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| Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War | 352 | 0 | Browse | Search |
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| Herodotus, The Histories (ed. A. D. Godley) | 90 | 0 | Browse | Search |
| Plato, Laws | 40 | 0 | Browse | Search |
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| Homer, The Odyssey (ed. Samuel Butler, Based on public domain edition, revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy.) | 22 | 0 | Browse | Search |
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| Isocrates, Speeches (ed. George Norlin) | 20 | 0 | Browse | Search |
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Browsing named entities in Plato, Laws. You can also browse the collection for Lacedaemon (Greece) or search for Lacedaemon (Greece) in all documents.
Your search returned 20 results in 19 document sections:
AthenianTo whom do you ascribe the authorship of your legal arrangements, Strangers? To a god or to some man?CliniasTo a god, Stranger, most rightfully to a god. We Cretans call Zeus our lawgiver; while in Lacedaemon, where our friend here has his home, I believe they claim Apollo as theirs. Is not that so, Megillus?MegillusYes.AthenianDo you then, like Homer,Cp. Hom. Od. 19.178. say that
rather than his peace legislation for war.CliniasThis statement, Stranger, is apparently true; yet, unless I am much mistaken, our legal usages in Crete, and in Lacedaemon too, are wholly acted towards war.AthenianVery possibly; but we must not now attack them violently,
but mildly interrogate them, since both we and your legislators are earnestly interested in these matters. Pray follow the argument closely. Let us take the opinion of Tyrtaeus (an Athenian by birth and afterwards a citizen of Lacedaemon), above all men, was keenly interested in our subject. This is what he says: Tyrt. 12 (Bergk). Tyrtaeus wrote war-songs at Sparta about 880 B.C. Though a man were the richest of men,Tyrtaeus 12 Bergk
though a man possessed goods in plenty (and he specifies nearly every good there is), if he failed to prove himself at all times most valiant in war, no mention should I make of nor take account of him at all. No doubt you also have heard these poems; while our friend Megillus is, I imagine, surfeited with them.MegillusI certainly am.CliniasAnd I can assure you they have reached Crete also, shipped over from Lacedaemon.AthenianCome now, let us jointly interrogate this poet somehow on this wise:
fair though it be and fitly glorified by the poet, deserves nevertheless to be placed no higher than fourth in order and estimation. i.e. courage comes after wisdom, prudence and justice.CliniasWe are degrading our own lawgiver, Stranger, to a very low level!AthenianNay, my good Sir, it is ourselves we are degrading, in so far as we imagine that it was with a special view to war that Lycurgus and Minos laid down all the legal usages here and in Lacedaemon.CliniasHow, then, ought we to have stated the matter?AthenianIn the way that is, as I think, true and proper
in hardihood, as the men go bare-foot in winter and sleep without coverlets and have no attendants, but wait on themselves and rove through the whole countryside both by night and by day. Moreover in our games, The “Naked Games,” held about midsummer. we have severe tests of endurance, when men unclad do battle with the violence of the heat,—and there are other instances so numerous that the recital of them would be well-nigh endless.AthenianSplendid, O Stranger of Lacedaemon! But come now, as to courage, how shall we define it? Shall we define it quite simply as battling against fears and pains
CliniasOn the face of them, we are inclined to approve; but to yield quick and easy credence in matters of such importance would, I fear, be rash and thoughtless.AthenianWell then, O Clinias, and thou, Stranger of Lacedaemon, suppose we discuss the second of the subjects we proposed, and take temperance next after courage: shall we discover any point in which these polities are superior to those framed at random,
nor would even the feast of Dionysus serve as an excuse to save him—a revel such as I once upon a time witnessed “on the wagons”At the Feast of Dionysus in Athens it was customary for revellers mounted on wagons to indulge in scurrilous language during the processions. in your country; and at our colony of Tarentum, too, saw the whole city drunk at the Dionysia. But with us no such thing is possible.AthenianO Stranger of Lacedaemon, all such indulgences are praiseworthy where there exists a strain of firm moral f
besides acting nobly in other ways. Thus, while education brings also victory, victory sometimes brings lack of education for men have often grown more insolent because of victory in war, and through their insolence they have become filled with countless other vices; and whereas education has never yet proved to be “Cadmeian,”i.e. involving more loss than gain—a proverbial expression, possibly derived from the fate of the “Sparti” (sprung from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus, founder of Thebes) who slew one another: cp. “Pyrrhic” victory. the victories which men win in war often have been, and will be, “Cadmeian.”CliniasYou are implying, my friend, as it seems to us, that the con
about the questions now in dispute that we are trying to learn.AthenianThus, then, we must do,—you must brace yourself in the effort to learn the argument, and I to expound it as best I can. But, first of all, I have a preliminary observation to make: our city, Athens, is, in the general opinion of the Greeks, both fond of talk and full of talk, but Lacedaemon is scant of talk, while Crete is more wittyA polite way of alluding to the proverbial mendacity of the Cretans (cp. Ep. Titus i. 12: KRH=TES A)EI\ YEU=STAI). than wordy