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When a messenger came from Crete bringing the news of the death of Acrotatus,1 she said, ‘When he had come to the enemy, was he not bound either to be slain by them or to slay them ? It is more pleasing to hear that he died in a manner worthy of myself, his country, and his ancestors than if he had lived for all time a coward.’ 2
1 Son of Areus I., king of Sparta. He fell in battle at Megalopolis in 265 bc., but the fact that hsi father Areus had been fighting in Crete may account for the intrusion of Crete here. Pausanias (viii. 27. 11) makes a more serious error in confusing this Acrotatus with his grandfather of the same name.
2 Cf. the similar saying of a Spartan woman, quoted by Teles in Stobaeus, Florilegium, cviii. 83.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1931. 3.
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