Antidosis

For when I was indicted, I pondered these very matters, as any one of you would have done, and I reviewed my life and my actions, dwelling longest on the things for which I thought I deserved approbation. But one of my associates, hearing me, made bold to urge an objection which was amazing in the extreme; he stated that while my life as I described it was worthy of emulation, yet he himself greatly feared that my story would irritate many of my hearers.

“Some men,” he said, “have been so brutalized by envy and want and are so hostile that they wage war, not on depravity, but on prosperity; they hate not only the best men but the noblest pursuits; and, in addition to their other faults, they take sides with wrong-doers and are in sympathy with them, while they destroy, whenever they have the power, those whom they have cause to envy.

They do these things, not because they are ignorant of the issues on which they are to vote, but because they intend to inflict injury and do not expect to be found out;[*](The voting of Athenian juries was by secret ballot. Cf. Isoc. 7.34.) and so, by protecting those of their own kind, they think they are providing for their own safety. “I have told you this in order that, being forewarned, you may be able to handle your case to better advantage and to use less dangerous arguments before the jury. For as things are, what judgement can you expect such men to reach when you tell them of your life and your conduct, which are not in the least degree like their own, but such as you are attempting to describe to me?

For you show that the speeches which you have written merit, not blame, but the highest favor; that the men who have been under your instruction have in no case been guilty of wrong-doing or of crime, while some of them have been crowned by the city in recognition of their worth; that from day to day you, yourself, have lived so uprightly and lawfully that I know not who of your fellow-citizens can compare with you; and that, furthermore, you have never brought anyone to trial nor stood trial yourself[*](Cf. Plat. Apol. 17d.) save in the matter of an exchange of property, nor have you appeared as counsel or as witness for others, nor have you engaged in any other of the activities which make up the civic life of all Athenians.

And to these peculiarities and idiosyncrasies you add another, namely, that you have held aloof from the public offices and the emoluments which go with them, and from all other privileges of the commonwealth as well, while you have enrolled not only yourself but your son[*](Isocrates married Plathane, the widow of Hippias of Elis, and adopted her son Aphareus. So far as we know, he had no children of his own. See Jebb, Attic Orators vol. ii. p. 30.) among the twelve hundred who pay the war-taxes and bear the liturgies, and you and he have three times discharged the trierarchy, besides having performed the other services more generously and handsomely than the laws require.[*](The twelve hundred richest citizens in Athens paid the special tax levies for war purposes and performed at private expense the ”liturgies” (public services), such as standing the expense of the training of a chorus for the drama or of fitting out a ship of war (trierarchy). See Gilbert, Greek Constitutional Antiquities p. 371.)

“When you say these things to men whose conduct is the opposite of all which has been said, do you not suppose that they will take offense and think that you are showing up the unworthiness of their own lives? For possibly if they had seen that it is through hard work and sacrifice that you provide yourself with the means wherewith to discharge your public duties and to maintain your affairs in general, they would not have felt the same about it.

But in fact they think that these fees which come to you from your foreign pupils are much greater than they actually are, and they consider that you live in greater ease and comfort than not only the people in general but also than those who cultivate philosophy and are of the same profession as yourself. “For they see most of the sophists, excepting those who have embraced your life and ways, showing off their oratory in the public assemblies or in private gatherings, contesting against each other, making extravagant professions, disputing, reviling each other, omitting nothing in the language of abuse,

but in effect damaging their own cause and giving license to their auditors, now to ridicule what they say, sometimes to praise them, most often to despise them, and again to think of them whatever they like. But in you they see a man who has no part in these things,[*](Cf. Isoc. 12.12-13. Havet (Introd. to Cartelier's Antidosis p. xlix) contrasts the dignity of the discourses of Isocrates with the personalities and recriminations characteristic of the public orators of his day.) who lives in a manner different from the sophists as well as from laymen, and from those who enjoy many possessions as well as from those who live in want.

It is true that reasonable and intelligent people might perhaps congratulate you on these grounds, but people who are less fortunate and are wont to be more chagrined at the honest prosperity of others than at their own ill fortune cannot fail to be surly and resentful. Knowing, then, that such will be the attitude of your audience, consider well what you had better say and what you had better leave unsaid.”

But I thought as he said these things and I think now that they would be of all men the strangest and most perverse who could take offense at being told that I hold myself at the service of Athens in discharging the liturgies and performing any public duty she enjoins, and yet do not ask to have any part in the allotment of the offices nor in the distribution of the gifts she doles out to others, nor in the privilege of prosecuting or defending cases in the courts.[*](Cf. Isoc. 12.12.)

For I have prescribed this course for myself, not because I am rich or have any false pride, nor because I look down on those who do not live in the same way as I do, but because I love peace and tranquillity, and most of all because I see that men who so live are looked up to both in Athens and in other parts of the world. Moreover, I consider that this kind of life is more agreeable than that of men who are busy with a multitude of things, and that it is, besides, more in keeping with the career to which I have dedicated myself from the first.

It was for these reasons that I chose this manner of life. And if I have refrained from accepting the bounties which are distributed by the city it was because I thought it outrageous if I, who am able to maintain myself from my private resources, should stand in the way of any of those who have been compelled to get their livelihood from the city, and if because of my presence[*](For example, by presenting himself for service on the juries and drawing pay for this. Cf. Isoc. 7.24 and note.) anyone should be deprived of the necessities of existence.[*](See Isoc. 7.54, note. Cf. Isoc. 7.24.) Now for this I deserved praise rather than prejudice.

But as things are I am utterly at a loss to know what I could do to satisfy men of this stamp. For if I have made it my object all my life not to injure or burden or offend any man, and if by this very course I offend certain people, what could I do to please them? Or what conclusion is left to me other than that I seem to be unfortunate, and that these people appear to be boorish and churlish toward their fellow-citizens?

It is, therefore, utter folly to seek to justify myself to those who are not minded like other men but are harder on the innocent than on the guilty; for it is obvious that the more honest a man shows himself to be, the more hopeless will he make his case in their eyes. But to the others[*](So Socrates, in Plato's Apology, addresses first one group of the jury, then the other.) I must address myself in reply to the false charge of Lysimachus that I am possessed of enormous wealth, lest this statement, if credited, impose upon me greater public burdens than I could bear.

Now, generally speaking, you will find that no one of the so-called sophists has accumulated a great amount of money, but that some of them have lived in poor, others in moderate circumstances. The man who in our recollection laid up the most was Gorgias of Leontini.[*](See General Introd. p. xii.) He spent his time in Thessaly when the Thessalians were the most prosperous[*](See Isoc. 8.117.) people in Hellas; he lived a long life[*](He lived one hundred and seven years according to Cicero, De senect. v.) and devoted himself to the making of money;

he had no fixed domicile in any city and therefore paid out nothing for public weal nor was he subject to any tax; moreover, he did not marry and beget children, but was free from this, the most unremitting and expensive of burdens; and yet, although he had so great an advantage toward laying up more wealth than any other man, he left at his death only a thousand staters.[*](A gold coin about equal in value to the guinea.)

And surely on the subject of each other's incomes we must not credit people who make charges at haphazard nor think that the earnings of the sophists are equal to those of the actors,[*](Popular actors, especially in comedy, received high pay. See Böckh, Public Economy of Athens p. 120.) but should judge men of the same profession in reference to each other and go on the principle that those of the same order of talent in each profession have incomes which are comparable.

If, then, you will class me with the sophist who has made more money than any other, and will compare me with him, you will not seem to engage in utterly blind conjectures on such matters, nor shall I be found to have managed badly in providing either for the public welfare or for my own, although, as a matter of fact, I have lived on less than I have expended on my public duties. And surely it is deserving of praise when a man is more frugal in what he spends on his own household than in what he pays out for the common weal.

It occurs to me as I am speaking what a change has come over Athens; people nowadays do not look at things in the same way as those who lived in the city in former times. For, when I was a boy, wealth was regarded as a thing so secure as well as admirable that almost every one affected to own more property than he actually possessed, because he wanted to enjoy the standing which it gave.[*](Contrast the conditions described in Isoc. 7.34 ff.)

Now, on the other hand, a man has to be ready to defend himself against being rich as if it were the worst of crimes, and to keep on the alert if he is to avoid disaster; for it has become far more dangerous to be suspected of being well off than to be detected in crime; for criminals are pardoned or let off with slight penalties, while the rich are ruined utterly, and it will be found that the number of men who have been spoiled of their property is greater than those who have been punished for their misdeeds.