[51]
However, I want to set up for myself a more difficult standard than for other people, and to make a proposition which may seem over-rash for my years. For I ask you not only to show me no mercy, if the oratory which I cultivate is harmful, but to inflict on me the extreme penalty if it is not superior to any other.1 But I should not have made so bold a proposal, if I were not about to show you what my eloquence is and to make it very easy for you to pass judgement upon it.
1 Cf. the boast in Isoc. 4.14.
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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