Antidosis

namely, in the fact that you have been educated as have been no other people in wisdom and in speech.[*](Cf. Plat. Apol. 29d.) So, then, nothing more absurd could happen than for you to declare by your votes that students who desire to excel their companions in those very qualities in which you excel mankind, are being corrupted, and to visit any misfortune upon them for availing themselves of an education in which you have become the leaders of the world.

For you must not lose sight of the fact that Athens is looked upon as having become a school[*](Cf. Isoc. 4.48 ff. See Havet's enthusiastic comment in Cartelier's Isoc. 15. p. lviii. Cf. also Thuc. 2.41; Thuc. 7.63.) for the education of all able orators and teachers of oratory. And naturally so; for people observe that she holds forth the greatest prizes for those who have this ability, that she offers the greatest number and variety of fields of exercise to those who have chosen to enter contests of this character and want to train for them,

and that, furthermore, everyone obtains here that practical experience which more than any other thing imparts ability to speak; and, in addition to these advantages, they consider that the catholicity and moderation of our speech,[*](The Attic “dialect” was the least provincial of all, avoiding the extreme harshness of the Doric and the softness of the Ionic, and tended to be more and more the language of cultivated Greeks, until in the time of Alexander the Great it had broadened into the “common dialect,” H( KOINH\ DIA/LEKTOS.) as well as our flexibility of mind and love of letters, contribute in no small degree to the education of the orator. Therefore they suppose, and not without just reason, that all clever speakers are the disciples of Athens.