4
yet they do not occupy themselves with the most vital part of philosophy. Those, on the contrary, who point out to the young, not by what means they may cultivate skill in oratory, but how they may win repute as men of sound character, are rendering a greater serviceHermogenes, Περὶ μεθόδου δεινότητος, 25, refers to this introduction as an example of inoffensive self-laudation in the orators. to their hearers in that, while the former exhort them to proficiency in speech, the latter improve their moral conduct.For Isocrates’ insistence on right conduct as the end of education see Introduction, p. xxv.
5
Therefore, I have not invented a hortatoryThis discourse is really hortatory in the general sense of that word, but Isocrates distinguishes it from hortatory (“protreptic”) discourses of the sophists, which were lectures to stimulate interest in whatever kind of learning they professed to teach, commonly oratory. exercise, but have written a moral treatise; and I am going to counsel you on the objects to which young men should aspire and from what actions they should abstain, and with what sort of men they should associate and how they should regulate their own lives. For only those who have travelled this road in life have been able in the true sense to attain to virtue—that possession which is the grandest and the most enduring in the world.
