[1]: See General Introduction p. 22. Yet he deals with the legend of Demeter in Isoc. 4 and with that of Heracles in Isoc. 5, and, half playfully, he goes into the stories of Helen and Busiris in the discourses devoted to them. See General Introduction.
[2]: Cf. Isoc. 10.4 ff., Vol. III., L.C.L.
[3]: See Isoc. 7.1.
[4]: One of his pupils, Theopompus, was a historian. For Isocrates’ attitude to the historians see Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit 2. p. 49.
[5]: For the plain style affected by the forensic orators, notably Lysias, see Jebb, Attic Orators1. pp. 159 ff. Cf. Isoc. 4.
[6]: Isocrates despised this kind of writing. See General Introduction.
[7]: See General Introduction.
[8]: The Gorgian figures, antithesis and parisosis, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus complained (Dion. Hal. Isoc. 14) were excessively used in the Isoc. 4.71-81.
[9]: See General Introduction.
[10]: An exaggeration. They abound in this discourse, but his earlier efforts were more ornate. Cf. Isoc. 5.27-28, and Isoc. 15.195.
[11]: An echo of Plat. Apol. 17.
[12]: Cf. same apology in Isoc. 5.149; Isoc. 15.9; Isoc. Letter 6.6.
[13]: Cf. Isoc. 15.4-8.
[14]: For the “greatest goods” cf. Plat. Laws 631c; Aristot. Rh. 1.5; and Herrick’s rendering of the famous Greek skolion: “Health is the first good lent to men;/A gentle disposition then;/Next, to be rich by no by-wayes;/Lastly, with friends t’enjoy our dayes.”
[15]: Cf. Bacchyl. 1.27 ff. (Bacchyl. 1.55 ff., Jebb’s edition): εἰ δ′ ὑγιείγας θνατὸς ἐὼν ἔλαχεν, ζώειν τ′ ἀπ′ οἰκείων ἔχει, πρώτοις ἐρίζει.
[16]: Such as are described at the beginning of the Isoc. 15..
[17]: See General Introduction; Isoc. 13.7 ff.
[18]: Cf. Isoc. 5.81 and note; Isoc. Letter 1.9 ff.; Isoc. Letter 8.7; and Aristoph. Kn. 217 ff.: τὰ δ′ ἄλλα σοι πρόσεστι δημαγωγικά, φωνὴ μιαρά, γέγονας κακῶς, ἀγόραιος εἶ· ἐχεις ἅπαντα πρὸς πολιτείαν ἃ δεῖ.
[19]: An unpaid fine entailed disfranchisement in Athens.
[20]: See General Introduction.
[21]: See Isoc. 7.24 and note.
[22]: See Isoc. 15.144-152 and notes.
[23]: Cf., for this contrast between the other orators and himself, Isoc. 15.147-149.
[24]: For this common cause of controversy see Isoc. 4.188 and note. Such controversies were sometimes referred to the General Assembly and there debated and voted upon.
[25]: Cf. Isoc. 12.142 and Isoc. 15.318.
[26]: Cf. Isoc. 15.318.
[27]: The theme of Isoc. 4 and of Isoc. 5.
[28]: The Panathenaic festival was celebrated in Athens each year but with special magnificence every fourth year, when it was called the Great Panathenaia.
[29]: A sacred enclosure on the right bank of the Ilissus, dedicated to Apollo—a gymnasium and exercise ground, but was also frequented by philosophers. Here Aristotle and his pupils were wont to gather.
[30]: Other sophists made much of the study and elucidation of the poets, but there is no evidence that Isocrates did. See Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit 2, pp. 46 ff.
[31]: Obviously he resents bitterly some attack upon him in recent years. Possibly it came from the “Eristics,” to the value of whose teaching he makes a condescending concession in Isoc. 12.26. These are not the “Eristics” mentioned in Against the Sophists (see Isoc. 13.1-8 and notes), who belong to an earlier period, but those referred to in Isoc. 15.258 and Isoc. Letter 5.3 ff.—namely Aristotle and his followers who had been hard on Isocrates (see Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit ii. p. 65). This is supported by the fact that the critics here referred to frequented the Lyceum. Blass, however (ii. pp. 68, 69), thinks that Isocrates has here in mind especially Speusippus.
[32]: Cf. Isoc. 15.265 and note.
[33]: See General Introduction.
[34]: See General Introduction; Isoc. 13.3, Isoc. 13.16, Isoc. 13.17; Isoc. 15.184, Isoc. 15.271.
[35]: Cf. Isoc. 1.21 and note; Isoc. 2.29.
[36]: See Isoc. 1.42 and note.
[37]: Cf. Isoc. 12.196-197.
[38]: A promise not fulfilled.
[39]: Cf. Isoc. 15.168.
[40]: Isoc. 10.13.
[41]: Cf. Aristot. Rh. 3.14, where he compares the prooemium of a speech to the prelude of a flute player.
[42]: The oligarchical party in Athens, generally, admired Spartan institutions. Among writers, Xenophon especially (see Xen. Const. Lac.) was emphatic in his praise of them. The Athenian philosophers, also, were wont to contrast the rigor and discipline of the Spartan with the slackness of the Athenian ways of life. See Isoc. 3.24 and note.
[43]: He does so in Isoc. 12.191 ff.
[44]: In the northern Peloponnese. For the Dorian Invasion of the Peloponnese see Grote, History of Greece vol.2, pp. 2 ff. Cf. Isoc. 6.16 ff.
[45]: In the campaigns of the so-called “Ionian Migration.” See Isoc. 4.34 ff.
[46]: See Hdt. 1.171.
[47]: Europe and Asia—north and south of the Hellespont.
[48]: For the Spartan Conquest of the Peloponnese see Grote, History of Greece 2, pp. 418 ff.
[49]: For conduct of Athens and Sparta in the Persian Wars, 49-52, compare Isoc. 4.71-74, 85-98.
[50]: “An innumerable army” in Isoc. 4.93.
[51]: See Isoc. 4.96; Isoc. 6.43.
[52]: See Isoc. 4.98, note.
[53]: Cf. Isoc. 4.98. Erybiades and the Peloponnesians generally, including Corinth, favored the removal of the fleet from Salamis to the Isthmus of Corinth. Themistocles thwarted this retreat. Hdt. 8.57 ff. The account in Plut. Them. is closer to that of Isocrates.
[54]: See Isoc. 4.72.
[55]: For contrast between the empire of Athens and that of Sparta, 53-61, compare Isoc. 4.104 ff.
[56]: Cf. Isoc. 4.16.
[57]: Here is the inoffensive word ἐπιμέλεια, supervision, to convey the feeling that the empire of Athens cared for the interests of the confederate states.
[58]: See Isoc. 4.104-106.
[59]: For these “decarchies” and their misrule see Isoc. 4.110-114.
[60]: Isocrates elsewhere views the Spartan supremacy as lasting from the end of the Peloponnesian War, 405-404 B.C., to the battle of Leuctra, 371 B.C. See Isoc. 5.47. But later in Isoc. 5.63-64 he speaks of Conon’s naval victory at the battle of Cnidus, 394 B.C., as the end of the Spartan rule, since it re-established the maritime influence of Athens. The latter is the version followed here. It is reasonable to say that Sparta’s supremacy by sea ceased with the battle of Cnidus and her supremacy by land with Leuctra.
[61]: See Isoc. 4.106, note.
[62]: The last decade of the Peloponnesian War, from what he terms the Decelean War, 413 B.C. (see Isoc. 8.37, 84, note.), to the fall of Athens 404-403 B.C.
[63]: Leuctra, 371 B.C.
[64]: See Isoc. 8.105.
[65]: Under the Peace of Antalcidas. See Isoc. 4.115, note.
[66]: Compare the treatment of this topic in Isoc. 4.100-132.
[67]: See Isoc. 4.144.
[68]: See Isoc. 4.118, Isoc. 7.80, note.
[69]: Members of the Confederacy of Delos had to bring certain lawsuits, especially those which involved disloyalty to the league in any way, to Athens for trial. See Isoc. 4.113, note.
[70]: See Isoc. 7.2, note.
[71]: For the treatment of Melos and Scione see Isoc. 4.100, note, and 109. Torone was captured by Cleon in 422 B.C. The men of the town were sent as prisoners to Athens, and the women and children sold into slavery (Thuc. 5.3).
[72]: In Isoc. Letter 2.16.
[73]: That is, the Spartans.
[74]: See Isoc. 4.113, note.
[75]: The account here given of the Confederacy of Delos is a fair statement. It was in its origin a voluntary association of the Ionian Greeks, partly against Sparta, but mainly against the Persian Empire, not for protection merely, but for the enrichment of its members at the expense of the barbarians. Each member contributed its quota to the common cause, the more powerful members in ships the weaker in money, φόρος. The quotas appear to have been fixed by Aristides, although approved by the synod of the allies. See Thuc. 5.18; Aristot. Ath. Pol. 23-24.
[76]: Helen, the wife of Menelaus, was the daughter of Zeus. See Hom. Od. 4.569 and Isoc. 10.16.
[77]: Digressions such as the praise of Theseus in Isoc. 10 and of Timotheus in Isoc. 15 are effective elements of variety. the praise of Agamemnon here seems awkwardly dragged in. It is commonly thought that Agamemnon is a masque for Philip of Macedon. (See, for example, Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit 2, pp. 331, 334.) The simplest explanation, however, is hinted at in Isoc. 12.76. Agamemnon stood out in his mind as the first leader of all Hellas against the East—the first champion of the cause to which Isocrates dedicated his life.
[78]: Cf. Isoc. 10.51.
[79]: According to legend, Pelops, the Phrygian, settled in the Peloponnesus and gave his name to that territory; Cadmus, the Phoenician, founded Thebes; Danaus, the Egyptian, became king of Argos—types of foreign invasion and conquest.
[80]: Cf. Isoc. 10.52.
[81]: Mercenary armies were now commonly relied upon even in Athens. See Isoc. 8.44 ff.
[82]: Paris, who carried off Helen, the wife of Menelaus.
[83]: these last two paragraphs show striking use of antithesis and parisosis—devices of rhetoric which at the beginning of this discourse he pretends to have outgrown. See Isoc. 12.2 and note.
[84]: For this rhetorical doubt cf. Isoc. 15.310.
[85]: In the Trojan War.
[86]: The distinction—not altogether clear—is between the older and the later inhabitants.
[87]: For the conquest of Messene see Isoc. 6.26 ff. The Spartans and Argives were almost always at war. See Isoc. 5.51.
[88]: The battle of Plataea was the final, decisive battle of the Persian Wars.
[89]: See Thuc. 2.71-72.
[90]: The Greek cities on the Asiatic seaboard, which had been subject to Persia.
[91]: The Thebans had “Medized.” The Plataeans in this battle acquitted themselves well; according to Plutarch (Plut. Arist. 20), they were awarded the meed of valor. Cf. Isoc. 14.57 ff.
[92]: Cf. Isoc. 14.62.
[93]: This was done by King Archidamus, who in the course of the Peloponnesian War besieged and took Plataea, 427 b.c. The walls of the town were razed, the women and children sold into slavery, the defenders slain, excepting some two hundred who escaped and found refuge in Athens. See Thuc. 3.57 ff.
[94]: Fellow-Dorians.
[95]: On the Corinthian gulf. For this event see Thuc. 1.103
[96]: See Isoc. 4, note.
[97]: Cf. Isoc. 12.101.
[98]: See Isoc. 4.114.
[99]: At Aegospotami, 405 b.c. See Isoc. 4.119.
[100]: See, however, Isocrates’ bitter attack upon the Athenian militaristic policy in On the Peace, especially Isoc. 8.44. Among the Athenian generals, he is here thinking mainly of Chares (the enemy and opposite of his friend and pupil, Timotheus. See Isoc. 15.129 and note), who seems to have uniformly preferred force to persuasion or conciliation in the treatment of the Athenian allies. See Introduction to Isoc. 8.
[101]: That is, conduct of the Spartans which has no parallel in Athenian history. Compare, for the contrast here drawn between Sparta and Athens in their feeling for the barbarians, Isoc. 4.156-159, 120, 121.
[102]: In the Peloponnesian War.
[103]: The Treaty of Miletus, 412 b.c. See Thuc. 8.18.
[104]: See Isoc. 4.111 and note.
[105]: For this episode see Isoc. 8.98 and note.
[106]: The battle of Cnidus, 394 b.c., in which the Spartan fleet was defeated by the joint fleets of Conon, the Athenian admiral, and Pharnabazus, the Persian satrap.
[107]: Peace of Antalcidas. See Isoc. 4.115 and note.
[108]: See Isoc. 4.180.
[109]: The democracy of Solon and Cleisthenes, much praised in the Isoc. 7..
[110]: Beginning with Aristides and Themistocles, especially the latter, who made Athens a sea-power.
[111]: This making a virtue of necessity is inconsistent with Isocrates’ uncompromising attitude toward the excesses of the later democracy in the Isoc. 7., the Isoc. 8., and even in this discourse.
[112]: Cf. Isoc. 8.102.
[113]: The homeless refugees who enlisted in the naval service of Athens for pay and the chance to pillage. See especially Isoc. 8.44 ff. and Isoc. Letter 9.9.
[114]: Cf. Eur. Hec. 607: ναυτική τ′ ἀναρχία.
[115]: This cynicism accords ill with his plea for justice as a rule of conduct for states in Isoc. 8.28 ff., where he approaches the Platonic ideal that it is better to suffer than to do wrong (Plat. Gorg. 46c ff.). Here Isocrates inclines, for once, to the “practical” view of Demosthenes; that if all other states made justice the basis of their foreign policy it would be shameful for Athens not to observe it; but in a world where all other states are seeking the power to do injustice, for Athens alone to be governed by that ideal to her disadvantage would be “not justice but cowardice.” See Dem. 15.28-29.
[116]: See Isoc. 4.25.
[117]: See Isoc. 12.72 ff.
[118]: Compare Montaigne, Essays, chapter 42: “Plutarch says somewhere that he does not find so great a difference between beast and beast as he does between man and man; which he says in reference to the internal qualities and perfections of the soul. And, in truth, I find so vast a difference between Epaminondas, according to my judgement of him, and some that I know, who are yet men of good sense, that I would willingly enhance upon Plutarch, and say that there is more difference between such and such a man than there is between such aman and such a beast.”
[119]: Most of these horrors are taken from the Argive legend of the house of Pelops and the Theban story of the house of Labdacus: from the former, Thyestes feasting unwittingly upon the flesh of his own sons, served up to him by his brother, Atreus; from the latter, Oedipus exposed as a child by his parents to perish in the mountains, the slaying of Laius, his father, by Oedipus, the marriage of Oedipus to his own mother, Jocasta, the death at each other’s hands of the sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, who were born of that incestuous union, and the blinding of Oedipus.
[120]: These stories furnished largely the themes of the tragic poets.
[121]: According to to one story it was from the seeds sown by Hephaestus on the soil of Attica that the Athenians were sprung. See Aesch. Eum. 13.
[122]: See Isoc. 4.39-40 and notes.
[123]: See Isoc. 4.24 and note.
[124]: See Isoc. 10.18 ff.
[125]: Repeated from Isoc. 10.18.
[126]: For Theseus as the author of the spirit of the Athenian polity see Isoc. 10.35-37.
[127]: See Isoc. 7.20 and note.
[128]: Aristocracy.
[129]: Timocracy.
[130]: Plat. Rep. 544c ff., distinguishes these three types: monarchy, which may be either a constitutional or an absolute rule; government by the few, which may be either an aristocracy or an oligarchy; and democracy. Aristot. Pol. 3.6 ff., recognizes three types: monarchy, aristocracy, and a republic, and, corresponding to them (aberrations from them), three debased forms, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. Isocrates’ point is that any one of these forms may be an aristocracy; it is the spirit of the constitution which matters (Isoc. 12.138); that government is best (i.e. an aristocracy) where the best men rule.
[131]: It appears to have been a common practice for speakers to show off their oratorical powers by extolling such themes. See Isoc. 4.close and note; Isoc. 10.12.
[132]: Repeated from Isoc. 7.14.
[133]: Cf. Isoc. 8.13, 133.
[134]: Cf. Isoc. 8.3 and note.
[135]: See Isoc. 8.124 and note.
[136]: Cf. Isoc. 15.318.
[137]: Cf. Isoc. 8.54.
[138]: See Isoc. 7.39.
[139]: Aristotle (Aristot. Ath. Pol. 8) states that Solon enacted that the election to the offices should be by lot from candidates selected by each of the tribes. For example, each tribe selected then candidates for the nine archonships, and among these the lot was cast. Cf. Isoc. 7.22.
[140]: The numerous “demes” into which Attica was divided.
[141]: See Isoc. 7.24-25 and notes.
[142]: See Introduction to the Antidosis.
[143]: See Isoc. 7.27 and note.
[144]: A very round number indeed. Tradition dated Theseus, whom Isocrates seems here to regard as the last of the kings, about 600 years before this time.
[145]: A pleasanter picture of the “tyranny” of Pisistratus is found in Aristot. Ath. Pol. 14 ff.
[146]: See Isoc. 4.39 and note.
[147]: For the Spartan Gerousia, Council of Elders, see Gilbert, Greek Constitutional Antiquities p. 47.
[148]: The Peace of Antalcidas.
[149]: See Isoc. 4.161, note.
[150]: See General Introduction.
[151]: Cf. Isoc. 4.154-155.
[152]: The reference is to Athens, an Ionian state, as leader of the Ionian Colonization. The looseness of structure in this discourse is shown by his treatment of this theme in three places, in 42 ff. and in 190 ff. as well as here. Cf. Isoc. 4.34-37.
[153]: See Isoc. 5.121 ff.
[154]: Isocrates regards the Ionian Colonization as contemporaneous with the Dorian Conquest of the Peloponnesus.
[155]: See Aesch. Seven; Soph. Ant.; Eur. Phoen.
[156]: Compare the treatment of the Adrastus episode in Isoc. 4.54 ff.
[157]: See Isoc. 4.55, note.
[158]: The version here is less offensive to the Thebans, perhaps because Athens is now cultivating friendlier relations with Thebes.
[159]: For the comparison of the early wars of Sparta and Athens, 175-198, cf. Isoc. 4.51-70.
[160]: Those who enjoyed citizenship in Sparta are called by Aristotle (Aristot. Pol. 8.7) ὅμοιοι, “equals.” Cf. Isoc. 7.61.
[161]: In historical times the population of Laconia, the valley of the Eurotas river, was made up of the Spartans, who lived in the city of Lacedaemon (Sparta seems to have been a later name); the Helots, serfs bound to the soil, who worked the estates owned by the Spartans, paying a high rental, sometimes half the crop; and the Perioeci, free-holders of land, who were scattered in villages throughout theEurotas Valley—“the land of a hundred towns,” possessing apparently their own local governments, but under the general control and supervision of the Spartan state. These, like the Helots, were probably made up mainly of earlier inhabitants conquered by the Spartans. See Gilbert, Greek Constitutional Antiquities pp. 30 ff. Isocrates’ picture of the driving out of the Perioeci from participation in the Spartan state as the result of a bitter factional fight seems to rest on a very doubtful tradition. See Grote’s extended discussion of this passage, vol. 2, pp. 367 ff.
[162]: The Perioeci, like the Helots, were subject to military service more and more as the pure Spartan population declined; but Isocrates’ complaint that they were made to take the brunt of danger is probably an exaggeration. However, the power of the Spartan magistrates, the Ephors, to condemn them to death without trial is well attested. See Gilbert, Greek Constitutional Antiquities p. 58.
[163]: Cf. Isoc. 5.148; Isoc. 4.90; Isoc. 6.99-100.
[164]: The high moral tone here is, like the plea for absolute justice as a principle of foreign policy in the Peace, inconsistent with the “practical” doctrine of Isoc. 12.117-118. See note on 118.
[165]: Three “wars,” with no attention to chronology: (1) that against Xerxes; (2) the warfare connected with the Ionian Colonization; (3) four campaigns summarized as one, all dealing with invasions: (a) that against Eumolpus and the Thracians; (b) that against the Scythians; (c) that against Eurystheus; (d) that against Dareius.
[166]: See Isoc. 12.49 ff.
[167]: See Isoc. 12.42 ff. and Isoc. 12.164 ff.
[168]: In 49 ff., 42 ff., 164 ff.
[169]: See Isoc. 4.68; Isoc. 6.42; Isoc. 7.75.
[170]: See Isoc. 4.68.
[171]: A queen of the Amazons, who, according to one legend, being enamored of Theseus, deserted her own people and followed him to Athens. In one tradition she meets her death fighting against the Amazons, who came to recover her. Paus. 1.2.1.
[172]: See Isoc. 4.58 ff.
[173]: See Isoc. 4.71-72, Isoc. 4.85-87.
[174]: See for the figure and the thought, Isoc. 12.32; General Introduction.
[175]: It has been conjectured, with no degree of certainty, that the pupil here referred to was Theopompus, the historian.
[176]: Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus are half-legendary kings famed for their virtues, and especially their justice. they are sometimes pictured as dispensing justice in the world of the dead. See Plat. Gorg. 523.
[177]: ”Before the development of the body, that of the mind had completely to give way“ in Sparta. See Plut. Lyc. 16; Gilbert GCA p.64.
[178]: For this feature of their training see Plut. Lyc. 17-18; Xen. Const. Lac. 2.5 ff.; Gilbert, GCA p. 64.
[179]: See 204.
[180]: The Perioeci, who, according to Isocrates, were of the Spartan blood, and their fellow-Dorians generally.
[181]: See Isoc. 3.3-4; Isoc. 15.251-252.
[182]: For this concord “honor among thiefs” see Plat. Rep. 351c.
[183]: See 50, note.
[184]: See the argument between Socrates and Thrasymachus in Plat. Rep. 1.
[185]: The common term for a servant. Slaves were often employed as secretaries.
[186]: “Epideictic” speeches—orations composed to display the powers of the speaker.
[187]: An exaggeration. But see Isoc. 6; Isoc. 7.7; Isoc. 3.24; Isoc. 8.142 ff.
[188]: Surely this is ironical.
[189]: Manifestly Isocrates in this passage imitates Plat. Rep. 344, where Thrasymachus, maintaining that “justice is the interest of the stronger,” bids Socrates not to mark the consequences of injustice practised on a petty scale but those of the “most complete injustice,” such as a despotism. Cf. Plat. Gorg. 483.
[190]: See 239 note.
[191]: The Spartans at the time of the Persian Wars numbered eight thousand according to Hdt. 7.234. Aristotle (Aristot. Pol. 2.9) states that in his day there were hardly one thousand.
[192]: Almost quoted from Isoc. 15.127.
[193]: See Isoc. 1.38 and note; Isoc. 2.37; Isoc. 5.134.
[194]: Cf. Isoc. 5.12.
[195]: As at the close of the Address to Philip.
[196]: See Isoc. 12.3.
[197]: Coray conjectures that the malady was dysentery.
[198]: Such as this discourse or the Panegyricus. See Isoc. 4.11.
[199]: Speeches which were written for display—epideictic oratory—are composed with finish but are not instructive. See General Introduction. Speeches written for the law-courts, on the other hand, lack the refinements of style and aim to pervert the truth. See General Introduction.
[200]: Such as the Isoc. 8. See Isoc. 15.62.
[201]: Cf. Isoc. 2.54.
[202]: Literally, “experience of things shown.” Others render “experience in epideictic oratory.”