Harmonides (11-15)

Such are the pleas one might bring in defence in such a case as this, none of them pretty. But don’t be afraid, my friend, I’m not going to use any of them. May there never be such a famine at Argos that they try to sow the gymnasium at Cyllarabis, and may I never be so destitute of a reasonable defence that in my need I look for refuges of this sort against the accusation. But realise this: there is a very great

In short I did not say that all wage-earners lived a mean and petty existence: no, it was those in private houses who endured slavery under the pretext of education that I pitied. My present situation, my friend, is altogether different. My private standing is not reduced, and in public life I take a share and

So I am willing to be bolder than I need be, to close with the charge against me, and to advance beyond defence. Moreover I say to you that no one does anything without pay, not even if you instance those at the head of things, for not even the emperor himself is unpaid. I do not mean tributes and taxes that come in every year from his subjects; no, the king’s most important reward is praise, universal fame, reverence for his benefactions, statues and temples and shrines bestowed on him by his subjects—all these are payment for the thought and care which such men evidence in their continual watch over the common weal and its improvement. To compare small with great, if you will begin at the top of the heap and descend to each of its component parts, you

Now if I had laid down a law that no one must do any work, I would rightly be thought guilty of breaking it; but if this was nowhere said in my essay, but rather that a good man ought to be active, how better could he employ himself than to work with his friends for the best ends and in full view under the open sky to let his loyalty, seriousness of purpose, and good will in his undertakings be put to the test, so that he may not be “a useless burden to the earth” [*] in Homer’s words?

Above all, those who censure me must remember that it is not a wise man—if such there be anywhere—whom they will censure but one from the common people, one who has trained himself in words and received moderate praise for them, but one completely unpractised in that acme of the virtues that the cream of men display. And surely I ought not to be grieved even on this account, for I at any rate have met no other who fulfilled the promise of wisdom. However I should be surprised if you were to condemn me for my present life—you knew me long ago when I was commanding the highest fees for the public practice of rhetoric, at the time when you went to see the Western Ocean and the lands of the Celts and met me: my fees were as high as those of any professor.

This then, my friend, is the defence which I offer