[45]
Accordingly, they believed that by removing the root of evil they would deliver the young from the sins which spring from it. On the other hand, they compelled those who possessed sufficient means to devote themselves to horsemanship,1 athletics,2 hunting,3 and philosophy,4 observing that by these pursuits some are enabled to achieve excellence, others to abstain from many vices.
1 That is, in training for the races at the festivals.
2 There were three gymnasiums in Athens: the Lyceum, the Academy, and the Cynosarges.
3 In Aristoph. Kn. 1382 ff., the reformed Demos declares that it will henceforth make all these demagogues take to hunting and give up concocting “decrees” for the Assembly.
4 The cultivated life. See Isoc. 4.47 ff.
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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