[THEME]

The law has conferred on a person who has brought a war to a successful conclusion the right to seek what prize he wishes and has provided that his request is to be granted. When a city was besieged, an orator, having dared to leave the city, went out alone for a conference with the enemy and persuaded them to lift the siege and invoked the law deeming him worthy to receive a reward. A military man speaks against him, arguing that the law grants prizes to one prevailing by arms, not to one persuading by words.

EXPLANATORY COMMENT

[1] You can find a model from comedy of how a military man is full of himself and a swaggerer and a great boaster. If any of you remembers Menander's character Thrasonides, he knows what I mean. Menander says that, when military stuffiness, like a disease, attacks a man, it moves his girlfriend to disgust. And “The Hated One,” of course, became a title for the play about Thrasonides. [2] It was because I had this example in my mind, I think, that I naturally introduced a soldier into my imaginary theme. For who is more likely to begrudge someone who has brought a war to a successful conclusion [by non-military means] than a person whose profession is warfare? And so on the one hand a kind of innate contempt buoys up the man, but malice and envy gnaw at him.