But in truth it was with good reason that I deplored at the beginning of my speech the
 misfortune which has attended me all my life in this respect. For this is the cause of the
 false reports which are spread about me, of the calumny and prejudice which I suffer, and
 of my failure to attain the reputation which I deserve—either that which should be mine by
 common consent or that in which I am held by certain of my disciples who have known me
 through and through. However, this cannot now be changed and I must needs put up with what has already come to
 pass. Many things come to my mind, but I am at a loss just what to do. Should I turn upon
 my enemies and denounce those who are accustomed always to speak falsely of me and do not
 scruple to say things which are repugnant to my nature? But if I showed that I took them
 seriously and wasted many words on men whom no one conceives to be worthy of notice I
 should justly be regarded as a simpleton. Should I, then, ignore these sophists and defend myself against those of the lay public
 who are prejudiced against me, attempting to convince them that it is neither just nor
 fitting for them to feel towards me as they do? But who would not impute great folly to
 me, if, in dealing with men who are hostile to me for no other reason than that I appear
 to have discoursed cleverly on certain subjects, I thought that by speaking just as I have
 spoken in the past I should stop them from taking offence at what I say and should not
 instead add to their annoyance, especially if it should appear that even now at this
 advanced age I have not ceased from “speaking rubbish”? But neither would anyone, I am sure, advise me to neglect this subject and, breaking off
 in the midst of it, to go on and finish the discourse which I elected to write in my
 desire to prove that our city had been the cause of more blessings to the Hellenes than
 the city of the Lacedaemonians. For if I should now proceed to do this without bringing
 what I have written to any conclusion and without joining the beginning of what is to be
 said to the end of what has been spoken, I should be thought to be no better than those
 who speak in a random, slovenly, and scattering manner whatever comes into their heads to
 say. And this I must guard against. The best course, therefore, that I can take under all these conditions is to set before
 you what I think about the last attempts Obviously he
 resents bitterly some attack upon him in recent years. Possibly it came from the
 “Eristics,” to the value of whose teaching he makes a condescending concession in Isoc. 12.26 . These are not the “Eristics” mentioned in
 Against the Sophists (see Isoc. 13.1-8 and
 notes), who belong to an earlier period, but those referred to in Isoc. 15.258 and Isoc. Letter 5.3 ff. —namely
 Aristotle and his followers who had been hard on Isocrates (see Blass, Die
 attische Beredsamkeit ii. p. 65). This is supported by the fact that the
 critics here referred to frequented the Lyceum. Blass, however (ii. pp. 68, 69), thinks
 that Isocrates has here in mind especially Speusippus. to arouse prejudice
 against me and then proceed to speak on the subject which I had in mind from the first.
 For I think that if I succeed by my writing in bringing out and making clear what my views
 are about education and about the poets, I shall stop my enemies from fabricating false
 charges and speaking utterly at random.