Antidosis
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Well, then, I do not see how I could show more clearly that the charges filed against me are false and that I am not guilty of corrupting my associates. My accuser has mentioned also the friendship which existed between me and Timotheus,
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and has attempted to calumniate us both, nor did any sense of shame restrain him from saying slanderous and utterly infamous things about a man who is dead, to whom Athens is indebted for many services.
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But I, for my part, should have thought that even if I were proved guilty beyond a doubt, yet because of my friendship with him I should be entitled to go free. But since Lysimachus is attempting to hurt me by the very means which ought to help my case, I am compelled to go into this question. I must explain that I did not mention Timotheus when I named my other associates because he was in very different case from them.
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For, in the first place, my accuser has not dared to say anything derogatory of my other friends, while he has laid greater stress upon his arraignment of Timotheus than upon the charges which he has preferred in his indictment. In the next place, my other friends were entrusted with only a few commissions, although in every case they discharged the duties assigned to them in such a manner that they won the honor which I mentioned a moment ago,
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while Timotheus had the responsibility of many affairs of great importance and over a long period of time. It would not, therefore, have been fitting to discuss him and the others in one group, but it was necessary to separate and segregate them as I have done.
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You must not think, however, that what I say in behalf of Timotheus is irrelevant to the present case, nor that I am straying beyond the limits of the indictment; for while it is proper for the layman to say what he has to say in defense of his own actions and then take his seat or else to be thought to overdo his case, yet when anyone occupies a position in the eyes of the public as a counsellor and teacher, he must then justify his followers as well as himself, especially if he is being tried on this charge—which is exactly the position in which I have been placed.
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Now any other man might be satisfied to say that it is not fair that he should share the blame for any mistakes which Timotheus may have made, on the ground that he was given no share in the rewards or the honors which were voted to Timotheus, nor was he even thought worthy by any orator of being commended as an adviser of the latter, and that it is only fair that one should either share the good fortunes of another, or have no part in his misfortunes.
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I, however, should be ashamed to make this plea, and I make you the same proposition regarding Timotheus as I made regarding my other associates. For I ask that if it turns out that Timotheus was a bad man and committed many wrongs against you—I ask to be allowed to share the blame, to pay the penalty, and to suffer whatever is meted out to the guilty; but if, on the other hand, it is shown that he was both a good citizen and a greater general than any other within our knowledge, then I hold that you should praise him and be grateful to him, while as to this indictment against me, you should pass whatever judgement you may deem fair in the light of what I, myself, have done.
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The facts, then, about Timotheus I can put most concisely and in the most comprehensive terms by saying that he has taken more cities by storm than any other man has ever done, and I include all generals who have led armies into the field whether from Athens or from the rest of Hellas. And among these cities were some whose capture compelled all the surrounding territory to make terms with Athens; so great was their importance in each case.
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For who does not know that
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Corcyra
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has the best strategic position among the cities in the neighborhood of the
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Peloponnese
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;
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Samos
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, among the cities of
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Ionia
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;
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Sestos
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and Crithôte, among those in the
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Hellespont
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; and
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Potidaea
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and Torône among the settlements in Thrace? All these cities he has taken and presented to you, with no great outlay of money, without imposing burdens upon your present allies, and without forcing you to pay many taxes
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into the treasury.
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Indeed, for the voyage of the fleet around the Peloponnese, Athens allowed him only thirteen talents and fifty triremes,
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and yet he captured Corcyra, a city with a fleet of eighty triremes, and about the same time he won a naval battle over the Lacedaemonians and forced them to agree to the terms of the present peace—a peace which has so changed the relative positions of Athens and of Lacedaemon
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that from that day to this we celebrate the peace with sacrifices every year because no other treaty has been so advantageous to our city;
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while, as for the Lacedaemonians, no man since that time has seen a ship of theirs voyage this side of Malea
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nor any land force advance beyond the Isthmus, and anyone can see in this fact the cause of their disaster at Leuctra.
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After these exploits he led an expedition against Samos;
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and that city which Pericles, renowned above all others for his wisdom, his justice, and his moderation, reduced with a fleet of two hundred ships and the expenditure of a thousand talents,
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Timotheus, without receiving from you or collecting from your allies any money whatsoever, captured after a siege of ten months with a force of eight thousand light-armed troops and thirty triremes, and he paid all these forces from the spoils of war.
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And if you can point to any other man who has done a like thing, I stand ready to admit my folly in attempting to praise superlatively one who has done no more than others. Well, then, from Samos he sailed away and captured Sestos and Crithôte,
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forcing you, who up to that time had been careless of your interests in the Chersonese, to give your attention to that territory.
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And finally he took Potidaea, upon which Athens had in times past squandered twenty-four hundred talents, and he met the expense from money which he himself provided and from contributions of the Thracians; and, for full measure, he reduced all the Chalcideans to subjection.
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To speak, not in detail, but in summary, he made you masters of twenty-four cities and spent in doing so less than your fathers paid out in the siege of Melos.
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I could wish that just as it has been quite easy to recount his exploits, so it were possible to picture briefly the circumstances under which each of them was accomplished—what the situation was in Athens in each case and what the strength of our foes—, for you would then have been made to appreciate much more highly the worth of his achievements and of the man himself. As it is, the subject is so large that I must leave it untouched.
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But I think you would like to have me explain to you why in the world it is that some of the generals who have a high reputation among you and are thought to be great fighters have not been able to take even a village, while Timotheus, who lacks a robust physique and has not knocked about with itinerant armies but has shared with you the duties of a citizen, has accomplished such great things. What I have to say on this question will no doubt be offensive, but it will not be without profit for you to hear it.
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Timotheus was superior to all the rest in that he did not hold the same views as you with regard to the affairs of the Hellenes and of your allies and the manner in which they should be directed. For you elect as your generals men who have the most robust bodies
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and who have served in many campaigns with foreign armies, thinking that under their leadership you will have some success. Timotheus, on the other hand, used these men as captains and division-commanders,
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while he, himself, showed his ability in the very things which it is necessary for a good general to know. What, then, are the requisites of a good general and what ability do they involve? For they cannot be summed up in a word, but must be explained clearly. First of all is the ability to know against whom and with whose help to make war; for this is the first requisite of good strategy, and if one makes any mistake about this, the result is inevitably a war which is disadvantageous, difficult, and to no purpose.
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Well, in this kind of sagacity there has never been anyone like him or even comparable with him, as may easily be seen from his deeds themselves. For, although he undertook most of his wars without support from the city, he brought them all to a successful issue, and convinced all the Hellenes that he won them justly. And what greater or clearer proof of his wise judgement could one adduce than this fact?
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What, then, is the second requisite of a good general? It is the ability to collect an army which is adequate to the war in hand, and to organize and to employ it to good advantage. Now, that Timotheus understood how to employ his forces to good purpose, his achievements themselves have shown; that in the ability to recruit armies which were splendidly equipped and reflected honor upon Athens he excelled all other men, no one even of his enemies would dare to gainsay;
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and, furthermore, in the power both to bear the privations and hardships of army life, and again to find abundant resources, who of the men who were with him in the field would not pronounce him incomparable? For they know that at the beginning of his campaigns, owing to the fact that he received nothing from Athens, he found himself in great extremities, but that, even with this handicap, he was able to bring his fortunes round to the point where he not only prevailed over our enemies but paid his soldiers in full.
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These are great things and compel our admiration; but the facts which I now give entitle him to even greater praise. For although he saw that you respected only the kind of generals who threatened and tried to terrify the other cities and were always for setting up some revolution or other among your allies, he did not fall in with your prejudices, nor was he willing to enhance his own reputation to the injury of Athens; on the contrary, he made it the object of his thought and of his actions to see to it that no one of the cities of Hellas should be afraid of him, but that all should feel secure excepting those which did wrong;
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for he realized that men who are afraid hate those who inspire this feeling in them, and that it was due to the friendship of the other cities that Athens rose to great power and prosperity, just as it was due to their hatred that she barely escaped the most disastrous fate. Bearing in mind these facts, he used the power of Athens in order to subdue her enemies, and the force of his own character in order to win the good will of the rest of the world, believing that this is a greater and nobler kind of generalship than to conquer many cities many times in battle.
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So concerned was he that none of the cities should in the slightest degree suspect him of sinister designs that whenever he intended to take his fleet to any of the cities which had been remiss in their contributions,
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he sent word to the authorities and announced his coming beforehand, lest his appearance without warning in front of their ports might plunge them into disquiet and confusion;
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and if he happened to harbor his fleet in any place, he would never permit his soldiers to plunder and pillage and sack the people’s houses, but took as great precautions to prevent such an occurrence as the owners would take to guard their own possessions; for his mind was not upon winning for himself the good opinion of his soldiers by such license, but upon winning for Athens the good opinion of the Hellenes.
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Moreover, when cities had been taken by him in battle, he would treat them with a mildness and a consideration for their rights which no one else has ever shown to allies in war; for he thought that if he showed such an attitude toward those who had made war upon him, he could give no greater guarantee that he would never bring himself to wrong the others.
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Therefore it was that, because of the reputation which this conduct gave him, many of the cities which had no love for Athens used to welcome him with gates thrown wide; and he, in turn, never set up any disturbance in them, but just as he found them governed when he entered their gates, so he left them when he passed out.
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And now to sum up all this: In other times many calamities were wont to be visited upon the Hellenes, but, under his leadership, no one can point to cities devastated, governments overthrown, men murdered or driven into exile, or any other of those ills that are irreparable.
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Nay, so complete was the respite from such misfortunes in his day that, so far back as we can remember, he is the only general under whom no complaint was raised against Athens by the other Hellenes.
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And surely you ought to find your ideal of a good general, not in one who by a single stroke of good fortune has attained, like Lysander,
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a success which it has been the lot of no other man to achieve, but one who, though loaded with many difficult responsibilities of all sorts, has always discharged them with honesty and wisdom. And just this has been the fortune of Timotheus.
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Most of you are, I suppose, astonished at what I am saying, and think that in praising him I am condemning Athens, since he, after having captured so many cities and having never lost a single one, was tried for treason, and again when he submitted his reports, and Iphicrates took upon himself the responsibility for the conduct of the campaign and Menestheus accounted for the moneys expended upon it, they, on the one hand, were acquitted, while Timotheus was fined a larger sum than anyone in the past had ever been condemned to pay.
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The fact is, however, that I desire to stand up for Athens also. It is true that if you consider the actions of the city by the standard of pure justice, no one of you can avoid the conclusion that her treatment of Timotheus was cruel and abominable; but if you make allowance for the ignorance which possesses all mankind, for the feelings of envy that are aroused in us, and, furthermore, for the confusion and turmoil in which we live, you will find that nothing of what has been done has come about without a reason nor does the cause lie outside our human weakness, but that Timotheus, also, has been responsible in some degree for the mistaken judgements passed upon him.
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For while he was no anti-democrat nor a misanthrope, nor arrogant, nor possessed of any such defect of character, yet because of his proud bearing—an advantage to the office of a general but out of place in dealing with men from day to day—everyone attributed to him the faults which I have named; for he was by nature as inept in courting the favor of men as he was gifted in handling affairs.
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Indeed he has often been advised by me, among others, that while men who are in public life and desire to be in favor must adopt the principle of doing what is most serviceable and noble and of saying what is most true and just, yet they must at the same time not neglect to study and consider well how in everything they say and do they may convince the people of their graciousness and human sympathy; since those who are careless of these matters are thought by their fellow-citizens to be disagreeable and offensive.
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“You observe,” I would say to him, “the nature of the multitude, how susceptible they are to flattery; that they like those who cultivate their favor better than those who seek their good; and that they prefer those who cheat them with beaming smiles and brotherly love to those who serve them with dignity and reserve. You have paid no attention to these things, but are of the opinion that if you attend honestly to your enterprises abroad, the people at home also will think well of you.
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But this is not the case, and the very contrary is wont to happen. For if you please the people in Athens, no matter what you do they will not judge your conduct by the facts but will construe it in a light favorable to you; and if you make mistakes, they will overlook them, while if you succeed, they will exalt your success to the high heaven. For good will has this effect upon all men.
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“But you, while seeking by every means in your power to win for Athens the good will of the rest of the Hellenes, because you recognize its great advantages, nevertheless do not consider that there is any need to secure for yourself the good will of Athens; nay, you who have benefited the city in ways beyond calculation are less esteemed than those who have done nothing of note.
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“And you could expect nothing else; for such men cultivate the public orators and the speakers who are effective in private gatherings and who profess to be authorities on every subject, while you not only neglect to do this, but actually make an open breach between yourself and the orators who are from time to time the most influential. “And yet I wonder if you realize how many men have either come to grief or failed of honor because of the misrepresentations of these orators; how many in the generations that are past have left no name, although they were far better and worthier men than those who are celebrated in song and on the tragic stage.
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But the latter, you see, found their poets and historians, while the others secured no one to hymn their praises.
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Therefore, if you will only heed me and be sensible, you will not despise these men whom the multitude are wont to believe, not only with reference to each one of their fellow-citizens, but also with reference to the affairs of the whole state, but you will in some measure show attention and pay court to them in order that you may be held in honor both because of your own deeds and because of their words.”
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When I would speak to him in this wise, he would admit that I was right, but he could not change his nature. He was a good man and true, a credit to Athens and to Hellas, but he could not lower himself to the level of people who are intolerant of their natural superiors. So it was that the orators occupied themselves with inventing many false charges against him, and the multitude with drinking them in.
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I should be glad to refute these slanders, if the occasion permitted me to do so; for I believe that if you could hear me, you would come to loathe the men who have stirred the city to anger against Timotheus and the men who dare to speak evil of him. Now, however, I shall leave this subject and take up again my own defense and the case before us.
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But I am at a loss to know how to proceed with the rest of my speech—what topic to take up first and what next; for the power to speak in any set order has escaped me. Perhaps, therefore, I have no choice but to discuss each point as it happens to occur to me. Accordingly, I am going to lay bare to you the thoughts which have now come into my mind. I have been thinking all along that I ought to put them before you, but I have been advised against doing so.
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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.
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“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.
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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;
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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?
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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“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.
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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,
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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,
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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
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anyone should be deprived of the necessities of existence.
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Now for this I deserved praise rather than prejudice.
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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?
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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
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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.
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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.
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He spent his time in Thessaly when the Thessalians were the most prosperous
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people in Hellas; he lived a long life
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and devoted himself to the making of money;
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But why speak of public affairs? For I have myself, in my own affairs, suffered not a little from this change. For when I was beginning to repair my own fortunes after I had lost in the Peloponnesian War the patrimony which remained to me from what my father had spent partly in rendering himself serviceable to the state and partly in educating me with such care that I was more conspicuous then and more distinguished among the youth of my own age and among my fellow-students than I am now among my fellow-citizens
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—
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when, as I have said, I began to attach pupils to myself, I thought that if I could acquire a greater competence and attain a higher position than others who had started in the same profession, I should be acclaimed both for the superiority of my teaching and for the excellence of my conduct.
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But the result has been the very opposite; for if I had turned out to be worthless and had excelled in nothing, no one would have made trouble for me;
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nay, I might have been a flagrant offender and yet lived secure—from the sycophants, at any rate. But now, instead of the acclaim which I expected, I have been rewarded with trials and perils and envy and calumny.
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For so much does the Athens of this day rejoice in repressing and humiliating honest men, while giving license to the depraved to say and do what they please, that Lysimachus, a man who has elected to live by practicing intrigue and by preying from day to day on his fellow-citizens, is here in court denouncing me; while I, who have never in my life injured any man, who have kept my hands clean from such spoils, and have provided my advantages from foreigners who feel that I have served them well, am charged with grave offenses and placed in very great peril by this trial.
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And yet all sensible men would do well to pray the gods to endow as many of our people as possible with the power of getting means from abroad in order to make themselves serviceable to the city, even as I have done. But, though there are many anomalies in my situation, it would be the crowning absurdity of all if, when the men who have paid me money are so grateful to me that they are still even now devoted to me,
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you on whom I have spent my means should desire to penalize me. It would be even more absurd if, whereas Pindar, the poet, was so highly honored by our forefathers because of a single line of his in which he praises Athens as “the bulwark of Hellas”
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that he was made ”proxenos“
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and given a present of ten thousand drachmas, I, on the other hand, who have glorified Athens and our ancestors with much ampler and nobler encomiums, should not even be privileged to end my days in peace.
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With regard, then, to this as well as to the other charges of my accuser, I consider that the defense which I have made is a sufficient answer. Nevertheless, I am not going to hesitate to confide in you the truth as to how I now feel about the pending trial and how I felt about it at the first. I was very confident that for myself personally I could make out a good case;
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for I relied upon the character of my life and conduct, and believed that I had no lack of arguments to justify them. But as I observed not only the intolerant feeling toward the teaching of eloquence on the part of those who are churlish toward everyone, but the truculent attitude towards it on the part of my fellow-citizens in general, I began to be afraid that the truth regarding me personally might be overlooked and that I might suffer some harm from the common prejudice against the sophists.
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But as time went on, and I fell to thinking what I should do in the present circumstances, I ceased being fearful and disturbed on this account, not without good reason, but after having weighed the probabilities and reassured myself.
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For I knew that the honest men among you—and it is to those that I shall address myself—do not remain fixed in opinions which they have formed unjustly, but are in quest of the truth and are ready to be convinced by those who plead a just cause; and I believed that I should have abundant grounds to show that philosophy has been unjustly slandered, and that it deserves much more to be held in favor than in contempt; and I am still of the same opinion.
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However, it is not surprising that liberal pursuits have sometimes failed of recognition and regard, nor that some people have been utterly misled about them. In fact we find that this happens in regard to ourselves as well as to other things without number. For our city, which is now and has been in the past the author of so many blessings both to our own people and to the other Hellenes, and which abounds in so many charms, has, nevertheless, a most serious drawback.
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For Athens is so large and the multitude of people living here is so great, that the city does not present to the mind an image easily grasped or sharply defined, but, like a turbid flood, whatever it catches up in its course, whether men or things, in each case it sweeps them along pell-mell, and in some cases it imbues them with a reputation which is the opposite of the true; and exactly that has been the fortune of this system of education.
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You must bear these things in mind, and not pass judgement in any trial without the exercise of reason, nor be as careless when you sit in judgement as you are in your private occupations, but must examine thoroughly each point and search for the truth, mindful of your oaths and of the laws under which you have come together to dispense justice. It is no minor question which is under discussion and on trial here, but the most important in the world. For you are to determine by your votes, not my fate only, but that of a way of life to which many of our youths are devoting their minds.
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I suppose that you are not unaware of the fact that the government of the state is handed on by the older men to the youth of the coming generation; and that since the succession goes on without end, it follows of necessity that as is the education of our youth so from generation to generation will be the fortune of the state. Therefore, you must not let the sycophants have control of a thing so momentous, nor punish those who refuse to pay them money, while permitting those from whom they have received it to do whatever they please.
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But if philosophy has an influence which tends to corrupt our youth, you ought not merely to punish the occasional offender whom some sycophant hales into court but to banish all who are engaged in teaching it. If, however, it has the opposite effect and helps and improves and makes better men of its devotees, then you should call a halt on those who load this study with abuse; you should strip the sycophants of their rewards, and counsel our young men to occupy themselves with this pursuit above all others.
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I would have given a good deal, assuming that I was doomed by fate to defend myself against this charge, if I could have faced this trial in the fullness of my vigor; for in that case I should have felt no misgiving but should have been better able both to protect myself from my accuser and to champion the cause of liberal education. Now, however, I am afraid that, although I have been enabled by this education to speak well enough on other themes, I may find that I have discoursed less ably upon this subject than upon matters which should have concerned me less.
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And yet I would rather lay down my life this day—for you shall have the truth even though the words be inept
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—after having spoken adequately upon this theme and persuaded you to look upon the study of eloquence in its true light, than live many times my allotted span and see it continue to fare among you as it now does.
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My aspiration, then, is much greater than my power to do the subject justice; but yet I shall try as best I can to explain what is the nature of this education, what is its power, what of the other arts it is akin to, what benefit it is to its devotees, and what claims I make for it. For I think that when you know the truth about this you will be in a better position to deliberate and pronounce judgement upon it.
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But I beg of you, if I appear to carry on the discussion in a manner far removed from that which is customary here, not to be impatient but to bear with me,
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remembering that when a man is defending himself on a charge unlike any other, he must resort to a kind of pleading which is out of the ordinary. Be patient, therefore, with the manner of my discourse and with my frankness of speech; permit me to use up the time allotted to my defense; and then cast your ballots as each of you thinks is right and in accordance with the law.
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In my treatment of the art of discourse, I desire, like the genealogists, to start at the beginning.
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It is acknowledged that the nature of man is compounded of two parts, the physical and the mental, and no one would deny that of these two the mind comes first and is of greater worth; for it is the function of the mind to decide both on personal and on public questions, and of the body to be servant to the judgements of the mind.
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Since this is so, certain of our ancestors, long before our time, seeing that many arts had been devised for other things, while none had been prescribed for the body and for the mind, invented and bequeathed to us two disciplines, physical training for the body, of which gymnastics is a part, and, for the mind, philosophy, which I am going to explain.
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These are twin arts—parallel and complementary—by which their masters prepare the mind to become more intelligent and the body to become more serviceable, not separating sharply the two kinds of education, but using similar methods of instruction, exercise, and other forms of discipline.
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For when they take their pupils in hand, the physical trainers instruct their followers in the postures which have been devised for bodily contests, while the teachers of philosophy impart all the forms of discourse in which the mind expresses itself.
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Then, when they have made them familiar and thoroughly conversant with these lessons, they set them at exercises, habituate them to work, and require them to combine in practice the particular things which they have learned, in order that they may grasp them more firmly and bring their theories into closer touch with the occasions for applying them—I say “theories,” for no system of knowledge can possibly cover these occasions, since in all cases they elude our science.
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Yet those who most apply their minds to them and are able to discern the consequences which for the most part grow out of them, will most often meet these occasions in the right way.
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Watching over them and training them in this manner, both the teachers of gymnastic and the teachers of discourse are able to advance their pupils to a point where they are better men and where they are stronger in their thinking or in the use of their bodies. However, neither class of teachers is in possession of a science by which they can make capable athletes or capable orators out of whomsoever they please. They can contribute in some degree to these results, but these powers are never found in their perfection save in those who excel by virtue both of talent and of training.
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I have given you now some impression of what philosophy is. But I think that you will get a still clearer idea of its powers if I tell you what professions I make to those who want to become my pupils.
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I say to them that if they are to excel in oratory or in managing affairs or in any line of work, they must, first of all, have a natural aptitude for that which they have elected to do; secondly, they must submit to training and master the knowledge of their particular subject, whatever it may be in each case; and, finally, they must become versed and practised in the use and application of their art; for only on these conditions can they become fully competent and pre-eminent in any line of endeavor.
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In this process, master and pupil each has his place; no one but the pupil can furnish the necessary capacity; no one but the master, the ability to impart knowledge while both have a part in the exercises of practical application: for the master must painstakingly direct his pupil, and the latter must rigidly follow the master’s instructions.
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Now these observations apply to any and all the arts. If anyone, ignoring the other arts, were to ask me which of these factors has the greatest power in the education of an orator I should answer that natural ability is paramount and comes before all else. For given a man with a mind which is capable of finding out and learning the truth and of working hard and remembering what it learns, and also with a voice and a clarity of utterance which are able to captivate the audience, not only by what he says, but by the music of his words,
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and, finally, with an assurance
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which is not an expression of bravado, but which, tempered by sobriety, so fortifies the spirit that he is no less at ease in addressing all his fellow-citizens than in reflecting to himself—who does not know that such a man might, without the advantage of an elaborate education and with only a superficial and common training, be an orator such as has never, perhaps, been seen among the Hellenes?
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Again, we know that men who are less generously endowed by nature but excel in experience and practice, not only improve upon themselves, but surpass others who, though highly gifted, have been too negligent of their talents. It follows, therefore, that either one of these factors may produce an able speaker or an able man of affairs, but both of them combined in the same person might produce a man incomparable among his fellows.
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These, then, are my views as to the relative importance of native ability and practice. I cannot, however, make a like claim for education; its powers are not equal nor comparable to theirs. For if one should take lessons in all the principles of oratory and master them with the greatest thoroughness, he might, perhaps, become a more pleasing speaker than most, but let him stand up before the crowd and lack one thing only, namely, assurance, and he would not be able to utter a word.
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But let no one of you think that before you I belittle my pretensions, while when I address those who desire to become my pupils I claim every power for my teaching; for it was to avoid just such a charge as this that, when I entered upon my profession, I wrote and published a discourse in which you will find that I attack those who make pretensions which are unwarranted, and set forth my own ideas.
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Now I am not going to quote from it my criticisms of others; for they are too long for the present occasion; but I shall attempt to repeat to you that part in which I express my own views. I begin at this point.
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Isoc. 13.14
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Now this quotation is of a more finished style
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than what has been said before, but its meaning is the same, and this ought to be taken by you as a convincing proof of my honesty; for you see that I did not brag and make big promises when I was young only to speak modestly for my philosophy now that I have reaped the harvest of my labors and am an old man, but that, on the contrary, I speak in the same terms both when I was at the height of my career and now when I am ready to retire from it, both when I had no thought of danger and now when I stand in jeopardy, and both in addressing those who wanted to become my pupils and now in addressing those who are to vote upon my fate. I do not see, therefore, how the sincerity and honesty of my professions could be more clearly shown.
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Let this quotation, then, add its weight to what I have said before. I do not, however, delude myself as to the people who are ill disposed towards my teaching: nothing of what I have said so far is enough to disabuse them of this feeling; and it will take many arguments of all sorts to convert them to a different opinion from that which they now hold.
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Accordingly I must not leave off expounding and speaking until I shall accomplish one of two things—until I have persuaded them to change their views or have proved that the slanders and charges which they repeat against me are false. These charges are of two kinds. Some of them say that the profession of the sophist is nothing but sham and chicane, maintaining that no kind of education has ever been discovered which can improve a man’s ability to speak or his capacity for handling affairs, and that those who excel in these respects owe their superiority to natural gifts;
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while others acknowledge that men who take this training are more able, but complain that they are corrupted and demoralized by it, alleging that when they gain the power to do so, they scheme to get other people’s property. Now there is not a sound or true word in either complaint, as I am very confident that I can prove to everyone.
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First of all I would have you note, in the case of those who assert that education is a sham, that they quite obviously talk rubbish themselves; for while they ridicule it as powerless to help us—nothing but humbug and chicane—at the same time they demand that my pupils show improvement from the moment they come to me;
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that when they have been with me a few days, they must be abler and wiser in speech than those who have the advantage over them both in years and in experience; and that when they have been with me no more than a year, they must all be good and finished orators; nor must the indolent be a whit less accomplished than the industrious, nor they who are lacking in ability than those who are blessed with vigorous minds.