high standard of virtuous
living to be disregarded even in old age. (So, too, it is worthy of
admiration in him that he lent his helping hand to virtuous old age.
(3) Thus, by making the elders sole arbiters in the trial for life, he
contrived to charge old age with a greater weight of honour than that
which is accorded to the strength of mature manhood.) And assuredly
such a contest as this must appeal to the zeal of mortal man beyond all
others in a supreme degree. Fair, doubtless, are contests of gymnastic
skill, yet are they but trials of bodily excellence, but this contest
for the seniority is of a higher sort--it is an ordeal of the soul
itself. In proportion, therefore, as the soul is worthier than the body,
so must these contests of the soul appeal to a stronger enthusiasm than
their bodily antitypes.

(1) Reading {protheis}. See Plut. "Lycurg." 26 (Clough. i. 118);
Aristot. "Pol." ii. 9, 25.

(2) Or, "seniory," or "senate," or "board of elders"; lit. "the
Gerontia."

(3) Or, "the old age of the good. Yet this he did when he made...
since he contrived," etc.

And yet another point may well excite our admiration for Lycurgus
largely. It had not escaped his observation that communities exist
where those who are willing to make virtue their study and delight fail
somehow in ability to add to the glory of their fatherland. (4) That
lesson the legislator laid to heart, and in Sparta he enforced, as a
matter of public duty, the practice of virtue by every citizen. And so
it is that, just as man differs from man in some excellence, according
as he cultivates or neglects to cultivate it, this city of Sparta, with
good reason, outshines all other states in virtue; since she, and she
alone, as made the attainment of a high standard of noble living a
public duty.

(4) Is this an autobiographical touch?

And was this not a noble enactment, that whereas other states are
content to inflict punishment only in cases where a man does wrong
against his neighbour, Lycurgus imposed penalties no less severe on him
who openly neglected to make himself as good as possible? For this, it
seems, was his principle: in the one case, where a man is robbed, or
defrauded, or kidnapped, and made a slave of, the injury of the misdeed,
whatever it be, is personal to the individual so maltreated; but in the
other case whole communities suffer foul treason at the hands of the
base man and the coward. So that it was only re