Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

Plutarch

Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. III. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1931 (printing).

To a base man, who asked him many times who was the best of the Spartans, he replied, The one most unlike you. [*](Life of Lycurgus and Moralia, 216 C.)

When another man inquired about the number

of the Spartans, he said, Enough to keep away all bad men. [*](Cf. Moralia, 215 D; (5) infra; Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, chap. xx. (52 D).)

When another asked the same question, he said, You will think they are many, if you see them fight.

When Dionysius, the despot, sent garments of a very costly kind for Lysander’s daughters, Lysander would not accept them, saying that he was afraid that the girls would appear more ugly because of them. [*](Cf. Moralia, 141 D, 229 A, and Plutarch’s Life of Lysander, chap. ii. (434 C). The same story is told of Archidamus in Moralia, 218 E.),

To those who found fault with him for accomplishing most things through deception (a procedure which they asserted was unworthy of Heracles) he used to say in reply that where the lion’s skin does not reach it must be pieced out with the skin of the fox. [*](Cf. Moralia, 229 B; Plutarch’s Life of Lysander, chap. vii. (437 A), Leutsch and Schneidewin, Paroemiographi Graeci, i. p. 30.)

When the Argives seemed to make out a better case than the Spartans about the territory in dispute, he drew his sword, and said to them, He who is master of this talks best about boundaries of land. [*](Cf. Moralia, 229 C; Life of Lysander, chap. xxii. (445 D).)