Lacedaemonians are here; men of that city, whose tried and glorious virtue is considered not only to be implanted in them by nature, but also to be fortified by discipline. The only men in the whole world who have been living for now seven hundred years and more under one system, and under laws which have never been altered. Many deputies are here from all Achaia, Boeotia, and Thessaly, places in which Lucius Flaccus has lately been in command as lieutenant under Metellus as commander-in-chief. Nor do I pass you over, O Marseilles, you who have known Lucius Flaccus as soldier and as quaestor,—a city, the strict discipline and wisdom of which I do not know whether I might not say was superior, not only to that of Greece, but to that of any nation whatever; a city which, though so far separated from the districts of all the Greeks, and from their fashions and language, and though placed in the extremity of the world and surrounded by tribes of Gauls, and washed with the waves of barbarism, is so regulated and governed by the counsels of its chief men, that there is no nation which does not find it easier to praise its institutions than to imitate them.

Flaccus has these states as his panegyrists and as witnesses of his innocence, so that we may resist the covetousness of some Greeks by the assistance of others. Although, who is there who is ignorant, provided he has only taken the most ordinary trouble to make himself acquainted with these matters, that there are in reality three different races of Greeks; of which the Athenians are one, being considered an Ionic nation; the Aeolians are another; the third were called Dorians. And the whole of this land of Greece, which flourished so greatly with fame, with glory, with learning, and many arts, and even with wide dominion and military renown, occupies as you know, and always has occupied, but a small part of Europe. It surrounded the seacoast of Asia with cities after it had subdued it in war; not in order to increase the prosperity of Asia by fortifying it with colonies, but in order to keep its hold upon it by placing it in a state of siege.