And suppose that, before engaging, our citizens send an embassy to one of the two cities, telling them what is the truth: Silver and gold we neither have nor are permitted to have, but you may; do you therefore come and help us in war, and take the spoils of the other city: Who, on hearing these words, would choose to fight against lean wiry dogs, rather than, with the dogs on their side, against fat and tender sheep?
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"How know we," etc. The Greek means: "how know we whether Telauges were not nobler in character than Sophocles?" The allusion is unknown.
Yes, he said; at any rate the individual out of whom he came is like the State out of which oligarchy came.
Then we may assume that our athletes will be able to fight with two or three times their own number?
[“What princes themselves do, they seem to prescribe.” --Quintil., Declam., 3.]
And the avaricious, I said, is the oligarchical youth?
And yet rich men probably have a greater superiority in the science and practise of boxing than they have in military qualities.
"Says he" (63): Plato, quoted by Epictetus, Arr. i. 28, 2 and 22.
“Quicquid principes faciunt, praecipere videntur.”
"With meats," etc. From Euripides, Supplices, 1110. XXXIII. "They both," i.e. life and wrestling.
Certainly, he said, there would be nothing wonderful in that.
Our kings can do what they please in such external reformations; their own inclination stands in this case for a law:
Of all changes, he said, there is none so speedy or so sure as the conversion of the ambitious youth into the avaricious one.
What, now, I said, if he were able to run away and then turn and strike at the one who first came up? And supposing he were to do this several times under the heat of a scorching sun, might he not, being an expert, overturn more than one stout personage?
Zeleucus by the like invention reclaimed the corrupted manners of the Locrians. His laws were, that no free woman should be allowed any more than one maid to follow her, unless she was drunk: nor was to stir out of the city by night, wear jewels of gold about her, or go in an embroidered robe, unless she was a professed and public prostitute; that, bravos excepted, no man was to wear a gold ring, nor be seen in one of those effeminate robes woven in the city of Miletus. By which infamous exceptions he discreetly diverted his citizens from superfluities and pernicious pleasures, and it was a project of great utility to attract then by honour and ambition to their duty and obedience.
"But, O noble sir," etc. Plato, Gorgias, 512 D. XXVII. "And as for those parts," etc. A quotation from Euripides, Chryssipus, frag. 839 (Nauck).
And do you not suppose, Adeimantus, that a single boxer who was perfect in his art would easily be a match for two stout and well-to-do gentlemen who were not boxers?
And when he has made reason and spirit sit down on the ground obediently on either side of their sovereign, and taught them to know their place, he compels the one to think only of how lesser sums may be turned into larger ones, and will not allow the other to worship and admire anything but riches and rich men, or to be ambitious of anything so much as the acquisition of wealth and the means of acquiring it.
It should be rather proclaimed, on the contrary, that no one should wear scarlet or goldsmiths’ work but courtesans and tumblers.
"Lives," etc. Euripides, Hypsipyle, frag. 757 (Nauck). "As long," etc. Aristophanes, Acharne, 66 i.