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, or in derision of those that had been cowards; the former
they declared happy and glorified; the life of the latter they described
as most miserable and abject. There were also vaunts of what they would
do, and boasts of what they had done, varying with the various ages, as,
for example, they had three choirs in their solemn festivals, the
first of the old men, the second of the young men, and the last of the
children; the old men began thus:

We once were young, and brave and strong;

the young men answered them, singing,

And we're so now, come on and try;

the children came last and said,

But we'll be strongest by and by.

Before they engaged in battle, the Lacedaemonians abated a little the
severity of their manners in favor of their young men, suffering them
to curl and adorn their hair, and to have costly arms, and fine clothes;
and were well pleased to see them, like proud horses, neighing and
pressing to the course. And therefore, as soon as they came to be well
grown, they took a great deal of care of their hair, to have it parted
and trimmed, especially against a day of battle, pursuant to a saying
recorded of their lawgiver, that a large head of hair added beauty to a
good face, and terror to an ugly one.

The senate, as I said before, consisted of those who were Lycurgus's
chief aiders and assistants in his plan. The vacancies he ordered to be
supplied out of the best and most deserving men past sixty years old.
The manner of their election was as follows: the people being called
together,