For A.L. Archias (19-20)

Let then, judges, this name of poet, this name which no barbarians even have ever disregarded, be holy in your eyes, men of cultivated minds as you all are. Rocks and deserts reply to the poet's voice; savage beasts are often moved and arrested by song; and shall we, who have been trained in the pursuit of the most virtuous acts, refuse to be swayed by the voice of poets? The Colophonians say that Homer was their citizen; the Chians claim him as theirs; the Salaminians assert their right to him; but the men of Smyrna loudly assert him to be a citizen of Smyrna, and they have even raised a temple to him in their city. Many other places also fight with one another for the honour of being his birth-place.

They, then, claim a stranger, even after his death, because he was a poet; shall we reject this man while he is alive, a man who by his own inclination and by our laws does actually belong to us? especially when Archias has employed all his genius with the utmost zeal in celebrating the glory and renown of the Roman people? For when a young man, he touched on our wars against the Cimbri, and gained the favour even of Caius Marius himself, a man who was tolerably proof against this sort of study.

For there was no one so

disinclined to the Muses as not willingly to endure that the praise of his labours should be made immortal by means of verse. They say that the great Themistocles, the greatest man that Athens produced, said, when some one asked him what sound or whose voice he took the greatest delight in hearing, “The voice of that by whom his own exploits were best celebrated.” Therefore, the great Marius was also exceedingly attached to Lucius Plotius, because he thought that the achievement which he had performed could be celebrated by his genius.