[65]
Wherefore I beseech you, O you Asiatic witnesses, that, when you wish to recollect with
accuracy what amount of authority you bring into a court of justice, you would yourselves
describe Asia, and remember, not what foreigners are accustomed to say of you, but what you
yourselves affirm of your own races. For, as I think, the Asia that you talk of consists of
Phrygia, Mysia, Caria, and Lydia. Is it then a proverb of ours or of yours that a Phrygian is
usually made better by beating? What more? Is not this a common saying of you all with respect
to the whole of Caria, if you wish to make any experiment accompanied with danger, that you
had better try it on a Carian? Moreover what saying is there in Greek conversation more
ordinary and well known, than, when any one is spoken of contemptuously, to say that he is the
very lowest of the Mysians? For why should I speak of Lydia? What Greek ever wrote a comedy in
which the principal slave was not a Lydian? What injury, then, is done to you, if we decide
that we are to adhere to the judgment which you have formed of yourselves?
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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