[17] Now the statesman is always by nature ruler of the State, like the leader[74] bee in the hive, and bearing this in mind he ought to keep public matters in his own hands; but offices which are called “authorities” and are elective he ought not to seek too eagerly or often, for love of office is neither dignified nor popular; nor should he refuse them, if the people offer them and call him to them in accordance with the law, but even if they be too small for a man of his reputation, he should accept them and exercise them with zeal; for it is right that men who are adorned with the highest offices should in turn adorn the lesser, and that statesmen should show moderation, giving up and yielding some part of the weightier offices, such as the generalship at Athens, the prytany at Rhodes, and the Boeotarchy here, and should add to the minor offices dignity and grandeur, that we may not be despised in connexion with the latter, nor envied on account of the former. And when entering upon any office whatsoever, you must not only call to mind those considerations of which Pericles reminded himself when he assumed the cloak of a general: “Take care, Pericles; you are ruling free men, you are ruling Greeks, Athenian citizens,” but you must also say to yourself: “You who rule are a subject, ruling a State controlled by proconsuls, the agents of Caesar; “these are not the spearmen of the plain,”[75] nor is this ancient Sardis, nor the famed Lydian power.” You should arrange your cloak more carefully and from the office of the generals keep your eyes upon the orators’ platform, and not have great pride or confidence in your crown, since you see the boots of Roman soldiers just above your head. No, you should imitate the actors, who, while putting into the performance their own passion, character, and reputation, yet listen to the prompter and do not go beyond the degree of liberty in rhythms and metres permitted by those in authority over them.[76] For to fail in one’s part in public life brings not mere hissing or catcalls or stamping of feet, but many have experienced “The dread chastiser, axe that cleaves the neck,[77] ” as did your countryman Pardalas and his followers when they forgot their proper limitations. And many another, banished to an island, has become, as Solon says,[78]
Pholegandrian or Sicinete,
No more Athenian, having changed his home.
Furthermore when we see little children trying playfully to bind their fathers’ shoes on their feet or fit their crowns upon their heads, we only laugh, but the officials in the cities, when they foolishly urge the people to imitate the deeds, ideals, and actions of their ancestors, however unsuitable they may be to the present times and conditions, stir up the common folk and, though what they do is laughable, what is done to them is no laughing matter, unless they are merely treated with utter contempt. Indeed there are many acts of the Greeks of former times by recounting which the statesman can mould and correct the characters of our contemporaries, for example, at Athens by calling to mind, not deeds in war, but such things as the decree of amnesty after the downfall of the Thirty Tyrants, the fining of Phrynichus for presenting in a tragedy the capture of Miletus, their decking their heads with garlands when Cassander refounded Thebes; how, when they heard of the clubbing at Argos, in which the Argives killed fifteen hundred of their own citizens, they decreed that an expiatory sacrifice be carried about in the assembly; and how, when they were searching the houses at the time of Harpalus’s frauds,[79] they passed by only one, that of a newly married man. By emulating acts like these it is even now possible to resemble our ancestors, but Marathon, the Eurymedon, Plataea, and all the other examples which make the common folk vainly to swell with pride and kick up their heels, should be left to the schools of the sophists.