Lampis, the shipowner, was once asked how he made his fortune. ‘Making the big one,’ he answered, ‘was easy enough; but it was a long and hard business to make the little one.’ So with political power and reputation. Though not easy to get in the first instance, anything will suffice to maintain and increase them when once they are great. It is as with a friend, when once he becomes such. He does not look for a large number of important services in order to retain his friendship; [Sidenote: B] small tokens, consistently shown, will keep his constant affection. Nor are the confidence and friendship of the people perpetually calling for you to open your purse, to play the champion, or to hold an office. They are retained by mere public spirit—by being in no haste to desert or shirk the burden of care and watchfulness. Campaigns are not matters of everlastingly facing the enemy, fighting, and besieging. They have also their times of sacrifice, their occasional social gatherings, their periods of ample leisure, when jest and nonsense are toward. And why should one look upon public life with dread, as being laborious, wearisome, and devoid of consolations, seeing that the theatre, processions, awards, ‘_dances of the Muses and Gladsomeness_,’ and honour [Sidenote: C] after honour to the gods relax the stern brow of the Bureau or the Chamber, and yield a manifold return of inviting entertainment? In the next place jealousy, the greatest bane of public life, is less severe upon old age. For, to quote Heracleitus, ‘_dogs bark at the man they do not know_.’ Though jealousy may fight with the beginner at the doors of the platform and refuse him access, no savageness or fierceness is shown to a man of familiar and established reputation, but he finds friendly admittance. For this reason some have compared jealousy to smoke. In the case of beginners, during the process of kindling, it pours forth in clouds; when they are in full blaze, it disappears. And while [Sidenote: D] people resist and dispute other forms of superiority—in merit, birth, or public spirit—through a belief that any acknowledgement to others means so much derogation to themselves, the primacy which is due to time—‘seniority’ in the proper sense—is conceded without a grudge. Respect paid to the aged has the unique quality of doing more honour to the giver than to the recipient. Moreover it is not every one who expects to attain to the power derived from wealth, eloquence, or wisdom; whereas no public man despairs of winning the esteem and distinction to which age gradually leads.