and, again, when Philip wrote to them ‘_If I enter Laconia, I will turn you out_‘, they wrote back, ‘_If._’ When King Demetrius shouted in his indignation, ‘Have the Lacedaemonians sent only one envoy to _me_?‘, the envoy replied undismayed, ‘One to one.’ Among our ancient worthies also we admire [Sidenote: B] the men of few words. It was not the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_ or the paeans of Pindar that the Amphictyons inscribed upon the temple of the Pythian Apollo, but the maxims _Know Thyself_: _Nothing in Excess_: _Give pledge, and Mischief is nigh_, which they admired for their simple and compact expression, with its closely-hammered thought in small compass. And does not the god himself show a love of conciseness and brevity in his oracles, deriving his name of ‘Loxias’ from the fact that he would rather be obscure than garrulous? Do we not also particularly praise and admire those who can say, by means of a symbol and without speaking a word, all that [Sidenote: C] is necessary? For instance, when his fellow-citizens insisted upon Heracleitus proposing some measure for the promotion of concord, he mounted the platform, took a cup of cold water, sprinkled it with barley-meal, stirred it with a slip of pennyroyal, drank it off, and went home. This was his way of intimating that to be satisfied with the commonest things, and to have no expensive wants, is the way to maintain a community in peace and concord. Another case is that of Scilurus, the Scythian king, who left behind him eighty sons. When he was dying, he called for a bundle of small spears, and bade them take and break it in pieces, tied together as it was, and in the mass. When they gave up the task, he himself drew the spears out one by one and snapped them all with ease, thereby demonstrating [Sidenote: D] how invincible was their strength if harmoniously united, how weak and short-lived if they did not hold together.