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Now if, after examining and reviewing all these admonitions in your own mind, you feel that my discourse is in any part rather weak and inadequate,For like apologies see Isoc. 15.9; Isoc. 12.4; Isoc. Letter 6.6. set it down to my age, which might well claim the indulgence of all; but if it is up to the standard of my former publications, I would have you believe that it was not my old age that conceived it but the divine will that prompted it, not out of solicitude for me, but because of its concern for Hellas, and because of its desire to deliver her out of her present distress and to crown you with a glory far greater than you now possess.
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I think that you are not unaware in what manner the gods order the affairs of mortals: for not with their own hands do they deal out the blessings and curses that befall us; rather they inspire in each of us such a state of mind that good or ill, as the case may be,
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is visited upon us through one another. For example, it may be that even now the gods have assigned to me the task of speech while to you they allot the task of action,Cf. Isoc. Letter 9.17. considering that you will be the best master in that province, while in the field of speech I might prove least irksome to my hearers. Indeed, I believe that even your past achievements would never have reached such magnitude had not one of the gods helped you to succeed;
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and I believe he did so, not that you might spend your whole life warring upon the barbarians in Europe alone, but that, having been trained and having gained experience and come to know your own powers in these campaigns, you might set your heart upon the course which I have urged upon you. It were therefore shameful, now that fortune nobly leads the way, to lag behind and refuse to follow whither she desires to lead you forward.
