despoiling an enemy afford
an excuse for not facing the battle? Cowards skulk about the dead,
pretending that they are fulfilling a duty, and many an army before now
has been lost from this love of plunder.

Very true.

And is there not illiberality and avarice in robbing a corpse, and also
a degree of meanness and womanishness in making an enemy of the dead
body when the real enemy has flown away and left only his fighting
gear behind him,--is not this rather like a dog who cannot get at his
assailant, quarrelling with the stones which strike him instead?

Very like a dog, he said.

Then we must abstain from spoiling the dead or hindering their burial?

Yes, he replied, we most certainly must.

Neither shall we offer up arms at the temples of the gods, least of all
the arms of Hellenes, if we care to maintain good feeling with other
Hellenes; and, indeed, we have reason to fear that the offering of
spoils taken from kinsmen may be a pollution unless commanded by the god
himself?

Very true.

Again, as to the devastation of Hellenic territory or the burning of
houses, what is to be the practice?

May I have the pleasure, he said, of hearing your opinion?

Both should be forbidden, in my judgment; I would take the annual
produce and no more. Shall I tell you why?

Pray do.

Why, you see, there is a difference in the names 'discord' and 'war,'
and I imagine that there is also a difference in their natures; the one
is expressive of what is internal and domestic, the other of what is
external and foreign; and the first of the two is termed discord, and
only the second, war.

That is a very proper distinction, he replied.

And may I not observe with equal propriety that the Hellenic race is all
united together by ties of blood and friendship, and alien and strange
to the barbarians?

Very good, he said.

And therefore when Hellenes fight with barbarians and barbarians with
Hellenes, they will be described by us as being at war when they fight,
and by nature enemies, and this kind of antagonism should be called war;
but when Hellenes fight with one another we shall say that Hellas is
then in a state of disorder and discord, they being by nature friends;
and such enmity is to be called discord.

I agree.

Consider then, I said, when that which we have acknowledged to be
discord occurs, and a city is divided, if both parties destroy the lands
and burn the houses of one another, how wicked does the stri