do not strive for a good object with the same
strength, resources, and good fortune, upon which depend at all events
the issues of the most admirable projects, though we ought to praise the
will itself which makes an effort in the right direction. Even though
another passes it by with swifter pace, yet the palm of victory does
not, as in publicly-exhibited races, declare which is the better man;
though even in the games chance frequently brings an inferior man to the
front. As far as loyalty of feeling goes, which each man wishes to be
possessed in the fullest measure on his own side, if one of the two be
the more powerful, if he have at his disposal all the resources which he
wishes to use, and be favoured by fortune in his most ambitious efforts,
while the other, although equally willing, can only return less than he
receives, or perhaps can make no return at all, but still wishes to do
so and is entirely devoted to this object; then the latter is no more
conquered than he who dies in arms, whom the enemy found it easier to
slay than to turn back. To be conquered, which you consider disgraceful,
cannot happen to a good man; for he will never surrender, never give up
the contest, to the last day of his life he will stand prepared and in
that posture he will die, testifying that though he has received much,
yet that he had the will to repay as much as he had received.

III. The Lacedaemonians forbid their young men to contend in the
pancratium, or with the caestus, in which games the defeated party has
to acknowledge himself beaten. The winner of a race is he who first
reaches the goal; he outstrips the others in swiftness, but not in
courage. The wrestler who has been thrown three times loses the palm of
victory, but does not yield it up. Since the Lacedaemonians thought it
of great importance that their countrymen should be invincible, they
kept them away from those contests in which victory is assigned, not by
the judge, or by the issue of the contest itself, but by the voice
of the vanquished begging the victor to spare him as he falls. This
attribute of never being conquered, which they so jealously guard among
their citizens, can be attained by all men through virtue and goodwill,
because even when all else is vanquished, the mind remains unconquered.
For this cause no one speaks of the three hundred Fabii as conquered,
but slaughtered. Regulus was taken captive by the Carthaginians, not
conquered; and so were all