ose who were less than thirty years old never came into the
market-place at all, but made their necessary purchases through their
friends and relations. And it was thought discreditable to the older men
to be seen there much, and not to spend the greater part of the day in
the gymnasium and the _lesches_ or places for conversation. In these
they used to collect together and pass their leisure time, making no
allusions to business or the affairs of commerce, but their chief study
being to praise what was honourable, and contemn what was base in a
light satiric vein of talk which was instructive and edifying to the
hearers. Nor was Lykurgus himself a man of unmixed austerity: indeed, he
is said by Sosibius to have set up the little statue of the god of
laughter, and introduced merriment at proper times to enliven their
wine-parties and other gatherings. In a word, he trained his countrymen
neither to wish nor to understand how to live as private men, but, like
bees, to be parts of the commonwealth, and gather round their chief,
forgetting themselves in their enthusiastic patriotism, and utterly
devoted to their country. This temper of theirs we can discern in many
of their sayings. Paidaretus, when not elected into the three hundred,
went away rejoicing that the city possessed three hundred better men
than himself. Polykratidas, when he went with some others on a mission
to the generals of the great king, was asked by them, if he and his
party came as private persons or as ambassadors? He answered, "As
ambassadors, if we succeed; as private men, if we fail."

And when some citizens of Amphipolis came to Lacedaemon, and went to see
the mother of Brasidas, Argileonis, she asked them whether Brasidas died
bravely and worthily of Sparta. When they praised him to excess, and
said that he had not left his like behind, she said, "Say not so,
strangers; Brasidas was a noble and a gallant man, but Sparta has many
better than he."

XXV. Lykurgus himself composed his senate, as we have seen, of the
persons who took part in his plot; and in future be ordained that
vacancies should be filled up by those men, upwards of sixty years of
age, who were adjudged to be the most worthy.

This seemed the greatest prize in the world, and also the most difficult
to obtain; for it was not merely that a man should be adjudged swiftest
of the swift, or strongest of the strong, but he had to be chosen as the
best and wisest of all good and wise me