Lysander

Surely it was not possible for those who saw money publicly honored, to despise it privately as of no service; or to consider as worthless for the individual’s private use that which was publicly held in such repute and esteem. Moreover, it takes far less time for public practices to affect the customs of private life, than it does for individual lapses and failings to corrupt entire cities.

For it is natural that the parts should rather be perverted along with the whole, when that deteriorates; but the diseases which flow from a part into the whole find many correctives and aids in the parts which remain sound. And so these magistrates merely set the fear of the law to guard the houses of the citizens, that money might have no entrance there, but did not keep their spirits undaunted by the power of money and insensible to it; they rather inspired them all with an emulous desire for wealth as a great and noble object of pursuit. On this point, however, we have censured the Lacedaemonians in another treatise.[*](Inst. Lacon. 42 (Plut. Morals 239 f.).)