taken
prisoners, and being taken must, if it so betide, endure the pains of
slavery for the rest of their days; or, after falling into dolorous
straits, (4) when they have paid to the uttermost farthing of all, or
may be more than the worth of all, that they possess, must drag on
a miserable existence in want of the barest necessaries until death
release them. Many also are they who gain an evil repute through
infirmity of body, being thought to play the coward. Can it be that you
despise these penalties affixed to an evil habit? Do you think you
could lightly endure them? Far lighter, I imagine, nay, pleasant even
by comparison, are the toils which he will undergo who duly cultivates
a healthy bodily condition. Or do you maintain that the evil habit
is healthier, and in general more useful than the good? Do you pour
contempt upon those blessings which flow from the healthy state? And
yet the very opposite of that which befalls the ill attends the
sound condition. Does not the very soundness imply at once health and
strength? (5) Many a man with no other talisman than this has passed
safely through the ordeal of war; stepping, not without dignity, (6)
through all its horrors unscathed. Many with no other support than this
have come to the rescue of friends, or stood forth as benefactors of
their fatherland; whereby they were thought worthy of gratitude, and
obtained a great renown and received as a recompense the highest honours
of the State; to whom is also reserved a happier and brighter passage
through what is left to them of life, and at their death they leave
to their children the legacy of a fairer starting-point in the race of
life.

(3) Or, "should chance betide." Is the author thinking of a life-and-
death struggle with Thebes?

(4) e.g. the prisoners in the Latomiae. Thuc. vii. 87.

(5) It is almost a proverb--"Sound of body and limb is hale and
strong." "Qui valet praevalebit."

(6) e.g. Socrates himself, according to Alcibiades, ap. Plat. "Symp."
221 B; and for the word {euskhemonos} see Arist. "Wasps," 1210,
"like a gentleman"; L. and S.; "Cyr." I. iii. 8; Aristot. "Eth.
N." i. 10, 13, "gracefully."

Because our city does not practise military training in public, (7)
that is no reason for neglecting it in private, but rather a reason for
making it a foremost care. For be you assured that there is no contest
of any sort, nor any transaction, in which you will be the worse off f