Plutarch, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The sentence is mine, and the man who quotes it usually stops reading before the sentence ends. I told the young statesman to see the Roman's shoes above his head and not to fill the people with pride in Marathon and Plataea. But the counsel was addressed to a man entering politics in a Greek city under the empire, and its whole subject is how to do that well: how to choose friends, how to handle the crowd, how to keep faction from ruining the city.
Quietism would counsel staying home. I counselled governing. The charge also presupposes that the only politics worth the name is resistance, and I wrote the other half of the answer myself, in the Lives. Look at what I set down of Cicero when the civil war was bursting out like an inflamed wound. He wrote to Caesar and entreated Pompeius, trying to mollify and pacify both.
When things were past remedy he confessed in his letters that he knew whom to fly from but not whom to fly to. Caesar's friend Trebatius advised him either to join Caesar or, if age forbade, to go to Greece and sit quietly out of the way of both. Cicero answered in passion that he would do nothing unworthy of his political life.1 I do not tell that story to mock him.
A man who sees both sides, tries to save the city from both, and will not do the unworthy thing is not a quietist, and he is not a fool either. Prudence is not a smaller virtue than courage; it is courage with a sense of time. Flamininus is my example of it. When the Aetolians stirred Greece against Rome under the pretext of restoring freedom to people who were free already, he went among the cities, and the sight of him steadied the wavering and brought back those who had begun to revolt.
Even after the victory he saw to it that the guilty should not be destroyed. At Naupactus, when the besieged called him by name from the walls and stretched out their hands with tears, he made no answer and turned away and wept; afterwards he reasoned with the consul and persuaded him to put aside his resentment and grant a truce, with time to send an embassy to Rome.2
That is statecraft under a master: a Greek heart working through Roman power to spare Greek lives. And it was this Quinctius who proclaimed at the Isthmian games that the Greeks were free and to be governed by their own laws.3 I have no illusion that the freedom was the old freedom. But a city that mistakes Trajan's Rome for Caesar's and stirs the people to a bravery that will ruin it has destroyed itself for nothing.
You ask whether I made my peace with empire. I did, as a man makes peace with weather he cannot alter, and I stayed in Chaeronea so that it should not become smaller. The Brutus and the Cato I wrote with love were men who resisted when resistance could still save something. I wrote the Precepts for a day when it could not, and I would have the Greeks be Greek where they stand.
The Greek who enters politics in his city today must know that he rules a people ruled by others, that the Roman's shoes are over his head, and that to stir the crowd with Marathon and Plataea is to invite a punishment the whole city will pay for. He should seek the friendship of the powerful for his city's sake, keep faction down, govern justly, and remember that liberty is now as much as the rulers allow.
This is not servility but prudence, and it leaves everything worth doing still to be done: the philosopher should converse with the powerful because through them he does good to many, and the old man should not leave public life while he can serve. He stayed in Chaeronea so that it should not become smaller.456
he says in his letters that he did not know which way to turn himself... so that he knew whom to fly from, but not whom to fly to.Lives Vol 4
he made no answer to them but turned away and wept. Afterwards, however, he reasoned with Manius, and persuaded him to put aside his resentment, and to grant the AEtolians a truceLives Vol 2
Having overcome Philip in battle, he proclaimed in the Isthmian games that the Grecians were free and to be governed by their own laws.Essays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 1
But in small matters, and such as are of no great consequence, it is not amiss to suffer his friends really to differ, every one following his own private reason; that so in the principal and greatest concerns, they may not seem to act upon design, when they shall unanimously agree to what is best. 17.Essays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 5
As for liberty, the people have as much as the emperors think fit to grant them, and more perhaps would not be expedient. The prudent man therefore will beg the Gods to grant to his fellow-citizens the unenvied plenty of the earth, and the kind temper of the seasons, and that wives may bear "children like to their parents," and also safety for all that is born and produced.Essays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 5
Nevertheless let this speech of the poet, Lie still at ease, poor wretch, in thy own bed, both be and seem to be spoken for the dissuading of him who shall, when he is now grown gray with age, begin to play the youth; and for the restraining an old man who, rising from a long administration of his domestic affairs, as from a lingering disease, shall set himself to lead an army to the field, or perform the office of…Essays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 5
The counsel that has been read as the wisdom of the Greek elite under Rome and as its surrender; the Lives he wrote of Brutus and Cato are the other half of the answer.