Better for them to have lost many times over the seven youths, than that heavy-armed and stationary troops should have been turned into sailors, and accustomed to be often leaping on shore, and again to come running back to their ships; or should have fancied that there was no disgrace in not awaiting the attack of an enemy and dying boldly; and that there were good reasons, and plenty of them, for a man throwing away his arms, and betaking himself to flight,--which is not dishonourable, as people say, at certain times.

This is the language of naval warfare, and is anything but worthy of extraordinary praise.

For we should not teach bad habits, least of all to the best part of the citizens.

You may learn the evil of such a practice from Homer, by whom Odysseus is introduced, rebuking Agamemnon, because he desires to draw down the ships to the sea at a time when the Achaeans are hard pressed by the Trojans,--he gets angry with him, and says: 'Who, at a time when the battle is in full cry, biddest to drag the well-benched ships into the sea, that the prayers of the Trojans may be accomplished yet more, and high ruin fall upon us.

For the Achaeans will not maintain the battle, when the ships are drawn into the sea, but they will look behind and will cease from strife; in that the counsel which you give will prove injurious.' You see that he quite knew triremes on the sea, in the neighbourhood of fighting men, to be an evil;--lions might be trained in that way to fly from a herd of deer.