Panathenaicus (261-265)

And you will deserve this reward; for you have extolled both these cities well and fittingly—Athens, according to the acclaim of the majority, which no man of note has ever disdained, while all men in their craving to obtain it are ready to submit themselves to any hazard whatsoever; but Sparta, according to the reasoning of those who endeavor to aim at the truth, whose good opinion some would choose in preference to that of all the rest of the world, even were mankind to number twice as many as now.

“I am insatiable in my desire to speak on the present occasion and I still have many things which I might say concerning you and these two cities and your discourse, but I shall forgo these subjects and declare myself only upon the question about which, as you say, you called me in to advise you. I counsel you, then, not to burn or to suppress your discourse, but—if there be any need of so doing—to revise and supplement it and then give to those who desire it the benefit of all the time and pains which you have spent upon its composition,

if indeed you wish to gratify the worthiest among the Hellenes—those who are in truth devoted to culture and do not merely pretend to it—and to annoy those who secretly admire your writings above all others but malign your discourses before the crowds at the national festivals, in which those who sleep outnumber those who listen;[*] for these speakers hope that if only they can hoodwink such audiences their own compositions will rival yours in popular favour, little realizing that their work is farther below the level of yours than the poets who have essayed to compose in the manner of Homer fall short of his reputation.”

When he had said these things and had asked those present to express their opinion on the question about which they had been called in, they did not merely accord him the applause with which they were wont to greet a clever speech but signified by tumultuous shouts that he had spoken excellently; they crowded around him, praised him, envied him, congratulated him, and found nothing to add to what he had said or to subtract therefrom, but showed that they were of his opinion and advised me to do the very thing which he had urged.

Nor did I, for my part, stand silently by; on the contrary, I praised both his native ability and his training, although beyond that I uttered not a word about the sentiments which he had expressed, as to how his conjecture had hit upon my purpose or missed the mark, but let him remain of the same opinion which he had formed for himself.