(“The Persians, on the contrary, though on all occasions they were well and wisely equipped, had to submit to my valour. And since it becomes a virtuous man and a king to pride himself not merely on his exploits but also on the justice of those exploits, it was on behalf of the Greeks that I took vengeance on the Persians, and when I made war on the Greeks it was not because I wished to injure Greece, but only to chastise those who tried to prevent me from marching through and from calling the Persians to account. You, however, while you subdued the Germans and Gauls were preparing to fight against your fatherland. What could be worse or more infamous? And since you have alluded as though insultingly to ‘ten thousand Greeks,’ I am aware that you Romans are yourselves descended from the Greeks, and that the greater part of Italy was colonised by Greeks; however on that fact I do not insist. But at any rate did not you Romans think it very important to have as friends and allies one insignificant tribe of those very Greeks, I mean the Aetolians, my neighbours? And later, when you had gone to war with them for whatever reason, did you not have great trouble in making them obey you? Well then, if in the old age, as one may say, of Greece, you were barely able to reduce not the whole nation but an insignificant state which was hardly heard of when Greece was in her prime, what would have happened to you if you had had to contend against the Greeks when they were in full vigour and united? You know how cowed you were when Pyrrhus crossed to invade you. And if you think the conquest of Persia such a trifle and disparage an achievement so glorious, tell me why, after a war of more than three hundred years, you Romans have never conquered a small province beyond the Tigris which is still governed by the Parthians? Shall I tell you why? It was the arrows of the Persians that checked you. Ask Antony to give you an account of them, since he was trained for war by you. I, on the other hand, in less than ten years conquered not only Persia but India too. After that do you dare to dispute the prize with me, who from childhood have commanded armies, whose exploits have been so glorious that the memory of them—though they have not been worthily recounted by historians—will nevertheless live for ever, like those of the Invincible Hero,(633) my king, whose follower I was, on whom I modelled myself? Achilles my ancestor I strove to rival, but Heracles I ever admired and followed, so far as a mere man may follow in the footsteps of a god.)