Letter 404: A man who receives a great gift from the gods and then thinks he has received only a small one wrongs those who gave it.

A man who receives a great gift from the gods and then thinks he has received only a small one wrongs those who gave it. You are more truly a child of the Muses than the man to whom they gave the laurel -- and yet you rank yourself among those who have received nothing great. But every man and every nation speaks in your favor. Whenever someone mentions a poet, it is you they have heard of, and no one disputes it. We rhetoricians, on the other hand, have more rivals than flies around a sheepfold in springtime. As for the man I call a sophist -- you pretend not to know him, though you yourself long ago voted him the foremost among sophists.

Φιλίππῳ. (355) Ὁ μέγα τι λαβὼν παρὰ θεῶν ἀγαθόν, εἶτα μικρὸν εἰλη- 15 φέναι νομίζων ἀδικεῖ τοὺς δεδωκότας. σὺ δὲ εἶ μὲν ἐκ Μου- σῶν μᾶλλον ἢ ᾧ δάφνην ἔδοσαν, τάττεις δὲ σαυτὸν εἰς τοὺς οὐ μέγα λαβόντας. ἀλλ’ ἀντιφθέγγεταί σοι πᾶς ἀνὴρ καὶ πάντα ἔθνη, κἂν εἴπῃς ποιητήν, σέ τις ἀκήκοε, μάχεται δὲ οὐδείς· ἡμῖν δὲ ἀνταγωνισταὶ πλείους ἢ ὅσαι μυῖαι κατὰ σταθμὸν ποιμνήιον ὥρῃ ἐν εἰαρινῇ. ὅν δέ φημι σο- φιστήν, ἀγνοεῖν προσποιῇ πάλαι πρῶτον αὐτὸν ἐψηφισμένος σοφιστῶν.