[133]
The first way by which we can set right and improve the condition of our city is to select as our advisers on affairs of state the kind of men whose advice we should desire on our private affairs, and to stop thinking of the sycophants as friends of democracy and of the good men and true1 among us as friends of oligarchy,2 realizing that no man is by nature either the one or the other but that all men desire, in each case, to establish that form of government in which they are held in honor.
1 This term is almost technical for the aristocratic party, but is here used in a broader sense. Cf. Isoc. 15.316.
2 Cf. Isoc. 15.318.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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