(But if we conceive this to be true, or that only those are happy who administer public affairs and who are in authority and rule over many, what then are we to say about Socrates? As for Pythagoras and Democritus and Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, you will perhaps say that they were happy in another sense of the word, because of their philosophic speculations. But as for Socrates who, having rejected the speculative life and embraced a life of action, had no authority over his own wife or his son, can we say of him that he governed even two or three of his fellow‐citizens? Then will you assert that since he had no authority over any one he accomplished nothing? On the contrary I maintain that the son of Sophroniscus(413) performed greater tasks than Alexander, for to him I ascribe the wisdom of Plato, the generalship of Xenophon, the fortitude of Antisthenes, the Eretrian(414) and Megarian(415) philosophies, Cebes, Simmias,(416) Phaedo and a host of others; not to mention the offshoots derived from the same source, the Lyceum, the Stoa and the Academies. Who, I ask, ever found salvation through the conquests of Alexander? What city was ever more wisely governed because of them, what individual improved? Many indeed you might find whom those conquests enriched, but not one whom they made wiser or more temperate than he was by nature, if indeed they have not made him more insolent and arrogant. Whereas all who now find their salvation in philosophy owe it to Socrates. And I am not the only person to perceive this fact and to express it, for Aristotle it seems did so before me, when he said that he had just as much right to be proud of his treatise on the gods as the conqueror(417) of the Persian empire. And I think he was perfectly correct in that conclusion. For military success is due to courage and good fortune more than anything else or, let us say, if you wish, to intelligence as well, though of the common everyday sort. But to conceive true opinions about God is an achievement that not only requires perfect virtue, but one might well hesitate whether it be proper to call one who attains to this a man or a god. For if the saying is true that it is the nature of everything to become known to those who have an affinity with it, then he who comes to know the essential nature of God would naturally be considered divine.)