But so long as conditions go on as before, and what has been said about them is
 inadequate, is it not our duty to scan and study this question, the right decision of
 which will deliver us from our mutual warfare, our present confusion, and our greatest
 ills? Furthermore, if it were possible to present the same subject matter in one form and in
 no other, one might have reason to think it gratuitous to weary one’s hearers by speaking
 again in the same manner as his predecessors; but since oratory is of such a nature that it is possible to discourse on the same subject matter in many different ways—to
 represent the great as lowly or invest the little with grandeur, to recount the things of
 old in a new manner or set forth events of recent date in an old fashion The author of the treatise On the Sublime , 38,
 quotes this passage and condemns Isocrates’ “puerility” in thus dwelling on the power of
 rhetoric when leading up to his praise of Athens , and so arousing distrust of his sincerity. But the objection
 loses its force if Isocrates is here using what had become a conventionalized statement
 of the power of oratory. This it probably was. Plut. Orat. 838f , attributes
 to Isocrates the definition of rhetoric as the means of making “small things great and
 great things small.” A similar view is attributed to the rhetoricians Tisias and Gorgias
 in Plat. Phaedrus 267a , who are credited with
 “making small things appear great and great things small, and with presenting new things
 in an old way and old themes in a modern fashion through the power of speech.” Cf. Isoc.11.4 and Isoc. 12.36 ; also
 Julian, Oration, i. 2 C. —it follows that one must not shun the subjects upon
 which others have spoken before, but must try to speak better than they. For the deeds of the past are, indeed, an inheritance common to us all; but the ability
 to make proper use of them at the appropriate time, to conceive the right sentiments about
 them in each instance, and to set them forth in finished phrase, is the peculiar gift of
 the wise. And it is my opinion that the study Literally the
 “philosophy which has to do with oratory”—culture expressed in speech. For “philosophy”
 as used by Isocrates see General Introd. p. xxvi. of oratory as well as the other
 arts would make the greatest advance if we should admire and honor, not those who make the
 first beginnings in their crafts, but those who are the most finished craftsmen in each,
 and not those who seek to speak on subjects on which no one has spoken before, but those
 who know how to speak as no one else could.