Isocrates

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Isocrates (436-338 B.C.) was the fourth of the famous 10 Attic Greek orators. Though not an original thinker, he was an exceptional speech writer and teacher who exerted great influence on his contemporaries.

Isocrates was one of five children of Theodorus of Erchia, a flute manufacturer, and his wife Heduto. He received an excellent education along traditional lines but was also acquainted with the new sophistic learning. When the disastrous Peloponnesian War wiped out his father's estate, Isocrates turned to writing forensic speeches for others. He himself did not speak in public or participate directly in politics because of a weak voice and bashfulness.

Isocrates apparently taught rhetoric at Chios and returned to Athens in 403 B.C. In 392 B.C. he founded his famous school, near the Lyceum, which drew students from all over Greece and at which he taught till after 351 B.C. Among his students were the general Timotheus; the historians Theopompus and Ephorus; Nicocles, King of Cyprus; the orators Isaeus, Hyperides, and Lycurgus; and the philosopher Speusippus. The last period of his unusually long and productive life was devoted to writing.

His Works

Though some 60 of Isocrates's works were known to the ancients, only 21 have survived. His style is most remarkable, characterized by pure diction, rhythm, complex structure, and smooth vocabulary, with unusually careful avoidance of dissonance of every kind.

Of the surviving works, six are forensic speeches: Against Lochites, Aegineticus, Against Euthynus, Trapeziticus, Span of Horses, and Callimachus. Three exhortations, To Demonicus and To Nicocles (374 B.C.) and Nicocles (372 B.C.), treat of ethics and reflect the morality of the times and some of the more advanced ideas of Isocrates. Three works are encomia (epideictic oratory): Busiris (391 B.C.), Helen (370 B.C.), and Evagoras (365 B.C.). The famous Panathenaicus (342-339 B.C.), which is educational and political in nature, may also be classified as epideictic.

The six political treatises that involve principally Athenian government and politics are Panegyricus (ca. 380 B.C.), Plataicus (373 B.C.), Archidamus (366 B.C.), Peace (355 B.C.), Areopagiticus (355 B.C.), and Philip (346 B.C.). Nine letters are also extant: to Dionysius, to Philip (two), to Antipater, to Alexander, to the Sons of Jason, to Timotheus, to Rulers of Mytilene, and to Archidamus. His two educational works are Against the Sophists (390 B.C.) and Antidosis (355/353 B.C.), in the first case directed against the Sophists and in the second case a defense of his own life and profession.

Thought and Contributions

Isocrates was a firm believer in subordinating the parts to the whole, and in rhetorical composition he looked to the effect of the whole. It is Isocrates who determined the form of rhetorical prose for the ancient Greek and even the Roman world (through Cicero). Though never a politician himself, Isocrates believed that a proper education should equip a person for proper conduct in public as well as private life. Ideas, he believed, were of no value unless they were realized in the actual world.

Described as a pamphleteer and publicist, Isocrates saw himself as molding public opinion and directing political action through his work. For him education was "the cultivation of the art of discourse," which he saw as involving not merely verbal expression but reason, feeling, and imagination.

In politics Isocrates dreamed of a Hellenism that would unite the free Greek states against the common enemy, Persia, but in cultural terms he perceived Hellenism as a brotherhood of culture going beyond all racial boundaries. He clearly saw the East-West conflict rooted in history. In the Panegyricus he looked to Athens as the mother of civilization and of free institutions to provide pan-Hellenic leadership; but with the rise of Thebes and a futile appeal to Dionysius of Syracuse in 368 B.C., he desperately appealed to the Spartan king Archidamus in 356 B.C., only to be disappointed.

In his Address to Philip it becomes clear that Isocrates had lost all hope that the Greek states would exercise the united action and wisdom that was needed for a united Greece. Isocrates rightly saw that Philip of Macedon was in a position to do this as well as lead an effective force against Persia, and it must be more than a remarkable coincidence that a year after the Battle of Chaeronea (338 B.C.) the Greek states united under Philip against Persia in a way set down in the Panegyricus and in the Address to Philip.

Further Reading

The most conveniently available edition of Isocrates's works is in the three-volume Loeb Library edition, the first two volumes translated by George Norlin (1928-1929) and the last by La Rue Van Hook (1945). George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (1963), is an excellent study that includes a discussion of Isocrates within the history of Greek oratory. Costas M. Proussis' article "The Orator: Isocrates" in Paul Nash, Andreas M. Kazamias, and Henry J. Perkinson, eds., The Educated Man (1965), is a fine description of Isocrates's educational ideas. R. C. Jebb, The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos (2 vols., 1876; 2d ed. 1893), is a standard work for the specialist.

Īsocratēs (436–338 BC), Athenian orator.

1. Hampered by physical weakness, Isocrates played no direct part in the political affairs of his city, but his written speeches no doubt influenced public opinion and provide a valuable commentary on the issues of the day. He was the son of a wealthy Athenian, Theodorus, and fell under the influence of Socrates. (Plato in the Phaedrus, writing when Isocrates had become famous, represents Socrates at an earlier period prophesying the young man's future greatness either as an orator or as a philosopher.) He studied under Prodicus, Gorgias, and Teisias (see ORATORY 1 and SOPHISTS) and the moderate oligarch Theramenēs. His family lost its fortune in the latter part of the Peloponnesian War, and Isocrates appears to have fled from the tyranny of the Thirty to Chios, where he taught rhetoric, and to have returned to Athens on the restoration of democracy. For a period he wrote speeches for others to use in the courts. (Orations 16–21 belong to this period.) In about 392 he opened a school at Athens and also began to write political discourses. The school was distinguished from those of the sophists by the greater breadth of education it gave and by its emphasis on morals; also by its method, which relied greatly on the efforts and hard work of the pupils themselves. It became famous, and pupils from all parts of the Greek world came to it, including the historians Ephorus and Theopompus, Androtion the atthidographer (see ATTHIS), the orators Hypereidēs and Isaeus, and the politician Timotheus (2).

The political writings of Isocrates were chiefly devoted to the cause of Greek unity. When his appeal in the Panegyricus met with no success (see 5 below), his panhellenism took another form: he sought a strong man to assume the leadership of a united Greece in an expedition against Persia, his chief hope lying in Philip II of Macedon (see Philippus, 5 below). His political speeches (or rather, essays cast in the form of speeches, for they were intended to be read) also include other topics of a more limited scope. Isocrates died at a great age shortly after the Athenian defeat by Philip at Chaeronea in 338 BC, it is said by starving himself to death when his third appeal to Philip failed.

2. Isocrates was the first orator of significance to treat rhetorical prose as a work of art (compare GORGIAS). His rhetoric is of a literary character rather than practical oratory. His sentences are long and flowing, the periods complex and highly wrought so that clarity is sacrificed to form; his avoidance of hiatus and of dissonance is almost total. This is Attic prose at its most elaborate. Owing to the popularity of his school, his influence on literature, Latin as well as Greek, was long-lasting, extending to Cicero. Nine letters (some of which may not be genuine) and twenty-one of his speeches survive.

3. Of the epideictic pieces, the Busiris (c.390) and the Encomium of Helen (written in the 380s), are criticisms of the works of other rhetoricians, in which he shows how the themes should have been handled; the Evagoras is an encomium on a king of Salamis (in Cyprus) who had recently died (374); the Panathēnāicus, begun when he was ninety-four and completed three years later, perhaps for delivery and publication at the time of the Panathenaic festival of 342, is mainly a laudatory historical review of the deeds and constitution of Athens.

4. Of the two essays on education, Against the Sophists (391 or 390) and On the Antidosis (353), the first is a protest against what he feels to be the narrow and futile instruction given by the sophists and an exposition of his own principles of teaching. The second is a defence of himself and his educational method, and the chief source of our knowledge of his system of education.

5. The political writings are his most important. The Panegyricus (‘festival oration’), his version of a conventional subject treated by Gorgias and Lysias (see 1 above), was published in 380 after ten years of composition. It is in structure and expression perhaps his greatest work. Its theme, a plea for the union of the Greek city-states under the joint hegemony of Athens and Sparta, is supported by a historical review. The Philippus, written in 346, is generally considered the most important of his works. It is an appeal to Philip II of Macedon as a Hellene and descendant of Heracles to unite the Greek states under his leadership and undertake an expedition against the Persians. The Platāicus, written in 373 after the seizure and destruction of Plataea by the Theban Nīcoclēs, is a plea for Athenian retaliation purporting to be spoken by a Plataean to the Athenian assembly. On the Peace (Lat. De pace), written shortly before the Social War ended in 355 with Athens' failure to retain her League, is a denunciation of an imperialist policy as a way to bankruptcy; Isocrates urges, in place of the limited peace being made with the allies, a Common Peace, and the foundation of colonies in Thrace as a way out of economic difficulties. It is inspired by strong feeling, and is the most vigorous of Isocrates' speeches, a companion piece to the Revenues of Xenophon. Both works illuminate the policies of Eubulus. The Archidamus (366) purports to be spoken by the future Spartan king (Archidamus III) on the Theban proposal that, as a condition of peace, Sparta shall recognize the independence of Messenē. In the Areopagīticus, probably written in 355, Isocrates contrasts the degenerate Athenian democracy of his day with the earlier democracy of Solon and Cleisthenes, with particular reference to the function, formerly exercised by the Areopagus, of censor of public morals. (John Milton's Areopagitica of 1644 deals with state censorship of publications.) This uncharacteristic outburst on the ills of Athenian democracy may have been occasioned by the financial and moral impoverishment of Athens after the Social War.

6. The forensic speeches (see 1) are of less importance. They were written for private litigants and include one for the son of (the famous) Alcibiadēs. An Athenian citizen alleged that the elder Alcibiades had robbed him of a team of horses, and sued his son for their value. The speech is interesting for the defence it contains of the father's character.

(436-338 bc) Greek philosopher and follower of Socrates. An important source for knowledge of fourth-century Greece, Isocrates was an orator and teacher of rhetoric, and known mainly as a historian, commentator on current affairs, educationalist, and adviser to one and all. He is praised, perhaps ironically, as a rhetorician by Plato at the end of the Phaedrus, but his own down-to-earth prescriptions for education, avoiding unnecessary speculative flights, suggest that he was more of a political realist than Plato himself.

Bust of Isocrates; plaster cast in the Pushkin Museum of the bust formerly at Villa Albani, Rome

Isocrates (Greek: Ἰσοκράτης; 436–338 BC, not to be confused with Socrates), an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. In his time, he was probably the most influential rhetorician in Greece and made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works.

Greek rhetoric is commonly traced to Corax of Syracuse, who first formulated a set of rhetorical rules in the fifth century BC. His pupil, Tisias, was influential in the development of the rhetoric of the courtroom, and by some accounts was the teacher of Isocrates. Within two generations, rhetoric had become an important art, its growth driven by the social and political changes, such as democracy and the courts of law.

The demand for rhetorical training was so high that a number of philosophers and teachers set up their own schools to train orators. Among these were the Sophists, which included such teachers as Isocrates and Gorgias. These schools proved to be a lucrative enterprise, and later attracted less reputable characters. However unlike most rhetoric schools of the times which were taught by itinerant sophists, Isocrates defined himself with his treatise against the sophists^[1].

Isocrates was born to a wealthy family (his father owned a successful flute factory) and received a fine education. He studied with Gorgias and possibly Socrates, among others. After the Peloponnesian War, Isocrates' family lost its wealth, and Isocrates was forced to earn a living.

Isocrates' professional career is said to have begun as a logographer, or a hired courtroom speech writer. Around 392 BC he set up his own school of rhetoric, and proved to be not only an influential teacher, but a shrewd businessman. His fees were unusually high, but he managed to attract more students than any other school. As a consequence, he amassed a considerable fortune.

Isocrates' program of rhetorical education stressed the ability to use language to address practical problems, cases where absolute truth was not obtainable. He also stressed civic education, training students to serve the state. Students would practice composing and delivering speeches on various subjects. He considered natural ability and practice to be more important than rules or principles of rhetoric. Rather than delineating static rules, Isocrates stressed "fitness for the occasion," or kairos (the rhetor's ability to adapt to changing circumstances and situations).

Because of Plato's attacks on the Sophists, Isocrates' school of rhetoric and philosophy came to be viewed as unethical and deceitful. Yet many of Plato's criticisms are hard to discern in the work of Isocrates, and at the end of his Phaedrus Plato even has Socrates praising Isocrates, though some scholars take this to be sarcastic. Isocrates saw the ideal orator as someone who must not only possess rhetorical gifts, but possess also a wide knowledge of philosophy, science, and the arts. The orator should also represent Greek ideals of freedom, self-control, and virtue. In this, he was an influence on Roman rhetoricians, such as Cicero and Quintilian, and on the idea of liberal education.

On the art of rhetoric, he was also an innovator. He promoted a clear and natural style that avoided artificiality, while providing rhythm and variation that commanded the attention of the listener. Like most rhetoricians, he saw rhetoric as a method of clarifying the truth, rather than one of obscuring it.

Of the 60 orations in his name available in Roman times, 21 were transmitted by ancient and medieval scribes. Another three orations were found in a single codex during a 1988 excavation at Kellis^[2][3], a site in the Dakhla Oasis of Egypt. We have nine letters in his name, but the authenticity of four has been questioned. He is said to have compiled a treatise, the Art of Rhetoric, but it has not survived. In addition to the orations, other works include his autobiographical Antidosis and educational texts, such as Against the Sophists.

Contents 1 Quote 2 Notes 3 Sources 4 See also 5 External links

Quote

"Ισοκρατης της παιδειας την ριζαν πικραν εφη, γλυκεις δε τους καρπους."[3]

"Isocrates said that the root of education is bitter, but the fruits are sweet."

Progymnasmata of Aphthonios. A similar sentence is found in the Progymnasmata of Libanios.

Notes

1. ^ Readings in Classical Rhetoric By Thomas W. Benson, Michael H. Prosser Page 43 ISBN 096118003X
2. ^ [1]
3. ^ [2]

Sources

• Bryant, Donald C., ed. Ancient Greek and Roman Rhetoricians: A Biographical Dictionary. Columbia, MO 1969.
• Eucken, Ch. Isokrates (Berlin/New York) 1983.
• Haskins, Ekaterina V. Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle. Edited by Thomas W. Benson. University of South Carolina Press, 2004.
• Isocrates. Volumes I and II, translated by George Norlin. Volume III, translated by Larue van Hook. Loeb Classical Library, London, 1928, 1929, 1945.
• Isocrates. The Rhetorical Tradition. Second Edition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Bedford/St. Martin's, Boston, 2001.
• Isocrates II, translated by Terry Papillon. University of Texas Press-Austin, 2004.
• Livingstone, Niall. A Commentary on Isocrates' Busiris. (Brill) 2001. The first scholarly commentary on Busiris.
• Poulakos, T. Speaking for the Polis: Isocrates' Rhetorical Education (South Carolina) 1997.
• Too, Y.L. The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates (Cambridge) 1995.
• Usener, S. Isokrates, Platon und ihr Publikum (Tübingen) 1994.
• Robin Waterfield's Notes to his translation of Plato's 'Phaedrus', Oxford University Press, 2002.

See also

• Aristotle
• Plato
• Rhetoric
• Sophists

External links

• Speeches of Isocrates (Perseus Project)
• "Plutarch", Life of Isocrates (attalus.org)
• B. Keith Murphy (Fort Valley State University) - Isocrates
• Isocrates (436 - 338 B.C.)

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