8
and, lastly, I have been ranked, not among those who are despised or ignored, but among those whom the most cultivated of the Hellenes will recall and talk about as men of consequence and worth. And yet, although I have been blessed with all these gifts, some in surpassing, others in sufficient measure, I am not content to live on these terms; on the contrary, my old age is so morose and captious and discontented that I have oftentimes before this found fault with my nature,
9
which no other man has contemned, and have deplored my fortune, although I have had no complaint against it other than that the philosophy which I have chosen to pursue has been the object of unfortunate and unscrupulous attacks.Such as are described at the beginning of the Isoc. 15.. As to my nature, however, I realized that it was not robust and vigorous enough for public affairs and that it was not adequate nor altogether suited to public discourse, and that, furthermore, although it was better able to form a correct judgement of the truth of any matter than are those who claim to have exact knowledge,See General Introduction; Isoc. 13.7 ff. yet for expounding the truth before an assemblage of many people it was, if I may say so, the least competent in all the world.
10
For I was born more lacking in the two things which have the greatest power in Athens—a strong voice and ready assuranceCf. Isoc. 5.81 and note; Isoc. Letter 1.9 ff.; Isoc. Letter 8.7; and Aristoph. Kn. 217 ff.: τὰ δ′ ἄλλα σοι πρόσεστι δημαγωγικά, φωνὴ μιαρά, γέγονας κακῶς, ἀγόραιος εἶ· ἐχεις ἅπαντα πρὸς πολιτείαν ἃ δεῖ.—than, I dare say, any of my fellow-citizens. And those who are not endowed with these are condemned to go about in greater obscurity so far as public recognition is concerned than those who owe money to the state;An unpaid fine entailed disfranchisement in Athens. for the latter have still the hope of paying off the fine assessed against them, whereas the former can never change their nature.
