8
Here you are then gathered together, the cream of every city, the very epitome of all Macedonia, in the country’s finest city, so different, thank goodness, from Pisa with its lack of space, its tents and huts, its stifling heat; nor is my audience a vulgar mob more keen on seeing athletics, most of them thinking Herodotus of secondary importance. No, there are the finest orators, historians, and rhetoricians—no small matter indeed that my arena should not seem far inferior to Olympia. Compare me with Polydamas, Glaucus, and Milo, and I know that you will judge me imprudent. But remember them less and strip me and look at me as I am, and then perhaps you will not find me altogether deserving of the whip. My arena being what it is, I should not find even this judgment unsatisfactory.
