Panathenaicus (81-85)

There is, moreover, connected with the above achievement one which, though less significant than those which I have mentioned, is more important and more deserving of mention than those which have been extolled again and again. For he commanded an army which had come together from all the cities of Hellas, a host whose size may be imagined since it contained many of the descendants of the gods and of the direct sons of the gods[*]—men who were not of the same temper as the majority of mankind nor on the same plane of thinking, but full of pride and passion and envy and ambition—,

and yet he held that army together for ten years, not by great bribes nor by outlays of money, by which means all rulers nowadays maintain their power,[*] but by the supremacy of his genius, by his ability to provide from the enemy subsistence for his soldiers, and most of all by his reputation of being better advised in the interest of others than others in their own interest.

But the final achievement by which he crowned all these is no less worthy of admiration. For he will be found to have done nothing unseemly or unworthy of these exploits which I have already described; on the contrary, although he waged war, ostensibly against a single city, but in reality not only against all the peoples who dwelt in Asia but also against many other races of the barbarians, he did not give up fighting nor depart for home before reducing to slavery the city of him who had offended against Hellas[*] and putting an end to the insolence of the barbarians.

I am well aware of the space which I have given to the praises of Agamemnon’s virtue; I am well aware also that if any of you should go over these one by one, many as they are, to see what might be rejected, no one would venture to subtract a single word, and yet I know that when they are read one after the other, all will criticize me for having said much more than I should.

For my part, if I inadvertently prolonged this topic I should be ashamed of being so lacking in perception when discoursing on a subject which no one has even ventured to discuss. But in fact I knew much better than those who will dare to take me to task that many will criticize this excess. I considered, however, that it would be less objectionable to be thought by some to disregard due measure in this part of my discourse than to leave out, in speaking of such a man, any of the merits which belong to him and which it behoves me to mention.