using such exercises as might improve their bodies, while they made use
of other men as their servants for all the necessaries of life, and had
their food prepared for them by the others; and these good and humane
actions they do for no other purpose but this, that by their actions and
their sufferings they may be able to conquer all those against whom they
make war. I need not add this, that they have not been fully able to
observe their laws; for not only a few single persons, but multitudes of
them, have in heaps neglected those laws, and have delivered themselves,
together with their arms, into the hands of their enemies.
33. Now as for ourselves, I venture to say that no one can tell of so
many; nay, not of more than one or two that have betrayed our laws, no,
not out of fear of death itself; I do not mean such an easy death as
happens in battles, but that which comes with bodily torments, and seems
to be the severest kind of death of all others. Now I think those that
have conquered us have put us to such deaths, not out of their hatred to
us when they had subdued us, but rather out of their desire of seeing a
surprising sight, which is this, whether there be such men in the world
who believe that no evil is to them so great as to be compelled to do or
to speak any thing contrary to their own laws. Nor ought men to wonder
at us, if we are more courageous in dying for our laws than all other
men are; for other men do not easily submit to the easier things in
which we are instituted; I mean working with our hands, and eating but
little, and being contented to eat and drink, not at random, or at every
one's pleasure, or being under inviolable rules in lying with our wives,
in magnificent furniture, and again in the observation of our times of
rest; while those that can use their swords in war, and can put their
enemies to flight when they attack them, cannot bear to submit to such
laws about their way of living: whereas our being accustomed willingly
to submit to laws in these instances, renders us fit to show our
fortitude upon other occasions also.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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