IV. ISOCRATES

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 chorusWealthy Athenians performed in turn special services to the state called liturgies. The most expensive of these was the choregy, which involved the payment, training, and equipment of a chorus for a lyrical or dramatic performance. and gave his children an educationSee Isocrates, (Or. xv.), 161. (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 Lysimachus436-435 b.c. of Myrrhinus, being twenty-two years younger than Lysias and seven years older than Plato.Plato was born in 428-427 b.c. Lysias, according to this statement, in 459-458. But see note on 835 d above. 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,The sanctuary of this Goddess of the Senate’s Hearth was in or near the Prytaneum, which was somewhere on the northern slope of the Acropolis. 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 dispositionSee Isocrates, (Or. v.), 81; (Or. xii.), 9. 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 Orationi.e. the , delivered at Olympia. 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.The trierarchy was one of the liturgies which wealthy citizens were obliged to perform. Being trierarch thus showed wealth.

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.365 b.c. Pupils of his were also TheopompusThe text of Photius reads Xenophon the son of Gryllus and 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 Chaerondas338-337 b.c. after hearing in the palaestra of Hippocrates the news of the battle of Chaeroneia;

This popular story of Isocrates’ death is given also by Lucian (?), 23, Pausanias, i. 18. 8, and Plutarch, 838 below. It is made famous by Milton in his tenth sonnet: as that dishonest victory At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty, Killed by report that old man eloquent

But Isocrates himself, at the end of his third letter, writes to Philip: But I am grateful to old age for this thing only, that it has continued my life to this point, so that of the things which I meditated in my youth and undertook to write in my and in that which I sent to you, I now see some being accomplished through your deeds and hope that others will be accomplished. Apparently he was well pleased with Philip’s success. See Blass, , 2nd ed., ii. p. 97.

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,From the ; Nauck, p. 427, no. 228. Pelops the Tantalid to Pisa came,, 1. Once Sidon’s city Cadmus having left.From the ; Nauck, p. 627, no. 819. Blass, , 2nd ed., ii. p. 97, thinks these lines enumerate three intrusions of foreigners into Greece. The fourth - not mentioned - would then be that of the Macedonians under Philip. 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.Under the Athenian empire in the fifth century, by the Spartans after the Peloponnesian War, by the Thebans under Epameinondas, and by the Macedonians. All these Isocrates himself had seen. But see note d above. A year (or, as some say, four years) before his end he wrote the Panathenaic Oration;In L.C.L. Isocrates, vol. ii. pp. 368 ff. 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 PropertyIbid. pp. 181 ff. If anyone proposed that a certain man be obliged to perform one of the liturgies which were required of wealthy Athenians, the man of whom this was required could challenge the proposer to an exchange of properties, which might transfer the obligation. 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,Mausolus, ruler of Halicarnassus, died in 353 b.c. His widow, Artemisia, caused eulogies to be written in competition by Greek orators and completed the magnificent tomb which he had, apparently, begun. This magnificent building - the Mausoleum - was designed by Greek architects and decorated by famous Greek sculptors. The remains of the sculpture include portrait statues of Maussolus and Artemisia and are among the most highly prized possessions of the British Museum. 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 CynosargesCynosarges was a region in Athens in which was a great gymnasium. 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. cf. , 613 a. 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. Attributed to Pericles by Plutarch, , chap. viii., and Cicero, , i. 40. 144. 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.The great work of Ephorus was a history of the world (primarily of Greece) from the return of the Heracleidae to the siege of Perinthus in 340 b.c. From this work Plutarch and others derived much of their information. Ephorus was born early in the fourth century and died about 320 b.c. 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.Bergk, ii. p. 329. The column and statue existed in the time of Pausanias (Paus. i. 18. 8). A bust in the Villa Albani in Rome may be a late copy of the head of this statue or, more probably, since Leochares was a famous sculptor, of the statue at Eleusis mentioned above. 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,This seems to have been situated near the north-west wall of the Acropolis, west of the Erechtheum: Cf. Judeich, ², p. 283. Two maidens were chosen each year to carry the peplos at the Panathenaic festival and were called Arrephoroi. 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.See note on 837 f. 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.The Pompeium was just inside the Dipylon gate, at which point the processions began. It was the storehouse for objects used in processions. 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 Lysistratus369-368 b.c. he presented in the twenty-eight years to the archonship of Sosigenes342-341 b.c. six series of dramas at the City Dionysia and won the prize twice, Dionysius as his manager,When a poet (διδάσκαλος) wished to avoid the labour of presenting a play he could delegate the management to a hypodidascalus, another poet experienced in such matters. We have many instances of this practice in the didascalic notices, notably in the case of Aristophanes. and, other poets managing, he presented two other series at the Lenaean festival.The City or Greater Dionysia were celebrated in March, the Rural or Lesser Dionysia in the various demes of Attica in December, and the Lenaean festival in December. At all of these dramas were performed, but new tragedies were not produced at the Rural Dionysia, and for a time the same was true of the Lenaean festival. A series of dramas comprised three tragedies and a satyr drama. The two prizes of Aphareus are recorded in an inscription, ii.² 2325 b (ed. min.). 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,Statues erected to honour one person were not infrequently transferred to another by changing the inscriptions. Dio Chrysostom in his condemns this practice. near that of Hygieia, but the statue of Anaco is gone. She had two sons, Alexander by Coenus, and Sosicles by Lysias.

V. ISAEUS

Isaeus was a Chalcidian by birth, but came to Athens and went to school [to Isocrates. He resembled] LysiasCf. Dion. Hal. , 2 χαρακτῆρα δὲ Λυσίου κατὰ τὸ πλεῖστον ἐζήλωσε, he emulated in the highest degree the character of 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,See below, Demosthenes, 844 b. 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 speechBlass, , 2nd ed., ii. p. 499, interprets this as referring to figures of thought (construing τὴν διάνοιαν with σχηματίζειν). Cf. 835 b supra ἀσχημάτιστος of Andocides. and to turn his attention to the urbane style of the orator; in which Demosthenes has closely imitated him. Theopompus the comic playwright mentions himCf. Kock, i. p. 737, no. 18. in the .