[-16-] “All provisions that I was required to make for the war have received due attention, fellow-soldiers, in advance.  First, there is your immense throng, all the chosen flower of our dependents and allies; and to such a degree are you masters of every form of combat recognized among us that alone by yourselves you are formidable to adversaries.  Then again, you yourselves can see how large and how fine a fleet we have and how many fine hoplites, cavalry, slingers, peltasts, archers, mounted archers.  Most of these classes are not found at all on the other side, and so far as they are found they are much fewer and weaker than ours.  The funds of the enemy are small, though obtained by forced contributions, and can not last long, while they have rendered the contributors better disposed toward us than toward the men who took them; hence the population is in no way favorable to the oppressors and is moreover on the point of open revolt.  Our treasury, filled from abundant resources, has harmed no one and will aid all of us. [-17-] In addition to these considerations so numerous and of such great importance I am on general principles disinclined to make any bombastic statement about myself.  Yet since this too is one of the factors contributing to supremacy in war and is believed among all men to be of greatest importance,—­I mean that men who are to fight well must secure an excellent general—­necessity itself has rendered quite indispensable some remarks about myself, their purpose being to enable you to realize still more the fact that not only are you such soldiers that you could conquer even without a good leader, but I am such a leader that I can win even with poor soldiers.  I am at that age when persons attain their greatest perfection both of body and intellect and suffer deterioration neither through the rashness of youth nor the feebleness of old age, but are strongest because in a condition half-way between the two.  Moreover I possess such a nature and such a training that I can with greatest ease discern what requires to be done and make it known.  Experience, which causes even the ignorant and the uneducated to appear to be of some value, I have been acquiring through my whole political and whole military career.  From boyhood till now I have been continually exercised in similar pursuits; I have been much ruled and done much ruling, from which I have learned on the one hand what kind of orders and of what magnitude must be issued, and on the other how far and in what way one must render obedience.  I have been subject to terror, to confidence:  as a result I have made it my custom neither to entertain any fear too readily nor to venture on any hazard too heedlessly.  I have met with good fortune, I have met with failure:  consequently I find it possible to avoid both despair and excess of pride.