Political Precepts (25-26)

But when some great and useful matter, yet such as requires much struggling and industry, is to be taken in hand, endeavor to choose the most powerful of your friends, or rather the mildest of the most powerful; for they will least thwart you and most co-operate with you, having wisdom without a contentious humor. Nevertheless, thoroughly understanding your own nature, you ought, in that for which you are naturally less fit, rather to make choice of such as are of suitable abilities, than of such as are like yourself; as Diomedes, when he went forth to spy, passing by the valiant, took for his companion one that was prudent and cautious. For thus are actions better counterpoised,

and there is no contention bred betwixt them, when they desire honor from different virtues and qualities. If therefore you are yourself no good speaker, choose for your assistant in a suit or your companion in an embassy an eloquent man, as Pelopidas did Epaminondas; if you are unfit to persuade and converse with the multitude, being too high-minded for it, as was Callicratidas, take one that is gracious and courtly; if you are infirm of body and unable to undergo fatigues, make choice of one who is robust and a lover of labor, as Nicias did of Lamachus. For thus Geryon would have become admirable, having many legs, hands, and eyes, if only they had been all governed by one soul. But it is in the power of statesmen—by conferring together, if they are unanimous, not only their bodies and wealth, but also their fortunes, authorities, and virtues, to one common use—to perform the same action with greater glory than any one person; not as did the Argonauts, who, having left Hercules, were necessitated to have recourse to female subtleties and be subject to enchantments and sorceries, that they might save themselves and steal away the fleece.

Men indeed entering into some temples leave their gold without; but iron, that I may speak my mind in a word, they never carry into any. Since then the tribunal is a temple common to Jupiter the counsellor and protector of cities, to Themis, and to Justice, from the very beginning, before thou enterest into it, stripping thy soul of avarice and the love of wealth, cast them into the shops of bankers and usurers,

And from them turn thyself,

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esteeming him who heaps up treasures by the management of public affairs to rob the temples, plunder graves, and steal from his friends, and enriching himself by treachery and bearing of false witness, to be an unfaithful counsellor, a perjured judge, a bribe-taking magistrate, and in brief, free from no injustice. Whence it is not necessary to say much concerning this matter.