[3]
Now, however, I have completely given up these devices of rhetoric.1 For I do not think it is becoming to the ninety-four years which I have lived nor, in general, to men whose hair has at length turned to grey2 to continue to speak in this fashion, but rather in the manner which every man, should he so desire, would hope to command, although no man can easily attain it without hard work and close application.
1 An exaggeration. They abound in this discourse, but his earlier efforts were more ornate. Cf. Isoc. 5.27-28, and Isoc. 15.195.
2 An echo of Plat. Apol. 17.