Nicocles or the Cyprians (11-15)

On the former topic, how a ruler should act, you have heard Isocrates speak; on the following topic, what his subjects must do, I shall attempt to discourse, not with any thought of excelling him, but because this is the most fitting subject for me to discuss with you. For if I did not make clear what I desire you to do, I could not reasonably be angry with you if you were to mistake my purpose; but if, after I have announced my policy beforehand, none of my desires are carried out, then I should justly blame those who fail to obey me.

And I believe that I should most effectively exhort you and urge you to remember my words and heed them, not if I should confine myself to giving you advice and then, after counting out my precepts, make an end, but if, before doing this, I should prove to you, first, that you ought to be content with our present government, not only from necessity, nor because we have lived under it all our lives, but because it is the best of all governments;

and, second, that I hold this office, not illegally nor as a usurper, but with the just sanction of gods and men, and by virtue of my earliest ancestors, and of my father and of myself. For, once these claims have been established, who will not condemn himself to the severest punishment if he fails to heed my counsels and commands?

Speaking, then, of forms of government (for this was the subject I set out to lay before you), I imagine that we all believe that it is altogether monstrous[*] that the good and the bad should be thought worthy of the same privileges, and that it is of the very essence of justice that distinctions should be made between them, and that those who are unlike should not be treated alike but should fare and be rewarded in each case according to their deserts.

Now oligarchies and democracies seek equality for those who share in the administration of them; and the doctrine is in high favor in those governments that one man should not have the power to get more than another—a principle which works in the interest of the worthless! Monarchies, on the other hand, make the highest award to the best man, the next highest to the next best, and in the same proportion to the third and the fourth and so on. Even if this practice does not obtain everywhere, such at least is the intention of the polity.