o have been given to the
Roman people and the immortal Gods rather than to myself--yet, in spite
of its having desert, law, and the wishes of those who offered the gift
in its favour, I determined that I must not accept it, for this reason
among others, namely, to prevent those, to whom such an honour was
neither due nor legal, from being jealous. Wherefore adhere with all
your heart and soul to the policy which you have hitherto adopted--that
of being devoted to those whom the senate and people of Rome have
committed and intrusted to your honour and authority, of doing your best
to protect them, and of desiring their greatest happiness. Even if the
lot had made you governor of Africans, or Spaniards, or
Gauls--uncivilized and barbarous nations--it would still have been your
duty as a man of feeling to consult for their interests and advantage,
and to have contributed to their safety. But when we rule over a race of
men in which civilization not only exists, but from which it is believed
to have spread to others, we are bound to repay them, above all things,
what we received from them. For I shall not be ashamed to go so
far--especially as my life and achievements have been such as to exclude
any suspicion of sloth or frivolity--as to confess that, whatever I have
accomplished, I have accomplished by means of those studies and
principles which have been transmitted to us in Greek literature and
schools of thought. Wherefore, over and above the general good faith
which is due to all men, I think we are in a special sense under an
obligation to that nation, to put in practice what it has taught us
among the very men by whose maxims we have been brought out of
barbarism.

X. And indeed Plato, the fountain-head of genius and learning, thought
that states would only be happy when scholars and philosophers began
being their rulers, or when those who were their rulers had devoted all
their attention to learning and philosophy. It was plainly this union of
power and philosophy that in his opinion might prove the salvation of
states. And this perhaps has at length fallen to the fortune of the
whole empire: certainly it has in the present instance to your province,
to have a man in supreme power in it, who has from boyhood spent the
chief part of his zeal and time in imbibing the principles of
philosophy, virtue, and humanity. Wherefore be careful that this third
year, which has been added to your labour, may be thought a prolong