Panathenaicus (86-90)

I thought also that I should be applauded by the most cultivated of my hearers if I could show that I was more concerned when discoursing on the subject of virtue about doing justice to the theme than about the symmetry of my speech and that too, knowing well that the lack of due proportion in my speech would detract from my own reputation, while just appreciation of their deeds would enhance the fame of those whose praises I sing. Nevertheless I bade farewell to expediency and chose justice instead.

And you will find that I am of this mind not only in what I am now saying but likewise upon all occasions, since it will be seen that I take more pleasure in those of my disciples who are distinguished for the character of their lives and deeds than in those who are reputed to be able speakers. And yet when they speak well, all men will assign the credit to me, even though I contribute nothing to what they say, whereas when they act right no man will fail to commend the doer of the deed even though all the world may know that it was I who advised him what to do.[*]

But I do not know whither I am drifting.[*] For, because I think all the time that I must add the point which logically follows what I have said before, I have wandered entirely from my subject. There is, therefore, nothing left for me to do but to crave indulgence to old age for my forgetfulness and prolixity—faults which are wont to be found in men of my years—and go back to the place from which I fell into this garrulous strain.

For I think that I now see the point from which I strayed. I was speaking in reply to those who reproach us with the misfortunes of the Melians and of villages with like populations, not meaning that we had done no wrong in these instances, but trying to show that those who are the idols of these speakers have laid waste more and greater cities than the Athenians have done, in which connection I discussed the virtues of Agamemnon and Menelaus and Nestor, saying nothing that was not true, though passing, mayhap, the bounds of moderation.

But I did this, supposing that it would be apparent that there could be no greater crime than that of those who dared lay waste the cities which bred and reared such great men, about whom even now one might say many noble things. But it is perhaps foolish to linger upon a single point, as if there were any lack, as if there were not, on the contrary, a superabundance of things to say about the cruelty and the harshness of the Lacedaemonians.