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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: living a public duty.
[4] Is this an autobiographical touch?
And was this not a noble enactment, that whereas other states are
content to inflict punishment only in cases where a man does wrong
against his neighbour, Lycurgus imposed penalties no less severe on
him who openly neglected to make himself as good as possible? For
this, it seems, was his principle: in the one case, where a man is
robbed, or defrauded, or kidnapped, and made a slave of, the injury of
the misdeed, whatever it be, is personal to the individual so
maltreated; but in the other case whole communities suffer foul
treason at the hands of the base man and the coward. So that it was
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