eed, loose talkers seldom
originate many sensible words. King Agis, when some Athenian laughed at
their short swords, and said that the jugglers on the stage swallowed
them with ease, answered him, "We find them long enough to reach our
enemies with;" and as their swords were short and sharp, so, it seems to
me, were their sayings. They reach the point and arrest the attention of
the hearers better than any others. Lycurgus himself seems to have been
short and sententious, if we may trust the anecdotes of him; as
appears by his answer to one who by all means would set up democracy in
Lacedaemon. "Begin, friend," said he, "and set it up in your family."
Another asked him why he allowed of such mean and trivial sacrifices
to the gods. He replied, "That we may always have something to offer to
them." Being asked what sort of martial exercises or combats he approved
of, he answered, "All sorts, except that in which you stretch out your
hands."

Of their dislike to talkativeness, the following apophthegms are
evidence. King Leonidas said to one who held him in discourse upon some
useful matter, but not in due time and place, "Much to the purpose, sir,
elsewhere." King Charilaus, the nephew of Lycurgus, being asked why his
uncle had made so few laws, answered, "Men of few words require but few
laws." When one blamed Hecataeus the sophist because that, being
invited to the public table, he had not spoken one word all supper-time,
Archidamidas answered in his vindication, "He who knows how to speak,
knows also when."

The sharp, and yet not ungraceful, retorts which I mentioned may be
instanced as follows. Demaratus, being asked in a troublesome manner by
an importunate fellow, Who was the best man in Lacedaemon? answered at
last, "He, sir, that is the least like you." Some, in company where Agis
was, much extolled the Eleans for their just and honorable management of
the Olympic games; "Indeed," said Agis, "they are highly to be commended
if they can do justice one day in five years."

We may see their character, too, in their very jests. For they did not
throw them out at random, but the very wit of them was grounded upon
something or other worth thinking about. For instance, one, being asked
to go hear a man who exactly counterfeited the voice of a nightingale,
answered, "Sir, I have heard the nightingale itself." Another, having
read the following inscription upon a tomb,--

Seeking to quench a cruel tyranny,