The Lives of the Ten Orators (4-5)

Isocrates was the son of Theodorus of Erchia, a citizen of the middle class, an owner of slaves who made flutes, through whom he gained a competence, so that he paid for a public chorus[*] and gave his children an education[*] (for he had other sons, Telesippus and Diomnestus, and also a daughter), and hence he is ridiculed on account of the flutes by Aristophanes and Strattis. Isocrates was born in the eighty-sixth Olympiad, in the archonship of Lysimachus[*] of Myrrhinus, being twenty-two years younger than Lysias and seven years older than Plato.[*] In his boyhood he was as well educated as any Athenian, for he attended the lectures of Prodicus of Ceos, Gorgias of Leontini, Teisias of Syracuse, and the orator Theramenes; and when the lastnamed was in danger of being arrested by the Thirty and had fled for safety to the altar of Hestia Boulaea,[*] everyone else was terrified, but Isocrates alone arose to speak in his aid; and at first he was silent for a long time, then afterwards he was urged to be silent by Theramenes himself, who said that his misfortune would be more painful if any of his friends should share it. And it is said that certain rhetorical teachings of Theramenes - those which go under the name of Boton - were of use to Isocrates when he was

falsely accused in the courts. But when he became a man he kept away from political affairs, since he had a weak voice and a timid disposition[*] and had lost his inherited property in the war against the Lacedaemonians. It is evident that he composed speeches for others, but he delivered only one, that on the Exchange of Property. He set up a school and turned to philosophy and to writing out the results of his thinking, and he composed his Festival Oration[*] and some others of an advisory nature, some of which he delivered himself and some of which he prepared for others to deliver, hoping that in this way he might lead the Greeks to think as they ought. But when he failed of his purpose he gave up that sort of thing and became the head of a school, at first, as some say, at Chios, where he had nine pupils. That was the time when, as he saw the tuition fees counted out, he burst into tears and said, Now I recognize that I have sold myself to these people. He would carry on conversation with all who desired it and was the first to make a distinction between contentious speeches and those of a political character, to which latter he devoted himself. And he also instituted at Chios public offices and the same constitution which existed in his native city. He made more money than any other sophist, so that he was even a trierarch.[*]

His pupils numbered about one hundred, including among many others Timotheüs, son of Conon, with

whom he visited many cities; and he composed the letters which Timotheüs sent to the Athenians, on account of which Timotheüs presented him with a talent out of the sum remaining after the relief of Samos.[*] Pupils of his were also Theopompus[*] of Chios, Ephorus of Cumae, Asclepiades who compiled the arguments of tragedies, and Theodectas of Phaselis, who afterwards wrote tragedies and whose monument stood as you go to the Bean-market along the Sacred Way which leads to Eleusis; it is now in ruins. There, too, were set up statues of the famous poets along with his; of these only the poet Homer exists now. And Leodamas the Athenian and Lacritus the Athenian law-maker and, as some say, Hypereides and Isaeus were his pupils. And they say that while he was still teaching oratory Demosthenes came to him eager to learn and said that he could not pay the thousand drachmas which he asked as tuition fee, but would give two hundred for one fifth of the instruction; whereupon Isocrates replied: We do not cut our instruction into bits, Demosthenes, but just as people sell fine fish whole, so, if you wish to be my pupil, I will sell you my course whole.

He died in the archonship of Chaerondas[*] after hearing in the palaestra of Hippocrates the news of

the battle of Chaeroneia;[*] and he removed himself from life by abstaining from food for four days. Just before the end he declaimed the opening lines of three dramas of Euripides:

Danaüs of fifty daughters fair the sire,[*]

Pelops the Tantalid to Pisa came,[*]

Once Sidon’s city Cadmus having left.[*]

He died at the age of ninety-eight or, as some say, one hundred years, for he could not endure the sight of Greece enslaved four times.[*] A year (or, as some say, four years) before his end he wrote the Panathenaic Oration;[*] and for the composition of the Festival Oration he took ten (but some say fifteen) years. This, they say, he derived from the speeches of Gorgias of Leontini and Lysias. The speech on the Exchange of Property[*] he wrote at the age of eighty-two years, and those against Philip shortly before his death. When he was an old man he adopted Aphareus, the youngest of the three sons of Plathanê, daughter of the orator Hippias. He acquired ample wealth, for he not only collected money from his pupils, but he also received from Nicocles, king of Cyprus, who was the son of Evagoras, twenty talents for the oration written in his honour. On account of his wealth he was envied and was proposed three times as trierarch. Twice he alleged illness and was exempted by petitions presented by his son, but the third time he undertook the duty and spent no small sum. To a father who said that he gave his son only a slave as companion he said, Go your ways, then, for you will have two slaves instead of one. He took part also in the competition offered by Artemisia in honour of Maussolus,[*] but his Eulogy is not extant. He wrote also a Eulogy of Helen and a speech called the Areopagitic. He departed this life some say on the ninth day of his abstention from food, others on the fourth day at the time of the funeral of those who fell at Chaeroneia. His son Aphareus also wrote speeches. Isocrates was buried with his family near Cynosarges[*] on the left side of the hill-he himself, his father Theodorus, and his mother; and her sister Anaco, the orator’s aunt, and his adopted son Aphareus, and his cousin Socrates, son of Anaco Isocrates’ mother’s sister, and his brother Theodorus who had the same name as his father, and his grandsons, the sons of his adopted son Aphareus, Aphareus and his father Theodorus, and the latter’s wife Plathanê, mother of the adopted son Aphareus. And over them there were six tablets which do not now exist. On the monument of Isocrates himself was a column thirty cubits high, on which was a siren seven cubits high as a symbol; but this exists no longer. There was also a tablet near by with poets and his instructors on it, among whom was Gorgias gazing into an astrological sphere and Isocrates standing beside him. There is also a bronze statue of him, dedicated by Timotheüs, son of Conon, at Eleusis in front of the vestibule. It bears this inscription:

Here to the goddesses twain Timotheüs giveth this statue

Tribute to friend and to sage, image of Isocrates.

It is a work of Leochares.

Sixty orations are current under his name, of which twenty-five are genuine according to Dionysius, twenty-eight according to Caecilius, and the rest are spurious. He was averse to public declamation, so much so that once, when three persons came to hear him, he retained two but let the third go, telling him to come the next day, since now the lecture-room had a full audience. And he used to say to his pupils that he himself gave instruction for ten minas, but would give ten thousand to anyone who would teach him self-confidence and a pleasant voice. And when he

was asked how he, not being a good speaker himself, could make others so, he replied that whetstones cannot themselves cut, but make iron fit to do so. Some say that he also wrote textbooks of oratory, others that in his teaching he made use of practice, not of method. He never demanded a fee from a fellow-citizen. When his pupils went to meetings of the assembly, he told them to report to him what was said there. He was greatly grieved by the death of Socrates, and the next day he appeared in black clothing. And again, when someone asked him What is oratory? he said, the art of making small things great and great things small. And once when he was a guest at a banquet in the house of Nicocreon, despot of Cyprus, and some of those present urged him to discourse, he said, for subjects in which I am competent this is not the time; in the subjects for which this is the time I am not competent. [*] When he saw the tragic poet Sophocles amorously following a boy, he said, Sophocles, we must not only keep our hands to ourselves, but our eyes as well. [*] And when Ephorus of Cumae had left his school without learning anything and had been sent back by his father with a second tuition-fee, he called him in fun Diphorus (Twice-bringer); he took, however, great pains with him and even suggested to him the subject of his work.[*] He showred himself also prone to sexual indulgence; he used an additional mattress beside him on his bed and kept his pillow wet with saffron. And when he was young he did not marry, but in his old age he kept a mistress named Lagiscê, by whom he had a daughter who died unmarried at twelve years of age. Then he married the daughter of the orator Hippias, Plathanê, who had three sons, one of whom, Aphareus, as has been said above, he adopted. This Aphareus dedicated a bronze statue of him near the Olympieium on a column with the inscription:

Aphareus set up this statue his father Isocrates’ image,

Sacred to Zeus, to exalt gods and his ancestors’ worth.[*]

And it is said that he rode a horse in a race when he was still a boy; for a bronze figure of him as a boy riding a horse is set up on the Acropolis in the ballground of the Arrhephoroi,[*] as some have said. In all his life but two lawsuits were brought against him: first when Megacleides challenged him to an exchange of property.[*] He did not appear in court in this suit, because he was ill, but sent his son Aphareus and won his case. The second suit was when Lysimachus challenged him to exchange property in connexion with the trierarchy; and this case he lost and performed the trierarchy. There was also a painted portrait of him in the Pompeium.[*] Aphareus wrote speeches, both juridical and deliberative, but not many. He also composed about thirty-seven tragedies, but the authorship of tw o of them is contested. Beginning in the archonship of Lysistratus[*] he presented in the twenty-eight years to the archonship of Sosigenes[*] six series of dramas at the City Dionysia and won the prize twice, Dionysius as his manager,[*] and, other poets managing, he presented two other series at the Lenaean festival.[*] There were statues of the mother of Isocrates and Theodorus and of her sister Anaco set up on the Acropolis; of these the statue of the mother is now placed, with a changed inscription,[*] near that of Hygieia, but the statue of Anaco is gone. She had two sons, Alexander by Coenus, and Sosicles by Lysias.

Isaeus was a Chalcidian by birth, but came to Athens and went to school [to Isocrates. He resembled] Lysias[*] in his melodious diction and in his skilful arrangement and treatment of the subject matter in his speeches, so that unless a person were thoroughly familiar with their particular styles, he could not easily tell to which of the two orators

many of the speeches belong. He was in his prime after the Peloponnesian War, as may be inferred from his speeches, and lived until the reign of Philip. He taught Demosthenes,[*] not at his school, but privately, for ten thousand drachmas, whereby he acquired great distinction. And he himself composed for Demosthenes the speeches against his guardians, as some said. He has left behind him sixty-four speeches, fifty of which are genuine, and some rules of rhetoric of his own. He was also the first to give artistic form to his speech[*] and to turn his attention to the urbane style of the orator; in which Demosthenes has closely imitated him. Theopompus the comic playwright mentions him[*] in the Theseus.