Panathenaicus (259-260)

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.