Orationes 42

517. Most of those occupied with rhetoric, men of Greece, are accustomed either to choose the practice of fictitious themes and to spend all their time practising declamation—yet to fall as far short in actual speaking as if they had done nothing toward that end—or else, despising such pursuits, to busy themselves with nothing more serious than these: with wrangling and with confounding those who come to them for discussion, by which they distress those they meet, while plainly making neither themselves nor those others any better. There was, indeed, one of the celebrated and ancient sophists who made a proud claim at the opening of his treatise: that he, at least, would do nothing of the sort and play no clever tricks, but would discourse upon these two themes, concord with one another and the war against the barbarians—setting forth, as I judge it, a most noble and fitting subject for his discourse. As for the war against the barbarians, I see no occasion to speak of it any longer; for now that all have together paid their penalty, I think the matter will be the concern of the gods and of our rulers, and, with the gods themselves to second the saying, I do not think the struggle will be a great one, since I see that of the whole inhabited world, and of that part already firmly held, it is but a small portion that now stands opposed through folly. As for what remains, concord with one another, I shall discourse of it as best I am able. For I hold that the use of this constant exercise and practice in rhetoric bears most of all upon contests of this kind. We do not practise always in order that we may never say anything useful; rather, the man who both can and dares to say what the occasion requires is the very one who shows that his practice was not made in vain or to no purpose. Now I was aware of this too, that it is a kind of prop and 518. refuge for many always to praise those present, and in whatever they say; and that many even of those who flee from other cities speak ill of them to the cities where they have come to settle, especially if there already exists between the two some difference. But I, for my part, could not praise commendations bestowed without restraint, unless there were joined to them some usefulness, and the prospect that the hearers would depart, so far as may be, the better for them; nor, in those matters where one must indeed gratify the speech along with justice, will I court the city before my eyes while declining to think the others worthy of their due. Nor, in this very first point, will I set the cities at odds, as do the common and base sort; rather I will praise them all, each so far as is fitting, and with this I will begin my discourse. For I hold that one who wishes to bring about a friendship common to the cities, one with another, ought not to speak well of some and ill of others, but to make mention of all to their honour, so that, first, you may all become more kindly disposed and receive my counsel more readily, and that thereafter something tending to concord may be accomplished. For if you accept being praised together, and none of you reckons the good repute of others as a dishonour to himself, but each takes joy in his neighbours' praises as in his own, then first of all you will display your concord beginning at the hearth, and thereafter you yourselves will little by little grow accustomed both to speak well of one another and to think those thoughts which are to the common advantage of you all. But to come as one who would counsel concord, and yet to shrink from praising you together, seems to me at once a kind of cowardice and the mark of one who ruins his own theme; and of two things one must be true: either that he has set about it badly, or that he does not know in what manner he ought to handle it.

First, then, let us reflect upon the whole community to which all of us here belong alike, greater and lesser; by how much it is believed to surpass the others, both in the judgement of the ruling magistrates and in that of nearly all men besides. For no other of all communities furnishes cities so numerous in all, nor indeed 519. its greatest ones so great as these. Furthermore, beauties of every kind in its lands, a fine proportion of seasons, modes of life of every sort, and its whole situation: for it is established as in the very navel of the entire empire, garlanded round about by many peaceable nations and races, from land and sea alike. It dwells under the best of orders, and one could charge it with neither willfulness nor excessive servitude, but in a station midway it is governed most nobly of all the regions beneath the sun. And it has risen to such dignity that, although the whole region is so vast which the Phasis and the Nile divide off toward the upper world—all of which was called collectively Asia by the Greeks from the beginning—this present portion about the sea, having taken the name from the mainland, has made it its own, so that it has prevailed to be called Asia in place of all the rest. Besides this, the respect and humanity shown by your rulers, and the concession that in all things you should be either superior to, or on equal terms with, most of those who are ruled, has made you seem so. How then is it not fitting that all should glory in their present blessings, and that all should regard them as their own and as common goods, and should in no way fall into faction among themselves over matters wherein none of those outside disputes their universal supremacy? Come then, let me pass over also the cities now contending for primacy, and from whom the greatest beginning of the strife arises—not, as I would say, because they err more than the others who are divided over them. For each, according as he happens to be attached to one, wishes to disparage the others on its behalf, so far as he can. But this I would neither do myself, nor do I think one who does it has good sense; rather I will go the wholly contrary way and adorn the cities as best I am able, using, as is fitting, the chief points of their praise.

I shall begin with the city that now receives us and offers its council-chamber for these discourses. How it once ruled the peoples about this region, and how afterward these very things, in which we now take pride, took their beginning from here, I think I shall leave aside; but what at once meets the eye is this: 520. a citadel of such great size, flashing from afar from every approach, like a common summit of the nation. Beneath it the rest of the city, in one place after another, has taken on situations and shapes of every kind. You would say that many towns had come together to dwell in one place, and that they had become, as it were, neighbouring townships made fellow-dwellers in time, as their parts grew ever toward one another. Adornments both old and new run through the whole city, any one of which, taken at random, would suffice to be the adornment of an entire city. Much, indeed, one might recount of the other parts—or whether one should call them townships—but who could pass over in silence that which is most precious of all and worthy of all remembrance with me? I mean the last quarter of the city, which has been consecrated to the Saviour according to the common good fortune of all mankind. For when the god had also to cross over into this mainland, he crosses over first here and makes the city the base of his intercourse with the whole continent. And in point of time this becomes a kind of second colony brought hither from Greece after the one from Arcadia, of those who came with Telephus; but in dignity and power it is by far the most venerable of all colonies. For here the hearth of Asclepius for Asia was established, and here friendly beacon-fires are raised for all men by the god as he calls them to himself and lifts up a most true light. And neither the gathering of a chorus is so great a thing, nor partnership in a voyage, nor the obtaining of the same teachers, as is the boon and gain of resorting together to the temple of Asclepius and being initiated into the first of the rites under the fairest and most perfect torch-bearer and hierophant, to whom every ordinance of necessity yields. I myself am among those who have not lived twice under the god, but who have lived many lives of every kind, and who hold their sickness to be, in this regard, profitable; and I am one, besides, who has received oracles in return for which I would not accept all the happiness that is reputed to exist among men. Nor, then, would anyone say that the places here are 521. harbourless; rather it is most right and just to say that this is the strongest and surest of all harbours, receiving the most, and far surpassing in its calm, in which the support of salvation is suspended for all from Asclepius. So who would be in his right mind if he did not join with so great and so noble a city, and pray on its behalf, and grant it every good word in his power? For I hold that, just as this city is a common good to all men through the power of the god, so it too would justly receive from all alike both goodwill and honour.

Well then. But is the case of Smyrna some trivial or commonplace matter, or such as one might take its like from many quarters? Those who have not seen her could not, even by conjecture, attain to her; while those who have seen her would call her the work of the gods, just as Homer said that the shield of Achilles was the work of Hephaestus, and the cities upon it as well. Her aspect from land and sea would afford much rivalry, both to those sailing in and to those sailing out, as to which of them took the greater delight. For she rises within a frame, making her base the shore and her summit the level of the upper ridge, lifted up from plain and glens little by little, ever in the same form. And these were not mere spectacle; what lies within surpasses it. For all the adornment that is allotted along with use—affording profitable rest to the body, and to the soul liberty and ease for its proper labours—all of it is gathered together: from temples, from baths, from harbours, from running-tracks. So there is no one who could be at leisure to call her anything but the greatest, bewitched by the abundance of her beauty. And the sea, the rivers, and the suburbs are worthy of one another and of the city, allotted to her, as it were, not by chance more than by deliberate vote. You would say, in the words of the Smyrnaean poet, "Without clan, without law, without hearth" is that man who does not first love the beauty of Smyrna, and then thereafter whatever else he chance to love. And the greatest and most honourable thing of all to tell: the choirs of the Muses and 522. the Graces tread the city through all time, by whom it is the nature of those who come to depart not only the happier but the better. So how is it fitting, if in other respects we become better men, that toward this city we should be worse, and not better, in our deeds; and that, while the advances and exercises in rhetoric somehow come to pass for all most of all in her, yet in all that pertains to good repute and to the grace that comes from words, we should not rank her among the first of cities?

Come then, let us make mention also of the third, so to speak, libation. I mean third in number, not now in rank; let no one hunt my word and drag the argument to the contrary sense. The greatest thing, then, one may already say of her is just this: that, there being these two cities, and so much having been said about them, there still remains something to say of her that is at once different and no worse in the saying. And I think that all who are within the Pillars of Heracles and the river Phasis would rightly count Ephesus their own, partly through the common use of her harbours, partly through all her other facilities of reception. For all are conveyed thither as to their own native land, and no one is so churlish or goes so directly counter to the plain facts as not to concede that the city is a common treasury of Asia and a refuge of need; nor is anyone so fond of fault-finding as to blame the boundaries of that city. For the territory is ample as one goes ever inland, ample too along the very sea, and everywhere sufficient to furnish all that a city needs, and to support every mode of life that men can or choose to lead. Yet how is it fitting that the use of her should be common to all, but goodwill toward her not common to her from all; and that the city's prosperity should matter alike to all, but that all should not alike pray that the city prosper? And, whereas in Persian times Artemis enjoyed such reverence from the barbarians, now that her temple stands larger than before, and the greatest of all governorships, and at the same time 523. the most venerable, is established there—are we to suppose that this one thing too does not suffice for friendship toward the city, the honour of the goddess, with which she, having honoured the city, holds it, and which it is fitting the city should obtain from men? And indeed two of the cities are colonies of one and the same city, that of the Athenians—whom no single man, surely, would be ashamed to call the very pride of all Hellas; and this third city too has already something akin to Athens to boast of, in respect of its production of autochthonous men and heroes; or, failing that, it has something akin to these two. For her colonists too are descended from autochthonous men, the Arcadians. So that from these things too it is fitting that the cities should recognize one another and honour what is theirs. Well then. What in common ought to be rendered to the races that make up the community and to the cities that lay claim to primacy has been said with all brevity, as it seems to me, and yet not the meanest of it, as you yourselves have signified; and many thanks to you for receiving these things kindly. It is fitting now that I, on my part, add the remaining portion of the discourse, that of exhortation—if indeed the hearing is not going to be merely some entertainment of the soul, but something useful is to be added besides—and that you, on your part, consent and listen to this too with the same disposition, so that you may have honoured the discourse not only with the praise of the moment, but also with the remembrance that lasts through all time and amid the affairs themselves.

For I, best of the Greeks here present, if each of you were going to give up, for the sake of fairness and fellowship toward the rest, those things in which you now glory, I would not myself counsel you to adorn your neighbours' affairs to the hurt of your own. But since each has so many things in which to take honest pride, and since you must think no less of yourselves for using virtue toward one another, I do not see what reason the difference has; rather I would say the wholly opposite of this: that if you wish to preserve your own honour, you should associate gently with the others; but if you would harass your present blessings, you would be led out into strife and contention. For in concord one may both praise others and hear his own things 524. praised; but in standing apart, having spoken ill of others, men hear ill of themselves in return, and that which they did not deserve. So, the more anyone wishes to be praised and to enjoy his existing advantages, the more must he grant equality to others and practise fairness. It would be most unreasonable of all to be vexed at others' goods while spoiling one's own, and to be more displeased if some other man also receives his due honour than if he himself should fail to obtain his due from all who give it willingly. And besides, a man will at once be vexed at others' goods and be seen to be envious—and this is in no way the part of the better man. It is worth reflecting upon this too: that all those things which we recounted a little before, and whatever else of the sort one might mention—such as the beauty of public buildings, the size of circuit-walls, fine situation, strength in wealth whether of land or of shipping, and all that belongs to this class—one might say to be the gift of fortune, which both grants each of these and takes them away whenever it likewise so wills; but the choice of concord, and the using of fitting conduct toward one another, belongs to the very mind of those so disposed. So that those who excel in concord ought to be prouder than those who win in those other respects. And indeed those things one may say do not belong to all in succession, but to those who built them and from whom we have received each thing, some in the same age, some born later; whereas to deliberate well and to be temperate belongs, surely, to everyone who wishes this to be present in himself. And just as we judge that house to be best appointed, not the one that is most beautifully built of stone, but the one that is best governed by a single mind, so too we should hold those cities to dwell best which know how to think the same thought. For faction is everywhere a terrible thing, full of uproar, and like to a wasting consumption. For it draws off all the powers, and clinging fast it sucks them dry and empties them, and does not cease before it has utterly worn the body away, using against themselves the very members that are diseased.

525. But indeed, since this is the fairest figure for any whole nation, and this its surest preservation, it is surely plain that cities also, three together and many together among those belonging to the same community, ought to hold fast to it. For surely those things that are commonly advantageous to all the cities in the nation do not hold a different account for some few of them. For if they lay claim to primacy, this does not make their faction any better; rather it is here that one might find its very excess. For if those things which no one would say belong even to ordinary men [nor to the meanest], these the men who think themselves entitled to excel shall reckon as fitting for themselves, and shall not guard against them so far as they can, how does the accusation not gain an addition? Or how is it not one thing that they wish and another that they bring about? For they wish to be esteemed as the best, surely; but in this way they would be seen to be disposed on equal terms with the worst. And I think that, just as everyone would think it right that generals should above all be better than their soldiers, and at any rate not worse, so too the cities to which deliberation in advance is entrusted should think no worse than the meaner cities and the many. As, then, good order and discipline are not a thing suited to the soldiers but for the generals dishonourable or useless—but if the many are to present themselves in their ranks, those who lead them must hold this very thing first—since that other case is impossible, that, when generals are in faction and confounded against one another, an army should come to be of one mind; so too of the cities we must think that those most befit temperance which stand in place of the common figure for all who are in the nation. I marvel that, when war comes, everyone would count it his gain to face danger with the most numerous and noblest of allies; yet when it is possible to enjoy one's possessions without danger, he reckons it a loss if this shall be in company with others; and that he will not even reflect upon this, that the greater the things of which he thinks himself worthy, the more fitting it is that the affairs of others too should prosper along with his own. For to be ahead of those who are worth nothing is no proud thing, but the rivalry with men of note is on both counts safe. For 526. to the victor the figure of honourable ambition is noble, and even if something else befall, the consolation is at hand. One may learn this from Homer too. For since the poet is most universal, it is no worse to make use of him also for matters of this kind. For he praises all the heroes, so to speak, and the very ones most opposed to one another, holding that thus the glory would become greater for those who conquered them. And in cataloguing the cities he has adorned each in a different manner, and all so far as was possible, in no case giving up the honouring of any one of them in whatever small respect it might have. For light, they say, is the favour of a good word. So that one must not deprive even one's enemies of such a thing when they have done some noble deed: a god's exhortation to Heracles, Pindar, I think, declares this. So divine a thing by nature is good speech, and it has its occasion not only when we are about to begin the rites, but also in most human affairs. And as a token that those who use it so far as is possible would act gratefully to the gods, there is this very cry of the herald and that of the priests, which is made whenever we ask good things of the gods. So, since this kind of speech befits the asking of good things, it is fitting, surely, to think that those who honour it altogether fare better and preserve a thing of the better portion. And if again this is so, how is faction not, in this respect too, to be shunned? For there is nothing more opposed to good speech than this evil; for one of two fairest things stands opposed to it. For it permits neither the saying nor the doing of what is best, but brings blasphemy in place of good speech, and ill-fortune in place of good fortune. So that where there is good speech, there too is good action; but where there is faction, neither of these is preserved.

And indeed the man who in no way thinks it right to pull down his neighbours seems to do this from confidence in himself, as one who would in this be reckoned no less for it; whereas the man who makes injury toward others his own gain, apart from his other baseness, renders himself suspect even in the matters about which he disputes, as having nothing 527. to say so great as he wishes. So that not even the man who should merely speak, glozing his willfulness with the name of courage, would seem to be of this stamp, but quite the contrary, prompted by fear for his possessions. For just as in the gymnastic contests to abandon the lawful and customary struggle and to play foul in the outside manner is the part of those who have little confidence in themselves, and do not think it possible to win from a position of strength, so too in affairs the untimely strife and the conduct outside the fitting figure seems to belong to those who are wholly worsted. So that faction is the cause not so much of envy as of fear and insolence and folly, and, in a word, of every vice; and it is most utterly contrary to the name which you have set upon it of contention for primacy. And apart from this, to be hostile and contentious toward men of another race might perhaps find some pardon; but to be so faithless and factious toward one's own kin no single man would say belongs either to a good mind or to good fortune. You may examine this by using the examples that have already come to pass. For even if the circumstances are not alike, nor the occasions similar, yet to be of good sense is somehow always the same. Carry your thoughts back, then, to ancient Greece—since you too, almost all of you, happen to be colonists of the Greeks there—and I shall say nothing new, but what all of you know: the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians. For so long as they thought the same thoughts and held one mind about affairs, they were themselves the envy of all the Greeks, and the authors of many great goods both to one another and to those of the rest who had need of them. And when nearly all mankind, so to speak, banded together against the Greeks, so that the sea was filled with triremes and the land with infantry, and the expectation of evils stood as a kind of gain in that the evils were not yet present—they were not at a loss what to do, but hearing that land and sea were changing places with each other, hearing that the sun was hidden by the arrows, and that rivers were failing the invaders who drank them, and that whole nations and cities were being consumed for the king's single dinner; and besides this, that the god was 528. driving away with terrible threats and terrors the sacred envoys who had come to Delphi—they were not dismayed, nor were they worsted by the onrushing events; but although no small part of Greece was sick, and some had stood decently aside (if indeed one must call this decent), while others openly took the Persian side, they showed of how great worth a thing it is when the first cities think the same thought. For being strong, the one in ships, the other in infantry, first they furnished the benefit from both, common to themselves and to the rest of the Greeks; then—what one might admire far more—they did not divide the leadership, but, as if a single city were furnishing both these things, they thought fit to make their zeal common but their leadership one. And it befell those who yielded it to gain no less than those judged worthy of it, nor to be of less account, either in the moment among the Greeks or in the time thereafter among all mankind. Nay, the Athenians at least were thought then to hold two leaderships over the Greeks: the one of the preparation against the enemy, the other of fairness toward one another—men who, alone filling two parts of the whole number of triremes, yielded the leadership to the Lacedaemonians, who did not contribute even a tenth of their own, holding that, if they did not first furnish their concord with one another, then, even had the ships been twice as many, they would in no way have helped affairs. And associating thus with one another and sharing all things in common, and setting the same bounds of the advantageous, they delivered Athens herself, already held and inhabited by the Persians, and they rescued Greece, which was being borne under water and all but already gone wholly to ruin; and they adorned land and sea with battles by foot and by sea, conquering as much as they prayed. And the man who made his own rule equal to the rule of Zeus they reduced to such fear and lowliness that, leaping up from his throne, he went fleeing, land before land, while the ships fled another flight 529. up toward Asia. Trophies were strung upon trophies, and altars of Zeus the Deliverer, and tripods common to the Greeks at Delphi, and dedications, and tithes, and adornments of the cities, and every increase, and such things became the order of the day. And the one party took over in turn the leadership of the Greeks, in return for the leadership they had then yielded at the right moment, obtaining it from the willing Greeks themselves in the same manner in which they themselves had then willingly yielded it; and the others, the Lacedaemonians, gave the like in return, and neither hindered nor disputed, but holding the others their betters in naval and overseas expeditions, they dissolved their own commanders and entrusted the leadership to them. And from this came Sestos, Ionia, Cyprus, Eurymedon—a catalogue adorned on both counts, of naval and infantry victories rivalling one another—all the fairest things, so to speak, were strung together; and the barbarians withdrew before them, holding the Greeks their masters in place of the king.

These, then, were the fruits of their concord, common to both, and common to all whom they led. But when they fell into faction over the leadership, and, reckoning fairness as cowardice, honoured willfulness as a virtue—and the popular leaders and champions among both parties, instead of foreseeing the future and hindering it and soothing the multitudes, were rather goading them and dashing the cities together, selling all the time to come for the pleasure of the day—then the Spartan herald proclaimed, as though sent down from some one of the gods, that that day would be the beginning of great evils for the Greeks; and these things were before long fulfilled. For those who seemed unconquered and unsackable were led off alive, arms and all, and begged for a treaty, when they might have persuaded their adversaries at the outset to keep the peace; and those who had so far surpassed them in this war, and had earlier been the authors of the Greeks' freedom—when a second war broke out, the Decelean, next in succession, and they had advanced to every 530. trial, things that one cannot even speak of without tears—were seen suffering these, until they razed their own walls with their own hands and were stripped of all their leadership. Flights and slaughters common to the Greeks, and affairs perishing in utter destruction—no single man could attain to them in the telling. The Lacedaemonians now held each empire; but a short time having passed, they were cast out of the sea and trampled on the land, and a third city overtakes them both, that of the Thebans. And it flourished for a while marvellously among the Greeks; but it too, after all, was not governed in the fairness of concord and temperance, but at once it rose and was cast down again. And when there came to be three cities, and of the Greeks some inclined to Athens, some to Sparta, some admired the Thebans, while nothing was common nor administered by judgement and reasoning, straightway the Phocian wars and the disturbances about the Pylaea and affairs full of shame fell upon one another; and the final portion of the Greeks was now Philip as leader and Antipater as master. For Alexander I shall pass over. And all those things sank like water into the ground; and a small remnant of Greece came welcome to you, taken up by the virtue of the present rulers. Does the difference, then, between faction and concord seem to you some small and trifling thing? Or, if you wish, consider the Athenians by themselves—who, when the barbarians attacked, governing themselves on equal terms, so far surpassed all others; but in the war against the Peloponnesians, having borne all else—disasters in Sicily, the revolts of allies, Cyrus, the king, all mankind as adversaries—were brought down by this one thing alone, by standing apart, and were not worsted by their enemies before they were unwilling to be ruled by themselves. And having come to such a pass of fortune that the democracy went into exile, yet when they had returned and voted to bear no grudge, they were spoken of most well and were again all but as at the beginning.

531. So great are the goods that mutual friendship and concord bring—both to a nation in common, and to the cities that take the lead, and to each single city by itself; and, on the contrary, faction is by nature the cause of the most extreme evils. For it is not possible, while using a peevish temper, to find affairs go pleasantly. And if anyone, because no war is now present, thinks these things idle babble, he himself, in his folly, does not know it. For it is so, I think: whenever war is present, faction ruins the affairs of war; and when peace prevails, it is the enemy of the goods of peace. For it is by nature ever harmful, and the harm meets the occasions. And most absurd of all is to feel the greatest gratitude to the rulers because they keep you free from the evils of war, but to choose willingly that very thing which is a far greater evil than war. For faction is harder than war by as much as war is set right by concord, while peace is ruined by faction; and as one may often gain nothing grievous from war, but nothing good from peace, if one uses faction. And indeed faction dissolves peace, whereas war in a sense dissolves faction: by so much is war preferable to faction. For where there is faction at the outset, there is also war, even against one's own people; but where there is lawful war, the danger is at once simple and easier. And indeed about war one may use both arguments, both that it should be made and that it should not; but no one has ever yet dared to say of faction that it would be better should it come to pass, nor that, if it came, it would be better to abide in it. But concerning wars men say that one ought not to break them off; concerning faction, no one has ever straightforwardly said that one ought not to cease as quickly as possible—and rightly. For wars have ere now brought to those who stood firm a reputation for temperance and courage, and have made greater out of lesser, and have furnished the ease that comes in later time. For to prevail over one's enemies by arms makes men least despised, I think, and this is no small part toward dwelling 532. in one's own land in safety. But faction is, as it were, the sum of all things shameful and evil, so that men are not merely worse than others, but do not even resemble their own selves. For let it not be supposed that, even if nothing irreparable now comes to pass—and may it never come to pass, O Zeus and ye gods!—yet of evil fruits, they say, one ought not to preserve even the seed. We must believe that Homer too speaks truly, that strife begins from the very least and advances to the very greatest. For, apart from the fact that the whole Iliad is composed toward this very end, and the entire poem is an indictment of faction, he says expressly of Strife these verses: "who at first rears herself but little, yet thereafter 533. plants her head in heaven and walks upon the earth." For my part I cannot grant that strife touches heaven; for terrible, I think, are the gates of Zeus to shut the passage against every disease. But this much I could maintain stoutly: that least of all things human does it have its bounds circumscribed.

In general, then, I think, one ought not to count any prize so great, whether laid up beneath the earth or in the open, as to be worthy of so great a madness; but if indeed one must say this too, reflect that for the Lacedaemonians then, and for the Athenians, and still further for the Thebans, there was some figure to their dealings with one another. For there was the championship of the Greeks, and that their own decrees should have authority, and that those in need should come to them, and the gatherings of money, and many such things, which served as a starting-point for the rivalry. Not, I think, that these were in every way desirable things—who in his right mind would say so?—yet still the disease had, so to speak, some sense in it. But you, men of Ionia, and you, men whether autochthonous or Arcadians—you who rejoice to hear it—if someone should ask you, instead of "you are in faction and you contend and you are troubled and you are puffed up," what in the gods' name will you answer? For the sake of what leadership do you do these things, or of what allies, or of what harbours, or triremes, or tributes, or territories, 533. or what is so great a thing as conquers your reckonings? Are not your ancestors—and, by Zeus, let me now be granted some freedom of speech; for not even physicians heal all things for pleasure, but it is well enough if they do not do most things with unpleasantness; come then, let us recall a little of these matters too, in case, on hearing them, you may relax your high spirit, even ever so little—those men, then, were content if they had anyone to set over themselves, and they continued in this figure, now thinking the Athenians their benefactors for freeing them from the barbarians, then again the Lacedaemonians for freeing them from the Athenians, and again giving themselves gladly to Philip and Alexander—so utterly were they without leisure for primacy. But indeed, as for present affairs and the order now established by good fortune, who is so much a child, or so old and beyond his senses, as not to know that one city, the first and greatest, holds all the earth beneath her, that one house directs all things, that rulers come to us by law each year, and that to these everything is entrusted, to do both greater and lesser things, however it ever seems best to them? What then, tell me, have we got into our heads, that we make trouble for ourselves, and dream, and fight about the shadow, and when we might enjoy the tranquillity which these men provide for us by their good service, both trouble them who have no need of it, and ourselves desire self-invited evils, as though we did not have what to do with our goods? For who would not be in doubt about the manner in which we now bear ourselves toward the rulers? With goodwill, I think, and faithfulness. And why not? Who indeed more than we? But we associate with them, somehow, mixing willfulness with flattery. For whenever each party thinks fit to court them more than those men require, and appoints how long they must stay with them, threatening that, if they do not comply, they will not endure it, and promises everything, both willingly and unwillingly, to serve them, but only to make use of them alone, 534. or above all to give them orders, while thinking that they ought not to let them act with authority in what they decide—what would one say such a thing is but a mixture of two unlike things, of which it is more marvellous to begin than to be seen unwilling to cease? For the basest, surely, begin such things, but the best put a stop to them. So that to be willing to attend to those men throughout, but to assign to us not even our share, how is this not utter calamity? And I marvel that you take pride not least in your temples and your games, which you reckon common, and yet over these very things you stand apart. And indeed, when you contend over those things in which, as common, you take delight, do you suppose that for the rest you will think the same thoughts? For I think that herein the common and the private are distinguished, and that the saying of the wise means this: that all things ought to be common to those who are going to fare most nobly. For where each possesses something apart, there too the advantage of each is apart; and from this come factions and battles and differences. For "this is not yours but mine" is the source of all contention. But where all hold their goods common, there they have a common mind about them too.

So you, treating these very titles as refutations of faction, have called your council-chambers common, your temples and your games common, and all the greatest things, so to speak, common. Yet how is it not necessary that one of two things be wrong? For if you rightly take pride in these things as being common, how is it not necessary to be ashamed of disputing over them? But if there is nothing venerable in them, how is it fitting to think highly of them? For I think that, if up to now this had escaped you, and someone, having found it out, had shown that some share of these things belongs to the others too, and that they are not the property of those who possess them alone, but common to all like money, and that it is not possible to shut out the others from the pride taken in them, you would reasonably all have ceased from the difference. But to 535. know it yourselves, to name them yourselves, to take pride in the appellation, and yet to turn the starting-points of concord into faction, and to misuse the fair names of things to the bitterness of affairs, and to fall sick from the very things from which it was fitting to be delivered—who would not say this is much as if certain men, from the very drugs prepared for their salvation, should not merely fail to fare better, but should even be destroyed? By no means, good sirs. For no one would begrudge your wishing to increase your own native cities and to adorn what you have; but the bitterness that attends this I, for my part, counsel you to take away. And how this shall come to pass, do you wish me to tell? Only listen kindly. If, O blessed ones, you give over a little your marvelling at stones, and reckon yourselves to be worth more than your buildings, and believe to be true that ancient saying, that walls and odeons and porticoes and the adornment of lifeless things are not what cities are, but men who know how to trust in themselves. And this means not to despise one's neighbours at random, nor to think one has everything—how could one?—but rather the small and simple thing of being of good sense. For those who have this in their minds least of all take refuge in walls and harbours, least of all have need of wealth and porticoes and all imported display, but know that even if they encamp under the open sky they are no worse than Babylonians drunk within their gates. And the fairest thing of all is theirs toward cheerfulness: for they do not think themselves an appendage of their possessions, but reckon all they acquire to be second to themselves. And indeed those embellishments require expense and time and the help of artisans, but this lies open in the midst for all who are able to see it, and needs no labour, but it suffices to wish in order to have the good. And those who deliberate rightly must wish altogether to prevail over their enemies, but with their friends to know when it is the moment 536. to be worsted. For not every victory is noble, nor does it come to men from the gods. And tragedy too is full of those who give this counsel. One of them somewhere says, "For you will rule your friends by not prevailing as much as you wish"; and another in turn says, "You do indeed master your friends by being worsted." And Demosthenes, writing to the Athenians about concord, said that defeat in such matters is judged a noble and fitting victory among the right-minded, speaking of that wherein sons are worsted by their parents, which citizens too concede to one another. If, then, you too will consent to use these reckonings, and first of all be yourselves so minded as to stand to one another in place of lovers—reflecting that not even the fairest man was ever in love with himself, but with someone else—and if, thereafter, it occur also to those who take the lead and conduct affairs among each of you to chant these things over you without fear, and in the very manner in which they now find everything that leads to contention both to say and to do, so henceforth to ply their art for the friendship and concord of you one with another; then perhaps, just as any other matter that meets with fitting practice, this too would be made exact for you and would abide, so to speak, in the very phrase of our prayer. But as it is we are so unreasonably disposed that we dispute and fight over things from which we expect to suffer nothing good at all, while we set at naught those things which it was possible for us, by using fairness, to enjoy—and that too when, as I recall, the mightiest of kings, who himself surpassed all in culture, expressly wrote to us about these matters at the very outset, and promised to judge those the best and noblest who should take the lead in concord of their own free will. But now, whenever an earthquake or some danger lays hold of us, we recognize one another and pray together, and the one party says they are saved through the other, so that we owe much gratitude to dangers; but whenever we come to be by ourselves and to do what we wish, we ourselves are set up for ourselves in place of the earthquakes, and we can neither keep quiet nor think any common thought, 537. but, as in a balance when its loads have been taken out, we move up and down to no purpose; so it seems that something of wantonness too is in the matter.

Will you not cease, O wondrous men, and come to know that these things to which we are attached, even if they are worth much, are yet mortal and of the second portion, while a good mind is most proper of all to the better sort—of which no small part is to be fitly disposed toward friendship? For do not suppose that in sieges to be split apart in the watches is the most unprofitable of all things, but that in commonwealths and in dealings with one another the dividing into many parts is profitable; rather, here too, if anywhere, harmony prevails. This is the true adornment of cities, this the greatest safeguard, this the fairest figure. These are the things of men who look upward, not into pits and rocks; these the things of men who have truly seen Nature—not the nature of stones or of timbers, but that under which all things are led—these are what falls to our lot as our share of the divine polity, in which we partake; since the whole heaven and cosmos too, which has received the fairest figure and name of all, is governed, surely, by a single mind and the power of friendship. And along with this the sun goes its way, keeping its own region through all time, and the phasings of the moon and the courses of the stars proceed, and the cycles of the seasons, and the orderings of each toward the others, and the fitting intervals, and again the harmonies are preserved, agreement prevailing, while no difference is present nor arises, but all things have yielded to the ordinance and use one mind about everything that is fitting. So that, if to imitate the better is the part of the right-minded, it would be the part of the right-minded also that all should as far as possible consider themselves to be some one thing. And you have before your eyes also the greatest example among human things: the best of kings in all respects, to whom, though many great things belong, the fairest seems to be concord and zeal toward one another. They, indeed, ruling all cities both greater and lesser, have made all 538. their partners. Yet how is it not absurd to count ourselves blessed in being ruled by such men, but to be unwilling to imitate them so far as we may? And indeed kings would conduct the affairs of men best by likening themselves to the lords of the universe, the gods; and cities would best be conducted by coming nearest to the mind of their rulers. And for us, by how much it especially belongs, beyond others, to be honoured both by the kings and by the overseers who come to us year by year—for here, where I began, here too shall I end—how is it not fitting that our forethought too should be the greater, that we do nothing which might appear to these men not to be well? By no means. Rather, for the sake of the gods themselves, and of the divine kings, and of all things that are noble and established, let us be willing to come to order, and to contend, if one may say so, in this one rivalry with one another: who shall be first in beginning concord, and who shall display more and clearer works of virtue toward the others. I, for my part, both wish for these things and expect them; and I would rather have spoken these words than have raised up for you the most numerous and greatest of buildings—save temples, I mean. And you, if you are persuaded, will show by deed that you have done no wrong, and that those who have shrunk hitherto from making mention of these matters to you were the ones at fault; but if you are otherwise disposed—which may it not be!—you will make a fair defence for them. For they will seem to have rightly kept silence, knowing that they would make none of you any better, while they themselves would give offence to you all. So let both parties strive in honourable ambition: let me have spoken to you the best things with all goodwill together with courage; and do you show that it is not in vain to say these things to you, but that you know how to make use of those who counsel the best.