Panathenaicus (256-260)

In this state of mind, they undertook to wage war and did not cease, albeit they were involved in many misadventures and dangers, before they had reduced them all to subjection, except the city of the Argives. But when at length they held the greatest territory and the strongest power in Hellas and a reputation appropriate to men who had achieved such mighty things, they continued no less to pride themselves upon the fact that they could boast of a record unique and glorious:

for they, alone of the Hellenes, could say that, albeit so few in number, they had never followed the lead or done the bidding of any one of the populous states, but had throughout been free and independent; and that they themselves in the war against the barbarians had held the place of leadership among all the Hellenes and had attained this honor, not without good reason, but because they had fought more battles than any other people in those times and had never been defeated in any one of them, when a king led them forth to battle, but had been victorious in all.

And no one could urge a stronger proof than this of their valor and their hardihood and of their concord amongst themselves, except that which I shall now mention: for of all the other Hellenic states, many as they are, no man could cite or find a single one which has not been involved in the misadventures which are wont to happen to states,

whereas in the city of the Spartans no one can show an instance of civil faction or slaughter or unlawful exile, nor of seizure of property or outrage to women and children, nor even of revolution or abolition of debts or redistribution of lands, nor of any other of the irreparable ills.[*] And as the Spartans review these facts, they cannot fail to remember you also, who have collected them and discoursed upon them so ably, and to be most grateful to you.

“But I do not now have the same feeling about you as I had formerly. For in time past I admired your natural endowments and the manner in which you ordered your life and your devotion to work and above all the truth of your teaching, but now I envy and congratulate you because of your good fortune. For it seems to me that during your lifetime you will gain a reputation, not greater than you deserve—for that would be difficult—but one more widely extended and more heartily acknowledged than that which you now possess, and that after you have ceased to live you will partake of immortality,[*] not the immortality which the gods enjoy, but that which plants in future generations a remembrance of those who have distinguished themselves in any noble endeavor.