Antidosis (6-10)

But when my eyes were opened, as I have said, to the fact that a greater number than I supposed had mistaken ideas about me, I began to ponder how I could show to them and to posterity the truth about my character, my life, and the education to which I am devoted, and not suffer myself to be condemned on these issues without a trial nor to remain, as I had just been, at the mercy of my habitual calumniators.

And as I kept thinking upon it, I came ever to the same conclusion, namely, that the only way in which I could accomplish this was to compose a discourse which would be, as it were, a true image of my thought and of my whole life; for I hoped that this would serve both as the best means of making known the truth about me and, at the same time, as a monument, after my death, more noble than statues of bronze.[*]

I saw, however, that if I were to attempt a eulogy of myself, I should not be able to cover all the points which I proposed to discuss, nor should I succeed in treating them without arousing the displeasure or even the envy of my hearers. But it occurred to me that if I were to adopt the fiction of a trial and of a suit brought against me—if I were to suppose that a sycophant[*] had brought an indictment and was threatening me with trouble[*] and that he was using the calumnies which had been urged against me in the suit about the exchange of property, while I, for my part, cast my speech in the form of a defense in court—in this way it would be possible to discuss to the best advantage all the points which I wanted to make.

With these thoughts in mind I set myself to write this discourse—I who am no longer in the prime of youth but in my eighty-second year. Wherefore, you may well forgive me if my speech appears to be less vigorous[*] than those which I have published in the past.

For, I assure you, it has not been an easy nor a simple task, but one of great difficulty; for while some things in my discourse are appropriate to be spoken in a court-room, others are out of place amid such controversies, being frank discussions about philosophy and expositions of its power. There is in it, also, matter which it would be well for young men to hear before they set out to gain knowledge and an education; and there is much, besides, of what I have written in the past, inserted in the present discussion, not without reason nor without fitness, but with due appropriateness to the subject in hand.