(I have purposely set down the whole of this speech for you lest you should think that I am cheating and defrauding by bringing forward ancient myths which may have some resemblance to the truth, but on the whole are not composed with regard to truth. But what is the true meaning of this narrative? You hear what it says, that even though a prince be by nature human, he must in his conduct be divine and a demi‐god and must completely banish from his soul all that is mortal and brutish, except what must remain to safeguard the needs of the body. Now if, reflecting on this, one is afraid to be constrained to adopt a life from which so much is expected, do you therefore conclude that one admires the inaction recommended by Epicurus, the gardens and suburbs of Athens and its myrtles, or the humble home of Socrates? But never has anyone seen me prefer these to a life of toil. That toil of mine I would willingly recount to you, and the hazards that threatened me from my friends and kinsfolk at the time when I began to study under you, if you did not yourself know them well enough. You are well aware of what I did, in the first place, in Ionia in opposition to one who was related to me by ties of blood, but even more closely by ties of friendship, and that in behalf of a foreigner with whom I was very slightly acquainted, I mean the sophist. Did I not endure to leave the country for the sake of my friends? Indeed, you know how I took the part of Carterius when I went unsolicited to our friend Araxius to plead for him. And in behalf of the property of that admirable woman Arete and the wrongs she had suffered from her neighbours, did I not journey to Phrygia for the second time within two months, though I was physically very weak from the illness that had been brought on by former fatigues?(396) Finally, before I went to Greece, while I was still with the army and running what most people would call the greatest possible risks, recall now what sort of letters I wrote to you, never filled with complaints or containing anything little or mean or servile. And when I returned to Greece, when everyone regarded me as an exile, did I not welcome my fate as though it were some high festival, and did I not say that the exchange to me was most delightful, and that, as the saying is, I had thereby gained) χρύσεα χαλκείων, ἑκατόμβοι᾽ ἐννεαβοίων (“gold for bronze, the price of a hundred oxen for the price of nine”?(397)) ἔφην ἀντηλλάχθαι; οὕτως ἀντὶ τῆς ἐμαυτοῦ ἑστίας τὴν Ἑλλάδα λαχὼν ἐγανύμην, οὐχ ἀγρόν, οὐ κῆπον, οὐ δωμάτιον ἐκεῖ κεκτημένος. So great was my joy at obtaining the chance to live in Greece instead of in my own home, though I possessed there no land or garden or the humblest house.