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Yet to that I give but a secondary place, as a tool the man used. It was the man himself I marvelled at, his spirit and his wisdom, and the steadiness of soul that steered a straight course through all the tempests of fortune with never a craven impulse. And Philip was of my mind about him; when a speech of his before the Athenian assembly against Philip was reported, Parmenio was angry, and made some bitter jest upon him. But Philip said: 44, Parmenio, be has a right to say what he pleases; he is the only popular orator in all Greece whose name is missing in my secret service accounts, though I would far rather have put myself in his hands than in those of clerks and third-rate actors. All the tribe of them are down for gold, timber, rents, cattle, land, in Bocotia if not in MacedoniaTo get a meaning, I translate as though the Greek, instead of οὐ Βοιωτίας οὐδ᾽ ἔνθα τι μή, ννεῖε ὁ μὲν Βοιωτίας, ὁ δ᾽ ἔνθα.; but the walls of Byzantium are not more proof against the battering-ram than Demosthenes against gold.
