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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: We ought, he said, to make the gods our allies on hostile no less than
on friendly soil.
He would do no violence to a suppliant, no, not even if he were his
own foe; since how irrational must it be to stigmatise robbers of
temples as sacrilegious and yet to regard him who tears the suppliant
from the altar as a pious person.
One tenet he never wearied of repeating: the gods, he said, are not
less pleased with holy deeds than with pure victims.
In the day of his prosperity his thoughts were not raised higher than
befits a man; he gave thanks to the gods; and offered more victims
when he had nothing to fear than he registered vows in time of
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