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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: an eye on the wealth, the luxury, the garments with their flowing trains,
the anointings with myrrh, the multitudes of attendants, and all the other
bravery of the Persians, you will be ashamed when you discern your own
inferiority; or if you look at the temperance and orderliness and ease and
grace and magnanimity and courage and endurance and love of toil and desire
of glory and ambition of the Lacedaemonians--in all these respects you will
see that you are but a child in comparison of them. Even in the matter of
wealth, if you value yourself upon that, I must reveal to you how you
stand; for if you form an estimate of the wealth of the Lacedaemonians, you
will see that our possessions fall far short of theirs. For no one here
can compete with them either in the extent and fertility of their own and
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