Orationes 10

68. All the prayers due to the gods of birth and the ancestral gods, and before these and after these to the Saviour and the guide of life and whatever else one might fittingly name, beginning from the hearth, have been duly offered; and the things with which one might adorn this day — honouring, that is, the custom which has prevailed in these matters — are now being fulfilled to the best of our power, with all bringing in all their eagerness. So that it is no small thing, from this presence, to infer, as to good cheer, how much, not only in private but also in public, the bearing of the city has increased, as though it had now, most of all, taken a sudden perception of how far it surpasses the rest in happiness — possessing, besides all the just claims by which it was judged to hold first place, also this birth to add to them. For above all each of those cities too — I mean those of which there is some account and whose name is great — does not refrain from making him a citizen and calling him by this title, where indeed they lay claim to him even as their champion, simply as certain mothers do who contend for a child, such as this one we may see here: granting the being of him to the mother to whom nature allotted it, but not depriving themselves of the calling of him theirs. And by however much this city beholds those others forcing their judgement to outrun nature, by so much does it double its affection. So that one may, most of all, call this rivalry alone good, after Hesiod's manner, and indisputably win this rivalry, in which both the sacrifices and the speeches now take place; since this city gives you the speeches too, dearest of children — not only these here, but those of each day. For me at least a god, having saved me from the uttermost extremity, gave to the city; and you, whatever you obtain from me, you have from her who received and gives; so that at once you may call the city your mother and say that you have been genuinely reared on the 69. same. And this is no small thing, I think, for the account of what is noble, both for you and for her. For you, in that you did not dishonour your fatherland, as though it would not suffice a noble soul for the practice of virtue and an adequate education, and so choose to serve a foreign hearth; and for her, it is open, surely, to take pride no less than any, in that she had the good fortune not only to bear you, but also, as you advanced in age, to keep you with her — being judged, moreover, to win in zeal for speeches and wisdom, along with the other fair things she possesses, together with those other cities or rather before them. For these reasons, indeed, of the prizes set on these things, some she is near to obtaining by good hopes, and others she has already reaped from your race; since this too is no small thing, I think, for you toward one another — that you were not born here alone in this city, I mean, while having to reckon your ancestors from elsewhere, but that, an unbroken succession beginning from of old, whence one could not even have found it out through length of time, had not the splendour been set forth, it advanced down to you, awaiting through you the full ages still to come. For from Quadratus — and the name, I think, is plain and proclaims itself alike to all — it is possible, descending by number, to behold the whole race down to him, a pure and genuine offshoot of this land, a poet would say, and one greatly blooming in itself and to bloom still more, as though ever beginning and never ceasing, so long as the earth that nourishes this fruit remains immortal. And it comes over me to behold this advantage of the race too — for it just now came into my mind: for to say that the first founders are genuine citizens is, perhaps, common and a good thing also in respect to others; but to have come from Quadratus, apart from the other things that belonged to him, turns the advantage round against the rest. For to them it belongs to take pride in this very thing — being citizens — and this is the greatest thing to them, as indeed it is; but he who was summoned by the god to take up the city, worn out by 70. time, made it the very thing it is; so that henceforth it remains to say that the other races belong to the city, but that the city belongs to this race. And yet this is not my word, but the city herself agrees and cries it aloud in the council-chambers, in the theatres, in the assemblies, in whatever part you wish, since all has been adorned by him.

These things being so, all that his descendants and children and children's children — this is the poetic phrase — having chosen the Roman citizenship, illustriously and with brilliance accomplished, I think I would do rightly to pass over. For if they were small things, one might always mention whatever came to hand, magnifying it with one's speech; but being great, or rather admitting of no excess, so that it is a labour to recount worthily even part of them once mentioned, without some brilliant good fortune of speech — why should one, abandoning the things in hand, which are themselves not small, if not even greater than those ancient things, and need only a prayer, run a risk concerning the whole, on top of what is already set before one? It would be best, leaving aside the ancestors who came between, of the wholly excellent child — they being, in a manner, before our very eyes — to mention briefly, and of these only such as bear upon the present discourse. And the very name of the child suggests it, so that, from home homeward, it gives alike the beginning of the race and of the discourse. Noble, then, and a good and honourable man, and one who pursued all the virtue that the nature of men deemed worthy of these names, and then became the father of this child — Fronto, of whom what should we say, since the hearers will anticipate whatever one might say, inasmuch, I think, as the man passed not long ago to the fairer and more god-beloved abode — unless one should, in the Homeric manner, show the whole by a brief address, saying, "the dear child of a man of good blood"? But his father's father, namesake of this child, that Apellas — for I think the discourse offered this beginning a little before — 71. of what sort was he to us? Of his other qualities I would say nothing of what is sung abroad — not his courage, not his magnanimity, not over how many nations he ruled, nor how many honours he reaped from emperors, none of these; for these one must pray one day to say about this child now ours, and to have good hopes that he will prove better not only than his father, but also than his grandfather, and I will add, than the rest of his ancestors too — so it seems good to the other gods and to the Healer. But that which I now behold common to this child and to that man, like the name, this I think it timely now to mention, and, though I am just beginning the discourse, to carry it forward, being unable to overleap it for excess of pleasure. But, O Lord Asclepius, a little before I called upon you in my prayers; be present, then, in everything, and most of all in what is now being said. O Lord, this too was your work, then, and a device of your grace. For before, you made that Apellas so very dear that you neglected him neither when he rested and slept, nor stood off when he was awake and toiling, but day and night did the same thing, saving the man, they say, in every way, out of the midst of the fire; and whom would not this man, if he wished, snatch even "out of the blazing fire," where indeed he could save even by fire, if he wished this? And now, it seems, you are rearing for us another servant for yourself in his stead, so that at once he succeeds to the name of his grandfather and to the honour from you. And yet I think you would vie with your father, and I myself with Homer, in this respect: for the plant grows for you in every way better beside the altars than the plant of the Delian god, and it is open to me to say that it is your plant, and not to liken it to another, as he did. For how is it not the stock of the Saviour himself, and that in the undefiled gardens of the Graces, which came forth from the blessed womb, reared up? And it is possible to compare it not only to the roots of the race, 72. which have already been mentioned, but also to the things blossoming upon it at this age, and that most vividly, dividing thus between what pertains to the soul and what to the body. For the gentleness of his soul outstrips the prime of his age, hastening toward old age; yet his gentleness does not resemble a worn-out thing, such as the necessities of life have wrought in many, but it shares youth, blended with a fitting high spirit. And let one behold it from the glance of his eyes, if anyone has been left short of learning by deed what is being said; for they are neither set up rigidly, nor do they resemble eyes cast down by some sleep through lowliness, but a quiet and gentle dignity strings together his look. Grace, then — that which is set before children as a gift from the gods, as if by some agreement — not at all naked, as the painters have it, but having thrown much modesty about itself, has melted into all his parts. And so no one ever smiled with so great an Aphrodite, nor again checked his laughter with a blush when it was already stirring. Nor again has spiritedness left him, by which one might infer the masculine nature; nor has it been carried out into that wild and beastlike kind when provoked; and proofs of both these he has himself furnished, now showing in his face the motion of his soul, and now gently persuading it to rest and setting up a calm. And what persuasion, in serious matters and in play, could one raise from this child's lips, not only when he speaks but even when he is silent? For neither could one, by speaking, turn another's heart as this child does, having shown beforehand by his silence what he wishes; nor would Nestor any longer seem — old man as he was — to utter things like honey, if tested beside this child. And, in sum, he is never serious without cheerfulness, but everything, even if it be hard, cannot be done without festivity; and the pleasant element in its turn is not, for him, removed from seriousness. And if 73. the saying of Plato rightly exhorts us — and one must think that this is so — that in the games of learning one should learn beforehand whatever it is necessary to have learned beforehand: as a carpenter, to measure or to weigh, and a warlike man, to ride while playing, or doing some other such thing, and that one should try, through the games, to turn the pleasures and desires of children to that point at which, when they have arrived, they must have the end — if one must say that this is well put by Plato, for I happened somehow to recall the words, neither taking anything away nor adding — who from the rest of the company of children could be a match for this one, for whom horse-races and the training of dogs have been let go, so far is he from being sick with any of the baser things, or in those very matters in which his life now is and the rest is to be? I mean the contests of children in the wrestling-schools and the rivalries of speeches. And, advancing now in his play, he simply divines the future, exercising his own fortune, and already sits as a judge; and assuredly nature has not failed to know the road through play to the true fortune. And one could not blame him as having judged unjustly, as they say the teacher of justice blamed Cyrus; since indeed he is wiser than Cyrus in the judicial art, having learned it from no one. Such is a pure nature, moulded from undefiled wax, as Plato says, having its moulding midway between the moist and soft and the hard and stony. And what would you say when one refers him to the god, the leader of the universe, and the god to whose care he was given from his very ancestors — a fitting good successor of good fathers, descendant and child and all that one may call him? O thrice and many times blessed those men, who, reaping in you the only immortality granted to the race of mankind, and along with their own memory leaving to you, as an inheritance more magnificent than the treasures beneath and about the earth, their own glory, upon which the god himself now safely sets you, having stood by and asked for him 74. as much as he himself wished and as the former rank of the race demanded. For what, what a day will succeed, after no long time, to this blessed day, dear also to the gods, when two beginnings of one year come together into the same point! For the present beginning of your birth, bringing the greatest good upon the year from beginning to end, and the other beginning that will straightway succeed this — and that too, of one and the same year — are established, rendering you the paternal and ancestral nurture-fee for good fortune. And it seems to me that the god, anticipating the honour customary among children, paid it to you, from your father's side, at the contests of the sacred Asclepieia, as has often been said, and at those descending from of old, from your father, to you; so that at once he both fulfilled all that was lawful, and, as you henceforth pass from boys to men — in the very way the imperial law ordains — you have henceforth been given over to the honours from the Emperor toward you, which he assigns to such as are now coming to manhood. Assuredly Apollo is not far from prophecy for us, so far as those hopes are good, and good too are those that will straightway come before our eyes. For my part, I seem already to perceive a certain lightness, just as Diomedes is portrayed by Homer by the gift of Athena to be at once light in his limbs and clear in his sight, and I cannot contain myself for joy. For fair, and perhaps fitted to adorn and to display all that belongs to you, are even the years of your birth already past; but far fairer than those seems to me this one now present, which alone will be inferior to those after it, but in all else surpassing those already gone by — in which we shall look upon you, your household and kinsmen and teachers and age-mates and all the friendly company, presenting a sweeter sight from the sacred purple of the Saviour, and matching the season of the year with the season of your age, simply like an autumn star 75. and, like it, sending forth its radiance — a fitting president of the contest, this child, for him who chose him. These things are yours, O Lord — for thus it is better to lead the discourse back to its beginning, with a fresh prayer — these things are yours. Come then, taking the helm yourself for us, as indeed you already hold it, save through this house: giving to this child, from the great Emperor, the honours which his ancestors reaped from that Emperor's ancestors; and granting to the Emperor himself, and to the imperial race, to administer all time, even as he was allotted from Zeus; and providing to this child to pass his appointed time in happiness, preserve, through children springing from children, the succession of the race both for the city and for yourself.