|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: praise.
As touching, therefore, the excellency of his birth, what weightier,
what nobler testimony can be adduced than this one fact? To the
commemorative list of famous ancestry is added to-day the name[1]
Agesilaus as holding this or that numerical descent from Heracles, and
these ancestors no private persons, but kings sprung from the loins of
kings. Nor is it open to the gainsayer to contend that they were kings
indeed but of some chance city. Not so, but even as their family holds
highest honour in their fatherland, so too is their city the most
glorious in Hellas, whereby they hold, not primacy over the second
best, but among leaders they have leadership.
|
