Panathenaicus (236-240)

Therefore I accept neither of these explanations but am rather of the opinion that you summoned us here and pronounced your encomium on Athens, not ingenuously nor for the reason you stated to us, but because you wanted to test us to see if we were true to the cultivated life, if we remembered what had been said to us under your tutelage, and if we could grasp at once the manner in which your speech was written—

that you chose, and chose wisely, to eulogize your own city in order that you might gratify the multitude of your fellow-citizens and that you might win the acclaim of those who are friendly disposed towards you. But having so decided, you conceived that if you confined your discourse to Athens alone and repeated the fables about her which fall easily from the lips of everyone, your speech would appear no different from those which had been composed by the other orators (which would cause you extreme humiliation and distress),

whereas if you discarded these fables and dealt with her acknowledged achievements, which have brought many blessings to the Hellenes, and compared these with the deeds of the Lacedaemonians, praising the achievements of your ancestors and censuring the things which have been done by the Lacedaemonians, not only would your discourse make a more striking impression upon your hearers but you yourself would lose no ground, and many would admire such a treatment of the theme more than what had been written by the other orators.

“At the first, then, so it appears to me, this was the manner in which you reviewed and thought upon your problem. But since you knew that you had praised the government of the Spartans more than any other man,[*] you feared lest you might impress those who had heard this praise as no different from the orators who speak without conviction or principle, if, that is to say, you censured on the present occasion those whom you formerly were wont to praise above all others. Pondering this difficulty, you proceeded to study in what light you could represent each of these two cities in order that you might seem to speak the truth about them both and that you might be able to praise your ancestors, just as you purposed to do, and at the same time to appear to be censuring the Spartans in the eyes of those who have no liking for them, while in reality doing nothing of the sort but covertly praising them instead.

Seeking such an effect, you found without difficulty arguments of double meaning, which lend themselves no more to the purpose of those who praise than of those who blame, but are capable of being turned both ways and leave room for much disputation—arguments the employment of which, when one contends in court over contracts for his own advantage, is shameful and no slight token of depravity but, when one discourses on the nature of man and of things, is honorable and bespeaks a cultivated mind.[*]