In Isoc. 15.295 is a similar picture of the attractions and advantages of life in Athens. since in addition to those which the city herself sets up, she prevails upon the rest of the world also to offer prizes;The meaning may be that prize-winners in Athens are awarded similar prizes in conpetitions elsewhere. for the judgements pronounced by us command such great approbation that all mankind accept them, gladly. But apart from these considerations, while the assemblages at the other great festivals are brought together only at long intervals and are soon dispersed, our city throughout all timeThe Panathenaic and the Dionysiac festivals were held every year, whereas the Olympic and Pythian games came only once in four years, and the Nemean and Isthmian games once in two years. Festival followed upon festival in Athens, and Isocrates’ statement is almost literally true. Thucydides says the same thing, Thuc. 2.38, and Xenophon declares that the Athenians celebrate twice as many festivals as the other Greeks, Xen. Const. Ath. 3.8. is a festival for those who visit her.

Philosophy,For “philosophy” in Isocrates see General Introd. p. xxvi, and Cicero’s definition, iii. 16, “omnis rerum optimarum cognitio, atque in iis exercitatio, philosophia.” moreover, which has helped to discover and establish all these institutions, which has educated us for public affairs and made us gentle towards each other, which has distinguished between the misfortunes that are due to ignorance and those which spring from necessity, and taught us to guard against the former and to bear the latter nobly—philosophy, I say, was given to the world by our city. And Athens it is that has honored eloquence,Cf. Isoc. 15.295-296; Plat. Laws 641e; and Milton: “mother of arts and eloquence.”

which all men crave and envy in its possessors; for she realized that this is the one endowment of our nature which singles us out from all living creatures, and that by using this advantage we have risen above them in all other respects as well;For the power and function of λόγος see Isoc. 3.5-9; Isoc. 15.273; Xen. Mem. 4.3. she saw that in other activities the fortunes of life are so capricious that in them often the wise fail and the foolish succeed, whereas beautiful and artistic speech is never allotted to ordinary men, but is the work of an intelligent mind,

and that it is in this respect that those who are accounted wise and ignorant present the strongest contrast; and she knew, furthermore, that whether men have been liberally educated from their earliest years is not to be determined by their courage or their wealth or such advantages, but is made manifest most of all by their speech, and that this has proved itself to be the surest sign of culture in every one of us, and that those who are skilled in speech are not only men of power in their own cities but are also held in honor in other states.

And so far has our city distanced the rest of mankind in thought and in speech that her pupils have become the teachersFor Athens as the School of Greece see General Introd. p. xxviii; Isoc. 15.296; Thuc. 2.41.1. of the rest of the world; and she has brought it about that the name Hellenes suggests no longer a race but an intelligence, and that the title Hellenes is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood.See General lntrod. p. xxxiv and Isoc. 9.47 ff. Cf. the inscription on the Gennadeion in Athens: Ἕλληνες καλοῦνται οἱ τῆς παιδεύσεως τῆς ἡμετέρας μετέχοντες