And you will deserve this reward; for you have extolled both these cities well and
 fittingly—Athens, according to the acclaim of the majority, which no man of note has ever
 disdained, while all men in their craving to obtain it are ready to submit themselves to
 any hazard whatsoever; but Sparta , according
 to the reasoning of those who endeavor to aim at the truth, whose good opinion some would
 choose in preference to that of all the rest of the world, even were mankind to number
 twice as many as now. “I am insatiable in my desire to speak on the present occasion and I still have many
 things which I might say concerning you and these two cities and your discourse, but I
 shall forgo these subjects and declare myself only upon the question about which, as you
 say, you called me in to advise you. I counsel you, then, not to burn or to suppress your
 discourse, but—if there be any need of so doing—to revise and supplement it and then give
 to those who desire it the benefit of all the time and pains which you have spent upon its
 composition, if indeed you wish to gratify the worthiest among the Hellenes—those who are in truth
 devoted to culture and do not merely pretend to it—and to annoy those who secretly admire
 your writings above all others but malign your discourses before the crowds at the
 national festivals, in which those who sleep outnumber those who listen; Cf. Isoc. 5.12 . for these
 speakers hope that if only they can hoodwink such audiences their own compositions will
 rival yours in popular favour, little realizing that their work is farther below the level
 of yours than the poets who have essayed to compose in the manner of Homer fall short of
 his reputation.” When he had said these things and had asked those present to express their opinion on
 the question about which they had been called in, they did not merely accord him the
 applause with which they were wont to greet a clever speech but signified by tumultuous
 shouts that he had spoken excellently; they crowded around him, praised him, envied him,
 congratulated him, and found nothing to add to what he had said or to subtract therefrom,
 but showed that they were of his opinion and advised me to do the very thing which he had
 urged. Nor did I, for my part, stand silently by; on the contrary, I praised both his native
 ability and his training, although beyond that I uttered not a word about the sentiments
 which he had expressed, as to how his conjecture had hit upon my purpose or missed the
 mark, but let him remain of the same opinion which he had formed for himself.