Antidosis

With these thoughts in mind I set myself to write this discourse—I who am no longer in the prime of youth but in my eighty-second year. Wherefore, you may well forgive me if my speech appears to be less vigorous[*](For this apology cf. Isoc. 5.149; Isoc. 12.4; Isoc. Letter 6.6.) than those which I have published in the past.

For, I assure you, it has not been an easy nor a simple task, but one of great difficulty; for while some things in my discourse are appropriate to be spoken in a court-room, others are out of place amid such controversies, being frank discussions about philosophy and expositions of its power. There is in it, also, matter which it would be well for young men to hear before they set out to gain knowledge and an education; and there is much, besides, of what I have written in the past, inserted in the present discussion, not without reason nor without fitness, but with due appropriateness to the subject in hand.

Now to view as a whole so great an extent of subject matter, to harmonize and bring together so many diverse varieties of discourse, to connect smoothly what follows with what goes before, and to make all parts consonant one with another, was by no means an easy undertaking. Yet I did not desist, in spite of my age, until I had accomplished it, such as it is. It is, at any rate, written with devotion to the truth; its other qualities I leave to the judgement of my hearers.