Declamation of the Philosopher, Physician, and Orator

...and he himself received him on the shore as he was leaving, in a white chariot; in the same way, Alexander the Great restored the fatherland of Aristotle, the most learned of philosophers, in honor of his teacher. To whom do the Pythagoreans: who worshipped him as a god. Pythagoreans not owe less than to God, and for whom they made a temple out of his house? He was in such admiration that if they merited to enjoy his presence, they would write to their own people as if they had obtained something great and illustrious, because they had seen Pythagoras. Now also you, O judges, respecting the holy and venerable name of philosopher, adjudicate the paternal goods to me, the philosopher, as is fitting; and by your sentence, decide. Since the will of the father desired this, since common sense judges this, and since the excellence of the doctrine which I profess specifically demands this. I have spoken.

You have heard thus far, most distinguished men, what has been said from the person of the philosopher in the petition for the paternal inheritance. Now, I pray, listen with attentive minds and ears to what the physician has argued in the second place, who has defended his own cause with the advocacy of this or a similar oration.

Utility of the physician.

The dispute, judges, is not among us as to which of our arts is the most beautiful, but which is the most useful to the city. It is asked who of us profits mortals more. Who does not know that the physician pertains to all orders of the whole city, to every sex, and to every age? Since it happens that the highest and the lowest, men, women, old men, and children fall ill, and since all indiscriminately seek utility from this, the physician can deservedly be called the common resource of the world. And by Hercules, if we discern truly, if we weigh all things curiously, medicine alone and the physician alone are the work needed by all. Medicine is that which alone fights against the Fates and repeatedly overcomes them, which prolongs life for the languishing, which restores to the light and vital air those who were already deplored, already wept over, and numbered in the family of Orcus the underworld. Many believe that they have been revived by the work of medicine. And not to recount the fables which claim that Hippolytus and the Tyndaridae were recalled to life by Aesculapius, is not Asclepiades—famous among physicians—the most powerful proof of this matter, who brought fate to a man already mourned and laid out for burial? He called forth his soul while it was hiding in the secret chambers of the body, and brought him back home, as if from the underworld, after he was almost buried.
The deceased called back by Asclepiades.

Add to this that the ancients attributed so much honor to him that they assigned the inventors of medicine to the gods and dedicated them to heaven, rendering Apollo and Aesculapius, whom Antiquity called archiatrus chief physician, as if the prince of physicians. And truly...