Panegyrica by Isocrates
436-338 BCE
Love of wisdom, then,
which has helped us to discover
and helped establish all that makes Athens great,
which has educated us for practical affairs
and made gentle our relations with each other,
which has distinguished misfortunes of ignorance
from those of necessity
and taught us to guard against the former
and bear up against the latter,
this love of wisdom our city made manifest
and honored speech,
which all desire
and envy those who know,
recognizing, on the one hand,
that this is the natural feature distinguishing us from all animals
and that, through that advantage it gives us, we excel them in all other things,
and seeing, on the other hand,
that in other areas fortune is troublesome
so that in those areas the wise fail
and the ignorant succeed,
and that there is no share of noble and artistic speech to the wicked,
but it is the product of a well-knowing soul,
and that the wise and those seemingly unlearned most differ from each other in this
and that those educated liberally, right from the start, are not recognized
by courage and wealth and such benefits,
but most by what has been said,
and that those who use speech well are not only powerful in their own cities,
but also honored among other men;
and to such an extent had our city outstripped the rest of mankind in wisdom and speech
that her students have become the teachers of others,
and she has made the name of the Hellenes seem no longer that of a people,
but that of an intelligence,
and that those rather are called Greeks
who share our education