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34 Imaginary Conversation. science, the most distinguished of your own countrymen ; not Philopemen nor Timoleon (the man who approaches more nearly to the gods than any) nor Philip of Macedon . . if in- deed you can hear me without anger and indignation name a barbarian king with Greeks. POLYBIUS. When kings are docile, and pay due respect to those who are wiser and more virtuous than themselves, I would not point at them as objects of scorn or contumely, even among the free. There is little danger that men educated as we have been should value them too highly, or that men edu- cated as they have been should eclipse the glory of Timoleon and Philopemen. People in a republic know that their power and existence must depend on the zeal and assiduity, the courage and integrity, of those they employ in their first offices of state: kings on the contrary lay the foundations of their power on abject hearts and prostituted intellects, and fear and abominate those whom the breath of God hath raised higher than the breath of man. Hence, from being the de- pendents of their own slaves, both they and their slaves be- come at last the dependents of free nations, and alight from their cars to be tied by the neck to the cars of better men. SCIPIO. Deplorable condition ! if their education had allowed any sense of honour to abide in them. But we must consider them as the tulips and anemones and other gaudy flowers, that shoot from the earth to be looked upon in idleness, and to be snapt by the stick or broken by the wind, without our interest, care, or notice. We cannot thus calmly contemplate the utter sub- version of a mighty capital ; we cannot thus indifferently stand over the strong agony of an expiring nation, after a gasp of years in a battle of ages, to win a world or be for ever fallen. PANETIUS. You estimate, O Emilianus, the abilities of a general, not by the number of battles he has won, nor of enemies he hath slain or led captive, but by the combinations he has formed, the blows of fortune he has parried or avoided, the prejudices