3
But Timotheus’s remarks need not be confined to Harmonides, nor to his profession: they seem applicable to all whose ambition prompts them to exhibit their talents and to aim at the approbation of the public. Accordingly, when I, like Harmonides, was debating within myself the speediest means of becoming known, I took Timotheus’s advice: ‘Who,’ I asked myself, ‘is the foremost man in all this city? Whose credit is highest with his neighbours? Who shall be my multum in parvo?’ Only one name could reasonably suggest itself—your own; which stands for the perfection of every excellence, the glass of culture and the mould of wit. To submit my works to you, to win your approbation—if such a thing might be!—were to reach the goal of my desire; for your suffrage carries the rest with it. Whom, indeed, could I substitute in your place, and hopé to preserve a reputation for sanity? Ina sense, no doubt, I shall be hazarding all on one cast of the die: yet with more truth I might be said to have summoned the whole population into one audience-chamber; for your single judgement must assuredly outweigh the rest, taken individually or collectively. The Spartan kings had two votes each to the ordinary man’s one: but you area whole Privy Council and Senate in yourself. Your influence is unequalled in the Court of Literature, and, above all, yours is the casting-vote of acquittal; an encouraging thought for me, who might well be uneasy otherwise at the extent of my hardihood. Moreover, I am not wholly without a claim on your interest, as belonging to that city which has so often enjoyed peculiar benefits at your hand, in addition to those which it has shared with the nation at large; and this encourages me to hope that in the present instance, if judgement is going against me, and the votes of acquittal are in a minority, you will use your prerogative, and make all right with that casting-vote of yours.
