Nay, everyone is aware of this also, that there is a superabundance of men who produce speeches for litigants in the courts. Nevertheless you will not find that any one of them, numerous as they are, has ever been thought worthy to have pupils, while I, as my accuser states, have had more than all the rest together who are occupied with philosophy. Yet how can anyone think that people who are so far apart in their ways of life are engaged in the same occupations?

But although I could point out many contrasts between my own career and that of the pleaders in the courts, I believe that the quickest way to disabuse your mind of this confusion would be to show that people do not study under me what my accuser says they do, and that I am not clever at the kind of oratory which has to do with private disputes.

For I think, now that the charge under which I formerly labored has been disproved, you are anxious to change your attitude and want to hear from me what sort of eloquence it is which has occupied me and given me so great a reputation. Whether, indeed, it is going to profit me to speak the truth, I am not sure; for it is hard to conjecture what is in your thoughts. Yet, for all that, I am going to speak to you absolutely without reserve.

For I should blush before my associates, if, after having told them again and again that I should be glad to have everyone of my fellow-citizens know the life I lead and the speeches which I compose, I did not now lay them open before you, but appeared rather to attempt to hide them away. Be assured, therefore, that you shall hear from me the whole truth, and in this spirit give me your attention.

First of all, then, you should know that there are no fewer branches of composition in prose than in verse. For some men have devoted their lives to researches in the genealogies of the demi-gods; others have made studies in the poets; others have elected to compose histories of wars; while still others have occupied themselves with dialogue,Elsewhere called disputation (“eristic”). See General Introd. p. xxi. and are called dialecticians.