Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/405

ISOO RATES 389 and nobler themes winch are treated by the politician. This helps to explain what would otherwise be startling. Not long after his death it could be asserted by his adopted son, Aphareus that he had written nothing for the law-courts. Whether the assertion was due to false shame or merely to ignorance, Dionysius of Halicarnassus decisively disposes of it. Aristotle had, indeed, he says, exaggerated the number of forensic speeches written by Isocrates ; but some of those which bore his name were unquestionably genuine, as was attested by one of the orator s own pupils, Cephisodorus. The doubt would not, indeed, have been even plausible, had not Isocrates fre quently spoken of such work with the aversion of one who would gladly forget, if he could, a distasteful episode of early life, a mere prelude to those labours of riper age in which he afterwards found his delight and his reward, olas- The real vocation of Isocrates was discovered from the and moment that he devoted himself to the work of a teacher rary and a writer. The instruction which Isocrates undertook to impart was based on rhetorical composition, but it was by no means merely rhetorical. That " inborn philosophy," of which Plato recognized the germ, still shows itself. In many of his works notably in the Panegyricus we see a really remarkable power of grasping a complex subject, of articulating it distinctly, of treating it, not merely with effect, but luminously, at once in its widest bearings and in its most intricate details. Young men could learn more from Isocrates than the graces of style ; nor would his success have been what it was if his skill had been con fined to the art of expression. ool of It was about 392 B.C. when he was forty-four that rates. h e opened his school at Athens near the Lyceum, and to the end of his life he continued to teach as well as to write. In 339 B.C. he describes himself as revising the Panathenaicus with some of his pupils ; he was then ninety-seven. The celebrity enjoyed by the school of Isocrates is strikingly attested by ancient writers. Cicero describes it as that school in which the eloquence of all Greece was trained and perfected : its disciples were " brilliant in pageant or in battle," 1 foremost among the accomplished writers or powerful debaters of their time. The phrase of Cicero is neither vague nor exaggerated. Among the literary pupils of Isocrates might be named the historians Ephorus and Theopompus, the Attic archaeologist Androtion, and Isocrates of Apollonia, who succeeded his master in the school. Among the prac tical orators we have, in the forensic kind, Isneus ; in the political, Leodamas of AcharnD3, Lycurgus, and Hyperides. And these are but a few names out of many. Hermippus of Smyrna (mentioned by Athenceus) wrote a monograph on the " Disciples of Isocrates." And scanty as are now the sources for such a catalogue, a modern scholar 2 has still been able to recover forty-one names. At the time when the school of Isocrates was in the zenith of its fame, it drew disciples, not only from the shores and islands of the vEgean, but from the cities of Sicily and the distant colonies of the Euxine. As became the image of its master s spirit, it was truly Panhellenic. When Mausolus, prince of Caria, died in 351 B.C., his widow Artemisia instituted a contest of panegyrical eloquence in honour of his memory. The most accomplished rhetoricians of Greece entered the lists at Halicarnassus ; but among all the com petitors there was not one if tradition may be trusted who had not been the pupil of Isocrates. litical Meanwhile the teacher who had won this great reputation [tings. ] iar } a ] so b een active as a public writer. The most interest ing and most characteristic works of Isocrates are those in which he deals with the public questions of his own day. 1 Partim in pompa, partira in acie illustres. De Oral., ii. , 2 Sanneg, De Schola Isocratea, Halle, 1867. 94. The influence which he thus exercised throughout Hellas might be compared to that of an earnest political essayist gifted with a popular and attractive style. And Isocrates had a dominant idea which gained strength with his years, until its realization had become, we might say, the main purpose of his life. This idea was the invasion of Asia by the united forces of Greece. The Greek cities were at feud with each other, and were severally torn by intestine faction. Political morality was become a rare and a somewhat despised distinction. Men who were notoriously ready to sell their cities for their private gain were, as Demosthenes says, rather admired than otherwise. 3 The social condition of Greece was becoming very unhappy. The wealth of the country had ceased to grow ; the gulf between rich and poor was becoming wider ; party strife was constantly adding to the number of homeless paupers; and Greece was full of men who were ready to take service with any captain of mercenaries, or, failing that, with any leader of desperadoes. Isocrates draws a vivid and terrible picture of these evils. The cure for them, he firmly believed, was to unite the Greeks in a cause which would excite a generous enthusiasm. Now was the time, he thought, for that enterprise in which Xenophon s comrades had virtually succeeded, when the headlong rashness of young Cyrus threw away their reward with his own life. 4 The Persian empire was unsound to the core, witness tho retreat of the Ten Thousand : let united Greece attack it and it must go down at the first onset. Then new wealth would flow into Greece; and the hungry pariahs of Greek society would be drafted into fertile homes beyond the yEgean. A bright vision ; but where was the power whose spell Asiatic was first to unite discordant Greece, and, having united project, it, to direct its strength against Asia 1 ? That was the problem. The first attempt of Isocrates to solve it is set forth in his splendid Panegyricvs (380 B.C.). Let Athens and Sparta lay aside their jealousies. Let them assume, jointly, a leadership which might be difficult for either, but which would be assured to both. That eloquent pleading failed. The next hope was to find some one man equal to the task. Jason of Pherae, Dionysius the First of Syracuse, Archidamus III., son of Agesilaus each in turn rose as a possible leader of Greece before the imagination of the old man who was still young in his enthusiastic hope, and one after another they failed him. But now a greater than any of these was appearing on the Hellenic horizon, and to this new luminary the eyes of Isocrates were turned with eager anticipation. Who could lead united Greece against Asia so fitly as the veritable representative of the Heraclidse, the royal descendant of the Argive lins, a king of half-barbarians it is true, but by race, as in spirit, a pure Hellene, Philip of Macedon 1 We can still read the words in which this fond faith clothed itself ; the ardent appeal of Isocrates to Philip is extant ; and another letter shows that the belief of Isocrates in Philip lasted at any rate down to the eve of Chseronea. 5 Whether it survived that event is a doubtful point. Tl:e popular account of the orator s death ascribed it to the mental shock which he received from the news of Philip s victory. He was at Athens, in the palaestra of Hippocrates, when the tidings came. He repeated three verses in which Euripides names three foreign conquerors of Greece Dandus, Pelops, Cadmus and four days later he died of 3 De Fals. Legal., 265 : ou% OTTCDS wpyi&v-ro % Kodew fylow TOUS ravra troiowras, a airtfiXfXOi>, f^eav, t-ripwv, &v8pas fiyovVTO. 4 eKeivovsyap 6fj.ooyf7rai . . . tfSr] fyKparf7s SOKOVVTCIS el vat TWV vpayfj-aTwy Sia -rriv Kvpov TrpoirfTfiav arv^rjcrai, PhilipjMis (Or. v. ;, 90; cf. Pancgyr., 149. 5 PMKppUS (Or. v.), 346 B.C. ; Epist. ii., end of 342 B.C. (?)