The lovers of the boys also shared their honour or disgrace; it is said that once when a boy in a fight let fall an unmanly word, his lover was fined by the magistrates.  Thus was love understood among them; for even fair and honourable matrons loved young maidens, but none expected their feelings to be returned.  Rather did those who loved the same person make it a reason for friendship with each other, and vie with one another in trying to improve in every way the object of their love.

XVIII.  The boys were taught to use a sarcastic yet graceful style of speaking, and to compress much thought into few words; for Lykurgus made the iron money have little value for its great size, but on the other hand he made their speech short and compact, but full of meaning, teaching the young, by long periods of silent listening, to speak sententiously and to the point.  For those who allow themselves much licence in speech seldom say anything memorable.  When some Athenian jeered at the small Laconian swords, and said that jugglers on the stage could easily swallow them, King Agis answered, “And yet with these little daggers we can generally reach our enemies.”  I think that the Laconian speech, though it seems so short, yet shows a great grasp of the subject and has great power over the listeners.  Lykurgus himself seems to have been short and sententious, to judge from what has been preserved of his sayings; as, for instance, that remark to one who proposed to establish a democracy in the state, “First establish a democracy in your own household.”  And when he was asked why he ordained the sacrifices to be so small and cheap, he answered, “It is in order that we may never be forced to omit them.”  So too in gymnastic exercises, he discouraged all those which are not performed with the hand closed.

The same class of answers are said to have been made by him to his fellow-countrymen in his letters.  When they asked how they should keep off their enemies, he answered, “By remaining poor, and not each trying to be a greater man than the other.”  Again, about walls, he said, “that cannot be called an open town which has courage, instead of brick walls to defend it.”  As to the authenticity of these letters, it is hard to give an opinion.

XIX.—­The following anecdotes show their dislike of long speeches.  When some one was discoursing about matters useful in themselves at an unfitting time, King Leonidas said, “Stranger, you speak of what is wanted when it is not wanted.”  Charilaus the cousin of Lykurgus, when asked why they had so few laws answered, that men of few words required few laws.  And Archidamidas, when some blamed Hekataeus the Sophist for having said nothing during dinner, answered, “He who knows how to speak knows when to speak also.”  The following are some of those sarcastic sayings which I before said are not ungrateful.  Demaratus, when some worthless fellow pestered him with unreasonable queries, and several times inquired, “Who is the best man in Sparta?” answered, “He who is least like you.”  When some were praising the magnificence and justice with which the Eleans conducted the Olympian games, Agis said, “What is there so very remarkable in the people of Elis acting justly on one day in every five years?”