Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

Summoned from Sicily by the Athenians to be tried for his life, he went into hiding, saying that it is silly for a man under indictment to seek a way to get off when he can get away. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades, chap. xxi. (202 C); Aelian, Varia Historia, xiii. 38.)

When somebody said, Don’t you trust your fatherland to decide about you ?he replied, Not I; nor would I trust even my mother, lest in a moment of thoughtlessness she unwittingly cast a black ballot instead of a white one. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades, chap. xxii. (202 D) and Aelian, xiii. 38.)

Hearing that sentence of death had been passed upon him and his companions, he said, Let us show them, then, that we are alive, and turning to the Spartan side he started the Decelean war against the Athenians. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades, chap. xxii. (202 D) and Aelian, xiii. 38; cf. also Polyaenus, Strategemata, i. 40. 6.)

Lamachus reprimanded one of his captains who had made a mistake, and when the man vowed he would never do it again, Lamachus said, In war there is no room for two mistakes.

Iphicrates, who was reputed to be the son of a shoemaker, was looked down upon. The first occasion on which he won repute was when, wounded himself, he picked up one of the enemy alive, armour and all, and bore him to his own trireme.

Encamping in a friendly and allied country, he threw up a palisade and dug a ditch with all care, and to the man who said, What have we to fear ? he replied that the worst words a general could utter were the familiar I never should have thought it. [*](Cf. Polyaenus, Strategemata, iii. 9. 17. The saying is attributed to Scipio Africanus by Valerius Maximus, vii. 2, and to Fabius by Seneca, De ira, ii. 31. 4. Cicero, De officiis, i. 23 (81) states it as a general maxim.)