The Essential Isocrates

By Jon D. Mikalson

The Essential Isocrates is a comprehensive introduction to Isocrates, one of ancient Greece’s foremost orators. Jon D. Mikalson presents Isocrates largely in his own words, with original English translations of selections of his writings on his life and times and on morality, religion, philosophy, rhetoric, education, political theory, and Greek and Athenian history. In Mikalson’s treatment, Isocrates receives his due not only as a major thinker but as one whose work has resonated across time, influencing even modern education practices and theory.

Isocrates wrote extensively about Athens in the fourth century BCE and before, and his speeches, letters, and essays provide a trove of insights concerning the intellectual, political, and social currents of his time. Mikalson details what we know about Isocrates’s long, eventful, and complicated life, and much can be gleaned on the personal level from his own writings, as Isocrates was one of the most introspective authors of the Classical Period. By collecting the most representative and important passages of Isocrates’s writings, arranging them topically, and placing them in historical context, The Essential Isocrates invites general and expert readers alike to engage with one of antiquity’s most compelling men of ideas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781477325544

Jon D. Mikalson

Jon D. Mikalson is author of The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year and Honor Thy Gods.

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Ashley and Peter Larkin Series in Greek and Roman Culture

THE ESSENTIAL ISOCRATES

JON D. MIKALSON

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

Austin

Copyright © 2022 by the University of Texas Press

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First edition, 2022

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Isocrates, author. | Mikalson, Jon D., 1943– writer of added commentary, translator.

Title: The essential Isocrates / Jon D. Mikalson.

Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers:

LCCN 2021047933

ISBN 978-1-4773-2552-0 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2553-7 (PDF)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2554-4 (ePub)

Subjects: LCSH: Isocrates—Translations. | Isocrates. | Isocrates—Ethics. | Isocrates—Philosophy. | Isocrates—Political and social views.

Classification: LCC PA4217.E5 M55 2022 | DDC 885/.01—dc23/eng/20220120

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047933

doi:10.7560/325520

ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ. Νέος ἔτι, ὦ Φαῖδρε, Ἰσοκράτης. ὃ μέντοι μαντεύομαι κατ’ αὐτοῦ, λέγειν ἐθέλω.

ΦΑΙΔΡΟΣ. Τὸ ποῖον;

ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ. Δοκεῖ μοι ἀμείνων ἢ κατὰ τοὺς περὶ Λυσίαν εἶναι λόγους τὰ τῆς φύσεως, ἔτι τε ἤθει γεννικωτέρῳ κεκρᾶσθαι. ὥστε οὐδὲν ἂν γένοιτο θαυμαστὀν προιούσης τῆς ἡλικίας εἰ περὶ αὐτούς τε τοὺς λόγους, οἷς νῦν ἐπιχειρεῖ, πλέον ἢ παίδων διενέγκοι τῶν πώποτε ἀψαμένων λόγων, ἔτι τε εἰ αὐτῷ μὴ ὰποχρήσαι ταῦτα, ἐπὶ μείζω τις αὐτὸν ἄγοι ὁρμὴ θειοτέρα. φύσει γάρ, ὦ φίλε, ἔνεστί τις φιλοσοφία τῇ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς διανοίᾳ.

Socrates. Isocrates is still a young man, Phaedrus, but I want to say what I prophesy for him.

Phaedrus. What is that?

Socrates. He seems to me to be better in his innate nature than the speeches associated with Lysias and also to have a more noble character. And so, it would not be surprising if, as he grows older, he should surpass in the very discourses that he now undertakes all those who have ever taken up discourses as if they were children. And if these things should not suffice for him, it would not be surprising if some more divine impulse led him to greater things because, my friend, by his innate nature there is some philosophy in the thinking of the man.

Plato, Phaedrus 278e10–279b1

CONTENTS

WRITINGS OF ISOCRATES

TERMS NEEDING DEFINITION

PERSONS PERHAPS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN BUT FEATURED IN ISOCRATES’ WRITINGS

CHRONOLOGY OF WORKS OF ISOCRATES AND OF MAJOR EVENTS MENTIONED BY HIM

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

1. ISOCRATES: HIS LIFE

2. ISOCRATES: ON HIMSELF

3. ISOCRATES: ON MORALITY AND RELIGION

4. ISOCRATES: ON PHILOSOPHY, EDUCATION, RHETORIC, AND POETRY

5. ISOCRATES: ON POLITICAL THEORY

6. ISOCRATES: ON ATHENIAN AND GREEK HISTORY

NOTES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

FURTHER READINGS

GENERAL INDEX

INDEX LOCORUM OF ISOCRATEAN PASSAGES

WRITINGS OF ISOCRATES

All dates are BCE.

1. To Demonicus (374–370)

2. To Nicocles (374)

3. Nicocles (372–365)

4. Panegyricus (380)

5. To Philip (346)

6. Archidamus (366)

7. Areopagiticus (357)

8. On the Peace (355)

9. Evagoras (370–365)

10. Encomium of Helen (370)

11. Busiris (391–385)

12. Panathenaicus (339)

13. Against the Sophists (390)

14. Plataicus (373–371)

15. Antidosis (354–353)

16. On the Team of Horses (397–396)

17. Trapeziticus (393)

18. Against Callimachus (402)

19. Aegineticus (391–390)

20. Against Lochites (394)

21. Against Euthynus (403)

LETTERS

1. To Dionysius I (368)

2. To Philip 1 (342)

3. To Philip 2 (338)

4. To Antipater (340)

5. To Alexander (342)

6. To the Children of Jason (359)

7. To Timotheus of Heracleia Pontica (345)

8. To the Rulers of Mytilenē (350)

9. To Archidamus (356)

The dates of Isocrates’ discourses and letters are given according to Mirhady and Too, 10. The dating is not always exact, sometimes based on relationships to other works, sometimes based on the dramatic date if an absolute date cannot be determined. For brief introductions to each discourse and letter and on the dating, see Mirhady and Too 2000 and Papillon 2004. An important challenge to the usual dating is Epist. 3 (To Philip) to 346 instead of 338 BCE (Roth, 262–263n637). There has also been for several centuries disagreement among scholars whether the To Demonicus (1) is correctly attributed to Isocrates. I accept the attribution to Isocrates, but for the arguments against, see Mikkola, 277–285.

TERMS NEEDING DEFINITION

antidosis: a legal procedure by which one citizen assigned an expensive state service may challenge another citizen either to take on the service or exchange all personal property with him.

Dēmos: the voting citizen body of Athens, males over the age of 18, with both parents Athenian born. It met as a group approximately forty times a year in the Ekklēsia and was represented in the nearly daily meetings of the Boulē. For Isocrates’ varying use of the term, see Bartzoka, 177.

discourse: the term now commonly used to describe the various writings of Isocrates, including especially those writings that are in form orations but were not intended for public oral delivery.

drachma: coinage, roughly the average daily wage of skilled workers in Athens in this period; 6,000 drachmas = one talent.

eudaimonia: often translated prosperity or mistranslated happiness. It is a status of life, defined by ancient philosophers as living well, faring well, having all the good things, being in need of nothing, or a good flow of life. It indicates the possession of what is, in the writer’s opinion, the highest human good. See Alexiou 2010.166–167; and Mikalson, 7–8.

eusebeia: proper respect for the gods; the term is usually imprecisely and anachronistically translated piety. See chapter 3 and Mikalson, 9.

hosiotēs: religious correctness; usually and wrongly translated holiness. See chapter 3 and Mikalson, 11–12.

Orations, types of: (1) Epideictic: showpieces, orations intended in part to display the skills of the orator; (2) Forensic: orations intended for the courtroom; and (3) Symbouleutic: orations of advice intended for legislative bodies. On these various types, see A Companion to Greek Rhetoric, edited by I. Worthington (Oxford, 2007), C. Carey (236–252), C. Cooper (203–219), and S. Usher (220–235).

panēgyris: an international religious festival, usually featuring athletic or literary competitions, or both. Distinct from a heortē, a local, national festival.

sophist: etymologically a wise man, but by Isocrates’ time associated with philosophers and teachers, especially of rhetoric. Isocrates uses the word occasionally of himself and his occupation but also occasionally in the derogative sense of an unprincipled teacher of rhetorical tricks that it had acquired by his time.

sōphrosynē: etymologically sound thinking, in general with a normal, properly functioning mind, but more specific than common sense and often in direct opposition to foolishness and lack of restraint. Although a matter of thought and hence intellectual, it is normally applied to some kind of behavior and hence has a strong moral coloring. See chapter 3; Alexiou, 103–104; and Mikalson, 12–13.

sycophant: an insulting term to characterize those who abused the Athenian court system by blackmailing innocent people and taking advantage of their speaking skills to sue on frivolous charges. On sycophants, see A. T. Alwine, Enmity and Feuding in Classical Athens (Austin, 2015), 14 and 111–113.

trierarchy: the service (liturgy) or obligation of supporting financially a trireme (a warship).

tyrant: usually in the Greek and modern traditions one who has seized and holds rule unconstitutionally. But Isocrates often uses the terms king, tyrant, and dynast interchangeably, without any negative connotation in tyrant. To avoid adding inappropriate connotations, I translate τύραννος and δυναστής as monarch, and βασιλεύς as king, but τύραννος as tyrant in those passages where Isocrates is giving the customary title to someone, as to Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, or is obviously describing what is commonly considered tyrannical behavior, as for Pisistratus or the Thirty Tyrants. On all this, see Alexiou, 113; and Liou, 211–217.

xenos: a friend who lives in another country, often serving as host in his country and as guest in his friend’s country. Xenia is the relationship of being xenoi.

PERSONS PERHAPS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN BUT FEATURED IN ISOCRATES’ WRITINGS

Archidamus: one of the kings of Sparta from 360 to 338 BCE, son of Agesilaus. Isocrates has him as the speaker, while still a young man, of the Archidamus (6), of 366 BCE, and then writes to him as king (Epist. 9) in 356 BCE.

Areopagus Council: the group of former archons in Athens, probably numbering about 140, who under Solon had wide judicial and legislative authority and were termed the guardian of the laws but whose range of authority was diminished first by Cleisthenes’ Ekklēsia and then over the years by other democratic measures. By Isocrates’ time its role was largely limited to investigating religious crimes and some cases of homicide, assault, and arson.

Artaxerxes II and Artaxerxes III: successive kings of Persia, with Artaxerxes II ruling from 404 to 359 BCE and Artaxerxes III, from 358 to 338 BCE.

Busiris: a mythical king of Egypt, in Greek art and literature an archetypal villain who sacrificed all foreigners who landed there. He was killed by Heracles, one of his intended victims.

Demonicus: a young Cyprian known only from Isocrates’ To Demonicus (1). His father, Hipponicus, had been a friend of Isocrates.

Evagoras: the strongly pro-Hellenic and pro-Athenian king of Cyprian Salamis from 411 to 374 BCE. He gave refuge to the Athenian general Conon after Athens’s defeat at Aegospotamoi in 405 BCE, and with Conon defeated the Spartan navy in the battle of Cnidus in 394 BCE. In 391 he invaded Persian territories with some success until his defeat at Citium in 382 BCE. After his assassination in 374 BCE, he was succeeded by his son, Nicocles.

Four Hundred: in the first oligarchic revolution in Athens, in 411 BCE, the four hundred Athenian citizens designated as the ruling body. Opposed by a prodemocratic Athenian fleet stationed in Samos and defeated in a sea battle against the Peloponnesians, they were deposed by the Athenians in 410 BCE, and the democracy was restored.

Lysander: the Spartan general who defeated the Athenians at Aegospotamoi in 405 BCE and the next year occupied Athens. He installed the Thirty Tyrants and published a list of Athenians to be excluded from the citizen rolls.

Nicocles: King of Cyprian Salamis, succeeding his father, Evagoras, from 374 to about 361 BCE. He is known primarily from Isocrates’ Nicocles and To Nicocles, but in contrast to the laudatory descriptions there, two contemporary historians, Theopompus of Chios and Anaximenes of Lampsacus, described him as hedonistic and licentious and as having suffered a violent death.

Thirty Tyrants: the thirty Athenian oligarchs installed to govern Athens by the Spartans in 404 BCE after their defeat and occupation of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War. After various assassinations, exilings, and confiscations of the property of their opponents, they were defeated in battle at Piraeus, in 403 BCE, and the democracy was restored. They were not included in the general amnesty of reconciliation that followed, and their fate is not well known. Some probably died in the battle at Piraeus; some had their property confiscated; some went into exile, and some were executed.

Timotheus of Athens: a former student of Isocrates. As an Athenian general he had great success in the 370s and 360s in building the Athenian Confederacy and then in the early 350s in the Social War of Athens against its former allies. After the Athenian defeat in the Battle of Embata in 356 BCE, he was convicted of treason by the Athenians, heavily fined, and went into exile. For Isocrates he was a model general.

Timotheus of Heracleia Pontica: tyrant of Heracleia Pontica from 346 to 338 BCE. After a period of regency, he succeeded his father, Clearchus, who had been a student of Isocrates.

CHRONOLOGY OF WORKS OF ISOCRATES AND OF MAJOR EVENTS MENTIONED BY HIM

All dates are BCE.

PREFACE

My previous scholarly work has focused on Greek religion, primarily that of Athenians in the Classical and Hellenistic periods, with an underlying emphasis on the interaction of that religious system with contemporary moral, ethical, political, philosophical, and historical ideas. I turned some years ago to Isocrates because he in a very personal way involved himself in all these areas, and I hoped to learn more about Greek religion from him. I did that, but I also encountered so much more of interest that was not readily accessible even to most classicists because of the nature and volume of Isocrates’ writings and the current state of scholarship on him. I set myself to translating and, more important, dividing and organizing Isocrates’ writings by topics, by the topics indicated in the chapter titles and subsections that follow. I wanted readers to be able to find easily what Isocrates has to say on topics of interest to them. The passages of Isocrates I offer constitute only a fraction, but a representative one, of the orator’s oeuvre, which covers nearly six hundred pages in the now-definitive English translations of his complete works by Mirhady and Too; and by Papillon.

Isocrates, though not an orator himself, was writing mostly in the Greek oratorical tradition, with epideictic (showpiece), forensic (for the courtroom), and symbouleutic (for legislative bodies) orations. An excellent introduction to all this is A Companion to Greek Rhetoric, edited by I. Worthington (Oxford, 2007).

The history of the period in which Isocrates lived is exceptionally complex and hard to follow. For a detailed, largely chronological survey I recommend S. Hornblower, The Greek World: 479–323 BC, fourth edition (London, 2011). I found it particularly helpful to have this history broken down city by city: for Athens, see C. Schwenk, 8–40; for Sparta, C. D. Hamilton, 41–65; and for Thebes, M. Munn, 66–106, all in The Greek World in the Fourth Century, edited by L. A. Tritle (London, 1997). Here I express my gratitude to my colleague Elizabeth Meyer who reviewed for me chapter 6 on Isocrates’ views of Greek history and saved me from several grievous errors. I am also indebted to Michael Gagarin and Terry Papillon and to Jim Burr of the University of Texas Press for their interest in Isocrates and in this book.

INTRODUCTION

From at least 380 BCE in a discourse intended for a Panhellenic audience, and later throughout his long life, Isocrates argued in discourses and letters to his fellow Athenians and to various rulers that the Greek cities should stop making self-destructive wars against one another and should unite and turn their energies and resources against their common historical foe, the king of Persia. They should recapture the Greek lands in Asia Minor from him, should settle there the Greeks who had been impoverished, displaced by the constant warfare, and forced into a mercenary career, and should give them cities and a livelihood. All Greek cities should be freed from domination by either other Greek states or non-Greeks and should be free and independent. At home the Athenians should practice sound thinking and justice, both toward one another and toward other Greeks. The idle and dissolute youth should be given training in the traditional virtues and in philosophy. Athens should be ashamed that some of its citizens were reduced to begging, and well-to-do Athens should provide jobs and training programs for impoverished Athenians. The Athenians should stamp out the sycophants who, merely for personal gain, prosecute and make life miserable for law-abiding Athenians. And Athenians should by their actions work to restore the good reputation their ancestors once had among all Greeks.

I offer here a portrait of the man who held such views, just one Athenian, largely through his own words. Isocrates was not a soldier, general, or politician. He did not lead armies or give orations before his fellow citizens. He was a rhetorician but did not have the voice or courage to speak before a crowd. He offered his advice on the most important Athenian and Greek issues of his time, in written discourses of various types, in extensive (and often published) essays and letters to his fellow Athenians and to leaders throughout the Greek world. And he was a philosopher, not in the model of Plato and Aristotle, but, for his time, sui generis, attempting to mix theory with experience, always toward practical personal, social, and political ends. And he was an important teacher: among his dozens of students were some of the most influential Athenians, kings, and princes of the Greek world.

I give here a rather full account of Isocrates’ own views of contemporary and earlier Athenian and Greek history, of Athenian political and social life, of his own philosophy and teaching, and, perhaps most important, of himself. He is in his writings the most self-reflective of the Greeks of the Classical Period, and these self-reflections offer an unparalleled look into the thought, work, and life of one Athenian. We can see him reacting to the major political, social, and personal events of his long life. We can actually come to know one Athenian, or at least how one Athenian presents himself, always remembering, of course, that he was not, in his class, in his education, in his occupation, in his influence, and even in many of his views an average Athenian. But average Athenians, even outstanding Athenians, have left little in their own words by which we can know them. For Isocrates we have a lot.

Through his voluminous writings Isocrates also offers us another way, personal and subjective, to look at the political, military, and social history of his and previous times. We are, of course, all enormously indebted to the ancient and modern historians who have attempted to sort out the facts of this history and to explain them. What Isocrates offers is what one man, an educated, worldly, and thoughtful man, believed about the events and trends of his own time and those of the near and far-distant past. And from what he writes, one can often glean what his contemporaries, often disagreeing with him, also believed. The current political situation in the world and my work on ancient Greek religion have convinced me that the large majority of people, ancient and modern, base their actions primarily on their beliefs, not on a careful, reasoned examination of the facts, and that has perhaps not been sufficiently integrated into modern historiography. In Isocrates we see expressed many of these beliefs of the middle forty years of the fourth century BCE. Isocrates also put events of his and earlier times into personal, moral, national, and international contexts and adds, as it were, some flesh and blood to the skeleton of historical facts we find in history books. Isocrates may not always get his facts right, but he knew what he, his fellow Athenians, and his fellow Greeks believed and was trying to affect those beliefs, and so he is a valuable source for his time. He is surely our single richest informant for the views, thoughts, and aspirations of the majority of Athenians and Greeks in the mid-fourth century BCE, the end of the Classical Period.

I intend not to judge Isocrates but simply to present him and his thought. By very modern standards and prejudices some readers will find faults. He no doubt had slaves. He scarcely mentions women except Helen of Troy. He is strongly nationalistic, in terms both of Athens and of Greece. He invokes and promotes stereotypes of Persians and other non-Greeks. He consorted with kings and princes and seemingly favors a good monarchy over democracy. He is conservative, nostalgic for the government, society, and morals of a time long past. He prefers a practical philosophy to the abstract, theoretical study that attracts modern philosophers to the Greeks.¹ He is not perfectly consistent, as we seem to expect our ancient authors to be, in his views and statements over a sixty-five-year career as a writer. He reshapes his arguments and rhetoric to suit different audiences and different times. He uses history for rhetorical purposes and is sometimes mistaken or careless or manipulative with the facts.² Such faults are, of course, not unique to Isocrates or to his time. They are commonly featured in our newspapers and television news stories today. Isocrates can be a rich source from antiquity for those trying to understand and not just condemn them. They are part of the complex personality of one quite remarkable and influential man and the products of his life, thought, and time in fourth-century BCE Athens. And so I present Isocrates, warts and all.

This account of Isocrates is presented primarily through Isocrates’ own words or, less commonly, in paraphrases or summaries of them. These are his views and thoughts about himself, his values, his occupation as a teacher, his time, and Athenian and Greek history as he himself, over a long life, expressed them, unencumbered, if that is the correct word, by corrections and criticisms of modern scholars. Conflicting views of Isocrates’ contemporaries on morality, philosophy, education, politics, and international affairs do appear regularly but only as Isocrates presents them. Some of the passages I attribute to Isocrates are drawn from writings that Isocrates presents in the guise of works written by others, Nicocles (3), Archidamus (6), and Plataicus (14). Some are from orations he wrote for participants in courtroom trials (16–21). I found that the statements in these writings are so consistent with works written in his own name that I have not marked them individually or treated them separately. They all, I argue, reflect Isocrates’ own views, but readers who doubt this need pay attention only to which writing is cited for each statement.

My intent is not to analyze, interpret, praise, criticize, or correct Isocrates but rather to present him and his thought as much as possible in his own words, to let him speak for himself. I hope to make the great range and volume of his writings more accessible and intelligible to readers by collecting and organizing his thoughts on individual topics such as justice, education, or the Persian Wars, thoughts and comments that are widely scattered amid his numerous writings. Those seeking corrections to, especially, his view of historical events or wanting parallels to his ethical comments from other ancient sources can most efficiently find them in the modern commentaries on his discourses. And I suggest in Selected Bibliography some representative books and articles that do analyze and synthesize various elements of his thought and offer abundant bibliography. But what I present here is Isocrates himself on himself and his own world and time.

For general orientation I open with the Life of Isocrates (chapter 1), a biography drawn from various sources and falsely attributed to Plutarch. It contains a wealth of biographical fact and fiction. Chapter 2 offers Isocrates’ own account of his own life, his personal morality, his wealth, his own writings, his students, his old age, and his reputation. Chapters 3–5 collect Isocrates’ general comments on morality and religion (3), philosophy, education, and poetry (4), and political theory (5). In chapter 6 I present chronologically Isocrates’ versions of Greek and particularly Athenian history, beginning with the earliest days of the Athenians and continuing down to his own final days in 338 BCE. Included here is also his description of Athenian government, morals, practices, and foreign policy as he saw them change from period to period. In this chapter we can see the application of the general principles Isocrates lays out in chapters 3–5 to the times, events, and famous individuals of Greek and Athenian history as Isocrates envisaged them.

I have attempted always to represent the views and thoughts of Isocrates, but different topics required different forms of representation. I use direct quotations when possible and appropriate, especially in chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6. Occasionally there but especially in chapters 2 and 6 direct quotations are interspersed amid summaries of Isocrates’ views. In short, I have structured each chapter, even each section in any chapter, in the manner that I think best reflects Isocrates’ thinking. The translations are my own, but I have profited greatly from the translations of Isocrates’ works by George Norlin, La Rue van Hook, David Mirhady and Yun Lee Too, and Terry Papillon and have borrowed from them the occasional phrase. Isocrates was famous in his own and later times for his ornate prose style and ability to create page-long sentences that were architectural marvels of finite verbs, participles, and dependent and relative clauses. Most such sentences I have simplified for the modern reader, but I have left a few here and there to give a taste of the Isocratean style. In my translations I use a few somewhat technical terms and also some transliterations of complex Greek terms that cannot be rendered into simple English; these may be found above in Terms Needing Definition.

The assignment of the quotations of Isocrates to one or another of chapters 2 to 6 and even to sections within these chapters was not easy and is not tidy. In one passage Isocrates may be discussing a matter of both morality and political theory, or of philosophy and history. In some cases a passage from an earlier chapter seemed so important that I repeated it in a later one, sacrificing economy to avoid the often neglected cross-reference. The result of this organization is that not everything that Isocrates writes about a specific topic—for example, justice—will be found in one place or one section or one chapter. If one wants to collect all the relevant passages on such a topic and see it in personal, general, and historical contexts, one will have to turn to the general index, or, of course, look to books and articles that treat such specific topics in Isocrates. This book is intended to reflect the scope and range of the life and thought of our orator, largely in his own words, not to analyze his treatment of specific topics or themes.

RECURRENT THEMES IN ISOCRATES

As a general orientation I offer some major themes that recur in the numerous and varied writings of Isocrates that follow.

Isocrates as a Teacher

Isocrates realized quite early on that he had neither the voice nor the courage to function as a public orator, a profession in itself, in front of the large political assemblies of Athens. From about 393 BCE, when he was forty-three years old, he made his living as a teacher: a teacher of rhetoric, the art of public speaking. He specialized in teaching how to write effective speeches on political matters. He taught a style of writing and how to write persuasive speech on serious topics, in contrast, in his view, to other professional teachers of rhetoric of the time who taught clever argumentation and the tricks of courtroom oratory. The course of study under him was as long as four years, and in that time Isocrates met with small groups of students and apparently analyzed and had them memorize mostly his own written speeches for purposes of imitation and study. His students, mostly from abroad, wealthy, of elite family and educational backgrounds, probably in their late teens or early twenties, paid well, usually a thousand drachmas (roughly $100,000 by modern standards) for the full course of study. Isocrates had, probably, no more than four or five students at any one time, but eventually his past students numbered about a hundred. Despite his own claims, Isocrates probably became quite a rich man from his teaching. Some of his students became leaders in their own countries, some became prominent in Athenian civic affairs, and some just remained private citizens but, as Isocrates puts it, more cultivated in conversations and keener advisers and judges of arguments than most people. Some of his students remained close to him long after their formal studies, and we find Isocrates corresponding with them and even consulting them to the very end of his life.

Isocrates as a Philosopher

Isocrates considered himself a philosopher and writes often of the value of philosophy, but his philosophy was significantly different from that of his contemporary Plato and from