[267]
I entered upon it at the age which I have already stated at the beginning.1 But when I had written half of it, I was attacked by a malady which it is not decorous to name,2 but which is powerful enough to carry off in the course of three or four days not only older people but many in the prime of life. I battled against this disease without respite for three years, and I passed every day of that time with such devotion to my work that those who knew of my industry as well as those who learned of it from them admired me more because of this fortitude than because of the things for which I had formerly been praised.
1 See Isoc. 12.3.
2 Coray conjectures that the malady was dysentery.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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