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.