For I am grieved to see the sycophant's trade faring better than philosophy—the one attacking, the other on the defensive. Who of the men of old could have anticipated that things would come to this pass, in Athens, of all places, where we more than others plume ourselves on our wisdom?

Things were not like that in the time of our ancestors; on the contrary, they admired the sophists, as they called them, and envied the good fortune of their disciples, while they blamed the sycophants for most of their ills. You will find the strongest proof of this in the fact that they saw fit to put Solon, who was the first of the Athenians to receive the title of sophist, at, the head of the state, while they applied to the sycophants more stringent laws than to other criminals;

for, while they placed the trial of the greatest crimes in the hands of a single one of the courts,For example, a charge of deliberate murder could come only before the Court of the Areopagus. A charge against the sycophants, on the other hand, could be brought before the Thesmothetae (see 237, note), who prepared the case for trial before a Heliastic Court, in which case the charge was termed GRAFH/(indictment); or before the Senate of the Five Hundred, in which case the charge was called EI)SAGGELI/A(impeachment); or before the General Assembly, in which case the charge was termed PROBOLH/(plaint). See Lipsius, pp. 176 ff. This was, however, true of so many crimes that the point of Isocrates is rather rhetorical. against the sycophants they instituted indictments before the Thesmothetae, impeachments before the Senate, and plaints before the General Assembly, believing that those who plied this trade exceeded all other forms of villainy; for other criminals, at any rate, try to keep their evil-doing under cover,