SOCRATES: Then you would not admit that sort of endurance to be courage--
for it is not noble, but courage is noble?

LACHES: You are right.

SOCRATES: Then, according to you, only the wise endurance is courage?

LACHES: True.

SOCRATES: But as to the epithet 'wise,'--wise in what? In all things
small as well as great? For example, if a man shows the quality of
endurance in spending his money wisely, knowing that by spending he will
acquire more in the end, do you call him courageous?

LACHES: Assuredly not.

SOCRATES: Or, for example, if a man is a physician, and his son, or some
patient of his, has inflammation of the lungs, and begs that he may be
allowed to eat or drink something, and the other is firm and refuses; is
that courage?

LACHES: No; that is not courage at all, any more than the last.

SOCRATES: Again, take the case of one who endures in war, and is willing
to fight, and wisely calculates and knows that others will help him, and
that there will be fewer and inferior men against him than there are with
him; and suppose that he has also advantages of position; would you say of
such a one who endures with all this wisdom and preparation, that he, or
some man in the opposing army who is in the opposite circumstances to these