On the Antiquities of Prussia

...they will realize that I have stepped onto this stage under your shelter; perhaps, lest they be judged by you, most wise prince, as chatterers with unbridled mouths, they will refrain from insults and at the same time keep their noses from curling. But if, neither respecting your majesty nor checking their unbridled tongues, they flow forth with unfair words, and should they wish not to sheathe the stings of their malice, but rather prefer to babble, there is nothing that can make me fear so much that I should disrupt the play I have begun. Let these little snobs sneer, let them protest, shout, argue, accuse, and finally hiss, provided that our performance has seemed plausible, agreeable, and pleasant to you. Antigonidas, once most skilled in the musical art, when he had stepped onto the stage with a pupil who was well-instructed in the art but not very pleasing to the public, is said to have said to all the listeners: "Sing for me and the Muses": for clearly, an art begun well, even if it lacks the charm of the populace, is nonetheless not stripped of its just approval. But to answer at last those who slander histories sought from long ago, as if there were less truth in them—this perhaps happens to those who are going blind and have the eyes of owls—but for those who see clearly, no person of sound mind doubts that there is greater dignity in antiquity. And so that they may not argue that Prussian affairs, as if subjected to eternal darkness and never likely to return to the sun and light from the murky recess of the past, let them remember at least what is told of Hercules, who is said to have compelled the three-headed Cerberus to come up from the underworld and to endure this sun and our warmth of ours, and the Thracian bard [Orpheus] to have led his stolen Eurydice forth from the Tartarean seats by his divine eloquence.