M. Tullius Cicero, For Archias
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

They, then, claim a stranger, even after his death, because he was a poet; shall we reject this man while he is alive, a man who by his own inclination and by our laws does actually belong to us? especially when Archias has employed all his genius with the utmost zeal in celebrating the glory and renown of the Roman people? For when a young man, he touched on our wars against the Cimbri, and gained the favour even of Caius Marius himself, a man who was tolerably proof against this sort of study. [20] For there was no one so disinclined to the Muses as not willingly to endure that the praise of his labours should be made immortal by means of verse. They say that the great Themistocles, the greatest man that Athens produced, said, when some one asked him what sound or whose voice he took the greatest delight in hearing, “The voice of that by whom his own exploits were best celebrated.” Therefore, the great Marius was also exceedingly attached to Lucius Plotius, because he thought that the achievement which he had performed could be celebrated by his genius. [21] And the whole Mithridatic war, great and difficult as it was, and carried on with so much diversity of fortune by land and sea, has been related at length by him; and the books in which that is sung of, not only make illustrious Lucius Lucullus, that most gallant and celebrated man, but they do honour also to the Roman people. For, while Lucullus was general, the Roman people opened Pontus, though it was defended both by the resources of the king and by the character of the country itself. Under the same general the army of the Roman people, with no very great numbers, routed the countless hosts of the Armenians. It is the glory of the Roman people that, by the wisdom of that same general, the city of the Cyzicenes, most friendly to us, was delivered and preserved from all the attacks of the kind, and from the very jaws as it were of the whole war. Ours is the glory which will be for ever celebrated, which is derived from the fleet of the enemy which was sunk after its admirals had been slain, and from the marvellous naval battle off Tenedos: those trophies belong to us, those monuments are ours, those triumphs are ours. Therefore, I say that the men by whose genius these exploits are celebrated, make illustrious at the same time the glory of the Roman people. [22] Our countryman, Ennius, was dear to the elder Africanus; and even on the tomb of the Scipios his effigy is believed to be visible, carved in the marble. But undoubtedly it is not only the men who are themselves praised who are done honour to by those praises, but the name of the Roman people also is adorned by them. Cato, the ancestor of this Cato, is extolled to the skies. Great honour is paid to the exploits of the Roman people. Lastly, all those great men, the Maximi, the Marcelli, and the Fulvii, are done honour to, not without all of us having also a share in the panegyric.