Isocrates

But now, although he alleges that I am able to make the weaker cause appear the stronger, he has, in fact, so low an opinion of my powers that he is confident that he with his lies will win against me and the truth.

But having so decided, you conceived that if you confined your discourse to Athens alone and repeated the fables about her which fall easily from the lips of everyone, your speech would appear no different from those which had been composed by the other orators (which would cause you extreme humiliation and distress), whereas if you discarded these fables and dealt with her acknowledged achievemen …

And the Lacedaemonians, we are informed by Isocrates, laid it down for a certain rule admitted among all nations, that the right to public territory as well as to private property was so firmly established by length of time, that it could not be disturbed;

This was, in fact, the course which I had already advocated in the Panegyric discourse.

Tales autem sunt omnes quibus pars altera in iure suo imminuitur, iuxta Isocratis definitionem vocantis τὰ τοὺς ἑτέρους ἐλαττοῦντα παρὰ τὸ δίϰαιον.

Many inquire of me whether I advised you to make the expedition against the barbarians or whether it was your idea and I concurred.

Well, then, does Isocrates in the Panathenaicus, having put the question "Whom, then, do I call educated?

But someone among those who are hard hit by my strictures might take offense and demand of me, “How is it, if indeed we are so badly advised, that we are safe and hold a power which is inferior to that of no other city?

Furthermore, it is easy to judge of my purpose from the fact that in most of the discourses which I have written, you will find that I condemn oligarchies and special privileges, while I commend equal rights and democratic governments—not all of them, but those which are well-ordered, praising them not indiscriminately, but on just and reasonable grounds.

On the former topic, how a ruler should act, you have heard Isocrates speak;

And yet certain persons who, although they have no share at all in learning, yet profess to be able to teach everybody else, and although they dare to find fault with my efforts, yet are eager to imitate them, will perhaps call it madness for me to concern myself with the misfortunes of Greece, as if Greece would be either better or worse off as a result of words of mine!

Perhaps some one of those who choose to live planlessly may attempt to disparage such reasoning and ask that I give my advice forthwith with regard to what has just been said.

The sons of Aphareus, my grandsons, who were instructed in music by Agenor, have asked me to write to you and beg that, since you have restored some of the other exiles, you will also allow Agenor, his father, and his brothers to return home.

Isocrates laid his hand on Ephorus and drew him away from the forum, judging him more useful for composing records of history;