For A.L. Archias (25-26)

And those brave men, our countrymen, soldiers and country bred men as they were, still being moved by the sweetness of glory, as if they were to some extent partakers of the same renown, showed their approbation of that action with a great shout. Therefore, I suppose, if Archias were not a Roman citizen according to the laws, he could not have contrived to get presented with the freedom of the city by some general! Sulla, when he was giving it to the Spaniards and Gauls, would, I suppose, have refused him if he had asked for it! a man whom we ourselves saw in the public assembly, when a bad poet of the common people had put a book in his hand, because he had made an epigram on him with every other verse too long, immediately ordered some of the things which he was selling at the moment to be given him as a reward, on condition of not writing anything more about him for the future. Would not he who

thought the industry of a bad poet still worthy of some reward, have sought out the genius, and excellence, and copiousness in writing of this man?

What more need I say? Could he not have obtained the freedom of the city from Quintus Metellus Pius, his own most intimate friend, who gave it to many men, either by his own request, or by the intervention of the Luculli? especially when Metellus was so anxious to have his own deeds celebrated in writing, that he gave his attention willingly to poets born even at Cordova, whose poetry had a very heavy and foreign flavour.

For this should not be concerned, which cannot possibly be kept in the dark, but it might be avowed openly: we are all influenced by a desire of praise, and the best men are the most especially attracted by glory. Those very philosophers even in the books which they write about despising glory, put their own names on the title-page. In the very act of recording their contempt for renown and notoriety, they desire to have their own names known and talked of.