43. Today, in fact, neither Athens, nor Nicomedeia, nor Alexandria in Egypt, nor Phoenicia, nor even the two Romes (the ancient and lesser Rome, and the later, more powerful city), nor any other state, glories any longer in literary achievements The golden streams of the past, and baser silver, and streams of metal more worthless still, all are blocked and choked up: their damming is complete.
So, since I was unable to reach the living sources themselves, I perforce studied their images. These second-hand imitations I greedily devoured in my mind, and having collected the knowledge, I grudged no one else a share in what I had myself acquired at the cost of much labour. Everybody was welcome to learn from me, and far from demanding a fee for my lessons, I was even prepared to help keen students with money from my own purse. But that story must wait until later.
44. In my career, even before the fruit was ripe, the blossom gave promise of a brilliant future. Certainly the emperor did not know me as yet, but I was well-known to all his bodyguard and they spoke of me in his presence, some recounting one quality, and others stressing another. They told him, moreover, that I was an eloquent orator. I would like to say something on this subject here. At the time of our birth, we are endowed with certain natural virtues, or their opposites.
Very beginning bestows blemishes
When I use the word ‘virtue’ in this connection, I am not referring to moral virtue, nor to political virtue, nor to the virtue which surpasses these others and attains to the pattern or perfection of the Creator; but just as some bodies, from the moment of birth, are endowed with beauty, while on others nature from their very beginning bestows blemishes and wrinkles, so with souls, too, some are distinguished at once with extreme grace and attractiveness, while others leave a trail of sombre and deep gloom. As time goes on, the innate graces of the first sort become more and more apparent, but in the second everything goes wrong and even the reason functions poorly.
45. However that may be, even in simple utterances I have been told that my language is peculiarly graceful, and though I do not strive after effect, there is in my words a certain natural beauty. Of course, I would not know this myself, had not many folk told me so in the course of conversation and had they not listened with rapt attention while I talked with them. Anyhow, it was this characteristic that first won me access to the emperor, and it was the eloquence of my tongue that, so to speak, proved to be my fore-runner, giving him a foretaste of the spirit deep-hidden within me.
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