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Cornelius Nepos · Miltiades §6.1-6.4

Honors for Miltiades and Later Decadence

Passage 6 of 8 · Latin

Summary

The author describes the modest yet supreme honor bestowed on Miltiades, comparing it with the excessive statues later decreed to Demetrius of Phalerum, to illustrate how the nature of state honors changes over time.

§6.1Cuius victoriae non alienum videtur quale praemium Miltiadi sit tributum docere, quo facilius intellegi possit eandem omnium civitatum esse naturam.
In regard to this victory, it does not seem out of place to show what kind of reward was bestowed upon Miltiades, so that it may be more easily understood that the nature of all states is the same.
§6.2ut enim populi Romani honores quondam fuerunt rari et tenues ob eamque causam gloriosi, nunc autem effusi atque obsoleti, sic olim apud Athenienses fuisse reperimus.
For just as the honors of the Roman people were once rare and modest, and for that reason glorious, but are now lavish and cheapened, so we find it to have been of old among the Athenians.
§6.3namque huic Miltiadi, qui Athenas totamque Graeciam liberarat, talis honos tributus est, in porticu, quae Poecile vocatur, cum pugna depingeretur Marathonia, ut in decem praetorum numero prima eius imago poneretur isque hortaretur milites proeliumque committeret.
For to this Miltiades, who had liberated Athens and the whole of Greece, such an honor was paid, when the battle of Marathon was being depicted in the portico which is called Poecile, that his portrait was placed first in the number of the ten generals, and he was represented as encouraging the soldiers and joining battle.
§6.4idem ille populus, posteaquam maius imperium est nactus et largitione magistratuum corruptus est, trecentas statuas Demetrio Phalereo decrevit.
That same people, after they had acquired greater power and had been corrupted by the bribery of the magistrates, decreed three hundred statues to Demetrius of Phalerum.

Notes

  1. §6.1Cuius victoriae — The relative pronoun is used adjectivally with `victoriae`, referring back to the victory of Marathon in the previous chapter. Syntactically, it functions as a dative or genitive depending on `alienum` (not out of place/not foreign to), meaning 'in connection with this victory'.
  2. §6.2fuisse — An infinitive in the accusative-and-infinitive construction depending on `reperimus` (we find). In the correlative structure `ut... fuerunt, sic... fuisse` (just as they were... so they were...), the subject accusative (such as `honores`) is omitted.
  3. §6.3talis honos tributus est... ut — A consecutive clause introduced by `talis... ut` (such... that). The imperfect subjunctives `poneretur`, `hortaretur`, and `committeret` express the result. The subject of the latter two verbs is `is` (Miltiades himself), indicating that he was represented in the painting as performing these actions.

Cite this passage

Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades §6.1-6.4. Humanitext Reader, https://reader.humanitext.ai/en/text/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0588.abo001.humanitext-lat2:6.1-6.4

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