Thus originated an empty ambition which eventually suggested a feeling of significance and prerogative, without any real superiority, to the victor in the Olympiads, to an insignificant community official, to the holder of a chair of honor or of a distinction (with perhaps a statue erected in his honor), or to the orator who had political influence, but was acclaimed with exultation only for his rhetoric, by a public of loiterers.

Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simm…, loc. 6780