Legatio Ad Gaium

if some men labour in this manner to bring to perfection things that can in no respect benefit human life, but which only afford pleasure and amusement to the spectators, in such a way as to be praised

Now the greatest and most excellent of all sciences is the science of government, by means of which every country which is good and fertile, whether it be champaign or mountainous, is cultivated, and every sea is navigated without danger by heavily-laden merchant-vessels, to communicate to the different countries the useful productions of each, out of a natural desire for participation and association, so that each land receives what it stands in need of, and sends abroad in requital those good things of which it has a superfluity;

for envy has never obtained a dominion over the whole of the habitable world, nor even over those great divisions of it, the whole of Europe or the whole of Asia, but it lurks in holes like a venomous reptile, creeping out in small districts to attack an individual man, or a single family, or, if it is very violent and powerful, perhaps one city; but it never attacks a larger circle of a whole nation or a whole country, especially ever since your august family has really begun to rule over all men in every part of the world.

"For your house has discovered and brought to light everything that is good, even in the midst of evils, and has banished all evils to the extremities of the earth, and beyond its borders to the very depths of Tartarus, and has brought back, from the most distant borders of the earth and sea, those profitable and beneficial things which were in a manner banished into the habitable world around us; and now all these things are entrusted to your power, to be governed by your authority.