Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/404

388 I S M I S ISMAILIA, a town of Egypt, nearly in the centre of the isthmus of Suez, on the western shore of Lake Timsah (which is traversed by the canal), and connected with the railway which joins Zagazeg, and consequently Alexandria and Cairo, with Suez. It was laid out in 1863, and for a time had a population of about 3000, mainly engaged in the construction of the canal. The broad macadamized streets and regular squares bordered with trees give it an attractive appearance ; and it has besides the advantage, a rare one in Egypt, of being surrounded on three sides by flourishing gardens. The Quai Mehernet Ali, which lies along the canal for upwards of a mile, contains the chalet long occupied by M. de Lesseps. At the end of the quay are the works for supplying Port Said with water ; and there is a bathing establishment on Lake Timsah. Ismailia is a separate mohafza or governorship, and has a vice-regal palace and a court of first instance. The population was returned as 3062 in 1872, and as 1897 in 1877. On the other side of the lake are the so-called Quarries of the Hyaenas, from which the building material for the town was obtained. ISMAILIA, or GONDOKORO, a famous mission-station and market-place in the territory of the Bari negroes on the right bank of the White Nile, about 330 miles, accord ing to Baker, above the confluence with the Bahr Giraffe, and about 200 miles below the northern end of Lake Albert Nyanza, in 4 54 5" 1ST. lat. and 31 46 9" E. long. The name Ismailia is more strictly applicable only to the military post established by Baker in 1871, and Gonclo- koro, as it is the more ancient, is still the more ordinary designation. In former times Gondokoro was a great centre of the ivory and slave trade ; and, though the site is now almost forsaken for ten months of the year, there is still a considerable ivory market held in December and January. In connexion with the mission instituted by Pope Gregory XVI. in 1846, the pro-vicar Knoblecher founded a station at Gondokoro in 1851, the principal station being at Khartum. A succession of misfortunes, including the death of Knobleclier in April 1858 and a famine in 1859, led to the final abandonment of the place. An interesting series of meteorological observations taken at Gondokoro will be found in Atti dei Lincei, 1860-61. ISMID, ISKIMID, or ISNIKMID (i.e., Ets NtKo/x,7/8etav), a town of the Turkish vilayet of Khudavendikiar in Asia Minor, in the sandjak of Scutari, situated at the head of the bay of Ismid (the ancient Sinus Astacenus), an inlet of the Sea of Marmora. It is connected by rail with Scutari, and the line is being continued eastward to Ada Bazar. As the seat not only of a pasha but also of a Greek metropolitan and an Armenian archbishop, Ismid retains somewhat of its ancient dignity, but the material condition of the town is little in keeping with its rank ; and but few traces are left of the magnificence which it possessed as Nicomedia, the capital of Bithynia. The population, estimated at from 10,000 to 15,000, are engaged in silk weaving and in commerce, Ismid being a great out let of goods from the interior. See NICOMEDIA. ISNIK. See NIC.EA. ISOCPiATES, one of the ten Attic orators, and one of the most remarkable men in the literary history of Greece, was born in 436 B.C., seven years before Plato. His father Theodorus was an Athenian citizen of the demo of Erchia, the same in which, about 431 B.C., Xenophon was born, and was sufficiently wealthy to have served the state as choregus. The fact that he possessed slaves skilled in the trade of flute-making perhaps lends point to a passage in which his son is mentioned by the comic poet Strattis. 1 Several popular " sophists " are 1 AraXavrr], frag. 1, Meineke, p. 292. named as teachers of the young Isocrates. Like other sons of prosperous parents, he may have been trained in su.ch grammatical subtleties as were taught by Protagoras or Prodicus, and initiated by Theramenes into the florid rhetoric of Gorgias, with whom at a later time (about 390 B.C.) he was in personal intercourse. He tells us that his father had been careful to provide for him the best education which Athens could afford. A fact of greater interest is disclosed by Plato s Phcedrus. " Isocrates is still young, Phaedrus," says the Socrates of that dialogue, " but I do not mind telling you what I prophesy of him. . . . . It would not surprise me if, as years go on he should make all his predecessors seem like children in the kind of oratory to which he is now addressing himself, or if supposing this should not content him some divine impulse should lead him to greater things. My dear PliEedrus, a certain philosophy is inborn in him." This conversation is dramatically supposed to take place about 410 B.C. It is unnecessary to discuss here the date at which the Fksedrus was actually composed. From the passage just cited it is at least clear that there had been a time while Isocrates could still be called " young "at which Plato had formed a high estimate of his powers. Isocrates took no active part in the public life of Athens ; he was not fitted, as he tells us, for the contests of the popular assembly or of the law-courts. He lacked strength of voice, a fatal defect in the ecclesia, when an audience of many thousands was to be addressed in the open air ; he was also deficient in " boldness " (roA/m). He was, in short, the physical opposite of the successful Athenian demagogue in the generation after that of Pericles ; by temperament as well as taste he was more in sympathy with the sedate decorum (dVooyx/a) of an older school. Two ancient biographers have, however, preserved a story which, if true, would show that this lack of voice and nerve did not involve any want of moral courage. During the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, Critias denounced Theramenes, who sprang for safety to the sacred hearth of the council chamber. Isocrates alone, it is said, dared at that moment to plead for the life of his friend. 2 Whatever may be the worth of the story, it would scarcely have connected itself with the name of a man to whose traditional character it was repugnant. While the Thirty were still in power, Isocrates withdrew from Athens to Chios. 3 He has mentioned that, in the course of the Peloponnesian War doubtless in the troubles which attended on its close he lost the whole of that private fortune which had enabled his father to serve the state, and that he then adopted the profession of a teacher. The proscription of the " art of words " by the Thirty would thus have given him a special motive for withdrawing from Athens. He returned thither, apparently, either soon before or soon after the restoration of the democracy in 403 B.C. For ten years from this date he was occupied at least Fore occasionally as a writer of speeches for the Athenian law- wovl courts. Six of these speeches are extant. The earliest ^ c " (Or. xxi.) may be referred to 403 B.C. ; the latest (Or. xix.) to 394-93 B.C. This was a department of his own work which Isocrates afterwards preferred to ignore. Nowhere, indeed, does he say that he had not written forensic speeches. But he frequently uses a tone from which that inference might be drawn. He loves to contrast such petty concerns as engage the forensic writer with those larger 2 [Pint.] Vit. Isocr., and the anonymous biographer. Dionysius does not mention the story, though he makes Isocrates a pupil of Theramenes. 3 Some would refer the sojourn of Isocrates at Chios to the years 398-395 B.C., others to 393-388 B.C. The reasons which support the view given in the text will be found in- Jebb s Attic Orators, vol. ii. p. 6, note 3.