Part 1: The Panegyric. Chapter 1. The Worth and Dignity of This Work

¹ I too, dear emperor, offer you a gift: a gift most fitting for me to give and for you to receive gladly. And perhaps it is better than those other gifts that time and envy consume, that give opportunity to bandits, and plunder to thieves. For the subjects of your power pay their yearly tribute—some in gold, some in silver, and some in whatever else is destined to perish with use, as the divine Apostle says. But a word of counsel is more precious than gold, more splendid than silver, more enduring than anything else whatsoever. And those subjects pay their tribute even against their will—the heaviest part of our condemnation; but wisdom is a free possession, belonging truly to no one master, offering its own labor as a gift freely chosen, and benefiting those who receive it.