Isocrates - Delphi Complete Works of Isocrates

The Complete Works of

ISOCRATES

(436338 BC)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2016

Version 1

The Complete Works of

ISOCRATES

By Delphi Classics, 2016

Complete Works of Isocrates

First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2016.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78656 381 1

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Ancient Athens Isocrates birthplace

Translated by George Norlin

Isocrates was born to a wealthy family in Athens and received a first-rate education. Greatly influenced by the sophist teachers Prodicus and Gorgias, he was also closely acquainted with Socrates. After the Peloponnesian War, Isocrates family lost its wealth and he was forced to earn a living. His professional career is said to have begun with being hired as a courtroom speechwriter. Athenian citizens did not hire lawyers and legal procedure required self-representation, often depending on professionals like Isocrates to write speeches for them. Though he lacked confidence himself in public speaking, Isocrates had a great talent composing rhetoric. In spite of playing no direct part in state affairs, his written speech influenced the public and provided significant insight into major political issues of the day.

Around 392 BC Isocrates set up his own school of rhetoric and he proved to be not only an influential teacher, but a shrewd businessman. His fees were unusually high, and he accepted no more than nine pupils at a time. Many of them went on to be famous philosophers, legislators and historians. As a consequence, he amassed a considerable fortune. Isocrates is notable for defining rhetoric as an outward feeling and inward thought of not merely expression, but reason and imagination. Like most great thinkers that studied rhetoric before and after him, Isocrates believed it was used to persuade, but also used in directing public affairs.

Isocrates program of rhetorical education favoured the ability to use language to address practical problems; he referred to his teachings as more of a philosophy than a school of rhetoric. Isocrates famously stressed that that students required only three things to learn: a natural aptitude that was inborn, knowledge training granted by teachers and textbooks and applied practices designed by educators. He considered natural ability and practice to be more important than rules or principles of rhetoric. Rather than delineating static rules, Isocrates stressed fitness for the occasion, or kairos (the rhetors ability to adapt to changing circumstances and situations). His school lasted for over fifty years, in many ways establishing the core of liberal arts education as we know it today, including oratory, composition, history, citizenship, culture and morality.

The importance of Isocrates speeches for the study of Greek civilisation of the fourth century BC remains undeniable. His school featured celebrated pupils such as the historians Ephorus and Theopompus and orators Isaeus, Lycurgus, and Hypereides. Twenty-one discourses by Isocrates survive, which include political essays, treatises on education and ethics and speeches for legal cases, as well as nine letters concerned more with public than with private matters.

P. Oxy. 1183, late first century AD papyrus containing Isocrates Trapeziticus

Source text: Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. With thanks to the Pegasus Digital Library.

Bust of Isocrates, Pushkin Museum

In many respects, Demonicus, we shall find that much disparity exists between the principles of good men and the notions of the base; but most of all by far have they parted company in the quality of their friendships. The base honor their friends only when they are present; the good cherish theirs even when they are far away; and while it takes only a short time to break up the intimacies of the base, not all eternity can blot out the friendships of good men. [2] So then, since I deem it fitting that those who strive for distinction and are ambitious for education should emulate the good and not the bad, I have dispatched to you this discourse as a gift, in proof of my good will toward you and in token of my friendship for Hipponicus; for it is fitting that a son should inherit his fathers friendships even as he inherits his estate. [3] I see, moreover, that fortune is on our side and that the present circumstances are in league with us; for you are eager for education and I profess to educate; you are ripe for philosophy and I direct students of philosophy.

Now those who compose hortatory discourses addressed to their own friends are, no doubt, engaged in a laudable employment; [4] yet they do not occupy themselves with the most vital part of philosophy. Those, on the contrary, who point out to the young, not by what means they may cultivate skill in oratory, but how they may win repute as men of sound character, are rendering a greater service to their hearers in that, while the former exhort them to proficiency in speech, the latter improve their moral conduct. [5]

Therefore, I have not invented a hortatory exercise, but have written a moral treatise; and I am going to counsel you on the objects to which young men should aspire and from what actions they should abstain, and with what sort of men they should associate and how they should regulate their own lives. For only those who have travelled this road in life have been able in the true sense to attain to virtue that possession which is the grandest and the most enduring in the world. [6] For beauty is spent by time or withered by disease; wealth ministers to vice rather than to nobility of soul, affording means for indolent living and luring the young to pleasure; strength, in company with wisdom, is, indeed, an advantage, but without wisdom it harms more than it helps its possessors, and while it sets off the bodies of those who cultivate it, yet it obscures the care of the soul. [7] But virtue, when it grows up with us in our hearts without alloy, is the one possession which abides with us in old age; it is better than riches and more serviceable than high birth; it makes possible what is for others impossible; it supports with fortitude that which is fearful to the multitude; and it considers sloth a disgrace and toil an honor. [8] This it is easy to learn from the labors of Heracles and the exploits of Theseus, whose excellence of character has impressed upon their exploits so clear a stamp of glory that not even endless time can cast oblivion upon their achievements. [9]