[271]
Why, then, have I gone into these matters? Not because I think that I should ask indulgence for the things which I have discussed—for I do not feel that I have spoken of them in a manner to require this—but because I desire both to relate my personal experiences and to commend those among my hearers who not only applaud this speech but prefer, as more weighty and more worthy of serious study, discourses which are composed for instruction and, at the same time, with finished art1 to others which are written for display or for the law-courts,2 and who prefer for the same reason discourses which aim at the truth to those which seek to lead astray the opinions of their auditors, and discourses which rebuke our faults and admonish3 us to those which are spoken for our pleasure and gratification.4
1 Such as this discourse or the Panegyricus. See Isoc. 4.11.
2 Speeches which were written for display—epideictic oratory—are composed with finish but are not instructive. See General Introduction. Speeches written for the law-courts, on the other hand, lack the refinements of style and aim to pervert the truth. See General Introduction.
3 Such as the Isoc. 8. See Isoc. 15.62.
4 Cf. Isoc. 2.54.
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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