many times, it is true, by words, but the most and greatest part of
good consists in action, as the very name of beneficence tells us
and they themselves also attest. For you may remember, continued
he, we heard this gentleman tell us but now what words Epicurus
uttered, and what letters he sent to his friends, applauding and
magnifying Metrodorus,--how bravely and like a spark he quitted the
city and went down to the port to relieve Mithrus the Syrian,--and
this, though Metrodorus did not then do anything at all. What and
how great then may we presume the pleasures of Plato to have been,
when Dion by the measures he gave him deposed the tyrant Dionysius
and set Sicily at liberty? And what the pleasures of Aristotle,
when he rebuilt his native city Stagira, then levelled with the
ground, and brought back its exiled inhabitants? And what the
pleasures of Theophrastus and of Phidias, when they cut off the
tyrants of their respective countries? For what need a man recount
to you, who so well know it, how many particular persons they
relieved, not by sending them a little wheat or a measure of meal
(as Epicurus did to some of his friends), but by procuring
restoration to the banished, liberty to the imprisoned, and
restitution of wives and children to those that had been bereft of
them? But a man could not, if he were willing, pass by the sottish
stupidity of the man who, though he tramples under foot and
vilifies the great and generous actions of Themistocles and
Miltiades, yet writes these very words to his friends about
himself: "You have given a very gallant and noble testimony of your
care of me in the provision of corn you have made for me, and have
declared your affection to me by signs that mount to the very
skies." So that, should a man but take that poor parcel of corn
out of the great philosopher's epistle, it might seem to be the
recital of some letter of thanks for the delivery or preservation