ἱστορίαι Historiai
Plut. Mor., Laconic Apophthegms 43 Laconic Apophthegms; or Remarkable Sayings of the Spartans, Plutarch; served verbatim
Of Callicratidas. Callicratidas the admiral, when some of Lysander’s friends desired him to permit them to kill one of the enemy, and offered fifty talents for the favor, though he wanted money extremely to buy provision for his soldiers, refused; and when Cleander urged him, and said, Sir, I would have taken the money if I were you, he replied, So would I, were I Cleander. When he came to Sardis to Cyrus the Younger, who was then an ally of the Lacedaemonians, about a sum of money to equip his navy, on the first day he ordered his officers to tell Cyrus that he desired audience; but being told that he was drinking, Well, said he, I shall stay till he hath done. But understanding that he could not be admitted that day, he presently left the court, and thereupon was thought a rude and uncivil fellow. On the next day, when he received the same answer and could not be admitted, he said, I must not be so eager for money as to do any thing unbecoming Sparta. And presently he returned to Ephesus, cursing those who had first endured the insolence of the barbarians, and had taught them to rely upon their wealth and abuse others; and he swore to his companions that as soon as ever he came to Sparta, he would do all that lay in his power to reconcile the Greek states, that they might be more dreadful to the barbarians, and not forced to seek assistance from them to ruin one another. Being asked what manner of men the Ionians were, he replied, Bad freemen, but good slaves. When Cyrus sent his soldiers their pay, and some particular presents to himself, he received the pay, but sent back the presents, saying that there was no need of any private friendship between them, for the common league with the Lacedaemonians included him. Designing to engage near Arginusae, when Hermon the pilot said, It is advisable to tack about, for the Athenians exceed us in number; he exclaimed: What then! it is base and dishonorable to Sparta to fly, but to stand to it and die or conquer is brave and noble. As he was sacrificing before the battle, when he heard the priest presaging that the army would conquer but the captain fall, undauntedly he said: Sparta doth not depend on one man; my country will receive no great loss by my death, but a considerable one by my yielding to the enemy. And ordering Cleander to succeed as admiral, he readily engaged, and died in the battle.

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

← Plut. Mor., Laconic Apophthegms 42 contents Plut. Mor., Laconic Apophthegms 44 →

Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass
Cyrus — a candidate entry Lysander — a life

Laconic Apophthegms; or Remarkable Sayings of the Spartans, Plutarch — translated by unknown (rev. W. W. Goodwin), 1874
Apparatus shelf + pinned Perseus TEI — Plutarch's Morals (the Moralia), ed. William W. Goodwin, five volumes · 'Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph. D.', with an introduction by R. W. Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874 (five volumes; a minority of the TEI transcriptions were keyed from the same publisher's 1878 reprint)
license: public-domain (US: the Goodwin edition is an 1874 Boston publication of a 1684-1694 translation — title pages verified on all five shelf scans at acquisition; Perseus digital editions CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern)