The Heroic Deeds of the Emperor Constantius

1. Poetry tells us that Achilles, when he fell into anger and quarrelled with the king, let fall from his hands his spear and shield, and tuning a lyre and harp, sang and celebrated in song the deeds of the demigods, making this the occupation of his leisure—a very wise plan, if you consider it. For to set oneself against the king and provoke him is altogether arrogant and savage; yet perhaps the son of Thetis does not escape this reproach either, that he gives himself up to songs and the striking of strings at the very moment for action, when he might then have held to his arms and not laid them aside, and might at his leisure afterwards have sung the king's praises and celebrated his successes. Nor does the father of those poems represent Agamemnon as having dealt moderately and like a statesman with his general, but as using threats and committing outrages upon him in deed, stripping him of his prize. And when he brings the two together in the assembly, both repenting—the son of Thetis crying out,

"Son of Atreus, has this then proved better for us both, For you and for me . . ."

and then cursing the pretext of their enmity and reckoning up the disasters that sprang from his wrath; and the king laying the blame upon Zeus and Fate and the Fury—he seems to me to teach, using these men as it were for images in a play, that kings should do nothing in arrogance, nor use their power for every end, nor give rein to their anger, like a bold horse carried away for want of bit and driver; and that, on the other hand, generals should not chafe at a king's disdain, but bear his rebukes with self-control and gentleness, that their lives may not be filled with regret.

Pondering these things by myself, my dear Emperor, and seeing you in your deeds display the Homeric education, and willing absolutely to do some good to all in common, while for us in particular you prepare honours and prizes, one upon another—and willing, I think, to be as much greater than the king of the Greeks as this: that he dishonoured the best of men, while you, I think, grant pardon even to many of the worthless, praising the saying of Pittacus, who set forgiveness above punishment—I should be ashamed if I did not show myself more grateful than Peleus, and did not praise, so far as I am able, the gifts that are yours; I do not mean gold and the purple cloak, nor, by Zeus, robes of every colour, the work of Sidonian women, nor the beauty of Nisaean horses and the flashing splendour of gold-mounted chariots, nor the bright and lovely jewel of the Indians. And yet, if anyone should choose to fix his mind upon such things and think each worth an account, he would, I think, drain off nearly the whole of Homer's poetry and still need words besides; and all the praises that were composed for all the demigods together would not suffice for you alone.

2. Let us begin, if you please, first with the sceptre and with kingship itself. For what does the poet say, when he wishes to praise the antiquity of the house of the Pelopidae and to display the greatness of their dominion?

"And lordly Agamemnon rose, Holding the sceptre that Hephaestus toiled to make, And gave to Zeus; and he to the son of Maia and himself, And lord Hermes gave it to Pelops, And Pelops gave it to Atreus, shepherd of the people; And Atreus dying left it to Thyestes rich in flocks, And he again left it to Agamemnon to bear, To be lord over many islands and over all Argos."

There you have the genealogy of the house of the Pelopidae, lasting not through three full generations. But our own kindred had its beginning from Claudius, and after the empire had passed to others for a little while between, your two grandfathers received it in succession. Your mother's father ruled Rome and Italy, and Libya besides, and Sardinia and Sicily—a dominion in no way meaner than that of Argos and Mycenae; while your father's father ruled the most warlike peoples of Gaul, and the Iberians of the West, and the islands within the Ocean, which are as much greater than those seen in our own sea as the Ocean overflowing the Pillars of Heracles is greater than the sea within. These whole regions they cleared of enemies, marching in common when there was need of it, and at times each visiting separately and cutting away the insolence and injustice of the neighbouring barbarians. These men, then, were adorned with such deeds. As for your father, he gained the share that belonged to him most piously and reverently, waiting for the appointed death of him who begot him; and the rest, which had been brought down from kingships into tyrannies, he freed from harsh slavery, and ruled over the whole, taking you, his three sons, as his fellow-rulers.

Is it worth while, then, to set against this the greatness of power, and the length of time they held dominion, and the number of those who reigned? Or is this in truth a matter of antiquity, and must we pass on to wealth and admire your mantle with its brooch—the very things that gave Homer such pleasant occupation? And must we make much account of the mares of Tros, which, three thousand in number, grazed in the marsh, and the thefts that came of them? Or shall we stand in awe of the Thracian horses, whiter than snow and swifter in running than the winter winds, and the chariots that went with them? And have we then anything to praise you for in these? And shall we think it right, I suppose, to set against yours the house of Alcinous and the halls of Menelaus that struck men with amazement, and the son of wise Odysseus, who persuaded men to babble such nonsense—lest perhaps you should seem to come off the worse in these things? And shall we not thrust the foolery aside? But take care lest someone indict us for pettiness and ignorance of what is truly noble, and convict us.

3. We must therefore leave such inquiries to the sons of Homer, and go boldly on to what comes nearer to virtue in these men, and to the things for which the poet makes greater account—bodily strength and experience in arms.

To which, then, of those hymned by the Homeric Siren shall we yield? There is Pandarus the archer in his pages, a faithless man and a slave to money, and besides weak in the hand and a poor man-at-arms; and after him Teucer and Meriones—the one using his bow at a dove, the other foremost in battle, but needing, as it were, a bulwark and a wall. So he too holds out his shield—not his own, but his brother's—and takes aim at the enemy quietly, showing himself a laughable soldier, since he needed a greater guardian and did not place his hopes of safety in his arms. But you, my dear Emperor, I have seen bringing down bears and leopards and lions in numbers with the arrows you let fly, using the bow for hunting and sport, while on the line of battle you have shield and breastplate and helmet. And I should not be afraid to match you against Achilles glittering in the armour of Hephaestus and making trial of himself and his arms,

"Whether they fitted him, and his glorious limbs moved freely within."

For your successes proclaim your skill to all the world.

As for horsemanship and lightness in running, is it worth while to compare with you those of old who won a name and a greater fame? Or had the one not even yet been discovered? For they used chariots and not yet unyoked colts. And whoever surpassed in speed, with him the judgment between you would be in doubt. To array a rank well and to draw up a phalanx Menestheus seems to have been most skilled, and the man of Pylos, by reason of his age, does not yield to him in experience. But the enemy often threw their ranks into confusion, and even drawn up upon the wall they could not hold out; while for you, who have joined in countless battles, against many enemies—barbarians, and against no fewer of these your own countrymen who had revolted and joined in the attack with him who chose to usurp the empire—the phalanx remained unbroken and undivided, not yielding even a little.

4. And that this is no idle talk, nor a counterfeit of words better than the truth of deeds, I wish to set forth to the present company. For it is, I think, absurd to recount your own deeds to you; and I should suffer the same thing as a poor and untutored spectator of the works of Pheidias, were he to attempt to describe to Pheidias himself the maiden on the Acropolis and the Zeus among the people of Pisa. But if I set forth the most august of your deeds to others, perhaps I might escape that fault, and shall not be liable to such reproaches. So now I must speak boldly.

And let no one be vexed with me for attempting to take hold of greater deeds, even if the length of the discourse runs out with them—and that too when I wish to hold back and force myself, lest the weakness of the words, poured around the greatness of the deeds, should mar them; just as they say the gold laid upon the wings of the Eros at Thespiae took away the exactness of the art. For in truth your successes need the Homeric trumpet, far more than the deeds of the Macedonian. And this will be plain if we use the method of discourse that we set before us from the beginning. There appeared a great kinship between the emperor's deeds and those of the heroes, and we said that he surpasses them all in the very point in which each of the others especially excelled; and how he is more kingly than the king himself—if we remember what was said in the proem—we showed, and it will be very plainly seen again. But now, if you please, let us survey his battles and his wars.

5. Whom, then, did Homer especially celebrate among the Greeks and the barbarians alike? I will read you the most decisive of his verses.

"Who then was far the best of these, tell me, O Muse, Of the men and the horses, that followed the sons of Atreus? Of the men by far the best was Telamonian Ajax, While Achilles was wroth; for he was far the strongest."

And again he says of the son of Telamon:

"Ajax, who in form and in deeds was fashioned Above the rest of the Danaans, after the peerless son of Peleus."

These, then, he says, were the best of the Greeks who came; and of those about the Trojans, Hector and Sarpedon. Will you, then, that we pick out the most brilliant of their feats and survey their greatness? For in a way the battle of the son of Peleus at the river, and the war of the Achaeans about the wall, come to the same thing as some of the emperor's deeds; and Ajax fighting in defence of the ships and standing upon the decks might perhaps meet with some worthy comparison. But I wish to recount to you the battle at the river which the emperor lately fought. You know whence the war broke out, and that it was waged with justice and not from a craving for more. Nothing prevents my recalling it briefly.

6. A faithless and reckless man, reaching out after a dominion that did not belong to him, killed the emperor's brother and partner in rule, and was lifted up with bright hopes, as though he would imitate Poseidon and prove that Homer's word about the god was no fable but truer than anything—the word that ran:

"Thrice he reached out as he went, and the fourth time came to his goal, To Aegae . . ."

and how from there, taking up his full armour and yoking his horses, he was borne over the deep.

"In joy the sea drew apart; and they flew on Right swiftly, nor was the brazen axle wetted beneath . . ."

since nothing stood in his way, and all gave place and drew back in gladness. So he thought that no enemy and no rival was left to him, and that there was not one thing to hold him from standing at the very mouths of the Tigris. There followed him a great host of foot, and horsemen no fewer, but those who are valiant—Celts and Iberians and those of the Germans who dwell near the Rhine and the western sea, which, whether one ought to call it Ocean or the Atlantic sea or fittingly use some other name, I do not insist; only that beside it dwell races of barbarians hard to fight and surpassing the other nations in strength—a thing I know not by hearsay only, which is an unsure proof, but by my own experience have learned. Raising from these nations a multitude no smaller than the army that followed him from home—or rather, the one part followed him as his own and of his own kindred, in great numbers, while the other, our own (for so it is right to call it), as much of the Romans as followed him by force and not by choice, like auxiliaries and mercenaries, followed in the rank and station of a Carian, ill-disposed, as was natural, to a barbarian and a stranger, who had despised and seized the dominion in drunkenness and debauch, but ruling as was fitting for one who had begun from such preludes and prerogatives.

7. He led them himself, not like Typhon, whom the prodigious tales of the poets say the Earth in her anger against Zeus brought to birth, nor as the strongest of the Giants, but such as Prodicus, wise in fables, fashions Vice to be, contending against Virtue and wishing to persuade the son of Zeus that she above all things ought to be honoured by him. Advancing to the battle, he brought forth the words of Capaneus, speaking barbarously and senselessly—not, however, like that man, trusting in the strength of his soul nor in the might of his body, but in the multitude of the barbarians that followed him, to whom he threatened that he would give over all things as plunder: captain to captain, company-commander to company-commander, soldier to soldier of those on the opposing side, with their baggage and possessions, not even leaving their bodies free. But the emperor's skill increased his folly, and led him down from the rough country into the plains, rejoicing and not understanding, but judging the thing to be sheer flight and not generalship. And so he is caught, like birds and fishes in nets. For when he came to the open ground and the plains of the Paeonians and thought it better to fight there, then the emperor posts his horsemen on each wing apart.

Of these some are spear-bearers, sheltered by hammered breastplates and helmets made of iron; greaves too fitted very closely about their ankles, and knee-pieces, and other coverings of iron of the same kind about their thighs; and the men themselves borne upon their horses exactly like statues, needing no shield. After these followed a multitude of other horsemen carrying shields, and others shooting from the horse. Of the foot, the heavy-armed were in the centre, joining on either side to the horse; and behind were the slingers and archers and all who hurl from the hand, bare of shield and breastplate. The phalanx being thus arranged, when the left wing had advanced a little, the whole of the enemy was thrown into confusion and did not keep its order. And as the horsemen pressed on and gave no respite, he who had so shamefully seized the kingship flees more shamefully still, and leaves behind his master of horse and very many commanders of thousands and of companies, fighting strongly; and above all the author of that monstrous and accursed drama, who first conceived the design of altering the kingship and stripping us of our prize.

For a while he rejoiced at having not been baffled in his first attempt nor failed of it; but then, with justice, penalties stood over him and exacted from him requital for his deeds, levying an incredible vengeance. For of all who joined the tyrant in the war, the death of some was manifest, and the flight of others plain, and the repentance of yet others; for many were suppliants, and all met with pardon, the emperor surpassing the son of Thetis in greatness of soul. For he, when Patroclus had fallen, would no longer even sell the enemy he took alive, but slew them as they clasped his knees in supplication; whereas the emperor proclaimed immunity for those who would renounce the conspiracy, not only taking away the fear of death or exile or any other punishment, but, as though from some misery and ill-starred wandering, he thought fit to bring them back from the life they had led with the tyrant, restoring them to their former standing unimpaired.

8. This shall again be the subject of discourse.

But this must now be said, that neither among the fallen nor among the fugitives was the tyrant's trainer. For not even to have hoped for pardon was reasonable for one who had conceived such unjust designs and wrought such impious deeds, who had laid hands upon the unjust murders of men and women, of many private persons, and of nearly all who shared in the imperial line—and that not in fear, as anyone might be who plans a kindred murder, dreading and suspecting some avengers and polluted spirits because of the defilement, but as though by some strange new rites of purification washing off the earlier murders, killing man upon man and women upon their dearest. Reasonably, then, did he despair of supplication. These things he probably thought; yet it may also be otherwise. For we do not know what he suffered or did, when he went off unseen and vanished. But whether some avenging spirit snatched him up, as Homer says of the daughters of Pandareus, and leads him to the ends of the earth to exact the penalty of his designs, or whether the river received him and bids him feast the fishes, is not yet plain. For up to the battle itself, and when the companies were drawing up against the phalanx, he was bold, moving about in their midst; but when the battle had been fought, as was fitting, he went off unseen, hidden, I know not whether by gods or by spirits—except that it was plainly to no better fortune. For he was not, after appearing again in power, to flourish in unpunished insolence, as he thought, but, vanishing utterly, was to undergo a punishment unhappy for himself but profitable for many and tending to their amendment.

So much, then, for the contriver of the whole business, who deserved a fuller account, breaking, as it did, in the middle of the action, the continuity of the narrative. He must now be left here again, and I must return to the point from which I set out, and render the end of the battle.

9. For the spirit of the soldiers does not fall together with the cowardice of their generals; but when their order had been broken—not by their own baseness, but by the inexperience and ignorance of him who arrayed them—they formed in companies and kept fighting; and the work was beyond all hope, the one side not yielding at all to the victors, the other ambitious to follow up the victory utterly. A confused tumult arose, and shouting and clashing of arms, swords shattered upon helmets and shields upon spears. Man closed with man, and casting away their shields they pressed on with the swords themselves, caring little for suffering, but turning all their fury to doing some dreadful thing to the enemy, that they might give them no clean nor tearless victory, and bartering their dying for it. And these things were done not by the foot alone against their pursuers, but also by such of the horsemen as had their spears wholly made useless by the shocks—long lances they are, which they broke and, leaping down, refashioned themselves into men-at-arms. And for some time they held out hardly and with difficulty; but when the horsemen, riding round, shot at them from afar with their bows, and the cuirassiers made dense charges upon them, since the plain was clear and smooth, and night came on, then some fled gladly, and the others pursued stoutly to the rampart, and take it with the very baggage and slaves and beasts. And the rout of the enemy having now begun, as I said, and the pursuers not relaxing, they are thrust to the left, where the river was on the right hand of the victors. There the great slaughter took place, and the place was filled with the corpses of men and horses mingled together. For the Draos was not like the Scamander, nor was it kindly to the fugitives, so as to thrust the dead with their very arms out of its streams and cast them away, while covering the living and hiding them safely in its eddies. For this the Trojan river did perhaps out of goodwill, or perhaps it was of such a size as to make the crossing easy for one who wished to walk or to swim; since indeed it can be bridged when a single elm is thrown into it, and all foaming with froth and blood

"It dashed against the shoulders of Achilles . . ."

if one must believe even this; yet it wrought nothing more violent, and when a little heat fell upon it, it gives up the war and forswears its aid.

10. This too seems to be one of Homer's playthings, when he invented a strange and absurd kind of single combat. For in other things he is plainly favouring Achilles, and, leading the army as it were to look on, he brings him alone, unconquerable and irresistible, against the enemy, slaying those he meets and putting all to flight at once by his voice and his bearing and the assaults of his eyes—at the beginning, I think, of the battle, and on the banks of the Scamander, until the fugitives gathered gladly into the wall. These things he recounts in many verses, and inventing battles of the gods and adorning his poetry with fables, he bribes the judges and does not allow them to bring in a just and truthful verdict. But whoever wishes not to be deceived at all by the beauty of the words and the fictions brought in from outside—as at the beginning we said about certain spices and colours—let him be an Areopagite judge, and we shall not fear the judgment. For we admit that the son of Peleus was a good soldier, persuaded of it by the poetry. He slays twenty men, and

"Twelve youths he chose alive out of the river, And led them forth, dazed like fawns, A blood-price for Patroclus, son of Menoetius, who had died."

Yet so much weight did the victory bring to the affairs of the Achaeans, that it did not even strike greater fear into the enemy nor make them despair utterly of themselves. And for this shall we need any other witness, leaving Homer aside? And is it not enough to recall the verses he composed, when Priam came to the ships bringing the ransom for his son? For when, after the agreement, the son of Thetis asked for how many days he wished to bury noble Hector,

"For how many days do you long to bury noble Hector?"

he goes through the rest and says of the war:

"And on the twelfth day we will fight, if there be need."

So little does he shrink from declaring war even after the truce. But the base and cowardly tyrant put forth high mountains as the defence of his own flight, and, building forts upon them, does not even trust to the strength of the places, but begs to obtain pardon. And he would have obtained it, had he been worthy and not been caught many times faithless and reckless, heaping injustice upon injustice.

11. As for the battle, then, let anyone judge—if he is not willing to attend to those who recount it, nor to well-made verses, but to look at the deeds themselves. Next, if you please, let us set against the deeds at that city the battle of Ajax over the ships and the fighting upon the wall of the Achaeans. To that city the Mygdonius, fairest of rivers, adds his own renown; and it bears too the name of King Antiochus; and it has gotten another, barbarian, name as well, familiar to most through their mingling with the barbarians of those parts. This city an army boundless in number, of Parthians together with Indians, surrounded, when it was resolved to march against the tyrant; and what they say befell Heracles as he went against the beast of Lerna—the sea-crab—the same was the king of the Parthians, who, crossing the Tigris from the mainland, walled the city round with mounds; then, receiving the Mygdonius into these, he turned the ground about the town into a lake, and held the city like an island within it, the battlements just rising and showing above. He besieged it, bringing up ships and engines upon ships; and it was the work not of a day, but, I think, of nearly four months. But those within the wall continually beat off the barbarians, burning their engines with fire-darts; and many ships they hauled up from the wall, while others were broken by the force of the engines that hurled and the weight of the missiles. For stones of seven Attic talents' weight were thrown against them. And when these things had been done for many days, a part of the mound is broken, and the flood of waters rushes in, and with it a part of the wall, no less than a hundred cubits, came down together.

Here he arranges his army in the Persian fashion. For the Parthians preserve and imitate the Persian ways, not deigning, it seems to me, to be reckoned Parthians, but pretending to be Persians. And so they take delight in Median dress, and go to battle like them, glorying in such arms and in gilded and purple garments. By this they devise to seem not to have revolted from the Macedonians, but to be recovering the kingship that belonged to them of old. So the king too, imitating Xerxes, sat upon an artificial mound, while his army advanced with the beasts. These followed from the Indians, and bore iron towers full of archers. Their leaders were the cuirassiers and the archers, and another boundless multitude of horse. For their foot has been made useless for war, sharing in no honoured rank nor of any use to them, since the country they range over is plain and bare. For such matters, it seems, are deemed worthy of honour or dishonour according to their use in war; and so what is by nature useless is not deemed worthy of much regard by the laws either. It fell out so about Crete and Caria and among countless other nations, that their warfare was so ordered. And so too the plain of Thessaly proved suited for horsemen to contend and exercise in. But our city's forces, set as they have been against adversaries of every kind, and prevailing by good counsel and good fortune, have reasonably been fitted to every form of arms and of equipment besides.

But all this perhaps is nothing to the discourse, as those would say who, like men set under laws, are bound by the rules of the arts of praise. As for me, if any of these things too concern you, I shall consider in due season; but the reproaches of men I escape without difficulty. For I say that I neither lay claim to the arts, nor does anyone who has not agreed to abide by certain rules do wrong in not keeping them; and perhaps we shall not lack other seemly excuses besides. But it is not worth while to draw out the discourse longer to no purpose and to wander from the subject. Let us go up again, then, into the track, and to the point from which I strayed.

12. For when the Parthians, arrayed in arms—both they and their horses—together with the Indian beasts, advanced against the wall, bright with hopes of carrying it that very moment, and the signal had been given them to go forward, they all thrust on, each man wishing himself to be the first to leap upon the wall and to carry off the glory of it; and they reckoned there was no fear, for those within would not withstand their onset. So great was the hope that the Parthians had. But the defenders kept their phalanx dense at the breach in the wall, and over the part still standing they posted all the useless multitude that was in the city, mingling among them no smaller a portion of the soldiers. And when the enemy rode on and no missile was let fly at them from the wall, they had a surer hope of taking the city by storm, and struck their horses with whips and bloodied their flanks with the goads, until they had got the mounds behind them—mounds which had been made by them before to hold back the outflowings of the Mygdonius, and there was very deep mire about the place, since it was not wholly bare of the flood, and because the earth was rich and could by nature hold the moisture. And there was here too an old defence of the city, a wide ditch, and in it a deeper pool had settled. And when the enemy were already at this and trying to cross, many sallied out from within, and many from the walls cast stones at them; and there was great slaughter of them, and they all turned their horses to flight, by merely wishing it and showing their intent by their bearing. For as they wheeled they fell at once and bore down the horsemen; and being heavy with their arms they stuck the more in the pool. And there is a slaughter of them such as never before in such a siege.

And when matters had gone thus with the horsemen, they make trial of the elephants, thinking rather to strike terror by the strangeness of the encounter. For their eyes were not so far destroyed that they could not see that the beast was heavier than a horse, and bore a burden not of two horses or more, but, I think, of many waggons—archers and javelin-men and an iron tower. But all these were hindrances against a place made by hand into a pool, and were plain to them in the event; whence it is not likely that they came for battle, but were prepared to strike terror into those within. They advanced in order, set apart from one another at equal distance, and the phalanx of the Parthians was like a wall—the beasts bearing the towers, and the heavy-armed filling up the spaces between. But arrayed thus they were of no great profit to the barbarian; for they gave pleasure and delight to those watching from the wall. And when these had had their fill, as of a brilliant and costly procession sent past them, letting fly stones from the engines and shooting with the bows, they challenged the barbarians to the assault. And the barbarians, being by nature quick to anger and reckoning it a dreadful thing to incur ridicule and to lead back their array unsuccessful, at the king's urging advanced against the wall and were pelted with dense stones and arrows; and some of the beasts were wounded and died, sinking into the mire. And fearing for the rest, they led them back again to the camp.

13. And when the Parthian had failed of this attempt too, he divides the archers into parts and bids them relieve one another and shoot continually at the breach in the wall, that the defenders might not be able to build it up and hold the city safely; for so he hoped to take it either unawares or by forcing those within with his numbers. But the emperor's foresight made the barbarian's design vain. For behind the heavy-armed another wall was being built; and the king thought they were still using the old foundations for the base. But when they had worked a whole day and night together, it rose to a height of four cubits, and at dawn was seen bright and newly made, those within giving way not even for a moment, but relieving one another and shooting javelins at those standing over the fallen wall; and this terribly amazed the barbarian. Yet he did not at once lead off his army, but again uses the same wrestling-tricks. And having done and suffered, I think, much the same, he led his army back, having lost many of his people by want, and spent many bodies upon the mounds and the siege, and slain many satraps, blaming one and another—the one because the mounds had not been firmly made, but had given way and been overwhelmed by the streams of the river; the other for having fought badly under the walls; and bringing various charges against others, he killed them. For it is well in the habit of the barbarians of Asia to shift the blame for their misfortunes upon their subjects—which he did then too, and so went off. And from that time he keeps the peace with us, and needed neither oaths nor treaties, but is content to stay at home, unless the emperor should march against him and exact justice for his recklessness and his folly.

Is it worth while, then, to set this battle against those over the Greek ships and the wall? Consider thus the likeness, and reckon the difference. Of the Greeks, the two Ajaxes and the Lapiths and Menestheus gave way at the wall and looked on while the gates were shattered by Hector and Sarpedon mounted upon the battlements. But these gave way not even when the wall was broken of itself, but conquered fighting and beat off the Parthians who had marched against them together with the Indians. Then the one, mounting the ships, fights on foot from the decks as from a bulwark, while these fought first from the walls as in a sea-fight, and at last the one side gave way both from the battlements and the ships, while these conquered the enemy who came on with ships and on foot.

14. But the discourse has done well to be carried down—I know not how—to Hector and Sarpedon, and even, as they say, to the very chief of their deeds, the casting down of the wall, which but one day before the Achaeans, he says, at the persuasion of the demagogue and king of Pylos, had built as an unbreakable bulwark for the ships and for themselves.

For this seems to me almost the noblest of Hector's deeds, and it needs no skill of Glaucus to understand it, nor any wiser device, since Homer plainly teaches that, when Achilles appeared, Hector "plunged into the throng of men"; and when Agamemnon pressed upon the Trojans and chased Hector to the wall, Zeus drew him off, that he might be saved at his leisure. And the poet, mocking him and laughing at his cowardice, as he sat already beneath the oak and by the gates, said that Iris came from Zeus, declaring:

"So long as you see Agamemnon, shepherd of the people, Raging among the foremost, slaying the ranks of men, So long give way from the battle . . ."

For how is it likely that Zeus should counsel anything so base and cowardly—especially to one not even fighting, but standing at great ease? And when the son of Tydeus, while Athena made a great flame blaze up from his helmet, slew many and forced the steadfast to flee, Hector stood far off from the war, and bearing many reproaches he gave up resisting the conquering Achaeans, and makes a seemly pretext of his going into the city, to advise his mother to appease Athena along with the Trojan women. And yet, if he himself had supplicated before the temple with the council of elders, there would have been much reason in it; for it befits, I think, the general or king, like a priest and prophet, ever to serve the god with due order and to neglect nothing, and not to think it more fitting for another, nor to entrust it to him, deeming the ministry beneath himself.

15. For I think that, slightly altering Plato's words, I shall not err in saying that for whatever man—or rather king—all that conduces to happiness is hung upon the god, and does not float among other men, by whose faring well or ill he too is forced to wander and his affairs with him—for such a man life is best prepared. And if no one will permit me to rewrite or alter or change the word, but bids it remain unmoved, like an ancient sacred thing, not even so shall we say the wise man means anything else. For by "upon himself" he surely does not mean the body, nor wealth, nor noble birth and the fame of one's fathers—for these are the private possessions of some man, but they are not the man himself—but mind and wisdom, he says, and, in a word, the god within us; which elsewhere he himself called the most sovereign form of the soul in us, and that the god gave this to each man as his guardian spirit—this which we say dwells on the summit of the body, and lifts us from earth toward our kindred in heaven. For to this, it seems, he commands that each man ought to be attached, and not to other men, who, wishing it, have often been able to harm and hinder us in other things; and some, even unwilling, have taken away one of our possessions. But this alone is unhindered and unharmed, since it is not even lawful that the better be harmed by the worse. And this teaching too is from him. But I seem to be loading you down with Plato's words, sprinkling on a few of my own as one sprinkles salt or grains of gold. Of these, the one gives a sweeter savour to the food, the other a more seemly spectacle to the sight. Both are in Plato's words; for they are wonderful both to perceive through the hearing, sweeter than salt, and to nourish and purge the soul with pleasure. So we must not shrink nor fear the reproach, if anyone should blame our greed, and that we lay hold of everything, like gluttons at banquets who seize all the dishes, not enduring to leave untouched what is set before them. For this, in a way, seems to happen to me too—to sing praises and doctrines together, and, before I have moderately reached the end of the former discourse, cutting it short in the middle, to expound the sayings of philosophers. To those who blame such things, something has already been said before, and will perhaps be said again.

16. But now, restoring the continuity of the present discourse, let us go back to the beginning, like those who run a fore-lap in the races. It was said before that Plato calls the mind and the soul the man himself, and the body and possessions his. These things are defined in his wonderful Laws. As, then, if one should take it up from the beginning and say: "For whatever man all that conduces to happiness is hung upon mind and wisdom, and not upon external things, by whose faring well or ill, or even suffering, he is forced to wander—for such a man life is best prepared"—he does not pervert the saying nor counterfeit it, but interprets it rightly and renders it; so too whoever substitutes the god for his word does no wrong. For if the spirit within us—which is by nature impassible and akin to god, yet, having endured and suffered much through its fellowship with the body, has given to the many the impression of suffering and perishing—if that presides over the whole life of him who is to be happy, what must we suppose he thought about the mind that is pure and unmixed with the earthly body, which we say is even a god, and to which we counsel every private man and king to entrust the reins of life—I mean the man truly worthy of the title and not bastard nor falsely named—understanding it and perceiving it through kinship, but yielding to it the rule and withdrawing from its charge as a man of sense? For it is foolish and very arrogant not to obey the god utterly, so far as one can, while caring for virtue; for in this above all we must suppose the god rejoices. Nor, however, must we stand aloof from the lawful service, nor despise such honour to the better, but we must reckon piety in the rank of virtue, the noblest piety. For holiness is the offspring of justice; and that this belongs to the more divine form of the soul has escaped none of those who handle such matters.

17. And so we praise Hector for being unwilling to pour libation because of the gore upon his hands; but we did not think it right for him to go into the city, nor to leave the battle, when he was to perform no work of a general and king, but of a servant and attendant, taking up the post of some Idaeus or Talthybius. But, as we said from the beginning, this seems to be a seemly pretext for flight. For when he closed with the son of Telamon, persuaded by the saying of the seer, he gladly parted from him and gave gifts, escaping death with joy; and to speak generally, he follows the fleeing boldly, but is nowhere the cause of victory and rout, save when he first leaped upon the wall of the Achaeans together with Sarpedon.

Shall we then, as not having so great a deed of the emperor's, shrink from the contest, lest we seem to set small things beside great and mean things beside what is worth greater zeal; or shall we dare to contend even against so great a deed? Now that was the wall above the shore, completed in not even the whole space before noon, such as the ramparts that it is lawful for us to build; but the wall above the Alps was an old fortress, and the tyrant uses it after his flight, making it out as a new-built bulwark and leaving in it a considerable garrison of stout men. Nor does he himself go as far off as he can, but stayed in the neighbouring city. It is an emporium of the Italians by the sea, very prosperous and abounding in wealth. For from here the Mysians and the Paeonians and such of the Italians as dwell in the interior carry their wares; and they were formerly called, I think, the Eneti. But now that the Romans hold the cities, they preserve their original name with a slight addition of a letter at the beginning of the appellation; and the sign of it is a single character, which they do not call by name, and which they use often instead of the letter beta, for the sake, I think, of a kind of aspiration and a peculiarity of the tongue. The whole nation, then, is so named; but to the city, as they say, an eagle flying favourably from Zeus on the right, as it was being founded, granted its own name. It lies at the foot of the Alps—mountains these of vast size, with sheer rocks in them, scarcely allowing the crossing to those who force it with a single waggon and a yoke of mules—beginning from the sea which we call the Ionian, and walling off what is now Italy from the Illyrians and the Gauls, and ending at the Tyrrhenian sea. For the Romans, when they had mastered the whole country—and in it is the nation of the Eneti and certain Ligurians and no mean portion of the other Gauls—did not forbid them to keep their ancient names, but compelled them to yield to the common name of the Italians. And now all that is settled within the Alps, reaching to the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian sea, is adorned with this appellation; while beyond the western Alps the Gauls dwell, and the Raetians the parts under the Bear, where are the sources of the Rhine and those of the Ister near the neighbouring barbarians; and the parts toward the east—these are the Alps which we said are fortified, where the tyrant established his garrison. So then, Italy being on every side hemmed in by mountains very hard to pass and by a marshy sea—since countless rivers flow into it which make a marsh like the marshes of Egypt—the emperor by his wisdom took the whole limit of that sea and forced the way up.

18. And that I may not seem to linger, speaking again of the difficult country, and that there was no room to pitch a camp or a rampart near, nor to bring up engines and siege-towers, the surrounding ground being terribly waterless and having not even small springs, I come to the capture itself. And if you please that I take the chief point of the discourse all at once, recall the march of the Macedonian against the Indians, who dwelt upon that rock to which not even the lightest of the birds could fly up—how it was taken—and you will desire to hear nothing more, except only this: that Alexander lost many Macedonians in taking the rock, while our ruler and general, losing not even a commander of a thousand or of a company, nor even a heavy-armed man of the roll, won a clean and tearless victory. But Hector, I think, and Sarpedon cast down many from the rampart, but, meeting Patroclus in his prowess, the one is killed at the ships, the other fled shamefully, not even taking up the body of his friend. So with no sense, but emboldened rather by bodily strength, they dared the passage to the wall. But the emperor, where the work is of valour and spirit, uses his arms and prevails with good counsel; and where good counsel only is needed, by this he steers and accomplishes such great things as not even the sword could have power to take.

19. But since the discourse, borne along by itself, has come at last longing to praise his understanding and good counsel, this must be rendered. And about these things we have already gone through a little; and all that seemed to us to have a kinship to the deeds of those heroes, likening great things to small, we set forth for the resemblance. But it is plain to one who looks at the greatness of the preparation and the abundance of the power. For then all Greece had been stirred, and a part of the Thracians and of the Paeonians, and all the subjects of Priam,

"As much as Lesbos within, the seat of Macar, encloses, And Phrygia above, and the boundless Hellespont."

But to count up the nations now coming together to the emperor and warring with him in the war, and those who arrayed themselves against him—would it not be idle talk and superfluous folly and far too old-fashioned? And by as much as the powers that come together are greater, by so much it is likely that the deeds surpass; so that of necessity these too excel those. In multitude, indeed, where is there room to compare? For those fought continually about a single city, and neither could the Trojans, prevailing, drive off the Achaeans, nor could the others, conquering, have power to take and overturn the rule and kingship of the sons of Priam; and ten years were spent by them. But for the emperor there are many contests; for it is recorded that he warred against the Germans beyond the Rhine, and there are the bridgings over the Tigris, and no mean proof of the power and spirit of the Parthians, when they did not endure to defend their country as it was ravaged, but looked on while all the land within the Tigris and the Lycus was cut to pieces. And of the deeds against the tyrant there is the voyage to Sicily and to Carthage, and the seizures beforehand of the mouths of the Eridanus, which took away all his forces in Italy; and last and third, the wrestling-bout about the Cottian Alps, which gave to the emperor the safe pleasure of victory, free of fear for the future, and forced the vanquished to lay upon himself a just penalty, very worthy of his deeds.

20. So much, in brief, have we gone through concerning the emperor's deeds, neither adding by flattery nor trying to magnify one who is perhaps no different from the rest, nor dragging the resemblances of his deeds from afar and forcing them, like those who expound the fables of the poets and resolve the fictions into plausible and admissible accounts, setting out from a very slight suspicion and taking up too dim beginnings, and trying to persuade us that the poets themselves meant these very things. But here, if one should take only the names of the heroes out of Homer, and put in and fit the emperor's, the verses of the Iliad will seem to have been composed no more for those men than for him.

21. But that you may not, hearing only about his deeds in war, suppose that the emperor comes off worse in the more august things, and those worth greater account—I mean speeches before the people and counsels, and all that judgment with mind and wisdom sets straight—consider Odysseus and Nestor, who are praised in the poetry, and if you find anything less in the emperor, reckon that to his praisers, while if he has the more, we should justly the rather approve him. So the one, when they began to be angry and to quarrel about the captive girl, attempting to speak, so far persuades the king and the son of Thetis, that the one broke up the assembly in disorder, and the other, not even waiting to discharge his duty to the god, but while still doing it and looking toward the sacred ship, sends his heralds to the tent of Achilles—fearing, I think, lest, forgetting his anger and freed from the passion, he should change his mind and escape the fault. But the wily orator from Ithaca, attempting to persuade Achilles to reconciliation and offering many gifts and promising countless things, so provoked the young man that, having before not resolved on sailing away, he now prepares for it. The wonderful proofs of their understanding are the exhortations to war and the wall-building of Nestor—an idea altogether senile and timid. So it was of no great profit to the Achaeans, that contrivance; but they were worsted by the Trojans after completing the wall, and very reasonably. For before, they thought themselves set as a defence of the ships, like a noble bulwark; but when they perceived a wall set before them and built up, with a deep ditch and pierced with sharp stakes, they grew slack and gave up their valour, trusting in the rampart.

22. But it is not the man who blames those heroes and shows them erring who is a worthy praiser of the emperor; rather, whoever should recall his deeds as they deserve—deeds done not in vain nor of themselves nor by some unreasoning rush, but rightly planned beforehand and ordered—he sufficiently praises the emperor's sagacity.

But to pick out the speeches before the people at each assembly, those to the armies and peoples and councils, requires a longer composition. Yet to listen to one is perhaps not hard. And consider for me again the son of Laertes, when he holds back the Greeks, eager to sail away, from their impulse, and transfers their zeal to the war; and the emperor's assembly among the Illyrians, where an old man, persuaded by youths to think childish thoughts, forgot his agreements and his pledges, and was hostile to his saviour and benefactor, and made treaties with one against whom the emperor had a war without truce or herald, and raised an army and met him on the borders of the country, wishing to hinder his advance. And when both armies came to the same place and the assembly had to be held before the heavy-armed, a high platform was raised, and a multitude of heavy-armed and javelin-men and archers surrounded it, and horsemen with their horses equipped, and the standards of the companies; and the emperor went up to it with his former colleague, bearing neither spear nor shield nor helmet, but his accustomed dress. And not one of the bodyguard followed him, but he stood alone upon the platform, trusting in his discourse, gravely composed. For he is a good craftsman of these things too, not whittling nor paring his words, nor turning his periods as the elegant orators do, but grave at once and pure, and using his words in season, so as to enter into the souls not only of those who lay claim to education and understanding, but even of many of the common people, who understand and follow his words. So he won over many myriads of heavy-armed and twenty thousand horse and the most warlike nations and a most fruitful land, not dragging them by force nor leading them captive, but willing and obeying him and ready to do what was bidden. This victory I judge far more august than that Laconian one; for that was tearless only to the victors, while this brought tears not even to the vanquished, but the actor of kingship came down from the platform having pleaded his case and rendered, like a paternal debt to the emperor, the purple; while the rest the emperor gives him in abundance, more than they say Cyrus gave to his grandfather, and made him live and pass his life as Homer thinks fit for the elder among men:

"For such a one it befits, when he has bathed and eaten, To sleep softly; for this is the right of old men."

For my own part, I would gladly go through the speeches that were spoken, and no hesitation would seize me in handling such noble words; but shame, I think, holds me back and does not permit me to transpose and interpret the speeches to you. For I should do wrong in spoiling them, and should be ashamed, refuted, if anyone who had read the emperor's composition or heard it then should remember it and demand not only the thoughts, but the virtues with which they are adorned, composed as they are in our native tongue. But this was not Homer's fear, recounting the speeches many generations later, when those men had left no memorial of what was said in the assemblies, and clearly trusting, I think, that he would proclaim and recount their words better than they could themselves. But to imitate for the worse is laughable and unworthy of a free and noble soul.

23. The wonderful deeds, then, and all of which the great crowd became spectator and preserves the memory with praise—since it looks to the end and is set up as judge of what turned out well or ill, and is no very refined praiser—you have heard often from the blessed sophists and from the poetic tribe, inspired by the Muses themselves; so that for their sake we have even troubled you, making our discourses about them too long. For you are already very glutted with them, and your ears are full, and never will the poets of such things fail, hymning wars and proclaiming victories with brilliant voice, like the heralds at Olympia; for you have furnished an abundance of these men, gladly listening. And no wonder. For their opinions about good and base things are akin to yours, and they report to you your own thoughts, which, sketching out in words as in an embroidered garment and moulding them with sweetest rhythms and figures, as though they had found something new, they bring to you; and you gladly receive them, and think both that they praise rightly and that you give them their due. But this is perhaps true, and perhaps also otherwise, unknown to you in what way it would be rightly done.

For I have bethought me of the Athenian Socrates—you know the man by report, and the fame of his wisdom proclaimed by the Pythia—who praised not these things, nor agreed that those were happy and blessed who possessed much land, and many nations, and among them many Greeks, and still more and greater barbarians, men able to dig through Athos and to join the continents by a bridge whenever they wished to cross, subduing nations and taking islands and netting them like fish and sacrificing a thousand talents of frankincense. Neither, then, did he ever praise Xerxes, nor any other king of the Persians or Lydians or Macedonians, nor even any general of the Greeks, save a very few whom he knew to rejoice in virtue and to welcome courage with temperance and to love wisdom with justice. But as many as he saw sagacious or clever or skilled in generalship or refined and persuasive to the multitude, who had apportioned to themselves some small portions of virtue, not even these did he praise altogether. And his judgment is followed by a host of wise men who serve virtue, while these famous and wonderful things they reckon, some of little worth, some of none.

If, then, this too seems good to you in some way, no slight fear holds me about my earlier words and about myself, lest perhaps you declare them a plaything, and me a laughable and ignorant sophist, laying claim to an art of which I confess I am quite inexperienced—as I must confess to you, who am going through true praises and such as you think it worth your while to hear, even if they seem to the many ruder and far inferior to what has been said. But if, as I said before, you approve the poets of those things, my fear is well relaxed. For I shall not seem to you wholly absurd, but, I think, inferior to many, yet, examined by myself, not altogether to be cast aside, nor attempting absurdities.

24. But for you it is perhaps not easy to disbelieve wise and divine men, who say much, each in his own way, but the chief point of their words is the praise of virtue. This, they say, is implanted in the soul and renders it happy and kingly and, by Zeus, statesmanlike and skilled in generalship and great-souled, and truly rich—not having the Colophonian gold,

"Nor all that the stone threshold of the Archer-god holds within,"

formerly in peace, when the affairs of the Greeks were upright, nor costly raiment and Indian jewels and very many myriads of acres of land, but that which is at once better than all these together and dearer to god, which one may save even in shipwreck and in the market-place and among the people and in the house and in the wilderness, in the midst of robbers and from violent tyrants.

For there is nothing at all better than that thing which, having taken it by force, one may hold and take from the man who once possesses it. For this possession is to the soul exactly such, I think, as light is to the sun. For of the latter many have often stolen and destroyed temples and offerings and gone off—some paying the penalty, others overlooked as not worthy of the correction that leads to amendment; but the light no one takes from it, nor does the moon, running under its orb in conjunctions and receiving the ray into herself, often showing us, as the saying is, night at noon. But neither does the sun take light from himself, shining around the moon set opposite and giving her a share of his own nature, nor when he has filled this great and wonderful universe with brightness and day. So too no good man, giving a share of virtue to another, was ever seen to have the less for what was shared. So divine and altogether noble a possession it is; and the saying of the Athenian stranger is no lie, whoever that divine man was: for all the gold beneath the earth and upon the earth is not worth virtue in exchange.

25. Boldly, then, let us now call rich the man who has this; and I think him also noble and a king alone of all, if anyone agrees. Nobility is better than baseness of birth, and virtue is better than a disposition not wholly earnest. And let no one think the argument contentious and forced, looking to the customary use of the words; for the many call those noble who come of men long rich. And yet how is it not absurd that a cook or a cobbler or, by Zeus, some potter, who has gathered money from his trade or from somewhere else, should not seem noble nor be called by the many by this name, but that, if his son inheriting the estate should pass it on to his descendants, these should then be high-minded and contend for nobility with the Pelopidae or the Heraclidae? But neither does one who was born of good ancestors, but himself sank to the opposite tendency of life, justly lay claim to kinship with them, if not even into the Pelopidae was it permitted to be enrolled for those who did not bear upon the shoulder the tokens of the race. A spear-mark, it is said, was stamped about Boeotia upon the Sown Men by the clod that bore and reared them, and from that this token was preserved long in the race. But upon souls do we think nothing of the kind ought to be graven, which would tell us exactly of our fathers and prove the offspring genuine? They say too that the Celts have a river, an incorruptible judge of their offspring; and neither the mothers, lamenting, persuade it to conceal with them and hide the fault, nor the fathers, fearing for their wives and offspring at the judgment; but it is an exact and lying judge. But us wealth bribes, and strength bribes, and bloom of body and the power of ancestors casting its shadow from without, and does not allow us to see through to the soul, by which, differing as we reasonably do from the other animals, we should make our judgment of nobility. And the ancients seem to me, using a wonderful happiness of nature, and having wisdom not acquired as we have, but philosophizing not in pretence but by their own growth, to have understood this, and to have proclaimed Heracles the offspring of Zeus, and the two sons of Leda, and to have deemed Minos the lawgiver, I think, and Rhadamanthys of Cnossus worthy of the same renown; and others they proclaimed the offspring of others, many excelling their natural fathers. For they looked to the soul itself and to the deeds, and not to deep and hoary wealth, nor to power come down to them from some grandfathers and great-grandfathers; and yet some of them might have had fathers not altogether without repute. But because of the excess of the virtue they honoured and served, they were reckoned the children of the gods. And this is plain from hence: for of others, not even knowing their natural parents, they referred the fame to the divine power, gracing them for their virtue.

26. And we must not believe those who say that those men, deceived by ignorance, thus falsely ascribed these things to the gods. For if even about the other gods or spirits it was likely that they should be deceived—clothing them with human shapes and such forms, while these possessed a nature unseen by sense and unattainable, hardly falling upon even an exact mind through kinship—yet it is not reasonable that they should have suffered this about the visible gods, ascribing to the Sun a son Aeetes, and to the Morning Star another, and others to others. But, as I said, we must, believing about them, make this examination of nobility; and whoever has good fathers and is himself like them, him we must boldly call noble; but whoever had fathers wanting in virtue, while he himself laid claim to this possession, of him we must reckon Zeus the father and begetter, and give him nothing less than those who, born of good fathers, emulated their parents; while whoever has become base from good men, him it is right to enrol among the bastards; and those born of base men and like their own parents we must never call noble, not even if they should be rich with countless talents, nor if they should count up ancestors who were rulers or, by Zeus, twenty tyrants, nor if they should be shown to have won more Olympic or Pythian victories or victories in the contests of war—which indeed are altogether more brilliant than those—than the first Caesar; nor the Assyrian diggings and the walls of the Babylonians and the pyramids of the Egyptians upon them, and whatever other signs there are of wealth and money and luxury, and of a mind inflamed by ambition and at a loss what to do with its wealth, then casting its abundance of money into this. For know well that neither ancient wealth nor wealth flowing in from somewhere of late makes a king, nor the purple robe nor the tiara and sceptre and diadem and ancient throne; nor yet many heavy-armed and countless horse, nor even if all men coming together should agree that this man is their king—since these do not bestow virtue, but a dominion not very fortunate for him who receives it, and far more for those who bestow it. For such a man, receiving it, is lifted aloft altogether, in nothing different from the fable and fate of Phaethon. And we need no other examples for the proof of the argument, since all life is filled full of such sufferings and of tales about them.

27. But if it seems wonderful to you that those rulers of much land and boundless nations should not justly lay claim to this noble and god-beloved name—those who, with a self-willed judgment, apart from mind and wisdom and the virtues that follow these, judge whatever comes to hand—know that they are not even free, not only if they should hold their present state with no one hindering them and have their fill of power, but even if they should master those who march against them and appear irresistible and invincible in their attacks. And if any of you disbelieves this saying, we shall not lack very manifest witnesses, Greeks and barbarians alike, who, having fought many and very mighty battles and conquered, won nations and forced them to pay tribute, yet were slaves more shamefully than those—slaves to pleasure and luxury and licence and insolence and injustice. These no man of sense would call strong, even if greatness should appear and shine in their deeds. For he alone is such, the man courageous with virtue and great-souled; but whoever is a slave to pleasures, and uncontrolled of anger and of desires of every kind, and forced to give up before small things—he is neither strong nor courageous with a human strength; though one should perhaps permit him, like bulls or lions or leopards, to take delight in his might—unless, casting even this away, like the drones he stands over the toils of others, being himself a soft warrior and cowardly and licentious. And being such, he is in want not only of true wealth, but also of that much-honoured and august and beloved thing, from which souls of every kind, hanging, have countless troubles and toils, for the sake of daily gain enduring to sail and to traffic and to rob and to snatch up tyrannies. For they live ever acquiring, ever in want—not, I mean, of the necessary food and drink and clothing; for such wealth is well defined by nature, and of it neither the birds nor the fishes nor the beasts can be deprived, nor even the temperate of men; but as many as the desire of money and an ill-starred love troubles, these must hunger through life and fare more wretchedly by far than those in want of their daily food. For these, when they have filled their belly, have much peace and a respite from pain; but to those others neither has a gainless day appeared sweet, nor has the kindly night, bringing the sleep that loosens limbs and cares, wrought any pause of their frenzied madness, but it whirls and twists their soul as they reckon and count up their money; and it does not deliver the men from the desire and the misery upon it—not the wealth of Tantalus and Midas, won besides, nor the greatest and harshest tyranny of spirits added to it. Or have you not heard that Darius the monarch of the Persians, a man not altogether base, but shamefully ill in love with money, out of desire dug through the tombs of the dead and laid on costly tributes? Whence he got his famous name among all men; for the notables of the Persians called him what the Athenians called Sarambus.

28. But the discourse seems, as though it had taken hold of some downhill road, to gorge itself unsparingly on invective and to chastise the ways of men beyond what is needful, so that we must not allow it to go further. We must, so far as we can, demand the good man, the kingly and great-souled. He is, first, pious and not careless of the service of the gods; then toward his parents, both living, I think, and dead, holy and careful; well-disposed toward his brothers, and reverencing the gods of kindred; gentle and mild to suppliants and strangers; wishing to please the good among the citizens, and caring for the many in justice and for their benefit. He loves wealth—not that weighed down with gold and silver, but full of the true goodwill of friends and their unflattering service. Courageous by nature and magnificent, yet least of all rejoicing in war and hating civil strife; but those who through some chance, or through their own baseness, spring up against it, he withstands courageously and wards off with self-control, bringing his deeds to an end and not desisting before he has destroyed the enemy's power and made it subject to himself. And having conquered with arms, he stayed his sword from slaughter, judging it pollution to go on killing him who no longer defends himself. Loving toil by nature and great-hearted, he shares the toils with all, and thinks fit to have the larger part in them, but gives to those others the prizes of the dangers, rejoicing and glad—not at having more gold and silver than the rest, and country-houses fitted out with costly adornment, but at being able to do good to many and to bestow on all whatever they happen to lack. Of these things the true king deems himself worthy. Loving his city and loving his soldiers, the one he cares for like a herdsman his flocks, foreseeing how the cattle may flourish and thrive for him, filling themselves with abundant and untroubled pasture; the other he watches over and holds together, exercising them toward courage and strength and gentleness, like well-bred and noble whelps, guardians of the flock, reckoning them sharers of his works and helpers to the multitude, and not snatchers and ravagers of the flocks like wolves and the worst of dogs, who, forgetting their own nature and rearing, appear, instead of saviours and champions, themselves destroyers. Nor will he endure them to be sleepy and idle and unwarlike, that the guards may not need other guards; nor disobedient to their commanders, knowing that this above all things—and there are cases where it alone suffices—is a saving practice for war; but fearless of all toils and tough, and not slothful, he will make them, knowing that there is no great profit in a guard who flees from toil and cannot endure nor hold out against weariness. And these things he persuades and compels not only by exhorting and praising the good readily and gracing them, or chastising eagerly and inexorably, but far more by showing himself such beforehand—abstaining from all pleasure, desiring nothing of money, small or great, nor taking it from his subjects, yielding little to sleep and turning from idleness; for truly no man is of any worth for anything while asleep, or even awake if he is like those who sleep. And he will have them obedient, well, I think, both to himself and to the rulers, if he is plainly obeying the best laws and following the right ordinances, and altogether assigning the rule to the naturally kingly and ruling part of the soul, and not to the spirited and licentious part.

29. And to endure and bear the toil both of the army and in arms, and all the exercises devised in peace for the sake of training against foreign contests—how could one best persuade men, but plainly by being himself seen tough and adamantine? For it is truly a most delightful sight for a soldier in his toil—a temperate emperor, sharing in the works and zealous and encouraging, and in seeming terrors cheerful and fearless, and where they are too bold, grave and weighty. For the ways of the subjects are by nature made like to the ruler in caution and boldness. And he must foresee, no less than what has been said, that they have abundant food and lack none of the necessaries. For often the most faithful guardians and watchers of the flocks, forced by want, are savage toward the herdsmen and bark round them when they see them from afar, and do not even keep their hands from the sheep.

Such on the field of war is the noble king; but to the city he is a saviour and guardian, not only warding off external dangers nor merely arraying himself against, or even marching upon, neighbouring barbarians; but rooting out faction and base customs and luxury and licence, he will give relief from the greatest evils. And shutting out insolence and lawlessness and injustice and the desire of measureless gain, he will not endure that the factions and strifes which spring from these, ending in nothing good, should so much as come to birth; and when they have arisen, he will make them vanish as quickly as may be and drive them from his own city. And no one will escape his notice in transgressing the law and forcing it, any more than one of the enemy escapes notice scaling the rampart. And being a good guardian of the laws, he will be a better maker of them, if ever the occasion and fortune call; and no device persuades such a man to bring in a false and counterfeit and bastard law among the established ones, any more than to bring in a slavish and ignoble seed among his own children. He cares for justice and right, and neither parents nor kinsmen nor friends persuade him to gratify them and betray the just. For he supposes the fatherland to be the common hearth and mother of all, older and more august than fathers, and dearer than brothers and strangers and friends; whose law to despoil and to force he judges a greater impiety than lawlessness about the property of the gods. For the law is the offspring of justice, a sacred and truly divine offering of the greatest god, which no man of sense will ever count of small worth nor dishonour; but doing all things in justice, he will honour the good readily, and the base he will eagerly try to heal, so far as he can, like a good physician.

30. And since faults are of two kinds—some showing better hopes and not wholly turned away from healing, others sinning past cure (for these the laws devised death as a release from their evils, not so much for their own benefit as for that of others)—the judgments too must of necessity be twofold. So he will suppose that the recognition and healing of the curable belong to him, but will hold off from the others very strongly, and would never willingly take in hand a judgment for which death is the penalty appointed by the laws for those condemned. And legislating about such men, he will take away the insolence and harshness and bitterness of the punishments, and will appoint for them a tribunal of temperate men who have given through their whole life no slight proof of their own virtue, who, using nothing arrogantly nor any wholly unreasoning impulse, having deliberated for a small part of a day—or perhaps not even having given it to deliberation—will cast the black vote concerning a fellow-citizen. But he himself must have neither in his hand a sword for a citizen's murder, even if he does the utmost wrong, nor in his soul a sting; since we see even the queen of the bees made by nature pure of a sting. But we must not look to bees, but, I think, to the very King of the gods, of whom the true ruler must be the prophet and minister. So all the things that have become wholly good, unmixed with the opposite nature and for the common benefit of men and of the whole universe—of these he was and is the maker; but the evils he neither begat nor ordained to be, but banished them from heaven, and turning about the earth and laying hold of the colony of souls sent thence, he ordained that his own children and offspring should judge and purge them. Of these, some are saviours and helpers of human nature, others inexorable judges, bringing a swift and dread justice upon wrongs both for living men and for those released from their bodies; and others, like executioners, certain avengers and fulfillers of the things adjudged—another tribe, of base and senseless spirits.

31. These the noble and god-beloved man must imitate, and impart his own virtue to many taken into this fellowship through friendship. And he must entrust to each office suited to his nature and choice—to the manly and daring and great-spirited, with understanding, military offices, that he may use his spirit and strength to the proper end; to the just and gentle and humane, easily inclined to pity, those of the civil offices that concern contracts, devising help for the weaker and simpler and for the poor against the strong and the deceivers and the knaves and those lifted up by their money to do violence and to despise justice; while to him who is mixed of both he must assign greater honour and power in the city, and entrust to him the judgments concerning crimes, on which follow punishment and just chastisement for the benefit of the wronged—he would reckon rightly and prudently. For such a man, having judged incorruptibly together with his colleagues, will hand over the verdicts to the executioner to fulfil, erring neither through greatness of anger nor through softness of soul from what is naturally just. And the best man in a city is likely to be some such person, having the goods that are in both, but escaping, as it were, the banes that come from the excess in each of those before mentioned. And himself watching over all and setting all straight, and ruling rulers, he will pray that those set over the greatest works and administrations, and sharing with him the counsel about all, be good and as like himself as possible. And he will choose not simply nor at random, nor will he wish to be a worse judge than those who judge stones and assay gold or purple. For these one road to the test does not suffice, but, understanding, I think, the varied and many-turning baseness and the contrivances of those who wish to cheat, they arrayed against all, so far as they could, the tests that come from the art. And he too, supposing the like about vice—that it is varied and deceitful, and that this is the hardest of its works, that it often lies, putting on virtue, and deceives those who cannot see more keenly, or who grow weary at the length of time for the examination—will rightly guard against suffering anything of the kind. And having once chosen, and having the best men about him, he will entrust to these the choice of the lesser rulers.

32. About laws, then, and rulers, he knows such things. Of the multitude, that part in the cities he will endure to be neither idle nor arrogant, nor yet wanting in necessaries; while the tribe of farmers in the fields, ploughing and planting, shall bring food to their guards and helpers, pay and necessary clothing. And leaving aside Assyrian buildings and costly and expensive public works, they shall pass their lives in deep peace, both from enemies abroad and from those at home, loving the author of their present blessings like a good genius, and hymning the god for him and praying—not feignedly nor from the tongue's edge, but from within, from the very soul, asking blessings for him. And the gods forestall their prayers, and having first given him divine things, did not deprive him of human ones. And if necessity should force him to fall into some evil, of those much-talked-of incurable ones, they made him a fellow-dancer of theirs and a table-companion, and raised for him fame among all men. These things I often hear from the wise, and the argument strongly persuades me. So to you too I have gone through it, speaking perhaps at greater length than the occasion warrants, but less, I think, than the subject. And whoever has had it as a care to listen to such discourses, he clearly knows that I do not lie. But there is another reason for the length, less necessary than the one mentioned, but, I think, more pertinent to the present discourse; and perhaps you ought not to be left unhearing of this either.

33. First, then, let us recall a little of what was said before, where we left off the account of these matters. We said somewhere that earnest hearers of true praises ought not to look to those things which fortune often shares even with the base, but to the habits and the virtue, of which the good and naturally earnest alone have a part. Then from there, taking them up, we carried on the discourse that follows, straightening it as toward a kind of rule and standard, by which it was right to fit the praises of good men and kings. And whoever has come into true and unvarying harmony with this archetype is himself blessed and truly happy, and fortunate are those who have a share of such a rule; while whoever has come near it is better and more fortunate than those who fall further short; but those who fall wholly short, or even turn the opposite way, are unhappy and senseless and base, the causes of the greatest disasters both to themselves and to others.

If, then, this too seems good to you in some way, it is time to go through the deeds we have admired. And lest anyone suppose that the discourse, going by itself, like a horse bereft of an opponent in the races, prevails and carries off the prizes, I will try to show in what the praise of ours and that of the wise orators differ from one another. The one party greatly admires being born of ruling ancestors and kings, supposing the descendants of the prosperous and happy to be blessed; but what comes after this they neither considered nor examined—in what manner they continue using their goods. And yet this was the chief point of that good fortune, and almost of all external goods—if anyone is not vexed even at the word—that the possession becomes good through prudent use and base through the opposite; so that it is no great thing, as they suppose, to be born of a rich and gold-laden king, but the truly great thing is, surpassing one's father's virtue, to show oneself altogether blameless to those who begot one.

34. Will you, then, learn whether this belongs to the emperor? I will furnish you a trustworthy testimony, and you will not convict me of false witness, I well know; for I will remind you of what you know—and perhaps you already understand what is meant, and if it is not yet plain, you will understand at once if you consider, first, that his father loved him exceedingly—being not very gentle to his offspring, nor giving more to nature than to character, but overcome, I think, by his attendance and finding nothing to blame, he was plainly well-disposed. And a sign of his mind is, first, that he set apart for Constantius this portion which he had supposed earlier should belong to himself; then that, ending his life, leaving the eldest and the youngest at leisure, he called this one, who was busy, and entrusted to him all the affairs of the empire. And having become master of all, he dealt with his brothers so justly and so temperately, that they, neither called nor coming to one another, fell into faction and fought, while toward him they were neither angry nor blaming. And when their faction had an unfortunate end, though it was possible for him to lay claim to more, he willingly gave it up, supposing that the same virtue is needed for many nations and for few, but that greater cares, I think, lie about whoever must tend and care for more. For he does not suppose kingship to be a means of luxury, nor that, as in the case of money, those who waste it on drink and pleasures contrive an abundance of greater revenues, so the king ought to provide himself, nor to take up a war, except for the benefit of the ruled. So, conceding to the other the larger share, while himself with virtue having the less, he supposed that he had the advantage by the better. And that it was not through fear rather than through his preparation that he loved quiet, let the war that fell out afterward be a plain proof to you. He used his arms, at any rate, against that man's forces afterward in his own defence. And here again, those men admire the conquering; but I far more the taking up the war with justice, and the bearing it through courageously and very skilfully, and, when fortune put the end to it, the using the victory dexterously, temperately and royally, and altogether the showing oneself worthy of conquering.

Will you, then, that of these things too we call the witnesses by name, as in the courts? That no war was ever waged before, neither by the Greeks against Troy nor by the Macedonians against the Persians—which indeed seem to have been just—on so great a ground, is plain even to a child; for those took a very fresh vengeance for very ancient wrongs, falling neither on the children nor on the descendants, but on him who had robbed and deprived the descendants of the wrongdoers of their rule. And Agamemnon was set on avenging "the strivings and groans for Helen's sake," and marched against the Trojans wishing to avenge a single woman. But for the emperor the wrongs were still fresh, and his rule was not like Darius' or Priam's—a noble man deemed worthy of the kingship belonging to him perhaps through virtue or by birth—but a shameless and rough barbarian of those captured not long before. And what he did and how he ruled, it is neither pleasant for me to tell nor in season; but that the emperor warred against him in justice, you have heard. Of his experience and courage the signs before mentioned are enough; but more trustworthy, I think, are the deeds than the words.

35. As for what happened upon the victory, and how there was no further need of the sword, not even if anyone was under suspicion of greater crimes, nor if anyone had become a closer friend to the tyrant, nor indeed if anyone, gratifying him, had deemed it right to bear his herald's staff and reviled the emperor, did he pay the penalty for his rashness—unless he was base in other respects—consider, by Zeus the god of friendship. What kind of thing is reviling? How truly heart-biting and tearing the soul more than iron the skin! For it provoked even Odysseus to defend himself as he could by word and deed; he quarrelled, at least, over it with his host, though himself a wanderer and a stranger, and that too knowing that

"Foolish . . . and worthless is the man Who offers grievous strife to his host";

and Alexander the son of Philip, and Achilles the son of Thetis, and certain others not base nor ignoble men. But it belonged, I think, only to Socrates and a few rare emulators of his, who became truly happy and blessed, to strip off the last tunic of ambition. For ambition is a terribly ambitious passion, and seems for this reason rather to be implanted in noble souls; for they are vexed at reviling as most contrary to themselves, and they hate those who cast such words at them more than those who bring the iron and plot murder, and suppose them their enemies by nature and not by convention, since the one party loves praise and honour, while the other not only takes these away but contrives false slanders besides. Of this passion they say even Heracles and certain others were not masters. But I neither believe the story about those men, and I have seen the emperor very self-controlledly turn aside reviling—a deed no meaner, as I judge, than taking Troy and routing a noble phalanx. And if anyone disbelieves and thinks it neither great nor worthy of so much praise, let him judge, looking to himself, when he falls into such a misfortune; and to him we shall not seem to talk much nonsense, as I am persuaded.

36. Being such and having become so, the emperor after the war is reasonably not only longed for and beloved by his friends—sharing with many honour and power and freedom of speech, and bestowing on them abundant money and allowing them to use their wealth as each wishes—but he seemed such even to his enemies. And let this too be a manifest proof to you: men of the senate, all that was of worth, surpassing the rest in dignity and wealth and understanding, fleeing as into a harbour to his right hand, leaving hearths and houses and children, embraced Paeonia instead of Rome, and his company instead of their dearest; and a squadron of chosen horsemen with their standards, leading their general, deemed it right to share with him the danger rather than with the other the good fortune. And all this was done before the battle which the earlier discourse set on the banks of the Draos; for from then they were already firmly confident, while before that the tyrants' affairs seemed to prevail, some advantage having been gained over the emperor's scouts, which made him senseless with pleasure and threw into confusion those who could not reach nor see through the generalship. But he was undismayed and noble, like a good ship's pilot when a squall has suddenly burst from the clouds, and then upon it the god shakes the deep and the shores. For there the inexperienced were seized by a strange and dreadful fear, while he already rejoices and is glad, hoping for an exact calm and stillness of wind. For it is said that Poseidon, when he shakes the earth, stills the waves. And fortune deceives the senseless and trips them in greater things, allowing them small advantages, while to the prudent she grants firm confidence about the greater things, whenever she troubles them in the lesser. This the Lacedaemonians suffered at the Pass, yet did not give up nor fear the Mede advancing upon them, though they had given up three hundred Spartans and their king at the entrances of Greece; this the Romans, having often suffered it, afterward set right with greater deeds; which the emperor too, considering and reckoning, in no way failed of his judgment.

37. But since the discourse has once willingly come to this and recounts the goodwill of the multitude and of those in office and of the guards—who indeed help him guard the empire and ward off the enemy—will you that I tell you a manifest proof of it, which happened yesterday, as it were, or the day before? A man of those set over the armies in Gaul—perhaps you know both his name and his character—left as a hostage of friendship and faith his son to the emperor, who needed nothing of the kind; then he was more faithless than the lions, with whom, it is said, there are no trusty oaths toward men, snatching the money from the cities and distributing it to the barbarians who came on, and as it were paying it down as ransom, though he might have furnished his safety by the sword and not by money; but he sought to bring them over to goodwill through money. And at last, taking up from the women's quarters a purple robe, he appeared a truly laughable tyrant and in truth a thing of tragedy. Then the soldiers were grieved at his faithlessness, and not enduring to see the wretch clad in a woman's garb, setting upon him they tore him in pieces, not bearing that the moon's orb should rule over them. This honour, then, the emperor had from the goodwill of his guards—a wonderful return for a blameless and just rule. And what manner of man he was upon it you long to hear; but this too has not escaped you—that he chose to be neither harsh toward that man's son nor suspicious and dreadful toward his friends, but was as gentle as possible and kindly to all, though many wished to play the informer and had their goads lifted against the guiltless. And though perhaps many were truly liable to the suspicions about them, he was alike gentle to all who were not convicted nor shown to be partners of the strange and accursed counsels. But the keeping of faith and oaths toward the son of him who broke the law and trampled it—shall we truly call it kingly and divine, or shall we rather approve Agamemnon, harsh and bitter against the Trojans, not only against those who went out with Paris and outraged the hearth of Menelaus, but even against those yet unborn, and whose mothers perhaps had not yet been born when he conceived the plan of the rape? If, then, one thinks the savage and rough and inhuman least befits a king, but the gentle and kind and humane befits one who least rejoices in punishments and is grieved at the misfortunes of his subjects, however they come about—whether through their own baseness and ignorance, or brought on from without by fortune—he plainly gives the prize to the emperor.

38. For consider how, toward the son, he proved better and juster than the one who begot him, and toward that man's friends more faithful than the one who professed friendship. For the one gave them all up, the other saved them all. And if that man, knowing this about the emperor's character, having understood it over a long time, strongly trusted that his son's affairs lay safe with him and his friends' affairs rode at firm anchor, he understood rightly, but was often a knave and base and unhappy, wishing to be the enemy of such a man, and hating and plotting against and robbing of what he ought not, one whom he knew to be exceedingly good and especially gentle. But if, while his son's safety found him beyond hope, and his friends' and kinsmen's safety hard and impossible, he nonetheless chose faithlessness, then he was for these reasons too base and senseless and more savage than the beasts, while the other was tame and gentle and great-souled—pitying the infant's age and character, gentle toward those not convicted, and overlooking and despising the villainies. For he who concedes things which not even one of his enemies, through the greatness of the wrongs he is conscious of, hopes for, is reasonably the bearer of the prize of virtue—transferring justice to the better and gentler side, surpassing in temperance those who set a measure to punishments, excelling in courage by supposing no enemy worth reckoning, and showing wisdom by joining in the dissolution of enmities and not passing them on to children or descendants, on the pretext of exact justice and of wishing, very reasonably as it were, to make away with the seed of the wicked like a pine. For this deed indeed belongs to them, and upon it an ancient saying set the image. But the good king, imitating exactly the god, knows that even from rocks swarms of bees fly out, and from the bitterest wood the sweet fruit grows—I mean the graceful figs—and from thorns the pomegranate, and other things grow from others unlike those that beget and bear them. So he does not think these ought to be destroyed before their prime, but to await the time and permit them, having thrust off their fathers' folly and madness, to become good and temperate; while those who become emulators of their fathers' practices will undergo justice in due season, not consumed beforehand for the deeds and misfortunes of others.

39. Do we seem to you, then, to have sufficiently completed the true praise? Or do you long to hear also of his endurance and his gravity, and how he is not only unconquered by his enemies, but was never taken by base desire, nor, desiring a fine house or a costly country-seat or necklaces of emeralds, took them by force or even by persuasion from those who possessed them; nor any free woman nor handmaid, nor altogether loved unjust love; and how he does not demand the measureless surfeit even of the good things the seasons bring forth, nor cares for ice in summertime, nor changes his dwelling with the seasons, but is ever present to the toiling parts of his empire, holding out nobly both against the cold and against the heat? If you bid me bring you the manifest proofs of these things, I will tell of things known and shall not be at a loss; but the discourse would be long and far-resounding, and I have no leisure to serve the Muses so far, but it is now time to turn to the work.