The manner of their repartees, which, as I said, were seasoned with
humour, may be gathered from these instances. When a troublesome fellow
was pestering Demaratus with impertinent questions, and this in
particular several times repeated, "Who is the best man in Sparta?" He
answered, "He that is least like you." To some who were commending the
Eleans for managing the Olympic games with so much justice and
propriety, Agis said, "What great matter is it, if the Eleans do justice
once in five years?" When a stranger was professing his regard for
Theopompus, and saying that his own countrymen called him Philolacon (a
lover of the Lacedæmonians), the king answered him, "My good friend, it
were much better, if they called you Philopolites" (a lover of your own
countrymen). Plistonax, the son of Pausanias, replied to an orator of
Athens, who said the Lacedæmonians had no learning. "True, for we are
the only people of Greece that have learned no ill of you." To one who
asked what number of men there was in Sparta, Archidamidas said, "Enough
to keep bad men at a distance."

Even when they indulged a vein of pleasantry, one might perceive that
they would not use one unnecessary word, nor let an expression escape
them that had not some sense worth attending to. For one being asked to
go and hear a person who imitated the nightingale to perfection,
answered, "I have heard the nightingale herself." Another said, upon
reading this epitaph,

Victims of Mars, at Selinus they fell,
Who quench'd the rage of tyranny--

"And they deserved to fall, for, instead of _quenching_ it, they should
have let it _burn out_." A young man answered one that promised him some