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Laches

Laches

by Plato

Original title: Λάχης · 88 pages · about 1 hour to read

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About this book

The Laches (; Greek: Λάχης) is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato. Participants in the discourse present competing definitions of the concept of courage or "manliness", ἀνδρεία in Greek.

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Quotes

  • “Nicias, the tactician, is very much in favour of the new art, which he describes as the gymnastics of war--useful when the ranks are formed, and still more useful when they are broken; creating a general interest in military studies, and greatly adding to the appearance of the soldier in the field.”
More quotes
  • “Laches thinks that he knows this: (1) ‘He is courageous who remains at his post.’ But some nations fight flying, after the manner of Aeneas in Homer; or as the heavy-armed Spartans also did at the battle of Plataea.”
  • “But then again unintelligent endurance may often be more courageous than the intelligent, the bad than the good. How is this contradiction to be solved?”
  • “The terrible is in the future, and therefore the knowledge of the terrible is a knowledge of the future. But there can be no knowledge of future good or evil separated from a knowledge of the good and evil of the past or present; that is to say, of all good and evil.”
  • “I say this, because I think that if it had been really valuable, the Lacedaemonians, whose whole life is passed in finding out and practising the arts which give them an advantage over other nations in war, would have discovered this one.”

Passages from the book's public-domain text on Project Gutenberg. Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

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