in each hall. He considered facetiousness as a seasoning of their hard
exercise and diet, and therefore ordered it to take place on all proper
occasions, in their common entertainments and parties of pleasure.

Upon the whole, he taught his citizens to think nothing more
disagreeable than to live by (or for) themselves. Like bees, they acted
with one impulse for the public good, and always assembled about their
prince. They were possessed with a thirst of honour, an enthusiasm
bordering upon insanity, and had not a wish but for their country. These
sentiments are confirmed by some of their aphorisms. When Pædaretus lost
his election for one of the "three hundred," he went away "rejoicing
that there were three hundred better men than himself found in the
city." Pisistratidas going with some others, ambassador to the king of
Persia's lieutenants, was asked whether they came with a public
commission, or on their own account, to which he answered, "If
successful, for the public; if unsuccessful, for ourselves." Agrileonis,
the mother of Brasidas, asking some Amphipolitans that waited upon her
at her house, whether Brasidas died honourably and as became a Spartan?
they greatly extolled his merit, and said there was not such a man left
in Sparta; whereupon she replied, "Say not so, my friends; for Brasidas
was indeed a man of honour, but Lacedæmon can boast of many better men
than he."

The senate, as I said before, consisted at first of those that were
assistants to Lycurgus in his great enterprise. Afterwards, to fill up
any vacancy that might happen, he ordered the most worthy men to be
selected, of those that were full threescore years old. This was the
most respectable dispute in the world, and the contest was truly
glorious; for it was not who should be swiftest among the swift, or
strongest of the strong, but who was the wisest and best among the good