Many times have I wondered at those who first convoked the national assemblies and
 established the athletic games, Pan-Hellenic gatherings at
 the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian games, including also the Pan-atheniac
 festival at Athens . See Gardner and Jevons, Manual of Greek
 Antiquities, pp. 269 ff. amazed that they should have thought the
 prowess of men's bodies to be deserving of so great bounties, while to those who had
 toiled in private for the public good and trained their own minds so as to be able to help
 also their fellow-men they apportioned no reward whatsoever, This is not quite exact (see Lys. 33.2 ), nor
 consistent with § 45 where he mentions contests of intellect and prizes for them. But
 the mild interest which these evoked served but to emphasize the excess of enthusiasm
 for athletics against which Isocrates here and elsewhere protests. Cf. Isoc. 15.250 and Isoc. Letter
 8.5 . The complaint is older than Isocrates. See Xenophanes, Fr. 19. 
 when, in all reason, they ought rather to have made provision for the latter; for if all
 the athletes should acquire twice the strength which they now possess, the rest of the
 world would be no better off; but let a single man attain to wisdom, and all men will reap
 the benefit who are willing to share his insight. Yet I have not on this account lost heart nor chosen to abate my labors; on the
 contrary, believing that I shall have a sufficient reward in the approbation which my
 discourse will itself command, I have come before you to give my counsels on the war
 against the barbarians and on concord among ourselves. I am, in truth, not unaware that
 many of those who have claimed to be sophists For the
 meaning of the word “sophist” see General Introd. p. xii. The word is commonly
 translated “orator,” since the sophists concerned themselves mainly with exemplifying
 and teaching oratory; but the sophist speaks only on the lecture platform; the political
 orator is called a “rhetor” in Isocrates. Gorgias and Lysias in their Olympic orations
 had spoken on this theme, but it is hardly probable that Isocrates had them particularly
 in mind in this patronizing remark. 
 have rushed upon this theme, but I hope to rise so far superior to them that it will seem
 as if no word had ever been spoken by my rivals upon this subject; and, at the same time,
 I have singled out as the highest kind of oratory Cf. Lys. 33.3 . For Isocrates, idea of the highest oratory see General
 Introd. p. xxiv. that which deals with the greatest affairs and, while best
 displaying the ability of those who speak, brings most profit to those who hear; and this
 oration is of that character. In the next place, the moment for action has not yet gone by, and so made it now futile
 to bring up this question; for then, and only then, should we cease to speak, when the
 conditions have come to an end and there is no longer any need to deliberate about them,
 or when we see that the discussion of them is so complete that there is left to others no
 room to improve upon what has been said.