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40“And since I have reached this topic, I will begin to speak about his public services. If he had lived in quiet retirement, perhaps his virtue would not have been clearly proved; but as it was, by being raised to the highest position and becoming the greatest not only of his contemporaries but of all others who ever wielded any power, he displayed it more conspicuously. 2For in the case of nearly all the others this authority had served only to reveal their weakness, but him it made more illustrious, since by reason of the greatness of his virtue he undertook correspondingly great deeds, and was found to be equal to them; he alone of men after obtaining for himself so great good fortune as a result of his nobility of character neither disgraced it nor treated it wantonly. 3I shall pass over, then, the brilliant successes which he regularly achieved in his campaigns and the high-mindedness he showed in his ordinary public services, although they were so great that for any other man they would warrant high praise; for, in view of the distinction of his subsequent deeds, I shall seem to be dealing in trivialities, if I also rehearse these scrupulously. I shall therefore only mention his achievements while he was your magistrate. 4Yet I shall not even relate all these with scrupulous detail, for I could never get to the end of them, and I should cause you excessive weariness, particularly since you already know them.
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