Kitap 8
4.2
This discourse of Herodes seemed to give occasion for a query about Nicolaus, which would be as pleasant as the former. Therefore, said Sospis, let every one carefully give his sentiments of the matter in hand. I begin, and think that, as far as possible, the honor of the victor should remain fresh and immortal. Now a palm-tree is the longest lived of any, as this line of Orpheus testifies: They lived like branches of a leafy palm. And this almost alone enjoys the privilege (though it is said to belong to many beside) of having always fresh and the same leaves. For neither the laurel nor the olive nor the myrtle, nor any other of those trees called evergreen, is always seen with the very same leaves; but as the old fall, new ones grow. So cities continue the same, where new parts succeed those that decay. But the palm, never shedding a leaf, is continually adorned with the same green. And this power of the tree, I believe, men think agreeable to, and fit to represent, the strength of victory.
4.3
When Sospis had done, Protogenes the grammarian, calling Praxiteles the commentator by his name, said: What then, shall we suffer those rhetoricians to be thought to have hit the mark, when they bring arguments only from probabilities and conjectures? And can we produce nothing from history to club to this discourse? Lately, I remember, reading in the Attic annals, I found that The seus first instituted games in Delos, and tore off a branch from the sacred palm-tree, which was called spadix (from σπάω, to tear.)
