The library · Edition and sources
Philo: On Husbandry
C. D. Yonge (1854–1855) · Translated text
Section XXV
XXV. (111) Do you, therefore, my friend, never enter into a contest of evil, and never contend for the pre-eminence in such practices, but rather exert yourself with all your might to escape from them. And if ever, being under the compulsion of some power which is mightier than yourself, you are compelled to engage in such a strife, take care to be without delay defeated; (112) for then you, being defeated, will be a glorious conqueror, and those who have gained the victory will have got the worst.
And do not ever entrust it to a herald to proclaim the victory of your rival or to the judge to crown; but do you go yourself and offer to him the acknowledgment of victory and the palm, and crown him, if he will, and bind him with wreaths of triumph, and proclaim him as conqueror yourself, pronouncing with a loud and piercing voice such a proclamation as this:
"O ye spectators, and ye who have offered prizes at these games! In this contest which you have proposed to us of appetite, and passion, and intemperance, and folly, and injustice, I have been defeated, and this man whom ye behold has gained the victory. And he has gained it by such a superabundance of excellence, that even we, who might very naturally have envied our conquerors, do not grudge him the triumph."
(113) Therefore, in all these unholy contests, surrender the prizes to others; but, as for those which are really holy, study yourself to gain the crown in them. And think not those contests holy which the different cities propose in their triennial festivals, when they build theatres and receive many myriads of people; for in those he who has overthrown any one in wrestling, or who has cast him on his back or on his face upon the ground, or he who is very skilful in wrestling or in the pancratium, carries off the first prize, though he may be a man who has never abstained from any act of violence or of injustice.
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