Apophthegmata Laconica

When, in obedience to his orders that the prisoners of war be sold naked, those charged with selling the spoils so offered them, there were many buyers for the clothing, but as for the prisoners’ bodies, altogether white and soft because of their indoor life, the buyers derided them as useless and worthless. And Agesilaus, stepping up, said, These are the things for which you fight, and these are the men whom you fight. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Agesilaus, chap. ix. (600 E); Xenophon, Hellenica, iii. 4. 19. Agesilaus, 1. 28: Polyaenus ii. 1. 5; Athenaeus, 550 E.)

Having routed Tissaphernes in the Lydia n country and slain a great many of his men, he proceeded to overrun the king’s country. The king sent money to him, and in return asked for a cessation of hostilities, but Agesilaus said that the State alone had the power to make peace, and that it gave him more pleasure to enrich his soldiers than to be rich himself, and that he thought it a grand thing that the Greeks did not accept gifts from the enemy, but took spoils instead. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Agesilaus, chap. x. (601 A-B), where the remark is made to Tithraustes, who was sent by the king to supplant Tissaphernes. Cf. also Xenophon, Hellenica, iii. 4. 25, and Agesilaus 4.6.)

When Megabates, Spithridates’ son, who was most fair of form, came near to him as if to greet him with a kiss because the boy felt that he was held in aiFection by Agesilaus, Agesilaus drew back. And when the boy stopped coming to see him, Agesilaus asked for him; whereupon his friends said that he had only himself to blame, because he shrank from coming within kissing distance of the fair one, and if he would not act the coward, the boy would come again. Agesilaus, reflecting by himself for no brief time in uninterrupted silence, finally said, There is no need of our trying to persuade him; for I feel that I had rather be above such things than to take by storm the most populous city of our opponents, since it is better to preserve one’s own liberty than to deprive others of theirs. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Agesilaus, chap. xi. (602 A); Moralia, 31 C (81 A); Xenophon, Agesilaus, 5, 4-5.)