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9“For these reasons, then, I ask and implore you one and all both to approve my course and to coöperate heartily with me, reflecting upon all that I have done for you alike in war and in public life, and rendering me complete recompense for it all by this one favour,—by allowing me at last to be at peace as I live out my life. Thus you will come to know that I understand not only how to rule but also how to submit to rule, and that all the commands which I have laid upon others I can endure to have laid upon me. 2I ask this because I expect to live in security, if that be possible, and to suffer no harm from anybody by either deed or word,—such is the confidence, based upon my own conscience, which I have in your good-will; 3but if some disaster should befall me, such as falls to the lot of many (for it is not possible for a man to please everybody, especially when he has been involved in wars of such magnitude, both foreign and civil, and has had affairs of such importance entrusted to him), with entire willingness I make my choice to die even before my appointed time as a private citizen, in preference to living forever as the occupant of a throne. 4Indeed, this very choice will bring me renown,—that I not only did not deprive another of life in order to win that office, but went so far as even to give up my life in order to avoid being king; and the man who dares to slay me will certainly be punished, I am sure, both by Heaven and by you, as happened, methinks, in the case of my father. 5For he was declared to be the equal of the gods and obtained eternal honours, whereas those who slew him perished, miserable men, by a miserable death. As for immortality, we could not possibly achieve it; but by living nobly and by dying nobly we do in a sense gain even this boon. 6Therefore, I, who already possess the first requisite and hope to possess the second, return to you the armies and the provinces, the revenues and the laws, adding only a few words of suggestion, to the end that you may not be afraid of the magnitude of the business of administration, or of the difficulty of handling it and so become discouraged, and that you may not, on the other hand, regard it with contempt, with the idea that it can easily be managed, and thus neglect it.
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