He disposed of much idle declamation about the Lacedaemonians by saying, most concisely, correctly and happily, that the Lacedaemonian commonwealth really was a standing army which threatened all the rest of Greece.

In fact, the Spartan had no calling except war.

Of arts, sciences and letters he was ignorant.

The labour of the spade and of the loom, and the petty gains of trade, he contemptuously abandoned to men of a lower caste.

His whole existence from childhood to old age was one long military training.