On Sparta
PlutarkhosSözler ve Alıntılar
Now Agesilaus would declare that in principle justice was absolutely the first of the virtues, for courage is of no use unless it is accompanied by justice, and if everyone were to act justly then there would be no need for courage.
When some woman, evidently a foreigner, said to Leonidas' wife Gorgo: ‘You Laconian women are the only ones who can rule men,’ she replied: ‘That is because we are the only ones who give birth to men.’
There is no difference between a friend and a mercenary except that the former is kept by the way he is treated and addressed, and the latter by money.
The reaction of Pausanias' son, Pleistoanax, to an Athenian politician's disparagement of Spartans as uneducated, was to say: ‘Your point is correct, since we are the only Greeks who have learned nothing wicked from you Athenians.’
If I have accomplished any glorious feat, that will be my memorial. But if I have not, not even all the statues in the world – the products of vulgar, worthless men – would make any difference.