Do we grow better or remain approximately the same?

17 When one of the elderly men said to him in his old age, inasmuch as he saw the good
old customs falling into desuetude, and other mischievous practices creeping in, that for
this reason everything was getting to be topsy-turvy in Sparta, Agis said humorously,
“Things are then but following a logical course if that is what is happening; for when
I was a boy, I used to hear from my father that everything was topsy-turvy among them;
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ought to be surprised if conditions later are worse than those earlier, but rather to wonder if they grow better or remain approximately the same.”21
18 Being asked how one could be a free man all his life, he sa