על עבודת האדמה כ״הOn Husbandry 25
א׳
1[111] Do you then also, my friend, never come forward for a rivalry in badness, nor contend for the first place in this, but, best of all, if possible make haste to run away, but if in any case, under the pressure of strength greater than your own, you are compelled to engage in the contest, do not hesitate to be defeated;
ב׳
2[112] for then you, the defeated combatant, will have won a grand victory, and those who have won will be suffering defeat. And do not allow either the herald to announce or the judge to crown the enemy as victor, but come forward yourself and present the prizes and the palm, and crown him (“by your leave, sir”), and bind the headband round his head, and do you yourself make with loud and strong voice this announcement: “In the contest that was proposed in lust and anger and licentiousness, in folly also and injustice, O ye spectators and stewards of the sports, I have been vanquished, and this man is the victor, and has proved himself so vastly superior, that even we, his antagonists, who might have been expected to grudge him his victory, feel no envy.”
ג׳
3[113] Yield, then, to others the prizes in these unholy contests, but bind upon your own head the wreaths won in the holy ones. And count not those to be holy contests which the states hold in their triennial Festivals, and have built for them theatres to hold many myriads of men; for in these prizes are carried away either by the man who has out-wrestled someone and laid him on his back or on his face upon the ground, or by the man who can box or combine boxing with wrestling, and who stops short at no act of outrage or unfairness.