Page:Key to Easy Latin Stories for beginners.djvu/105

PART IV.] ANECDOTES. 97 if his shield was safe. When his friends said that it was safe he ordered it to be brought to him. Then he asked if the enemy had been defeated. On hearing the answer that they had been entirely conquered, and had taken to flight, ‘It is enough now,’ said he, ‘for I die unconquered.’ Then he ordered the weapon to be drawn from the wound, and when this, was done, he at once died. 278.Demetrius Poliorcetes had stormed the city of Megara. The philosopher Stilpo replied as follows to him, on him asking if he had lost anything: ‘I have lost nothing; all my property remains to me.’ Now he had said this after his money had been taken away, and his sons and fellow-citizens reduced to slavery. Yet he affirmed that he had lost nothing, for the true riches, that is to say courage and wisdom, which the enemy could not take away, still remained to him. ‘What the soldiers have taken from me,’ remarked he, ‘I shall never consider (really) mine.’ 279.Formerly there was an Athenian (named) Sophanes, who won the highest praise for valour among the Greeks. Some say of this man that he carried an iron anchor attached to the belt of his cuirass; that he was wont to stick this anchor into the ground as often as he approached the enemy, lest the enemy might charge and drive him from his post; but when the enemy were put to flight, that he was wont to take up the anchor, and thus again assail the enemy. These stories are told of this man. Now some think that there was an anchor on his shield, as a crest, not that he carried an iron anchor. 280.A certain Rhacoces had seven sons, of whom the youngest, who was called Cartomes, used to annoy his brothers from day to day. And after his father had frsquently admonished him in vain, the judges who, according to the commands of the king, were travelling through Asia, reached the region where Rhacoces was living. Hearing of the arrival of the