But I urge all who intend to acquaint themselves with my speech, first, to make allowance, as they listen to it, for the fact that it is a mixed discourse, composed with an eye to all these subjects; next, to fix their attention even more on what is about to be said than on what has been said before; and, lastly, not to seek to run through the whole of it at the first sitting, but only so much of it as will not fatigue the audience.Cf. Isoc. 12.Isocrates, through writing for a reading public, habitually uses the language of a discourse to be delivered. See General Introd. p. xxx. For if you comply with this advice, you will be better able to determine whether I speak in a manner worthy of my reputation.

These, then, are the things which it was necessary for me to say by way of introduction. I beg you now to listen to my defense, which purports to have been written for a trial, but whose real purpose is to show the truth about myself, to make those who are ignorant about me know the sort of man I am and those who are afflicted with envy suffer a still more painful attack of this malady; for a greater revenge upon them than this I could not hope to obtain.

I consider that in all the world there are none so depraved and so deserving of the severest punishment as those who have the audacity to charge others with the offenses of which they themselves are guilty. And this is the very thing that Lysimachus has done. For this informer, himself delivering a composed speech, has said more in complaint of my compositions than upon all other points; it is as if one were to charge another with breaking into a temple, while showing in his own hands plunder stolen from the gods.