And how great must we think will be the name and the fame and the glory which they will
 enjoy during their lives, or, if they die in battle, will leave behind them—they who will
 have won the meed of honor in such an enterprise? For if those who made war against an
 Alexander Another name for Paris . and took a single city were accounted worthy of such
 praise, what encomiums should we expect these men to win who have conquered the whole of
 Asia? For who that is skilled to sing or trained to speak will not labor and study in his
 desire to leave behind a memorial both of his own genius and of their valor, for all time
 to come? I am not at the present moment of the same mind as I was at the beginning of my speech.
 For then I thought that I should be able to speak in a manner worthy of my theme; now,
 however, I have not risen to its grandeur, and many of the thoughts which I had in mind to
 utter have escaped me. Therefore you must come to my aid and try to picture to yourselves
 what vast prosperity we should attain if we should turn the war which now involves
 ourselves against the peoples of the continent, and bring the prosperity of Asia across to
 Europe . And you must not depart to your homes as men who have merely listened to an oration; nay,
 those among you who are men of action must exhort one another to try to reconcile our city
 with Lacedaemon ; and those among you who make
 claims to eloquence must stop composing orations on “deposits,” The translation is influenced by Professor Bonner’s note on τὴν παρακαταθήκην in Classical Philology, 
 xv. p. 385. He argues convincingly that τὴν
 παρακαταθήκην is not a particular deposit but that the article is “generic,
 not specific.” Deposits entrusted by one man with another were rather common
 transactions before the days of banks and caused frequent lawsuits. Hence “the deposit
 theme” became a hackneyed exercise in the schools of rhetoric. It is, in the opinion of
 Isocrates, too commonplace and trivial for serious oratory. or on the other
 trivial themes “Humble bees and salt” are mentioned in
 Isoc. 10.12 as subjects on which speakers show off their
 powers to the neglect of worthy themes. In general, he seems here to be thinking of such
 rhetorical tours de force as Lucian caricatures in his Encomium on the House
 Fly . which now engage your efforts, and center your rivalry on this
 subject and study how you may surpass me in speaking on the same question, bearing ever in mind that it does not become men who promise great things to waste their
 time on little things, This very complaint he makes of his
 rival sophists. See Isoc. 13.1 , 10. nor yet to make
 the kind of speeches which will improve no whit the lives of those whom they convince, but
 rather the kind which, if carried out in action, will both deliver the authors themselves
 from their present distress Not too urbanely he dwells upon
 the poverty of his rivals. Cf. Isoc. 13.4 , 7. and win
 for them the credit of bringing to pass great blessings for the rest of the world. The kind of discourse to which Isocrates himself devoted his
 serious efforts. See Isoc. 12.11 and General Introd. p.
 xxiv.