ible people.

Sec. XIV. Moreover it is no great task to resist disreputable and low and
worthless fellows who importune you, but some send such off with a laugh
or a jest, as Theocritus did, who, when two fellows in the public baths,
one a stranger, the other a well-known thief, wanted to borrow his
scraper,[668] put them both off with a playful answer, "You, sir, I
don't know, and you I know too well." And Lysimache,[669] the priestess
of Athene Polias at Athens, when some muleteers that bore the sacred
vessels asked her to give them a drink, answered, "I hesitate to do so
from fear that you would make a practice of it." And when a certain
young man, the son of a distinguished officer, but himself effeminate
and far from bold, asked Antigonus for promotion, he replied, "With me,
young man, honours are given for personal prowess, not for the prowess
of ancestors."

Sec. XV. But if the person that importunes us be famous or a man of power,
for such persons are very hard to move by entreaty or to get rid of when
they come to sue for your vote and interest, it will not perhaps be easy
or even necessary to behave as Cato, when quite a young man, did to
Catulus. Catulus was in the highest repute at Rome, and at that time
held the office of censor, and went to Cato, who then held the office of
quaestor, and tried to beg off someone whom he had fined, and was urgent
and even violent in his petitions, till Cato at last lost all patience,
and said, "To have you, the censor, removed by my officers against your
will, Catulus, would not be a seemly thing for you." So Catulus felt
ashamed, and went off in a rage. But see whether the answers of
Agesilaus and Themistocles are not more modest and in better form.
Agesilaus, when he was asked by his father to pronounce sentence
contrary to the law, said, "Father, I was taught by you even from my
earliest years to obey the laws, so now I shall obey you and do nothing
contrary to law." And Themistocles, when Simonides asked him to do
something unjust, replied, "Neither would you be a good poet if your
lines violated the laws of metre, nor should I be a good magistrate if I
gave decisions contrary to law."

Sec. XVI. And yet it is not on account of want of metrical harmony in
respect to the lyre, to borrow the words of Plato, that cities quarrel
with cities and friends with friends, and do and suffer the worst woes,
but on account of deviations[670] from law and justice. And yet some,
wh