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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: madness, and immoderate eating like the snare of indolence. Even the
double portion[1] allotted to him at the banquet was not spent on his
own appetite; rather would be make distribution of the whole,
retaining neither portion for himself. In his view of the matter this
doubling of the king's share was not for the sake of surfeiting, but
that the king might have the wherewithal to honour whom he wished. And
so, too, sleep[2] he treated not as a master, but as a slave,
subservient to higher concerns. The very couch he lay upon must be
sorrier than that of any of his company or he would have blushed for
shame, since in his opinion it was the duty of a leader to excel all
ordinary mortals in hardihood, not in effeminacy. Yet there were
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