Letter 9: To Archidamus (1-5)

Since I know, Archidamus,[*] that many persons are eager to sing the praises of you, your father, and your family, I have chosen to leave to them that topic, since it would be a very easy one to treat. I myself, however, intend to exhort you to feats of generalship and military campaigns which are in no respect similar to those which are impending now, but, on the contrary, are such as will make you the author of great benefits, not only to your own state, but also to all the Greek world.

This is the choice of subject I have made, although I am not unaware which of the two discourses is the easier to deal with; nay, I know perfectly well that to discover actions which are noble, great, and advantageous is difficult and given to few men, whereas to praise your virtues I should have found an easy task. For there would have been no need of deriving from my own resources all that was to be said about them, but in your own past achievements I should have found topics for treatment so many and of such a kind that the eulogies pronounced upon other men would not have rivalled in the slightest degree the praise that I should have lavished upon you.

For how could anyone have surpassed in nobility of birth the descendants of Heracles[*] and Zeus—and all men know that to your family alone confessedly belongs this honor—or in valor the founders of the Dorian cities in the Peloponnese who occupied that land, or in the multitude of the perilous deeds and the trophies erected as a result of your leadership and rule?

Who would lack material if he wished to recount in full the tale of the courage of your entire state, and of its moderation, and its constitution established by your ancestors? How long a story would be needed to tell of your father’s wisdom, of his handling of affairs in adversity, and of that battle in Sparta[*] in which you, leading a few against many, exposed yourself to danger, and, surpassing all, proved to be the author of your city’s salvation—a deed than which no man could point to one more glorious!

For neither capture of cities nor slaughter of a multitude of the enemy is so great and so sublime as the saving of one’s fatherland from perils so dire—and no ordinary fatherland, but one so greatly distinguished for its valor. Any man who should relate these achievements, not in polished style, but simply, and without stylistic embellishment, merely telling the tale of them and speaking in random fashion, could not fail to win renown.