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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: telling the bearer to take back to the king this answer: "He need not
be at pains to send him letters in private, but if he could prove
himself a friend to Lacedaemon and the well-wisher of Hellas he should
have no cause to blame the ardour of his friendship," but added, "if
your king be detected plotting, let him not think to find a friend in
me. No, not if he sends me a thousand letters." For my part, then, I
hold it praiseworthy that, by comparison with pleasing his fellow-
Hellenes, Agesilaus scorned such friendship. And this, too, among his
tenets I find admirable: the truer title to self-congratulation
belonged not to the millionaire, the master of many legions, but to
him rather, who, being himself a better man, commanded the allegience
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