Orationes 16
Orationes 16 Imperial Aelius Aristides GreekFor all men, as I think, there are sufficient occasions for speaking on the present occasion. For the city is worthy of earnest effort, if any other of the Greek cities is; and the work in honour of which it holds its sacred festival is the greatest of those that have come before the sight of men; and the times are the best and most perfect of any that have ever been. And to me the occasion is most clear of all, even from the habitual course of our life. For Asclepius bids me speak; so that it is not possible to reckon up weakness of body before the Saviour himself, nor to be afraid of the magnitude of the theme, that it may not be easy to succeed in it; but, as Pindar said, when a god has shown the beginning, there is nothing to hinder—especially since we are not now making trial of him for the first time, but have known before, in many and great matters, in our own case and not in that of others, how great is the abundance of his ease, even in things that seem altogether hopeless, much less in things that are hard but do not necessarily admit of despair. I, then, have come to such a point of trusting that another will take the care, that I do not know in what way I am speaking extempore—except that it is not altogether from the mouth, but I am still writing. For neither did I know beforehand what I should say, before I had now to speak; and he who has given the command is greater for me than all preparation. And I hold that it is not in the same way with great matters as with the open seas; for the latter, the greater they are, by so much the more do they afford fear, but the former in some respect even help, for it is possible to lay hold of a mooring, as it were, from many quarters; so that, unless one were altogether unfortunate, one will at least escape the appearance of failing of the whole.
And I think that some even of those among the Hyperboreans have already heard the oracle about Cyzicus, the witness to the city's prosperity—which to the other cities is an expounder, but to this city is also a founder. For the other cities he founded through the colonists whom he sent out to each place, but of this one he became straightway the founder himself. So how is Cyzicus not prosperous, beginning from such a beginning and referring its origin at once to such a founder and witness? And one would recognize this also by looking straightway at its situation and its whole nature: that the god set upon it a name suited to what was coming to be; so do the things from the land and from the sea fall together. For it lies before Asia, beginning from an island, but settling onto the mainland, on one side having the Euxine Sea set before it, on the other the Hellespont, being a kind of bond of each sea—or rather of all that men sail. Coastings-along and circumnavigations and inward voyages of all sailors never fail it; but some are carried on the surface, letting themselves go with a fair wind into the open sea past the islands of the city, while others run down into it and run up out of it. And yet if it seemed good to the poets to call the city of the Corinthians prosperous, because, lying on the Isthmus, it receives those who travel to either side of the Peloponnese, surely the appellation belongs splendidly to this city. For, lying in the midst of the sea, it draws all men together into one, escorting those from the inner sea to the outer, and those from outside to the inner, like a kind of navel of the region between Gadeira and the Phasis. It has indeed befallen other islands too, I think, to lie in an ample sea all round; and Homer, exalting Crete, said that it lies "in the midst of the wine-dark sea"; but this city's case is more august. For it has not taken the middle of a single sea; one may
say that it has not only much sea, but manifold sea: that toward the north a kind of source and starting-point of all that is navigable, that toward the west the longest and most graceful strait, and a third in the midst of both these, both by nature and by place—the one indeed called the Propontis—which it has, one may say, wholly filled.
And such are the things from the sea; and the things from the land, in turn, are sister to these and counterbalancing them. All the land is much and abundant, and, as one would think fitting by its name, the mainland in magnitude; and the kinds of country are many and most distinct from one another, and all inclining toward the best. For the mountains here are gentler than the plains among others, and the plains are sufficient to be not a city's but nations' own; and there are rivers and lakes and marshes and glens and certain delights of the blessed. So that if one wished to settle all the places, many would be the cities about the lakes, and many on the shores of the sea, and not a few in the interior; and the many would be ignorant of one another, except such cities as chanced to lie next to cities. And such are the things from land and sea for the city, rivalling one another and bound by no many parallels. And indeed, the city itself you would call both an island and a peninsula, and something beyond a peninsula toward the mainland. For because it is not crossed by a neck, nor set out from some narrow point, but the mainland stretches alongside it lengthwise, it is continuous with it on both its legs, and it has surpassed the example of Scyros, and any other city or island that is, by a little, mainland. And yet Thucydides, indeed, praises Sicily, because it is distant at the least twenty stades from the mainland; but this city is so far distant from the mainland that it might even escape notice that it is not an island, and if one should take away the moles
- and the bridges, it would be possible to swim to it from the mainland. So both the whole island and the city are in nature no less honourable than the greatest islands, Crete and Sicily. As for the beauties of the public buildings and the whole equipment and the magnitude of the city, no one is so destitute of words as not to be able to praise it, nor so capable of speaking as easily to display it. But I, passing over all the rest, shall single out that which it most befits me to mention. For this seems to me to display the founder best of all by its tokens, and that it is the work of one of the higher beings; for it seems like a temple of all the gods, like what they so call the agora. For just as if set apart by lots for all the gods, the whole is divided up, and the temples have parted it among themselves, as though the gods were vying with one another over the salvation of the city. And the sacrifices and processions and approaches and worships of the gods, with the established ordinances, are not far from the city of the Athenians, in not using kinship toward the best. And indeed its other power is consistent with these things. For the city has so great an abundance that, if one should say it is the provider even of the temples and other public ornaments elsewhere, one would not be ashamed; so splendid are the things it possesses, and common to all; and neither does Italy look down upon its possessions, nor Egypt so far off, nor the Tyrrhenian Sea, nor the "windings of the Syrians and Cilicians," as a poet might say, nor any nation, so to speak, whether on the mainland or in the islands, which has not been adorned by this city. And as for the Ionians and Aeolians and the islands and cities at their feet, why should one speak? And the most vigorous thing of all: for just as good runners, having given a long lead, easily win, so you too, having furnished all men with what they needed, yourselves come last and stand over them.
I have come to the very surge itself: how could I say
as much as I wish? But I would say so much that, having said it, I might pardon myself. For I am all but saying that you have made all who set their hands to like works appear as children, having raised so great a work that to conceive of it would have seemed a deed of madness, but to bring it to completion is beyond man. One might be at a loss whether the greater part of the island has been carried hither, or remains in its place. And I think all would agree that the votive offering could belong to no other city, nor the quarrying to any other than yours; for nature would not suffice. For formerly sailors took their bearings by the peaks of the islands—"this is Cyzicus, this Proconnesus," whichever of the rest one might see; but now the temple in place of the mountains suffices, and for you alone there is no need of beacons or fire-signals or towers for those putting in, but the temple, filling all that is seen, displays at once both the city and the magnanimity of those who possess it, and, being so great, is fairer than it is large. And if Homer and Hesiod chanced to pass by, they would, it seems to me, easily speak, transferring the legend about the Trojan wall—that Poseidon and Apollo, working in art together in common, wrought the work for the city: the one furnishing the rock from the depth of the sea and at the same time making it possible for it to be conveyed; the other, as is fitting for a founder, wishing to adorn his own city with so great an addition. You would say that each of the stones is in place of a whole temple, and that the temple is in place of a whole circuit-wall, and that the circuit-wall of the temple, in turn, would suffice for a city. And if you wish for the things of ease and luxury—for in place of three-storeyed houses and triremes it is possible to see the greatest temple, many times greater than the rest, and itself threefold in nature. For one part of it is a sight underground, another above, and the middle the customary one. And there are runs
both underground and suspended, running through it in a circle, as though they were not in the part of an addition, but made on purpose to be runs.
These things, then, there is no need to adorn with words, but to set aside for the geometers and the praisers, and of these such as are perfect and competent to measure so great a matter; for I dread even this, lest not even for all of these it be possible to find out the exactness. For if one should leave aside the discourses about the temple itself, it is enough to wonder at the engines and the conveyances, which the need of the temple discovered, things not before existing among men. And it is worth congratulating you also on account of your fortune. For you inscribed upon it the best of the kings down to that time; but the work has come to its completion for you in these times, which have in turn obtained the fairest of fair things, and on behalf of which it would be most just that so great a thank-offering should stand to the gods, since it was not easy to find a greater. Now, that these emperors furnished more kingly ancestors than the kings before them, and what the whole structure of their lineage on both sides is from the beginning, and in what upbringing they were reared and on what, and the abundance of their entire education—these things it would be a long discourse to go through, and in no way easy to fulfil. But that which seems to me most fitting for the present assembly to hear, and the most peculiar encomium of them, and the most marvellous of things that have come into record in discourse, and which contains all their nobility and education gathered together, and which no private man can pass over in silence, and at which every city and every race of men is amazed—on this we shall dwell as far as may be. For these are the men who raised the proverb to its highest, and through the greatest deeds showed the limit, that in truth the things of friends are common—not having shared a herd of horses, nor furniture, nor some acres of land, nor only so far as formerly the longest
partnership had to advance; but having come to such a pitch of magnanimity as to comprehend by this word all the earth and the sea, and to leave nothing of what exists outside the common share—truly, in Homer's phrase, having made the earth common: by their own presidency, but by the use of all. Things which formerly it was possible to pray for, on behalf of justice, but which it was in no way possible to hope for, but the limit of prosperity appeared like a kind of prayer. For generals before now have chosen generals as colleagues in dangers, and cities have taken one another at critical times, and kings have made friendships and treaties with kings—and these for the most part overcome by need, and we know partnerships to have arisen up to this point; but a king has now for the first time willingly chosen a king as his partner in the whole, and alone of all from the whole of time has sought not so much to acquire dominion as to acquire a king on all equal terms. And indeed, having laid his dominion in the middle, he did not make his own part less, but by this very thing made both his own and his fellow-ruler's greater. For Alexander amazed men by not accepting the partnership with Darius—and perhaps doing well, inasmuch as he was not going to share Asia with an equal in honour; nevertheless, it seems to me that not even if a man were far better than Darius, would he have so consented to rule all the rest together with another. But these men made their kingship a token of the most perfect justice, as though they took over the affairs of men for this very reason, that they might be common teachers of virtue to all. This is beyond every circuit of the Caucasus, this beyond the conquest of the Indians and the Caspian Gates, this beyond all human things, this belongs to those who win with the fairest things and the things that befit their nature. For neither if there is some land outside the Atlantic sea, had they acquired this in addition, nor all the uninhabitable places within, through excess of cold or
heat—if, finding these and getting them tempered by the gods, they had made them an addition to their dominion privately, each by himself somehow—would they seem to me to surpass all in virtue by so much as now, having made what they have common, and having valued one another above all that they have.
O the wonder of him who has no need to be king, if it should not seem good to his brother; and the wonder of him who will not accept being king, if not together with his brother! O you who have requited one another with equal things, alone most like one another to the highest degree, yet alone of all differing most—yourselves partners in the greatest things, but having no others as partners in the equal things! For the King of the Persians seemed to possess something distinctive, what was called the King's Eye and the King's Ears; and this perhaps afforded some use, but for the most part, it seems to me, was a piece of boasting, that he might seem to see and hear double the other men. But these found this fairest and wisest thing to excess: for both became ears and eyes to one another, and doubled the use given by nature, and made the guarding of their dominion not foreign, but truly from their own house, having shared all things. And in no way is the good of monarchy thereby destroyed, but it is a marvellous monarchy in two bodies and two souls, with one judgment set firm in them, as of some harmony running through all the strings. What music, then, could be better than this? What concert dearer to Apollo and the Muses? What harmony more common to the race of men? For the work of Amphion and Zethus came only so far as to wall Thebes, and there some blame the music of the one; but these, having shared their music on behalf of all the cities and all men, sing the same song, having received the melody from their father and ancestors, but having made it in the whole far more splendid, as best became those of whom they were
the children, according to prayer. And they seem to me to have planned fittingly to the form of their polity too; for this alone of states changed the law. For all the others, both Greeks and barbarians, who little by little laid hold of dominion, considered this one thing: how no one should enjoy the same things with them, but how as far as possible all should be driven away. But these alone of all set the good things out as common in the midst, like prizes for the best; and it makes no difference whether one dwells in Europe or Asia or Libya, nor is there any boundary that divides—not the Tanais, not the Maeotic lake, not the Atlantic island, nor anything one could name—but all men and all races belong to the city, and it is possible for all to hold the offices that arise. As, then, they knew their ancestors to have established for the worthy a common participation in the offices held in turn, so they themselves, far surpassing all in virtue, made the dominion of the whole common. And the most pleasant part of the conception: for just as formerly they furnished those abroad with the annual magistrates to name by pairs, so now it is possible to name the perpetual ones at once both by their father's name and together with one another. So consistently did they plan the whole polity, and furnished an excess greater than hope. And indeed Homer said somewhere, exalting kings, "Great is the spirit of kings nurtured by Zeus"; but these made the marks of their dominion not the strength of spirit nor the excess of anger, but brought in the strongest things of humanity and magnanimity, and in truth showed that their nurture was divine. At any rate their reasoning is divine, and truly has its model from above and looks to that polity, if one must speak the sum of it; since they say that the gods themselves, and the whole order and heaven, are held together by friendship and partnership, and that through these all things ever proceed
safely for all time, and that envy and ill-will neither exist nor ever come to be in the houses of the gods nor in their characters.
Those, then, who take in addition palisades and walls truly increase their dominions by certain small and mortal things; but these, having brought forth to all to see such splendid and marvellous examples of virtue and justice and friendship, these in truth have got their victory from the gods, these are adorned with the immortal crown; these too it is reasonable to consider both friends of the gods, as they are of one another, and benefactors of men in pure truth. For just as good writers, by means of the copy-tablets above the head, with surpassing skill display the letters as greatest and fairest, writing for the boys to imitate to the best of their power, so these have revealed the fairest of things among men through the greatest of examples, so that each can imitate to the best of his power, and, as from teachers, profit from the kings for their own affairs. What pillars of Sesostris could surpass these—those which he set up on both continents as he went round—or rather, would seem to come near these? What man at once conquered so much, and so profitably for the conquered? For with others, fear makes the subjects their own, but for these, prayers and thanks are common from all, coming into the midst not for decency only, but from the purest part of the mind. And there comes into my mind the case of the two saviour gods, who, having taken hold of all the earth, save it in common and work together, sending to one another both the benefits from themselves and the thanksgivings from men, and making them common; among whom who is it reasonable should be more of good repute than these, or who be in greater account of salvation, than those who have become, as it were, prophets and an imitation of those gods' mind, having joined the fairest friendship for the benefit of the common race of men?
It is worthy, then, to feel gratitude to the gods, and toward the
kings both to rejoice with them and to pray with them, but to count ourselves blessed for the time, and, besides counting ourselves blessed, to enjoy the fruits of the dominion as they arise. For fair indeed are these ornaments of the buildings, and marvellously persuasive to the multitudes; but that is already perfect and truly a gift of some god, when both ornaments sing together, both those in the souls and those of the buildings. For just as in these we praise the harmonies and the preservation by each part of its due order toward the others, so this too must be thought to be living toward beauty, when harmony and order prevail throughout all. This is the true and proper ornament of cities, this saves both a man privately and a city; this one need not buy with the spending of money, nor the wasting of time, nor with assistants, nor work at it by setting up engines, but each man must himself persuade himself to choose the better. And do not wonder if, having nothing to censure, I then think fit to exhort; nor consider exhortation to belong only to those who come forward on a charge. But it befits the praisers too; and this is plain from the old saying babbled about the runners. For no one, so to speak, exhorts the last of them, nor those who are altogether left behind, but those whom he sees to be near the victory. And I think that the generals too do not spend their words of exhortation on those of the soldiers for whom it is all the same to say much and to say nothing, but on those for whom it is likely to come most to need. So we too now say nothing subtle or wise to you, but nearly the very things you do and in which you are engaged; and these are reverence for the rulers, honour for the laws, to think the same—a thing always at every time of good repute, but to the present times exceedingly suitable. Now all the cities must regard one another as sisters; now factions and disturbances and
rivalries and the petty quibbling over vain things must be put away and made an end of, considering these to be diseases of beasts and that they must belong to those; but true peace and guileless friendship and justice and partnership through all things, if possible, must be reckoned the greatest of gains—in the intercourse with one another knowing that old saying, to be "guests"; and in the reception of guests making the use of one's power less, knowing that there is a case where defeat is also more graceful than victory and worth more. For these are from the beginning the strongest things and fitting to the present times, and having their benefit straightway at once from one's own house, and differing marvellously much for the honour from the kings. For there is no way in which you could gratify them more than by acting thus, nor any way in which what you wish could come to you more from them than if you furnish yourselves such as they would most wish. And, as I said, I have nearly exhorted nothing different from what you do; but just as I praised the temple, looking to it and finding nothing from my own resources, so now too I have neither found nor said anything of my own, but the things I see you doing, these I have praised, and these for the sake of the good token, that nothing be lacking to the speech of what it is fitting should be present. So much we too contribute to you for the festival, as it were on the spur of the moment; and perhaps it is moderately well.