[1]: Pan-Hellenic gatherings at the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian games, including also the Pan-atheniac festival at Athens. See Gardner and Jevons, Manual of Greek Antiquities, pp. 269 ff.
[2]: This is not quite exact (see Lys. 33.2), nor consistent with § 45 where he mentions contests of intellect and prizes for them. But the mild interest which these evoked served but to emphasize the excess of enthusiasm for athletics against which Isocrates here and elsewhere protests. Cf. Isoc. 15.250 and Isoc. Letter 8.5. The complaint is older than Isocrates. See Xenophanes, Fr. 19.
[3]: For the meaning of the word “sophist” see General Introd. p. xii. The word is commonly translated “orator,” since the sophists concerned themselves mainly with exemplifying and teaching oratory; but the sophist speaks only on the lecture platform; the political orator is called a “rhetor” in Isocrates. Gorgias and Lysias in their Olympic orations had spoken on this theme, but it is hardly probable that Isocrates had them particularly in mind in this patronizing remark.
[4]: Cf. Lys. 33.3. For Isocrates, idea of the highest oratory see General Introd. p. xxiv.
[5]: 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.
[6]: Literally the “philosophy which has to do with oratory”—culture expressed in speech. For “philosophy” as used by Isocrates see General Introd. p. xxvi.
[7]: For Isocrates’ opinion of court oratory see General Introd. p. xxii.
[8]: This is done by Lys. 2.1, by Hyp. 6.2, and by Isocrates himself, Isoc. 12.36-38.
[9]: See General Introd. p. 30.
[10]: This self-confidence is something more than Isocratean vanity. It is a conscious device to enhance the greatness of this theme. At the beginning he is exalted by its magnitude; at the end, 187, he is cast down by his failure to measure up to it. See Havet’s interesting remarks in Cartelier’s Antidosis, p. lxv.
[11]: Artaxerxes II., king of Persia, 404-359 B.C.
[12]: The Greek states which were under the influence of Athens were democratic; those under Sparta’s influence, oligarchic.
[13]: Almost the same language is used in Isoc. 5.9.
[14]: This claim was made good two years later when the new confederacy was formed. See General Introd. p. xxxvii. The Greek word “hegemony”—leadership, supremacy—is often used in the particular sense of acknowledged headship of confederated states, as here.
[15]: See Isoc. 12.124 and Hdt. 7.161.
[16]: The same boast is made in Isoc. 10.35 and Isoc. 15.299.
[17]: In contrast particularly to the ancestors of the Spartans when they established themselves in the Peloponnesus.
[18]: The “autochthony” of the Athenians was a common theme of Athenian orators and poets: Isoc. 8.49, Isoc. 12.124-125; Thuc. 1.2.5; Eur. Ion 589 ff.; Aristoph. Wasps 1076.
[19]: A challenge to Spartan pride and pretensions.
[20]: For the story of Demeter and Persephone (here called Kore, “the maiden”) see HH Dem.; Ovid, Fasti iv. 393-620, and Metamorphoses v. 385 ff.; Claudian, De raptu Proserpinae, and Walter Pater, “Demeter and Persephone” in his Greek Studies.
[21]: Cf. Plat. Menex. 237e; Lucret. vi. 1 ff.
[22]: For the Eleusinian Mysteries see Lobeck, Aglaophamus, vol. i; Gardner and Jevons, Manual of Greek Antiquities, pp. 274 ff.; Gardner’s New Chapters in Greek History, xiii; Diehl, Excursions in Greece viii.
[23]: Quoted in Isoc. 8.34. For the blessedness of the Mystics see HH Dem. 480 ff.; Pindar, Fr. 102; Sophocles, Fr. 753 Nauck.
[24]: So Plat. Menex. 238a. Cf. Cicero, Flaccus 62, “adsunt Athenienses unde humanitas, doctrina, religio, frugeres, iura, leges ortae atque in omnes terras distributae putantur.”
[25]: In the month Boëdromion (August).
[26]: This custom is attested by inscriptions. See full discussion of it in Preller, Griech. Mythol. i. p. 773.
[27]: for this view of the gradual progress of civilization see Xenophanes, Fr. 18 Diels; Aesch. PB 447 ff.; Eur. Supp. 201 ff.; Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. pp. 60, 236, 542, 771, 813, 931; and Lucretius’s elaborate picture, v. 780 ff.
[28]: For the traditional “Ionic migration,” led by Athens, in the course of which settlements were made in Samos and Chios and in the islands of the Cyclades, in Asia Minor, and on the shores of the Black Sea, see Isoc. 12.43-44, 166, 190; Thuc. 1.2.6; Grote, History of Greece (new edition), ii. pp. 21 ff.
[29]: The tradition is probably correct that Athens was the first city to set her own house in order and so extended her influence over Greece. The creation of a civilized state out of scattered villages is attributed to King Theseus. See Isoc. 10.35; Isoc. 12.128 ff.. In Isoc. 12.151-4, Isocrates maintains that certain features of the Spartan constitution were borrowed from Athens.
[30]: There is no evidence to bear out a literal interpretaion of this statement, but the tradition is probably right which regarded the Areopagus in Athens as the first court set up in Greece for the trial of cases of homicide. It was believed that this court was first convened to ty the case of Orestes, an alien. See Aesch. Eum. 684; Dem. 23.65 ff.
[31]: So Isoc. 12.202. Pliny Nat. Hist. 7.194, catalogues many Athenian discoveries in art. Cf. Milton, Par. Reg. iv. 240: “Athens the eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence.”
[32]: Thucydides in Pericles’ funeral oration emphasizes the open hospitality of Athens to foreigners and strangers, Thuc. 2.39.1.
[33]: The word οἰκείως suggests μέτοικοι, the foreign residents, who numbered about one-third of the free population of Athens.
[34]: Thucydides states that all the products of the whole world found their way to Athens, ii. 38. 2.
[35]: The armistice or “Peace of God”—the sacred month as it was called at Olympia—during which the states participating in the games ceased from war. See Gardner and Jevons, Manual of Greek Antiquities, p. 270.
[36]: Lys. 33.1, speaks of Heracles as having founded the Olympic festival out of good will for Hellas.
[37]: Isocrates here refers to the sights and show-places of Athens, and to the Panathenaic and the Dionysiac festivals especially. See Tucker, Life in Ancient Athens, Chap. xii.
[38]: In Isoc. 15.295 is a similar picture of the attractions and advantages of life in Athens.
[39]: The meaning may be that prize-winners in Athens are awarded similar prizes in conpetitions elsewhere.
[40]: The 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.
[41]: For “philosophy” in Isocrates see General Introd. p. xxvi, and Cicero’s definition, De orat. iii. 16, “omnis rerum optimarum cognitio, atque in iis exercitatio, philosophia.”
[42]: Cf. Isoc. 15.295-296; Plat. Laws 641e; and Milton: “mother of arts and eloquence.”
[43]: For the power and function of λόγος see Isoc. 3.5-9; Isoc. 15.273; Xen. Mem. 4.3.
[44]: For Athens as the School of Greece see General Introd. p. xxviii; Isoc. 15.296; Thuc. 2.41.1.
[45]: 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
[46]: On Athens as a refuge for the oppressed see the words of Procles in Xen. Hell. 6.5.45. Cf. Isoc. 8.138.
[47]: Andocides, Isoc. 8.28, speaks of the “habitual bane” of Athens—that of throwing away her stronger friends and choosing the weaker. Cf. Plat. Menex. 244e, and Dem. 20.3.
[48]: Heracles had been during his life a slave to the commands of Eurystheus, king of Mycenae. After the death of Heracles and his apotheosis, his sons were driven by Eurystheus out of the Peloponnesus. In the course of their wanderings they found refuge in Athens, where Theseus, the king, championed their cause against their oppressor. Eurystheus was killed in battle by Hyllus, one of the sons of Heracles. See Grote, Hist. i. p. 94. Adrastus, king of Argos, was the leader ot he expedition known in story as that of the Seven against Thebes. They were defeated by the Thebans and were not even allowed to recover their dead for burial. Adrastus fled to Athens and there was given refuge and aid to avenge himself on the Thebans. See Grote, Hist. i. p. 277. Both of these episodes are commonplaces in panegyrics on Athens. Cf. Isoc. 6.42; Isoc. 12.168-171; Lys. 2.7-16—a close parallel to Isocrates; Plat. Menex. 239b ff.; Dem. 60.8, 27; Lyc. 1.98; Xen. Hell. 6.5.46.
[49]: The dead had a divine right to burial. See Isoc. 12.169 and Soph. Ant.
[50]: Aristodemus, the great-great-grandson of Heracles, had twin sons, Eurysthenes and Procles, who established the double line from which Sparta drew her two hereditary kings.
[51]: For these legendary wars against the Scythians, Amazons, and Thracians see Grote, Hist. i. pp. 201 ff. These stood out in the Athenian mind as their first great struggle against the barbarians, and generally found a place beside the Persian Wars in pictures of their glorious past. Cf. Isoc. 6.42; Isoc. 7.75; Isoc. 12.193; Lys. 2.4 ff.; Plat. Menex. 239b; Xen. Mem. 3.5.9.
[52]: These complaints are stated in Isoc. 12.193.
[53]: At the decisive battles of Marathon, 490 B.C., and Salamis, 480 B.C.
[54]: This passage is closely imitated by Lyc. 1.70, and by Aristeides, Isoc. 12.217.
[55]: By general acknowledgement. See Isoc. 4.99 and Isoc. 7.75, Isoc. 8.76.
[56]: Athens obtained the supremacy as the head of the Confederacy of Delos 477 B.C. See Isoc. 7.17; Isoc. 12.67; Hdt. 9.106; Thuc. 1.95; Xen. Hell. 6.5.34.
[57]: The custom of delivering funeral orations for those who fell in battle seems to have originated in the Persian Wars. Of such orations the following are the most celebrated: the oration of Pericles in honor of those who died in the first year of the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 2.35-46); the Epitaphios of Gorgias, published in Athens some time after 347 B.C., represented by fragments only; the Epitaphios attributed to Lysias on those who fell in the Corinthian War, 394 B.C.; the Menexenus of Plato; the Epitaphios attributed to Demosthenes on those who were killed at Chaeronea; that of Hypereides on the heroes of the Lamian War.
[58]: Dion. Hal. Isoc. 5, gives a digest of 75-81 and remarks with unction that no one can read it without being stirred to patriotism and devoted citizenship. However, later (14) he quotes extensively from the same division of the speech to illustrate the author’s excessive artifices of style.
[59]: This artificial paragraph is closely paralleled in Isoc. 7.24 and in Isoc. 3.21.
[60]: Cf. Isoc. 7.41. This part of the Panegyricus has much in common with the pictures of the old democracy in Athens drawn in the Areopagiticus and the Panathenaicus.
[61]: Political parties and clubs of that day are here no doubt idealized to point the contrast to the selfish intrigues of the present. Cf. Isoc. 4.168 and Thucydides’ picture of the evils of faction, Thuc. 3.82. These clubs, whatever they may have been in the Golden Age, were later sworn enemies of popular government and the centers of oligarchical conspiracies. See Thuc. 8.54; and Aristot. Ath. Pol. 34.
[62]: A favorite comparison. Cf. 186, Isoc. 5.111-112, Isoc. 9.65.
[63]: Sections 85-87 are closely paralleled in Lys. 2.23-26.
[64]: As was done by the Peace of Antalcidas. See 115, note.
[65]: The Athenians at Marathon were reckoned at ten thousand, the Persians at about two hundred thousand.
[66]: Echoed from Thuc. 1.70.
[67]: Isocrates makes greater “haste” than Hdt. 6.110.
[68]: This agrees with Hdt. 6.120.
[69]: The second campaign is described by Hdt. 7-9.
[70]: A like artificiality of rhetoric to describe the presumption of Xerxes in building a bridge across the Hellespont for his troops and a canal through the promontory of Athos for his ships (Hdt. 7.22-24) seems to have been conventional. Cf. Lys. 2.29 and Aesch. Pers. 745 ff.
[71]: There were originally in all about four thousand, according to Hdt. 7.202.
[72]: An understatement of the number. Cf. Hdt. 8.1.
[73]: Paralleled in Plat. Menex. 240d; Lys. 2.23; Lyc. 1.108.
[74]: This paragraph is closely paralleled in Lys. 2.31; Hyp. 6.27; and Lyc. 1.48.
[75]: Thermopylae.
[76]: An army of 2,640,000, acc. to Hdt. 7.185.
[77]: The attempt to bribe the Athenians was, according to Hdt. 8.136, made after the battle of Salamis.
[78]: Cf. Lys. 2.33 ff.
[79]: Unlike Gorgias, Fr. 18, and Lys. 2.37, who do go into such details.
[80]: So Isoc. 12.50 Lys. 2.42. But according to Hdt. 8.44-48 the Athenians furnished 180, the others 198.
[81]: Cf. Isoc. 12.51.
[82]: The Melan episode is dramatically told by Thucydides v. 84-116. Because the Melians refused to join the Delian Confederacy they were besieged and conquered by the Athenians, 416 B.C. The men of military age were put to the sword and the women and children sold into slavery. Five hundred Athenians were later settled there. Scione revolted from the Confederacy in 423 B.C. Reduced to subjection in 421 B.C., the people suffered the same fate as did the Melians later and their territory was occupied by Plataean refugees (Thuc. 4.120-130). These are blots on the record which Isocrates can at best condone. “Even the gods are not thought to be above reproach,” he says in the Isoc. 12.62-64, where he discusses frankly these sins of the Athenian democracy. Xenophon tells us that when the Athenians found themselves in like case with these conquered peoples after the disaster at Aegospotami they bitterly repented them of this injustice, Xen. Hell. 2.3.
[83]: In this and the following paragraphs we have a summing up of the spirit of the Athenian hegemony in contrast to that of the Spartan supremacy described in 115 ff. Cf. Isoc. 12.59 ff.
[84]: ταῖς δυναστείαις means simply “powers” in 81, but commonly powers not responsible to the people—oligarchies as here or tyrannies as in 39.
[85]: A pan-Hellenic sentiment. Cf. 81.
[86]: Citizens under oligarchies are without rights; they are like the metics in Athens—residents on sufferance.
[87]: By φύσις, nature. Cf. “All men are created equal.” The contrast between nature and convention— φύσις and νόμος—was a favorite topic of discussion among the sophists. Cf. an echo of it in Isoc. 1.10.
[88]: A democratic government. Cf. Isoc. 12.54 ff.
[89]: A round number. So Lys. 2.55. Demosthenes reckons the period of supremacy more accurately at 73 years, 477-404. In Isoc. 12.56 Isocrates reckons it at 65 years—roughly from the Confederacy of Delos to the Athenian disaster in Sicily, which was really the beginning of the end of the Athenian supremacy.
[90]: Allotments of lands to Athenian colonists in Greek territory, as in Scione and Melos. See note on 101. For these “cleruchies,” as they were called, see Gardner and Jevons, Manual of Greek Antiquities, pp. 602 ff.
[91]: The total population including foreign residents and slaves is reckoned at about 500,000; the total area is about 700 square miles.
[92]: See Thuc. 2.13 and Thuc. 8.79.
[93]: Herodotus characterizes Euboea as a “large and prosperous” island, Hdt. 5.31. Cf. Thuc. 8.96.
[94]: This cynical remark points to the Spartan conquest of Messene.
[95]: Probably a taunt flung at the Euboeans and all who were under the protection and influence of Athens.
[96]: When their city was destroyed in the Peloponnesian War, 427 B.C., the Plataeans took refuge in Athens and were later settled in Scione. At the close of the war they were forced to leave Scione and again found refuge in Athens. By the Peace of Antalcidas they were restored to their own territory only to be driven from their homes by the Thebans in 372 B.C. Once more Athens became their refuge. See Isoc. 14.13 ff.
[97]: In Athens and in other states under ther influence there was in the oligarchical party a group of Spartan sympathizers who out-Spartaned the Spartans. After the downfall of Athens at the close of the Peloponnesian war, when Sparta became the supreme power in Greece, 404 B.C., governing commissions of ten (“decarchies”) composed of these extremists, with a Spartan harmost and garrison to support them, were set up in most of these states by the Spartan general Lysander (Xen. Hell. 3.4.2). In Athens the “decarchy” succeeded the rule of the thirty tyrants. Compare what Isocrates says here about the decarchies with Isoc. 5.95 and Isoc. 12.54.
[98]: The reference is to Lysander, who on his mother’s side was of Helot blood. The Helots were serfs of the Spartans.
[99]: In Athens 1500, according to Isoc. 7.67; Isoc. 20.11.
[100]: Such a decree of the Ecclesia as was passed in 378 B.C., when the new confederacy was formed, absolving the allies from paying tribute and from the practice of trying their cases in Athens. These had been the causes of friction. See Isoc. 12.63.
[101]: Above all, the Treaty or Peace of Antalcidas, 387 B.C. Cf. Isoc. 4.120 ff. Xen. Hell. 5.1.31, quotes from this treaty: “King Artaxerxes thinks it just that the cities in Asia, and the islands of Clazomene and Cyprus, shall belong to him. He thinks it just also to leave all the other cities autonomous, both small and great—except Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, which are to belong to Athens, as they did originally. Should any parties refuse to accept this peace, I will make war upon them, along with those who are of the same mind, by land as well as by sea, with ships and with money” (Trans. by Grote, Hist. ix. p. 212). See General Introduction. p. xliii, and introduction to Panegyricus.
[102]: In the absence of the Athenian fleet.
[103]: Cf. Xen. Hell. 5.2.1.
[104]: Cf. Isoc. 12.97.
[105]: Freedom and autonomy—a single idea; see General Introd. p xxxii; Isoc. 14.24; Isoc. Letter 8.7.
[106]: See Isoc. 4.126.
[107]: Allusion is to the victory of Conon Cimon at the Eurymedon, 466 B.C.
[108]: Cf. Isoc. 7.80. There appears to have been a definite treaty setting bounds beyond which neither the sea nor land forces of Persia might go: see Isoc. 4.120 and Isoc. 12.59-61; also Dem. 19.273; Lyc. 1.73. This was the so-called Treaty of Callias: see Grote, Hist. v. pp. 192 ff.
[109]: For this play of words— ἀρχή, “beginning,” and ἀρχή, “dominion”—cf. Isoc. 3.28, Isoc. 8.101, Isoc. 5.61.
[110]: Battle of Aegospotami 405 B.C.
[111]: At the battle of Cnidus, but with the help of Conon.
[112]: See Xen. Hell. 4.8.7.
[113]: See Isoc. 4.115 and note.
[114]: Cf. Isoc. 4.118 and note.
[115]: Cf. Isoc. 4.175; Xen. Hell. 6.3.9.
[116]: The Peloponnesian War.
[117]: See words of Brasidas in Thuc. 4.85.
[118]: By the Treaty of Antalcidas, negotiated by Sparta, the Ionian cities of Asia Minor and the neighboring islands were given over to Persia (Xen. Hell. 5.1.31).
[119]: As, for example, over the Ionian cities.
[120]: Slaves by purchase were in worse case than slaves by capture in battle.
[121]: The Ionian cities were forced to fight with the Persians against Cyprus. See 134.
[122]: In 383 B.C. Cf. Isoc. 8.100; Xen. Hell. 5.2.7.
[123]: In the same year. See Xen. Hell. 5.2.25. The Cadmea was the citidel of Thebes.
[124]: This helps in dating the Panegyricus.
[125]: The siege of Olynthus was begun in 382 B.C. See Xen. Hell. 5.2.11. The siege of Phlius was begun in 380 B.C. See Xen. Hell. 5.2.8.
[126]: Amyntas, the father of Philip, was aided by the Spartans against Olynthus 383 B.C. See Isoc. 6.46 and Isoc. 5.106.
[127]: For the sympathy between Sparta and Dionysius see Isoc. 8.99, Isoc. 6.63.
[128]: By the Peace of Antalcidas.
[129]: Cf. Isoc. 8.72.
[130]: In his second letter to Philip, 5, Isocrates urges him to make all the barbarians, excepting those who join forces with him, serfs of the Hellenes.
[131]: For tribute levied by Sparta see Xen. Hell. 6.2.16.
[132]: The Cyclades, hilly and comparatively barren.
[133]: The “mainlanders”—Persian subjects in Asia Minor.
[134]: Reference to the ten years’ war between Artaxerxes and Evagoras, king of Salamis. For Evagoras see introduction to Isoc. 2, and for the war see Isoc. 9.64 ff.
[135]: The armament of Tiribazus, composed largely of an army of Greek mercenaries and a navy drawn from Ionian Greeks.
[136]: That of Evagoras.
[137]: See Isoc. 9.53-54; Xen. Hell. 4.8.24.
[138]: Greeks who sold their services as mercenary troops because of poverty at home. See Isoc. 4.168 and note.
[139]: Cf. Dem. 2.22.
[140]: Cf. Dem. 2.14.
[141]: Chios revolted from Athens and joined Sparta after the Sicilian expedition (Thuc. 8.7). After the battle of Cnidus she joined Athens again (Dio. Sic. 14.84-94).
[142]: Isocrates alone is authority for this war.
[143]: Salamis
[144]: See terms of Treaty of Antalcidas given in note on 115.
[145]: The war between Persia and Sparta which ended with the battle of Cnidus, 394 B.C. Conon, after the battle of Aegospotami in which he had been one of the generals, took service with the Persians, and was the captain of the fleet in this battle.
[146]: Conon.
[147]: The alliance of Argos, Thebes, Athens, Euboea, Corinth, and Sparta, formed at Corinth (Xen. Hell. 4.4.1).
[148]: Succeeded Thimbron as commander of the Spartan fleet, 399 B.C. He is said to have taken nine cities in eight days (Xen. Hell. 3.2.1).
[149]: Appointed harmost of Atarneus by Dercylidas, 398 B.C. (Xen. Hell. 3.2.11).
[150]: Admiral of Spartan fleet 400 B.C. (Xen. Hell. 3.1.4).
[151]: The campaign of Agesilaus occurred in 395 B.C. (Xen. Hell. 3.4.20).
[152]: Contemptuous, recalling Aristoph. Ach. 81.
[153]: The famous “ten thousand” led by Cleararchus, a Spartan, were employed by Cyrus, the younger son of Dareius, against his brother Artaxerxes, the Persian king, 401-399. The death of Cyrus, due to his rashness in the very moment of victory, deprived the rebellion of its leader and left the Greek army stranded in the heart of Asia. Xenophon, who has described this expedition in the Anabasis, led the remnant of this army after many months of hardship back to the shore of the Black Sea. See Grote, Hist. viii. pp. 3O3 ff. The expedition, though unsuccessful in its purpose, was regarded as a triumph of courage and a demonstration of the superiority of the Greeks over the Persians in warfare. The episode is used in Isoc. 5.90-93 with the same point as here.
[154]: Xen. Anab. 5.3.3 gives the survivors of the battle of Cunaxa as 8600.
[155]: Cf. Isoc. 4.168; Isoc. 5.96, 120, 121; Isoc. Letter 9.9.
[156]: Clearchus and four other captains were invited to a parley, under a truce, and treacherously slain (Xen. Anab. 2.5.31). Cf. Isoc. 5.91, where Isocrates uses the same language as here.
[157]: Tissaphernes, one of the four generals of Artaxerxes, engaged to furnish safe escort to the Greeks but, in fact, beset their march with treachery (Xen. Anab. 2.4.9).
[158]: See Xen. Anab. 2.4.4. Cf. Isoc. 9.58.
[159]: For effeminacy of the Persians see Isoc. 5.124.
[160]: Viceroys of the king—provincial governors.
[161]: See Xen. Hell. 3.4.26; Grote, Hist. ix. p. 92.
[162]: Cisthene was probably a town in Asia Minor captured by Agesilaus in the campaign.
[163]: Conon was one of the Athenian generals at the battle of Aegospatomi. After that disaster he left Greece and took service with the Persians against Sparta, and was instrumental in the defeat of the Spartan fleet at the battle of Cnidus. For the treachery referred to here see Grote, Hist. ix. p. 187.
[164]: Themistocles, commander of the Athenian fleet at Salamis, was later ostracized and took refuge at the Persian court. See Grote, Hist. v. p. 138.
[165]: When they captured Athens. See Isoc. 4.96; Hdt. 8.53; Aesch. Pers. 809.
[166]: There is no other authority for this oath of the Ionians. A similar oath is, however, attributed by Lyc. 1.81, to the collective Greeks before the battle of Plataea.
[167]: See Plat. Rep. 470c; Livy 31.29, “cum barbaris omnibus Graecis bellum est eritque.”
[168]: See Hdt. 9.5; Lyc. 1.122; Dem. 19.270.
[169]: The custom is attributed to Aristeides by Plut. Arist. 10.
[170]: The priests at Eleuis belonged to families traditionally descended from Eumolpus and Keryx.
[171]: See Hdt. 8.65; Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. p. 15.
[172]: Cf. Isoc. 9.6.
[173]: “Victories over the barbarians call for hymns, but victories over the Hellenes for dirges,” said Gorgias in his Epitaphios, and Isocrates may have had his words in mind. The Gorgias fragment is quoted by Philostr. Lives of the Sophists, 493.
[174]: See Plat. Hipparch. 228b; Plat. Rep. 606e, and Aristoph. Frogs 1035.
[175]: See Isoc. 5.101; Isoc. 4.140.
[176]: See Isoc. 4.141 and note.
[177]: Evagoras had ravaged Phoenicia and Syria, stormed Tyre, and made Cilicia revolt from Persia. See Isoc. 9.62.
[178]: Lycia was subjected to Persia by Harpagus (Hdt. 1.176), but never tamed.
[179]: See Dio. Sic. 15.2.
[180]: From Cnidus in S.W. Asia Minor to Sinope on the Black Sea; a line drawn from Cnidus to Sinope cuts off Asia Minor from Asia. The expression “from Cnidus to Sinope” was a catch phrase.
[181]: In the Persian Wars.
[182]: The Ionians in Asia Minor. See Hdt. 5.103.
[183]: Cf. the picture of distress in Isoc. Letter 9.8-10.
[184]: The hireling soldiers in Greece were becoming a serious problem. See Isoc. 5.96, 120, 121; Isoc. Letter 9.9.
[185]: By Dionysius I. See Dio. Sic. 14.106 ff.
[186]: The Sicilian cities, Selinius, Agrigentum, and Himera, were surrendered to the Carthaginians by Dionysius. See Dio. Sic. 13.114.
[187]: By the Treaty of Antalcidas.
[188]: The same complaint against the leading statesmen is made in Isoc. Letter 9.8.
[189]: For Isocrates’ aloofness from public life see Isoc. 5.81; Isoc. 12.9-10; Isoc. Letter 1.9; Isoc. Letter 8.7; and General Introd. p. xix.
[190]: That is, instead of warring among themselves and plundering each other, the Greeks must wage their wars against, and seek their plunder from, the barbarians. Cf. 15 and 187; Isoc. 5.9.
[191]: Cf. Theognis, 386 ff.
[192]: The Treaty of Antalcidas. See 115-120 and notes.
[193]: Articles of treaties were commonly inscribed on pillars of stone, set up either within a public temple or near it.
[194]: Chiefly Antalcidas of Sparta and Tiribazus, the Persian satrap, negotiated the peace. Isocrates complains that the treaty was arbitrary—not based on any principle whatsoever.
[195]: Compare the boast of Xerxes in Hdt. 7.8.
[196]: See Isoc. 12.107.
[197]: Another name for Paris.
[198]: The translation is influenced by Professor Bonner’s note on τὴν παρακαταθήκην in Classical Philology, xv. p. 385. He argues convincingly that τὴν παρακαταθήκην is not a particular deposit but that the article is “generic, not specific.” Deposits entrusted by one man with another were rather common transactions before the days of banks and caused frequent lawsuits. Hence “the deposit theme” became a hackneyed exercise in the schools of rhetoric. It is, in the opinion of Isocrates, too commonplace and trivial for serious oratory.
[199]: “Humble bees and salt” are mentioned in Isoc. 10.12 as subjects on which speakers show off their powers to the neglect of worthy themes. In general, he seems here to be thinking of such rhetorical tours de force as Lucian caricatures in his Encomium on the House Fly.
[200]: This very complaint he makes of his rival sophists. See Isoc. 13.1, 10.
[201]: Not too urbanely he dwells upon the poverty of his rivals. Cf. Isoc. 13.4, 7.
[202]: The kind of discourse to which Isocrates himself devoted his serious efforts. See Isoc. 12.11 and General Introd. p. xxiv.