and also these:
It was not thus, when, at my sight amazed,
Troy saw and trembled, as this helmet blazed.[174]
For apologies claim a great liberty of speech and boasting, as
considerable parts of their defence.
Themistocles also, having been guilty of nothing distasteful either in
his words or actions, yet perceiving the Athenians glutted with him and
beginning to neglect him, forbore not to say: Why, O ye happy people,
do ye weary out yourselves by still receiving benefits from the same
hands? Upon every storm you fly to the same tree for shelter; yet, when
it is fair again, you despoil it of its leaves as you go away.
7. They therefore who are injured usually recount their good actions to
the ingrate. And, if they also praise those excellences which others
are pleased to condemn, they are not only pardonable but altogether
without blame. For it is evident they do not reproach others, but
apologize for themselves.
This gave Demosthenes a glorious freedom, yet allayed the offensive
brightness of his own praises, which almost everywhere shine through
his whole Oration on the Crown, in which he extols those embassies and
decrees which were so much objected against him.
8. Not much unlike this is the insinuating delicacy of an antithesis,
when a person, being accused for any thing as a crime, demonstrates its
opposite to be base and vicious. So Lycurgus, being upbraided by the
Athenians for stopping a sycophant’s mouth with money, said: And what
kind of citizen do you then take me to be, who, having so long managed
the affairs of the republic amongst you, am at last found rather to
have given than to have received money unjustly? And Cicero, Metellus
objecting he had cast more by his evidence against them than ever he
had acquitted by his pleading for them, replies: Who therefore will not
freely declare that Cicero has more honesty and faith than eloquence?
Many expressions of this nature are in Demosthenes; particularly,
But who might not justly have slain me, if I had endeavored in word
only to sully the honors and glorious titles which the city hath? Or,
What, think you, would those vile fellows have said, if, whilst I had
been curiously poring on other things, the cities had rejected our
alliance?[175] And all his forementioned oration ingeniously dresses
these antitheses and solutions of cases with the subtle ornaments of
his own praise.
9. But this may very profitably be learned therein, that, delicately
tempering the encomiums of his auditors with the things relating to
himself, he secures himself from being liable to envy, nor becomes
suspected of self-love. There he relates in what manner the Athenians
behaved themselves to the Euboeans, in what manner to the Thebans, and
what benefits they conferred upon those of Byzantium and Chersonesus;
in all which he confesses his part was only that of their minister or
steward. Thus by a rhetorical deceit, he finely and insensibly instils
his own praises into his hearers, who pleasingly hang upon his words,
and rejoice at the commemoration of those worthy deeds. Now this joy is
immediately seconded by admiration, and admiration is succeeded by a
liking and love of that person who so wisely administered the affairs.
This Epaminondas seems to have considered, when reviled by Meneclidas,
as though he had an higher opinion of himself than ever Agamemnon had.
If it be so, says he, Thebans, ’tis you have puffed me up; you, by
whose help alone I overthrew the Lacedaemonian empire in one day.
10. But since for the most part men are exceedingly displeased with
those who are the trumpeters of their own fame, but if they sound
forth another’s, are delighted and give them cheerful acclamations;
it is hence grown a frequent custom amongst orators, by a seasonable
extolling those who have like purposes, actions, and manner of life
with theirs, to assure and wheedle over the auditory to themselves.
For the hearers know that, though the panegyrist solemnizes another’s
worth, he has yet the same endowments of virtue, so that his encomiums
will redound to himself. For as he who reproaches any man for faults
of which he himself is guilty cannot but perceive he principally
upbraids himself, so the virtuous, by giving applauses to the virtuous,
offer their own praises to the apprehensive, who will presently cry
out, And are not you one of these? Therefore Alexander honoring
Hercules, and Androcottus again honoring Alexander, in effect proposed
themselves to be in like manner honored by others. So Dionysius
scoffing Gelon, and calling him the Gelos (or laughing-stock) of
Sicily, was not aware that through envy he had happened to infringe the
greatness of his own authority and power.
11. These things the man of state must know and observe. Now those
who are forced upon their own praises are the more excusable, if they
arrogate not the causes wholly to themselves, but ascribe them in part
to Fortune and in part to God. Achilles therefore said:
Since now at length the powerful will of heaven
The dire destroyer to our arm has given.[176]
And Timoleon did well, who erected a fane to Fortune, and dedicated
his house to the Good Genius, to whom he referred the felicity of his
attempts. But best of all, Python of Aenos, after he had slain Cotys,
coming to Athens and perceiving the orators very busy in applauding
him to the people, which displeased many and stirred them up to envy,
thus speaks: These things, ye Athenians, some of the Gods have done;
our hands were only the instruments of their work. Sylla also prevented
envy by perpetually praising Fortune, not his own prowess; and at last
surnamed himself Epaphroditus, in acknowledgment that his success
proceeded from the care of Venus. For men will more readily impute a
defeat to chance or the pleasure of some God than to the virtue of
the conqueror; for the one they think to be a good not pertinent to
the conqueror, but the other to be a proper defect of their own,
which proceedeth from themselves. The laws therefore of Zaleucus were
received by the Locrians with the more willingness and delight, because
he had told them Minerva constantly appeared to him and dictated and
instructed him in those laws, and that they were none of them his own
inventions.
12. This kind of excuses may be framed as convenient remedies or
preventions when we have to do with persons of a difficult or
envious humor. But it is not amiss to use some little revocations
or corrections of what may seem spoken to our praise, before those
who are of a sedate and composed temper. If any commend us as those
who have learning, riches, or authority, we should hinder them from
choosing such topics, and rather desire of them, if they can, to
take notice of us as innocent, good, and useful. Thus we do not so
much confer as transfer praises, and seem not to be puffed up with
our applauders, but rather to be offended that they have not praised
conveniently and for truly meritorious things. We hide also inferior
with better qualifications; yet not as desiring to be commended, but
as teaching to commend aright. Such forms as these may be referred
hither: It is true, I have not walled the city with stones or brick;
but if you will view my fortifications, you shall find armor, and
horses, and confederates.[177] But more apt is that of Pericles. When
his friends bewailed him in the extremities of death, they put him
in mind of his authority and the great offices he had discharged, as
also what victories, trophies, and cities he had left the Athenians;
but he, raising himself a little, reproved them as fixing only upon
common encomiums, and enlarging rather on those of fortune than on
those of virtue, whereas they neglected the greatest matter, which was
more peculiar to himself,—that he had never been the occasion of any
Athenian’s wearing black. And hence the orator may learn, if he be a
good man, to transfer the eulogiums of his eloquence to his virtuous
life and manners; and the commander who is admired and applauded for
his conduct and happy fortune in the wars may freely propose his
clemency or justice as more worthy to be praised. Nay, further, it
becomes even an emperor, upon a profusion of such glutting praises as
flatterers are commonly guilty of, to say something of this nature:
No God am I. Why do ye equal me
Thus to th’ immortal powers.[178]
If you know me well, let my justice or temperance, my equanimity or
humanity, be rather spoken of. For even envy herself can easily concede
the lesser honors to him who refuses the greater; nor will it rob
any of true encomiums, not to expect false and vain ones. Therefore
several princes, who permitted not themselves to be called Gods or
the offspring of the Gods, have yet assumed the titles Philadelphus,
Philometor, Evergetes, or Theophilus; and were never offended when they
were honored with those glorious yet human appellations.
Again, they who in their writings and sayings are absolute votaries
to wisdom by no means will be called σοφοί (or wise men), but can
presently swallow the epithet of philosophers (or lovers of wisdom), or
that of proficients, or any other easy name which sounds not big nor
exposes them to envy; and so they beget and preserve a good esteem. But
your rhetorical sophisters, whilst in their orations they gape for the
extraordinary acclamations of divine, angelical, wonderful, lose even
those common ones of manly or pretty well.
13. Now as skilful painters, that they may not offend those that have
weak eyes, allay their over-bright and gaudy colors by tempering
them with darker; so there are some who will not represent their own
praises altogether glaring and immoderately splendid, but cast in
some defects, some scapes or slight faults, to take away the danger of
displeasure or envy. Epeus intolerably brags of his skill in boxing.
I’ll crush my adversary’s body, break his bones;
yet he would seem to qualify all with this,