5.6
As a man was narrating to his mother the noble death of his brother, she said, Isn’t it a shame, then, to have missed his company on such a journey ? Cf. Moralia, 242 b (22), infra.
5.7
One woman sent forth her sons, five in number, to war, and, standing in the outskirts of the city, she awaited anxiously the outcome of the battle. And when someone arrived and, in answer to her inquiry, reported that all her sons had met death, she said, I did not inquire about that, you vile varlet, but how fares our country ? And when he declared that it was victorious, Then, she said, I accept gladly also the death of my sons. Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Agesilaus, chap. xxix. (612 c-d).
5.8
Another was burying her son, when a commonplace old woman came up to her and said, Ah the bad luck of it, you puir woman. No, by Heaven, said she, but good luck; for I bore him that he might die for Sparta, and this is the very thing that has come to pass for me.The story is told also by Teles in Stobaeus, Florilegium, cviii. 83; Cf. also Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, i. 42 (102).
5.9
When a woman from Ionia showed vast pride in a bit of her own weaving, which was very valuable, a Spartan woman pointed to her four sons, who were most well-behaved, and said, Such should be the employments of the good and honourable woman, and it is over these that she should be elated and boastful. Cf. Severus in Stobaeus, Florilegium, v. 47, and the similar story of the Roman Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi.
5.10
Another, hearing about her son that he was conducting himself badly in a foreign land, wrote to him, Ill report is spread about ye; pit this from ye or else stop yer living. Cf. Moralia, 241 a (3), supra.
