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when you have brought the Hellenes to feel toward you as you see the Lacedaemonians feel toward their kings,See Isoc. Letter 2.6. and as your companions feel toward yourself. And it is not difficult for you to attain this if you determine to show yourself equally friendly to all, and cease treating some of the cities as friends and others as strangers, and if, furthermore, you fix your choice upon the kind of policy by which you can make yourself trusted by the Hellenes and feared by the barbarians.
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And do not be surprised (as I said in my letter to Dionysius after he had made himself master of Sicily) that I, who am not a general nor a public orator nor in any other position of authority, have expressed myself to you more boldly than the others. The fact is that nature has placed me more at a disadvantage than any of my fellow-citizens for a public career:Isocrates dwells on his disabilities repeatedly. Cf. Isoc. Letter 1.9; Isoc. Letter 8.7; and Isoc. 12.9-10. See General Introd. p. xix. I was not given a strong enough voice nor sufficient assurance to enable me to deal with the mob, to take abuse, and bandy words with the men who haunt the rostrum;
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but, though some will condemn my taste in saying so, I do lay claim to sane judgement and good education, and I would count myself in comparison with others not among the last, but among the foremost. And that is why I endeavor in this way, for which my nature and powers are suited, to give advice to Athens and to the Hellenes at large and to the most distinguished among men.
