The Erotic Essay

Turning now to courage—for it will not do to omit this either, not because I would intimate that your character does not still admit of great development nor that the future will fail to furnish richer material for eulogy to those who wish to praise you, but rather that words of praise mean most at your age when to do no wrong is the best hope for other lads—your courage a man might extol on many other grounds but especially because of your training for athletic sports, of which you have a multitude of witnesses.

And perhaps it is in place first to say that you have done well in choosing this kind of contest. For to judge rightly when one is young what line of action one should pursue[*](Blass notes a similarity in the Dem. 60.17; not impressive.) is the token of an honest soul and of sound judgement alike, and on neither ground would it be right to omit praise of your choice.

You, therefore, being well aware that slaves and aliens share in the other sports but that dismounting is open only to citizens and that the best men aspire it, have eagerly applied yourself to this sport.[*](The contestants were called apobates, desultores, i.e. dismounters. The drivers seem to have dismounted at times and raced with the teams. Dion. Halicarn. Roman Antiq. 7.73; E. Norman Gardiner, Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals, pp. 237-239.)

Discerning, moreover, that those who train for the footraces add nothing to their courage nor to their morale either, and that those who practice boxing and the like ruin their minds as well as their bodies, you have singled out the noblest and grandest of competitive exercises and the one most in harmony with your natural gifts, one which approximates to the realities of warfare through the habituation to martial weapons and the laborious effort of running, in the magnificence and majesty of the equipment simulates the might of the gods,[*](Certain gods were represented as using chariots, particularly Ares and Poseidon.)