Id have hoped that it isn’t much of any kind of argument, since sharp wits can be an indispensable aid to …

(pace Edward Gibbon — personally, via Feynman*!)

… leading by example (showing >>> telling)

( but also/and by swagger

   (Since wit, appropriately weaponized & singularly demo’d, is its own distinction?
   )
 )

NB hadnt experienced Eurovision, might have expanded his idea of swag..

* >But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous (quoted in TFLiP)

EDIT2: seems like NB had other ways to motivate his men (beside fear & swag)— according to that English historian “Livy” was smacked in this kind of context, but we’ll never know for sure now

EDIT: (material) baubles require a more or less centralized fount of honor (as republics ever had), transmission of (the clear products of) wit.. otoh, needs just… a market (of at least one)