1.1
Cato the Elder, when certain persons praised a man who was inconsiderately rash and daring in war, told them there was a difference between a man’s setting a high value on valour and his setting a low value on life; and his remark was just. At any rate, there was a soldier of Antigonus who was venturesome, but had miserable health and an impaired body. When the king asked him the reason for his pallor, the man admitted that it was a secret disease,
1.2
whereupon the king took compassion on him and ordered his physicians, if there was any help for him, to employ their utmost skill and care. Thus the man was cured; but then the good fellow ceased to court danger and was no longer a furious fighter, so that even Antigonus rebuked him and expressed his wonder at the change. The man, however, made no secret of the reason, but said: O King, it is thou who hast made me less daring, by freeing me from those ills which made me set little value on life.
1.3
On these grounds, too, as it would seem, a man of Sybaris said it was no great thing for the Spartans to seek death in the wars in order to escape so many hardships and such a wretched life as theirs. But to the Sybarites, who were dissolved in effeminate luxury, men whom ambition and an eager quest of honour led to have no fear of death naturally seemed to hate life;
1.4
whereas the virtues of the Lacedaemonians gave them happiness alike in living or dying, as the following elegy testifies: These, it says, died, not deeming either life or death honourable in themselves, But only the accomplishment of them both with honour. For neither is a man to be blamed for shunning death, if he does not cling to life disgracefully, nor to be praised for boldly meeting death, if he does this with contempt of life.
