so now too I ask this of you, as fair, it seems to me: let my manner of speaking pass (perhaps it is worse, perhaps better), and look at this alone, and turn your mind to it: whether what I say is just or not. For that is the virtue of a judge, and the virtue of a speaker is to tell the truth.

The opening ends with a definition, and it divides the work in the room. The jurors' job is to judge justice; the speaker's is to tell the truth. Style belongs to neither. Aretē, usually "virtue," means the excellence proper to a thing, what makes a knife a good knife or a horse a good horse. Socrates gives a short account of what makes a good juror and a good speaker, and leaves the jury to apply it. The last words of the opening, t'alēthē legein, "to tell the truth," pick up the first sentence's charge that his accusers said nothing true. The speech that follows tries to prove it.