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As for testing them under arms, and watching them get wounded—no! It is bestial and terribly cruel and, more than that, unprofitable to kill off the most efficient men who can be used to better advantage against the enemy. As you say that you intend to visit the rest of Greece, Anacharsis, bear it in mind if ever you go to Sparta not to laugh at them, either, and not to suppose that they are exerting themselves for nothing when they rush together and strike one another in the theatre over a ball, or when they go into a place surrounded by water, divide into companies and treat one another like enemies, naked as with us, until one company drives the other out of the enclosure, crowding them into the water—the Heraclids driving out the Lycurgids, or the reverse—after which there is peace in future and nobody would think of striking a blow. Above all, do not laugh if you see them getting flogged at the altar and dripping blood while their fathers and mothers stand by and are so far from being distressed by what is going on that they actually threaten to punish them if they should not bear up under the stripes, and beseech them to endure the pain as long as possible and be staunch under the torture. Asa matter of fact, many have died in the competition, not deigning to give in before the eyes of their kinsmen while they still had life in them, or even to move a muscle of their bodies; you will see honours paid to their statues, which have been set up at public cost by the state of Sparta. When you see all that, do not suppose them crazy, and do not say that they are undergoing misery without any stringent reason, since it is due neither to a tyrant’s violence nor to an enemy’s maltreatment. Lycurgus, their law-giver, could defend it by telling you many good reasons which he has discerned for punishing them; he is not unfriendly to them, and does not do it out of hatred, nor is he wantonly wasting the young blood of the city, but he desires that those who are destined to preserve their country should be tremendously staunch and superior to every fear. Yet, even if Lycurgus does not say so, you see for yourself, I suppose, that such aman, on being captured in war, would never betray any Spartan secret under torture inflicted by the enemy, but would laugh at them and take his whipping, matching himself against his flogger to see which would give in.
