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The fact, then, that our city was governed in those times better than the rest of the world I would justly credit to her kings, of whom I spoke a moment ago. For it was they who trained the multitude in the ways of virtue and justice and great sobriety and who taught through the manner of their rule the very truth which I shall be seen to have expressed in words after they had expressed it in their deeds, namely, that every polity is the soul of the state, having as much power over it as the mind over the body. For it is this which deliberates on all questions, seeking to preserve what is good and to avoid what is disastrous,1 and is the cause of all the things which transpire in states.
1 Repeated from Isoc. 7.14.
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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