[813] Ὑμέας γὰρ πυνθάνομαι προεστάναι τῆς Ἑλλάδος (Herodot. i. 69): compare i. 152; v. 49; vi, 84, about Spartan hegemony.
[814] Xenoph. Repub. Lac. 10, 8. ἐπαινοῦσι μὲν πάντες τὰ τοιαῦτα ἐπιτηδεύματα, μιμεῖσθαι δὲ αὐτὰ οὐδεμία πόλις ἐθέλει.
The magnificent funeral discourse, pronounced by Periklês in the early part of the Peloponnesian war over the deceased Athenian warriors, includes a remarkable contrast of the unconstrained patriotism and bravery of the Athenians, with the austere, repulsive, and ostentatious drilling to which the Spartans were subject from their earliest youth; at the same time, it attests the powerful effect which that drilling produced upon the mind of Greece (Thucyd. ii. 37-39). πιστεύοντες οὐ ταῖς παρασκευαῖς τὸ πλέον καὶ ἀπάταις, ἢ τῷ ἀφ᾽ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν ἐς τὰ ἔργα εὐψύχῳ· καὶ ἐν ταῖς παιδείαις οἱ μὲν (the Spartans) ἐπιπόνῳ ἀσκήσει εὐθὺς νέοι ὄντες τὸ ἀνδρεῖον μετέρχονται, etc.
The impression of the light troops, when they first began to attack the Lacedæmonian hoplites in the island of Sphakteria, is strongly expressed by Thucydidês (iv. 34),—τῇ γνώμῃ δεδουλωμένοι ὡς ἐπὶ Λακεδαιμονίους, etc.
[815] Xenoph. Hellen. v. 4, 52: compare iii. 5, 20.
[816] Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 4, 19.
[817] Pausan. iv. 24, 2; iv. 35, 2.
[818] Pausan. ii. 19, 2; Plutarch (Cur Pythia nunc non reddat oracula, etc. c. 5, p. 396; De Fortunâ Alexandri, c. 8, p. 340). Lakidês, king of Argos, is also named by Plutarch as luxurious and effeminate (De capiendâ ab hostibus utilitate, c. 6, p. 89).
O. Müller (Hist. of Dorians, iii. 6, 10) identifies Lakidês, son of Meltas, named by Pausanias, with Leôkêdês son of Pheidôn, named by Herodotus as one of the suitors for the daughter of Kleisthenês the Sikyonian (vi. 127); and he thus infers that Meltas must have been deposed and succeeded by Ægon, about 560 B. C. This conjecture seems to me not much to be trusted.
[819] Herodot. vii. 149.