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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: [2] See Plut. "Apophth. Lac." p. 104.
Yet let it not be supposed, because he whom we praise has finished
life, that our discourse must therefore be regarded as a funeral
hymn.[3] Far rather let it be named a hymn of praise, since in the
first place it is only the repetition, now that he is dead, of a tale
familiar to his ears when living. And in the next place, what is more
remote from dirge and lamentation than a life of glory crowned by
seasonable death? What more deserving of song and eulogy than
resplendent victories and deeds of highest note? Surely if one man
rather than another may be accounted truly blest, it is he who, from
his boyhood upwards, thirsted for glory, and beyond all contemporary
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