It is true, a man may say, these were favors peculiar to those particular
places on which he bestowed his benefits; but then what favors he bestowed
on the Eleans was a donation not only in common to all Greece, but to all
the habitable earth, as far as the glory of the Olympic games reached.
For when he perceived that they were come to nothing, for want of money,
and that the only remains of ancient Greece were in a manner gone, he not
only became one of the combatants in that return of the fifth-year games,
which in his sailing to Rome he happened to be present at, but he settled
upon them revenues of money for perpetuity, insomuch that his memorial
as a combatant there can never fail. It would be an infinite task if I
should go over his payments of people's debts, or tributes, for them, as
he eased the people of Phasaelis, of Batanea, and of the small cities about
Cilicia, of those annual pensions they before paid. However, the fear he
was in much disturbed the greatness of his soul, lest he should be exposed
to envy, or seem to hunt after greater filings than he ought, while he
bestowed more liberal gifts upon these cities than did their owners themselves.