[12]
Nevertheless, disregarding all these difficulties, I have become so ambitious in my old age that I have determined by addressing my discourse to you at the same time to set an example to my disciples and make it evident to them that to burden our national assemblies with oratory and to address all the people who there throng together is, in reality, to address no one at all;1 that such speeches are quite as ineffectual as the legal codes and constitutions2 drawn up by the sophists;
1 The same sentiment is expressed in Isoc. Letter 1.6-7. See General Introd. pp. xxxvi. ff.
2 Possibly a disparagement of Plato's Republic and Laws （see Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit, ii. p. 4）, but more probably of Isocrates' unfriendly rival, Antisthenes, who, according to Diog. Laert. 6.1.16, wrote a work On Law, or the Constitution of a State.
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.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
