179
Are you not therefore surprised, when you look at it in this light, that the rewards are now more numerous, but the city was then more prosperous? And that the men are now inferior, but were better then? I will try to explain this to you. Do you think, fellow citizens, that any man would ever have been willing to train for the pancratium or any other of the harder contests in the Olympic games, or any of the other games that confer a crown, if the crown were given, not to the best man, but to the man who had successfully intrigued for it? No man would ever have been willing.
180
But as it is, because the reward is rare, I believe, and because of the competition and the honor, and the undying fame that victory brings, men are willing to risk their bodies, and at the cost of the most severe discipline to carry the struggle to the end. Imagine, therefore, that you yourselves are the officials presiding over a contest in political virtue, and consider this, that if you give the prizes to few men and worthy, and in obedience to the laws, you will find many men to compete in virtue’s struggle; but if your gifts are compliments to any man who seeks them and to those who intrigue for them, you will corrupt even honest minds.