Antidosis

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.