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,
They, at Selinus, did in battle die,

said, it served them right; for instead of trying to quench the
tyranny they should have let it burn out. A lad, being offered
some game-cocks that would die upon the spot, said he cared not
for cocks that would die, but for such as would live and kill
others. In short, their answers were so sententious and pertinent,
that one said well that intellectual, much more truly than
athletic, exercise was the Spartan characteristic.

Nor was their instruction in music and verse less carefully
attended to than their habits of grace and good breeding in
conversation. And their very songs had a life and spirit in them
that inflamed and possessed men's minds with an enthusiasm and
ardor for action; the style of them was plain and without
affectation; the subject always serious and moral; most usually it
was in praise of such men as had died in defence of their country,