Oration 22

One might find many other things—indeed, simply all that have to do with some work or action—common to philosophers and to orators, that is, to such orators as are not vulgar mongers nor hirelings looking only to money and to private disputes about contracts or such matters, but are deemed worthy to give counsel and make laws in public—just as, I suppose, Pericles and Thucydides did at Athens, and Themistocles still earlier, and Cleisthenes and Pisistratus, so long as a man was still content to be called orator and popular leader;

for Aristides and Lycurgus and Solon and Epaminondas, and any other such man, are to be reckoned philosophers in their statesmanship, or orators in respect of the noble and true rhetoric—I mean such men as give counsel and make laws about the upbringing of the young, as Lycurgus did in Lacedaemon, and about the intercourse of love, and about the acquisition of property, how much and in what way it ought to be made, and about marriage, and about partnership, and about coinage, and about honor and dishonor, and about the building of houses, and whether a city ought to dwell walled or, as the god counselled the Lacedaemonians, unwalled, and about the training for war and the disposition not only of hoplites but such as Epaminondas is said to have devised, when he stationed the lovers beside their beloved, that they might the more be kept safe and be witnesses to one another of valor and of cowardice; and that this company, named the Sacred Band, prevailed over the Lacedaemonians in the battle at Leuctra, all the Greeks following those men;

but the chief matter, which has often fallen to the lot of many—namely peace and war, which happens now to be under inquiry. The whole of this class of question is called among philosophers "concerning the fitting"—as, whether one ought to marry, whether one ought to take part in public affairs, whether one ought to make use of monarchy or democracy or some other form of constitution; among which questions is this also, as it seems to me: whether one ought to make war. For the philosophers do not merely inquire about these things in a plain way, but at what time, and against whom, and upon what having happened or not happened, each of them ought to be done. And the difference is just this, that the orators consider in this case or in that—for instance, whether it is expedient for the Athenians to make war upon the Peloponnesians, or to help the Corcyraeans against the Corinthians, or for the Thebans to ally with Philip against the Phocians, or for Alexander to cross over into Asia.

For in all these deliberations this too not least comes in: whether it is just to make war upon men who have not first done wrong; and if some wrong has been done by those upon whom they purpose to make war, how great a wrong this is that has happened. But the philosophers see matters from afar, examining in themselves what sort of things they are. For it is far better to have deliberated about everything well in advance, and to have reached a settled judgment, so that, when the crisis of some affair arrives, men may themselves know how to make use of it and to advise others, rather than to be in some sense taken suddenly, thrown into confusion, and improvise about matters they do not understand.

For the orators, whenever it is necessary to consider some matter, knowing nothing more than the rest and not having examined it beforehand, both deliberate themselves, in a manner, and at the same time advise others. But the philosophers know about actions in advance, and chance to have deliberated long since; so that, if anyone summon them as counsellors of cities or nations or kings, they will be the better able, and the more safely, to declare their opinion—not whatever occurs to them at the moment, nor saying now this and again the opposite, smitten by anger or rivalry or money, ever inclining, as upon a balance, one of the orators themselves said, I think, in the direction of the gain. And I say this not to find fault with rhetoric, nor with good orators, but with the base ones and those who merely pretend to the craft.