Panathenaicus (266-270)

Now as to the subject which I undertook to discuss, I think that I have said enough; for to review in detail the points which have been made[*] not in keeping with discourses such as this. But I do wish to relate my personal experiences in relation to its composition.

I entered upon it at the age which I have already stated at the beginning.[*] But when I had written half of it, I was attacked by a malady which it is not decorous to name,[*] but which is powerful enough to carry off in the course of three or four days not only older people but many in the prime of life. I battled against this disease without respite for three years, and I passed every day of that time with such devotion to my work that those who knew of my industry as well as those who learned of it from them admired me more because of this fortitude than because of the things for which I had formerly been praised.

When, however, I had at length given up my work both because of my illness and of my age, certain of those who were in the habit of paying me visits, and who had read again and again the portion of my discourse which I had written, begged and urged me not to leave it half-finished or incomplete, but to work upon it for a short time and to give my thoughts to what remained to be done.

They did speak as men do who perfunctorily acquit themselves of a duty, but praised extravagantly what I had written, saying about it such things that if any people had heard them who were not my personal friends and kindly disposed towards me, they could not possibly have failed to suppose that my visitors were trying to make a fool of me and that I had lost my wits and was altogether a simpleton if I allowed myself to be persuaded of what they said.

But, although I had this feeling about the things which they made bold to state, I did allow myself to be persuaded (for why make a long story of it?) to occupy myself with the completion of the discourse, at a time when I lacked but three years of having lived a century and when I was in a state of infirmity such that anyone else similarly afflicted, so far from undertaking to write a discourse of his own, would not even be willing to listen to one worked out and submitted by another.