(But to report to you those speeches which he made at every public gathering to the armies and the common people and the councils, demands too long a narrative, though it is perhaps not too much to ask you to hear about one of these. Pray then think once more of the son of Laertes when the Greeks were rushing to set sail and he checked the rush and diverted their zeal back to the war,(365) and then of the Emperor’s assembly in Illyria, when that old man,(366) persuaded by mere youths to think childish thoughts, forgot his treaties and obligations and proved to be the enemy of his preserver and benefactor, and came to terms with one against whom the Emperor was waging a war that allowed no truce nor herald of a truce,(367) and who was not only getting an army together, but came to meet the Emperor on the border of the country, because he was anxious to hinder him from advancing further. And when those two armies met, and it was necessary to hold an assembly in the presence of the hoplites, a high platform was set up and it was surrounded by a crowd of hoplites, javelin‐men and archers and cavalry equipped with their horses and the standards of the divisions. Then the Emperor, accompanied by him who for the moment was his colleague, mounted the platform, carrying no sword or shield or helmet, but wearing his usual dress. And not even one of his bodyguard followed him, but there he stood alone on the platform, trusting to that speech which was so impressively appropriate. For of speeches too he is a good craftsman, though he does not plane down and polish his phrases nor elaborate his periods like the ingenious rhetoricians, but is at once dignified and simple, and uses the right words on every occasion, so that they sink into the souls not only of those who claim to be cultured and intelligent, but many unlearned persons too understand and give hearing to his words. And so he won over many tens of thousands of hoplites and twenty thousand cavalry and most warlike nations, and at the same time a country that is extremely fertile, not seizing it by force, or carrying off captives, but by winning over men who obeyed him of their own free will and were eager to carry out his orders. This victory I judge to be far more splendid than that for which Sparta is famous.(368) For that was “tearless” for the victors only, but the Emperor’s did not cause even the defeated to shed tears, but he who was masquerading as Emperor came down from the platform when he had pleaded his cause, and handed over to the Emperor the imperial purple(369) as though it were an ancestral debt. And all else the Emperor gave him in abundance, more than they say Cyrus gave to his grandfather, and arranged that he should live and be maintained in the manner that Homer recommends for men who are past their prime:—) Τοιούτῳ γὰρ ἔοικεν, ἐπεὶ λούσαιτο φάγοι τε, Εὐδέμεναι μαλακῶς· [D] ἣ γὰρ δίκη ἐστὶ γερόντων.