310
Many ideas crowd into my thoughts, but I do not know how I can make place for them; for it seems to me that while every point which I have in mind would appeal to you if I presented it by itself, yet if I attempted to discuss them all at this time, I should put too great a strain both upon myself and upon my hearers. Indeed I fear that in what I have already said to you I may have fatigued you by speaking at such length.
311
For we are all so insatiable in discourse that while we prize due measure and affirm that there is nothing so precious, yet when we think that we have something of importance to say, we throw moderation to the winds, and go on adding point after point until little by little we involve ourselves in utter irrelevancies. Why, at the very moment that I say this and recognize its truth, I desire, nevertheless, to speak to you at greater length!
312
For I am grieved to see the sycophant’s trade faring better than philosophy—the one attacking, the other on the defensive. Who of the men of old could have anticipated that things would come to this pass, in Athens, of all places, where we more than others plume ourselves on our wisdom?
313
Things were not like that in the time of our ancestors; on the contrary, they admired the sophists, as they called them, and envied the good fortune of their disciples, while they blamed the sycophants for most of their ills. You will find the strongest proof of this in the fact that they saw fit to put Solon, who was the first of the Athenians to receive the title of sophist, at, the head of the state, while they applied to the sycophants more stringent laws than to other criminals;