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Those who think that the Spartans felt their discipline to be essentially a hardship should read the song of Tyrtaeus, which they recited in their tents on the eve of battle: With spirit let us fight for this land, and for our children die, being no longer chary of our lives. Fight, then, young men, standing fast one by another, nor be beginners of cowardly flight or fear.
These appearances which your messenger observed indicate to me that the men he saw were a body of Spartans, and that they supposed themselves on the eve of a desperate conflict. Those are the men, practicing athletic feats, and smoothing and adorning their hair, that are the most to be feared of all the soldiers of Greece. If you can conquer them, you will have nothing beyond to fear."
The most urgent matter was the war which had been carried on between the Spartans and Achaeans since 550, in which the duty of mediating necessarily fell to the Romans.
"Jest not, Pausanias; you will find me in earnest," answered Uliades, doggedly, and encouraged by the evident effect that his eloquence had produced upon the Spartans themselves. "I have met with a grievous wrong, and all Greece shall hear of it, if it be not redressed. My own brother, who at Mycale slew four Persians with his own hand, headed a detachment for forage.
These weapons were arranged so as to form what the Greeks called a trophy, and right under them Aristomenes boldly wrote his name in letters so large that all could see it. When morning dawned, and the Spartans came as usual into the temple to offer up their morning prayer and sacrifice, they were astonished and dismayed at the sight of this trophy.
"It's a punishment of the Gods," said the wife of Phaon. "You should not have let Daphne run the streets like a boy. It's against nature. No decent Athenian girl would be allowed to. I never put my nose out of my Mother's house exeept on the days of women's festivals until I was married." "But, my dear," said Phaon mildly, "you forget the Spartans are different."
Pausanias, surprised and moved by the burst of the fair Byzantine, gazed at her admiringly, and thought within himself how harshly the same sentiment would have sounded on the lips of a tall Spartan virgin; but when Cleonice heard the approving interlocution of Diagoras, her enthusiasm vanished from her face, and putting out her lips poutingly, she said, "Nay, father, I repeat only what others say of the Spartans.
It is said that after the death of Menelaus Helen was driven from the Peloponnesus by the indignant Spartans.
As they proceeded thus in marching order, and quite unprepared for any hostile movement, the Spartans suddenly found themselves face to face with the whole Argive army, drawn up in order of battle. Thanks to this perfect organization, in a very few minutes every man was in his place and ready for battle.
The man made no secret of his reason, but answered: "My, king, you have made me less warlike by freeing me from those miseries on account of which I used to hold my life cheap." And the Sybarite seems to have spoken to the same effect about the Spartans, when he said that "they do no great thing by dying in the wars in order to escape from such labours and such a mode of life as theirs."
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