I thought also that I should be applauded by the most cultivated of my hearers if I could
 show that I was more concerned when discoursing on the subject of virtue about doing
 justice to the theme than about the symmetry of my speech and that too, knowing well that
 the lack of due proportion in my speech would detract from my own reputation, while just
 appreciation of their deeds would enhance the fame of those whose praises I sing.
 Nevertheless I bade farewell to expediency and chose justice instead. And you will find that I am of this mind not only in what I am now saying but likewise
 upon all occasions, since it will be seen that I take more pleasure in those of my
 disciples who are distinguished for the character of their lives and deeds than in those
 who are reputed to be able speakers. And yet when they speak well, all men will assign the
 credit to me, even though I contribute nothing to what they say, whereas when they act
 right no man will fail to commend the doer of the deed even though all the world may know
 that it was I who advised him what to do. these last two
 paragraphs show striking use of antithesis and parisosis—devices of rhetoric which at
 the beginning of this discourse he pretends to have outgrown. See Isoc. 12.2 and note. 
 But I do not know whither I am drifting. For this
 rhetorical doubt cf. Isoc. 15.310 . For, because I
 think all the time that I must add the point which logically follows what I have said
 before, I have wandered entirely from my subject. There is, therefore, nothing left for me
 to do but to crave indulgence to old age for my forgetfulness and prolixity—faults which
 are wont to be found in men of my years—and go back to the place from which I fell into
 this garrulous strain. For I think that I now see the point from which I strayed. I was speaking in reply to
 those who reproach us with the misfortunes of the Melians and of villages with like
 populations, not meaning that we had done no wrong in these instances, but trying to show
 that those who are the idols of these speakers have laid waste more and greater cities
 than the Athenians have done, in which connection I discussed the virtues of Agamemnon and
 Menelaus and Nestor, saying nothing that was not true, though passing, mayhap, the bounds
 of moderation. But I did this, supposing that it would be apparent that there could be no greater crime
 than that of those who dared lay waste the cities which bred and reared such great men,
 about whom even now one might say many noble things. But it is perhaps foolish to linger
 upon a single point, as if there were any lack, as if there were not, on the contrary, a
 superabundance of things to say about the cruelty and the harshness of the Lacedaemonians.