Antidosis

I said, I think, before these selections were read, that I asked not only to be adjudged guilty if my discourses are harmful but to be visited with the heaviest of punishments if they are not incomparable.[*](See Isoc. 15.51.) If any of you then felt that my words were boastful and over-confident, they cannot longer justly be of this opinion; for I think that I have made good my promise and that the discourses which have been read to you are such as from the first I maintained that they were.

But I want to say just a word in behalf of each of them and so make it still more manifest that what I then said and what I now say about them is true. First of all, tell me what eloquence could be more righteous or more just than one which praises our ancestors in a manner worthy of their excellence and of their achievements?

Again, what could be more patriotic or more serviceable to Athens than one which shows that by virtue both of our other benefactions and of our exploits in war we have greater claims to the hegemony than the Lacedaemonians? And, finally, what discourse could have a nobler or a greater theme than one which summons the Hellenes to make an expedition against the barbarians and counsels them to be of one mind among themselves?