(Now for my part I should have been glad to repeat to you the words that the Emperor used, and no fear would overtake me when handling words so noble. But modesty restrains me and does not permit me to change or interpret his words to you. For it would be wrong of me to tamper with them, and I should blush to have my ignorance exposed, if someone who had read the Emperor’s composition or heard it at the time should remember it by heart, and demand from me not only the ideas in it but all the excellences with which they are adorned, though they are composed in the language of our ancestors.(375) Now this at any rate Homer had not to fear when, many generations later, he reported his speeches, since his speakers left no record of what they said in their assemblies, and I think he was clearly confident that he was able to relate and report what they said in a better style. But to make an inferior copy is absurd and unworthy of a generous and noble soul. Now as to the marvellous portion of his achievements and those of which the great multitude was spectator and hence preserves their memory and commends them, since it looks to the result and is there to judge whether they turn out well or ill, and eulogises them in language that is certainly not elegant,—as to all this I say you have often heard from the ingenious sophists, and from the race of poets inspired by the Muses themselves, so that, as far as these are concerned, I must have wearied you by speaking about them at too great length. For you are already surfeited with them, your ears are filled with them, and there will always be a supply of composers of such discourses to sing of battles and proclaim victories with a loud clear voice, after the manner of the heralds at the Olympic games. For you yourselves, since you delight to listen to them, have produced an abundance of these men. And no wonder. For their conceptions of what is good and bad are akin to your own, and they do but report to you your own opinions and depict them in fine phrases, like a dress of many colours, and cast them into the mould of agreeable rhythms and forms, and bring them forth for you as though they had invented something new. And you welcome them eagerly, and think that this is the correct way to eulogise, and you say that these deeds have received their due. And this is perhaps true but it may well be otherwise, since you do not really know what the correct way should be.)