Yun Lee Too

The rhetoric of identity in Isocrates offers a sustained interpreta-
tion of the Isocratean corpus, showing that rhetoric is a language

which the author uses to create a political identity for himself in
fourth-century Athens. Dr Too examines how Isocrates' discourse
addresses anxieties surrounding the written word in a democratic
culture which values the spoken word as the privileged means of
political expression. Isocrates makes written culture the basis for a
revisionary Athenian politics and of a rhetoric of Athenian hege-
mony. In addition, Isocrates takes issue with the popular image of
the professional teacher in the age of the sophist, combating the
negative stereotype of the greedy sophist who corrupts the city's
youth in his portrait of himself as a teacher of rhetoric. He
daringly reinterprets the pedagogue as a figure who produces a
discourse which articulates political authority.
This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to ancient
rhetoric and should appeal to people with interests in the fields of
classics, history, the history of political thought, literature, literary
theory, philosophy and education. All passages in Greek and Latin
have been translated to ensure accessibility to non-classicists.
CAMBRIDGE CLASSICAL STUDIES
General Editors
M. F. BURNYEAT, M. K. HOPKINS,
M. D. REEVE, A. M. SNODGRASS
THE RHETORIC OF IDENTITY IN !SOCRATES

THE RHETORIC OF IDENTITY IN !SOCRATES
Text, power, pedagogy
YUN LEE TOO

Lecturer in Classics, University of Liverpool
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP
40 West 2oth Street, New York, NY IOOI 1-4211, USA
IO Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
© Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge 1995
First published 1995
Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

Too, Yun Lee.
The rhetoric of identity in Isocrates : text, power, pedagogy/ Yun Lee Too.
p. cm. - (Cambridge classical studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o 521 47406 X (hardback)
1. Isocrates - Criticism and interpretation. 2. Speeches, addresses, etc., Greek
History and criticism. 3. Athens (Greece) - Politics and government. 4. Political
oratory - Greece - Athens. 5. Rhetoric, Ancient. 6. Oratory, Ancient. I. Title. II.
Series.
PA4218.T66 1995
885'.01 - dc20
94-20628
CIP
ISBN o 521 47406 x hardback
UP
For my family
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements XI
Abbreviations XU
Introduction I
1 Isocrates and logos politikos 10

2 The unities of discourse 36
3 The politics of the small voice 74
4 Isocrates in his own write 113
5 The pedagogical contract 151
6 The politics of discipleship 200
Brief afterword 233

Appendix 1 Isocrates and Gorgias 235
Appendix 2 Concerning the Chariot-team 240
Bibliography
General index
Index of Greek words
Index of Passages
lX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe a debt of gratitude to many people for their encour-

agement, patience and the generosity of their learning.
In particular, I would like to thank Robert Wardy, who
from 1989 to 1992 watched over the writing of the
Cambridge PhD thesis which forms the basis of this book,
casting his scrupulous and discerning eye over its contents.
John Henderson gave me the opportunity to try out some of
my more daring interpretations at an early stage. During
the 'conversion' of the thesis into a book Myles Burnyeat
provided opportunities to discuss and debate issues, chal-
lenged the arguments and gave much appreciated support,
while Michael Reeve offered himself as both a rigorous and
sympathetic audience and critic. From them I learned a lot
about what the 'teacher' and what critical reading might be.
I would also like to mention and thank the following for
the comments, suggestions and criticisms which made the
writing of this book an ongoing dialogue: the late Charles
Brink, Paul Cartledge, Simon Goldhill, Richard Hunter,
Geoffrey Lloyd, Donald Russell and Malcolm Schofield (the
latter two as examiners and, later, as generous commenta-
tors). Clare Brant and Iain Macpherson also lent patient
ears and provided the support good friends give. I apologise
to anyone I might have forgotten to mention.
Finally and not least of all, I would like to thank the
Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College for a
hospitable environment provided in the form of a Junior
Research Fellowship.
XI
ABBREVIATIONS
AJA American Journal of Archeology

AJAH American Journal of Ancient History
AJP American Journal of Philology
AS Ancient Society
BICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
CA Classical Antiquity
CJ Classical Journal
CP Classical Philology
CQ Classical Quarterly
CR Classical Review
CSCA California Studies in Classical Antiquity
CV/EMC Classical Views/ Echos du monde classique
cw Classical World
CWeekly Classical Weekly
FGrH Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker
GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
HPT History of Political Thought
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
/CS Illinois Classical Studies
JG Inscriptiones Graecae
JHP Journal of the History of Philosophy
JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies
LCM Liverpool Classical Monthly
NLH New Literary History
QJS Quarterly Journal of Speech
R-E Real-encyclopadie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft
REG Revue des etudes grecques
RhM Rheinisches Museum
RPh Revue Philologique
Xll
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
TAPA Transactions and Proceedings of the American

Philological Association
YCS Yale Classical Studies
ZPE Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik
Xlll
INTRODUCTION
Every society has a particular language or languages which

an individual can invoke to demonstrate that he or she is a
member of that community. This book is about the making
of identity in the classical Greek city. It concerns itself with
the complex rhetoric of self produced by the author and
intellectual Isocrates in defining himself as a citizen of
fourth-century Athens. The study examines how Isocrates
constructs a language within which he proceeds to fashion
and authorise his own identity. What I hope will emerge
from my analysis is an awareness that language can serve as
a potent non-material basis for an individual's authority
within society.
Isocrates is at once an obvious and unobvious choice for
the present book. Scholars in Antiquity and in the
Renaissance regarded Isocrates (436-338 Be) as the pre-
eminent rhetorician of ancient Athens and accordingly made
him a central figure in their picture of fourth-century
Athens. For the majority of modern scholars, however, he is
a figure of inadequacy. He is an exception in a moment of
otherwise remarkably self-aware literary, political and intel-
lectual achievement that we have come to know as 'classical
Athens'. Isocrates loses out on several counts. He is rele-
gated to the margins of a particular Athens. This Athens
features Demosthenes and Lysias as its preferred orators,
Thucydides and Xenophon as its historians, and Plato as its
privileged philosopher, as perhaps the Athenian intellectual
of the fourth century. Even Marrou, who admits Isocrates'
significance for the development of rhetoric in the West,
must concede: 'De quelque point de vue qu'on se place:
puissance de seduction, rayonnement de la personnalite,
richesse du temperament, profondeur de la pensee, art
I
INTRODUCTION
meme, Isocrate ne saurait etre mis sur le meme plan que

Platon ... ' 1 In the same vein de Romilly concludes an article
which implicitly seeks to establish goodwill towards the
rhetorician, 'Isocrates, it is true, is not very intelligent: but,
all the same, it must be said: we all take after him, in some
way or other.' 2
My study attempts in part to restore authority to
Isocrates. My intention will be to recover not the authority
which readers in Antiquity and in the Renaissance attributed
to the author but that which the author's own rhetorical dis-
course creates for him. Given what many observe to be our
own mistrust of rhetoricians and rhetoric the project may ini-
tially appear self-defeating. Indeed, one may speculate that
scholars subsequent to the Renaissance regard Isocrates as
such a peripheral individual precisely because he was Athens'
rhetorician par excellence. This description of the author
enables critics to lay against him the charges that he is more
style than content, more text than substance, in short that he
is more rhetoric than anything else, particularly philosophy.
Perhaps Aristophanes originates this view of rhetoric when
he attacks the rhetorical education of the sophists in the
Clouds. In any case it is certainly Plato who gives the most
authority to the negative stereotypes of rhetoric. In one
passage of the Euthydemus Socrates offers an attack on
rhetoric which many scholars believe to be aimed specifically
at Isocrates. 3 Here the philosopher dismisses the rhetorician's
profession as an inauthentic pursuit of wisdom. Rhetoric, he
observes, occupies an intermediate position between philoso-
phy and politics (cf. 305c7; 306a-b). In other dialogues
Socrates offers the definition of· rhetoric which many now
take for granted, casting it as an 'art of persuasion' .4 From
this follows a baggage of moral judgements, namely that
rhetoric is the art of going to any and every length (panta
1
Marrou (1956), p. 131.
2
De Romilly (1958), p. 101.
3 Hawtrey (1981), p. 190 and Canto (1989), pp. 34-5.
4
Note Kennedy (1963), p. 7, 'Wherever persuasion is the end, rhetoric is present';
~!so G~thrie (1971), p. 50; Vickers (1988), p. 1. Also, Dodds (1959), p. 4,
Rhetoric was the Art of Success.'
2
INTRODUCTION
legein) - deceptions, lies, force and so on - to achieve its goal

of persuasion (e.g. Republic 494e4). Rhetoric is a language of
inauthenticity, and so it is the antithesis of 'philosophy', of
the discourse that Plato wants to be viewed as the language
of what is real, true and just. Plato has
caricatured rhetoric and rhetoricians, painting a portrait of
bad language practised by insincere individuals.
Because etymology tends to decontextualise, it is a mode
of reading which may begin to free us from Platonic notions
and prejudices about (Isocratean) rhetoric. Pierre
Chantraine may or may not be justified in connecting the
Greek word for rhetorician, 'rhetor', with eiro, which
supplies some of the parts of the verb legein, 'to speak'. He
defines a 'rhetorician' simply as 'celui qui parle en public' or
'orateur a l'assemblee, homme politique' .s For Chantraine, a
rhetorician is first and foremost an individual who speaks in
a public place: the lawcourt, the Assembly, the marketplace,
the panhellenic festival gathering, all of which
perhaps with the exception of the last - represent the civic
community. 6 In providing this definition of the rhetorician,
Chantraine recognises a basic function of this individual's
discourse. Indeed, when Isocrates and later authors write of
the role of language in creating society, they implicitly indi-
cate that the fundamental purpose of their discourse, as
rhetoricians, is to address the civic sphere. 7
In a frequently cited passage from the Antidosis Isocrates
speaks of the role of logos in creating civic communities and
their institutions. He narrates how through logos men
persuaded one another, associated with one another, created
cities, established nomoi, the cities' conventions or laws, and
invented arts: 'Since present in us was the ability to persuade
one another and to make clear what we wanted, we not only
departed from the life of wild animals but we came together,
s Chantraine (1968), I, p. 326, viz. 2 ei'pw; also Benveniste (1948), pp. 52-4.
6 Gorgias 502d2-e8; Euthydemus 305b6-c2.
7 Also cf. Isocrates Nicocles 6-9; Antidosis 253-7; Panegyricus 48ff.; Xenophon
Memorabilia 4.3.rrff. (on Aoy1crµ6s);Cicero On Invention r.2. Spence (1988), pp.
13ff., regards Isocrates as the paradigm of the 'humanist rhetoric' which orders
society into being.
3
INTRODUCTION
built cities, established conventions [or 'laws' (nomous)] and

created arts; and speech (logos) is what formed for us nearly
all the devices we discovered' (Antidosis 254). 8 In the narra-
tive of this paragraph logos is introduced as a language of
persuasion. As such, it creates public space and is in turn
redefined within this public space, evolving, for instance, as
nomos or law or as a technical, i.e. artistic, language. What
this narrative suggests is that once logos has brought people
together into a community, it becomes less a language of
persuasion than a particular language or discourse which is
designed to operate within that particular community to
reinforce it. As a public discourse, as rhetoric, logos is to be
perceived as a special language designed both to constitute
and to announce the deliberate strategies that individuals
use to devise images - whether good, bad, beautiful, ugly,
truthful, misleading, and so on - of their societies, such as
we have in Antidosis 254. It both constructs itself around,
and sometimes also consciously rejects, discursive conven-
tions which may be distinct from those, say, of dialogue,
poetry, and so on. As rhetoric, logos also constitutes a
whole 'language' by which an individual declares himself or
herself to be part of a particular society through its use: it
provides him or her with a mark of his or her membership
in that society. In Isocrates' case, the particular society to
which allegiance is affirmed is a democratic one. If Schmitt-
Pantel is right to see democratic ethos as being constituted
precisely by the willingness of the individual to see himself
and to be seen as a member of a group, then democracy is a
society that supports and encourages rhetorical discourse.9
mpi WV av
8
eyyevoµevov 8' 17µ1vTO\Jmi6e1v a:AAT]/\OVS
Kai 8T7AOVV
TTpos17µ6:sCXVTOVS
[3ovAri6wµev, O\J µ6vov TOV 6rip1w8ws ~ijv CXTTT7AA6:yT7µEv,
6:Ma Kai 0-VVEA66VTES
TTOAEIS 0Kio-aµev Kai v6µovs e6eµe6a Kai Texvas Evpoµev, Kai o-xe86v cmaVTa TO.
81' 17µwvµeµrixavriµeva Myos 17µ1vE<YTIV
6 o-vyKaTaO-KEV6:o-as.
9 Cf. Schmitt-Pante! (1990) and Euben (1990), p. II I, on the literary construction
of tyranny in terms of 'isolation'.
4
INTRODUCTION
II
Hannah Ahrendt has declared that persuasion is irrelevant to

authority and is in fact incompatible with it: it is not neces-
sary to convince in order to have influence and power. 10
Ahrendt's point in more detail is that persuasion assumes that
equality exists between those persuading and those who are
being persuaded, an equality which she regards as being
absent between those asserting authority and those subject to
it. From this understanding of authority it follows that
Isocrates is most successful in constructing an authoritative
image for and of himself, as I shall argue he is, precisely when
he does not require his audience to believe what he is saying.
Accordingly, I lay down as one of the assumptions for this
study that, when any rhetorical author, and particularly
Isocrates, intends to produce an authoritative image of him-
self, what he demands of his audience is merely the perception
and reception of the images he produces rather than a belief
in them. So also, a rhetoric of authority does not require its
modem audience to believe or assume that it depicts ancient
society and culture as they historically or actually were, and
may even indicate that it is offering an account which differs
from reality. Such a rhetoric demands only the realisation
that it provides us with a means of approaching Antiquity
that may constitute the basis for our own (re)constructions of
ancient society and culture. It asks its reader to assent to the
author's portrait of a community and of the individuals who
constitute that community created.
As the most rhetorical representative of 'Athens',
Isocrates should be the author who provides us with the eas-
iest access to his society. Nevertheless, he finds himself in an
extremely ironic position, for he is perceived to be one of
classical Athens' least readable and communicable authors.
The reason for this is the reader's failure to recognise that
while rhetoric mediates a series of images to him or her, it
10 See Ahrendt (1958), p. 82 and Friedman 'On the concept of authority in political
philosophy', p. 63 in Raz (1990).
5
INTRODUCTION
does so as a language of sophisticated and subtle codes.

Rhetorical discourse is playful, at once setting up and violat-
ing its own codes. We shall see that in addressing the public
space Isocrates both draws on and transgresses the norms of
civic identity obvious to his own contemporary audience
and to a modern one. He constructs his identity through
strategies of self-depiction and self-authorisation less explicit
than those employed by many of his contemporaries and
often at odds with them. In particular, we shall see that he
invokes a democratic language while actually putting for-
ward an ideology of oligarchical elitism. He paradoxically
locates himself on the fringes of the city through a discourse
which defines just this common space. Isocrates invokes but
also flouts the conventions which declare an individual to be
a member of democratic Athenian society. What is ulti-
mately needed to read Isocratean rhetoric, then, is an aware-
ness that it at times manipulates and appropriates what
appear to be and also are conflicting ideologies and their
languages. I suggest that in the end Isocrates does as much,
if not more, to undermine as to reinforce the status of
rhetoric as a language of community. What emerges from
the author's writings is a sense of his uniqueness and his
superiority, constructed through the 'otherness' of contem-
poraries and potential competitors.
In an effort to confront Isocrates' recalcitrance the pre-
sent study will take the form of a detailed analysis of his
'voice'. This study is divided into six chapters and each of
these will attempt to elucidate different aspects of the per-
sona generated according to and despite the constraints of
public identity in fourth-century Athens. The first four chap-
ters will examine how Isocrates poses a challenge to the val-
ues and functions scholars traditionally assign to oral and
written language in classical Greece. Chapter I approaches
the question of Isocrates' political identity through a consid-
eration of the literary identity of his writing. It argues that
he provides what must be seen in retrospect as a unique
alternative to the ancient literary obsession (and also to the
modern one) with the multiplication and classification of lit-
6
INTRODUCTION
erary genres according to distinct styles and literary forms. 11
He names the 'genre' of his literary discourse as logos poli-

tikos (inadequately rendered in English by 'political dis-
course'). For Isocrates logos politikos is the only legitimate
language for a citizen and thus one to which all other dis-
courses must be either subsumed or subordinated. He
derives part of his authority from the fact that his writing is
concerned with the city-state and its well-being. Chapter 2
investigates the coherence of Isocratean 'political discourse'
and of the authorial voice. It considers the various ways in
which the author structures his texts to create a body of
works which suggest to its audience that it should be read as
such and in this or that order. I draw attention to a sense of
chronological ordering which affirms the integrity of the
texts as a 'corpus' but also consider how the works sustain
other structures, such as repetition and antilogy, which both
reinforce and challenge their integrity as a corpus.
The next two chapters consider in detail how Isocrates
radically transforms the political value and meaning of
'voice'. Modern literary and philosophical criticism might
imply that the challenge to Isocrates' civic identity should
come from his wish to be seen as a writer, in particular as
the 'leader of (written) words'. Derrida's readings of Plato
suggest that literary texts are prone to self-contradiction and
dismantling despite the fact that the author might claim full
control over them. 12 Against and at odds with this critical
backdrop, chapters 3 and 4 demonstrate that Isocratean
'political discourse' constitutes a rejection of the discourses
which traditionally ensure that one will be heard in the
Greek city. Chapter 3 examines Isocrates' political autobiog-
raphy. He claims for himself a 'small voice' or, as scholars
designate it, mikrophonia. I show how in doing so he dis-
tances himself from the figure of the orator and litigant -
the 'new politician', perhaps most notoriously represented
by Cleon - whose public rantings bring about the decay of
11 Tannenbaum (1986), pp. 1-16, sees a similar use of 'genre' to define political
identity in the plays of Shakespeare.
12 See the essay 'Plato's Pharmacy' in Derrida (1981).
7
INTRODUCTION
the Assembly and lawcourts as civic institutions. In chapter

4 I shall argue that the 'small voice' also helps to validate
literary language. Isocrates draws an analogy between his
own 'small voice' and the 'small voice' which belongs to
writing, namely his political texts. Through this characterisa-
tion of written discourse he offers a means of accommodat-
ing a mode of communication in a culture where spoken
language is conventionally viewed as the privileged medium
of political participation. I shall examine the politics implied
by the attribution of mikrophonia to writing. A 'small voice'
is associated with a life of quietude, responsibility, that is
political non-involvement, and with the abandoned demo-
cratic virtues, above all 'moderation'. The quietistic text also
has the potential, however, to wield enormous political influ-
ence. This text is depicted by Isocrates as travelling through-
out the Greek world and establishing, with the author as its
ultimate ruler, a cultural hegemony which is presented as
superseding Athens' military empire.
Chapters 5 and 6 of this study examine how Isocrates
negotiates the fact that he might be viewed as a teacher and
the ambivalence associated with such an identity. They con-
sider the ways in which the civic identity that he has created
for himself requires him to limit and qualify his pedagogical
persona. In chapter 5 I demonstrate that Isocrates presents
us with a text, Against the Sophists, which breaks off just at
the point when it appears to teach. Scholars generally regard
this 'silence' as a textual lacuna. I argue, however, that the
obvious and conventional supplements that have been and
might be proposed for this supposed lacuna are unsatisfac-
tory, and I propose that Isocrates 'deliberately interrupts this
work to resist the notion that teaching has to be a language
or doctrine which prescribes the teacher as a model for the
student's identity. In the sixth and final chapter I explain
that Isocrates cuts short this work for the further reason of
maintaining the boundary of political discourse and to pre-
serve his civic identity as the focus of authority in his writ-
ings. He has rejected the more conventional pedagogical dis-
courses in order to assimilate the language of teaching to
8
INTRODUCTION
'political discourse'. I show that he affirms the overall conti-

nuity of his discourse by using pedagogy as a metaphor that
articulates the power of Athens and of her individual citizen,
ultimately 'Isocrates'. Even here pedagogical language and
identity are ambiguous because Isocrates writes against a
background in which the pedagogue is to be viewed as a
treacherous citizen. I conclude my study of Isocrates by sug-
gesting how his political valuation of 'teaching' offers us a
way into the politics underlying current debates regarding
'curriculum' and 'canon' in the modern academy.
III
While this study of Isocrates is written first and foremost
with classicists in mind, it also raises issues which, I hope,
are of interest to others working in other disciplines, partic-
ularly literary criticism, history and political theory. In order
to make it accessible to a broader range of readers I have
decided to be as sparing as possible with my quotation of
texts in Greek and Latin in the main body of the discussion,
where all passages cited are transliterated or translated. I
have, however, cited these passages in the original languages
in the footnotes so that the reader does not have to tum fre-
quently to Greek and Latin editions for reference.
9
1
!SOCRATES AND LOGOS POLIT/KOS
Yet, at first sight, what could be more simple? A collection of texts that
can be designated by the sign of a proper name.
Foucault 1
Literary taxonomy, like numerology, is a spendthrift affair: one can find

significant patterns in virtually any random set of materials ... They are
simulacra of identity, concealing for the purposes of analytic economy the
differences that have to break out if anything serious is to be said. The
point of the taxonomic sketch is that its very fragility, its lapses and inad-
equacies, lead straight to a number of key questions. One has to stage an
illusion of coherence and completeness in order to perceive how far it
doesn't and can't suffice - to demonstrate that, when one moves out cen-
trifugally into the realm of particular cases, the paradigm may well turn
out to be a hapax in disguise.
Cave 2
I
We often determine an author's identity at least in part
through the number and the type of works that he or she
writes. Yet characterising an author in this manner is not
necessarily as straightforward as it might at first appear. To
take an author and the body of works written by this indi-
vidual, his or her ceuvre or corpus, is perhaps, as Foucault
goes on to observe, to be able to take very little, if anything,
for granted. Accordingly, to take 'Isocrates' or 'the works of
Isocrates' as the basis for a study, as I am now doing, is to
risk opening up the continuities of discourse we know as this
author and his works to a host of possibly disturbing ques-
tions.3 In particular, an ancient author like Isocrates high-
' Foucault (1972), p. 23.
2
Cave (1988), p. 226.
3 See Foucault (1972), pp. 21ff.
IO
lights the fragility of authorial and literary identity. There is

a sense in which what we take to be the authentic body of
works of the author will always also be a 'canon'. That is to
say, it will be a body of literature deliberately authorised
and instituted by someone other than the author, perhaps
coming about as the result of an accumulation of author-
ships and editorships like the Garland of Philip, the Palatine
Anthology and, by some accounts, the Homeric poems. So
we receive the texts of Isocrates only after they have passed
over several centuries through the hands of numerous inter-
mediaries, e.g. readers, scribes, booksellers, librarians, schol-
ars. Each of these individuals has the power to determine
which texts will survive as the author's texts and in what
precise form.
Scholars show the degree to which there might be dis-
agreement about the size of the Isocratean corpus.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Photius, the patriarch of
Byzantium, assigned twenty-five works to Isocrates,
Caecilius of Caleacte twenty-eight, the Suda Lexicon thirty-
two. Modern critics ascribe twenty-nine or thirty works to
him. Pseudo-Plutarch revealed the extent to which the size
of an author's corpus might vary when he credited the
rhetorician with no fewer than sixty texts. 4 Why such diver-
gences exist is. explained by the fact that there is a coming
together of assumptions about both an author and his or
her works in the construction of the corpus. Authors are
defined in terms of a set of underlying premises and preju-
dices about their works, and their works in terms of a set
of notions about their author. Declaring 'this is a work
of Isocrates' requires that the person who does so accepts
the text in question as a work of Isocrates on the basis of
various characteristics which one has already decided are
Isocratean, e.g. absence of hiatus, balanced periods, use of
antithesis and so on. Similarly, declaring 'this is a work of
Plato' requires that one thinks a dialogue to be Plato's on
4 Photius Cod. 159.101b33-4 and Cod. 260-486b5; Ps.-Plutarch 838d; also cf.
Drerup (1906), pp. lxxxviff., and Mathieu and Bremond (1962) i, p. xx and n.2.
I I
ISOCRATES AND LOGOS POLIT/KOS
the basis of traits that one deems Platonic, e.g. use of dia-
logue and dramatic form, myths and so on.
One of the assumptions which play an especially signifi-
cant role in the reader's formation of the corpus concerns
how and what a particular author should or should not
write. The case of Isocrates demonstrates that the literary
identity of works can determine whether and where they are
included in the body of works attributed to an author.
Genre can thus become a factor in the formation of the cor-
pus, not only establishing what may be included in it but
also, as Fowler observes, its centre and its margins. 5
Isocrates makes derogatory statements about logography,
or writing court speeches for other people, as a strategy of
what we will see to be his self-characterisation (e.g.
Panathenaicus I 1). Reading these statements at face value,
some scholars have accordingly declared Isocrates' dicanic
works spurious or at least doubtful in their origin. 6 On the
other hand, a perception that Isocrates might engage in
other types of discourse has resulted in scholars ascribing
certain otherwise unattested texts to him. Ps.-Plutarch
(838b) advocated the genuineness of an Encomium of
Mausolus, even though acknowledging that this work had
not been preserved in his own time, and Hermippus (apud
Diogenes Laertius 11.55) declared his belief in the existence
of a Funeral Oration of Gryllos. Clearly both Ps.-Plutarch
and Hermippus regarded encomia as a significant dimension
of Isocratean discourse.
Richard Jebb, however, considered epideixis a less signifi-
cant category than others. He called into question the
authenticity of these speeches, assigning them to Isocrates of
Apollonia, the confusing namesake and supposed pupil of
Isocrates.7 Both Hieronymus Wolf and Georg Benseler
ignore the epistles but they invent further legal and delibera-
5 Fowler (1979), pp. 97-119.
6
Ben~el~r and Drerup consider Against Euthynus, for instance, to be spurious.
Their Judgement may proceed from the belief that booksellers often mislabelled
forgeries with the names of famous orators in order to increase sales; see Bonner
(1920b), p. 385, and Dover (1968), pp. 25-6.
7
Cf. Jebb (1876), ii, pp, 11 and 80, n. 2 and Hesychius 653 (Suda, s.v. 'laoKpCTTTJS).
12
tive texts for him, giving emphasis to dicanic and sym-

bouleutic genres. Benseler posited a To Euthynus (distinct
from and in addition to the dicanic text Against Euthynus)
on the authority of Aristotle Rhetoric 1392bo-12; 8 Wolf
took To Philip 81, where Isocrates mentions a letter he
wrote to Dionysius, as a reference to a lost speech To
Dionysius. 9 Finally, the debate on whether or not an Art of
Rhetoric (techne) should be included among the genuine
works of Isocrates hinges on whether scholars think the
rhetorician engaged in 'technical discourse'. ro
II
Genre is an important issue for reading Isocrates' works,
and I want now to consider how various readers have
understood it and used it as an interpretative tool. Genre
may be understood very generally as a literary category
defined in terms, for example, of theme, style (e.g. language,
metre) and/or occasion of performance (e.g. drama, lyric,
epic). It might appear that once we can identify the genres
of Isocrates' works we can begin to establish his corpus with
some certainty. But the generic identity of his texts has also
historically been a point of contention. Throughout the cen-
turies scholars produced a series of 'taxonomic sketches',
thinking that they were fixing once and for all the categories
of his prose. In the ninth century AD the patriarch of
Byzantium and Antiquity's librarian par excellence, Photius,
proposed the following system of classification for what he
believed to be his genuine writings: symbouleutic works (To
Demonicus, To Nicocles, Nicocles, On the Peace,
Panegyricus, Areopagiticus, Plataicus, Archidamus, To
Philip), encomia (Busiris, Helen, Evagoras, Panathenaicus),
8 In his essay De Hiatu, p. 56.
9 Jebb (1876), ii, p. 80, n. 2, and Jaeger (1963), p. 247, suggest, however, that there
is no reason to doubt that these passages refer to anything other than the surviv-
ing speech Against Euthynus and the extant Epistle to Dionysius respectively.
10 The thirteenth-century Byzantine scholar Maximus Planudes, for one, preserved
supposed fragments of Isocrates' technical treatise on rhetoric in his grammati-
cal writings. On the existence of the treatise, see the discussion in chapter 5.
13
ISOCRATES AND LOGOS POLITIKOS
dicanic texts (Antidosis and the forensic speeches, apart from

Concerning the Chariot-team, which he seems to have omit-
ted by mistake), and the nine letters. rr Photius' implicit
intention was to fit the non-epistolary works or logoi into
the three Aristotelian genres - symbouleutic, dicanic, enco-
miastic - after Rhetoric I 358b6---8. He aimed to make the
works of the rhetorician more familiar and accessible with a
familiar terminology. 12 Against the Sophists does not fit into
any of the categories identified by the Byzantine scholar,
and the description of it as a 'critique (kategoria) of the
sophists who take an opposing political stance' perhaps
assimilates it to a larger category of epideixis in which the
encomia are also included. r3
The three main medieval and early Renaissance codices
give evidence that soon after Photius other individuals were
devising various alternative taxonomies for the texts of
Isocrates in the way that they order them. At first glance r
(Urbinas, late ninth or early tenth century), 8
(Laurentianus, thirteenth century) and /\ (Vaticanus, c. AD
1063) appear to offer random arrangements of his works. I4
More careful consideration, however, reveals several identifi-
able and constant groupings within these codices. Editors
always arrange together To Demonicus, To Nicocles and
Nicocles, which are the speeches with a Cypriot connec-
tion, 15 and likewise, Helen, Busiris, Against the Sophists and
Evagoras, texts which might be viewed as having a sophistic
or epideictic dimension. They also organise the remaining
texts into two distinct sets, which might be described as
dicanic and non-dicanic. 16
11
Cf. Photius Cod. r59.rorb33-ro2br9. On Photius, see Kennedy (1983),
pp. 278ff.
12
Heiserman (1977), p. 59. Kennedy (1983), p. 281, observes that, while Photius
leaves Plato and Aristotle out of his Bibliotheca because they were already well
known, _he us~s Aristotelian terminology and classification in an attempt to
enable his audience to be comfortable with less familiar material.
1
3 Photius Cod. 159. 102a9--1o.
14
See Drerup (1896), pp. 21-6 and Bekker (1823), p. 695.
15
Keil's parainetic speeches; cf. Keil (1883), p. 74.
16
Drerup (1906), p. xcii, found this classification of the Antidosis as a dicanic text
troubling.
14
Hieronymus Wolf published his Greek edition of Isocrates

at Basel in r 570. In it he set out the works according to a
fourfold taxonomy which closely followed the overall group-
ings suggested by the major codices. 17 Wolfs taxonomy con-
sisted of 'hortatory' works (To Demonicus, To Nicocles,
Nicocles); 'deliberative' works (Panegyricus, To Philip,
Archidamus, Areopagiticus, On the Peace); 'epideictic' works
(Evagoras, Encomium of Helen, Busiris, Panathenaicus,
Against the Sophists); and 'forensic' works (Plataicus,
Antidosis, Concerning the Chariot-team, Trapeziticus, Against
Callimachus, Aegineticus, Against Lochites, Against
18
Euthynus). The Plataicus, which purports to be spoken in
the Assembly, now found itself a 'forensic' text.
The next significant attempt to order the works of
Isocrates occurred in the nineteenth century when Benseler
devised an eightfold classification. 19 Benseler's aim appeared
to be to offer a more precise description of the subject-mat-
ter of the texts: ( r) texts relating to war with Persia
(Panegyricus, To Philip); (2) texts relating to internal feuds of
Greece (Plataicus, Archidamus, On the Peace); (3) concerning
Athens and her constitution (Areopagiticus, Panathenaicus);
(4) Cyprian discourses (Evagoras, To Nicocles, Nicocles, To
Demonicus); (5) against the sophists (Against the Sophists,
Busiris, Helen); (6) apology for his life (Antidosis); (7) forensic
speeches dealing with concerns after the rule of the Thirty
(Against Callimachus, Against Lochites, Against Euthynus);
(8) other forensic speeches (Aegineticus, Concerning the
Chariot-team, Trapeziticus).
We see that for Wolf and Benseler Isocrates' letters had
no place in the corpus. These scholars refused to take into
11 Prior to Wolf, Demetrius Chalcondylas published the editio princeps, which con-
tained three lives of Isocrates and the orations, at Milan in 1493. At Venice in
1499 Aldus Manutius produced an edition of Epistles 1-8, and in 1513 an edi-
tion of the orations. At Paris in 1533 Wolf published a Latin edition of what he
regarded as all the works. Highet (1949), pp. 122-3, lists the numerous
Renaissance translations of the three speeches To Demonicus, To Nicocles and
Nicocles after 1517, when the first vernacular edition was produced in German
by J. Altenstaig.
18 See Sauppe and Baiter (1839-43), p. iv, and Jebb (1876), ii, pp. 81-2.
19 Benseler (1854), i, p. 16 and Jebb (1876), ii, p. 83, n.1.
15
account the codices which contained the epistles.

Accordingly Jebb had the excuse to offer a further taxon-
omy of Isocrates' works. He abandoned Benseler's complex
scheme for a simpler and more comprehensive fourfold one:
(r) 'scholastic', consisting of the 'hortatory' works (To
Demonicus, To Nicocles, Nicocles); 'display' works (Busiris,
Helen, Evagoras, Panathenaicus) and 'educational' works
(Against the Sophists, Antidosis); (2) 'political', embracing
works apparently dealing with Greek-Persian relationships
and panhellenic ideology (Panegyricus, To Philip) and with
internal Greek affairs (Plataicus, On the Peace, Archidamus,
Areopagiticus); (3) 'forensic speeches' (Against Lochites,
Aegineticus, Against Euthynus, Concerning the Chariot-team,
Against Callimachus); (4) 'letters and fragments'. Jebb opted
for this more inclusive scheme but compromised its simplic-
ity by subdividing his four classes. For instance, he split
'scholastic' into 'hortatory', 'display' and 'educational'
speeches, and went on to describe the forensic speeches in
rather precise terms. He presented Against Lochites as an
action for assault (dike aikias), Aegineticus as an inheritance
claim (epidikasia), Against Euthynus and Trapeziticus as
actions to recover deposits (dike parakatathekes), Concerning
the Chariot-team as an action for damage (dike blabes) and
Against Callimachus as a special plea (paragraphe). 20
Early in this century Engelbert Drerup returned to the
medieval and Renaissance codex groupings. He argued that
from them the original order of works in the archetype
could be recovered. He proposed that in the archetype the
twenty-one existing orations and the nine epistles had been
divided into triads as follows: orations: (r) seven sophistic
epideixeis (Busiris, Helen, Evagoras, Against the Sophists, To
Demonicus, To Nicocles, Nicocles); (2) seven deliberative
works (Archidamus, Areopagiticus, Plataicus, On the Peace,
To Philip, Panathenaicus, Panegyricus); (3) seven court
speeches (Antidosis, Concerning the Chariot-team, Against
Callimachus, Aegineticus, Against Euthynus, Trapeziticus,
20
Jebb (1876), ii, pp. 82-4.
16
!SOCRATES AND LOGOS POLITIKOS
Against Lochites) and letters: (a) three prooemia (1, 6 and 9);
(b) three letters with a Macedonian theme (2, 3 and 5) and
(c) three commendations (4, 7 and 8).21
With so many precedents for revising the taxonomy of
Isocrates' works, it is not at all surprising to find that George
Norlin produced yet another arrangement in his Loeb edition.
Volume one contains political texts; volume two attempts the
unprecedented move of grouping together the works that
seemed to its editor to be more clearly autobiographical than
the others. 22 Larue Van Hook's third volume takes up every-
thing else, i.e. the encomia, the dicanic speeches and the letters.
The succession of generic typologies outlined above consti-
tutes a series of descriptions of Isocrates as an author. Each of
these attempts to identify and categorise his texts says some-
thing about him. They portray him as an individual who
engaged either in all forms of rhetorical discourse (Photius and
his contemporaries), or especially in political discourse (Jebb),
or as someone who produced mainly sophistic and political
texts (Drerup ). Yet rather than offering us definitive descrip-
tions of the rhetorician, this succession impresses upon us the
arbitrariness of the critics' characterisation of Isocrates' works
and consequently of Isocrates. The continual revision of
generic boundaries suggests that literary identity is unstable.
This is because it is to a degree subjective.2 3 Genre is liable to
be re-read and reformulated as the scholar revises his or her
understanding of just what being Isocratean entails. Genre is a
product of personal and social prejudices and assumptions
about particular literary identities. Tzvetan Todorov observes,
'Genres, like any other institutions, reveal the constitutive trait
of the society to which they belong.' 24 As such it also brings
into focus the larger problem of how to constitute the continu-
ities of discourse known as the author and his (or her) works. 25
Typology may be perceived as an attempt to put each of an
21
Drerup (1906), pp. lxxxvi and xciii-xciv.
22
See Norlin and van Hook (1966-8).
2 3 Hirsch (1967), p. 77, argues that although genre is unstable, it offers some rules
for the 'game' of reading.

2
4 Todorov (1976), p. 163.
2
s See Foucault (1972), p. 60.
17
author's works in a proper place as constituted by these literary

categories. (Structuralists, who believe that there is a proper
place for linguistic and literary constructions, are especially
prone to view this as the function of generic reading.) But find-
ing the 'proper place' for an author's works often entails the
employment of anachronistic notions of genre and so involves
a series of disturbing dislocations of the author's own author-
ity. While Photius, Wolf, Benseler and the others assumed that
they were putting forward generic schemes which could be
readily justifiable, none of them could lay claim to a definitive
authority. They were clearly only organising the rhetorician's
texts on the basis of notions of ancient genre that were in some
way more representative of Byzantine, Renaissance, Victorian
and modem conceptions of literary identity.
Contemporary criticism might at first seem to offer several
options for escaping from the potentially endless succession
of imperfectly authorised generic typologies. Fearing that 'we
remain prisoners of prejudices transmitted from century to
century', T odorov calls for a theoretical justification of
generic reading in his study of the 'fantastic'. 26 What this
might entail is perhaps suggested by Jonathan Culler. Culler
insists that in offering a generic description one should do
more than observe and enumerate external similarities (such
as form or theme) between texts; rather he requires that one
shows how different genres have distinct literary processes,
that is how they function distinctly from one another. He
implicitly ascribes to genre an intrinsic value of its own, sug-
gesting that the literary identity per se has validity for a text
regardless of how that text might actually define itself. 2 7 At
the other extreme, Mikhail Bakhtin grants that notions of
genre are in any case themselves shaped and determined by a
complex set of assumptions and prejudices. In view of this,
Bakhtin, whose work generally favours plurality, advocates
increasing the number of genres, perhaps indefinitely, so that
our descriptions of discourse become more detailed and less
26
Todorov (1975), p. 26.
27
Culler (1975), pp. 135-7; see Coulter (1976), p. 7, on the intrinsic value of genre.
18
!SOCRATES AND LOGOS POLITIKOS
systematic. 28 In effect, this critic resists typology and calls for

the recognition of the individuality of each text.
III
Yet to be sure that we are describing the texts of Isocrates in
a way that can be credibly defended we must ultimately
return to what he himself has to say about the literary iden-
tity of his own writing. In 1943 Stanley Wilcox drew atten-
tion to two passages from two of his apparently late works,
Antidosis 45-6 and Panathenaicus 1-2. These passages, he
complained, were inevitably overlooked when scholars dis-
cussed ancient articulations - 'theory' is too problematic a
notion - of genre. 2 9 I cite these texts below:
Thus first you must learn this, that there are as many categories (tropoz)
of prose as there are of poetry. Some people have wasted away their lives
in research on the generations of the heroes (1). Others wrote commen-
taries about the poets (2) or chose to produce accounts of military deeds
(3); while some whom they called 'antilogicians' concerned themselves
with questions and answers (4). It would be no small labour if someone
were to attempt to enumerate the forms of prose. Accordingly, making
mention of that which suits me, I shall let the others go.
There are some people who do not lack experience in what I
have spoken about and have decided to write speeches not about private
contracts (5) but those of a Greek (Hellenikous) and political (politikous)
nature and those which are for an assembly (panegurikous), which every-
one would agree are more like compositions accompanied by music and
rhythm than speeches uttered in the courtroom (6) ... 3o
(Antidosis 45-6)
28 Bakhtin (1986), pp. 60-102, especially p. 79.

2
9 See Wilcox (1943b), pp. 427-31; also Grube (1965), p. 43.
3D TTpwTOV µ1:vO\JV EKEivo8e'i'µa0e'i'vvµas ' OTI Tp07TOITWV Aoywv eicriv OUKEAO:TTOVS,;
TWV µETO:µeTpov 7TOl1'jµo:TWV. oi µEVyap TO:yevri TO:TWV iiµ16ewv aval;T)TOVVTES
TOVl3iovTOVCX\JTWV KaTETpl\jJaV,oi 81:mpi TOVS7TOIT)TO:S E<f>IAOO"O<f>T)O"av,
ETEpOl8e
TO:S 7Tp0:~EIS TO:S EVTois 7TOAeµo1s crvvayayeiv el3ovM\6ricrav, O:AAOI
8e TIVESmpi
TO:S epwTT}O"EIS Kai TO:S 0:7TOKpicre1s yey6vacr1v, ovs 6:VT1Aoy1KovsKaAovcr1v.EIT)8'
o:vOU µ1Kpov epyov, El 7TO:crasTIS TO:S i8eas TO:S TWV Mywv e~ap16µeiv emxe1pr\-
O"EIEV i'is 8' ovv eµoi 7TpOO"TJKEI,TaVTT)Sµvricr0eis eacrw TO:S&.Mas.
Eicri yap TIVES01 TWV µEV7TpOElpT)µevwv OUK6:mipws exovcr1, ypa<pEIV81: 7Tp0-
1JPT)VTatMyovs ou mpi TWV i8iwv crvµl30Aaiwv, 6:M' 'EMriv1Kovs Kai 7TOAITIKOVS
Kai TiavT)yvp1Kovs, ovs o:7TaVTES o:vcpricrmev6µ010Tepovs eivm Tois µETo:µovcr1Kfjs
Kai pv0µwv 7TE7TOIT)µEVOIS i\ Tois EV81KaO"TT)p!~AEyoµevo1s.
19
When I was younger I decided not to write mythological speeches (1), or

those full of wonders and fictions in which the masses delight (2) in pref-
erence to speeches concerned with their well-being. Nor did I want to
write speeches which give an account of ancient deeds and Greek wars
(although I knew that they were justly praised) (3); nor, moreover, those
which seem simple in utterance and without any artifice so that experts in
verbal cut and thrust recommend them as practice-pieces to the young if
they wish to win in litigation (4). Letting all these go, I worked at those
speeches which give counsel regarding what is useful to Athens and to the
rest of the Greeks and which are full of numerous enthymemes and many
antitheses, parallelisms and the other figures which give splendour to ora-
tory and force those listening to approve and thunder applause (5) ...
(Panathenaicus 1-2)3 1
In these two passages Isocrates names a number of different

categories of prose writing which he identifies as being in use
among authors who wrote in his lifetime: e.g. genealogy,
poetic commentary, military history, sophistic argumenta-
tion, legal texts, mythology, speeches concerned with
Greece. The words 'some (hoi men, hoi de)' and 'others
(alloi)' at Antidosis 45 denote his fellow prose writers.
I want to begin by suggesting that Isocrates could not
have in mind any strict or rigid schema of genres - perhaps
like the more theoretical regulation of genre found in
Aristotle (especially the Rhetoric) and later writers. This
becomes clear from the presentation of the prose categories
he lists. We see that at Antidosis 45-6 Isocrates states only
that there are as many genres of prose as there are types of
poetry (poiemata): the list he provides in this chapter is not
intended to be exhaustive. Like the forms of poetry, the
ideai logon, the phrase which now denotes prose 'genres'
JI NEWTEposµev WV Tipo,:ipovµ11vypaq>EIVTWV r,.oywv O\J TOVS µv6w6EIS ov6e TOVS

TEpcrreias Kai 4IEV6or,.oyias µEO"TOVS, µaMov xa/povow fi TOIS mpi
ors oi TIO/I.A.OJ
Tf\s avTWV 0-WTT)piasA.Eyoµevo1s,ov6e TOVS TCXSTiaA.atCXS Tipa~EISKai TOVS TIOA.E-
µovs TOVS'EMT)VIKOVS E~T)yovµevovs,Kaimp ei6ws 6tKaiws a\JTOVSETiatvovµevovs,
ov6' au TOVS O'.TIA.WS 6oKOVVTase!pf\o-6at Kai µT)6Eµtas KOµljJOTT)TOS µETEXOVTas,
ovs oi 6Etvoi TIEpiTOVS&ywvas Tiapatvovo-t Tois VEWTEpotsµEA.ETCX\/, EiTIEpf3ovr,.ov-
Tat TI/1.EOV
EXEIVTWV O'.VTt6iKWV, O'./\A.CX
m:nnas TOVTOVS eao-as TIEpiEKEIVOVS ETipayµa-
TEVOµT)V, Tovs TIEpi Twv o-vµq>Ep6VTwv Tij TE TIOA.Et
Kai Tois ar,.r,.01s"EAAT)o-to-vµ-
µev ev6vµ11µ6:TwvyeµoVTas, OVK6Mywv 6' O'.VTt6E'o-Ewv
f3ovA.EvovTas,Kai TIO/I.A.WV Kai
TiaptO-WO-EWV Kai TWV CJ.A.A.WVi6EWVTWV EVTa'is flT)TOpeiats61ar,.aµTIOVO-WV Kai TOVS
O'.KOVOVTasemo-11µaivE0-6atKai 6opvf3E'iVavayKal;ovo-wv.
20
(also Antidosis 183), are virtually innumerable. He has no

intention of listing (exarithmein) them as this would involve
a great labour. It is important to realise that elsewhere the
author makes disparaging remarks about enumeration, com-
paring the unpersuasive and uncommitted reading of a text
to the reeling off of a list (aparithmon) at To Philip 26. In
his study of the Pythagorean tradition Burkert observes that
the word arithmos strongly connotes a unit in a system of
rational, logical ordering.32 Like enumeration, literary cat-
egorisation is a form of systematic and systematising
language (cf. Aristotle Poetics r453ar7-r8; Rhetoric to
Alexander r42rb7ff.), which we shall see in chapter 5 Isocrates
rejects as a whole.
In place of an exhaustive catalogue of prose at Antidosis
45-6, he invokes a rhetorical device: he engages in a preteri-
tion, the trope which summarily enunciates what will remain
unsaid. At Panathenaicus r-2 Isocrates continues to dispel
any idea that he means to supply a definitive schema of gen-
res. Instead of a theoretical or precise articulation of prose
categories he now provides us with autobiography, a por-
trait of his youth drawn according to the types of logoi
which he decided not to write then (cf. Panathenaicus r). At
section r r he implements rhetorical poikilia or variety to
designate his prose, again discrediting the notion that he
offers any systematic taxonomy of genre.33 He now divides
prose between speeches concerning private contracts (peri
ton idion sumbolaion) and those concerning Greek, royal and
civic, perhaps public, affairs (peri ton Hellenikon kai
basilikon kai politikon pragmaton).
The observation that Isocrates provides an unsystematic
naming of genres at Antidosis 45-6 and Panathenaicus r-2 is
important because it invites the question whether the vari-
ous categories mentioned provide authoritative ways of
naming or describing his own prose. Ancient and modern
readers have understood him to be referring in these passages
32 Burkert (1972), pp. 265-6 and 455, n. 42. At p. 265, n. 130, he observes that at
Busiris 16 Isocrates uses ap10µ6s in this sense.
33 See the reference to rro1K1Aia at Panathenaicus 246; also Race (1983), pp.95-112.
21
to some of the different prose forms that he employs, and

thus as being in some sense programmatic. 34 Nevertheless,
his cavalier attitude towards the 'taxonomies' he offers
implies that, if he does seek a specific or fixed way of desig-
nating his writing, it is not in terms of these schemata.
Indeed, one anonymous critic in Antiquity even perceived
Isocrates to be challenging the very distinctions of genre pre-
sented in the Antidosis and Panathenaicus. This individual
attributed to him the following sentiment, now preserved in
Quintilian: 'he thought that praise and blame were present
in every genre' (/. 0. 3.4. n35). According to this passage
Isocrates - if this is indeed the same Isocrates3 6 - believed
that all genres had elements of praise and blame, so that his
writing was distinguished and unified by an epideictic ele-
ment. Quintilian's source suggests that epideixis helps the
reader to recognise Isocratean discourse inasmuch as it
reveals itself in every work of his corpus. In so doing the
critic perhaps suggests that the more obvious encomia, the
Helen, Busiris and Evagoras, are more obviously Isocratean
than the other works.
When Quintilian's nameless critic asserts 'he [Isocrates]
thought that praise and blame were present in every genre',
he clearly believes that Isocrates produced different prose
genres but that each of these shared the elements of praise
and blame with the other genres. There are, however, several
problems with this view. First, this critic draws particular
attention to epideixis comprising both praise and blame,
although this is nowhere named in the rhetorician's own dis-
cussion of genres in the two passages I cited earlier. Second
and more importantly, Antidosis 45-6 and Panathenaicus
1-2 both reveal a very specific structure which provides the
reader with a description of the author's work quite differ-
ent from that suggested by the critic. In both passages
34
E.g. Dionysius of Halicamassus lsocrates 1 with discussion below and Hudson-
Williams (1951), esp. p. 69.
35
in omni genere inesse laudem ac vituperationem existimavit.
36
Barwick (1963), p. 54, argues that Quintilian confuses the Athenian Isocrates
with the younger namesake.
22
Isocrates enumerates the various prose genres using a strat-

egy that originates in Greek lyric poetry, the praeambulum
or, by its abbreviated name, 'priamel'.37 A priamel consists
of a list in which the final item is privileged to the extent
that all the preceding terms stand as negative foils for what
is mentioned last. An example of the priamel occurs m
Sappho 16:
0Ji µEv hTTTT)WV cr,p6-rov oi OETTEO'OWV
oi OEvawv <pcxicr'fo[i] yo:v µe11cx1[
v]cxv
e]µµEVCXI eyw OEKfjv' ch-
K0'./1/110',0V,
,w ,IS epcx,CXI
(vv. 1-4)
[Some say that a host of horsemen is the finest thing upon the black
earth; others a host of footsoldiers; yet others, a fleet of ships. But I say it
is that thing which someone loves.]
Here the speaking persona observes first that some people

claim that the best thing is cavalry, others that it is infantry
and others still that it is a navy. The '!'-voice, however,
insists finally that what one loves is truly the best thing and
proceeds in the rest of the poem to elaborate upon this point
with the account of Paris' desire for Helen.
In the Antidosis Isocrates mentions six different categories
of prose. Of these, the first five are theogony, poetic com-
mentary, history, antilogic and legal speeches; and the last
mentioned are the 'Hellenic', 'political' and 'panegyrical'
texts which have a musical and rhythmical quality.
According to the logic of the priamel, this final type, logos
politikos, for short, is presented as the alternative preferred
to all the other genres previously named, and indeed this is
the sort of logos which Isocrates says that he chose to write.
Similarly, in the Panathenaicus he identifies no less than five
types of prose, and the last he names are those which are
concerned with giving useful advice to Athens and to the
Greeks. The structure of the priamel determines that, by
37 F. Dornseiff (1921) Pindars Stil (Berlin), pp. 97-102. Dornseiff was followed by
W. Krohlig (1935) Die Priamel ( Beispielreihung) als Stilmittel in der griechisch-
romischen Dichtung. Greifswalder Beitrage fi.ir Literatur- und Stilforschung, Heft
10 (Greifswald).
23
being mentioned last, this symbouleutic discourse is singled

out for special attention. If logos politikos, 'political dis-
course', is the only description of his works that Isocrates
admits, it also offers a means of designating his whole cor-
pus. Accordingly, the phrase provides him with a means of
distinguishing between the prose he writes and that which
others write. The category of 'political discourse' serves as
an authorial seal or a sphragis - to invoke the term used by
the poet of the Theognidea - linking the author and his texts
inextricably to one another. Isocrates elsewhere uses the
description of his writing as 'political discourse' to mark
himself out from his contemporaries who also write prose.
At Antidosis So he observes that 'few people (ouk polloi)'
could speak about what is useful to Athens and Greece as a
whole. He invokes another rhetoric of emphasis here. The
phrase ouk polloi, literally 'not... many', is a litotes, an
understatement, a strategy of muted boasting. By this
device, he indirectly claims that he alone engages in political
discourse.
Thus Isocrates cultivates and attaches particular value to
the sort of political discourse, indeed logos politikos, that he
describes at Antidosis 46 and Panathenaicus 2.3 8 Some schol-
ars have recognised the privileged status of Isocratean logos
politikos. Citing in part the first chapter from the
Panathenaicus - some scholars emend his essay to make him
cite Panathenaicus I more fully - in his essay Isocrates,
Dionysius of Halicarnassus asserted that Isocrates was
responsible for directing oratory away from concerns of an
eristic and a philosophical nature to those of a political one
(ta politika, Jsocrates 1). Dionysius defined logos politikos as
a discourse which 'wishes to speak and do what is of bene-
fit. .. to those who learn it' (1). In the nineteenth century
Millier thought on the basis of Panathenaicus 2 that
Isocrates gave up the other types of rhetoric in order to
devote himself to the writing of logos politikos only at the
38
As Burgess (1902), p. 98, observes, the phrase also turns up at Against the
Sophists 9 and 20; it is alluded to at Panathenaicus 11; Panegyricus 11, 12;
Antidosz:~3, 48, 49, 216, 227 and 228.
24
end of his life.39 Muller's interpretation can only be sus-

tained if the reader misunderstands the contrast that
Isocrates draws between the literary production of his youth
('when I was younger (neoteros ... on)') and that of his later
life (cf. 'now as things are (nun d1' (3)). The rhetorician is
not declaring that the speeches he wrote in his youth and in
old age are to be distinguished in terms of genre since he
produced only 'political discourse' in his later years; rather
he asserts that his earlier speeches are to be distinguished
from his subsequent ones by the devices, e.g. enthymemes,
antitheses, balanced phrasing and so on, that they use or do
not use - toioutous refers to these devices. Other critics went
on to construct a hierarchy of genres for Isocrates in which
'political' (or sometimes symbouleutic4°) discourse is deemed
the most important type of writing and the other categories
of prose, represented by the legal speeches, the encomiastic
works and the epistles,41 are accorded a less prominent posi-
tion in the corpus or, in some cases, completely excluded
from it. Yet, as Sappho r 6 illustrates, when a priamel
accords one item or person a special position and status -
e.g. a love object - it does so by implicitly rejecting all the
other items which it has previously mentioned. Scholars
were right to single out political discourse for special atten-
tion but wrong to think that it can be located within a tax-
onomy of Isocratean genres.
IV
Isocrates distinguishes logos politikos from a whole range of
other genres which he implicitly ascribes to other authors,
and in doing so he creates a category that comprehends all
39 Muller (1858), iii, p. 152.
4° Vahlen takes genos politikon to be a synonym for genos sumbouleutikon, on the
assumption that Alcidamas' logos Messeniakos, a political work which has not
come down to us but is referred to by Aristotle (Rhetoric 1373b18 and 1397au),
is also representative of the symbouleutic genre. Cf. Walberer (1938), pp. 4-5
and Charlton (1985).
4' E.g. Bloom (1954), pp. 88ff., finds the epideictic speeches difficult to accept but
proposes that their problematic status can be explained away if one regards
them as designed to convince an otherwise unreceptive audience.
25
of his own works. Interestingly, while earlier scholars did

not realise that logos politikos was the term Isocrates
intended to denote all of his writing except for the forensic
speeches (see below), their comments show that to some
extent they registered the comprehensive nature of this cate-
gory of prose. The ancient critic Hermogenes seemed to
entertain precisely the possibility of reading all of Isocrates'
works as political discourse, suggesting that logos politikos is
a unity of various styles.42 Here Hermogenes' word for
'style' is idea. Hermogenes deemed the rhetorician to be
bringing together the particular styles, i.e. the Ideas of
Beauty, Character and Realism, which the critic understood
as being constitutive of political discourse.43 Following
Brandstatter, Burgess writes that 'Isocrates in general uses
the phrase logos politikos to mean an oration looking to the
interest of the entire state or of all Greece' .44 This critic
glosses the phrase logos politikos quite precisely; however, he
also admits the embracing character of the term. He
observes that for many authors the category 'political dis-
course' included the various forms of oratory, philosophy,
history and poetry. 45
Nevertheless, the comprehensiveness of the category of
'political discourse' as constructed by Isocrates should be
distinguished from the indeterminacy that other authors
ascribe to the genre. Several pre-Alexandrian authors apart
from Isocrates implicitly or explicitly envisioned logos poli-
tikos as a particular literary identity which resisted a calci-
fied and rigid set of norms and conventions which qualified
it as the genre in question and thus as a category which was
evacuated of any peculiar, defining traits, perhaps apart
from diversity. In at least one passage Plato deployed 'politi-
cal speech' as an embracing term. Robert Clavaud observes
42
See Rabe, pp. 380-403 and translation in Wooten (1987), pp. 108ff.
43
Hennogenes, On Ideas II.II, p. 395R. See Bateman (1981), pp. 182-96.
44
Burgess (1902), p. 98, n. 1; also Brandstatter (1894), pp. 134-9; Walberer (1938),
pp. 4-5 and Charlton (1985), p. 57, who suggests that the logos politikos evokes
the panhellenic principle of Tipos Tov l3apl3apov(cf. Antidosis 77).
45 Burgess (1902), p. 98, n. 2.
26
that the phrase logos politikos at Menexenus 249e4 denotes

civic discourse, that is, any speech performed in a civic
space, in general. 46 Even if one were to object that Socrates
is here referring only or specifically to funeral orations or
logoi epitaphioi, as this is the concern of the dialogue's
speakers, such a claim would not diminish in any way the
generality of the term logos politikos. In her monumental
study of the funeral oration, Nicole Loraux demonstrates
that this mode of discourse eludes definitive description. It is
neither just an epideictic text, nor just a symbouleutic text.
It is at least both these things, and much more. The funeral
oration contains elements panegyrical, historical and peda-
gogical in nature. The epitaphios logos becomes in short a
kind of writing which stands for Athens: 'Thus in the
funeral oration the city ensures, in imaginary terms, its grip
on reality, and the Athenians invent Athens.'47
Other ancient authors provide more direct, if general,
statements which present the phrase logos politikos as a
comprehensive, fluid term for rhetorical language in general.
The fourth-century author of the Rhetoric to Alexander, usu-
ally identified as Anaximenes of Lampsacus, makes a similar
move with the phrase 'political speech', presenting it as the
broad rubric under which the three Aristotelian genres -
demegoric, epideictic, dicanic (142rb7ff.) - can be compre-
hended. 48 The corollary of this is that all demegoric, epideic-
tic and dicanic logoi are to be described as politikoi.
Quintilian, however, reports that Anaximenes had only two
genres, the judicial and the public (iudicialem et con-
tionalem ). He indicates that the genos politikon should be
understood as encompassing all logoi (I. 0. 3-4.9): all forms
of rhetorical language are now 'political'. On what appears
to be the authority of Quintilian Spengel emends the
Rhetoric to Alexander, attributing to its author only
46 Clavaud (1980), pp. 88-92. Cf. Loraux (1986), p. 241, n. 107, who observes
that Dionysius of Halicarnassus employs the term logos politikos to describe
the Menexenus (On the Style of Demosthenes 127).
47 Loraux (1986), p. 337.
48 See Kennedy (1963), p. 12.
27
'demegoric' and 'dicanic' speeches.49 As Burgess observes,

later Aristides uses the phrase 'political discourse' to refer to
all the different divisions of oratory, and regards the adjec-
tive politikos as a synonym for 'rhetor' .50
In identifying legal texts, for instance, as examples of
logos politikos, these critics were not making any radical or
contested claim. Traditionally, the language of the
dikasterion or lawcourt explicitly presents itself as a political
discourse. This is because the guilt incurred by one individ-
ual may either come to rest upon the citizens as a whole or
have other widespread repercussions for the city (e.g.
Antiphon Stepmother 4; Tetr. r.2.2-3 and 11; 2.1.2; Lysias
1.47; 5.5; 7. I). Litigants involved in public suits often
addressed their speeches to andres Athenaioi or andres politai
(e.g. Antiphon Tetr. 2. 1. 1), i.e. to the citizens of Athens, to
make it known that the case was a civic matter. Some modem
scholars have insisted that the distinction between the law-
court and the Assembly should be maintained. They argue
that, even if sycophants often used the courts as a vehicle
for carrying on political rivalries, the Assembly was more
often and more explicitly equated with the demos or people
as a whole. Certainly, there is no existing text which directly
uses demos as a synonym for dikasterion and the dikasterion
is often contrasted with the demos/ekklesia. Hansen, how-
ever, draws our attention to the inscription IG I2 114, which
clearly states that no one can be condemned to death - one
must assume by a court - without the participation of the
whole Athenian people. si Here the reference to the jury as
the 'Athenian populace' synecdochically identifies them with
the state's citizenry. It is indicative of Isocrates' idiosyncratic
use of logos politikos that, although legal texts are more
obviously political in nature than epideixeis or pedagogical
works, he does not refer to his six court speeches in his con-
49 l:::,.voyevri TWV TIOAITIKWV

e!cn Mywv, TO µev oriµriyop!KOV, TO OEO!KaVIKOV,
Spengel
(1966), i, p. 174, lines 15-16.
50
Burgess (1902), p. 98, n. 1, who perhaps provides us with a gloss on Antidosis
76-7.
5' See discussion in Hansen (1974), pp. 19-20.
28
struction of political discourse for reasons that will later

become evident.
V
Clearly it would be mistaken to regard Isocrates' political
language as a discourse defined by a particular place (e.g.
the Assembly) or occasion (e.g. a vote), for, as we will see in
subsequent chapters of this study, the rhetorician rejects the
idea that the majority of his texts, if any, might be per-
formed in a civic space. To define 'political discourse' in
terms of a political occasion is to do something that Hansen
warns us to refrain from doing, namely putting a specific
(modern) construction on the Greek words ho politikos ('the
political man'/ 'the politician') and ta politika ('political
things'/ 'politics').52 This appropriation of logos politikos to
a contemporary model of political discourse leads Hudson-
Williams, for instance, to claim not only that Isocrates'
political speech was publicly presented but also, on this
basis, that it was extemporaneously composed, unlike texts
for the lawcourt or panegyric festival, which, he claims, were
first written and then read.53
If Isocratean logos politikos functions as a literary cate-
gory which defies specific description in terms of physical
and temporal context, it is not, however, without certain
characteristic traits which help to identify it. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus describes Isocratean logos politikos as a 'use-
ful' discourse, and in so doing, he possibly refers to the
author's own emphasis on the utility of his discourse and
that of his various speaking personae. Indeed, the speaker of
On the Peace criticises his audience for driving off all speak-
ers but those who gratify their desires.s4 These remaining
orators are useless, failing to discuss the interests of the state
(10). At Antidosis 285 Isocrates condemns the verbal games
52 Hansen (1983), pp. 33-6.

53 Hudson-Williams (1951), p. 69.
54 Cf. TOVS o-vvayopevovTas Tais vµETepais em0vµiais, 3; 6:pfoKOVTOSvµiv Myovs
epovcnv, 5; 9 and passim.
29
of the students of the older sophists because they prevent

people from paying attention to the government of their
own households and of the state, which Xenophon presents
as being analogous to one another (cf. Memorabilia 4.1.2).
The rhetorician declines to describe these individuals as
those 'who love to do philosophy (agapi5ntas philosophein)',
reserving this characterisation for those who are concerned
with the affairs of the citizen and the polis. In the opening
chapters of the Panathenaicus logos politikos is characterised
as giving useful advice to the city (cf. Panathenaicus 2), in
contrast to 'useless verbiage (perittologia)' (Antidosis 269)
and 'fiction (pseudologia)' (Panathenaicus r). These latter
forms of discourse give delight, but are otherwise utterly
profitless. They thus resemble the sophists' valueless eristic
(cf. Helen r).
In these passages Isocrates appears to be evoking a pro-
grammatic dichotomy between utility and pleasure that can
be found in other contemporary authors. Thucydides, for
instance, complains about the logographers, who prefer to
write compositions that embrace what is incredible (apisti5s)
and mythical (muthi5des) rather than what is true because
the former is more attractive to hear (1.21.155; cf. 1.22-4).
What he suggests is that the truth is beneficial but not enjoy-
able. Even Cleon, Thucydides' worst abuser of popular ora-
tory, criticises the Athenians for allowing themselves to be
carried away by the pleasure (hedone) of what they hear:
rather than deliberating about the city's welfare, they sit as
if listening to sophists (3.38. 7). Slightly later in his speech
calling for the punishment of Mytilene, the demagogue reit-
erates this warning against the' pleasure of speech (hedone
logi5n) and advises rhetoricians who delight with their
speeches (hoi ... terpontes logi5i) to concern themselves with
less important matters (3.40.2-3). Then, at Gorgias
513b8-c2, Socrates says to Callicles that orators ideally
ought to speak in accordance with the character of the audi-
55 ws Aoyoyp6:cpo1~vvE0ecrcxv
ETTiTO TTpocraywy6Tepov T1J 6:Kpo6:cre1
,'\ 6:A176foTepov,
OVTa O:VE~EAEYKTa
Kai TO:TTOAAO:VTTOxp6vov a\JTWV6:nicrTWSETTiTO µv0w5es EK-
VEVIKT)K6Tas.
30
ence, since listeners dislike orations which are different from

them. Soon after at 513c6---d8 the philosopher reveals his
advice to be ironic: pandering to one's audience is flattery, a
bad thing; resisting one's audience is a good thing.
Yet to say that Isocrates' political writing is only useful or
beneficial is to give a partial characterisation of it. His over-
all description of his work ultimately allows the polarity
between utility and pleasure to break down. Speeches should
be both useful and able to cause delight at the same time. At
Antidosis 47 he writes that audiences enjoy (chairousin) lis-
tening to panhellenic orations, examples of the political dis-
course he so values, as much as they enjoy listening to
poetry. After all, here and at Panathenaicus 2, he says that
logos politikos resembles works composed in rhythm and set
to music because it makes use of a rather poetic and elabo-
rate style. Later on in the Antidosis he recalls a conversation
with his pupil Timotheus in which he suggests that utility
and pleasure do not have to be mutually exclusive. Isocrates
explains that satisfying (areskein) the audience is extremely
important if one is to succeed in public life. He observes that
one achieves this by performing the most useful deeds
(Antidosis 132; also 133).
In the Panathenaicus the Spartan visitor is made to recall
Isocrates' emphasis on appealing (cf. 'so that ... you might
please (hina ... charisei)') to the audience (237). He says that
his former teacher's writing is 'able to provide benefit
together with play or to delight the hearers' (Panathenaicus
24656). (The proximity of terpein to the phrase meta paidias
suggests that Isocrates might be punning on paideia, 'educa-
tion'.) The visitor corroborates the view that in logos poli-
tikos pleasure and utility are not mutually exclusive where
the audience is concerned: pleasure is one of the desired
effects of political and symbouleutic language. Elsewhere
Isocrates gives top priority to a text's ability to delight his
audience. At To Nicocles 42-3 he acknowledges that every-
body grants that poetic and prose counsels are 'useful'.
56 fi -repm1v TOVSO:KOVOVTO:S,
-rfis 6vvo:µevris µe-ra no:1610:sW<j>EAEIV
31
Nevertheless, they derive no pleasure from this type of writ-

ing, regarding it as a form of chastisement. In the same
work he advises his addressee to say what pleases a general
audience if he is to have popular appeal (49). The writer
should take as his models Homer and the tragic poets, who
shun the 'most useful (hoi ophelimotatoi) speeches' (48) in
favour of those which are most mythical (hoi muthodestatoi,
48), which Thucydides had rejected as being written only to
delight (cf. History 1.21.r). In recognising that one must say
what gratifies the audience, To Nicocles offers a prescription
for success in political writing which later works recapitu-
late. At Against the Sophists r 8 Isocrates suggests that suc-
cessful students of oratory should ideally appear to speak
'more pleasantly (chariest eron)' than their contemporaries.
Isocrates also places some of the onus of pleasure on the
audience which receives his political texts. At Panathenaicus
135 he draws a contrast between individuals who 'enjoy lis-
tening' to his account of a 'useful constitution' presented in
a manner that is easy to bear and timely and those who do
not derive pleasure from serious matters.57 Unlike the for-
mer, the second type of audience will find his description
annoying and long-winded.
Prior to Aristotle, the majority of fifth- and fourth-cen-
tury authors do not as a rule formalise particular literary
traits and characteristics into systems of genre. They are so
relaxed about generic differences that they even play down
the gap between prose and poetry. In chapter 9 of the
Encomium of Helen Gorgias had already raised the possibil-
ity of the identity of prose with poetry when he defined
poetry as a logos, a speech or discourse which possesses
metre (metron). Gorgias, to whom Isocrates may be refer-
ring when he mentions his own use of the Gorgianic figures
antithesis and parisosis at Panathenaicus 2, held that metre
was the crucial definiens of the poetic text. The corollary of
the description of poetry in Helen 9 is that if prose merely
57 EO'Ta\8' 6 Myos Tois µEv 178EC.VS o:vO:KOVO"OCYI
TIOAITEiavXPTlO-TT)VEµov 81E~IOVTOS
01'.h' OXAripos o(h' O:Kalpos, 0:/\ACI.crvµµETpos Kai TIPOO-T)KC.VVTois TIPOTEpov
EipT}µEVOIS,
Tois 8E µr\ xaipoVCYITois µETO:TIOAAfisO"TIOV8fisEipT}µEVOIS.
32
assumes metre it qualifies as poiesis. In the light of this, it is

interesting to note that scholars depict Isocrates as the ora-
tor who most conspicuously experimented with rhythm and
metre in his prose. Even Aristotle, Isocrates' reputed con-
temporary and rival, breaks down the assumed distinction
between poetic and prose writing, although on the basis of
other considerations. He rejects the notion that metre is
above all what distinguishes poetry from prose and chooses
instead to distinguish between poetical and historical dis-
course on the basis of the content and the nature of their
representations (Poetics r45ra36---bro). He argues that, even
if one were to rewrite Herodotus' Histories and put it into
metre, this work would still remain history of a sort (Poetics
r45rb2). Unlike history, poetic discourse, or more precisely
its plot, is structured according to probability (to eikos) or
necessity (to anankaion) (r45rb9).
Isocrates also characterises logos politikos as a poetic dis-
course.58 Poetry can hold the audience's interest and atten-
tion (To Nicocles 42-9), and elsewhere, at Antidosis 46 and
Panathenaicus 2, he emphasises the fact that political speech
can have features which allow it to resemble poetry. Political
discourse benefits from rhythms and a more poetic and elab-
orate style in addition to weightier and newer enthymemes
and numerous other figures. As a result of these qualities, it
produces as much delight as poetry. The rhetorician makes
another claim for viewing prose writing or logos politikos as
a poetic art, as a poietikon pragma, at Against the Sophists
r 2. Here he criticises those of his contemporaries who
attempt to teach oratory on the analogy of learning how to
write the letters of the alphabet. He states that they do not
realise that they have selected an unsuitable paradigm for
rhetorical art. Letters of the alphabet are static and unchang-
ing (12), while rhetorical discourse is mobile and fluid. In the
Evagoras Isocrates most prominently raises the possibility of
a relationship between prose and verse (which Bundy helps
to corroborate when he draws parallels between the Evagoras
58 On the distinctions between prose and poetry, see Bers (1984), pp. 1-4.
33
and Pindar's poetry59). At first glance he portrays himself as

taking up prose, a mode of writing which ostensibly regards
itself as inferior to poetry, the traditional and established
mode of literary communication. In an early section of the
Evagoras he observes that, while prose has gained the sup-
port of philosophers, it does not yet have the approval of
those who write praises of another individual's virtue (8).
Encomiasts still prefer verse because it sets at their disposal
numerous figures and tropes (8), a more varied vocabulary
(9), metre and rhythm by which they can 'lead the souls'
(psuchagogousi) of their listeners (ro). Prose offers a more
limited range of options. It places only ton onomaton ta poli-
tika and enthymemes (ro) at the disposal of those who
employ it. Accordingly, poetry has a tremendous advantage
over prose when it comes to persuasion, as Isocrates declares
(r r). To understand Isocrates only at his literal word, how-
ever, is to miss the larger point of the Evagoras. What he
ultimately proposes is that prose can be every bit as effective
as poetry. In publishing what purports to be the first prose
encomium in Greek literature, an encomium of the Cypriot
monarch Evagoras, 60 he demonstrates that prose is also a
suitable medium for epainos. The point is that his achieve-
ment helps to efface the distinction between verse and ton
onomaton ta politika, a phrase which seems to denote either
words concerned with civic, i.e. 'political', matters or else
words used by citizens. This phrase I take to be the author's
deliberate invocation of logos politikos.
VI
In this chapter I have begun to consider the problem of
what Isocratean discourse is. I hope to have demonstrated
59
Bundy (1986), pp. 18-19 on kairos as a device for selectiveness and p. 45, n. 32.
6
° Cf. mpi 81: TWV TO\OVTC.V~ ov8eis 1Tc.01TOT'OVTWVcrvyyp6:q>EIVemxe{p17crev,
Evagoras 8. An author's claim to be the first to praise a certain thing or person
or to devise a new mode of encomium is a commonplace that cannot be taken at
~ace value. In _fact, the very conventionality of the claim undermines the original-
ity of the praise. See, for example, Isocrates, Helen 2; To Philip 109; and Plato
Phaedrus 247c3-4.
34
that the traditional generic (and piecemeal) approach to

Isocrates' texts does not provide a satisfactory answer to
this problem. Generic taxonomy offers an affront to
Isocrates' authority and the autonomy of his writing. It pre-
sumes to put his works in their 'proper' place without
acknowledging that the categories bring to the author and
his work a series of anachronistic assumptions about how
and what he writes. The historical (re)organisations of his
texts all fail to recognise that he stresses the continuity of his
writing as a body, a corpus, of logoi politikoi. He names his
prose 'political discourse', and in so doing, he implicitly sets
his own limits and boundaries upon it, implicitly defining his
corpus for the reader.
In suggesting that the type of prose he writes is to be pre-
ferred to all others, Isocrates also assumes the prerogative of
validating his works for his audience. I suggest that he
establishes the claim to his authority in 'otherness', in a dis-
crimination against all other authors and their discourse. In
the subsequent chapters of this study I shall seek to establish
both how Isocrates' texts indicate their overall identity as
political discourse, showing that their designation as such is
more than an arbitrary claim, and how they define them-
selves against the 'other'.
35
2
THE UNITIES OF DISCOURSE
I
In this chapter I want to explore the ways in which Isocrates
indicates and establishes a sense of the coherence of his writ-
ing. It can be argued that by comprehending the sum of his
works under a single literary identity, namely logos politikos,
he implies a unity or common thread to all of his writing.
Yet this is not sufficient to demonstrate the coherence of his
work. Because he also makes his audience aware that
generic identity and its value are artificially constructed, the
reader is prompted to search for a reason for seeing his dis-
course as a body which hangs together apart from its uni-
form designation as 'political discourse'. The reader requires
further evidence of an authorial hand in creating a sense of
unity within his prose to further justify its overall identity as
logos politikos. What I intend to do in this chapter is exam-
ine the strategies by which Isocrates communicates just this
sense of continuity within his works. I shall demonstrate
that he establishes various types of links and references from
oration to oration, which demand that the audience reads
these works together by assuming that it does so. 1 It will
become apparent from the various patterns illuminated in
this chapter that for Isocrates literary unity is complex and
diverse in nature.
II
Traditionally, performance was a powerful factor in struc-
turing otherwise unrelated texts into a coherent unit, or else
in reinforcing the coherence of related texts. Rhapsodic pre-
sentation was one performative occasion which could, and
' See for instance 'Presupposition and Intertextuality' in Culler (1981), pp. 100-18.
was, implicitly understood to order literary works in this

fashion. The Panathenaic Rule - to which several fourth-
century authors, including Plato and Isocrates, make refer-
ence - required rhapsodes to recite the Iliad and Odyssey in
exactly the same way 'from beginning to end' year after
year. The Rule constructed the totality of the Homeric
poems for their audience by ensuring that these works were
recited in their entirety. 2
Apart from rhapsodic performance, dramatic occasion
also had the capacity to create a sense of literary unity.
Festivals, such as the Dionysia, brought together a group of
three or more often four plays (a trilogy plus a concluding
satyr play) as a distinct continuity whether or not they were
closely tied together by theme, a common character, literary
setting and so on.3 In the case of rhetorical texts, performa-
tive occasion has a diminished, or at least more complicated,
role to play in establishing coherence between different
works. The delivery of a single speech most often defines a
performative occasion. Although the speech may provoke a
response from another individual or be given in response to
another person's oration on that occasion - as in a legal
case - the fact that these texts were written by different indi-
viduals prevents the audience from perceiving them as a
unity like the dramatic tetralogy or trilogy.
The conditions for unity in the case of a wholly literary
author's works are different, since the author cannot rely on
an actual performance to establish continuity between differ-
ent texts. When a wholly literary author writes, he does so
on the understanding that when he makes his work available
to a reading audience he ultimately allows them to deter-
mine how his texts will be received. Indeed, in the Phaedrus
Plato portrays the literary author as unable to intervene in
the reading process and implicitly as powerless to determine
2 See Isocrates Panegyricus 159, [Plato] Hipparchus 228b and Diogenes Laertius
r.57. For a discussion of this and other evidence for the Panathenaic Rule, see
Davison (1955), pp. 1-21.
3 Jebb (1902), p. xcxix, distinguishes the Sophoclean trilogy from the Aeschylean
trilogy, in which there is a greater sense of progression from play to play.
37
how the text will be structured by its audience (cf. 275e3-5).

Perhaps, for this reason, unity is all the more significant an
issue for an author who writes in order to be read, rather
than to be dramatised or recited, and unity is emphatically
articulated as such.
Plato, in particular, provides one of the best-known, if
least understood, treatments of what constitutes unity in a
literary text.4 At Phaedrus 264c2-5 the author has Socrates
say that a speech should resemble a living creature or zoion:
'I think you would say this, that it is necessary for every
speech to be put together as a living creature (zoion), having
a body of its own which is neither headless nor footless but
has a middle and extreme parts, written so that they are
appropriate to each other and to the whole.' 5 The 'living
creature' is an animal with a distinct anatomy, and accord-
ing to Socrates' analogy, a speech must cohere so that, like
the creature, its individual components - a head, a body,
feet - are suited to one another and to the whole. 6 At 264b7
Socrates introduces the 'logographic necessity (ananke
logographike)' as a principle which determines 'by some
necessity (ek tinos anankes)' that each element of a speech
occupies a specific place and only that place in the speech.
This ordering principle requires that individual components
of a work are arranged one after the other so that what must
come first or second should be first or second (264b4-5).
The implication of this is that, since they are defined as
parts of the whole by their specific place within the overall
narrative structure, they cannot be randomly rearranged or
transposed in the text. Socrates sets his image of the well-
ordered and properly integrated speech against descriptions
of two disorderly written texts, the Lysianic Eroticus
(234e5-235a) and the Midas epigram. Both of these works
are so intrinsically disordered and unordered that the reader
4
See the recent discussion of the problem in the Phaedrus by Ford (1991).
5
, AMa T06E YE oTµm 0-Ecpcxva1&v, 6Eiv 1T<X\/Ta Myov wcrmp l;wov CJVVEO-TCXVat
crwµcx
TI exovTa mhov aVTOV,WO-TE µTJTECXKecpai\ov cxi\i\a
Efvm µTJTECX1TOVV, µfoa TE EXEIV
Kai CXKpa, 1TpE1TOVTacxi\i\rii\015Kai T<:poi\cpyEypaµµeva.
6
Cf. Dissoi Logoi 6.13.
must fail if he attempts to impose order upon them (cf.

228d1-5 and 264d3-6).
Isocrates characterises himself as an exclusively literary
author (as we shall see in the following chapter) and, like
Plato, he stresses the importance of narrative as an indica-
tion of textual integrity. In Epistle 9.5, his letter to the
Lacedaemonian king Archidamus, Isocrates ironically indi-
cates the importance of structure in even a brief work such
as this letter. 7 At first the rhetorician appears to say that
structure is unimportant. He observes that the accomplish-
ments of Sparta are so preeminent that an individual could
take special liberties in recounting them and still win recog-
nition. He imagines someone forgoing rhetorical embellish-
ment (hap/as dielthon 8) and even a carefully constructed nar-
rative sequence so that he merely enumerates (exarithmesas9)
the Spartan deeds and writes haphazardly about them
(chuden eipon 10 ). Isocrates, of course, does not himself actu-
ally write about Lacedaemonian matters in this fashion.
Because he is noticeably ambivalent about the Spartan state
and its achievements in other texts, e.g. Archidamus and
Panathenaicus, it is worth questioning whether the reader
should take at face value his invitation to dispense with
ordered rhetorical composition in the light of a work's sub-
ject matter. If anything, Isocrates paradoxically highlights
the importance of order by seeming to discount it.
A concern with the need to maintain a sense of order in a
literary work is implicit in other speeches. At Panathenaicus
17, Isocrates complains that his speeches have been abused
by hostile individuals, who fail to divide them correctly, pull
them to pieces and in short destroy them. rr One might be
7 mpi WV µ17 Koµ41ws' Cl.AA'O:TIAWSO!EA.6wv,µ176e Tij /1.E~ElKOO-µT]O"as, a/I.A'

E~ap16µficrasµ6vov Kai xv617v EliTWV OVOEiS OVK&v EVOOKtµficrE!EV.
OO"TlS
8 The verb normally refers to a narrative which proceeds in a logical and sequential
manner, e.g. To Nicocles 6; Nicocles II and 29; On the Peace So; Antidosis 12.
9 See the earlier discussion of Antidosis 46 and To Philip 26.
1° For eikei see e.g. Isocrates Epistle to Archidamus 5; Alcidamas On the Sophists
33; Plato Timaeus 34c3 and for chuden, see Trimpi (1983), pp. 315-16.
II "Ews µev O\JV TOVSA6yovs µov EAvµaivoVTo,;rapavay1yvwcrKOVTES ws 6vvaTOVKO:K-
!O"TaTois eavTwv Kai 61aipo0vTESoVK6p6ws Kai KaTaKvil;ovTES Kai ;ro:vTa Tp6;rov
6ta<p6EipovTES,
39
tempted to see him finding fault with his enemies for failing
to avoid hiatus when reading his texts. 12 Yet in the light of
his literary, rather than oral, emphasis, it is more likely that
he is taking issue with readers who do not respect the order
of his work, perhaps by citing out of context. Interestingly,
Plato's Hippias speaks of Socrates engaging in a 'pulling to
pieces' of speeches (Hippias Major 304a5). 13 The sophist is
clearly criticising the way in which Socrates structures
speeches rather than the way in which he reads them out.
Later, in the Panathenaicus at sections 72-87, Isocrates gives
us what he claims to be a 'digression' on the virtues of
Agamemnon in part to draw attention to the fact that there
is a proper order according to which his work should pro-
ceed. At the end of the digression, at section 88, he declares
that he will now 'straighten' his narrative and turn to 'what
follows next', namely a polemic against the Spartans.
Then, under the pretext of giving political advice to the
addressees of Epistle 6, the children of Jason of Pherae,
Isocrates observes that the structure and integrity of a
speech depends on the arrangement of its parts. He draws
an implicit analogy between governing the state well and
producing an orderly speech. He tells his readers to ponder
the outcome that their actions will have, just as an orator
considers what must be accomplished by his oration in its
parts and as a whole (6.8 14). Isocrates' awareness that the
individual elements of a speech should be perceived as parts
of a whole perhaps resembles Socrates' insistence in the
Phaedrus that the parts and whole of a logos fit properly
together. With its reference to 'parts (mere)' of a larger
whole, the speech, the language that Isocrates employs here
is perhaps similar to that used by Plato in his 'living
creature' metaphor.
12
In two of his speeches (e.g. 18.267; 18.312; 45.27) Demosthenes uses the verb
lumainesthai to denote the reading of texts in a destructive fashion.
'3 See Merlan (1954), p. 69.
14
·r/ •0 Myci:i Kai -rois ,oO Myov µepeo-161mrpaK,EOVfo,iv.
40
III
While these cited passages might suggest that in the fourth
century authors were above all concerned with the sense of
order and unity in a single text, their subsequent readers
have concerned themselves with the order of their whole lit-
erary output. This shift in interest is most evident in the case
of Plato. From the eighteenth century onwards, scholars
exercised and continue to exercise themselves in attempting
to determine the chronology of the Platonic dialogues. 1 s The
motivation for so doing was to establish that a particular
dialogue belonged in the Platonic corpus: to be able to place
a Platonic dialogue in one of three general periods, namely
early, middle or late, and moreover, to be able to locate as
precisely as possible where each dialogue came in this
chronology, was taken to be a virtual guarantee that the
work belonged in the Platonic corpus. 16
There is often an assumption that this chronology coin-
cides with the historical order of composition, inasmuch as
it is often taken for granted that an early work will display
its priority and a late one its lateness with regard to content
and style, for instance. Yet, in arriving at this chronology,
readers fail to admit the possibility that an author may sug-
gest to his readers that his texts were composed in a certain
order or that they should be read in a certain order which
may be quite distinct from the actual order of composition.
The system of references between the Theaetetus, Sophist
and Statesman gives the impression that these dialogues con-
stitute a 'narrative' unit, 17 while the dramatic account of
events leading from Socrates' trial to his death presented the
1 s See Brandwood (1990) for a survey of the various approaches used as criteria for
dating the dialogues with respect to one another. He observes that until the early
nineteenth century, the criterion was the content of the dialogues, while after the
late nineteenth century the criteria became style, vocabulary, rhythm and so on.
16 For such an assumption, see the recent study by Ledger (1989); Brandwood
(1990), p. ix, declares that the issue of authenticity is closely bound up with the
problem of chronology.
1 7 On the Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman trilogy, see e.g. Voegelin (1957) Order
and History, vol. 3 (Baton Rouge), pp. 141-3; Friedlander (1958), iii, pp. 243ff.;
Ryle (1966) Plato's Progress (Cambridge), pp. 27f., 284-6, 295-9; Taylor (1937),
p. 374; and Miller (1980), pp. rff.
41
Apology, Crito and Phaedo as a 'trilogy', at least to ancient

readers. In neither instance, however, can the reader assume
that narrative order is indicative of the historical order of
composition - although in fact nearly_ all modern scholars
assume that the first trilogy coincides with the actual order
of writing while the second one does not. 18
In pointing out scholars' mistaken assumption that narra-
tive order is historical order, I do not mean to discredit the
larger project of recovering chronology. In fact, my inten-
tion here is to show that Isocrates supplies various indica-
tions which displace and replace the conventions of perfor-
mance associated with epic poetry, drama and legal speeches
in drawing attention to the identity of his writings as a cor-
pus. Most obvious of these are the suggestions that the texts
constitute an autobiographical narrative, depicting the
rhetorician's whole development and career as a writer of
'political discourse'. Above all, two works, Against the
Sophists and Panegyricus, construct the 'early' and 'middle'
periods of Isocrates' career. In the Antidosis the author
declares that he composed Against the Sophists, the work in
which he professes to set out the principles of his rhetorical
teaching, when he was younger (neoteros, 195) and when he
was beginning to undertake his 'profession' (pragmateia,
193). In this later work Isocrates offers his text discussing
what is entailed in the teaching and learning of rhetoric as
the work which inaugurates both his corpus and his career.
What he has done is to suggest to his audience that Against
the Sophists comes before the other works with a pedagogi-
cal intent. It is to be seen as preceding To Demonicus, To
Nicocles and Nicocles, the three speeches which deal with the
education of the Cypriot royal family, and perhaps the
shorter works addressing sophistic concerns, Helen, Busiris,
and Evagoras, which give few indications about how they
should be dated. Indeed, in the absence of other works
18
Some of Plato's dialogues are patently ahistorical, as Nussbaum reveals when
she shows that Plato attempts retrospectively to rewrite history in the Phaedrus:
'"This story isn't true": madness, reason and recantation in the Phaedrus'
(Nussbaum (1986), p. 212).
42
which Isocrates explicitly says were composed at the initial

stages of his career, Against the Sophists is not only a termi-
nus post quern for the corpus; it is also a text which stands
for the author's whole 'early' period.
Isocrates' akme is by definition the peak of his intellectual
and writing career and so a special period in his life. At
Evagoras 73 the author reflects that that period was respon-
sible for his most accomplished and perfect encomiastic
writing. Isocrates explicitly identifies with this moment only
one text in his corpus, the Panegyricus, appropriately the
speech which he purportedly writes to celebrate the achieve-
ments of Athens at a panegyric festival and which therefore
deals with what is ostensibly the privileged concern of
Isocratean 'political discourse' as a whole. The rhetorician
speaks of the Panegyricus as the climax of his career at To
Philip 10 - note that at Epistle 3.6 Isocrates says he wrote
the Panegyricus when he was 'young (neos)' in order to
emphasise his age at the time of the writing of that letter.
Although Isocrates' middle period is accorded a special
position through the Panegyricus, it is his later career which
ultimately receives the most emphasis. In several works
Isocrates explicitly characterises himself as an old man, first
to create a pretext for making self-conscious remarks about
his writing and then to allow his reader to locate his texts in
the overall chronology of his corpus. He says that he is
eighty years old when he writes Epistle 9 (16; also cf. 2; 3;
6.6), and eighty-two and nearing the end of his philosophical
career (cf. 193 and 195) when he composes the Antidosis. In
the latter text Isocrates recalls Socrates, who declares him-
self seventy at the beginning of the Apology in an effort to
gain sympathy from his audience (17d2-3). Furthermore,
the author presents himself as a 94-year-old when he begins
to write the Panathenaicus (3) and as virtually on his
deathbed at ninety-seven when he completes the final chap-
ters of this work (267-70). I suggest that in stressing how
old he is in these works Isocrates invokes certain ethopoeic
conventions. These conventions characterise the 'old man' as
a figure of moderation (cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 139oa14) and
43
experience (cf. Rhetoric to Alexander r437br r-17). 19 They

explain why the rhetorician indicates his age especially in
works where he assumes the position of wise adviser and
teacher. Thus, in the Archidamus, the Spartan king says that
his youth makes him reluctant to speak to the council of his
elders because his lack of years will compromise what he has
to say (Archidamus r-6; cf. Rhetoric to Alexander
r437a33-4). 20 Ironically, behind the young persona of
'Archidamus' and lending it his symbouleutic authority is
Isocrates, the seventy-year-old rhetorical master of Athens.
Isocrates also draws attention to his maturity by a number
of other means. He frequently proclaims the lateness of sev-
eral of his texts by referring, nostalgically or ruefully, to a
time when he 'was younger' (Ep. r.r; Ep. 3.6; Panathenaicus I
and 55). Elsewhere old age is represented as both motivating
and constraining the author's production of literary works. It
forces him to compose Epistles 3 and 6 as he is unable - or so
he claims - to travel to his addressees to deliver the text in
person (cf. Epp. 3-4; 6.2), while he writes the epistle to
Alexander in part to demonstrate that he is not suffering
from senile dementia (Ep. 5.r). At other points Isocrates says
that his numerous years affect the style and structure of his
text (although, as Ledger has observed, the prose and style of
Isocrates' corpus are in fact so consistent that they offer a
constant for the stylometric analysis of other authors 21 ).
Being old prevents him from putting more precision and
labour (cf. akribesteron kai philoponoteron) into his encomium
of Evagoras at Evagoras 73. His maturity makes Epistle 4
rather 'old-mannish' (presbutikoteron, 13); while it elsewhere
explains and excuses the unfortunate discrepancies between
19
See Finley (1981), for the cultural and ideological determinants on youth and
old age.
20
Sinclair (1988), pp. 31-2, discusses the age requirements for different political
offices in Athens and Sparta.
21
Ledger (1989), pp. 117 and 129, observes that there is very little difference in
'style' between the Panegyricus, which was apparently composed at the begin-
ning of Isocrates' career, and the very late Panathenaicus. Isocrates might apolo-
gise for going off-topic in the Agamemnon excursus in one of his latest works
the Panathenaicus (74-87), but Race (1978) shows that he is at least as deliberat~
and as significant here as anywhere else.
44
the late To Philip and 'previous' works (10, 18, 28, 110). Age
also affects the literary capacity of one of Isocrates' personae.
'The multitude of his years' is one of the factors which pro-
vide the fictional speaker of On the Peace with an excuse for
ending his speech when he does (cf. 145).
Some works indicate their lateness by referring to others as
earlier compositions. To Philip and Epistles 2 and 3, also
addressed to Philip, together constitute a Macedonian 'corre-
spondence'. Isocrates invites us to see these texts as renewing
calls in earlier works for a war against the barbarians, in
order to unite the Greek states after the failure of his efforts
to persuade the Syracusan tyrant to undertake war on behalf
of the Greeks (To Philip 9, although cf. 84). At To Philip 81
he refers to his ineffective plea in the Epistle to Dionysius ( 1),
indicating that this letter precedes the overtures to Philip. 22
But Isocrates also establishes a chronology within the
Macedonian correspondence. Both Epistle 2 and Epistle 3
present themselves as coming after To Philip. Epistle 2
reminds the Macedonian ruler of the great eunoia he showed
towards the earlier work, in which he is urged to lead a
Greek military expedition against the barbarians (esp. To
Philip 113-28) ( 1). Employing To Philip as a captatio benevo-
lentiae or opening designed to gain the audience's sympathy
and favour, Isocrates hints that the same favour should be
given to the present letter. At section 13 of the letter he again
indirectly refers to To Philip when he contrasts the severely
curtailed length of the epistolary form he now uses with the
expansiveness of a logos, implicitly the earlier treatise (13).
He commences Epistle 3 by noting that he has already
rehearsed its contents with Antipater, namely in Epistle 4,
and he presents this letter as a much terser treatment of
themes already dealt with in To Philip (3. 1 23 ). There are also
thematic allusions to To Philip which reinforce the sense that
the letter was written subsequently. The praise of death
22 & mp rnfoTe111a Kai 1rp6s L':.1ovvcr1ovTTJVTvpavvi6a KTTJcraµevov. Jaeger (1963), p.

152, argues that the letter to Dionysius was sent after Isocrates' programme of
'cultural unity' flopped.
2 3 1rapa1rM\cr1a µi:v Tots evTCflMycp yeypaµµevo1s, 1roM 6' EKEivwvcrvVToµc:nepa.
45
which occurs in the service of one's state at Epistle 3-4 recalls

the encomium of those who are willing to die in war at To
Philip r 35, while the elevation of Philip to divine status in
section 5 of the letter echoes the praise of Heracles, the hero
who outdoes some of the gods, at To Philip rr3-r5 and the
recognition of Philip's support from the gods at I 52-3.
Isocrates establishes that another of the Macedonian
texts, the very brief Epistle 5 (to Alexander), is contempo-
rary with the letters to Philip. 2 4 He suggests this letter was
sent along with the other missives to the Macedonian king
when he observes that writing to Philip obliges him to write
as well to Philip's son, Alexander. He observes that he
would be acting strangely (atopon) if he did not write to the
son, who is in the same geographical place (topon) as his
father (r). The proximity of atopon and topon suggests that
the author intends a verbal pun here: the literal topos is also
a literary or discursive topos, here the father serving as a
pedagogical model for his son. Alexander will someday
inherit his father's responsibilities and so needs to be
advised as his father is (5). So obvious is the connection
between this epistle and the letters to Philip that Jaeger sees
it as part of Epistle 2. 2 s
The text which most ostensibly cites 'prior' texts and
assures the reader of its late position in the corpus is the
Antidosis. The Antidosis takes on the form of a legal text, an
apology, and legal speeches regularly use other 'texts' -
prosecution charges (cf. Antidosis 29), laws, depositions of
witnesses, wills, letters - in order to substantiate the argu-
ments made by the litigants. Where in Nicocles the author's
Cypriot persona, Nicocles, envisages the possibility of 'his'
own words (logoi) becoming one type of evidentiary dis-
course, i.e. 'laws' (nomous, Nicocles 62), Isocrates now con-
fers the status of 'evidence' or 'proof upon his literary texts
in the Antidosis. Indeed, he cites portions of his own works.
He transforms these passages into witnesses (martures) to
24
For an ironic reading of this text, see Merlan (1954).
25
Jaeger (1963), pp. 253-4.
the author's character, to his writing and to his concern with

the well-being of the Greek world (cf. 54), rendering the
Antidosis a 'mixed speech (miktos logos)', because, as he
says, it brings together many different types (ideas) of dis-
course (11-12). At Antidosis 59 Isocrates asks for
Panegyricus 51-99 to be read out in the 'courtroom'; at 66
he requests the same of On the Peace 25-56 and 132-45; at
73, To Nicocles 14-39; at 194, chapters 14-18 of Against the
Sophists, the work which he supposedly produced in his
youth; while at sections 253-7 he recalls the 'hymn to logos'
at Nicocles 5-9. 26 In so doing, Isocrates establishes that the
Antidosis is a work which follows these cited texts, and he
asserts the coherence of his authorial persona even in the
case of texts, such as On the Peace and Nicocles, where he
has assumed a fictional identity.
I do want, however, to make a qualification when speak-
ing of Isocrates' 'reference' to earlier works in the Antidosis.
Drerup concluded from a study of the manuscript evidence
that the rhetorician himself cited the 'witness speeches' in
full. 27 This critic observes that codices 8 and /\, in so far as
this second codex is complete, reproduce the cited texts with
several notable changes. He argues that these changes prob-
ably originate with Isocrates rather than with a subsequent
scribe. 28 He suggests that when fourth-century audiences
encountered familiar passages, they did not expect precise
repetition. 2 9 It may help his view that Demosthenes Against
Timocrates 160--4 and Against Androtion 47-52 are not
exactly identical.3° Yet his larger position is not in any case
as secure as may appear. The most reliable codex, r (the
Urbinas), refers to the passages from the earlier speeches in
shorthand, citing only the first and last few words of the
26 For the phrase, Jaeger (1944), pp. 89 and 320.

2
1 Drerup (1906), p. xciv.
28 Drerup (1906), p. xcviii.
29 Drerup (1906), p. xcviii, 'Neque aetatis illius homines tarn pusilli animi erant et
angusti, ut verba quaedam a scriptore laudata ad unguem spectarent et excuter-
ent.'
3o Navarre and Orsini (1954), pp. xi-xiii. The editors do not rule out the possibility
of revision by someone other than Demosthenes.
47
passages. Immanuel Bekker's edition of Isocrates reproduces

the mode of citation employed in the Urbinas.31 There is one
good reason for believing that the Urbinas correctly repre-
sents what Isocrates actually did. Citing such long passages
as those from On the Peace and the Panegyricus would
increase the length of the Antidosis, a work which, even
without these 'witness speeches', is by far the most prolix of
the author's works.
IV
Isocrates most obviously signals the coherence of the corpus
by signalling a temporal progression from early to late
works; however, it might be argued that he needs to supple-
ment this by other continuities. A solely linear structure is in
itself problematic in that it calls into question the role
assigned by ancient Greek society to the written text as a
durable, even eternal, 'memory aid' or memorial (cf.
ktema ... es aiei, Thucydides 1.22.4).32 If a text can only be
read from beginning to end, it implies at an extreme both
that the only point of reading is to get to the end and that,
once the end has been reached, the text has been exhausted.
The suggestion that this might indeed be the case comes
from the Phaedrus, the Platonic dialogue which calls into
question the authority of the written text. Here Socrates dis-
approves of Phaedrus reading repeatedly to himself the
Lysianic Eroticus, a work which already seems to say the
same things over and over again (228a5--e5 and 235a4-7).
Plato's proposal in the Phaedrus that this or any text should
be read through once is perhaps unusual, and he may be
suggesting that the Eroticus is only worth reading once, thus
denigrating it. As we shall see, Isocrates at least proposes
the iterability of rhetorical discourse when he states that
logoi are such that one can speak about the same things
many times over (Panegyricus 8).
31
Bekker (1823), pp. 115, 117, 119, 148 and Drerup (1906), p. xcv.
32
Interestingly, Longinus makes the ability to withstand numerous rereadings
(1roAArJTJo:va6Ewp17a1s)a requirement for the sublime text (On the Sublime 7.3).
Malcolm Heath observes that classical Greek notions of

literary unity are far more flexible and accommodating than
we might expect. He then proceeds to identify diffusion as a
key principle that both unifies and calls unity into question.
Literary structure tolerates what Heath calls 'centrifugal
practices', such as digression, amplification and thematic
variation.3 3 I follow Heath in proposing that Isocrates cre-
ates other coherences apart from the sense of a linear order,
some of which may at first glance appear to challenge the
coherence of his discourse or, as Ruthven terms it, to 'dis-
orient' its audience regarding unity.34 Where I part company
from Heath is in suggesting that in the case of Isocrates
these alternative temporalities reinforce the unity of the cor-
pus by generating rhetorical structures that concentrate,
focus and underscore various parts of the whole rather than
disperse them. I suggest that Isocrates rejects an exclusively
linear order so as to legitimise alternative methods for
organising the literary unity and for authorising certain
parts of his discourse over others.
One indication that multiple orders are tolerated in a
body of texts is the fluid use of the language of chronology
in fourth-century prose. Programmatic statements regarding
consecutive narrative are not quite as straight[ orward as
they initially appear. If the metaphor of the living creature
(zoion) at Phaedrus 264cr-3 most obviously declares that a
speech should proceed from its beginning to its end, it also
provides a basis for deliberately taking the text out of this
progressive order and for emphasising certain of its parts.
When Socrates declares that no logos must be without head
or foot (264c4), we generally assume that he means every
text must have a beginning and an ending. Nevertheless, the
metaphor can be understood to be implying one of several
other things as well. I suggest that the central myth of the
soul (243e9-257b6), which is generally thought to have no
relevance for the dialogue's discussion of literary and rhetor-
33 Heath ( 1989), pp. 5ff.

34 See Ruthven (1979), pp. 6-7; also cf. Foucault (1972), p. 149.
49
ical theory, offers us another way of understanding the liv-

ing creature metaphor. The central myth defines a living
creature as a combination of body and soul in which the
soul is the privileged component. The soul initiates move-
ment in the body, informs it (246c5-6); it is its rational ele-
ment. This definition of the zoion as a combination of body
and soul proposes that we view the metaphorical 'living
creature' as more than a formal unity, as more than a physi-
cal anatomy. If the analogy between literal and literary ani-
mal holds true, then the text is also to be viewed as a combi-
nation of body and soul (psuche), controlled by the latter.
Plato gives us a hint later on in the dialogue at 27rcro-d.s as
to what this metaphorical 'soul' might be. Here Socrates
says that persuasion consists in the orator being able to dis-
tinguish the types of speech, just as he distinguishes types of
soul (cf. 276a8).35
On at least one occasion, Isocrates simultaneously pre-
scribes and undermines the concept of literary unity as a lin-
ear structure. In the Panathenaicus, as we saw earlier, he
seems to offer us authoritative statements on the need for
temporal sequence in literary texts (cf. sections 17 and 88).
Yet he can also be read as calling into question the idea that
a text should simply proceed from beginning to end. Section
24 comes in the middle of what may be described as an auto-
biographical 'excursus' (5-33) and marks the beginning of a
return to the main theme as follows:36 'For if I were to do
this without either putting a conclusion (telos) on what I
have written or rounding off the beginning (ten archen) of
what I am about to say with the conclusion (tei teleutei) of
what has now been said, I would appear to resemble those
who speak at random (eikei), in a vulgar manner (phortikos)
and haphazardly (chuden). I must guard against this.'
35 Tov To0 e!86Tos Myov Mye1s ~wvTa Kal eµ41vxov. While I accept Heath's warning
that the Phaedrus emphasises textual completeness over textual 'unity', I do not
agree with him that the Phaedrus eludes 'the imposition of thematic unity' (1989,
pp. 18 and 27).
36
There are verbal parallels between this passage and the more widely discussed
Agamemnon 'digression' at Panathenaicus 74-87.
50
(Panathenaicus 24).37Initially, the author appears to advocate

chronological order. He employs vocabulary which resembles
the language of Epistle 9.5 and the terms that Socrates
employs in his criticism of the haphazard arrangement of the
Lysianic Eroticus (Phaedrus 264b3).38 According to him, prose
texts (gegramnzena) require an end (telos) to avoid being hap-
hazard (cf. eikei, phortikos and chuden). Nevertheless, his own
syntax complicates this straightforward interpretation of the
passage. Isocrates deliberately disrupts the logical order of the
words to make a point about the fluidity of chronology. He
plays with the concepts of 'beginning' and 'end'. In the Greek
his announcement that the 'beginning (arche) of what will be
said' (cf. Panegyricus 13) follows the statement 'the end
(teleute) of what has already been said'. Isocrates uses the
word beginning (arche) - arche is involved in another word
game at e.g. On the Peace ror and Panegyricus r 19 (see
below) - in denoting the latter part of the Panathenaicus, and
end (teleute) to signify the beginning of the text. What high-
lights this playfully inappropriate placement of arche and
teleute is the participle sunkleisas, which means 'rounding off
or 'concluding'. The ideal of 'rounding off a beginning' is per-
haps somewhat paradoxical. Also the author confusingly
locates the phrase 'what has already been said' after, not
before, the phrase 'what will be said'.
Isocrates concedes that a logos might be structured by
other than a beginning, middle and end. At On the Peace
r 32, he describes the presentation of the current work as fol-
lows: 'I have discussed (dieilegmai) most of this, not in order
(ephexes), but as each thing occurred at its opportune
moment (kairoi).'39 Although the verb dieilegmai (from diale-
gomai) seems to suggest that he will narrate or list various
items in turn, he here conspicuously rejects chronological
37 Ei yap TOtiT'f\8T11TOJO{'flV
µr\TETEAOSEm0EJSTOISyEypaµµEVOISµr\TEcrvyKAEicrasTT]V
6:pxriv TWV p'fl0r\crm0ai µEAAOVTWV 0µ01os &v
T,j TEAEVT,jTWVf\8Tl -rrpOElp'flµEVWV,
ETvai 86~aiµ1 TOIS EiK,j Kai q,opTlKWS Kai xv8'flV O TI &v E1TEA01JMyovcriv· 0:
q,vAaKTEOV 17µivEcrT1v.
38 Cf. ov xv8'flV 80KEI~E~Afjcr0aiTO:TOVMyov.
39 81EiAEyµaiµEv Ta -rrAEtcrTa-rrEpiavTwv TovTwv, ovK Eq,E~fjs,o:AA' ws EKacrTovT0

Kaip0 crVVITT\1TTEV.
51
order in this work to attain the kairos, a moment of oppor-

tunity. The abandonment or replacement of linear progres-
sion is most obvious when he speaks of the kephalaia order-
ing some of his speeches in whole or in part. In the Antidosis
he observes that the structure of To Nicocles is not strictly
linear, unlike the other works referred to in this apology: the
work is disjunct and divided into 'so-called headings (ta
kaloumena kephalaia)' (68).4° Other passages present the
kephalaion as displacing the more familiar parts of a
speech's anatomy, particularly its end. At On the Peace 142
Isocrates announces that he will deal with this speech's
kephalaion, its most important point, at the conclusion of his
speech. Note that its etymological root, kephale, might have
suggested that we should find the kephalaion at the begin-
ning of the work. Elsewhere, at To Philip I 54, at the very
end of this work, he provides what he calls 'the summary (to
kephalaion) of his advice' to Philip to undertake a panhel-
lenic project. 4 1
Plato demonstrates the potential of this vocabulary for
irony when he plays on the misleading similarity between
the words kephalaion, key point, and kephale, which denotes
a work's 'head' or beginning. He speaks of a text's 'head
(kephale)' where an author like Isocrates would speak of its
'key point (kephalaion)'. At Gorgias 505d1 Socrates describes
the myth which turns up in the last half of the dialogue as a
kephale. The description is inappropriate. Like all such nar-
ratives, the myth in question poses a challenge to linear
order, which the word kephale seems to connote, by break-
ing up the continuity of the dialogue (cf. 505c10-ch). Above
all, it comes at the conclusion of the Gorgias. Elsewhere
40 See also To Nicocles 9 and the phrase KE<pMaicr... ptjµaT1 at Aristophanes Frogs
854; Stanford (1958), p. 147, comments 'as the adjective has widely varying
meanings, the translation is much disputed here. I take it that two ideas, rhetori-
cal and anatomical, are uppermost: (a) "summing up", i.e. giving the chief
"heads" of an argument; (b) having to do with the head: hence a "heady" (or
'crowning') phrase ... '
41
Similarly, in Plato's Phaedrus Phaedrus observes that the sophist Thrasymachus
demonstrated his rhetorical skill by placing things 'in summary (ev Kecpal\a{cr)' 'at
the end (fol TEAEvTfiS )' of his speech to remind his audience of what had been
said (267d5-6). Also cf. Symposium 186c5-6; Timaeus 17c2 and 26c6.
52
Plato signals through his vocabulary that the 'head' of a text

need not be its beginning. At Timaeus 69b r Timaeus
announces that he will put the 'final start (teleuten ...
kephalen )' on his preceding narrative.42 This 'final start'
comes at the end of the text, where Plato has located mater-
ial that is especially important to his argument, and only
after the narrator has refined the less persuasive and less
philosophical types of aetiological discourse, i.e. the purely
materialistic theories of causation proposed by Anaxagoras
and Anaximander.43 In the Phaedrus Plato reveals the differ-
ence between arranging a work by 'headings (kephalaia)'
and giving it an adequate structure. Phaedrus announces
that he will present Lysias' Eroticus 'in sections (en kepha-
laiois)' (cf. Phaedrus 228dr-5). Socrates' criticisms of this
speech as failing to resemble an animal with head, feet and
body (cf. 264c) make it clear that such rhetorical partition-
ing is anything but the chronological ordering which the
zoion's anatomy figures. Phaedrus, teasingly described by
Socrates as phile kephale (264a7), is someone who highlights
what Plato implies to be the disorder of conventional liter-
ary structure.
V
One of the alternative patterns which Isocrates constructs in
his corpus is repetition. Repetition can be understood in the
strict sense of saying the same thing again in virtually the
same words (i.e. citing) or more often in the looser sense of
recalling ideas and themes already employed in an earlier text
without necessarily using the same language. 44 The good
42 Heath (1989), p. 20, observes that Plato also speaks of the end of a text as a
'head' at Philebus 66c10-d2.
43 In later rhetorical theory the phrase TEA!Ka KE<paAma denotes 'motivational
indices', the concern of the psychological aspect of rhetoric. See Volkmann
(1963, reprint), p. 83.
44 Smith (1940), p. 9, gives as examples of thematic and verbal repetition in
Isocrates: Helen 17 and Archidamus 104; On the Peace IOI and To Philip 61;
Antidosis 310 and Panathenaicus 22. Smith also observes the following repeti-
tions in other authors: Isaeus 7.41 and 10.25; Dinarchus 1.14-15 and 3.17-18;
Aeschines 1.4 and 3.6; Aeschines 2.172-6 and Andocides 3.3-9.
53
rhetorician rarely says exactly the same things over again, for
just as he can metamorphose great things (ta megala) into
humble things (ta tapeina) and vice versa, he also knows how
to present what is old (ta palaia) in a novel fashion (kainos)
(Panegyricus 8).45Clearly, saying things more than once is an
important technique of rhetoric, whether understood as the
art of publicity or of persuasion. Familiarity gained through
repetition disarms readers and renders them receptive, for
when they see something for the second or third or fourth
time, they offer little resistance to it. This lack of resistance
may explain the complacency that is sometimes exhibited
towards literary commonplaces. Beyond this, repetition
stresses the constancy of thoughts and words by bringing
past speech into proximity with a similar present speech.
Classical authors legitimise literary repetition when they
grant a privileged position to familiar language and
themes.46 Authors writing in the fifth and fourth centuries
express a strong preference for traditional or familiar dis-
course, expressed as archaios logos, over 'novelty (he
kainotes)'. They may do this ironically, through characters
who prefer what is ultra-sophisticated to what is traditional.
In certain passages of Aristophanes and Plato, figures use
the charge that one is 'older' or 'more ancient' than the two
Titans Cronos and Iapetus in order to disqualify others
from contemporary social and intellectual culture.47 Yet the
45 In his life of Isocrates Pseudo-Plutarch relates that when the rhetorician was
asked 'What is rhetoric? (Ti fJTlTop1Ktj;)',he responded 'to make small things great
and great things small' (Ta µev µ1Kpa µey6:Aa, TO:81:µey6:Aa µ1Kpa 1TOIEJV, 838f).
For other occurrences of this definition of rhetoric, see Blass and Benseler
(1889), ii, p. 278; Norlin (1966), i, pp. 124-5; also Suss (1910), pp. 17--18.
46
Cole (1991), p. 34, wrongly supposes that as part of a 'later generation' Isocrates
advocates novelty or innovation (Kmv6TT1Te5) alone. Certainly paradox and innova-
tion (Kmvo'TT1TES) form the core of the literary programme of the Second Sophistic,
and particularly of the 'novel'. See Heiserman ( 1977), pp. 77 and 226, n. 4.
47 The texts of the classical period also disapprove of such traditionalism and con-
ventionality, either in an attempt to leave some room for innovation or to com-
ment on the general tendency of the period to be overly archaic. Note Aeschylus
PB 317 with comments by Griffith (1983), p. 145; Aristophanes, Clouds 929, 998;
Plato Lysis 205b----c;Symposium 195b7 with comments by Dover (1980), pp.
124-5; Thucydides 7.69.2. Quintilian suggests that vetustas can help to authorise
a discour~e but warns against over-affectation (see Institutio Oratoria 1.6.3-1 on
anachromsm). Kaster (1988), pp. 172ff., discusses the 'authority of the ancients
(veterum auctoritas)' in the late antique grammarians Servius and Macrobius.
54
very figures who speak in this fashion (e.g. the Unjust

Speech in the Clouds and the poet Agathon in the
Symposium) are associated with the new sophistic culture
which Aristophanes and Plato attack. Likewise, Isocrates
offers a subtle critique of Archidamus, who not only aban-
dons traditional Spartan reserve when he addresses the
council of elders but also expresses his lack of commitment
to the state's past. The speaker describes the stories regard-
ing Athens' successes against the Amazons, the Thracians
and the Peloponnesians as ta archaia, old and worn-out top-
ics, declaring that they are not relevant to the present occa-
sion (Archidamus 42). By describing ta archaia as irrelevant,
Archidamus shows that he misunderstands the potential of
such discourse to speak to the present.
The authority of traditional discourse or archaios logos is
also declared more explicitly. In the matter of legislation,
Plato has his interlocutors in the Laws affirm the importance
of regard for and maintenance of traditional laws and cus-
toms to ensure the stability of their ideal society (cf. Laws
797a7ff.). Other prose authors apparently invoke this posi-
tive ideology of the traditional (ta archaia) to gain accep-
tance and respect for their own discourse or that of their
characters. When Aristophanes' Praxagora announces that
she will 'teach (didaxo)' - the verb suggests that the discur-
sive moment is both dramatic and pedagogical - her audi-
ence what is useful (chresta), she expresses her anxieties that
her listeners will prefer to 'begin something new (kaino-
tomein )' by listening to novelties (kainotetes) and depart
from 'the ancient habits' (Ecclesiazusae 583-5 48). Praxagora
implies that what is beneficial is also traditional. In
Tetralogy I -4.2 Antiphon's speaker disapproves of the meth-
ods of the prosecutor who says that he relies on probability
and on the testimony of witnesses (r.3.9). The speaker of
Tetralogy r .4 describes these forms of evidence as 'novel
things (kainotata)' and, as such, dastardly tricks (kakour-
48 TOVS8E 6EaTOS'
El KatVOTOµEtV Kai µ17TOISii6ao-1 Mav
E6EAT]CJOVCJIV
TOIST, apxa101s EV8taTpi~EIV,To(iT' foff 8 µ01110-Ta8e801Ka.
55
gotata). At Thucydides 2.61.3 Pericles criticises his Athenian

audience because they are slaves to novelty (he kainotes),
which he periphrastically describes as 'what is unforeseen,
unexpected and for the most part contrary to reason'. 49
In To Nicocles Isocrates rejects novelty (he kainotes),
namely paradox and incredible things, in favour of tradi-
tional matters (ta archaia), since new-fangled themes do not
have the pedigree of well-worn common topics or koinoi
topoi (41). At Antidosis 55 he asks his audience not to expect
'new speeches' from him since it has already read often (pol-
lakis) what he is about to say, whether because he makes use
of themes familiar from other authors or because he cites
from his earlier works. Elsewhere, in the Panegyricus (10),
he himself assumes the now familiar position that literary
ability does not consist of devising novelties. He is neverthe-
less aware that in advocating traditional themes such as the
Persephone myth he leaves himself open to the charge of
producing 'old-fashioned themes (hos archaion onton)'
(Panegyricus 3off.).
Scholars have criticised the Panathenaicus as a work lacking
in invention on several different counts. Usher describes the
work's style as 'at times flabby, repetitious and inconsequen-
tial'50 and his assessment is not entirely subjective, for his sty-
lometric analysis of Isocrates' language reveals that this speech
uses the most elaborate amplification and the longest periods
in the whole corpus. Previously, Norlin castigated Isocrates for
his failure in invention, style and nerve. Following Jebb, he
offered the judgement that the Panathenaicus is an inferior
reworking of the author's prior worksY These judgements are
49 8ovr..oi yap qip6vriµa To aiqiv/81ov Kai 6:.rpoa86KTJTOV
Kai To .rr..daT<:p .rapaMycp
~vµl3aivov.
50
Usher (1973), p. 59.
51
Norlin (1968), ii, pp. 369-70 and Jebb (1876), ii, p. 126. Jebb's statement results
from misrepresentation of Panathenaicus 172, where Isocrates states that he is
aware of appearing now to write the opposite of what he said in the Panegyricus
(Kai µTj8els olfo0w µe 6:yvoeiv OT! To:vaVT/a TVYXCXVW Mywv oTs ev T<:p
TTavTjyvptKc";°)
Mycp qiavE!TjV av mp1 TWV<XVTWV TOVTWV yeypaqiws). In the sec-
tions leading up to this remark (168-71), the rhetorician narrates how Thebes
returned the Argive dead at Athens' request during the time of Theseus, while at
Panegyricus 57-8 he had explained that Athens went to war with Thebes in
order to retrieve its corpses.
biased in part by the lateness of the work, but they also result
from the author's deliberate privileging of the familiar and tra-
ditional over originality here. At Panathenaicus 126 the author
seems to express anxiety about covering the same ground. In
this section he bemoans the fact that he cannot introduce
praise of Theseus into his encomium of Athens because he has
already dealt with this topic at Helen 18ffY Yet his anxiety
about repeating himself is self-created, for he only and ironi-
cally recalls this passage from his prior work when he
announces that he cannot deal with it again in the
Panathenaicus. Later in the speech he reveals his predilection
for the familiar. At Panathenaicus 190-1 he refers to Athens'
roles in the Persian War and the Ionian war of colonisation
and then proceeds to explain that he has already spoken suffi-
ciently about them in this work (i.e. at 42ff., 49ff., 164ff.). If
repetition causes the writer concern, this concern also brings it
to the notice of the reader.
The most obvious model of archaios logos is myth, a type
of discourse which concerns itself with ancient, familiar
themes and which is constructed by an author's forefathers,
their predecessors and their actions (cf. Hippias Major
285d6---e2).Myths can increase the authority of the work in
which they occur, and can provide an author with a licence
beyond his social position. Pindar and Bacchylides had used
myth in presenting moral and political allegories of a critical
nature to their aristocratic patrons. In so doing, they may
have provided the basis for Plato's designation of the myths
in the Gorgias and Timaeus as the 'head (kephale)' or key
section of those works. The Isocratean corpus makes appar-
ent the political capacity inherent in myth. Nicocles justifies
his own status and power through mythical ta archaia (cf.
Nicocles 26). He employs the figure of Zeus, and elsewhere
the foundation narrative of Cyprus, as the prescriptive
precedents, as the aetiologies, for his own position of
authority (Nicocles 28). Similarly, the rape of Demeter,
which Isocrates narrates at Panegyricus 27ff., is an example
s2 Heath (1989), p. 37, n. 18, terms this 'generic thinking'.
57
of ta archaia which explains how Athens became what it is

today and what it will continue to be (esp. Panegyricus 30).
As an archaic discourse, myth also plays an important
part in what we might describe as pedagogical contexts. The
heroes portrayed in myth offer their audience paradigms for
imitation, which will in turn control the identity of future
generations and their discourse. In the Platonic dialogue
named after him, Protagoras describes how young Athenian
men read poems which praise distant ancestors. From these
poems they learn how to become like their predecessors
(Protagoras 325e4-326a4). Likewise, Isocrates frequently
prescribes ancestors (or their texts) as models to be imitated
by subsequent generations. At To Demonicus 34 and To
Nicocles 35 (cf. 41) he stresses the value of 'bygone events
(ta pareleluthota)' as a paradigm for behaviour in the future
(ta mellonta). He implicitly responds to Gorgias, who had
claimed in the Encomium of Helen (II) that the future was
unknowable. In particular, To Demonicus, which Isocrates
compares to a 'storehouse' of advice and counsel (cf. 44), is
a 'deja lu' of themes and ideas which have their ostensible
origin in Homer and the epic poets, the traditional 'wise
men' of Greece.53
Undoubtedly in Isocrates' 'archaeology' the most authori-
tative and predominant paradigm is the figure of the father.
Demonicus is to learn above all from the example left by his
own father Hipponicus (To Demonicus 9 and II; cf. 2), while
Archidamus is to have in mind the examples of his father,
Archidamus II (about whom Xenophon had published his
encomium a few years before), and more distant ancestors
53
For the references see the footnotes to Norlin's Loeb edition. On the identifica-
tion of the poets as sophists, see Kerferd ( 1981), p. 24. Yet many scholars see the
lack of originality in To Demonicus as evidence that it is inauthentic. See Drerup
(1896), p. cxxxv; Sandys (1872), p. xxi; Blass (1898), ii, p. 279; Rummel (1976),
p. 257, n. 44, 'Because of the lack of unity and rhetorical perfection, the authen-
ticity of this oration has been doubted. The ideas are representative of Isocrates'
views even if style and expressions are not characteristic. It is likely, therefore,
that it was composed by a student of Isocrates, and as such still constitutes a
val~able source of his ideas.' It might be argued, however, that the lack of origi-
nality demonstrated by To Demonicus testifies to the work's authenticity inas-
much as it reveals allegiance to what is traditional (ta archaia).
as he undertakes the panhellenic project which Isocrates

urges upon him (Epistle 9.r, 4). Evagoras provides Nicocles
with an image of his own dead father, Evagoras. The
assumption is that Nicocles will in turn become the 'father'
of Cyprus if he imitates his predecessor as portrayed in the
speech (cf. r2ff. and 74-7).
For Isocrates the imitation of a state's 'forefathers' is an
important political strategy. Thus numerous different para-
digms are offered to Demonicus apart from his biological
father Hipponicus (cf. To Demonicus 52); he is told that it is
easy to learn (katamathein) from the labours and works of
Heracles and Theseus, who are significantly the mythical
founders and fathers of Sparta and Athens respectively (To
Demonicus 8). The paternal identity of Heracles and Theseus
explains why they occupy such an important role in the
Helen, a work which stresses the superiority of the Greeks
over the barbarians, and also why Philip of Macedon is
urged to liken himself (cf. homoiothenai) to Heracles with
respect to his plans as far as possible (To Philip r 14). When
the speaker of the Plataicus describes the Thebans as a peo-
ple who do not imitate Athenian gentleness, he implicitly
characterises them as the enemies of Athens (17). He also
tacitly acknowledges the importance of Theseus' legacy to
the city: we learn from the Helen that the hero left 'traces' of
his gentleness (praotes) in the Athenian character (Helen 37).
Mythical heroes are not the only 'forefathers' of a state.
In the Areopagiticus, the work which praises Solonian 'an-
tiquity', the author proposes that if the Athenians model
(mimesometha) themselves after their ancestors (84) he and
they will be free of all their problems and will be able to res-
cue the Hellenic peoples as a whole. 'Archidamus' likewise
advises his audience to recover the former glory of the
Spartan state by copying (mimesasthai) its forefathers
(Archidamus 82). This discourse of mimesis (I shall discuss
Isocrates' ideal of imitation in chapter 5) ensures that
'archaisms' are never obsolete. It guarantees that myth in
particular, as well as other forms of traditional language,
such as the gnomic declarations in To Demonicus, To
59
Nicocles and Nicocles, will be perpetuated as a popular dis-

course of knowledge and culture.s4 Only the speaker of On
the Peace urges his audience to abandon the militaristic
model provided by previous citizens as he advocates paci-
fism ( On the Peace 36).
There is a more general sense in which repetition produces
authority. Repetition helps to conventionalise, to make
familiar and acceptable to the public what might otherwise
remain a private and idiosyncratic discourse. As a strategy
of publicity, repetition creates liability on the part of the
speaker and the litigant, and thus verifies what they have to
say.ss As we have seen, Isocrates re-represents in the
Antidosis sections from To Nicocles, Panegyricus, On the
Peace, Nicocles and Against the Sophists as witness speeches,
a type of discourse which functions as evidence in legal texts
precisely because they are presented to the Athenian demos.
In Against Callimachus Isocrates justifies saying the same
things over again (cf. 42) by pointing to the civic identity
and function of his speech. He presents his case within the
context of the 'Amnesty' law, of a particular type of lan-
guage which all citizens ideally have a role in forming and to
which they all have access (cf. Xenophon Memorabilia
1.2-42).
More often Isocrates informs the reader that he is repeat-
ing his own words because they have already acquired a
public or conventional status as the result of being used by
other individuals. In the Antidosis he supports his citation of
To Nicocles 14-39 with the observation that others are
already exploiting his material (74). In Epistle 9 Isocrates
justifies reworking the theme of panhellenic unity that is
already so familiar from his prior works by observing that
he is merely working with a theme that even his enemies imi-
tate (cf. 14-15 56). In To Philip 11 he justifies recycling earlier
works by pointing out that rival orators copy (mimeisthaz)
54 At To Nicocles 43 lsocrates identifies the archaic poets Hesiod, Theognis and

Phocylides as the source of his maxims.
55 Pringsheim (1950), p. 21.
56 mpi i::iv eyw Kai 1TpOTEpoveipriKa KO:iv(iv 1To1r\o-oµaiTOIJS:Myovs.
60
his Panegyricus. A later passage in this same work demon-

strates particularly well his awareness that one can grant
authority to texts by citing and thus repeating them. At To
Philip 94 Isocrates states that he will now join those who
quote his earlier speeches and, in this way, reassert owner-
ship over his own writing.
If reference helps to authorise the cited texts by affirming
their place in the body of works to which the author affixes
his name, lack of reference to an individual work or individ-
ual works has the effect of excluding them from the con-
struction of an author's corpus or at least of marginalising
them within this corpus. It is thus significant that at To
Philip 94 the author also makes a point of refusing to
employ the writings of other men in his own speeches. In
this way he denies to the texts of his contemporaries the top-
ical, commonplace and thus institutional status that they
grant to his works when they cite them. Likewise, because he
makes no retrospective references to the six court speeches
in any of his other compositions, he should be seen to be
downplaying, if not denying, responsibility for these works.
Although it is possible to explain the lack of allusion by the
fact that legal discourses are generally only cited and
referred to by other court speeches, the characterisation of
the writer of lawcourt speeches, or logographer, as a figure
of disrepute affirms the deliberateness of this silence. 57
VI
There occurs in the corpus yet another coherence, a disloca-
tion of past, present and future which is more radical than
repetition and which consequently provides the greatest
challenge to the unity of the Isocratean corpus as a dis-
course and to the unity of the authorial voice. Norman
s1 A number of scholars have tried to claim that with the phrase 1Tpos µEv TTlV
1TapaKma6r\KT1V (Panegyricus 188) the author self-consciously refers to his
deposit speech Against Euthynus; however, Bonner has shown that the phrase is
rather only a general reference to speeches concerned with the 1TapaKma6r\KT1-or
'deposit'-theme, see Bonner (1920b), pp. 385-7.
61
Baynes observes that when one tries to read a number of

Isocrates' works in terms of one another, one encounters
conflicting views and statements: 'just a bundle of contradic-
tions' he remarks at one point in his essay on the rhetori-
cian.s8 George Kennedy accuses Isocrates of 'strange incon-
sistencies and vacillations' with regard to his political
views.59The contradictions become especially troubling if we
take seriously the principle of consistency that the author
appears to advocate at On the Peace I 14, when he calls for
the Athenian citizen to realise that his naval empire is in fact
no different from the Theban tyranny which he despises.
According to this passage, a sensible man (phronimos) is
identified by an ability to recognise that similar situations
produce similar actions or outcomes (tas autas praxeis). 60
Baynes attempts to justify the contradictions in the corpus
by arguing that Isocrates is writing a series of encomia on
Athens, and changes his views according to circumstances.
He argues that epideictic discourse requires Isocrates to
rewrite history in a creative fashion, to distort 'facts', in
order to achieve his aim, despite the rhetorician's criticism
of individuals who do precisely this at Busiris 4-5. 61
Kennedy explains Isocrates' incoherences as due to the fact
that the latter was not a 'political thinker'. 62 Both these
scholars feel the need to explain away or apologise for what
they perceive to be Isocrates' shortcomings, but the ways in
which they seek to do this are questionable. Baynes, in par-
ticular, is mistaken to think that Isocrates is only composing
praises of Athens.
Many of the contradictions in the corpus involve debate
about the nature of Athenian hegemony, and these contra-
dictions compromise the reputation of Athens. In On the
Peace, which refers to events of the 350s, the speaker pre-
sents his audience with arguments which repudiate the
8
5 Baynes (1960), p. 160.
59 Kennedy (1963), p. 197.
6
° Kaho1 TWV <ppov{µws 81aKE1µevwvOVKe116:x1crTOV ,'\v TO:S OVTO:S
TOVTOcr1iµE16vEO"TIV,
TWV oµo/wv <pa(VWVTatyvwp/i';;oVTES.
npa~EIS ETIITIO:VTWV
61
Baynes (1960), p. 166.
62
Kennedy (1963), p. 197.
Athenian Empire and the militarism that is required to sus-

tain it. 63 These arguments stand in opposition to the state-
ments in favour of empire (arche) put forward in the
Panegyricus and Archidamus. The contrasting attitudes in
these works are highlighted by puns. At On the Peace ror
the spokesman for the peace party observes that the 'begin-
ning (arche)' of Sparta's woes is her naval 'hegemony
(arche)'; 64 at Panegyricus I 19 Isocrates writes that Athens'
loss of her 'empire (arche)' was the 'beginning (arche)' of her
troubles. 65 If for the pacifist hegemony brings woes, hege-
mony is to be celebrated as cultural imperialism for the
author of the Panegyricus. Still, as Buchner observes, even
in the Panegyricus itself arche is a fluid term. While the
word is synonymous with hegemonia as in the Areopagiticus
and above all denotes control over the Greeks in a war
against the barbarians, he notes that in the earlier epideictic
portion of the work (20-128) it denotes a leadership to
which the Athenians have a greater prerogative, while it des-
ignates a leadership to be shared equally by both Athens
and Sparta in the speech's final and overtly panhellenic sec-
tion (133-86). 66
On the Peace also qualifies the apparent praise of Athens
in other speeches. There is a detailed responsion between this
work and the Archidamus, which alludes to a peace confer-
ence of 366. In On the Peace the speaker urges the Athenian
audience not to emulate their imperialistic ancestors of the
fifth century (37-44) and to take note of the evils of empire
and of tyranny (77-9). Archidamus, in contrast, cites prece-
dents precisely in order to encourage war. He urges his hypo-
thetical Spartan audience to imitate the ancestors who con-
quered Messenia (16-24, 82) and he draws attention to the
63 Davidson (1990), p. 21, dates On the Peace to the midst of the negotiations to
end the Social War (355 BC).
64 Likewise, in his address to the Macedonian ruler at To Philip 61 Isocrates
observes that Alcibiades' attempt to gain control (o:pxtj) of the sea for Athens
was the start (o:pxtj) of her present troubles. He goes on to state, however, that
Alcibiades later won great glory (66~a), despite his initial failure to encourage
Philip to initiate an expedition against the barbarian.
65 Heilbrunn (1975), p. 174; the pun also occurs at Nicocles 28 and To Philip 61.
66
Buchner (1958), pp. I 50- I.
Spartan arche (67) and the success in war that Dionysius,

tyrant of Sicily, achieved (44).67 Thus, despite sharing a com-
mon hostility towards contemporary Athens and her hege-
monic claims (cf. Archidamus 89 and 9468), the two fictional
speakers present opposing viewpoints.
In addition, when juxtaposed with the late Panathenaicus,
On the Peace reveals a mutually exclusive view of the peace
made with the Persian king. In section 16 of the earlier
work, the speaker commends what appears to be the Peace
of Antalcidas, which the Spartans and Persians settled in
386 BC, as a model for an Athenian settlement with all the
other Greek states. 69 Isocrates' fictional persona explains
that such arrangements guarantee the autonomy of the cities
and are just and beneficial to them. In chapter 156 of the
Panathenaicus Isocrates says that he will make the 'begin-
ning (arche)' of what he will say, punningly setting up the
reader for his criticism of the way in which both Athens and
Sparta have abandoned hegemony (arche). Isocrates com-
plains that, although the Greeks could have been successful
against the King, they nevertheless proceeded to settle with
him a peace (eirene) on both land and sea (158). Isocrates'
ambitions for Athens are apparent but the precise object of
his criticism is less clear. Norlin and the Italian editors,
Argentati and Gatti, understand the eirene of section 158 to
be the Peace of Antalcidas. Wesley Thompson, following
Theopompus, sees the reference to the Peace of Antalcidas
as coming later on at sections 159ff. He takes the eirene of
Panathenaicus 158 to be the Peace of Callias (442/1 or
450/49).70 This is despite the fact that the language which
67
Harding (1973), pp. 137-49. Mathieu argues less convincingly than Harding for
the 'fictiveness' of On the Peace when he declares that there is no external corrob-
oration for believing the anonymous hypothesis which begins 'Isocrates stood up,
giving advice ... (avicJTOTOI
o'lo-oKpCTTTJS ... )' (p. II6, n. 3).
o-vµl30VA.EI./WV
68
Cf. Baynes (1960), pp. 160-1, who describes the Archidamus as a 'pure epideik-
tikos logos'.
69
Thompson (1983), pp. 75-80, argues that Isocrates refers to the Peace of
Antalcidas (386), although he admits that other scholars see him as referring to
the Peace of 375 in section 16. Thompson is probably right to think that the
Peace of 386 is a commonplace in pacifist propaganda of the period.
70 See Thompson (1983), p. 77.
Isocrates uses here does not correspond to that which he

uses when he describes the Peace of Callias at On the Peace
r r 8, Areopagiticus 80, and Panathenaicus 59.1 1 But if
Thompson is correct in his identification of the 'Peace', he
indirectly illustrates that Isocrates was willing to invent his-
tory for the explicit purpose of creating contradictions (and
not, as Baynes suggests, for adhering to an encomiastic pro-
gramme), for historians have convincingly argued that the
Peace of Callias is a fiction, perhaps created by Isocrates
himself.72
Because of the importance which On the Peace r 14
attaches to maintaining consistent views, one might still be
tempted to reconcile the rhetorician's conflicting views on
hegemony. The persona theory seems to provide one obvious
solution. The two passages in question express qualms about
a single person possessing differing opinions, and it is possi-
ble to argue that On the Peace, Archidamus, Panegyricus and
Panathenaicus present alternative points of view because
they are attributed to different individuals - respectively an
unnamed member of Eubulus' peace party, the Spartan
prince and Isocrates himself. It is only natural that different
individuals, even fictional ones, should say different things,
and furthermore, it is a requirement of convincing character-
isation that they should. Nevertheless, it is also worth con-
sidering that Isocrates neither authorises nor deauthorises
any of these voices in a way that appears to resolve the con-
tradiction. Even though the speaker of On the Peace is an
Athenian and is characterised in terms that closely ally him
with Isocrates (as we shall see in the following chapter), he
nevertheless disagrees with the Isocrates of the Panegyricus
and the Panathenaicus. Similarly the views of the Spartan
71 Isocrates' language at Panathenaicus 158 also does not correspond to the lan-
guage employed in other sources: Protocallisthenes apud Plutarch Cimon 13-4;
Demosthenes 19.273; Diodorus Siculus 12.4.5; Lycurgus In Leocratem 73, etc.
References from Sealey (1954-5).
12 On the dubious authenticity of the Peace of Callias, see e.g. Raubitschek (1964),
pp. 151-9; Welles (1966), pp. 3-25 and Sealey (1954-5), p. 329, who argues that
it was in all likelihood a fiction created by Isocrates himself. For its authenticity,
see Wade-Gery (1945), p. 218; Oliver (1957); Raubitschek (1966).
Archidamus coincide with those of the author, despite the

fact that the latter produces what may be taken for anti-
Spartan propaganda in the Panathenaicus. Alternatively, one
might attempt to explain the contradictions through a devel-
opmental model for Isocrates' political doctrine which holds
that in the later works the author rejected the ideal of
'peace' for one of arche, a programme of pacifism for one of
hegemony.73 But his own vague representation of the
chronology of his works foils this explanation. If we are
assured that the Panathenaicus, for instance, is late, we can-
not be certain that On the Peace is the earlier of the works
to address the issue of whether or not an empire should be
maintained through war.
Phillip Harding provides a means of reading the tension
between the views expressed in On the Peace and the other
three works discussed above. Harding argues that On the
Peace and Archidamus together provide us with a structure
of rhetorical opposition, the antilogical or dissoi logoi motif,
which demonstrates the author's ability to present different
sides of one issue. Harding assumes that antilogical texts
must be composed in close proximity to one another, and
maintains that On the Peace and Archidamus must have
been written within a very few years of each other, after
355/ 4.74 Harding's dating of these works has recently been
attacked by Robert Moysey, who prefers to regard On the
Peace as a historical document.75 Yet, as I have argued, the
historical chronology of Isocrates' works is far less impor-
tant than the order in which he wants them to be seen as
having been composed. The author conceals the actual order
of composition, while giving much clearer directions about
the artificial, reading order. What this implies is that the
actual time lapse between the writing of individual works
should not affect our perception of these texts as elements of
a rhetorical structure. This is an important point, for it sug-
gests that Harding's hypothesis can be extended to take into
73 Cf. Jaeger ( 1963), p. 152.
74 Harding (1973), p. 147.
1s Moysey (1982), pp. 122-4.
66
account the differing points of view between On the Peace

and the two ostensibly pro-Athenian speeches presented in
Isocrates' own persona, Panegyricus and Panathenaicus.
After all, Isocrates' keenness to emphasise the unity of his
works as a corpus above all affirms that On the Peace and
the Panathenaicus, his last major composition, should be
seen to be referring to one another regardless of their posi-
tion in any actual or artificial chronology.
It is important for the reader to realise that dissoi logoi or
antilogies, as Protagoras and the author of the Dissoi Logoi
demonstrate, are to be approached as oppositions that one
cannot and should not attempt to explain away.76 As such,
they structure and designate the forensic occasion and its
discourse in several ways. The verb antilegein is initially a
legal term which denotes the defendant contradicting a
charge and thus forcing a lawsuit to proceed (cf. Phaedrus
261c5).77 Thus imaginary lawsuits, such as Antiphon's
Tetralogies, are conceived as antilogical situations. In
Antiphon's work an accuser and a defendant each take
opposing sides of a case; their arguments are designed to
make the audience aware of the difficulty of interpretation
when the argument is based almost entirely on probability
or to eikos (cf. antilogisastho, r.2.8; 3.2.6). In Aristophanes'
Clouds, a weaker speech and a stronger speech describe the
action of engaging in an agon or contest, which perhaps
replaces the litigation Pheidippides is bound to undergo for
his debts, as antilegein (887, 901, 938, 1040). In the Frogs,
various characters refer to the contest between Aeschylus
and Euripides, which displaces the trial of Dionysus and
Xanthias, as antilogiai (775, 878, 998, 1076).
Litigation in the Athenian lawcourt was institutionalised
as an antilogical procedure. The six thousand dicasts of the
76 Diogenes Laertius says of Protagoras at 9.51, 'He was the first to say that on
every matter there are two speeches opposed to one another (TTpc7:nosE<JlT] ovo
Myovs dvai mpi TTavTos TTpayµaTos avTlKE1µEvovsai\i\11i\015)'.Diogenes also
refers to two books of antilogical discourse. Robinson (1979), p. 41, dates the
anonymous Dissoi Logoi between 403 and 395, following the majority of schol-
ars, as does Kerferd ( l 98 l ), p. 42.
77 Pringsheim (1950), p. 26.
popular courts swore the Heliastic Oath at the beginning of

their year of service. By it, they were obliged to uphold the
democracy, to vote according to their consciences and to
give both prosecuting and defending parties a fair hearing.7 8
Litigants in speeches constantly refer to this oath when they
characterise the legal agon as having two sides, each of
which needs to be heard or read impartially. Lysias' clients,
in particular, appeal to their audiences to listen to their
cases without prejudice (cf. Lysias 3.21; 6.35). Isocrates
makes allusion to the jurist's responsibility to be an impar-
tial audience to both parties in a case at the beginning of his
mock defence, the Antidosis. He asks his hypothetical audi-
ence to withhold its verdict until it has heard his argument,
the 'other' side of the case, in the make-believe trial (17).
The rhetorician, furthermore, demands this model of recep-
tion for legal texts, namely the impartial hearing of both
sides of a case, for his political discourse. At On the Peace
r r the speaker indicates the importance of being able to lis-
ten to both sides of a story without prejudice to either side
for making good judgements and counsels. The pacifist
implicitly compares himself to a litigant about to make a
defence of his position that Athens should not go to war in
the face of arguments for military action put forward in
other works like the Archidamus, Panegyricus and
P anathenaicus.
The dissoi logoi is a structure that exists in the Isocratean
corpus as a whole, but it is one that also exists in certain
individual works. The speech which most clearly contains
inextricable oppositions within itself is the Panathenaicus. 79
While this speech exhibits some stylistic anomalies, the
figures for antithesis manifest themselves here as they do
in other speeches in the corpus, where, for instance, we
find contrasting statements on the effects of the Athenian
78
Demosthenes (19.6) attributes the oath to Solon. It is preserved in Demosthenes
24.151; also cf. Demosthenes 39.40; 57.63; Aristophanes Wasps 725, 919.
79 At Panathenaicus 224 Isocrates uses one of the premises that appear in the
anonymous Dissoi Logoi, stating that the same things can be useful to some and
harmful to others. This relativistic argument serves as a prelude to the different
effects that 6µ6vota has on different Greek states (225ff.).
68
Empire. 80 I propose that these oppositions at the smaller,

verbal level announce those at the larger, conceptual level to
which Isocrates draws attention. Near the beginning of the
Panathenaicus Isocrates compares himself to a chorus before
its contest (pro tou agi5nos, 39). The analogy between the
agi5n and the rhetorical moment operates at several different .
levels. The most obvious comparison is of Isocrates' own
position to a drama, evoked by his self-characterisation as a
chorus (choros). This analogy is quickly superseded, however,
by the idea of the speech as a contest (agi5n) between Athens
and Sparta. Isocrates announces in this and following sec-
tions that he will compare and contrast these two cities
because they appear to match one another in their achieve-
ments (39-40 ). He then proceeds to praise Athens while
apparently criticising Sparta for the reason that the Spartans
have undermined the panhellenic ideal to which the
Athenians claim to have been most faithful. The Spartans
have contravened the nationalistic doctrine, by preferring
close ties with the Persians (159-60, 225ff.) to those with
other Greeks, and by neglecting the literary culture and edu-
cation that ought to define their Greekness (209).
So far, I have only given the most superficial reading of
the Panathenaicus as an agi5n. The agon-metaphor of section
39 is more than a mere comparison. It further invokes the
double-sided view, the antilogical structure, of the legal con-
test, posing a challenge to Gentili's proposal that the 'book
culture' of which Isocrates is a chief representative spurns
the agonistic motif as an oral structure. 81 The polarity of the
Panathenaicus is not immediately obvious because it consists
not just in a contrasting description of Athens and Sparta
but also in the opposing and alternative ways in which we
might interpret the representation of these two states. A
80 Usher (1973), p. 60.

81 Gentili (1988), p. 169, 'Thucydides, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle are the van-
guard of the new book culture, access to which was only through a process of
attentive, solitary reading. And discourse produced with the written page in
mind requires, obviously, a transformation in communicative structures and
compositional norms - basically, to use Aristotle's formulation, the replacement
of an "agonistic" manner with a "graphic" one.'
69
Spartan interlocutor, identified as one of Isocrates' former

pupils, speaks in sections 234-63, and offers a means of
interpreting his treatment of Sparta as praise rather than
criticism. The Spartan panegyrist observes that one of the
most powerful controls on the Panathenaicus is the need to
win over the audience (237; cf. Antidosis I 32-7). According
to him, this rhetorical requirement obliges Isocrates to trot
out the commonplaces in praise of Athens and in blame of
Sparta in a way that will appeal to the Athenian audience
for whom the speech is intended: it does not oblige the
author to be committed to what he says (239). 82 The inter-
locutor goes on to insist that there is covert praise underly-
ing the blame of Sparta and that the most intelligent inhabi-
tants of Sparta will correctly perceive this. According to
him, they will notice the demonstration (apodeixis) which
articulates the encomium of their city and they will see that
the explicit criticism has been deliberately undermined by its
presentation in a disorderly (eikei) manner and in unimpres-
sive language (251). 83
In support of his alternative interpretation of Isocrates'
speech the interlocutor offers a picture of a complex, polyse-
mous Panathenaicus. In section 240 he attributes to Isocrates
logoi amphiboloi or ambivalent speeches. Zucker observes in
his 1954 essay on the Panathenaicus that Isocrates is the first
author to employ the term logoi amphiboloi. To Zucker, the
phrase logoi amphiboloi means ambiguous speeches. He
glosses these words with the help of a quotation from
Demetrius On Style 291, where the author refers to an
example of amphiboly or equivocation in the work of a
pupil of Socrates named Aeschiries (cf. sections 205 and
297). It is reported that Aeschines spoke in such a way
about a particular man named Telauges that he left it uncer-
tain whether he was engaging in approval or disapproval of
82
!1~rvey (1966), p. 624, _has shown that the author's reference to the Spartans'
1lhteracy (209 and 251) 1s an exaggerated caricature which turns up in other texts
of the period (Di'ssoi Logoi 2. ro and Hippias Major 285c).
83
In the light of the interlocutor's remarks, it is worth noting that the Spartans are
compared fa_vourably to the Thebans at Plataicus 17, while their kingship is held
up as a possible answer to Athens' internal crises at On the Peace 142.
his subject. 84 In interpreting logoi amphiboloi Zucker could

have also sought help from Isocrates' own gloss on the
phrase. The Spartan visitor goes on to describe the speeches
in question as those which are poised between praise and
blame. He says that because they present equivocations and
ambivalencies they can be taken either way. 85 According to
the interlocutor, these are the sort of speeches which must
be expected when one deals with human and political (cf.
pragmata) affairs (240). 86 Antiphon's Herodes had previ-
ously used the word amphisbetesis to denote the 'dispute'
that his opponents left room for (Herodes 16).
There remains in the end a lack of assurance about how
to interpret the interlocutor's characterisation of Isocrates'
speeches as logoi amphiboloi. The reader is ultimately forced
into a position of uncertainty, of aporia, regarding the
interpretation of the Spartan visitor's treatment of the
Panathenaicus as an antilogical or amphibolic text, and this
consequently throws into doubt the question of how to read
the Panathenaicus as a whole. The Spartan's reading can be
neither entirely credited nor discredited, for Isocrates neither
clearly validates nor invalidates the interlocutor's comments.
The author reports his reaction following the visitor's speech
as follows: 'Indeed, I myself did not silently stand by but
praised his nature and assiduity. About the other things he
had uttered, as to whether his hidden meanings agreed with
my opinion or not, I said nothing, but I allowed him to be
as he was with regard to the opinion he had formed for him-
self (265). 87 Isocrates praises the Spartan's talent (phusis)
but does not disclose whether his former pupil has been cor-
8
4 Zucker (1954), pp. 248-9.
85 ETTaµq,0Tepil,;e1v
8vvaµevovs Kai TToMas 6:µq,1crf,riTr\cre1s
exoVTas.
86 Zucker is at pains to distinguish the logoi amphiboloi from the pseudologia men-
tioned at Panathenaicus 246, which he himself translates by 'Fiktionen' and
which Pohlenz had earlier viewed as apate or 'illusion' (Zucker (1954), p. 248).
In the following chapter I will discuss the implication of sections 246 and 247 for
authorial intention.
87 ov µiiv ov8' eyw TTapEO"TWS EO"JWTTWV,
6:M' ETT1JVEO"a
TT)VTE <pVO"JV
avTOV Kai TT)V
ETTJµEAEJav,mpi 8e TWV &Mwv ov8Ev eq,6ey~6:µriv WV Elmv, o•6' ws ETVXETats
t/TTOVoimsTl7S eµijs 81avoias ov6' ws 81r\µapTEV, 6:M' EIWVa\JTOV OVTWSEXEJV
wcrmp avTOS aVTOV81E6riKEV.
71
rect in his interpretation; he allows his interpreter and the

latter's interpretation to remain as they are. Isocrates' liter-
ally unqualified encomium is precisely what qualifies and
indeed renders problematic his praise of his former student.
By not allowing us to substantiate or reject out of hand the
speech of the interlocutor, Isocrates accommodates more
than a single interpretation - whether the unambiguous
praise of Athens and condemnation of Sparta or the equivo-
cal representation of Sparta within the context of an
encomium of Athens. He shows that the discourse of per-
suasion can tolerate polysemy in the form of conflicting
viewpoints on the same subject. Isocrates can be made to
assume all voices for all people, and it may be just this
which demonstrates his political skill rather than his failings,
as it does for Kennedy. 88
Ironically, Isocrates' refusal to allow the reader to reduce
his discourse to a single viewpoint may be the feature which
makes the strongest case for the coherence, rather than for
the lack of coherence, of his corpus. In the final section of
the Panathenaicus he orders his readers not to speak out
(apophainesthai) about what they do not know (272). He
advises them to wait until they find themselves in agreement
(homonoesai) with others who are experienced in the matters
which have been the subject of his demonstration. Implicitly,
Isocrates requests that his audience not express its views
before coming to an agreement with him: concurring with
his knowledge and opinions is to be the basis of the author-
ity for others to write or speak.
Nevertheless, the Panathenaicus demonstrates just how dif-
ficult it is to know precisely what the author thinks. He ren-
ders agreement with him impossible. In the Panathenaicus, as
elsewhere in the corpus, he invokes antilogy as a model for
receiving his discourse. He provides us with several ambiva-
lently validated options for reading the Panathenaicus - anti-
Spartan document (the straight reading), a panhellenic docu-
ment (the interlocutor's reading), both at once (the totalising
88
Kennedy (1963), p. 197.
72
interpretation), or something else - and so prevents us from

knowing definitely the author's position, particularly as
regards Sparta. If the reader is to accept 'concord' as a pre-
requisite for engaging in political discourse, then (s)he will
find that Isocrates has effectively taken away any voice (s)he
might have had. In preventing his audience from speaking
and writing in the discursive space which he already occu-
pies, Isocrates effectively arrogates to himself the exclusive
right to produce logos politikos, the discourse which he
claims to write to the exclusion of all other genres.
Beyond this, the fact that the Panathenaicus presents and
refuses to resolve conflicting points of view cautions the
reader not to exclude particular statements or even whole
speeches from the corpus on the grounds of inconsistency.
While this work does not specify the context of Isocratean
discourse for the reader, it does nevertheless make it possible
to entertain the validity of opposing points of view in works
written earlier. Thus, if nothing else, Isocrates makes a case
for seeing even mutually exclusive points of view as part of
the unity of his corpus and as an aspect of the totalising
nature of his own discourse.
VII
This chapter has shown how the desire to demonstrate the
coherence of his discourse controls the way in which Isocrates
structures his texts. If he rejects the organisation of his texts
according to numerous, distinct generic categories and offers
instead a single comprehensive genre, logos politikos, he also
creates several continuities and coherences within this single
category. By means of a series of cross-references, which pro-
duce a sense of chronology, repetition, contrast and antilogy,
Isocrates suggests why we should regard his political dis-
course as a body of texts that obliges its reader to perceive it
as such. Generic coherence is affirmed less by coherence of
the texts' 'speaking' voice than by patterns of thought and
argument, even those, as in the case of antilogy, which seem
at first to indicate discontinuity and inconsistency.
73
3
THE POLITICS OF THE SMALL VOICE
We are then as superior to the uneducated as they are to cattle. The com-
parison was the oldest article of faith in the literary culture, extending back
to Isocrates, repeated later through the Renaissance and beyond. The elo-
quent man was nothing less than a distinct and artificial species: he had cre-
ated himself, and was for that reason enormously proud of his achievement.
Kaster 1
I
Isocrates observes at Antidosis I 90- I that an individual
requires a sufficiently loud voice and daring if he is to stand
up and declaim before a large audience. In this way he
excuses himself from one of the important sites in the
Athenian city, the orator's platform (bema), when he draws
attention to his soft voice and lack of nerve in three pas-
sages I shall now cite:
Do not be amazed (as I wrote to Dionysius when he had become tyrant)
that I have spoken more daringly to you than others although I am not a
general, an orator or any other figure of authority. As regards a political
career I was the citizen the least suited by nature, for I did not have a voice
sufficiently strong nor self-assurance to enable me to cope with the mob, to
be reviled and to abuse those who parade on the speaker's platform.
(To Philip 81) 2
I abstained from politics and oratory, for I had neither an adequate voice
nor self-assurance.
(Epistle 8. 7)3
1
Kaster (1988), p. 17.
2
Kai Tipos ~tovvcnov TT]VTVpawi8a KTT]O'O:µEVOV,
Kai µ17eavµ6:cn;is, & TIEpE'TTEO'TE!Aa
Ei µT)TEO'TpaTTJYOS WV µT)TEPTJTWpµT)T,&Mws 8vv6:0'TT]S 6pacrvTEp6v 0'01 8tEIAEyµm
TWV O.AAWV. Eyw yap Tipos µEv TO 'TTOA!TEVE0'6at'TTO:VTWV 6:cpvEO'TaTOS
EyEv6µriv TWV
'TTOA!TWV ( OIJTEyap <pWVT]V foxov 1KOVT]V OVTETOAµav 8vvaµEVT]Vox;\~ xpficr6at Kai
µo;\vvEa6a1 Kai ;\018opEia6at TOISETiiTOV~riµaT05 KVAtv8ovµEvo15).
3 Eyw TOV µEv 'TTOA!TEVE0'6at Kai PTJTOpEVE!V OVTEyap <pWVT]V foxov lKav17v
O:'TTEO'TT]V'
ovTE ToAµav.
74
I knew that my nature was neither sufficiently tough nor hard for political
action and that it was imperfect for speaking and altogether useless ... for I
doubt whether any other citizen was so lacking in the two attributes
which have the greatest power at Athens, a voice strong enough and self-
assurance.
(Panathenaicus 9 and ro)4
These passages come from three different works - the first

addressed to Philip of Macedon, the second, a letter
addressed to the leaders of Mytilene, and the third, an
encomium of Athenian culture addressed to an Athenian
audience. These passages are so central to Isocrates' self-
portraiture that they are quoted and commented upon again
and again in the secondary literature. 5 Frequent reference,
however, does not entail that these passages have been prop-
erly read, for quotation and repetition have taken the place
of any significant endeavour to interpret these first-person
statements. Since there has been virtually no sustained
attempt to locate and understand Isocrates' inability to
speak in the framework of contemporary politics, or rather
its depiction in contemporary literary texts, at Athens, the
aim of this chapter is to illuminate the political identity that
the rhetorician's rejection of a public, speaking voice pro-
duces for him.
II
I shall begin to recover Isocrates' self-presentation by con-
sidering again how critical tradition has influenced our own
reception of the author and his work. To Philip 8 r, Epistle
8.7 and Panathenaicus 9-ro have been the basis of the liter-
ary portraits of the rhetorician produced by Roman and
Byzantine biographers. They have drawn material from
Isocrates' work and, later, from each other's writings, some-
4 TT]VOE<pVCJ"IV Elows npos µEv T0:5 npo:~EJS6:ppwo-TOTEpavKai µaAaKWTEpavovo-av

TOV OEOVTOS, npos OE TOVS Myovs OVTETEAEiavOVTETiaVTax,;i XPTJO-lµT]V ... OVTW
yap EVOET]S 6:µcpoTepwveyev6µ11vTWVµeyio-TT]Vovvaµ1v EXOVTWV nap' 11µiv, cpwvfis
IKavfis Kai T67'µ11s,ws ovK oio' e\' T15&Mos Twv 1rol\1Twv.
s Most recently, see Ober (1989), pp. IIJ-I4, who believes that Isocrates gave up a
public career because of his voice.
75
times transferring details from the biographical tradition of

one person to that of another. 6 Until very recently, classical
scholars generally assumed that details in the work of an
author which could be 'corroborated' with details in the tra-
dition of the author's 'lives' were historically accurate. Yet
such an assumption reveals what we shall see to be a certain
nai:vete about the biographical craft in Antiquity, and in
particular about the relationship of biography to the works
of the author whom biography attempted to reconstruct.
This nai:vete reveals itself in the high premium that ancient
biographers placed on the first-person statements they found
in the works of authors about whom they write their 'lives'.
For them, first-person statements offered specially author-
ised access to a writer about whom they may have had no
other independent knowledge.
Thus Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ps.-Plutarch, Philostratus,
the author of the Suda lexicon and the anonymous
biographer, sometimes identified by scholars as Zosimus,
without exception ref er to the weak voice and stage
fright that Isocrates ascribes to himself. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus works with the conviction that Isocrates had
political ambitions which were disappointed by his handi-
caps (Isocrates r). According to Dionysius' narrative, nature
(phusis) - Isocrates' small voice and faint-heartedness - frus-
trated his decision (prohairesis) to participate in the
Athenian democratic process. 7 All the later biographers also
mention Isocrates' weak voice. Ps.-Plutarch and Photius
portray him as being of frail voice; Philostratus refers to the
6
A number of articles have discussed the derivative and parasitic nature of bio-
graphical writing in Antiquity, especially Russell (1963), p. 23. Janet Fairweather
has kindly supplied me with evidence that speech impediments were important in
the biographies of several other Athenian figures of the fifth and fourth centuries:
Sophocles (Anon. Life 4); Plato (Diogenes Laertius 3.5); Demosthenes
(Westermann, p. 295, 62ff.) and Aristotle (Westermann, p. 402, 4). It is not
implausible that Isocrates' description of himself and the elaboration of his
description in the biographical tradition (see the following pages) had an effect
on these other 'lives'.
7 0"1TOV6T)Vµev E1TOtei-ro
TIPO:TTEIV
TE Kai AEYELV ws 61: TJ q,vcris T)Vav-
TO:1TOALTLKO:,
TOAµav TE Kai q,wvfis
TlOVTO,To: 1rpCna Kai KvptwTaTa Tov pT)Topos o:q,EAOµEV17,
µEyE0os, WV xwpis ovx o16v TE i'jv EV OXA'f>AEYELV, T®TTlS µev 0:1TEO"T17 TfiS
1rpoa1pfoEws.
deficiency of his voice; the Suda lexicon mentions the shal-

low timbre of his speaking voice; while in his description of
him the anonymous biographer or Zosimus says that he was
weak in regard to his voice. 8 In these biographies Isocrates'
small voice explains why he stayed out of public, i.e. politi-
cal, life (cf. Ps.-Plutarch 837a and Photius Cod.
260.486br7-r8). Philostratus observes that he never spoke in
the 'assemblies' (Lives 505), while the Suda lexicon and the
anonymous biographer insist that he did not appear in the
lawcourts.
As Fairweather has shown, where ancient biographers
could not simply draw on their subject's self-representation,
they engaged in deliberate literary fiction.9 Probable fictions
were manufactured on the basis of these passages to fill in
the 'gaps'; many of the details found in the 'lives' came
into being when the scholar-biographers elaborated and
expanded upon the writings of their subjects. One of the
'lives' takes Isocrates' self-description as a point of depar-
ture for biographical fiction, recording an episode in his life
for which there is no other evidence. In his Life of Isocrates,
Ps.-Plutarch relates an episode from Isocrates' early life
which illustrates his inability to speak in public. He recounts
how a young Isocrates stands up to defend the rhetor
Theramenes, whom Dionysius of Halicarnassus believes to
be one of Isocrates' teachers (Jsocrates I), when he is put on
trial by the Thirty. Isocrates, according to his biographer,
remains silent for a long time (836f). Moreover, he never
manages to utter a word on this occasion, as Theramenes
warns his loyal pupil to keep quiet for his own safety.
Since Ps.-Plutarch mentions the author's weak voice in the
following section of his 'life', it is reasonable to assume that
8 'Emi 8' riv8pweri, TWVµEVTIO/\ITIKWV 1rpayµmwv O:TIE<JXETO loxv6cpwv6s T' WVKai
EV/\a~T]STOVTpOTIOV(Ps.-Plutarch 837a); Eis av8pas OETE/\E<Jas1rpayµcnwv µEv
6:vaxwpEi TWVTIO/\ITIKWV, OT\ TE TT]V<pWVT]V loxvos TJVKai TOVTpOTIOVEV/\a~TJS
(Photius, Cod. 260, 486b17--19); Ta µEV ovv 1roAmKa wKvE1Kai 6:mcpoha TWV
EKKAT]cr1wv 816: TE To E/\/\ITIESTov cp6EyµaTos (Philostratus, Lives 505); Kai 810: µEv
TTJS cpwvf'Js TTJVmoviav Kai To 6:1rappricriacrTov 8/Kas ovK dmv (Suda); and Twv
yap 81KavlKWV O'.TIEIXETOTI/\EOVO'.KIS
81a TO 8vo TI0:6T]EXEJV crwµaTIKO:,OT\ TE OEI/\OS
i'jv Kai 6:cr6EVT]ST,j cpwv,j (Anon. or Zosimus 35-6).
9 Fairweather (1974), especially pp. 23~7; also Lefkowitz (1981).
77
this story serves the function of establishing Isocrates'

mikrophonia at an early stage in his life. Like Plutarch, to
whose corpus his work has been assimilated, the biographer
retrojects adult traits back onto the youth of his subject in
order to distinguish his 'personality'. (Gill observes that in
Antiquity an individual was thought to maintain a consis-
tent 'personality' throughout his or her life. 10 )
Ps.-Plutarch elaborates the portrait of Isocrates' 'small
voice' at two other points in his narrative. He reports that,
when a small group of people come to hear Isocrates teach,
the rhetorician falls silent with embarrassment. He allows
only two of the visitors to stay, and tells the third one to
return on the following day, stating that he now has a (the-
atre)-audience or theatron (838e). To answer the paradox of
how Isocrates can teach the art of persuasion when he him-
self cannot speak, Ps.-Plutarch has him compare himself to
a whetstone which cannot itself cut but sharpens iron so
that it can cut (838e). Clearly, the biographer offers us aver-
sion of the commonplace observation that teachers teach
what they themselves cannot do. 11 Furthermore, Ps.-
Plutarch informs us at 838f that when Isocrates was being
entertained by the Cypriot tyrant Nicocreon, possibly either
an alternative or a corrupt form of Nicocles, he was asked
to give a speech. 12 He declines the invitation with a chiastic
sentence that raises some doubt as to his oratorical inexperi-
ence, 'for the matters in which I am capable this is not the
moment; in the matters for which this is the moment I am
not capable'. 13
10
See Gill (1983) and Pelling (1990), 213-44, especially p. 240.
11
Cf. Photius, Cod. 260.487b12-15. Janet Fairweather supplies me with another
parallel from Eustathius' Life of Pindar. Here Pindar explains why he does not
sing with the following statement, 'For it is also the case that shipbuilders make
rudders but do not know how to steer [ships] (Kai yap oi vavnriyol... nri6cxA1a
no1ovvTESKV~EpvavovK oi6aow)', to which an unnamed sophist responds with his
own explanation for why he did not become a demagogue, 'the whetstone which
sharpens a blade for cutting, nevertheless, cannot itself cut (Kai iJ eo<:ovri
61;vvovaa eis Toµ17v TO: m617p1a oµws aVTT] TEµVEIV ov 6vvaTm)' (Westermann,
p. 96, l 55--62).
12
Cf. Blass (I 8952 ), ii, p. 276, number 2.
13
OTs µev EYWCEJVOS
ovx 6 vvv Kmpos' oTs 6' 6 vvv Kmpos OVKeyw 6e1v6s.
Ps.-Plutarch and the other ancient scholars make other

more notable departures from Isocrates' text, even challeng-
ing the details in the author's own self-characterisation.
Unable or unwilling to accept his emphatically literary iden-
tity, they invent biographical details which establish oral
performances for certain texts. Ps.-Plutarch mentions a
speech that Isocrates delivered at the funeral games of
Mausolus of Halicarnassus. He admits that this work did
not exist in his own time (838b), and thereby inadvertently
supplies one reason to be doubtful about its authenticity.
Hence the Suda lexicon rejects its existence. The author sug-
gests that the Isocrates who spoke at the funeral of King
Mausolus was Isocrates of Amyclas, a student of the
Athenian Isocrates. He observes that only Isocrates' pupils,
and not Isocrates himself, entered this competition, which
Theopompus won (apud Hesychius 653). In a similar vein,
Jebb argues that the Isocrates in question is surely the ora-
tor Isocrates of Apollonia, since the Athenian rhetorician
was unlikely to have competed with his students. r4
Philostratus believes that Isocrates delivered the
Panegyricus at Olympia (Lives 505). Philostratus insists
upon this point despite the fact that the length of time that
he says the author took to compose the speech would have
made it extremely unlikely that it could have been recited at
any specific occasion, least of all the public gathering for
which Isocrates originally claims to have prepared it, per-
haps the paneguris of 380 BC. rs Photius ventures that
Isocrates took five or ten years to compose the work,
attributing this to time spent on rhetorical invention and
disposition (Photius Cod. 260-487ar3-r4), while Ps.-Plutarch
supposes that he took either ten or fifteen years (Ps.-
Plutarch 837f). Quintilian observes that Athens would not
have waited ten years for Isocrates' advice since this lapse of
time would have rendered it obsolete (/. 0. 10-4-4). But
there is another reason for seeing the Panegyricus, the most
1
4 Jebb (1876), ii, pp. 11-12, n. 1.
1
s Also see Norlin (1966), i, p. II6.
79
oratorical of the author's works in style and, Buchner

argues, one which incorporates the most explicitly epideictic
of Athenian genres, the epitaphios, 16 as a purely literary text.
On two occasions in the corpus Isocrates observes that a
panegyrical gathering provides an author with an inattentive
audience. On such an occasion, the audience is either
jostling and running around - one assumes to see and to
hear better - (To Philip 12) or it is slumbering soundly
(Panathenaicus 263).
Other biographers are eager to have Isocrates utter his
own self-defence, the Antidosis, before an Athenian jury. Ps.-
Plutarch and Photius state that he gives this speech in
response to a challenge by a certain Lysimachus and loses to
this individual (Ps.-Plutarch 839c; Photius 487b). It is easy
to see that this narrative has a loose basis in the Antidosis,
where Isocrates recalls that he lost a trial over a trierarchy
(4) and says that he writes the present, fictional (cf. en apolo-
gias schemati) speech in order to justify himself (8). 1 7
Ps.-Plutarch and Photius are adamant that Isocrates must
have presented the Antidosis in person. They have him lose
it, and in so doing, invent an outcome for the trial which is
entirely consistent with his own claims that he is not by
nature an orator. To take Antidosis 4 into account they fab-
ricate an earlier trial involving a liturgy, at which, owing to
illness, he is successfully represented by his step-son
Aphareus, an Athenian orator (Ps.-Plutarch 839c; Photius
487b ). 18 If nothing else, Isocrates' numerous allusions to
Plato's Apology, an account of the trial of Socrates in which
the author's hand is apparent, suggest that the work was not
16
Buchner (1958), p. 7.
17 On the fictional occasion, see Bonner (1920a), pp. 193-7.
18
Mathieu used the fictionality of the Antidosis as an argument that the earlier
Plataicus was never meant to be performed in the assembly. Just as the subse-
quent apology invents a second imaginary trial as its discursive moment, so the
Plataicus fabricates as its pretext 'une seconde accusation imaginaire' to follow
the real assembly that took place after the capture of Plataia by Thebes in 373
BC. According to Mathieu (1925), p. 93, the Plataicus is the second 'request' for
Athenian help that attempts to get the city to reverse its initial refusal to assist
Plataia. Cf. Welles (1966), p. 22 for a stronger argument that the Plataicus is an
imaginary appeal.
80
intended to document an historical event, while its

length suggests that it was meant for readers rather than lis-
teners.
It is worth noting that the Antidosis - and for that matter
Isocrates' other 'court' speeches - is not unusual in being
fictional. Modern scholars inform us that many of the
'court' speeches which we have were tenuously based on
reality, being fabricated for a reading audience. 19 We know
from Diogenes Laertius that Isocrates' Against Euthynus
inspired responses from a number of other orators.
Antisthenes' A Reply to Isocrates' 'Without Witnesses'
(Diogenes Laertius 6. l 5), Speusippus' A Reply to 'Without
Witnesses' (Diogenes Laertius 4.5), and the titles For
Euthynus and Against Nicias Regarding the Deposit in
fragments of Lysias all suggest that the Euthynus case
had become a commonplace of fourth-century dicanic writ-
ing.20 It has been observed that Ps.-Plutarch discounts
Aeschines 2 and Demosthenes 19 as records of actual legal
proceedings, arguing that there are no references to these
works in the speeches which are related to them, i.e.
Aeschines 3 and Demosthenes 18 (Demosthenes 15.3). 21
Critics now affirm that Antiphon's Tetralogies, Lysias 14
and l 5, Demosthenes' On the Crown, and perhaps Against
Meidias (21) were composed with reading audiences fore-
most in mind. 22
19 E.g. Russell (1983), pp. 16-17; Kerferd (1981), p. 49; Humphreys (1985). See
Jaeger (1944), p. 302, n. 27, and Cloche (1963), p. 25, who writes that the
speeches oflsocrates 'sont tout fictifs'.
20
See Jebb (1876), ii, p. 220. For the evidence, see Bonner (1920b), p. 387, who
argues that the phrase 'against the deposit (Tipos µEv Tr,v 1TapaKaTa0TJKT]v)'at
Panegyricus 188, which earlier scholars have thought to refer to a specific
'deposit' case Against Euthynus, more probably denotes the general body of liter-
ature concerned with such cases. Certainly the following phrase 'regarding the
other matters about which they now babble (mpi Twv &Mwv wv vvv <pt>.vapovcri)'
supports the idea that Isocrates is speaking in general terms. Also, Jebb (1876),
ii, p. 220.
21
Dover (1968), p. 172.
22
See Dover (1968), pp. 172-4; pace H. Erbse (1956), 'Uber die Midiana des
Demosthenes', Hermes 84, pp. 135--51. MacDowell (1990), pp. 27-8, concludes
that Demosthenes did not deliver the speech in exactly its published form.
81
III
The ancient biographers' narratives of Isocrates' life suggest
that they are uncomfortable about seeing him solely as an
author of written texts. I suggest that, consciously or not,
they disclose their assumptions that even a rhetorician like
Isocrates who denies his ability to declaim must at some
point speak in public and, accordingly, that rhetoric is ide-
ally, if not wholly, an oral rather than a literary art. Even
contemporary scholars continue to work with a concept of
rhetoric which implies that it is to some degree an orally
performed language. Barilli, for one, defines rhetoric as 'a
comprehensive, total way of using discourse'. He sees per-
formance as supplying the physical (i.e. aural/oral) aspect,
and argument as providing its noetic element. 2 3 Barilli's divi-
sion of rhetoric into two main components suggests that
when one of these components is absent rhetoric is somehow
deficient. Barilli rearticulates the traditional and limiting
view of rhetoric which necessarily calls into question the
possibility of an explicitly voiceless rhetorician like Isocrates
existing.
The assumption that rhetoric involves an oral element is
ultimately permitted to prejudice assessments of Isocrates
even as a writer. In Antiquity, Dionysius of Halicarnassus'
essay on Isocrates demonstrates how the privileged position
given to oral discourse in classical Athens affects the way in
which the author's prose has been (and still is) assessed. In
this work Dionysius contrasts Isocrates' writing with
Lysias'. Dionysius regards Lysias as someone who wrote
works which were intended to be performed publicly in
actual contests, but judges Isocrates to be a literary writer,
someone whose works were meant only to be read (r r). He
pronounces the highly artificial period employed by
Isocrates lacking in the intensity necessary for dicanic ora-
tory. For him, Isocrates' style is not compact (strongule) but
rambling and diffuse (2). Furthermore, it is poetic and thus
2
3 Barilli ( I 989), p. vii.
suited mainly for epideictic performance and private reading

(anagniisis) rather than for political activity, which I take to
be the sense of chresis (2). Dionysius separates the poetic
from the political sphere, despite the fact that Isocrates calls
this division into question when he applies the description of
poetry to his own logos politikos at Evagoras 75-7 and
Against the Sophists 12 (i.e. poietikon pragma).
Dionysius derives his negative critique also in part from
the work of the philosopher Hieronymus (c. 290-230 BC). At
section 13 of his essay Dionysius tells his reader that
Hieronymus regards Isocratean writing as fine for private
reading (anagniinai), but inadequate for public declamation
(demegoresai). The rhetorician's texts lack the play of voice,
i.e. tone and emotion, required for oratorical performance.
The philosopher compares the 'voice' of the rhetorician's
text to that of a slave who reads out. 2 4 (His personification
of the rhetorical text probably derives in part from To Philip
26, where Isocrates observes that the literary work is with-
out phone. 2 s)
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars, like their
ancient counterparts, find Isocrates both unspeakable and
virtually unreadable. Marrou complains about his style, 'for
one is entitled to something less academic, less scholarly,
something a little more virile and exacting than his rather
flabby and florid, his slightly enervating Atticism'. 26 The
problem goes beyond style alone for Jebb. For him, the indi-
cations that the Antidosis was never performed or meant to
be performed before a jury precipitate a crisis of confidence
in literary identity. The imaginary or fictive status of the
Antidosis disqualifies the work as a 'proper' example of a
2
4 1Epwvvµos 61: 6 qni\6croq,6s q,17cr1v
6:vayvwvat µ/:v &v T!Va 6vv176fjvat TOVSMyovs
cxvTov wi\ws , 617µ17yopfjcrat61: TTJVTE q,wvriv wi Tov Tovov brapavTa Kai EV
TavT-i;i TD KaTacrKEvij µETa Tf\s apµoTTovcr17s v;roKplcrEwsEiTIEtvov ;ravTEi\ws. To
yap µeytcrTOV Kai KlVT]TlKWTaTOV TWV oxi\wv ;rapEicr0at, TO ;ra0TjTIKOVKai
Eµ\f/VXOV... Ka06i\ov 6e q,17cr1vavTOV EJS 6:vayvwCYTOV Tiat6os q,wvriv KaTa6vvTa
µtjTE TOVOVµtjTE ;ra0os µtjTEVTIOKptcrtv 6vvacr0at q,epElV.
2 s Philodemus Rhetoric 1.198 (Sudhaus) also contains criticisms of Isocrates' style
by Hieronymus, as does Cicero Orator 190, who reports that the philosopher
was troubled by the anapaests and senarii in the rhetorician's prose.
26 Marrou (1956), p. I 19.
genre. Jebb writes, 'The Antidosis, though thrown for liter-

ary purposes into the form of a defence in court, cannot
properly be called "forensic".' 27 To make explicit the under-
lying premise of Jebb's remark, verbal performance is the
privileged criterion of literary identity and meaning: when
an author intends an oral moment of performance, he gives
his work a right to be a rhetorical text. The discovery that
Isocrates probably did not intend any of his works to be
declaimed in the courtroom or assembly would have called
into question Jebb's implied theory and explicit taxonomy of
genre (see Chapter One), although not necessarily the per-
ception of the rhetorician's style.
It might also be argued that Jebb grants such prominence
to oral performance in rhetoric because he is one of the
foremost critics of classical drama in his time. A number of
his remarks regarding the dramatisation of Sophocles' plays
in his time reveal the paramount importance that he grants
to performance as a means of discovering the intention, i.e.
the author's intention, of a classical work. In his introduc-
tion to the Oedipus Tyrannus, Jebb comments, 'A drama is
itself the only adequate commentary on its persons.' 28 He
rises to praise of the r 88 r productions at Harvard
University and the Theatre Frarn;ais, Paris, for illuminating
the characters that Sophocles had created: dramatic produc-
tion produces clarity and certainty. It removes any difficult
interpretative cruxes. 2 9
IV
The unfavourable assessments of Isocrates which I surveyed
in the previous section do not allow for the possibility that,
when the author presents himself as being unable to speak,
he may be engaged in a particular, ironic mode of self-depic-
tion. The Roman and Byzantine scholars are curiously
unaware that their biographies, which deploy their own con-
27 Jebb (1893), ii, p. 82.
28
See Jebb ( 1 887), p. xxvi.
2
9 Jebb (1887), pp. xlviii-lii.
ventions of characterisation, could well be based on earlier

texts which in turn are as strongly governed by ethopoeic
concerns. They fail to realise that when they encounter the
'I'-voice that purports to be Isocrates in To Philip, Epistle 8
and the Panathenaicus, they may be dealing with a highly
controlled and highly determined persona. Verbal analysis is
a first step towards understanding that Isocrates observes
the conventions of public discourse when he produces his
self-portraiture. For one thing, the repetition of the phrase
'an inadequate voice ([oute] phone hikane)' in To Philip Sr,
Epistle 8.7 and Panathenaicus 9-ro presents mikrophonia as
a commonplace or topos in at least the Isocratean corpus,
while the carefully balanced syntax, the parallel ordering of
words, displayed in the three passages gives every indication
of deliberateness and of stylistic craft.3°
Russell, who has studied Greek declamation extensively,
states in a recent paper that the rhetorical portrayal of per-
sonality, whether that of the author's or speaker's self or of
another character, is 'a dominant factor in all kinds of ora-
tory, and at all periods of Greek literature'.31 But I want to
take a further cue for a more sustained reading of the
Athenian writer from the literary historian Richard
Lanham, who holds that first-person utterances of authors
'establish a self in society', particularly when the society in
question is keenly aware of its rhetorical nature.32 Of course
by 'self Lanham does not intend us to understand the
author as (s)he really is; that is something to which access is
severely limited, if it is ever possible. The rhetorical 'self in
question is rather a complex of social roles or masks by
which the author may be seen to be depicted. This under-
standing of rhetorical 'self is what in particular highlights
the status of rhetorical discourse as a social language. 'I'-
3o ... oCm yap cpwvrivfoxov

µr')TEcnpaT17yos WV µr')Te PTJTWPµr')T o:Mws OWCXCYTT]S
IKOVT]V OVTETOAµav 8vvaµev17v (To Philip 81); OVTEyap cpwvrivea-xov iKavriv OVTE
TOAµav (Epistle 8.7); TTpos µev Tas TTPCX~EIS
appWCYTOTEpav Kai µMaKvJTepav ova-av
TOV OEOVTOS,TTpos 8F- TOVS Myovs OVTE TEAEtav OVTE TTaVTax,j XPT]CYlµT]V
(Panathenaicus ~
3' Russell in Pelling (1990), p. 200.
32 The phrase comes from Lanham (1976), p. 20.
statements say something about how an author wishes to be

viewed in relation to the immediate culture that (s)he inhab-
its. Accordingly, we need to view Isocrates as portraying
himself within the framework of social and political ideology
in fourth-century Athens.
The main challenge to be overcome is to be able to accept
Isocrates' negation of public oratory and the oral perfor-
mance of his texts without diminishing or marginalising his
contribution to the discourse of his period. Stephen
Greenblatt's study of 'self-fashioning' becomes extremely
useful in allowing us to accommodate Isocrates within clas-
sical Athens.33 Greenblatt reveals in his analysis that human-
istic authors employed dialectical strategies for defining their
identities. He observes that these writers assimilated them-
selves to external authorities and simultaneously resisted
them as if they were implicitly or explicitly hostile or alien.
For him the rhetorical selves of the Renaissance are com-
posed in accordance with conventional, institutional powers
and despite or in defiance of autonomy-threatening forces
and their individual representatives. He shows that, for one,
Sir Thomas More engages in all the techniques of self-
aggrandisement to create a political position for himself at
the court while repudiating precisely the authority of the
individual, which such self-aggrandisement assumes, in
Utopia and in his own religious life.34 Greenblatt locates the
humanistic discourse of self-depiction within the immediate
historical context offered by the society an author inhabits
or purports to inhabit, but he also places it within a larger
historical framework. He claims that the adversarial strate-
gies of self-depiction which he terms 'self-fashioning' are
ultimately derived from the classical authors who developed
rhetorical culture for the West.35
I want to argue that Isocrates' strategy of self-characteri-
sation is analogous or even identical to the sort of 'self-fash-
ioning' that Greenblatt sees occurring in Renaissance
33 Greenblatt (1980), p. 9.
34 See the first chapter in Greenblatt (1980).
35 Greenblatt (1980), p. 2.
86
authors.3 6 I suggest that, like these later writers, Isocrates

creates his own identity through a dialectical tension. On the
one hand, there is the statement to be taken at face value
that the rhetorician is disempowered because he is unable to
engage in rhetoric; on the other hand, there is the fact that
in the society which Isocrates purports to occupy making
such a statement can be a means of producing actual
authority for oneself. This tension is constructed around the
representation of speaking in public as a form of activity
which Isocrates at one and the same time recognises and
resists as the basis of political authority.
For Isocrates, the representation of speaking in public as
a political activity is the normative one. Homer can be
invoked to supply a text which declares the importance of
being able to speak. In the Iliad Phoenix states that in teach-
ing Achilles his aim was to make him 'both a speaker of
words and a doer of deeds' (9.443). The hero implies by this
statement that words and deeds should ideally complement
one another. Phoenix's description of his teaching is impor-
tant because it in some sense anticipates the programme of
sophistic education in the fifth century. The sophists
regarded excellence in speaking (eu/kali5s legein) as the key
to success in civic life. A cultivated virtue (arete), particu-
larly oratorical skill, could compensate for deficiencies of
birth and nature that previously prevented someone from
gaining prominence in his society. Thus the sophists
promised to teach their students skill in speech as the basis
of political expertise.
As far as classical Athens is concerned, speaking in public
is both a means to a civic career and the civic career in
itself.37 Reference to rhetorical art almost always implies a
mention of political activity or status. In the Encomium of
36 Isocrates was known to the Renaissance. He was first published in the fifteenth
century and several of his works concerning power relationships in the state,
especially To Nicocles and Nicocles, were extremely popular in the latter part of
the century. Of course, the Latin translations were read by far more people than
the Greek originals. See Reynolds and Wilson (1974), p. 138 and Highet (1949),
pp. 122-3.
37 Carey (1989), p. 4 and references at n. 24.
Helen Gorgias describes logos as a great potentate (dunastes

megas, 8). By this description he suggests rhetorical lan-
guage possesses power which is akin to that held by a
despotic ruler. Gorgias' own career demonstrates the close
association between language and political status, as various
sources provide evidence that Gorgias participated in the
427 BC embassy to Athens to seek help for Leontini against
Syracuse.38 Plato reinforces the importance of oratory and
politics in Gorgianic rhetoric when he depicts the sophist as
an individual who taught both persuasive speech and the art
of good citizenship (Gorgias 449a5ff.; 452d5ff.). In particu-
lar, Socrates here describes the ability to rule others as con-
stituted by the ability to persuade individuals present at a
political gathering (452erff.). In the Phaedrus Plato credits
the sophist Protagoras with works on the art of speaking
correctly and on government (267c6). He confirms the politi-
cal dimension of the sophist's pedagogy when in another
dialogue Socrates describes Protagoras' teaching of the man-
agement of one's home and city as a political skill
(Protagoras 3r8e5-3r9a4).
Later, even scholars of the Roman period continue to
portray political concerns as the domain and prerogative
of someone who teaches or uses oratory. In his life of
Themistocles, Plutarch says that Mnesiphilus, the teacher of
the famous general and politician, taught sophia. This 'wis-
dom' Plutarch glosses as 'political cleverness and under-
standing of how to act', and observes that it involves dicanic
arts and rhetorical practice (Themistocles 2-4).39
It is against and within this cultural background that
Isocrates identifies speaking in public as political activity. At
Epistle 8.7 the verbs 'to engage in political activity [as a citi-
38 Cf. Plato Hippias Major 282b4-9, where Gorgias is described as doing 'public
things (Ko1vo:)'and as appearing to be 'an excellent speaker (o:p1cr,a elmiv)', and
Diodorus Siculus 12.53.1-2, which seems to rely heavily upon Plato as a source.
Thucydides refers to the mission without mentioning Gorgias (3.86.3). Prodicus
of Ceos and Hippias also went on embassies; see Guthrie (1971), ii, p. 40.
39
In addition, Herodotus 8.57 presents Mnesiphilus as a 'wise adviser' of
Themistocles. Thucydides (1.138.3) and Xenophon (Memorabilia 4.2.2) cast
some doubt on this tradition. See the discussion of the problem in Kerferd
(1950) and Morrison (1949), pp. 55-63.
88
zen] (politeuesthai)' and 'to speak in public (rhetoreuein)' are

juxtaposed in such a way as to suggest that they are inter-
changeable. The weak voice and lack of courage provide
Isocrates with his excuse for staying away from public life,
which is also denoted by the words to politeuesthai at To
Philip 8 r and hai praxeis at Panathenaicus 9. (The phrase
'concerning the affairs in which we exercise ourselves as citi-
zens (peri tas praxeis en hais politeuometha)' at Helen 5
shows that the noun praxeis can denote the political activi-
ties in which the citizens of a state participate.) Thus in the
passages cited at the beginning of this chapter he says he is
the least enabled and most marginal of citizens, 4° and he
asserts that he is deprived of the things which endow one
with the greatest authority.41 He becomes through his own
self-portraiture a marginal figure, a citizen without influence,
in a particular construction of Athens. This is an Athens in
which a public, speaking voice is valued because it empow-
ers the individual as citizen, ideally as orator. In this city
only those who are not adult male citizens - women, chil-
dren, slaves - or who, although citizens, have deprived
themselves of the opportunity to mount the bema to address
the demos by committing a crime such as homicide (which
brings pollution upon the city) or by support of an oppres-
sive regime, such as that of the Thirty, may not speak.42
Through his self-portraiture Isocrates ostensibly invokes a
phonocentric model of classical Athens, one in which oral
speech and oral performance are the privileged activities,
and implicitly one in which writing is deficient for any num-
ber of reasons but primarily for the lack of someone to
speak (for) it.43
4o C::,5O\JKoT6' ei TIS &Mos TWV TTOAITWV, Panathenaicus IO; eyw yap TTpos µev TO
TTOAITEVE0"0atTTCX\ITWVaq,vfoTCXTOS
eyevoµT)VTWV TTOAITWV, To Philip 81.
41 OVTWyap ev6e175aµq>OTEpwveyevoµT)VTWV µeyio-TT)V6vvaµ1v EXOVTWV TTap' iJµiv,
Panathenaicus rn; ovTe Toi\µav 6vvaµEVT)Vand µTJT'&i\i\ws 6vv6:o-TT)5,
To Philip 81.
42 Cf. Andocides' report that the soldiers who supported the Four Hundred by
remaining in Athens were not permitted to address the 6f\µ05 or to offer advice,
eimiv 6' EV T0 6Tjµ'{l OUKe~ijv avTois ov6e ~OVAEVO"at ( On the Mysteries 75).
Aeschines refers to a law whereby the right to speak in council or to the people
is revoked for someone who has prostituted himself (Against Timarchus 19-20).
43 For the concept oflogocentrism, see Derrida (1981), pp. viii-xvi.
V
If one takes at face value Isocrates' statement that he is dis-
empowered because he cannot speak in public, one works
on the assumption that there is only one classical Athens,
and within that only one valid model of civic identity. To
take Isocrates' self-representation literally is moreover to fail
to historicise adequately. Fourth-century authors, such as
Isocrates, call into question the traditional democratic con-
figuration of the relationship between power and the spoken
word: more precisely, they inscribe within this conventional
configuration a critique of it. The sophistic programme of
oratory as the means to a life in politics became in part
responsible for the phenomenon which Connor terms the
'new politicians'.44 After the death of Pericles, the individual
whom Thucydides credits with the ideal of the politically
active Athenian (2-40.2), a new set of individuals acquired
positions of leadership that had traditionally been denied to
them by becoming 'talkative (laloi)'.45 Aristotle notes that
demagogues, people like Cleon, Anytus, Cleophon and
Hyperbolus, used their skills at speaking in public and to
large crowds of people to rise to positions of power in
Athens (Aristotle Ath. Pol. 28. 1). Aristophanes draws atten-
tion to the important role that speaking had in establishing
their careers when he derogatorily calls these new politicians
'rhetors' (cf. Acharnians 38, 680; Knights 60). For the poet,
these demagogic rhetors are 'new men' or upstarts: to
emphasise their 'newness' he depicts Cleon and Anytus as
tanners, Cleophon as a lyre-maker and Hyperbolus as lamp-
maker, as men whose professions show that they do not
belong to the traditional establishment.4 6 They have dis-
placed their more principled predecessors, the generation of
44 Connor (1971).
45 Dodds (1959), p. 356.
46
See Clouds 551, 874-6, 1065; Acharnians 846 and Peace 681. Also see M. I.
Finley (1962), pp. 17-18 and Ste-Croix (1981), pp. 290 and 603, n. 25; Ste-Croix
(1972), p. 235, n. 7, observes that the depiction of the democrats as tradesmen is
largely a comic travesty of their populism. Indeed Forrest (1975), p. 41, notes
that Cleon's father was choregus in 460/59.
90
Pericles, becoming in part responsible for the decay of the

assembly and the lawcourts. Elsewhere, in the Clouds, the
comic poet belittles the contribution that speaking well
makes to political advancement. Pheidippides is sent to the
school of Socrates to learn the art of argument not so that
he can become a prominent statesman or general, but so
that he can talk away his gambling debts.
The new politicians become responsible for the loss of
power and respect for speaking in public in the fourth cen-
tury. As a result of their careers, a voice, specifically the
speaking voice of the orator, is a liability rather than an asset.
The greatest liability of all is to have a loud voice, like that of
the 'new politicians' and their successors. So Demosthenes
discredits Meidias, on trial for assault (hubris), when he draws
attention to his loud voice (phone): Meidias shouts (Against
Meidias 195 and 200). In another speech of Demosthenes,
Against Pantainetus, the speaker produces an unfavourable
portrait of Nicobulus, a money-lender who is by virtue of his
profession socially disreputable. Nicobulus expresses himself
in large terms that signify his unsavoury character: he walks
quickly, brandishes a stick and above all chatters at high vol-
ume (52). Elsewhere, in On the Crown, Demosthenes defames
his opponent Aeschines when he accuses him of training his
voice for the speaker's platform (280 and 308; also On the
False Embassy 255); 47 he brings home his point when he puns
on his opponent's name, juxtaposing Aischine with aischune,
'shameful', at On the Crown (308) and On the False Embassy
(336). The loud voice is in fourth-century authors such a con-
vention of characterisation that Lysias has to warn his readers
not to take it for granted. In Lysias Oration 16, written for
Mantitheus, the speaker observes that individuals who speak
softly (mikron dialegomenoi, 19) and dress neatly are not nec-
essarily responsible for good actions, while those who neglect
these external marks of respectability can also be responsible
for many good deeds. The speaker explicitly asks his audience
to look beyond mere appearances when they judge him.
47 Note Demosthenes' use of ricrvx{aat On the Crown 308.
91
Public oratory has become public ranting. Public oratory

is the manipulation, seduction and hoodwinking of a mob
too stupid to know when someone is taking advantage of
them. It is assimilated, moreover, to polupragmosune or
meddling in civic affairs, concerning oneself with lawsuits
where one has no business, for one's own personal and self-
ish gains.48 In the Wealth Aristophanes provides Isocrates
and his contemporaries with a paradigmatic figure of
polupragmosune. This is the sycophant who is generally
regarded as a caricature of the 'new politician' (most proba-
bly Cleon49) and who embodies civic and political interfer-
ence par excellence. 50 The sycophant justifies his prosecution
by claiming that his actions benefit (euergetein, 912) the city
and ensure that its laws are upheld (917-19). Aristophanes'
Just Man, however, reveals the sycophant's litigious activity
for what it really is, namely to polupragmonein (9 l 3). He
advocates instead 'keeping quiet (hesuchian echon)', the ethi-
cal ideal which Pindar had invoked in Pythian 8 (921).
Whether Aristophanes' characterisation of the sycophant
constitutes a serious critique of contemporary legal practice,
as Adkins supposes, or whether it is an exaggerated parody
of a particular type of citizen, as Allison more cautiously
suggests, it is evident that polupragmosune and its related
words are strong terms of censure. After Aristophanes, the
author of the Rhetoric to Alexander defines the polupragmon
as someone who speaks too often (1437a35-6). Several cen-
turies later, in a work entitled Concerning Meddling,
Plutarch presents the sycophant and the busybody or
polupragmon as parallel figures (Moralia 523b).
Isocrates' own criticism of oratorical activity is entirely
consistent with a historicisation that one finds in other
fourth-century authors. Like his contemporaries, he draws a
contrast between the past as an era of social responsibility
48
See Ehrenberg (1947); Adkins (1976); Allison (1979); Campbell (1984).
49 Adkins (1976), p. 310. Thucydides reports how Cleon, the paradigmatic manipu-
lative and devious rhetor, earned a generalship because of his popularity with
the mob (4.27.4-28.3).
°
5
Cf. Plutarch Pericles 10, 32 and 35; references from Lateiner (1982), p. r.
92
and the present as an age of self-interest. He depicts political

oratory as in his own day degenerating into a mercenary
and banausic activity. A distinct contrast is drawn with the
earlier democracy, where holding political office, and hence
speaking in public, were for the benefit of the city and her
citizens. He observes that prior to Marathon Athens' citi-
zens regarded civic office as a public service or liturgy, and
because they understood political life to involve public
service, they did not go out of their way to seek office
(Panathenaicus 145-6; Areopagiticus 25)Y Elsewhere he
describes the earlier constitutions of Solon and Cleisthenes
as 'more democratic', literally 'more demotic (demotikoteran)'
(Areopagiticus 23), despite the fact that a modern historian
of political thought might classify them as aristocracies,
meritocracies or even oligarchies.s 2 He calls these earlier
governments more 'democratic' because they granted office
to their citizens according to their ability and personal
wealth rather than by lot, as in contemporary Athens
(Areopagiticus 22). He continues by explaining that selecting
individuals for office in this manner ensures that positions
are filled by those who will be able to act in the interests of
the people rather than for themselves. It is such responsible
government, and not the subsequent populist governments,
which best attains the democratic ideal.
Isocrates also helps to construct the particular image of
contemporary oratory as irresponsible political activity in
several specific passages. In one section of On the Peace the
speaker produces a critique of polupragmosune:
I am amazed if you are unable to perceive that there is no class more ill-
intentioned towards the people than evil orators and demagogues. For in
addition to your other troubles, they want you above all to be short of
daily necessities. They see that those able to manage their own affairs
from their private wealth are on the side of the city and of those who
speak best of all, but that those who are forced to make their living off
51 Also see Christ (1990).

52 Ste-Croix (1954), p. 23, notes that in classical authors the adjective 81iµoKpaT1K6s
appears far more frequently than 81iµoT1K6S. Sealey (1973), p. 253, rightly sug-
gests that 'democratic' (or 'demotic') is worthless as a designator of an actual
political position because it is such a value-laden term.
93
the lawcourts, the assemblies and the takings from there are forced
through need to be subservient to them and are especially grateful to
impeachments, indictments and the other sycophancies which are the
result of their work.
(129-30)53
The fictional speaker, implicitly characterised as a member

of Eubulus' peace faction, draws a contrast between the
wealthy citizens who mind their own business - with whom,
we shall see, Isocrates identifies himself - and the orators
who make profit out of other people's misfortunes. The
speaker presents the 'class ... of evil orators and demagogues'
as the bane of society. In so doing, he invokes a picture of
society in decline after the death of Pericles, 54 which he sig-
nifies by the change in the meaning of traditional terms. 55
Isocrates marks political change through linguistic change.
Previously, the words rhetores and demagogoi were neutral
terms. Rhetor simply meant someone who spoke in public,
while demagogos literally meant 'leader of the people' .s6
Certainly, this is the sense that these nouns retain when
Isocrates uses them elsewhere to describe the ideal
demagogos Pericles, who did much for his city ( On the Peace
126 and Antidosis 234). In Isocrates' Athens, the 'rhetor'
and the 'demagogue' no longer act in the interests of the
people, yet the city's inhabitants still stupidly continue to
53 8avµ6:l;w 8' ei µTJ8vvacr0e crvv18eivOT\ yevos ov8ev ECJTIKaKOVO\JCJTEpov T0 TTA176e1

TTOVTJpWV f)TJTOpwv Kai 8Tjµaywywv TTpos yap TOIS0:AAOIS KaKOISKai TWV KaTO:
TTJV tjµepav EKO:CJTTjV6:vayKa{wvOVTOIµ6:AJCJTa ~O\JAOVTaJ CJTTav{l;e1v
vµo:s, opwVTES
TOVSµev EKTWV i8{wv 8vvaµevovs TO:mphep' a\JTWV 810\KEIV T'17STTOAEWS OVTasKm'
TWV TO: ~EATICJTa AeyoVTwv,TOVS 8' O:TTO TWV 81KaCJTTjp/wv l;wVTas Kai TWV
EKKATjCJIWV Kai TWV EVTEV0ev ATJµµo:TWVvcp' aVTOIS810:TTJVev8e1avr'JvaYKacrµevovs
eTvm,Kai TTOAATJV xo:p1vexoVTasTa'i'seicrayyeAims Kai Ta'i's ypacpa'i'sKai Ta'i's &Mais
CJVKOcpavT{ms Tais 81' aVTWVy1yvoµevms.
54 The model of post-Periclean decline is central to Thucydides (cf. 2.65.7). On the
possible relationship between Thucydides and Isocrates, see Mathieu (1918) and
Pearson (1941), p. 211, who observes that Isocrates was very familiar with the
work ofThucydides. Hudson-Williams (1948) prefers, however, to argue that the
two authors drew on a common stock of themes.
55
Isocrates reflects this important idea at Areopagiticus 20; cf. Thucydides 3.82.4ff.
and Plato Republic 56od-561a.
56
Finley (1962), p. 19, for instance, and Ste-Croix (1981), p. 290. Also of interest is
Schiappa (1990), who traces the development of p17Twp-cognates during the
fourth century.
94
choose them as their leaders or prostatai (Panathenaicus

15).57The speaker of On the Peace emphasises the corrupt
nature of these new leaders when he evaluates them as 'evil
men' (poneroi, 129) and then as 'oligarchs' (oligarchikoi,
133), a particularly strong word after the government of the
Four Hundred in 410. The pacifist speaks of orators and
demagogues bringing trouble to 'the people (to plethos)'.
They do damage to the city by their oratorical activities in
the lawcourts and Assembly, institutions regarded as repre-
senting the whole Athenian citizenry and purposely confused
with one another in the disapproving literary representation
of the new democracy.5 8 The rhetors and demagogues pro-
duce accusations in the Council for public offences (eisan-
geliai), formal indictments (graphai) and sycophancies (suko-
phantiai) as a means of making a living.
In a later work Isocrates reinforces this critique of oratory
in contemporary Athenian democracy. In the Antidosis he is
its victim. Isocrates presents himself as having been brought
to trial by a make-believe sycophant named Lysimachus,
who has become skilled at legal contests as a result of fre-
quent 'meddling' in the lawcourts (dia polupragmosunen);S 9
cf. 'if I were to imagine ... that a sycophant brought the
57 Connor (1971) observes that the terms ptjTwp and ,rpocrTcxT'flSare part of the
new political terminology, p. rr6.
58 Classical authors efface the differences between 61KacrTtjp1ovand the EKK7'ricria
and between their respective discourses in order to insist upon the political
dimension of the speech produced in them. Regardless of any distinction
between forensic and political oratory that he draws in the Phaedrus, Plato, for
instance, elsewhere reflects the tendency to disregard the specific locality of the
speaker's platform when he has Gorgias refer to the 61KacrTtjp1ov, the
[3ov?\evTtjp1ovand the eKK?\ricriaas all types of 'political gathering (1ro?\1T1K6scrv?\-
7\oyos)', Gorgias 452e2-5; Dodds (1959), ad. foe.; also 463d1-2 and 464b4. Also
MacDowell (1971), pp. 2-3, and Carey (1989), p. 5, who observes that the law-
courts had become a virtual 'extension of the assembly'. Nevertheless, Hudson-
Williams (1951), p. 69, attempts to distinguish between forensic oratory and
political oratory on the grounds that the former is largely literary, often com-
posed by a professional speechwriter, while the latter tends to be extemporane-
ous and oral.
59 A Lysimachus is mentioned in Against Callimachus 7 as one of Callimachus'
victims. Isocrates may have used his name for his fictional litigant. On the
construction of the 'sycophant' in and by fourth-century authors including
Isocrates, see together the articles by Osborne and Harvey in Cartledge, Millett
and Todd (1990), pp. 83-102 and pp. 103-21 respectively.
95
indictment [against me] and created trouble for me'

(Antidosis 8; cf. 48). 60 Lysimachus provides Isocrates with
'trouble (pragmata)' (8), forcing him to participate in a trial,
a situation he would prefer to avoid. The word pragmata
may have political connotations and it may be the case that
Isocrates is evoking these here in order to assimilate the law-
court to the assembly, and legal oratory to political
oratory. 61 Later on in this oration he reinforces the close
association between the speech of the lawcourts and the
speech of the assembly. At section 3 r 5 he remarks that
although Athens formerly punished sycophants, it now
employs them as its accusers and its legislators (3 r 5; also
3 r 3). He stresses the fact that the sycophant's sphere now
comprehends both rhetorical and political activity when he
speaks of these individuals as both 'accusers (kategoroi)'
and 'legislators (nomothetai)'. His point is that contempo-
rary Athens uses the wrong people to enact her constitution.
Rhetorical polupragmosune has other unsavoury connota-
tions and associations; it articulates a desire for military
expansionism. Polupragmosune is on occasion employed as a
synonym for the term which denotes aggressive ambition
(pleonexia). Such ambition is responsible for the creation of
empire and it is a characteristic trait of an empire like that
which Athens' great rival, Sparta, possesses (cf. Busiris 20;
Panathenaicus 243). In On the Peace the speaker presents
public oratory as the means by which individuals at Athens
articulate and propagate the city's hegemonic policy. The
pacifist tries to persuade his audience that peace (hesuchia)
with other Greek states is more beneficial than war and the
militaristic foreign policy which' the state now pursues. He
uses the term polupragmosune, a word identified with ora-
tory, to disparage Athens' foreign policy ( On the Peace 26;
cf. r6). Here the speaker proceeds by presenting pacifism
60
Ei O v,ro6e(µ17v... O"VKO<pa:v,17v
O OVTa ,ov yeypaµµevov Kai ,ov ,rpa:yµa,a: µ01
,rapE)(OVTa.
61
Cf. Thucydides 2.65.3 and Plato Gorgias 516a1-3. Carter (1986), p. 19, 'The
general term for civic and legal affairs (which were often inextricably entwined)
was pragmata.'
96
and aggression in terms of a moral dichotomy. He draws a

contrast between concern for one's own affairs as dikaiosune
or justice, and Athens' imperialism as what the reader is to
regard as injustice. If peace respects the limits that Greek
tragedy, epinician poetry and, later, Plato teach have been
assigned by the gods to each individual or state, 62 then
polupragmosune transgresses these limits.
In Thucydides the Spartan king Archidamus enunciates a
position of quietism that is to be contrasted with the ambi-
tious striving of the Athenians (1.8off.). 63 Isocrates subverts
this Thucydidean stereotype of the slow-acting and delibera-
tive Spartan in his Archidamus. In this speech, the Spartan
prince declares that he is abandoning a stance of quietude
(hesuchian) in order to urge the state to go to war against
Thebes to protect its Messenian interests (2). The council of
Spartan elders before whom Archidamus pleads his case has
been assimilated to the Athenian lawcourts and assembly.
As Archidamus' own language reveals, the act of speaking
constitutes political activity:
I have spoken about these things not because I desire to speak (legein) or
am prepared to live differently than before. Rather it is because I wish to
urge you not to underrate any age but to consider in all ages if anyone
can offer any good [advice] about the present circumstances (peri ton
paronton pragmaton).
(6)64
I never loved oratory (logous) but always thought that those who engaged
in it were less effective in political affairs (pros tas praxeis). Yet now I
would value nothing more than to be able to speak as I wish on the mat-
ters at hand.
62 Cf. Charmides 161d1, 163a4ff., etc.

63 See North (1966), pp. 102-4.
64 Ov µTjVws bn6vµwv TOV11eye1v,ov5' ws 0./1/\WSTIWS;rapEO"KEvacrµevos ~f\v T] T0V
;rape/\66VTa xpovov, OVTWSeip17Kampi TOIJTWV, aMa ~ovMµevos vµas ;rpoTpE4'aJ
µ176eµiav a;ro60K1µa~EIVTWVTj/1\KIWV, aM' EVcmacrms ~T)TEJV
El T\5 TI 6vvma1 mpi
TWV;rap0VTWV;rpayµaTWV EiTIEIV aya66v.
65 Ov6e TIWTIOTE 6e Myovs ayam\cras, a1111'aei voµi~wv TOVS mpi TOVTO61a-
Tpi~ovTa5 apyoTEpOVS dvm ;rpo5 T0.5 ;rpa~EIS, VVV ov6ev av mpi TI/\E\OVOS
i\ 6vv176f\vmmpi Twv ;rp0Ke1µevwvws ~ov11oµm 61e116e'i'v.
;ro117craiµ17v
97
Archidamus hedges and apologises. He must not appear too

eager to assume the role of orator. This is because there is
an assumption that people who speak publicly make poor,
ineffective contributions to society because public speaking
is a form of political agitation. The words which refer to the
military concerns of the moment, 'the present circumstances
(peri ton paronton pragmaton)' (Archidamus 6; cf. pros tas
praxeis, r 5), suggest an opposition between rhetorical word
and political deed, and they are the very ones which
Isocrates employs when referring to the sort of oratorical
activity from which being unable to speak excludes him (cf.
hai praxeis, Panathenaicus 9). What this tension between
word and deed suggests is that Sparta and her leader now
resemble the Athens which Isocrates depicts himself as
inhabiting.
VI
In his Rhetoric Aristotle speaks of the way in which an ora-
tor might modulate the volume of his voice. He observes
that the speaker may use a large, that is loud (megalei),
voice, a small, that is soft (mikrai), one, or a medium (mesei)
one (Rhetoric r403b26-8). He works on the assumption that
each of these speaking voices helps to communicate the ora-
tor's nature to the audience. If the loud voice is associated
with the verbal culture created and inhabited by the new
politicians, the aggressive Cleon-like demagogues, ambitious
for money and power, the soft voice, in contrast, charac-
terises the quietist. The soft voice denotes the responsible
citizen as the apragmon. Where this individual had been crit-
icised by Thucydides' Pericles for his indifference to affairs
of the city in the 'Funeral Oration' (2-40.2), he now pos-
sesses an authority and respectability which derives precisely
from the fact that he is unlike the 'new politicians' and
'sycophants' of the recent past and the present.
Isocrates' mikrophonia is part of a larger complex rhetoric
of civic identity. It is a version of what some scholars have
come to regard as a 'trite', and, by implication, a meaning-
98
less commonplace: 66 this is the topos 'unaccustomed as I am

to public speaking'. 67 This rhetorical convention is most
immediately a plea for sympathy on the basis of one's lack
of experience at public speaking. The source of its power is
the implication that the speaker is a political innocent and
so distinct from the busybody who frequents the assembly
and lawcourts. Mikrophonia and its variations thus articu-
late the speaker's rejection of the civic ideal of the right to
public speech, namely isegoria, and of a phonocentric
Athens. 68 It provides the citizen with a strategy that enables
him to be excused from contemporary public and political
life.
The small voice is also constituted within a traditional
language of political virtue which originates in archaic
poetry. The archaic poet or his representative speaks in the
interests of the city and its people by advocating moderation
and stability in the face of social change and the uncertainty
which accompanies change. The Megarian poet of the
Theognidea constructs himself as one of the old-school
nobility (agathoi). As such, he is to be understood as having
lost influence to the new upstarts, who also term themselves
agathoi. 69 He laments the absence of moderation in his soci-
ety with the coming of the new order. The goddess Sophro-
sune has departed from mankind together with Shame,
Faith and the Graces, in an echo of Hesiod's Works and
Days 199-200, and the citizens who are truly saophrones
have met their downfall (1082a). In an attempt to reverse
the course of events, the poet advises his addressee to wel-
come moderation into all aspects of his life. For instance,
the addressee is to take the middle road and to avoid
extremes (331-2); he is not to hurry if he is to achieve virtue
66 E.g. Wyse (1904), p. 654 on Isaeus JO. I.

61 For other examples of the trope, see Andocides On the Mysteries 1; Antiphon
Herodes 1-2; Stepmother 1; Tetralogy 2.2.1; Demosthenes 27.1---2; 34.1; Ps.-
Demosthenes 58.3; Isaeus 8.5; JO.I; Lysias 12.3; 19.2 and 55; and Plato Apology
17c-d. These examples cited from Burnet (1924), p. 146 and Edwards and Usher
(1985), p. 237.
68 On lariyop{a, see Griffiths (1966) and Woodhead (1967).
69 E.g. vv. 32-8, 53-72, I 165.
99
(335-6); he is to be sophron in possessing both a share of

knowledge and ignorance (453-4) and in avoiding reckless
deeds in pursuit of wealth (754-6).7°
The discourse of moderation is particularly a feature of
the pristine Athenian democratic ideology. Aristotle suggests
this when he reproduces in the Constitution of Athens two
poems by Solon which extol sophrosune as a virtue. In these
poems Solon identifies moderate and peaceful behaviour as
ideal features of the democracy he has created:
VµEIS8' riavxcxaavTESEVIq,pmi KapTEpov 17Top,
of TIO/\/\WV aya0wv ES Kopov TJACXO"OTE,
Ev µETpio1a1Ti0m0E µfyav v6ov· oVTEyap riµE1<;
1TEIO"OµE0', (chapter 5.3)
ov0' vµ1v apT!a Taln' EO"ETOI.
[You who have proceeded to the full measure of many good things make
quiet the strong heart in your breasts and set your great mind on moder-
ate things, for we shall not be persuaded nor will these things be secure
for you.]
and
8f\µos 8' w8' CXVaplaTa O"\JV 17yEµ6vma1vETIOITO,
µflTEAiriv avE0Ei<;µflTE ~1a~6µEvos
TIKTEIyap Kopo<;V~plv, OTOVTI0/1.VS0/1.~0SETiflTOI
av0pw1TOIO"IV 00"0\Sµ17v6os apTlo<;171.(chapter 12.1)
[Thus the people would follow their leaders in the best possible way,
neither being too lax nor being forced, for excess produces violence when
great prosperity follows men who do not have sound minds.]
The first poem expresses the ideal of moderation as emo-

tional peace or quietude and as due measure of thought. 71
Curiously, Solon speaks of a 'full measure' or surfeit (koros)
of good things as being one of the conditions in which the
individual achieves the ideal of moderation. The second text
articulates the democratic ideal of the time in terms of the
image of the properly tuned lyre. The image suggests that
'restraint' is somehow connected with the idea of 'harmony'.
70 Rahe (1992), pp. 43 and 812, notes that To µfo-ov denotes the public sphere in
archaic and classical Greek thought.
71
North (1966) observes that crwq,pocrvvriis the neighbour of 'Hcrvxkx in
Epicharmus, fr. 101, p. 19.
l00
In another poem (16 West) Solon declares that while the

'mean (metron)' of knowledge is extremely difficult to attain,
it holds the key to discovering the limits of all things.
Elsewhere the poet speaks of the need for restraint in mat-
ters concerned with money and wealth, the areas where he
concentrated his political reforms (e.g. 13.7-8, 71-73;
24.7-10 West).
After the archaic period sophrosune continues to be an
important element in the construction of civic identity, espe-
cially that of Athenian identity. Edith Hall observes that in
tragic literature the four cardinal virtues (which she trans-
lates as 'wisdom' or 'intelligence', 'manliness' or 'courage',
'discipline' or 'restraint' and 'justice') stress the Greekness of
the dramatic characters who possess them. She observes that
the absence of these virtues signifies the foreignness of bar-
barian figures. Especially prominent is the virtue of 'restraint
(sophrosune)'. 72 In the fifth century Aristophanes implicitly
figures silence as moderation. He portrays the reticent, old-
fashioned Aeschylus, and not the chattering Euripides, as
the ostensible solution to Athens' problems (cf. Frogs 832,
916, 927, 15ooff.). In the Constitution of Athens, Isocrates'
contemporary Xenophon endows the ideal Spartan citizen
with the traits of the apragmon. At section 3.4 of this work
Xenophon tells us that the Spartan lawmaker Lycurgus
ensured that his citizens would be modest and disciplined.
Lycurgus dictates that the Spartans should restrain their ges-
tures, keeping their hands within their cloaks, position their
eyes on the ground and walk keeping silent.
Isocrates identifies the virtue of moderation with contem-
porary quietism and in so doing suggests that this individual
ultimately owes his allegiance to another age. This is
because for the rhetorician sophrosune belongs to a former
and better Athens. The virtue is most often invoked nostal-
gically, perhaps to avoid the oligarchical resonances that, as
North shows, sophrosune had acquired in the fourth
12 On the role that the cardinal virtues play in the definition of Greekness and par-
ticularly of being Athenian, see Hall (1989), pp. 121ff.
IOI
century. 73 In the model of decline which Isocrates advocates,

the virtue of moderation is associated particularly with pre-
Periclean Athens and is made notable by its absence from the
new Athens. In the Helen Theseus, the mythical founder of
Athens, is said to exhibit beyond all other virtues his moder-
ation (sophrosune, 31) and his gentleness (praotes, 37), instill-
ing them into the state's institutions. Isocrates begins the
Panathenaicus by lamenting the absence of moderation in
present-day Athens (cf. 'if we were moderate
(sophronesaimen) and ceased from our madness against one
another', 14). In contrast he commends his ancestors because
their government shows the influence of sophrosune
(Panathenaicus 151 and 197). In On the Peace he measures
Athens' current policy of aggression against other states with
an earlier constitutional order and finds the former lacking.
The pacifist declares that before Athens and Sparta sought
empires, an activity which he characterises as polupragmosune
(58), they were governed 'most moderately (sophronestata)'
(104). Not surprisingly, the dichotomy between the temperate
past and the intemperate present is especially evident in the
Areopagiticus. This text uses an idealised portrait of the
'good old days' as a foil for contemporary democracy. At the
beginning of this work Isocrates reflects that in a state wealth
and power corrupt; they produce senseless and uncontrolled
behaviour, while poverty and weakness produce moderate
and reasonable behaviour (4). These are the terms in which
the rhetorician sets out his characterisation of past and pre-
sent. Athenian imperialism gives rise to political and moral
chaos: the poverty of her pre-imperialistic days engenders
temperance, denoted by the phrase 'sobriety and great mod-
eration (sophrosune kai polle metriotes)'. This, and not mili-
tary strength, is ultimately what maintains the city and her
constitution (Areopagiticus 13).
73
North (1966), pp. 44, 66, and passim; also Forrest (1975), p. 50. In his analysis
of the transformation of language through civil unrest at Corcyra, Thucydides
tells us that o-w<ppoo-vvriprovides the oligarchic or aristocratic factions in that
city with one of their slogans (3.82.8).
l02
VII
Despite these positive valorisations, an individual's claim of
innocence can still backfire if not further carefully and
appropriately qualified. Isocrates' self-characterisation,
indeed his self-fashioning, both involves and requires careful
negotiation of another set of precarious identities. On the
one hand and most obviously, he must make certain that he
is not to be associated with the 'new politicians' and their
behaviour. Yet on the other hand, in order to reject this ora-
torical identity, he must reinscribe himself within an alterna-
tive identity which is potentially even less creditable. The
rhetorician displaces one culture and ideology with another
ideology which is conservative to the extent that it can be
seen to depart from the democratic ideal despite its invoca-
tion of democratic virtue.
Heilbrunn argues that Isocrates' refusal to mount the
speaker's bema or platform is not only made in reaction
against contemporary democracy, which has become vitiated
by self-interest, but that it is also a deliberately anti-populist
stance.74 This critic draws support for his view from
speeches in which Isocrates can be seen to be expressing
sympathy for less populist forms of government. At Nicocles
21 Nicocles says that monarchs alone care for the state's
concerns as if they were their own affairs. If this sentiment
proceeds from the mouth of an individual who might be
expected to speak in favour of monarchy, the author, in his
own persona, does not grant any greater intrinsic value to
democracy than to oligarchy or monarchy at Panathenaicus
132. What Heilbrunn ultimately points to is a tension
between different class ideologies and identities. Indeed, in
the Constitution of Athens Aristotle narrates the political his-
tory of fifth-century Athens as a constant contest between
post-Periclean 'new politicians', whom he describes as pop-
ulists, and their more traditional opponents, whom he pre-
sents as being the champions of the well-born and distin-
74 Heilbrunn (1975), pp. 157-8; also Race (1978), p. 176.
103
guished citizens (28. 1-3; cf. Areopagiticus 16, 20 and 50, and
Plutarch Pericles 11.3). According to the terms of this analy-
sis, Isocrates situates himself within a discourse which asso-
ciates him with Athens' privileged and conservative citizens,
with the 'aristocrats' or 'oligarchs'. It is significant that in
the Characters Theophrastus caricatures the oligarchic
nature as precisely a distaste for the general population of
Athens, for the places of public speaking and for the orators
and sycophants.75
In the fourth century to be seen as an anti-populist is not in
itself a wholly positive thing. It is to risk identification with
the oligarchs who came into power on two different occasions
at the end of the fifth century, the Four Hundred (411-410
BC) and the particularly savage Thirty Tyrants (404 BC). In
these forms, and particularly as represented by the Thirty, oli-
garchy had shown itself to be a repressive and unjust regime.
The experience of these oligarchies provoked Athens to pass a
law determining that death should be served to anyone who
harmed or endangered the democracy. 76 Accordingly, in order
to have a credible public identity, Isocrates needs to reassure
his audience of his allegiance to the democratic, Athenian
ethos despite his aristocratic status. 77 The rhetorician must
moderate the apparent privilege of his position with the claim
to have observed what we shall see to be the Athenian coun-
terpart of noblesse oblige.
In such a contemporary context, an author achieves this by
appropriating to the rhetoric of moderation the discourse of
the Athenian benefactor or liturgist. If the loud voice belongs
to the city's oppressors, the soft voice (mikrophonia) and legal
inexperience are generally constructed within the self-repre-
sentation of the citizen who is able and willing to render his
services to the polis and its people. 78 This association of qui-
etude with public service serves a particular function in that it
75 See Theophrastus Characters 17.
6
7 See Andocides On the Mysteries 96-8.
77 This is the view of Strauss (1959) and Davidson (1990), p. 31. Jones (1957), espe-
cially pp. 41-3, suggests that criticism of popular democracy was widespread
and prevalent in the literature of classical Athens.
78
Cf. On the Peace 128 and Antidosis 159; see Jones (1957), p. 55.
104
mitigates the apparent privilege enjoyed by the speaker as a

member of the wealthier classes. The speaker of Lysias 7
begins his defence with the plea of dicanic and political
na'ivete. He states that because he is an individual who wishes
to lead a peaceful life (toi boulomenoi hesuchian agonti), he has
taken part neither in lawsuits (mete dikas echein) nor in other
political concerns (1). Later in the speech the defendant refers
to his wealth, listing the trierarchies, property-taxes, chore-
giae, and so on, that he has performed, the civic services or
liturgies which were imposed on only the richest Athenians as
a tax. Lysias 19, likewise, confirms the conventional connec-
tion between quietude and public benefaction. The speaker
begins the oration by contrasting his inexperience with the
preparation and eagerness of his opponents (2). At a later
point in the speech he reiterates his claim of dicanic inexperi-
ence - despite being thirty years old, he has never been seen
in any public meeting place (55). Here also he proceeds to an
impressive list of the liturgies his family has performed out of
a sense of civic duty and liberality (57-64).7 9 If busybodiness
is to be understood as a bane to the city and her people, qui-
etude is implicitly constructed as a public service or liturgy.
Oration I 2 begins with the speaker Lysias himself assum-
ing the pose of the quietist. Lysias denies that he is further-
ing private political ambitions in his prosecution of
Eratosthenes. His stated aim is to seek retribution for the
murder of his brother Polemarchus (2). Lysias explicitly
characterises himself as the forensic innocent at section 3:
Jurors, although never having pursued my own affairs or anybody else's
[in court], I am now forced to accuse this man [Eratosthenes] as a result
of what has happened. As a result, I continually lose my nerve lest
through inexperience I make my case against him for my brother and
myself in a manner that is unworthy and unaccomplished. 80
79 Shuckburgh (1929, reprint), p. 298, observes that the speaker came from a fam-
ily which was established enough to be associated by marriage with one
Aristophanes, a man of liturgic status.
80 eyw µev ovv, w av6pes 61KacrTai, o(h' eµaVTOVTIWTIOTE OVTE6:11116Tp1aTipcxyµaTa
Tipcx~asvOv rivcxyKacrµaLVTIOTWVyeyevrwevwv TOVTOV KaTriyopeiv, WO"TE TI0/1/\CXKIS
e!s TIOAATjV
6:0vµiav KaTEcrTTlV,
µii 610:TTjV6:m1piav 6:va~iws Kai 6:6vvchws VTIEpTOO
6:6EAq>OVKai eµaVTOVTTjVKaTTlyopiav TIOITJO-OµaJ.
105
The claim is often taken at face value and regarded as evi-

dence that Oration I 2 was the first of Lysias' speeches. 81
This, however, is to ignore the possible motivation underly-
ing the statement. Lysias' protest is particularly significant
in the light of the identity of the orator's opponent. By
denying familiarity with the courts, he distinguishes himself
as much as possible from Eratosthenes, one of the infamous
Thirty. In this way he demonstrates that despite being a
metic, he acts more in the interests of democratic Athens
and, in one context, more democratically, than does a
proper citizen. Later in the speech, he draws attention to his
father's, Cephalus', similar inexperience in matters of the
lawcourt: he neither prosecuted anyone nor was he prose-
cuted (4). Lysias describes his father, his brothers and him-
self as kosmioi or orderly, employing an adjective that Solon
and Theognis had presented and used as part of the vocabu-
lary of responsible, conservative citizenship. 82 To avert the
possible unsavoury connotations of quietude, he goes to
great lengths to draw attention to the ways in which his
family has helped the state. He recalls that his father
Cephalus had paid out war taxes and had even sponsored
choruses (20).83 He draws attention to Cephalus' fulfilment
of civic obligations, effacing to some degree the disparity
between citizen and metic status. 84
As in the speeches of Lysias, Isocrates' quietist is always a
liturgist. Isocrates first invokes the topos of dicanic inno-
cence in Concerning the Chariot-team, the speech in which
the younger Alcibiades offers a defence of his father. Here
the speaker implicitly characterises himself as a responsible,
because unmeddling, citizen. He begins his apology with a
81
Scholars have also suggested that oration 20, which seems to antedate oration
12, may not be a genuine speech. But it is not necessary to assign oration 20 to
another, anonymous author if one understands that the claim of inexperience in
Against Eratosthenes is determined first and foremost by ethopoeic prerogative.
Cf. Lateiner ( 1982), p. 5.
82
Lysias 16.19; cf. Lateiner (1982), p. 6.
83
On the wealth of Lysias' family, see Lateiner (1982), p. 5; for the metic's obliga-
tions to the state, see Manville (1990), p. II.
84
<;arter (1986), pp. 126-8, who observes that Aristotle deals with the responsibili-
ties of the metic in Eudemian Ethics 1233a28.
I06
portrait of his opponents as habitual litigants who turn pri-

vate interests into public concerns and therefore as individu-
als whose credibility must be called into question, unlike his
own (r-3). The rhetorician's speaker and client is youthful
and inexperienced in legal affairs, unlike his adversaries,
who are well rehearsed in litigation and are by implication
political opportunists (r-2). It is significant that Concerning
the Chariot-team purports to have been written in 397, after
the fall of the Thirty Tyrants, the oligarchs who ruled
Athens in 404. This approximate date provides the charac-
terisation of the defendant and his accusers with a poignant
historical frame. The younger Alcibiades is too young to
have had anything to do with the infamous oligarchy, while
his opponents are implicated in it by their oratorical skill
and experience. His criticism of the prosecutors is pre-
dictable and even to be expected given his social identity.
Details in his family history clearly disclose that he belongs
to the wealth-owning class at Athens. At sections 34-5 of
the speech, he mentions the family's liturgies and, in particu-
lar, he draws attention to the service rendered by his father's
success in the chariot races, a sport in which only the very
wealthy could participate.
In his own self-portrait Isocrates makes such a close con-
nection between his apragmosune and liturgy that the two
become virtually synonymous. This is nowhere more appar-
ent than in the Antidosis. In this work he professes complete
ignorance and inexperience of the assembly and lawcourts
despite being a teacher of rhetoric (9-10, 37-8). The claim of
legal inexperience is also important in the Antidosis, his fic-
tional apology for himself as a teacher of rhetoric. He pre-
sents himself as the victim of Lysimachus, a make-believe
sycophant or professional prosecutor, who forces him to
undertake what the reader is to perceive as an uncharacteris-
tic defence in the lawcourt. He compounds the sense of
injury by declaring that he is unable to defend himself in a
manner worthy of his reputation and his old age. Isocrates
is easy prey for his accuser because of his lack of familiarity
with the courtroom (26). At Antidosis 38 he reinforces our
107
impression that he is at a disadvantage. Here he claims

never to have been seen near a lawcourt, unlike the syco-
phants - for instance, Lysimachus - who all but dwell there:
So you would see those earning their livelihoods from your contracts and
from the litigation connected with these things all but living in the law-
courts, but no one has ever seen me in the council-seats, in the inquiries,
in the lawcourts or before the arbitrators. I am second to no other citizen
in keeping away from all these. (38)85
The commonplace 'unaccustomed as I am to public speak-

ing' involves a poignant sub-text. Underlying Isocrates' over-
all self-characterisation is a reference to Plato's Apology. He
portrays himself in the image of Socrates, who announces at
the beginning of his defence that he has never yet parti-
cipated in a trial despite being seventy years old (17d2-3).
Although Socrates ostensibly denies that he is a quietist (cf.
Apology 36b6 and 37e2-3), he appropriates to his identity the
quietist's characteristics and language. He portrays himself as
a sophron who works for the good of the city by devoting
himself to philosophy (3 I b2-3). Elsewhere in the dialogue we
learn that Socrates' condition, like Isocrates', is due to his
voice, namely the divine voice which periodically speaks to
him, preventing him from taking part in public life. The
Antidosis, a text which continually raises the issue of who its
speaker is (as we shall see later), constitutes Isocrates'
attempt at being Socrates.
In the Antidosis Isocrates cleverly exploits his identity as
teacher of rhetoric to assure the audience that he does not
engage in frequent litigation and to draw attention to the
fact that he renders public service to his city. He allows that
teaching may be assumed to bring him a large income, as it
did Gorgias (155), and he admits to receiving fees from his
students at Antidosis 224-6. 86 Nevertheless, he is careful to
85 TOVSµev To{vw cmoTWVcrvµ~oi\a(wv TWVVµETepwvl;wVTas Kai T,iS mpi Tmha
,rpayµaTelas i6on' av µ6vov 01.JKEV TOIS 61KacrTTjp/01soiKOVVTas,eµe 6' ov6eTs
m.:mo6' ewpaKEVol'.h' EVTOIS crvve6pio1s OVTEmpi TO:S CXVaKpicre1sOVT' E1T1TOIS
61KacrTTjp/01sOVTE,rpos TOIS 61alTTJTa1s'ai\i\' OVTWSc'mexoµai TOVTWVCXTICX\ITWV
86
ws ov6eis 0:/\/\0STWV1TO/\JTWV.
Johnson (1957) calculates how much Isocrates would have earned during his life-
time from his supposed 100 students.
108
qualify this remark to avoid any misunderstanding. He

states that he accepts fees only from the students who come
from outside Athens, avoiding the charge that he makes
profit from his fellow citizens (cf. Antidosis 39).87 He also
asserts that through public service he has given far more
back to the city than he has received from it ( r 58) and
thereby answers the charge that he 'corrupts' or 'ruins' the
youths he teaches (Antidosis 240 and 243). 88 This is because,
by teaching rhetoric, he produces citizens who now go on to
benefit their polis (93-4).
Isocrates' language reinforces this characterisation of his
pedagogy as a form of civic service. He observes that par-
ents 'rejoice (chairousin)' when their sons spend their time
with him even though they must pay (chremata didoasi) for
this (241). The verb chairousin evokes the noun charis, which
signifies, among other things, the obligation incurred by the
recipients of a liturgy. The speaker in Against Callimachus
argues that charis is owed to him for the numerous public
services that he has discharged for the city (58; cf. 62 and
67), while Alcibiades argues that although his father per-
formed numerous liturgies he refused to accept any char is,
here gratitude, for his actions ( On the Chariot-team 35; cf.
r 5 and 38). To demonstrate that he recognises the reciproc-
ity of the favour-obligation (charis), Isocrates expresses his
own gratitude (again charis) to his students for what they
have given him in this work at sections 99 and ro6 (to
Timotheus).
The rhetorician claims that he has rendered a favour to
Athens as a whole by his teaching, and thus that he has cre-
ated an obligation on the part of those who benefit from his
service. He can declare that he deserves and receives an hon-
our which is far more expressive of thanks (polloi chari-
87 Ps.-Plutarch (Moralia 837d) informs us that Isocrates charged IO minae

although, it seems, only to his foreign students. See Forbes (1942), p. 20; Blank
(1985) and Gentili (1988), pp. 155-76, on the question of the intellectual's receipt
of pay.
88 Forbes (1942), p. 24, nevertheless thinks that the Athenian stranger's suggestion
that foreign teachers be allowed to teach for pay in the city is directed against
Isocrates (Laws 804c---d).
109
esteran doxan) because individuals have calculated (logi-

zomenoi) and reckoned his profession to be worth far more
than logography or speechwriting for payment (50, cf. 60).
He highlights the liturgic status of his intellectual activity in
order to make the point that he has already paid - even if
metaphorically - the debt which the fictional sycophant
Lysimachus falsely accuses him of owing. His representation
of his teaching as a civic service is his response to the antido-
sis, the process which requires a wealthy citizen to exchange
his property with another who has challenged him for
neglect of civic taxes. 89 His announcement at section 320
that he will 'discharge (kataluso)' his logos, a word which
may denote either a speech or a financial account, reinforces
the idea that rhetoric and its pedagogy are commodified.
The defendant's final plea to the members of the jury to vote
however each 'pleases (chairei)' and wishes subtly reminds
the city of its obligation to Isocrates, who has in his teach-
ing already far exceeded the trierarchy initially laid upon
him by Athens (323): the verb chairei proposes a favourable
vote as a way to return the rhetorician's charis.
The deliberateness of Isocrates' presentation of his teach-
ing as a liturgy in the Antidosis becomes evident when we
consider how he characterises his pedagogy elsewhere. In
other speeches where his status as an Athenian is less of an
issue he prefers to present the teacher-student relationship as
an extension of a friendship (philia) or a guest-host relation-
ship (xenia). In several works he insists that by offering
counsel to certain individuals he is continuing the friendship
which he had with their fathers (cf. Epistle 5.r; Epistle 6.r).
He specifically asks the addressees of Epistle 6 to consider
the epistle as xenia, as a token of guest-friendship (4). We
can compare this text with Memorabilia r.2. 7, where
Xenophon makes Socrates say that the reward for teaching
should be the friendship of one's students. In the prefaces to
To Demonicus and To Nicocles Isocrates characterises the
89
On t~e avT{8ocns, see Michell (1940), pp. 380-1; Davies (1981), pp. 9--10, 76;
Gabnelson (1987); Christ (1990).
I IQ
advice he gives to his addressees as a gift (doron, To

Demonicus 2; dorean, To Nicocles 2). He concludes To
Nicocles with an implicit criticism of the professional
teacher's contract: unlike the presents which cost the recipi-
ent more than the donor this speech enriches the one who
now gains possession of it (54). The point is that, unlike the
liturgy, the gift of the guest-friend does not explicitly con-
struct the identity of the donor as citizen.
It is also worth noting that midway through the Antidosis
Isocrates provides us with a family history which allays any
1
suspicions the reader may have that he is a man of new-
found wealth. He draws attention to the fact that his father
1
spent a large amount of money both in performing benefac-
tions for the city and in educating his son so that he would
achieve prominence and recognition beyond his peers (r6r).
Ancient commentators find the social status of Isocrates'
father deserving of their attention. Ps.-Plutarch and the
author of the Anonymous Vita tell their readers that his
father, Theodorus, performed a liturgy, a choregia or financ-
ing of a chorus.9° They also inform us that Theodorus was a
maker of flutes and hired slave-girls to work for him. This
latter detail is significant for it reveals the belief that no self-
respecting citizen, as Isocrates' father must have been, would
have performed manual labour.9 1
In Isocrates' Athens only the citizen who can look after
himself is able to act in the interests of the state and in this
sense to be a true democrat (cf. On the Peace 129). This
point is briefly reiterated in the Panathenaicus, where
Isocrates emphasises that he lacks neither the amenities of
life nor the moderate things (ton metrion) desired by any
sensible individual (7): euporia and ta metria belong to the
vocabulary of the moderate man, the individual who is
sophron because he is an apragmon.
9° See Ps.-Plutarch 836e and Anonymous Life 1-3.

91 Ste-Croix (1981), p. 181. In notable contradistinction, the comic tradition prefers
to present Isocrates as a 'flute-borer (cxvr..oTpvnris)'.
II I
VIII
Modern readers and the biographical traditions have taken
at face value Isocrates' claims that he lacks the ability to
speak before an audience and to participate in civic life. In
contrast, in this chapter, I have argued that particular
ethopoeic conventions underlie this aspect of his self-depic-
tion: whether or not he actually spoke in public is not the
issue in this context. In the fourth century 'voice' or lack of
'voice' is invested with certain social and political signifi-
cances. Instead of regarding Isocrates as an anomaly for not
participating in civic life, we need to recognise that he delib-
erately distances himself from a democratic Athens in which
civic and political life is above all defined by public and oral
performance of discourse. He constructs his identity against
the alleged background of the verbal and political aggres-
siveness of the 'new politicians' of the fifth century.
Refraining from the oral performance of discourse produces
a civic persona for the author by allying him with what he
wants his readers to see as the conservative democrat's
ideals of moderation and political responsibility.
112
4
ISOCRA TES IN HIS OWN WRITE
Two forms of discourse coexisted and were in distribution and constant

competition. The one was initially and predominantly political, even when
not directly addressing public matters, for its main domain of prolifera-
tion was the public space. The other's relation to the political sphere is
less clear. It made the discursive 'capital' accessible to the many, but in its
moment of conception it was withdrawn from the public deep into the
private domain.
Ophir 1
I
In the previous chapter I showed how Isocrates' 'small
voice' fashions a political identity for him. It enables him to
articulate a rejection of public oratory and to adopt a stance
of apragmosune which serves to distinguish him from the
chattering and loud-mouthed 'new politicians'. 2 In this chap-
ter I want to explore the way in which Isocrates extends the
'small voice' to his construction of the written word in an
attempt to valorise this as the privileged medium of political
activity. My claim will be that he paradoxically valorises
writing by recharacterising the features which other authors
deem to be its weaknesses and failings as its strengths. I sug-
gest that he takes upon himself the defence of writing as a
means of simultaneously establishing an identity in relation
both to one's own citizens and to those of other states: he
creates for himself a political position both in the Athens
which he inhabits and in Greece as a whole.
1
Ophir (1991), p. 163.
2
This is the interpretation offered by Ehrenberg (1947), Adkins (1976) and Carter
(1986), amongst others. Allison (1979), however, argues that these terms do not
denote contraries so much as extreme departures from an ideal of moderate par-
ticipation in the city-state.
113
!SOCRATES IN HIS OWN WRITE
II
Isocrates is the ancient author who more than any other
establishes writing as a medium of political expression and
activity. He declares himself a writer of 'political discourse',
that is of speeches concerned with the welfare and security
of Athens and Greece, at Antidosis 45-6 and Panathenaicus
r-2 (see chapter r). At Epistle 6.8-9 he uses the production
of a literary text as a parallel instance of a common general
principle of political action (cf. pragmata), namely how to
plan when governing a state. He advises the new rulers of
Pherae to plan their actions as if they were composing a
speech. Just as rhetoricians must consider the aim of their
speech as a whole, the aim of each of its individual parts,
and the kinds of argument that will accomplish these aims,
so the children of Jason must act with regard to affairs of
state.3 In these passages Isocrates most overtly suggests that
writing has a political identity and function.
What cannot be overstated is the radicalism of Isocrates'
discourse, due to the fact that the written word is charac-
terised by 'newness'. Writing is invented. Aeschylus'
Prometheus Bound (459-62), Gorgias' Palamedes (30) and
Plato's Phaedrus (274dr-2) provide us with narratives
regarding the invention of writing - the latter two are admit-
tedly extremely problematic ones. Both these latter texts
either suggest or insist that writing was invente<l'along with
games and is itself a sort of game (paidia) and therefore not
suited to serious matters. According to Herodotus' story of
the Lydian famine (r.94.3-4), the purpose of a game is to
waste time and to distract one's attention from more press-
ing issues. Alcidamas alludes to the game-like nature of
writing when in On the Sophists he states that writing con-
sumes an author's time because it tends to involve gathering
material and arguments from the works of other writers (4,
8). Despite the extra effort spent on composition, the written
text is generally less effective than the spoken text because
3 Several scholars argue that ideai denotes both the content and style of rhetoric:
Taylor (1911), pp. 201-12; Schlatter (1972) and Gaines (1990).
I 14
once written it cannot adapt itself to respond to the audi-

ence's disposition at particular moments (9-10). In addition,
because a speechwriter or logographer has prepared in
advance what he will say, he will be 'more voiceless (cf.
aphonoteron)' than a layman if he is compelled to speak off
the cuff ( On the Sophists I 5).
Part of the newness of writing lies in the fact that it is one
of the tools of the sycophantic litigant or new politician.
Contemporary authors provide evidence for the assimilation
of writing, particularly as the art of the logographer or pro-
fessional text-writer, to the unsavoury politics of the orator.
In their works they reflect the common perception of logog-
raphers, that is professional ghostwriters, as individuals who
are paid to engineer the careers of the rhetores by writing for
them the speeches that would further their ambitions. They
show the logographers to be political agents in an Athens
which places a premium on the ability to speak in public,
and identify their writing as the litigation which they help to
script.4 Accordingly, Isocrates has to concede that, while
oral speech was first and foremost the medium of the oppor-
tunistic new politics, writing and the skill of the literary
artist had a significant part to play in supporting such activ-
ity. At section 25 of To Philip he alludes to the common
perception that literary texts are produced primarily for dis-
play and for profit, while at section 29 of the same work he
pleads with the reader to put aside 'his prejudices against the
sophists and read speeches', in order to gain acceptance of
his own writing.s
In Plato's Phaedrus the dialogue's namesake is made to
declare that no self-respecting civic figure would be caught
leaving written texts behind him when he has died (Phaedrus
257d4-9). This statement implies that to be seen to be an
author of written speeches is to allow oneself to be charac-
terised in a negative manner. Dinarchus (5.3) and Aeschines
4 See the introduction in Carey and Reid (1985), pp. 13-18, and Lavency (1964),
pp. 36ff.
s See the comments of Hudson-Williams (1951), pp. 68-9, who regards oral com-
position as the privileged mode of text production.
115
(3.172; cf. 2. 165-7) call Demosthenes a 'logographer' in an

attempt to discredit him by drawing attention to his use of
the lawcourts and assemblies to achieve influence. 6 Another
orator, Demades, adamantly (and, of course, ironically in
the light of his authorship of speeches) denies practising the
art of logography in order to distance himself from
Demosthenes and his mercenary career (Demades 9). 7
The image of the 'logographer' is such a negative and
powerful one that it threatens to attach itself to anyone who
has anything to do with writing. Accordingly, Isocrates has
to work even harder elsewhere to distance this stereotype of
the writer from himself and to ensure that his discourse is
not seen to be appropriated by the new politics and the
ambitious oratory of the lawcourts and Assembly. When he
elects to present writing as an aspect of his apragmosune, the
quietism that is the only respectable stance for the citizen in
Athens after the oligarchies of 411-1 o and 404, 8 the rhetori-
cian goes to some length to repudiate any links between his
work and dicanic composition in particular. At Against the
Sophists 19 Isocrates criticises those who promise to teach
forensic process (dikazesthai). The rhetorician states that the
verb which denotes such activity is the most unpleasant of
words. According to him, dikazesthai is a term of abuse and
a word which the enemies of this activity, i.e. Isocrates him-
self, rather than its proponents, might be expected to use (cf.
19).9 We saw that in the analysis of genres at Antidosis 46
and Panathenaicus 1-2 Isocrates depicts himself as rejecting
the petty and private quarrels of the lawcourts, while at
Panegyricus 11 he criticises others who mistakenly judge
forensic oratory to be the mode of writing to which they
must aspire.
Isocrates is most adamant about denying that he is either I
6
Jones (1957), p. 128.
7 Jones (1957), p. 128.
8
Miller (1983), especially p. 215, argues that Greek authors present writing as
embodying the principle of intellectual leisure or crxo?lfithrough literary digres-
sion which dramatises the time available to the writer. See the close analysis of
this passage in Race (1978).
9 8 TWV q:,6ovovvTWVEpyov rjv AEYEIV.
116
a logographer or a habitual litigant in the Antidosis, perhaps

because, as a defence, this speech lays him open to such
labelling. At section 2 of this work he takes issue with the
individuals who 'blaspheme' against his profession by calling
it dikographia. He suggests that this appellation is unsuit-
able, just as it is inappropriate to call Pheidias, the famous
sculptor, a 'doll-maker', or to denote the art of Zeuxis and
Parrhasius as sign-painting. In section 36 and following of
the same work he claims as part of his self-representation
that he has not had anything at all to do with forensic ora-
tory (at least until the composition of the Antidosis). At
Antidosis 41 he uses his pedagogical persona to exclude the
possibility that he has ever engaged in this mercenary activ-
ity. He argues that those who prepare speeches for litigants
are not the sort of people to attract pupils. So, if the reader
accepts his self-portrayal here as the teacher par excellence
of Athens and Greece, then he or she cannot perceive him to
have been a writer of speeches for the lawcourts. In section
225 of the same speech he makes a point of asserting that,
even in teaching, he is in no way party to the new politics,
for his students do not learn from him how to be workers of
trouble (kakopragmones) or sycophants (sukophantai).
This recusatio of dicanic activity and the form of writing
connected with it explains why Isocrates cannot refer to the
six court speeches in his later works and thus admit having
written them ( Concerning the Chariot-team, Trapeziticus,
Against Callimaclzus, Aegineticus, Against Lochites, Against
Euthynus). Ignoring the ethopoeic constraints upon
Isocrates, Dover prefers to call into question the authenticity
of these works. This critic works with a thesis which holds
that Athenian rhetoricians had little control in the publica-
tion process of the speeches that have now come down to
us. 10 In applying this thesis to the Isocratean corpus Dover
cites evidence of a debate over the integrity of this author's
legal texts that took place in Antiquity and is partially pre-
served in the eighteenth chapter of Dionysius' essay on
rn In contrast to Dover ( r 968), see Usher ( r 976).
I 17
Isocrates. 11 Dover notes that in his Isocrates Dionysius

reports Aphareus as saying that Isocrates composed no
forensic texts at all; Aristotle as observing that there were
numerous 'bundles' of his forensic speeches lying in the
bookstalls (fragment 140); and Cephisodotus insisting in his
Rebuttals to Aristotle that he must have written at least a
few forensic texts for the lawcourts. In citing this text as a
basis for questioning the authorship of the court speeches
ascribed to Isocrates, Dover fails to recognise the different
motivations behind each of the statements recorded in it.
Aphareus, Isocrates' adopted son and supporter, upholds
Isocrates' anti-forensic persona in an effort to maintain his
good reputation; while Aristotle, writing as a contemporary
and rival of Isocrates, insists on his identity as a logogra-
pher when he testifies to 'bundles' of speeches. The title of
Cephisodotus' work suggests that Aristotle, rather than
Isocrates, is the main target of the author's invective.
In distinguishing himself from the logographer, and so in
characterising himself as a quietist, Isocrates criticises other
individuals who write, even if they do not do so for the law-
courts. Lentz suggests that logopoios, 'word-maker', is a
neutral term in the fourth century. 12 The description of the
prose writer as logopoios might even be perceived to be a
strategy for associating prose with poetry, the established
and respectable discourse (cf. Evagoras 8). Yet Isocrates uses
logopoios or a close cognate on several occasions in his cor-
pus, r3 and on every occasion but one the term is deployed in
an unmistakably dismissive fashion (i.e. logon poietas,
Against the Sophists 15). At Busiris 37-8 he declares the
logopoioi responsible for creating false stories about Busiris
11
Dover (1968), pp. 14-15, 22, and 160. This passage is important for Dover
because he notes that it establishes the Isocratean authorship of the Trapeziticus
and thus suggests that T]paml; ... , which occurs at Corpus Lysiacum F (verso
line 25), need not be the speech we know as Isocratcs' speech against the banker
Pasio.
12
Lentz (1982), p. 63, argues that AoyoTT016, is a neutral term for prose writers on
the basis of Herodotus 2.134.3; Dinarchus 1.35; Aeschines 1.94, 3.173;
Demosthenes 19.250, 58.19; Aristotle Rhetoric 1408a34; and Isocrates To Philip
75.
3
' Busiris 37; To Philip 75 and 109; Antidosis 136 and 137; Against the Sophists 15.
118
and for imputing immoral deeds to the heroes in general. At

section 109 of To Philip, logopoioi denotes the prose encomi-
asts who have failed to diversify their praise of Heracles. In
the three other passages the logopoioi resemble or are identi-
fied with the busybody orators and demagogic politicians.
At Antidosis r 36 'those able to make speeches (logopoiein) in
public gatherings' are grouped with the 'orators' and indi-
viduals who claim to 'know everything'. Such men are
blamed for capturing the attention of the Athenian general
public and turning them against noble individuals such as
the general Timotheus. The words hoi logopoiountes at To
Philip 75 describe prose writers who wish bad things for
Greece. Speaking nonsense (phluarountes), they resemble the
individuals of Antidosis r 36-7 who boast that they know all
things.
III
For classical Greek authors, the most objectionable thing
about writing is not that it might be an element of the new
politics but that it does away with the author. For
Alcidamas, the lack of flexibility demonstrated by the writ-
ten text is due to the fact that, unlike the spoken word, it
does not have its author at hand to alter his speech to suit
present circumstances through extemporary composition (5).
In a particularly celebrated and notorious passage of the
Phaedrus Plato takes up the critique produced by
Alcidamas. He presents the literary text as one which is ren-
dered helpless by the loss of its 'father (tou patros)'
(275e3-5). The author is not there to answer any questions
raised by the text's audience or to assert ownership over his
work. Isocrates similarly acknowledges that the written
work must endure the absence of the author who might oth-
erwise help it. At To Philip 25-7 he offers the following
description of a literary text:
I do not fail to recognise the extent to which spoken speeches are more
effective at persuasion than read ones, nor that all assume the former are
uttered on important and pressing matters while the latter are written for
119
display and profit. This is a reasonable observation. When a speech is

deprived of the speaker's reputation, his voice, the variations in rhetorical
delivery, and moreover, of timely and serious involvement in the matter at
hand, and there is nothing to contribute to its case or to support persua-
sion, and it is bereft and stripped of all these things I have mentioned and
someone reads it unpersuasively and without depicting any character, as if
he were reeling off a list, it is not surprising, I think, that it seems a poor
speech to the listeners. And these things might harm the present speech
and make it appear less impressive. 14
Isocrates begins with the conventional observation that

writing may be less persuasive than spoken speech. This is
because it does not have someone to speak it and to speak
for it. Writing is deprived of any personal authority a
speaker might bring to it, his voice, and his gestures and
responses (26), in short, the whole rhetorical performance.
In the absence of a speaker, written works also forfeit the
chance to exploit the kairoi, the opportune moments that
unexpectedly arise and guarantee the success of a perfor-
mance or of an argument (cf. e.g. Against the Sophists 13
and 16). For this reason, people assume that they should use
oral speeches when they are dealing with important, pressing
concerns (25). Unlike Alcidamas and Plato, however, he
does not intend ultimately to call into question the authority
of writing. He refers to current prejudices against writing
but he does so in order to anticipate and defuse the criti-
cisms that may be brought against the written text, above all
the logos politikos which he produces. His aim, I argue, is to
create for writing a more acceptable image, one which
marks a radical departure from that given to it by his prede-
cessors and contemporaries.
4
' oo-ov 6iaq,epovo-t Twv :.\6ywv EIS To -rrEi6E1v
KaiT01 µ' ov :.\E:.\Tj6Ev oi :.\EyoµEvo1Twv
avay1yvwo-Koµevwv, ov6' OTI TIOVTESVTIEIATjq>ao-t TOVS µEv TIEpi o--rrov6aiwv
-rrpayµaTWV Kai KaTETIEty6vTWV f)TjTOpEVE0"6at,
TOVSOE-rrpos ETIJOEl~IV Kai -rrpos ep-
yo:.\a~{av yEypaq,6m. Kai Tal'.h' OVKaMyws eyvwKao-1v· em16av yap 6 Myos
OTIOO-TEpTj6fi T,iS TE 66~ris T,iS TOVAEYOVTOS Kai T,iS q,wvfis Kai TWV µETa~o:.\wv
TWV EVTats f)TjTOpElmsyiyvoµevwv, ETIOETWV Katpwv Kai TfiS o--rrov6fis T,iS mpi
TT]V-rrpa~tv, Kai µTjOEV~ TO o-vvaywv1~6µEVOVKai o-vµmt6ov, a:.\:.\a TWV µEv
-rrpoEtpriµevwvCXTIOVTWV epriµos YEVTjTatKai yvµv6s ' avay1yvwO-KTjOE TIS a\JTOV
am6avws Kai µTjOEV ~eosevo-riµmv6µEvosa:.\;\' WO-TIEPa-rrap16µwv, EIKOTWS,oiµm,
q,av:.\os eTvm COKEiTOIS OKOVOVO"IV, CXTIEpKai TOV v0v ETIIOEIKVVµEvov µa:.\10-T'av
~:.\a41m Kai q,avMTEpov q,aiveo-6m -rro1tjo-E1Ev.
120
Isocrates' description of writing at To Philip 25-7 is

extremely suggestive. I venture that he has assimilated to his
own self-characterisation the portrayal of the written word,
lending his persona to a discourse that is supposedly
deprived of its author. Like Isocrates, whose mikrophonia
robs him of his voice, writing is deprived of a public speak-
ing voice. Writing is voiceless, 'bereft (eremos)' of the ora-
tor's voice (phone), and not the least because its author is
unable to speak in public. The adjective 'bereft' or eremos is
significant. It evokes ereme dike, the technical phrase which
denotes a case compromised by the failure of one of the liti-
gants, usually the defendant, to appear in person. Antiphon
uses the term to describe a trial which proceeds by default
when one of the parties involved does not turn up on at least
two different occasions (cf. Tetralogy r.r.8 and Herodes 13).
Later Lysias has the speaker of Oration 29 use the adjective
eremoteros to express his surprise at the failure of the
accusers to turn up and support their case against him
(29. r ), while the speaker of Demosthenes 2 r employs similar
phraseology in referring to the unadvocated litigation before
him (2r.87). Similarly, Thucydides tells us that Alcibiades
was sentenced to death in a trial that took place in his
absence (cf. erernei dikei, 6.6r.7). At Plato Apology r8c7-8,
Socrates declares that in the past his accusers have brought
charges against him which he has not felt the need to
answer: 'they made an accusation without (cf. eremen) any-
one responding to it at all' .1 s
Isocrates' characterisation of the written text as a logos
eremos emphatically reinforces his self-portraiture as an
individual who refuses to engage in public oratory and as
someone who is disassociated from the politics of the popu-
lar demagogue. In his portrayal, the written word is pre-
sented in the image of the responsible citizen, namely him-
self. But he goes beyond this to prove wrong the perception
that writing must be a weak or ineffective discourse as a
result of being deprived of its author's voice and bodily
!5 chexvws eptjµ17v KaT17yopovvTEScrrroi\oyovµevov ov6ev6s.
121
presence. Writing may be voiceless, but his legitimation of

the 'small voice' in the context of the construction of his
own civic identity turns on its head the charge that the
unadvocated speech is necessarily a disadvantaged text. In
fact, he proceeds to demonstrate that the non-presence of
the author or orator is ultimately what makes writing politi-
cally more effective than oral speech. He turns the apparent
disadvantage of both his own lack of voice and that of the
written text to his distinct advantage.
One text where the strength of voicelessness becomes
apparent is Epistle r. The letter commences by stressing the
fact that Isocrates cannot be present to deliver the contents
of his text in person. He explains to his audience that age
prevents him from coming to speak to Dionysius in person
(r; cf. Epistle 6.r). He then goes on to state that writing to
Dionysius should put him at a disadvantage with respect to
the royal flatterers who populate the tyrant's court:
I know that when men try to give advice, it is better to come in person
than to write a letter, not only because it is easier to address the same
matters face to face than to communicate by a missive nor because every-
one has greater faith in spoken than in written words, listening to the for-
mer as practical advice and the latter as if it were a poem. In addition to
these things, in the case of personal exchanges, if anything said is not
understood or believed, the one who utters the speech may defend his
words by being present in both cases, while if such a thing happens in the
case of a letter or writing, there is no one to put the matter right. For
when the author is absent, there is no one to defend it.
(2-3)16
Isocrates begins by observing that oral discourse is more

effective at persuading an audience than written discourse
because the individuals can ensure that they choose the most
16
OI8a µev ovv OTI TOIS crvµ~OV/\EVEIV emxe1povcr1 TTO/\V81mpepe1µ17 010'.ypaµµchwv
TTOIEICJ0at
T17vCJVVOVCJiav a/\/\' CTVTOVS
TT/\T]CJIO'.CJCTVTCTS,
ov µ6vov OTI TTEplTWVaVTWV
TTpayµchwv pc;rov &v TIS TTapwv TTpos TTap6VTa <ppO:CJEIEV 17 81' ETTICJTO/\l7S
OT]/\W-
CJEIEV,
ova' OTI TTO'.VTES
TOIS/\Eyoµevo1s µo:/\/\OV17TOISyeypaµµevo1s TTICJTEVOVCJI,Kal
TWVµev ws EICJT]yT]µO'.TWV, TWV8' ws TTOIT]µ<hwvTTOIOVVTat T17v&Kp6acr1v. ETI OE
TTpos TOVTOIS EVµev Tais CJVVOVCJ!a!S17vayvori01j TI TWV/\Eyoµevwv 17µ17TTICJTEV01j,
TTapwv 6 TOV Myov OIE~IWVaµ<pOTepo1sTOVTOISETT17µvvev,EV OE TOIS ETTICJTE/\-
/\Oµevo1sKal yeypaµµevo1s T)VTI crvµ~lj TOIOVTOV, OVKECJTIV6 81op6wcrwv; CTTTOVTOS
yap TOVyp6:41avTOSEpT]µaTOV~ori617CJOVTOS ECJTIV,
122
ISOCRATES IN HIS OWN WRITE
appropriate moments to address their hearer and tailor what

they have to say to the latter's response. Accordingly, the
court flatterers and toadies whom the rhetorician mentions
as enjoying the company of the tyrant Dionysius (cf. 4) seem
to enjoy an advantage over Isocrates, who must write to the
ruler because of his old age. These individuals have a greater
likelihood of addressing the Syracusan leader at the oppor-
tune time, which the rhetorician hopes to have met in writ-
ing his epistle, cf. 'how could any opportunity be finer than
the one which now presents itself to you?' (8). 17
But as a whole, Epistle r reveals the vulnerability of the
court flatterers. The rhetorician calls into question the
capacity of Dionysius' courtiers to offer him useful advice.
According to the author, these individuals who surround the
tyrant do not have the qualifications which will enable them
to counsel well. This is because they have never assumed any
of the roles, 'student (mathetes) .. .listener (akroates) .. .inven-
tor (heuretes)' (4), which Isocrates mentions as allowing
them to rehearse their talents as advisers and which he con-
trasts with the more obviously political activities he dis-
misses at the end of the letter; cf. 'being a demagogue
(demegoron) ... being a general (strategon) ... being a potentate
(dunastes on)' (9; cf. Epistle 8.ro). The flatterers have
assumed the positions and a posture of deference which they
think will advance their social standing, but in doing so,
they have neglected the intellectual, quietistic activities that
more effectively legitimate them in the eyes of a post-
Periclean Athenian like Isocrates. The flatterer is cast as
someone who possesses a short-sighted overeagerness for
power and for influence in the intimate context of the
tyrant's court.
Isocrates presents Epistle r as being emphatically 'bereft'
of its author (3); he speaks of his absence (erema) from his
text. The word erema, of course, characterises Epistle r, by
analogy with the unadvocated legal text, as the speech which
does not have someone at hand to assist its case by ensuring
1 7 TTWSavm:xpaTTE0-01
Ka/1/\IWVKatpos TOV vvv0-01TTap6VTos;
123
that it is received in a favourable manner. Yet, if the physi-

cal presence of the court advisers does not assist their cause,
it is also the case that Isocrates' separation from his letter
does not adversely affect his ability to influence Dionysius.
He c·onstructs his relationship with the Syracusan tyrant on
the basis of the roles mentioned in section 4 of the letter,
since, as he elsewhere observes (cf. To Philip I and To Philip
82 18), intellect and education provide an individual with
authority superior to mere force (bia). At section 5
Dionysius is described as 'a listener to the composition (sun-
grammatos akroates)'. 'Listener (akroates)' may seem an
inappropriate word to use in the light of the emphasis on
Epistle I as a literary text, unless one recognises that it
recalls the occurrence of akroates and its synonym, mathetes,
in the previous paragraph. Both are conventional terms
employed in denoting a 'student' in Antiquity, i.e. someone
who places himself under the authority of a teacher (cf.
Busiris 47). 19 It is in this sense that Dionysius is to 'hear'
Isocrates rather than the chattering sycophants with their
poor advice. The medium of the literary epistle makes this
possible, creating a 'voice' and presence for the teacher-
adviser which is far more authoritative than those the spo-
ken word could afford. Indeed, Isocrates writes of his letter
'creating a presence (cf. ten sunousian, 2)': the noun sunousia
and its cognate words denote both 'presence' and the pupil-
teacher relationship. 20
Isocrates' last major work, the Panathenaicus, also makes
the point that the physical absence of the author need not
render a text vulnerable or less persuasive than a spoken
speech. Indeed, of all the author's works, the Panathenaicus
is the most explicit about, and the least apologetic for, the
fact that it is written. Throughout the work and particularly
near the end of it, Isocrates reminds his audience that they
18
He employs the same argument in the Antidosis to explain why Timotheus is
such a successful general despite his slight build (II5, n8 and To Demonicus 6).
19
See Schenkeveld (1992) for the sense of the verb 6:Kovw and Appendix 1.
20
E.g. Tovs avv6VTas, Against the sophists 4; Tovs avveivai µ01 !3ovAoµevovs,
Antidosis 193; Tovs crvv6vTas 17µiv, Antidosis 199; Helen 5; Plato Gorgias 515b2;
Epistle 2 310e1, e8, 311a3, d4, d7, 315a4.
124
are reading a literary text. At section 2 3 I, he observes that

he has dictated an earlier portion of the Panathenaicus to a
slave for publication ahd that this has been written (en ...
gegraphos) in a fine and just manner about the city of
Athens (231). This sense of the Panathenaicus as a written
composition is reinforced when Isocrates debates with him-
self what to do with the speech. He suggests that the writing
of the speech was an ordeal. He discloses that he agonised
over whether he should 'erase' or 'burn' his creation (232),
or whether he should have it distributed to a selected audi-
ence, as one can only do with a literary text (233; cf. 262).
After section 267, he employs a self-referential vocabulary
which insists that we regard the Panathenaicus as a literary
work, perhaps as a literary artefact. He engages in a narra-
tive on the production of the current speech, leaving the
reader with an image of it as an emphatically written text. 21
Although this depiction of the Panathenaicus may appear
to reveal a lack of confidence on the author's part, there is
nevertheless a deliberateness about it. Isocrates tells us that
the speech is a work of his extreme old age. He informs us
that he began it when he was ninety-four (3) and did not
finish it until he was at least ninety-seven, after suffering a
terrible disease that nearly killed him (267-8). These details
suggest that the Panathenaicus is a speech which implicitly
indicates its awareness of the fact that it will have to do
without the help of its author, since the end of his life is
imminent. It sets out accordingly to demonstrate that a text
has a validity which can exist independently of the individ-
ual who created it. In fact, the Panathenaicus even suggests
that authorial presence may actually affect its capacity to
communicate and persuade. The point is made in the
encounter that Isocrates narrates between himself and the
former student who has earlier described his discourse as
logos amphibolos (cf. 240 ). After this characterisation of his
prose, the erstwhile pupil offers an evaluation and character-
isation of his teacher's writing in section 246:
21 Cf. f\OTJOETWV 17µ1crewvyeypaµµevwv (267); TO µepos TOVMyov TO yeypaµµevov
(268); TCXyeypaµµeva (269); ypaqlElv... Myov (270).
125
But for those reading casually it will seem simple and easy enough to
comprehend, but for those going through it painstakingly and trying to
perceive what has escaped the attention of c;Jhers, it will appear difficult,
hard to understand, full of a great deal of research and philosophy and
packed with all sorts of complexity and fiction, not of the kind accus-
tomed to harm one's fellow citizens with malice but of the kind able to
benefit or delight the hearers with play ... 22
The interlocutor assumes a role which makes him an inter-

preter not just of Isocrates' writing but also of his intention-
ality. He sees himself as being invited to supplement his for-
mer teacher's voice. He informs the reader that Isocratean
writing is frequently not what it initially appears to be. To
careless and matter-of-fact readers, the rhetorician's work
seems simple and easy to understand. To careful and intelli-
gent readers, however, it is virtually unreadable. To this lat-
ter audience, the work reveals its difficulty and its complex-
ity, exhibiting the author's research (historia), philosophy
(philosophia), variety (poikilia) and fiction (pseudologia). 2 3
Critics often refer to or cite this passage, assuming that it
offers a programmatic statement for Isocratean writing.
Nevertheless, in the following section of the work, the
interlocutor is made to undermine his assessment of
Isocratean writing. What he says, whether consciously or
not, implies next that the rhetorician's texts are not to be
spoken for, particularly by someone other than the author.
In section 247, the student declares that, if he were to inter-
pret the present text for an ignorant audience, he would ren-
der (ton logon ... poiein) the work eremon. 2 4 The vocabulary
22
a"A"AaTOIS µev pc;,:6vµc.05avay1yvc.0crKOVO"JV0:1TAOVVeTvat 86~oVTa Kai p6:81ov KaTa-
µa6ei'v, TOIS 8' aKpti3ws 81e~tOVO"\V KaTt8EJV8 TOVS O:AAOVS
a\JTOV,Kai 1TEtpc.0µevo1s
AEATJ6ev, xa"Ae1rovcpavovµevov Kai 8vcrKaTaµ6:6TJTOV Kai 1ro"A"Afjs1,ev lcrTopias ye-
µovTa Kai cp1"Aocrocpias, 1ravT08a1rfjs 8e µecrTov 1ro1K1"Aias
Kai \f/Ev8o"Aoyias,ov Tfjs
el61crµEVTJSµETa KaKias i3A0:1TTEIV TOVS crvµTIOAITEVoµevovs,a"A"AaTfjs 8vvaµEVTJS
i\ 'rep1re1vTovs aKovovTas.
µETa 1ra1810:s c.0cpe"Ae1v
23
Cf. Panathenaicus 2, where Isocrates announces his use of numerous
enthymemes (1ro"A"Awv antitheses {ovK 6"Aiyc.0vf:f OVTt6foec.0v)
µev ev6VµTJµO:Tc.0v),
and parisoses (1rap1crc.0crec.0v).
The references to antitheses and to parisoses sug-
gest that at the syntactical level Isocrates wants to be viewed as working within
the Gorgianic tradition.
24 ETIIO"TT]µTJV
yap TOISOUKel86cr1vevepyai';6µevov EpTjµOVTOVMyov µe 1TOIE\V Kai Tfjs
Ttµfjs 6:1rocrTepdv Tfjs y1yvoµevTJs avavT0 816: Tovs 1rovovvTa5 Kai 1rpayµma
crcpicrtvaVTOJS1rapexoVTa5.
126
!SOCRATES JN HIS OWN WRITE
of this passage is extremely suggestive. Isocrates undermines

his former student's attempt to impose a reading on the
work for others: each member of the audience is to be given
the opportunity to work out a reading for himself. If the
interlocutor were to assist the text by making explicit what
he thinks to be its meaning for Isocrates' less talented read-
ers, he would actually end up by compromising the author-
ity of the speech. He would render the work similar to the
legal document which does not have someone to present its
case (cf. eremon). By speaking for the author and his text,
the interlocutor makes the Panathenaicus more vulnerable
than if it had no one to speak for it. His own description of
his exegetical role leads to the conclusion that a literary text
which lacks someone to speak for it is not necessarily handi-
capped or unable to assert authorial control.
IV
The identity of author most immediately defines Isocrates'
relationship to his own city-state, Athens, for the voiceless
nature of writing is presented as the basis of a revisionary
politics of responsibility to the city. But writing also helps to
construct an identity for Isocrates which has a validity
beyond the boundaries of his own polis, perhaps creating for
him a 'national' identity. At several points in his corpus, he
indicates that his works are to be understood as being sent
out or even published throughout the Greek-speaking and
-reading world. In the longer works the verb diadidonai - cf.
Evagoras 74 (diadothentas), Antidosis 193 (cf. diedoka) and
Panathenaicus 233 (diadoteos) - suggests that Isocrates
wants his reader to perceive his texts as being published.
Turner takes the occurrence of diadidonai and its related
forms to be evidence that the author's works were circulated
in multiple copies throughout the Greek-speaking world. 25
(Mathieu, in the same vein, conceives of even a patently
Athenian work like the Panegyricus being published in
2
s Turner (1951), p. 19.
127
ISO CR A TES IN HIS OWN WRITE
numerous copies at the moment (kairos) of the Olympian

festival. 26) But it is the letters which especially suggest that
writing offers Isocrates the opportunity to communicate
with other Greek states. The Epistle to Dionysius I, for
instance, begins with its author stating that a letter is the
most convenient way in which he can advise the Syracusan
tyrant (r). Sandys takes this passage as evidence that
because the rhetorician was too old to undertake travel, he
sent his views on government and politics to the rulers of his
age.21
Outside Athens the writer's political identity cannot be
entirely defined and controlled by the history of his own
city-state. If the self which Isocrates acquires through being
a literary figure at Athens is that of the responsible citizen,
the identity he establishes for himself outside Athens is
above all that of the adviser and counsellor. The sophist or
professional teacher provides an obvious model of identity
for Isocrates as a Greek author providing advice to audi-
ences in various states. The sophist was an individual who
travelled from city to city dispensing his knowledge to those
who could afford to pay for it: the paradigmatic sophist is
perhaps Herodotus' Solon, who arrives at the court of
Croesus to fill the role of 'wise adviser' after writing the laws
of Athens (Histories r.29ff.).
The sophist's 'outlook', as Guthrie suggests, was panhel-
lenic as a result of his mobility. 28 It may not be a coinci-
dence that Isocrates seems to express a panhellenic ideology
in a number of his works. In Epistle 8, he asks to be consid-
ered an able 'counsellor (sumboulos) and ally' for the
Mytilenian cause despite lacking oratorical ability and expe-
rience (7). His authority, he declares, lies in his considerable
experience in composing works concerned with the 'freedom
and autonomy of Greece' 29 rather than in a career in public
speaking. (In this Isocrates differs from Demosthenes, who
26
Mathieu (1925), p. 66.
27
Sandys (1872), p. xiii.
28
Guthrie (1971), p. 44.
29
v-rrepTr\S eAev0eplasKai Tr\S avTovoµ/as Tr\S Twv 'EMrivwv.
128
seems to regard being a sumboulos as contingent upon being

a rhetor ( On the Crown 212). ) In Epistle 8 he refers to prior
works which as a whole or in part advocate the panhellenic
ideal of Greek unity achieved through war against the bar-
barians. Elsewhere he says that he devotes himself to writing
political discourses which ostensibly aim to revive panhel-
lenic idealism (Antidosis 76-7) and benefit Athens and the
rest of Greece (Panathenaicus 2; cf. Epistle 9. 14, 17, 19).
Even if one argues that, for Isocrates, publication takes
the place of the sophist's itinerant passage and (as we saw in
the previous chapter) gratitude replaces payment, I propose
that it is difficult to see him as just or simply a sophist who
writes. I suggest that, as an Athenian author invoking what
appears to be a panhellenic ideology, he is caught up in a
complicated tension that exists in being both Athenian and
Greek. However, for him, just as being a quietist is in the
end more important than being able to speak in public,
being Athenian ultimately takes precedence over and
eclipses being Greek. We perceive that the written word
becomes a strategic means of articulating less a panhellenic
ideal than a particular hegemonic ideology whereby Athens
and her citizens enjoy the prerogative of defining Greek
identity. Only in this context, it seems, can explicit ambition
escape the charge of being polupragmon in the Isocratean
corpus.
V
To underscore the priority of civic ideology and status even,
or perhaps especially, in an apparently panhellenic context, I
want to consider four passages in the Isocratean corpus
where nationalism is implicitly subverted by a discourse
biased towards Athens. These are the excursuses on Heracles
at To Philip 109-15, on Theseus at Helen 29-37, on
Timotheus at Antidosis 107-39 and on Agamemnon at
Panathenaicus 74-87, which will receive a more extended
consideration at the end of this chapter.
The first three passages present us with individuals who
129
seem at least at first glance to be quintessential panhellenic

heroes, figures whose actions can be regarded as anticipating
a strengthened sense of Greek identity and what could be
the conquest of the Persian barbarian by the present-day
Hellenic states. In To Philip Heracles is the mythical para-
digm who demonstrates to Philip of Macedon that a unified
military venture can both succeed and bring fame to the
individual who undertakes such a venture. 30 Isocrates con-
centrates on the hero's success at reconciling the Greek cities
to one another,3 1 implying that this is the reason for the
hero's swift conquest of Troy (II 1-12). In the Helen, a work
which ostensibly deals with the panhellenic event par excel-
lence, the Trojan War (67),32 he compares Theseus, the
legendary founder of Athens, favourably with Heracles, the
quintessential panhellenic hero of To Philip. At section 24 of
the speech he emphasises the 'nationalism' of Theseus'
achievements. He draws attention to the Athenian hero's
role in accomplishing deeds which were particularly signifi-
cant for defining the Greeks as such rather than as members
of individual city-states and in assuming risks which prove
to be of greater relevance to them as a whole. Sections
107-39 of the Antidosis seem to portray the Athenian
general Timotheus as a contemporary figure who can enact
the panhellenic ideal. Timotheus' military and diplomatic
successes are presented as being able to draw the Greeks
together for the sake of a venture against a common enemy.
He commands unity of mind and purpose (homonoia) from
the Hellenic states, and furthermore he shows himself able
to act without harming the interests of any of the Greek
cities (121).
But in each of these three passages Isocrates qualifies the
apparent panhellenism to such an extent that these so-called
'digressions' can be reread as articulations of Athenian
ideology. Right after the encomium of Heracles in To Philip
he cites the contemporary example of Jason of Pherae,
3° Cf. Hartog (1988), p. 323.
)I 8tai\Aa~as 'TCXS
TTOAEIS
npos c'xi\A17Aa5.
32
See Kennedy (1958a).
130
ostensibly to demonstrate that a leader can achieve glory

even if he only speaks about undertaking a panhellenic ven-
ture: 'Jason increased his position to such an extent by
words (logoi) alone' ( 120 ). I suggest that the reference to
Jason's logos draws attention to Isocrates, who has con-
structed his identity in part as the Athenian author and as
the individual who by logos alone initiates and incites war
against the barbarians. In this way he draws attention to
himself as the individual who deserves the reward of fame.
In the Helen panhellenism is qualified from within the
digression. Isocrates structures the Theseus-narrative in such
a way as to suggest that the establishment of Athens pro-
vides the teleology of the hero's deeds. After section 24, he
turns his attention to events which concern Athens alone.
He dwells on the services which the hero performed for the
benefit of Attica: the slaying of the Minotaur, of the
Centaurs, Sciron, Geryon and so on, all feats which help to
civilise the city-state (25). He also goes on to narrate the
hero's organisation of Athens into a city-state (3133) and his
benevolent tyranny over the city (37).
The larger context of the Antidosis proposes that
Timotheus is first and foremost an Athenian citizen whose
career is to be seen as raising the status and profile of his
city. He succeeds in making Athens the most blessed and
powerful city without draining her wealth (121-2) and with-
out alienating any of the other Hellenic states. The
Athenocentrism which he stands for is reinforced by the
subtle analogy that Isocrates draws between himself, the
Athenian teacher of rhetoric, and the general. Timotheus is
Isocrates' ex-student and resembles his former teacher in a
number of respects. The author observes that Timotheus'
achievement in increasing his city's influence and power
throughout the Greek-speaking world is all the greater
because he does not have an impressive physique (115).
Isocrates' reference to Timotheus' apparent handicap calls
to mind his own weak voice and lack of daring in speaking.
131
Then, Timotheus has been undeservedly tried for treachery

and is obliged to pay an unprecedented fine to the city (129),
like Isocrates, who is made to defend himself on an unjust
liturgy charge which prompts the writing of the Antidosis.
Both Timotheus and Isocrates are seen to be off enders
despite their services to the state through military victory
and teaching. It might be suggested that the praise of
Timotheus operates as a veiled encomium of Isocrates, the
Athenian teacher of rhetoric.
Of particular interest among the 'panhellenic digressions'
is the fourth one, the encomium of Agamemnon at
Panathenaicus 74-87. This passage has provoked consider-
able scholarly commentary, nearly all of which affirms that
Isocrates has a vision of Greek unity. Following Schafer
(1887), numerous critics held that Agamemnon serves as a
second protreptic model (after To Philip) for Philip to
undertake a panhellenic expedition.34 Just as the Mycenaean
king united all of Greece in a military venture against the
Trojans (76), so the Macedonian monarch is to cement a
Greek alliance and lead it against the Persian barbarians.
This interpretation is based on the assumption that the pas-
sage should be read as panhellenic propaganda along with
the other digressions, particularly Helen 29-37 and To Philip
109-15. 35 It is a seductive reading, not least because it pro-
vides To Philip with a sequel. There are, however, consider-
able difficulties with what is now the received view on the
passage. First, as I have argued, the other three 'digressions'
in To Philip, Helen and Antidosis suggest that in Isocrates
there generally lies a powerfully articulated civic ideology
beneath a 'panhellenic' veneer. Second, the fact that the
Macedonian king is nowhere in the work mentioned by
name makes this particular construction of the passage as a
coded message to Philip problematic.
While the majority of critics have assumed that the politi-
34 Schafer (1887). p. 6: Blass (1898), ii, p. 321; Zucker (1954); Seek (1976). pp. 12
and 17; Wendland (1910), p. 152; Mathieu (1925), pp. 170 1; Schmitz-Kahlmann
(1939), pp. 53-5; Perlman (1957), p. 314, n. 52.
35 Zucker (1954), p. 18.
132
cal agenda of the Panathenaicus is to be seen as one to be

adopted by Philip of Macedon, I suggest that its actual
agenda is rather the programme that has already been taken
up by Isocrates, the literary author. I follow Norlin in reject-
ing the Agamemnon-Philip synkrisis in favour of what
this critic regards as the 'simplest explanation', namely to
view Agamemnon's military undertaking as symbolising
Isocrates' own literary project of self-aggrandisement.3 6 I
propose to regard the mythical king as the author's alter
ego, and to view the Agamemnon-passage as an affirmation
that writing can and does empower individuals.
Isocrates gives a series of indications that Panathenaicus
74-87 serves as an account of himself and of the power of
literary rhetoric. The encomium of Agamemnon significantly
resembles another section of the work that might initially be
described as the author's 'autobiographical' excursus, sec-
tions 5-33. There are numerous similarities of language,
structure and theme which invite the reader to consider the
passages alongside one another. Most obvious of these is the
author's wish for us to see both portions of the text as
departures or digressions from the main theme of the work,
namely the praise of Athens, her deeds and those of her
ancestors (5). In section 5 he announces that he will delay
his encomium of the city and commence with an account of
the things that have happened in his own life. In the follow-
ing section, he states his intention to present this personal
history as a preface to the more overtly political theme of
the work, 'I therefore wish to speak first about myself and
about the people who have this attitude to me' 37 (6). When
he brings this '!'-narrative to a close in section 33, he
expresses his awareness that he is transgressing the propor-
tions of his preface. He observes that he is being 'carried
beyond the proportions of a proemium'.
Isocrates' framing of the later Agamemnon-passage is sim-
ilar. Again, he expresses anxieties that he is neglecting his
36 Norlin (1968), ii, pp. 418-19.

37 f3ovt-.oµai ovv 1rpo81aAEX8fivai mpi T EµavTOV Kai mpi TWV OVTW 1rp6s µE
8taKELµEVWV.
1 33
central theme, but this time to recount the hero's contribu-

tions to the Trojan War. He invokes the image of an over-
stepped boundary. At sections 74 and 88, he says that the
present discussion is 'outside (exo)' or 'beyond (porro) the
main (Athenian) theme' (cf. 84-5). These observations are
ironically self-aware. They come despite his statement that he
is prepared to ignore the proportions (ten ... summetrian) of
the speech in order to do justice to his subject (section 86).
Both the autobiographical narrative and the encomium of
Agamemnon similarly attribute their digressive nature to the
author's supposed lack of control over his narrative. In sec-
tion 7 Isocrates eagerly tells the reader that his thoughts are
beset with 'confusion (ten ... tarachen)'. He also speaks of his
perplexity or atopia, a word which possibly announces the
supposed displacement of Athens, the speech's literal and
metaphorical topos. Near the end of his personal history, he
announces that he is troubled by aporia. He is at a loss
(aporo) whether to continue his defence of himself against
those who slander him or to return to his central political
theme, the comparison between Athens and Sparta (22), but
in the end fear of appearing to write randomly leads him to
conclude his apology (cf. 24). These remarks clearly antici-
pate his subsequent uncertainty (aporo) regarding the sort of
language he should employ in discussing the deeds of the
Argive king (74). Aporia is again expressed at section 88.
Here he suggests that he does not know (ouk oid') where he
is being carried (pheromenos). I understand the phrase 'I do
not know (ouk oid')' to be a gloss on the verb 'I am at a loss
(aporo)', and I take the passive participle pheromenos to be
expressing the author's loss of control over the structure of
the speech.
We should be wary of taking Isocrates' claims that he is
unable to control his narrative at face value. As Race has
shown in the case of the poetry of Pindar, the self-con-
sciousness involved in declaring one's powerlessness neces-
sarily undercuts an author's claim of aporia.38 The aporia-
18
Race ( I 978), p. 179.
1 34
motif is part of a very deliberate strategy which affirms the

highly structured nature of the Agamemnon-passage and the
author's control over his writing in the very work in which
he ironically claims that his literary skill is debilitated.39
Epinician poetry helps us to read the Panathenaicus in
another way. The production of encomiastic discourse in
Pindar and Bacchylides is a complex affair in which the
doxa of the laudandus is tied up with the reputations of the
poet, his patron, and the mythical figures in the poetry.
Verbal and thematic repetitions and parallels in the odes of
Pindar and Bacchylides dramatise in particular the interde-
pendence of the poet or first-person voice in the ode, the
'subject', and the athletic victor or 'object' .4° Indeed, in the
Panathenaicus there are analogies between Isocrates and
Agamemnon which suggest that the first-person authorial
figure and the Homeric hero are to be closely identified with
one another. As in the Antidosis Isocrates is again the unde-
serving target of his contemporaries' abuse.41 Privately,
insignificant, rival sophists plagiarise and imitate his works
(16). Openly, however, they spread lies (pseudologia42 ), slan-
ders (diabolai) and envy (phthonos) about him (21). He
informs his audience that one of these undistinguished rivals
39 Race (1978), followed by Heath (1989), p. 33, examines the structure of the pas-
sage to show that this section of the text is a highly structured and controlled
piece of writing. According to this mode of interpretation, the author's own
claim of aporia in old age and loss of skill in writing, which Wendland, for
instance, had taken to be his indication that structure can be sacrificed for
theme, is a disingenuous denial of rhetorical ability. Miller (1983) provides a jus-
tification for this type of formal analysis: the Agamemnon excursus expresses
what he sees to be an ideology of leisure (crxor-r\) shared by such writers as
Homer, Pindar and Plato.
4° There is a large scholarly literature regarding the relationship between the poet/
speaking voice in the ode and the athlete who is being praised. See, for instance,
Bundy (1986, reprint) and G. Most The Measures of Praise, Hypomnemata 83
(Gottingen) generally, and T. Hubbard (1985) The Pindaric Mind. A Study of
Logical Structures in Early Greek Poetry, Mnemosyne Supplement 85, especially
pp. 133-62.
4 1 On the sophists' slander of Isocrates, see, for instance, Panathenaicus 17-19 and
Epistle 9. 1 5.
42 Note that the Spartan interlocutor uses 4JEv8or-oyia to refer to Isocrates' benign
'fiction' (µEO'TOV
... Kai 4JEV8or-oyias, ov Tfjs Ei61crµevrisµncx KaKias ~AO'.lTTEIV
TOVS
crvµ1Tor-1Tevoµevovs,246). The critique of 4Jev8or-oyia in the earlier part of the
Panathenaicus suggests that the word is at best ambivalent in section 246.
135
ISOCRATES IN HIS OWN WRITE
unfairly criticises (diaballein) him for despising the perfor-

mances of rhapsodes and the teachings of others before a
group of bystanders just before the Great Panathenaia (17).
As a result of these criticisms, he is now forced to defend
himself (23). The sophists effectively cheat him out of the
honour (doxa) that is rightly his because they determine how
the general public will feel about him.
Agamemnon has also been slandered by others. Isocrates
aspires to remove prejudice, especially phthonos, from
Agamemnon and win deserved recognition (doxa) for him
(75).43 This time the culprits are not rival sophists, but
dramatists who sacrifice truth for their art, which is dismis-
sively termed pseudologia (cf. 78).44 The Homeric hero has
become the model for individuals to imitate and, accord-
ingly, he ought to have eclipsed everyone else in praise
(76-7). Nevertheless, the dramatic fictions in which he has
been portrayed have meant that he enjoys less fame than
even those who do not feel they can imitate him. It is with
the aim of restoring to Agamemnon the glory that the
sophists have taken from him, and of reasserting the overall
programme of authorising writing as a mode of political
activity, that Isocrates produces the mythical excursus of
chapters 74-87.45
Significantly, Isocrates and Agamemnon share the same
basis for the claim to great doxa. This is their identity as
Greek or Hellenic leaders.4 6 Agamemnon is portrayed as the
individual who first creates Greece. He puts an end to con-
flict and strife amongst the Greek states. He brings them
into a state of concord in order to lead them against the
Trojans:
The result is that he gathered together the Greeks, who were in a state of
war, in upheaval and many troubles, and brought them out of these. He
brought them into a state of concord and, despising deeds which were
43 On the importance of 66~a in the Isocratean corpus, see To Nicocles 38 and To

Demonicus 2, and the discussion in the following chapter.
44 Isocrates could be referring to Aeschylus' Agamemnon.
4s See Davidson (1990), pp. 33-4.
46 Norlin (1968), ii, p. 419.
136
superfluous, prodigious and without benefit to others, he assembled an

army and led it against the barbarians. None of those with a good reputa-
tion at that time or coming later will be found to have engaged in an
expedition finer or more useful to the Greeks than this individual.
(77-8)47
The Trojan expedition is presented in this passage as the

original and ultimate model for classical panhellenism. The
Trojan War provides the Greeks with a prescriptive stance
that they supposedly continue to maintain against the bar-
barian (cf. Panathenaicus 42). Moreover, Agamemnon is the
archetypal Greek leader because he achieves homonoia. This
is the ideal unity of mind which, Perlman observes, serves as
the precondition for any expedition against Persia in the
fourth century.4 8 Isocrates describes how Agamemnon
reverses tarache - Isocrates uses this word and its cognates
to denote confusion and strife amongst the Greek states
elsewhere at On the Peace 9, 64, Panegyricus 104 and Epistle
9. 14. He writes that the Mycenaean king persuades the lead-
ers of other states, whether more or less willingly, to parti-
cipate in the Trojan expedition (76). Agamemnon may use
force to oblige participation in his project, but the important
point is that he succeeds in unifying Greece. He accom-
plishes this feat because he despises the actions of the other
Greeks which are 'superfluous ... prodigious and of no benefit
to others' (77) and because he works only for the benefit (cf.
ophelimoteron) of the Greeks (78).
If Agamemnon commands his army amidst internal dis-
turbances (en ... tarachais, 77), Isocrates needs to write
regardless of the distress caused by the intellectuals of his
time. The sophists upset him (sunetarachthen) to such a
47 W<JTETTapaAo:f?wvTOVS"E7'-M1vasEV TTOAEµcpKai Tapaxais Kai TTOAAoisKaKOIS
OVTasTOVTWVµEv aVTOVSaTTtjAAa~EV, EIS6µ6vo1av OEKaTacrT17crasTa µEv TTEplTTCX
TWVepywv Kai TEpaTWOTlKai µTlOEV wcpEAOVVTa TOVS aAAovs VTTEpEioE,0-TpaTOTTE-
oov OEcrvcrT17crasETTiTovs f?apf?apovs f\yayev. TovTov OEKaAA1ovcrTpaT17yriµa Kai
TOIS"EAAT10"1V wcpEAlµWTEpov ovoeis cpav17crETm TTpa~as OVTETWVKaT' EKEIVOV TOV
xpovov EVOOKlµTlO"C(VTWV OVTETWVVO"TEpov emyevoµevwv.
48 Perlman ( 1969) cites references to o'µovo1a at Panegyricus 3, 173-4; To Philip r 6,
83, 141; Antidosis 17 and Panathenaicus 13. In addition, Helen 67 refers to the
homonoia that made possible the Trojan expedition; for an interpretation of this
work as a panhellenic treatise, see Kennedy (1958a). On 6µ6v01a as an ideal of
Greek society, see Rahe (1992), p. 62.
137
degree that he cannot describe his emotional state to

his audience (20; cf. 7). Despite this, he wants his reader
to perceive his literary achievements as paralleling the
Homeric leader's military and political accomplishments. At
Panegyricus 159 he observes that Homer's poetry received
great doxa because it praised those who went to war against
the 'barbarians'. With this statement the rhetorician pro-
vides us with justification for celebrating his own prose.
Isocratean political discourse deserves praise not only
because it commemorates Agamemnon's undertaking
against the barbarian but also because it attempts to recre-
ate the general's feat. Isocrates' literary career is to be seen
as modelling itself upon Agamemnon's military enterprise. If
Isocrates has refused to assume the traditionally authorita-
tive roles of general, orator and politician (cf. To Philip 81
and Epistle to Dionysius 1.9), it is in order to become instead
the 'leader of words/speeches' 49 (Panathenaicus 13) and the
'true leader (hegemon ... alethinos)' of rhetoric in Greece
(Antidosis 2065°). As such a leader, he identifies himself as
the eloquent individual whom the Epistle to Archidamus asks
for to persuade the Greeks to attack Persia (Epistle 9. 1751).
After all, Isocrates is the author who more than any other
sets out and effects an apparently panhellenic programme in
speeches such as To Philip where he presents his writing as a
literary polemic (polemon) against the 'barbarian' (130; cf.
Panathenaicus 13; To Philip 105-31; Epistles 1, 2 and 3).
The rhetorician defines his identity in some sense through
the content of his writing. He engages in a form of character-
isation that biographers employ when they assume that what
an author writes about is ultimately himself,52 or that Plato's
Ion invokes when he boasts that speaking about generalship
49 EµEOETWV Mywv 17yeµ6va TOVTWV yeyevrwevov.

50 At Plato Republic 6ooa9-b2 Glaucon observes that Homer was regarded as the
'leader of education (17yeµwv1ra16e{as)' during his lifetime.

51
T6v TE T0 Mycp K6:M1cn' &v 6vv170evTa1rapaKa7'fo-m Tovs "EM17vas ETTiTflV TWV
j3apj36:pwvcnpaTe{av.
52
Thus biographers assume on the basis of his literary works that the archaic war
poet Tyrtaeus is a general in the Spartan war against the Messenians. Lefkowitz
(1981), p. 38.
138
makes him a general (Ion 54ra1-3). Ion declares himself the

best Greek general for the reason that he is best among the
Greeks at reciting the Homeric epics, which are concerned to
some degree with military matters (541a5ff.). The improba-
bility of Ion's claim suggests, however, that Plato is offering
a reductio ad absurdum of this construction of identity.
Isocrates' description of himself as the 'leader of words/
speeches' is one of the most explicit statements in the corpus
that being a writer endows an individual with an authorita-
tive role. But it is also a description that requires consider-
able qualification in order to be understood properly.
Agamemnon's position as Greek leader proceeds from his
identity as a general, but the Panathenaic festival treats cul-
ture, which is above all constituted by the Homeric poems,
as one of the foundations of political authority. At stake in
this self-characterisation is the claim to define Greek identity
through language, for Isocrates' rhetorical and linguistic
programme assumes a political agenda, arrogating to itself
the right to determine the logos which defines the Greek
community. I suggest that in his self-description as a 'leader
of speeches' or 'rhetoric' he puts forward an ideal of
Hellenismos which insists upon the integrity of literary form
and content -- thus the panhellenic theme. Isocrates' repre-
sentation of himself as a rhetorical leader employs a com-
mon vocabulary reflecting Greek prejudice against barbarian
discourse also found in the work of his philosophical con-
temporary, Aristotle.53 For Aristotle, Hellenismos is both a
53 It appears that this double programme was repeated in the Roman period and in
Late Antiquity by the 'grammarians' of whom Kaster (1988), p. 53, writes 'A
grammarian's claim to stand against Tiberius and control Latinity by limiting
words' "citizenship" and, in Nero's reign, Seneca's sarcastic reference to the gram-
marians as the "guardians of Latin speech" mark out the period when the gram-
marian became identified in his own mind and in others' eyes as the agent of lin-
guistic control.' One passage to consider in the light of Kaster's observation is
Augustine City of God 19.7, where the author says in response to individuals who
object that diversity of languages separates people from one another and makes a
global community impossible, 'But effort was made so that the imperial city
imposed, in addition to her yoke, her language upon the conquered peoples
through the peace of association. Through this an abundance of interpreters
would not be lacking but rather abound (At enim opera data est ut imperiosa civi-
tas non solum iugum, verwn etiam linguam suam domitz:~gentibus per pacem soci-
etatZ:~inponeret, per quam non deesset, immo et abundaret etiam interpretum copia)'.
1 39
JSOCRATES IN HIS OWN WRITE
doctrine of literary purity54 and a strategy of national self-

definition. In the Rhetoric, for instance, Aristotle discusses
literary style in terms that are unmistakably political. He
glosses 'speaking Greek (to hellenizein)' as the 'beginning/
rule of style (arche tes lexei5s)' (Rhetoric 1407a19-20), and
insists upon the use of 'authorised (ta kuria) nouns and
verbs' (1404b5-6). In the Sophistic Refutations he defines
solecism or a misuse of language as 'speaking in a barbarian
fashion' (barbarizein, 165b21), that is, as speaking in the
manner of a non-Greek.55 In the discussion of style at
Poetics 1457b3-4 he contrasts what is authorised, to kurion,
or standard Greek, with gli5tta or dialectal forms, observing
later that 'others (heteroi)' employ these and that they sup-
ply the basis for 'barbarism' ( 1458a26).
VI
The overall framing of the Agamemnon-encomium must be
a significant factor in how one ultimately interprets this pas-
sage. It is of consequence that the inset narrative regarding
the Homeric hero occurs within a work which is now
entitled Panathenaicus. The title is explained by the author's
reference to the Panathenaia at section I 7 of the work. The
Panathenaia or Panathenaic festival was celebrated yearly
as the Minor Panathenaia, and every four years in more
opulent fashion as the Great Panathenaia, serving as an im-
portant occasion that united the Hellenes.56 During it, the
Greeks lay aside their differences to celebrate a shared cul-
tural inheritance through gymnastics, music and the suppos-
edly panhellenic poetry of Homer. Homer is an especially
privileged author, for as Nagy argues, the Homeric epics,
54 On the 'virtues of style', compare the discussion of Kennedy (1963), pp. 104-5
and 275.
55 Cicero ( On the Orator 3.42-3) appears to be reclaiming the original political pro-
gramme of the Hellenismos/barbarismos distinction when in the discourse on
dialect he has Crassus associate the power of Athens with her language and
employs it as an analogy in turn for the power of Rome and her language.
56
Also see the hypothesis on Demosthenes 21 as printed in the Oxford Classical
Text.
140
especially the Iliad, deal with the panhellenic theme par

excellence, namely the expedition of the combined Greek
forces against the East. The epics are to be understood as
preserving the kleos of the Greek hero par excellence,
Achilles, throughout the whole of the Hellenic world inas-
much as they envisage the whole of Greece as their audience
(also cf. Iliad 9-413; Odyssey I 1.489-91).57
The panhellenic emphasis of the celebration is also
revealed in one of the traditions surrounding its foundation.
Like all other important festivals, the Panathenaia has its
origins in a mythical past. The festival is claimed to be one
of the oldest Greek festivals, if not the oldest one. Aelius
Aristides declares the Panathenaia the oldest of the competi-
tive festivals together with the Eleusinia (Panathenaic
Oration 362), although the scholiast on Aristides makes the
Eleusinia older (Dindorf iii.323) and Pausanias makes the
Lycaea older (8.21). Along with Hellanicus and Androtion,
Harpocration makes Erichthonius, the son of Hephaestus
and Athena, the festival's founder. 58 He also tells us that
when it was founded the celebration was originally called
the Athenaia. If Harpocration is to be believed, then the
subsequent name 'Panathenaia' is analogous to Pandia and
should mean a festival in honour of Pan-athena, perhaps
'Athena, goddess of all Greeks', to be celebrated by all
Greeks. This is an interpretation supported by the existence
of Panathenaic festivals outside Athens at Marathon (Pindar
Pythian 8. 79).59 Beyond this, according to Harpocration's
etymology, the word 'Panathenaia' contains a narrative of a
57 To preserve the panhellenism of the epics and their performance, the texts were
regularised during the rule of Peisistratus and strict rules were laid down to
ensure that they were presented in the same fashion year after year. See Nagy in
Kennedy (1989), p. 36.
58 81TTO'.TTava0tjvma TJYETO'A0r\VTJCJI,
TO'.µev Ka0' EKaCJTOVEVtaVTOV, TO'.8e 810: 1TEV-
TTava0rivmK0 ( I 2. 17); 17yaye 8e
TaETTJpl8os,&mp Kai µeycX:\a eKaAovv 'lcroKpO'.TTJS
T~V eopT~V 1Tp0HOS'Ep1x86v1os 6 'Hcpa(CJTOV, 'EAMvtKOS (FGrH 323a
Ka00'.Cj)T]CJIV
F2) TE Kai ,Av8poTiwv, (324 F 2) EKO'.TEpos
EVO'.,AT8186s ,rpo TOVTOV8', Aeriva'ia
EKaAeho, ws 8e8r\AwKev"lcrTpos evy' Twv'ATTtKwv (334F 4). As cited in Davison
(1958), p. 23.
59 'Panathenaia' is sometimes understood to mean a festival celebrated by all
Athens on the analogy of TTav1wv1a;Davison ( I 958), p. 23.
festival which develops from being a state occasion into a

panhellenic one. 60
Yet the Panathenaia is not simply and unproblematically a
panhellenic occasion. The characterisation of the Panathenaia
as a Greek festival is challenged by other sources regarding its
foundation. It becomes apparent that there is a significant
tension between the Athenian and panhellenic identities of the
Panathenaic festival. Atthidography, the body of writing
regarding Attica and its city, Athens, appropriates the cele-
bration to the po/is. Traditions apart from the one repre-
sented by Harpocration stress the Athenian origins of
the Panathenaia's founder in a more notable manner.
Apollodorus (iii. 14.6) and the scholiast on Aristides (iii.323
Dindorf) make its founder Erichthonius, the son of the
Athenian king Amphictyon. Plutarch attributes the establish-
ment of the festival to Theseus, the mythical father of Athens
(Theseus 1.24; cf. Panathenaicus 18). A scholium on Plato
Parmenides 127a regards both Erichthonius and Theseus as
joint founders of the festival. According to this source,
Erichthonius initiates the celebration, while Theseus is to be
credited with bringing it to the people of Athens. Davison
suggests that this double foundation is reminiscent of the
double founding of the court of Areopagus, first for the
purification of Ares and then for the purification of Orestes. 61
What is even more revealing about the political status of
the Panathenaia is the belief that several different prominent
Athenian figures reorganised and reformed the festival. This
indicates that the celebration is constructed in part through
and on the authority of Athens' leading citizens. Peisistratus
is the first historical figure that scholars associate with the
Panathenaia. While Meiggs suggests that there was a reor-
ganisation of the festival before Peisistratus came to power, 62
Oliver prefers to see a reorganisation by the tyrant himself. 63
According to Oliver, Peisistratus' Panathenaic reforms con-
cern the performance of the Homeric epics. He cites On the
60
See Davison (1958), p. 23.
61
Davison (1958), p. 23.
62
Meiggs (1972), p. 292.
63 Oliver (1968), p. 17.
Orator 3.34.137, where Cicero claims that Peisistratus

arranged the poems in the order in which they have now
come down to their readers. In attributing an Athenian
recension of the Homeric texts to the tyrant, Cicero may also
be crediting Peisistratus with the Panathenaic Rule, the rhap-
sodic protocol which required the Iliad and Odyssey to be
recited in a fixed, chronological order whenever they were
performed. 64 Peisistratus' reputed role in editing the Homeric
poems is extremely significant, for Cicero and those who fol-
low him implicitly give to the sixth-century ruler of Athens
control over what should have been in theory the most delo-
calised, the most Greek, of literary works. These details
should be read keeping in mind that Athens had earlier used
Homer in support of territorial claims to Salamis (cf.
Aristotle Rhetoric I 357b30-36). 65
Other sources attribute the revision of the Panathenaic
festival to Pericles, Athens' foremost statesman at the time
of the Peloponnesian War. 66 In his Life of Pericles Plutarch
writes at some distance from ancient Athens. He oversimpli-
fies his narrative and makes major figures responsible for the
actions and incidents he presents. Thus he says that Pericles
built the Odeion, where public musical contests and perfor-
mances took place at Athens. Plutarch also seems to say
that Pericles instituted at the Panathenaia musical contests:
'Pericles prided himself and then decreed for the first time
(proton epsephisato) for a musical contest to take place at
the Panathenaia. When he was chosen as athlothetes, he
himself arranged (dietaxen) the manner in which the contes-
tants should play the flute, sing or play the lyre. It was from
this time that the Athenians watched musical contests in the
Odeion' (13.6). 67 One historian, Davison, is careful to differ-
entiate between the decree (cf. epsephisato) that brings about
64 See Davison (1955), esp. pp. 19ff., who calls into question the historical reliabil-
ity of Cicero.
65 Davison (1955), pp. 16-17. See also the article by Ford (1985).
66 Wade-Gery (1952), p. 77, n. 77 and Davison (1955), p. 8.
67 <JllAOTlµovµEvos6' 6 TTEplKAfiSTOTE ,rp&nov e4117cpio-aTO µovo-tKfiS aywva TOIS
aipE0Eis Ka00TI XPTlTOVS6:y-
TTava017vaio1s&yeo-0at, Kai 61ha~EV mhos 6:01106eT17S
WVl~OµEVOVS aVAEIVi\ <;t6EIV
i\ Kt0api~EIV.e0EWVTO
6e Kai TOTEKai TOV0:/1/\0Vxpovov
EV'S"216Ei~TOVSµovo-tKOVS6:ywvas.
143
musical contests and the 'Panathenaic Rule', that is, the pre-
scriptions regarding how the recitation of Homer was to be
conducted. Davison notes that the verb dietaxen does not
necessarily mean that Pericles established the rules for recit-
ing the poems in a particular order. In fact, it is important
to realise that the historicity of Plutarch's account of the
role of Pericles in organising the festival is in some doubt.
The details in Plutarch's biography are at variance with pic-
torial evidence on amphorae, which depict musical events at
the Panathenaia as early as the sixth century. Yet we can
reconcile the archaeological evidence with the literary mater-
ial if we understand that, when Plutarch wrote the words
proton epsephisato, he meant that Pericles simply formalised
already existing musical contests at the festival in order to
bring about an Athenian redefinition of a conceptually pan-
hellenic occasion. This interpretation has an analogy in
Davison's suggestion that, as athlothetes, Pericles followed a
protocol which already existed regarding the performance of
the epics. 68
Read in this way, Plutarch's evidence does not conflict
with the idea that the Rule originates with Peisistratus or
one of his predecessors. And just as the institution of the
Rule implies the appropriation of control over Greek iden-
tity, Pericles' 'addition' of a musical and poetic element to
the festival also has a political meaning which needs to be
elucidated. His creation of these contests is to be seen as
bringing the Panathenaia into line with the Delian and
Pythian festivals, where the Greeks celebrated their common
identity through music, along with poetry and gymnastics
(cf. Panegyricus 45-6; Aristotle Ath. Con. 60.1-2).
One subsequent 'reorganisation' of the Panathenaia more
than any other reveals that through the festival Athens
could be seen to consolidate her power and wealth and to
arrogate to herself a leading position amongst the Greek
states. 69 Treaties dating from the fifth century offer evidence
68
Davison (1958), pp. 33-6.
69
Perlman, (1957) and (1969), argues that Isocrates prefers Athenian hegemonic
ideology to the panhellenic ideal.
144
that the Athenian colonies were invited to share in the cult

of Athena by contributing a cow and a panoply, token pre-
sents of food and arms, at the Great Panathenaia. By this
action, they were to demonstrate both their allegiance and
their gratitude to the mother-city.7° In his study of the
Panathenaia, Davison concludes that the celebration was
intended to be an opportunity for Athens' colonies to assert
their Athenian identity.7 1 But during the fifth century
Athens also extended participation in the festival beyond her
genuine colonies. The city increased the number of states
which had an obligation to the festival and to the cult of
Athena. Inscriptional evidence, particularly that constituted
by the Athenian Tribute Lists ('a declaration of political
power by the Athenian citizens as well as a public account-
ing by the responsible officials', writes Harris7 2 ), reveals that
Athens' allies were granted a share in the cult of Athena and
began to have the same obligations as the colonies at the
Great Panathenaia. 73Merritt and Wade-Gery argue that this
change occurred between 453/2 and 448/7 after the treasure
of the Delian League had been moved from Delos to Athens
in 454. Following these scholars, Barron suggests that Athens
re-represents the League as a 'system of colonies' and the
Great Panathenaic festival as their 'common feast' 74 - at
Clouds 386-7 Aristophanes makes a reference to this event. 75
But however one interprets this move, it has to be granted
that Athens redefines her relationship with these other city-
states. On the one hand, by extending participation to her
7° Meiggs (1972), pp. 292--5; Merritt and Wade-Gery (1962); Barron (1964), p. 47.
7' Davison (1955), p. I02.
72 Harris (1989), p. 28.
73 Meiggs (1972), p. 305.
74 Merritt and Wade-Gery (1962), p. 71, and Barron (1964), p. 47. Barron argues
that the specific colonisation narrative which underlies the extension of
Panathenaic obligations is that of Ionia: Ionia becomes the paradigmatic KTicr15-
narrative a generation later in 426/5. See Barron (1964), pp. 47- 8, and
Raubitschek (1966), p. 37.
75 Cf. -/j8ri l;wµoO TTavaeriva/015 EµTIA'fl<Y0Eis.
The scholium on Clouds 386 glosses the
line with the comment that the colonies of Athens sent oxen to be burnt at the
Panathenaia. Merritt and Wade-Gery (1962) suggest that the passage from the
Clouds refers to the excess of beef following the extension of Panathenaic obliga-
tions to the allies, pp. 69-70.
145
allies, the city now treats them with the same regard as if
they were genuine apoikoi. On the other hand, by requiring
her allies to give food and weapons at the festival, the city
can be seen to be extending and reinforcing her political
authority. What might once have been viewed as a panhel-
lenic festival, a statement of solidarity against the
barbarian,7 6 is transformed into an occasion for Athens to
exact from her colonies a tribute payment that was symbolic
and later from her allies a tribute payment that was ritual.
VII
The Panathenaia, as an ambivalent celebration of panhel-
lenism, provides a significant context within which to read
the encomium of Agamemnon in the Panathenaicus. It offers
the possibility of reading the passage as a demonstration of
Athens' hegemonic status amongst the Greek states and not
as a statement of the need for Greek unity. It provides too a
means of seeing how Isocrates might appropriate this articu-
lation to the politics of writing in which he engages.
Isocrates turns Agamemnon's military enterprise into a
literary project, but he also transforms the model provided
by the Homeric hero in another notable respect. If
Agamemnon can still be seen in some degree to be a Greek
hero, enacting a panhellenic ideology, Isocrates is first and
foremost an Athenian 'hero', representing his own interests
as an Athenian citizen. 77 When he describes himself as the
leader of words/speeches at Panathenaicus I 3, he envisages
himself as a 'leader of speeches' in an Athens which enjoys a
hegemonic status over the other Greek states - perhaps, as
the tyrant state.78 It is significant that in the Panegyricus, the
most patently Athenian of all the author's works, Isocrates
76
Wade-Gery (1945), p. 228 and Raubitschek (1966).
77 See Panegyricus 159. At Helen 67 the Trojan War is clearly to be viewed as a
model of a panhellenic enterprise. Jaeger (1944), p. 67; Kennedy (1958a);
Kennedy (1963), p. 187. For a differing opinion, see Heilbrunn (1977).
78
On the tyrant empire, see e.g. Will (1972), pp. 171--3; Quinn (1964); Loraux
(19~6). p. 420, n. 161. Ober (1991), p. 89, thinks that Thucydides represents
Penclean democracy as 'a fa9ade for a sort of monarchy'.
146
stresses that Athens' culture and education, and especially

her language, synecdochically constitute Greekness (49-50).
The citizens of Athens achieve authority within their own
city by employing speech (logos) well, with the result that
this eloquent city becomes the teacher of the rest of Greece
and thus declares her position of authority.79 Logos is cele-
brated on two occasions in his corpus, Nicocles 6-8 and
Antidosis 253, as the force which organises humans into civic
communities.
The rhetorician claims for Athens the right to determine
Greek identity through language. As an Athenian citizen, he
assumes for himself the prerogative to declare the otherness,
the alterity, of even the language spoken by other Greeks.
We see that he takes issue with the Spartans because they
have established agreements, notably referred to as homolo-
giai, with the Persians (Panathenaicus 107). The word
homologia suggests that the Spartans 'speak together with'
the barbarians. By entering into contract with the Persians,
the Spartans have contravened the principle of homonoia, of
Greek unity, defined by enmity with a cultural other, the
barbarians. The Spartans speak together with the barbar-
ians, such that the Spartans have abandoned the moderation
which characterises the Greek and particularly the Athenian
tongue (Antidosis 296). Implicitly, the Spartans have in a
sense become 'barbarians', whose very name, barbaroi, rep-
resents their inarticulate 'babbling', since they are unable to
maintain a relationship with other Greeks. At Panathenaicus
225-8 lsocrates criticises the Lacedaemonians for being able
to sustain homonoia only within their own state while caus-
ing other Greek states to quarrel with one another (226). He
suggests that they do this in order to control the Hellenic
states more easily and thereby proposes to his audience the
benefits of an Athenian hegemony. 80
It is important to realise that, while lsocrates gives
Athenian Greek a privileged status, he does not grant to
79 Cf. Antidosis 296; Thucydides 2.41. I.

° Cf. Perlman
8
(1957) and (1969).
147
JSOCRATES JN HIS OWN WRITE
anyone speaking or teaching Greek at Athens the preroga-

tive of determining Greek identity. He arrogates this privi-
lege to himself, as the city's preeminent writer of logos poli-
tikos. At Panathenaicus 20 he declares that he is engaged in
literary polemic (polemon) against those who boast (tois ala-
zoneuomenois). The individuals who are elsewhere in his
works characterised by their boasting are of course the
sophists. In Against the Sophists (I, 10, 19), for instance, he
denotes the discourse of these professional intellectuals by
the verb alazoneuesthai. Notably, the discourse of these indi-
viduals poses the biggest obstacle to achieving Greek unity
and Athenian hegemony, for they engage in modes of writ-
ing, e.g. eristic, paradox, logography, which bring no profit
to their societies (cf. Panathenaicus 1-2). What he seems to
be saying at Panathenaicus 20, then, is that he is at war with
his intellectual rivals and contemporaries. He returns the
criticism and abuse to which he himself is subject.
Isocrates' construction of his literary career as a polemic
against both non-Greek and Greek-speaking individuals
radically redefines the political notion of homonoia.
Although Isocrates ostensibly calls for Hellenic unity, as a
result of this summons he is paradoxically at odds, at 'war',
with the rest of Greece, with Sparta and with the sophists,
whose itinerant status creates for them a panhellenic iden-
tity. It is precisely this plea which is presented as setting him
apart from his Greek contemporaries. I suggest that the
manner in which 'panhellenism' defines his identity is very
deliberate, for what underlies his literary polemic is a subtle
strategy of authorisation. The rhetorician asserts the legiti-
macy of his written texts by calling into question the validity
of the work of others, especially his rival sophists. He ulti-
mately cancels out other Greek voices because they do not
conform to political discourse as he envisages it, e.g. at
Antidosis 45-6 and Panathenaicus 1-2. For him, literary
homonoia is constituted not by a consensus of different indi-
viduals speaking and preferably writing. Rather, literary
homonoia is ideally constituted by the texts of one particular
writer from Athens, Isocrates himself, as his construction of
148
logos politikos began to imply (see chapter 2): homonoia is in

effect a form of literary tyranny.
Isocrates certainly invites this reading of the authority he
constructs for himself through the written word in other
works. In the two speeches To Nicocles and Nicocles he sug-
gests that, as a sumboulos, his authority is identical with that
belonging to the individual to whom he gives his knowledge.
To Nicocles and Nicocles together describe and prescribe the
process of autocratic authority, namely how to rule (archein)
and how to be ruled (archesthai). 81 In the final section of To
Nicocles, he declares that 'a good counsellor (sumboulos
agathos) is the most useful and most tyrannical (turannikota-
ton) of all possessions' for a ruler (53). According to
Forster, the adjective turannikotaton indicates that he is
implicitly recommending himself and his writing as the most
appropriate possessions that an autocratic ruler could have,
because they will help him to govern well. Indeed, Isocrates
says that those who can contribute most to understanding
(dianoia) greatly increase a leader's kingdom. But Forster's
interpretation stops short because it fails to take into
account two important issues. First is the difficulty of dis-
cerning the intention or dianoia of an adviser like Isocrates;
second is the close association of Nicocles and Isocrates in
the two works. 82
In the second work, Nicocles, the Cypriot king is made to
speak like Isocrates. The tyrant's language is virtually indis-
tinguishable from that produced by the rhetorician in the
earlier speech and deliberately recalls passages from To
Nicocles. For instance, Nicocles' phrase 'I shall try to go
through (ego peirasomai dielthein)' (Nicocles I r) conspicu-
ously echoes the words which the rhetorician uses to preface
his teaching on how to be a tyrant, ego peirasomai dielthein
81 Cf. Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 926--7; Xenophon Cyropaedia l .6.20; Plato

Protagoras 326d7; Statesman 305d1-4. Also see Pohlmann (1913), p. 1128, who
thinks that the unifying principle of the two works is a contrast with contempo-
rary democracy, and Jaeger (1944), p. 84 and passim. Baynes (1960, reprint), p.
149, can find no obvious unifying principle for the two speeches.
82 Cf. the seemingly positive sense of 'tyrant' at Evagoras 46 and Helen 34. It must
be kept in mind that both the Evagoras and the Helen are paradoxical encomia.
149
!SOCRATES JN HIS OWN WRITE
(To Nicocles 6). Nicocles' announcement that he will speak

about himself to reveal what sort of king his subjects have
(29) bears a resemblance to Isocrates' characterisation of his
'autobiography' in the Antidosis (cf. 7, 54, 69, 255, etc.). One
thing alone clearly differentiates the speaking voices of To
Nicocles and Nicocles. This is the genitive Isokratous at
Nicocles r r. 83 It identifies Isocrates as the speaking voice of
the 'other', prior text, To Nicocles. Consequently, it makes
us aware that the present text, Nicocles, is uttered by a dif-
ferent persona, that of Nicocles. Yet, at the same time, the
genitive Isokratous alerts us to the arbitrariness of authorial
designation in this instance, highlighting what is otherwise
the lack of features which distinguish the voice of the tyrant
from that of the rhetorician and so the ruler from his
adviser.
VIII
The aim of this chapter has been to show both that writing
provides Isocrates with an important aspect of his civic iden-
tity and also that the written word legitimises this civic iden-
tity beyond the limits of his own city. He has replaced the
earlier politics of the voice by a politics of the written word.
In the hands of Isocrates writing now contradicts the view
that it is a form of discourse weakened by its relative new-
ness, by its association with dicanic logography and, above
all, by the absence of an author or speaker. Writing is now a
powerful mode of civic communication, a new form of polit-
ical activity which, so he claims, endows its practitioner - in
this case, Isocrates - with the status of 'leader of words' in
all Greece. Thus Isocrates shows how Athenian identity can
be used as an expression of authority and superiority over
Greek and non-Greek alike.
83 T6v µev O\JV ETEpov,ws XPTlTVpavveiv,'lcroKpchovs TlKOV<JaTE,
TOV6' ex6µevov, a 6Ei
1TOJEiV
TOVSapxoµevovs, eyw m1p6:croµai 61EA6Eiv, ovx ws EKEivovvmp~aAovµevos.
150
5
THE PEDAGOGICAL CONTRACT
Imagine that I am a teacher. .. I am the person who, under cover of setting

out a body of knowledge, puts out a discourse, never knowing how that dis-
course is being received and thus for ever forbidden the reassurance of a
definitive image - even if offensive - which would constitute me.
Barthes (author's italics) 1
It makes no difference whether I write or not. They will look for other
meanings, even in my silence.
Eco 2
I
Not all the scholarship on Isocrates has proceeded with the
aim of marginalising him, of making him a peripheral figure
against which to establish the authority of other fourth-
century individuals. Although the case for him as a figure of
literary and political importance has conventionally been
muted, critics have always supported and continue to support
the representation of Isocrates as the pedagogue, Isocrates as
the teacher of rhetoric, even of Isocrates as the founder of a
'school' of rhetoric. My purpose is to call into question this
authoritative construction as it now stands. I shall consider to
what extent, if any, the Isocratean corpus is able to sustain
and enact its pedagogical gestures, e.g. the promise to teach,
the giving of advice, the passing on of knowledge. One text in
particular, Against the Sophists, has provided the basis for the
establishment of Isocrates' pedagogical role, and this text will
now be the focus of attention in the present chapter. In a rad-
ical departure from previous readings I shall draw attention
to what I regard as the deliberate problematisation of the
1
Barthes (1977), p. 194.
2
(1990) Foucault's Pendulum (London), p. 641.
teacher-figure in this brief work. I shall demonstrate that

when we attempt to view Isocratean discourse as pedagogy
constraints emerge again and again. These are constraints
which ask us to ponder what it means for the rhetorician to
be a teacher and what it means to identify parts of his literary
corpus as didactic discourse.
II
Isocrates emerges as a prominent figure in the history of edu-
cation as a result of the way in which Against the Sophists is
characterised. One manner in which scholars read Against the
Sophists is as an early work, perhaps the earliest work of the
corpus to which they can justify giving serious attention. They
regard it as the work which both announces and initiates its
author's pedagogical programme. They date it unanimously
to the 390s, most often to 393 BC.3 Several considerations
allow readers to arrive at this date. First, there is Isocrates'
own suggestion of a chronology for his works and the loca-
tion of Against the Sophists in this chronology. At Antidosis
193 he reminisces, as it appears, and says that he wrote it at
the beginning of what we are to take to be his public life (peri
tauten ... ten pragmateian) as a teacher. Slightly later, at section
195, he goes on to state that he composed it when he was
rather young (neoteros). These passages support the common
assumption that, like Demosthenes, Lysias, Hyperides and
other contemporary prose writers, Isocrates started his public
life as a logographer. The fact that he denies ever writing for
the Athenian lawcourts and finds fault with those who engage
in litigation (Against the Sophists 194) is viewed as confirma-
tion that he soon rejected this literary genre in order to under-
take a new, more reputable profession as a teacher of rhetoric
and as an author of political speeches.s Certainly, at first
glance, the six dicanic speeches support this chronology, for
3 On the dating, see the traditional view held for instance by Kennedy (1963), p.
176, n. 80 and Eucken (1983), p. 5, and references in note 7.
4 Cf. Carey and Reid (1985), introduction and Lavency (1964), pp. 36ff.
5 E.g. Burgess (1902), p. 102 and Kennedy (1963), p. 176.
they all appear to refer to events that follow closely after the
reign of the Thirty (404).
Numerous scholars also maintain the early dating of
Against the Sophists because they work with the premise that
Plato took Isocrates to task in a number of the dialogues. 6
They assume, accordingly, that when similarities of language
and theme occur in the texts of Plato and Isocrates, the
philosopher is always citing and responding to the rhetori-
cian. A number of critics draw attention to what they perceive
to be parodies of Against the Sophists in the Gorgias, for
instance. 7 They argue that at Gorgias 463a6-7 Plato echoes
Isocrates' statement that rhetoric is a task requiring a 'coura-
geous and doxastic soul (psuches andrikes kai doxastikes)'
(17). Isocrates' 'doxastic soul', i.e. the soul with an aptitude
for determining doxa, has become Plato's 'stochastic soul
(psuches ... stochastikes)', one with a shrewd ability for guess-
work (Gorgias 463a7). Eucken draws attention to another
apparent Platonic borrowing of Isocrates in the Gorgias. At
5 I 9d I -4 Socrates highlights the fact that teachers of arete
engage in 'a rather illogical (alogoteron) deed' and contradict
their claims to teach virtue when they accuse their students of
cheating them out of their fees. Plato appears to be echoing
Against the Sophists 6, where Isocrates accuses the sophists of
an irrational action (alogon), criticising them for demanding
deposits against their fees since this undermines their promise
to make their students just. 8 Isocrates' alogon is apparently
picked up by alogoteron at Gorgias 519d1-2, while his refer-
ence to 'noble and just men' apparently anticipates Plato's
'good and just men' at Gorgias 519d2-3.
Closer inspection suggests, however, that the characterisa-
6 The following scholars see in Plato a parody of Isocrates: Jebb (1876), ii, p. 50;
Thompson (1868), p. 28; Shorey (1933), p. 34; Kennedy (1963), p. 176, n. 80;
Eucken (1983), pp. 36 and 40.
7 Dodds (1959), pp. 18-30, assigns the Gorgias to 387-385, after the author's visit
to Sicily, and so proposes a date in the late 390s for Isocrates' text. According to
this interpretation, a pre-Sicily date of 393-390 for the Gorgias shifts Sophists
back even earlier to the middle or early part of the 390s.
8 Cf. Kai TOVTOV TOVMyov Ti &v CXAoyc:nepovEil) TTpayµa, av0pc:movs aya0ovs Kai
61Ka{ovs yevoµevovs, e;mpE0EVTas µev a61Kiav VTTOTOV 616aO'KCCAOV,
crx6VTas 61:
a6JKEivTOUT'!) ~ OVKEXOVO'IV
6JKaJOO'VVT)V, (Gorgias 519d1-4).
153
tion of Against the Sophists as an early work should not be

taken at face value. First and foremost, it is important to con-
sider that the Antidosis presents itself as an imaginary trial
and that the author's recollection that he wrote Against the
Sophists at the beginning of his career is to be viewed as part
of the internal chronology in the corpus, which need not bear
any correlation to the date at which works were actually com-
posed. We need to ask whether this work can be regarded as
reliable personal history, as scholars of autobiography and
historians have assumed. 9 Moreover, the priority of Against
the Sophists is questionable once we realise that there is no
independent evidence that Isocrates had to be a logographer
before becoming a teacher of rhetoric. There are other models
for an intellectual's career in the fourth century. Maidment
argues that Antiphon, for instance, made his living as a
teacher of rhetoric before achieving success as a logogra-
pher. ro Alternatively, Isocrates could have simultaneously
pursued his legal and non-legal careers, although he obscures
the former in any case. Support for this view comes from
Dionysius of Halicarnassus' observation that he wrote the
Trapeziticus for one of his pupils (Isocrates 18). If Dionysius
is correct in thinking that he wrote the Trapeziticus for a
pupil, we must assume that he was already teaching rhetoric
and advertising this fact through a work like Against the
Sophists. More recently, Eucken argues that another court
speech, Aegineticus, must have been written after Against the
Sophists, if we are to give the latter text an early date. II
9 Moysey (1982) makes the mistake of regarding the Antidosis as a historical doc-
ument which in tum confers the status of document upon the other works it
cites. Moysey rejects Harding's (1973) more convincing reading of On the Peace
as an epideictic oration composed in tandem with the Archidamus.
rn Maidment (1982), p. 36.
11
On the dating of these two forensic works, see Eucken (1983), p. 5, and references
in notes 2 and 3. Ultimately the references to people and events in the six dicanic
speeches cannot help us by offering a terminus post quern for Sophists because it is
unlikely that they were ever intended to be presented in the dikasterion: the texts
postdate by an indefinite period the personages and historical occasions mentioned
in them. Van Hook (1968), p. 21 I, for instance, argues that the Trapeziticus
should be dated to or just before 393 on the basis of internal references to histori-
cal events, i.e. the implicit mention of the battle of Cnidus (36) and the mention of
Satyrus of Bosporus as if he were still alive (57). The battle of Cnidus occurred in
394 and Diodorus Siculus tells us that Satyrus died in 393 (xiv.93).
1 54
Even the Platonic 'evidence' for the dating of Isocrates'

text is open to reinterpretation. At one extreme Dodds sug-
gests that no firm basis exists for believing that any relation-
ship exists between the works of Isocrates and Plato. He dis-
misses the parallels between Against the Sophists 17 and
Gorgias 463a6ff., arguing that the vocabulary of these pas-
sages is too general. 12 Dodds' scepticism apart, the temporal
relationship between the writings of these two authors is
uncertain. Once we cease to take it for granted that it is
Plato who must be criticising Isocrates as 'sophist' and who
must have the last word, the argument for the early dating
of Against the Sophists is less secure. There is now room for
entertaining the possibility that it may rather be Isocrates
who criticises his contemporary Plato, using the latter's own
language. After all, Dodds himself points to passages in the
Antidosis and the Panathenaicus where Isocrates appears to
be responding to the Gorgias.1 3 Eucken also cites a loose
parallel between Gorgias 456d3-4 and Nicocles 4, where the
verb tuptein occurs in both instances. If Nicocles is assigned
its traditional date in the 360s, it would come after the
Gorgias, which Jaeger places between 395 and 390. 14
Verdam assigns Against the Sophists to circa 384, locating
it between the Busiris and the Panegyricus. 15 He infers this
from what he believes to be Against the Sophists' position,
following Plato's Theaetetus and preceding his Meno -
nowadays scholars no longer believe that the Theaetetus pre-
dates the Meno. With Jaeger, Verdam proposes the Gorgias
as the origin of several phrases in Against the Sophists. In
particular, Verdam perceives an echo of Isocrates' 'coura-
geous soul (psuches andrikes)' (17) at Meno 81d3, where
Socrates declares that learning requires someone who is
andreios, and at Meno 86b8-9, where Socrates states that
those who think it necessary to discover what they do not
know are rather brave (andrikoteroi). 16 Jaeger proceeds on
12
Dodds (1959), pp. 27-8.
13 Dodds (1959), p. 27, n. 2 for a list of parallel passages.
14 See Jaeger (1944), pp. 55 and 303, n. 44·
1
s Verdam (1916), p. 378.
16 Verdam (1916), pp. 385 and 394.
155
the assumption that lsocrates had before him two of Plato's

works, the Gorgias and the Protagoras, as 'prospectuses'. It
is his hypothesis that Isocrates takes issue with the impor-
tance that Plato grants to dialectic at the expense of rhetoric
and with the eristic tendencies of the philosopher's earlier
dialogues. I7 Jaeger, however, shows the need for uncertainty
regarding the actual dating of the texts when he ultimately
admits the lack of proof for any deliberate relationship
between similar phrases such as psuches ... doxastikes
(Against the Sophists 17) and psuches ... stochastikes (Gorgias
463a7). 18
III
Against the Sophists is invective. This is the second characteri-
sation which assures this brief work an important place in the
readers' construction of lsocrates' didactic persona. This one
is entirely consistent with lsocrates' attempt to make the
reader regard the work as dating from his early years.
Aristotle observes in the Rhetoric that, depending on their
age, individuals will say different types of things and in differ-
ent ways. He notes that young people, in particular, are more
prone to display their anger (Rhetoric 1389a9--10). Since
lsocrates vents his spleen against contemporary intellectuals
in Against the Sophists, he keeps within the bounds of con-
ventional ethopoeia when he leads the reader to think that the
work was written sooner rather than later in his career.
At Antidosis 193-4 lsocrates describes Against the Sophists
as the work in which he censures his rivals for their exagger-
ated claims to teach. He takes issue with their inflated adver-
tisements, which fourth-century prose represents as being an
unfortunate commonplace of the professional teacher's dis-
course. 19 In the Protagoras the sophist from Abdera presents
his advertisement (epangelma) as a claim to be able to teach
political skill (politike techne), namely the art which makes
17 Cf. Helen I on the criticism of eristic, and Jaeger (1944), p. 56.
18
Jaeger (1944), p. 304, n. 44.
'9 Also Aristotle NE 1164a31, 118ob35, 1181a12.
men good citizens (319a4-7). According to Aristotle

Rhetoric 1402a23-5, Protagoras' epangelma consists in the
promise of being able to make the weaker speech stronger.
Xenophon expresses explicit disapproval of the sophists'
'advertisement'. He reports Socrates' amazement that indi-
viduals promised virtue (areten epangellomenos) and charged
fees (Memorabilia I .2. 7). Xenophon's insistence that
Socrates himself 'advertised' no such thing is supported by a
number of the Platonic dialogues. 20 In the Euthydemus
Socrates describes Euthydemus and Dionysodorus as 'adver-
tising themselves (sphi5 epangellomeni5)' (273e5). Yet the
magnitude of their epangelma, their advertisement or claim
to be able to teach virtue well and quickly, raises serious
doubts about their credibility (273d8-9 and 274a3-4).
Undeniably Against the Sophists is an anatomy of the
unfulfilled promise. The anonymous grammarian who pro-
vides us with a summary of the work characterises it as an
anti-sophistic polemic and identifies as Isocrates' targets in
particular two groups of individuals: (I) those who
announce themselves as teachers (tous epangellomenous
didaskein) and have no knowledge of what they teach, and
(2) those who write 'Arts of rhetoric (technen rhetoriken)'
and again are ignorant of their supposed expertise. 21
Kennedy argues for three different targets in the treatise: (1)
the teachers of disputation (2) the teachers of political dis-
course and (3) the individuals who write 'arts'. 22 As I per-
ceive the structure of Isocrates' text, it falls into three main
sections, which together direct polemics against four identifi-
able groups of professional intellectuals.
In sections 3-8 the rhetorician finds fault with those who
promise to make their students virtually immortal as a result
of teaching them 'virtue', particularly the Greek ideals of
moderation and justice. 2 3 Ironically, these teachers of virtue
20
References from Eucken (1983), p. 19; also Meno 95b----c.
21
Mathieu and Bremond (1929), i, p. 143, lines 9-12.
22
Kennedy (1959), p. 172.
2 3 See µ6vov OVK&eavcnovs vmoxvovv,ai 4; TTJV61Ka\O-
,ovs avv6v,as 'TTOIT)O-EIV,
O-VVTJV 5; TOVS6e TTJVCXpETTJV
Tiapa6WO-EIV, Kai TTJV0-W<j>pOavVTJV 6;
EVEpyal;oµEVOVS,
cf. apETTJVETITJYYEIAaVTO
Kai crwq>pO(J\JVTjV
mpi av,wv,20.
157
are themselves corrupt. Outwardly, they play down the

importance of money and profit, but in fact they charge fees
and even request deposits, which are entrusted to third par-
ties for safe-keeping (4-5). By requiring a deposit, the
sophists betray their own doubt as to whether they can
make their pupils just. The sophists inadvertently contradict
(tanantia prattontes) their own promises to be able to teach
moral virtue, particularly justice (5): Isocrates plays on the
dichotomy between words (epangelma) and deeds (denoted
by the participle prattontes). In section 7 of the speech, he
observes that teachers of virtue fail to spot the contradic-
tions in their own actions despite being on the lookout for
verbal contradictions (7; cf. Antidosis 251-3). 24 In section 8
he points out that spending time with the sophists produces
no obvious benefit, perhaps invoking a traditional argument
employed by those who deny that arete can be taught. This
is the argument expressed, for example, at Dissoi Logoi 6.6,
where the author observes that many people who do not
spend time with sophists become worthy of note, that is,
worthy of speech (axioi logou).
At sections 9- r 8 Isocrates finds fault with a second group
of individuals. Here he criticises the professional teachers
who promise instruction in 'political speeches (tous politik-
ous logous)', the very form of writing which he reserves for
himself (9). He complains that these individuals have created
an 'art' or 'skill (techne)' which consists in drawing people
by cheap fees and big boasts. 2 s The sophist's techne lies in
another word-deed polarity, this time the opposition
between 'great promises' and 'small fees'. Isocrates goes on
to point out the antithesis between the teacher's promise and
his result which undermines this 'skill'. In section 9 he
observes that the teachers of rhetoric themselves produce
speeches which are far worse than those extemporised (cf.
autoschediazousin) by mere amateurs or lay people. They
have gone wrong in advocating an art of speech which lacks
24
TCXSEVaVTIW<mshri µev TWVMywv T'flPOVVTas, hri 6e TWVepywv µ17Ka6opwvTas.
25
ws TTAEl<J"TOVS
TlJ µ1KpOT'flTITWV µ1cr6wv Kai T0 µeye6e1 TWV ETTayye?l.µCXTWV
TTpocraycxywVTm,9; cf. oi TOA.µWVTEs
... a?l.al;ovevecremTTEpimhwv, IO.
flexibility ( l 2- l 4) and in providing instruction to individuals

who have no innate talent or potential to succeed (15). For
Isocrates, rhetoric is an art that needs to pay attention to
particular contexts ( l 6- 18).
Norlin regards Isocrates in sections 19-20 as dealing with
the sophists already mentioned earlier in the work. 26 I argue,
however, that Isocrates deals briefly with two different
groups of sophists (cf. 19). He first makes mention of a
recent group of professional teachers who boast about their
methodological approach to pedagogy but who will, he pre-
dicts, show their ineffectiveness like the individuals criticised
in sections 9-14 (19). He more clearly distinguishes the sec-
ond group of sophists, naming them 'the rest (loipoi)' (19).
He finds fault with 'the rest', an earlier group of sophists
who produced treatises or manuals (technai) which promised
to teach the art of litigation. This group is far worse than
the teachers of morality, who at least profess virtue and
moderation, despite themselves failing to exhibit it. The treat-
ise writers misrepresent the art of logography and dicanic
pleading, which for the most part deals with private litigation
(cf. Panathenaicus 11), as logos politikos, the discourse which
Isocrates defines as dealing with matters of public or
'national' concern, and become instructors of political med-
dling and greed (20). These sophists are presented as being
part of the problem of contemporary Athenian democracy;
their didactic programme sets them in opposition to
Isocrates' own literary programme, which, as we have seen,
he depicts as the product of his apragmosune and
si5phrosune.
Isocrates is deliberately vague about the specific names of
the sophists whom he criticises for making exaggerated
promises. He offers us four groups of individuals differenti-
ated by various contradictory claims to teach, yet no names.
His refusal to mention names distinguishes Against the
Sophists from the other works which are also generally
regarded as being critical of other contemporary or nearly
26 Norlin (1968), ii, p. 174.
159
contemporary Greek intellectuals, i.e. Busiris and Helen. In

the Busiris he openly faults the professional teacher
Polycrates for disregarding the conventions of epideictic
writing in his Apology for Busiris and Accusation of Socrates
(Busiris 1-8). He takes issue with Polycrates for using the
wrong apologetic commonplaces in his work on Busiris and
for not defending the mythical king who, in alternative tra-
ditions, transgressed the laws of hospitality by eating his
guests. At the beginning of the Helen he specifically identi-
fies Protagoras, Gorgias, Zeno and Melissus as the targets of
his polemic (2-3). His imprecise reference to his contempo-
raries in Against the Sophists provokes the inevitable ques-
tion 'what is a sophist?' - the word sophisti5n appears in the
title and at section 19.
There is at least one powerful reason, however, for not
turning to prosopography as a response to this problem.
Much of the prosopographical evidence is relatively late,
and, as Lefkowitz observes, '[b]y the second century the
philosophical discussions of the fourth century were charac-
terised as malicious disputes'. 2 7 Owen has analysed these dis-
putes and in an essay entitled 'Philosophical Invective'
reveals that philosophical slander is a discourse which rein-
vents and fictionalises its object. He cautions his readers not
to take at face value the bad things they hear about
Antiquity's teachers. 28 He demonstrates that when intellectu-
als abused their rivals, as they frequently did, they used a
number of conventions and commonplaces which show up
time and time again in the doxographies that accumulate
around the philosophers: the charge of throwing away one's
shield, of having a slave for a mother, of being a thief or
plagiarist, of having students who tum out to be tyrants or
orientalisers and, as we have seen, the charge of producing
an exaggerated promise and charging fees. Invective, as a
discourse, produces stereotypes and so it has a tendency to
efface the distinctive differences between the individuals it
2
1 Lefkowitz (1981), p. 127.
28
Owen (1986), pp. 347-64.
160
targets. It tends to lump its victims together into broad,

readily identifiable classes, transforming them into some-
thing 'other' to be dismissed. So in the Helen Isocrates
closely associates Protagoras with Gorgias, Zeno and
Melissus (2). He effaces differences of doctrine between
these individuals to represent them as figures who had a
propensity for devising falsehoods (4) and a concern with
making profit (6). Protagoras, Gorgias, Zeno and Melissus
are both of a certain type and representatives of that type.
In Against the Sophists he avoids the use of proper names to
prevent his reader from reducing the text to a pointed attack
on a few particular individuals, and for this reason he is all
the more powerful in his attack on contemporary 'rivals'.
IV
The polemical portion of Against the Sophists ends at sec-
tion 19, and readers of the work now expect to find an
account of Isocrates' own rhetorical doctrine. The anticipa-
tion is created by his own description of the work as a cor-
rective to the sophists' boastful advertisement or epangelma.
Against the Sophists promises (cf. huposchesis) to show its
audience what it means for Isocrates to teach rhetoric and
to be a teacher of rhetoric. At section 22 of the work, he
declares: 'So that I do not appear to demolish the promises
of others and myself seem to speak beyond my means, I
think I will easily make it clear even to others why I myself
came to believe these things to be so.' 29 Here Isocrates
expresses anxieties about appearing to contradict himself.
He worries that he might seem to exaggerate his own didac-
tic programme. The words ton enonton recall his earlier ref-
erence to the fact that teachers of rhetoric promise to teach
their pupils to speak comprehensively on a subject; cf. 'not
to leave out anything pertaining to the issue (ton enonton)'
2 9 "Iva 8e µ11 80KW TO:S µev TWV &Mwv 1hroo-xfoe1s 81aMe1v, mhos 8e µe(l;w AEYEIV
TWV EVOVTWV, E~ wvmp mhos em(o-0riv OVTWTOUT'EXEIV,p<;X8(ws0Tµa1 Kai TOIS
CI.AAOIS
cpavepov KOTOO-TTJO-EIV.
161
(9).3° His fear of failing to live up to his own high standards

is heightened because he has just criticised others for their
promises (huposcheseis), which are deceptive because unful-
filled. Pringsheim observes that the verb hupischnoumai and
its related words are part of a formal vocabulary of contract
which originates in archaic religious ritual; thus the sophists
effectively break an unspoken agreement between teacher
and student.3 1 This is the contract that Isocrates ostensibly
wishes to remain intact, as his characterisation of Against
the Sophists as one teacher's self-advertisement which does
not engage in boasting or 'exaggerated promises (megalas
tas huposcheseis)' at Antidosis 195 suggests.
Nevertheless, Against the Sophists ultimately fails to
deliver the promised account of Isocrates' teaching. The
work comes to an abrupt stop at section 22. It ends after the
verb katastesein, even though the text exhibits every indica-
tion that the author intended to write more. The phrase
which begins this section, 'so that I do not seem (hina de me
doko)', is one which appears elsewhere in the corpus as a
transitional formula. 'So that I do not seem' marks a change
from one topic to another, or from one way of treating a
topic to another. It turns up at Panegyricus 51, when
Isocrates turns from praising Athens' specific cultural
achievements to applauding the city's military supremacy.
The phrase also shows up at Helen 38, when the author
shifts from an encomium of Helen, indirectly expressed
through a narrative involving Theseus, to more direct praise
of Helen in terms of the events surrounding the Trojan War.
At both Panegyricus 51 and Helen 38, the phrase accompa-
nies Isocrates' anxiety that he does not appear to have
enough material for the theme he is discussing (cf. aporon,
Panegyricus 51; di' aporian, Helen 38). On two other occa-
sions, the phrase hina de me doko precedes his attempt to
anticipate criticism regarding the structure of the speech at
hand. At Archidamus 40 the speaker uses the phrase to sig-
30
µT]8EvTWV evovTwv ev TOISTTpayµacri TTapaA1TTE1v.
3' Pringsheim (1950), pp. 18-19, points to the use of these verbs as part of a con-
tractual vocabulary at To Philip 63, 91 and Panathenaicus 103.
nal a change in argument to make the point that Sparta

should go to war with Thebes. The speaker invokes the
phrase at Against Callimachus 45 when he explains why he
has devoted so much of this speech to the amnesty that
came into effect after the rule of the Thirty.
Judging from these parallels, 'so that I do not seem' ought
to signal a shift from polemic against rival teachers to
Isocrates' justification of himself as a teacher in Against the
Sophists. Critics therefore explain the abrupt ending of the
work at section 22 as the result of an unfortunate accident,
namely a lapse in textual transmission. In the eighteenth cen-
tury the classical scholar Auger declared Against the Sophists
incomplete on the basis of his study of several Parisini
codices.32 What may also have prompted this conclusion was
optimism that the rest of the text could and would be recov-
ered. This was a reasonable expectation, for scholars were
discovering hitherto unavailable bits of Isocrates in the nine-
teenth century. In 1812 Mustoxydis discovered manuscripts
which gave a complete copy of the until then partially pre-
served Antidosis, while in 1823 Bekker chanced upon the
Urbinas r, now regarded as the most reliable codex, in the
Vatican. Later Drerup also adopted the position that Against
the Sophists is an incomplete text, 33while Baiter and Sauppe,
two other editors of Isocrates' works, also complained of a
lacuna after section 22. These latter two critics cited Auger as
their authority.3 4 Most recently, Schiappa explains the silence
after katastesein as a manuscript problem. 35As to how much
of the Against the Sophists is lost, there are differing opin-
ions. Blass, who regards the mutilation as a very ancient one,
suggests that we have lost only a very small amount of text.36
Others feel that, regardless of the amount lost, the reader is
deprived of the most important part of the work, Isocrates'
rhetorical doctrine. Jebb surmises that the 'lost part of the
32 Auger (1782), iii, pp. 1-2. Mathieu and Bremond (1929), p. 141, observe that
Auger consulted Parisini 2930, 2931, 2932, 2990 and 2991.
33 Drerup (1896), p. 371-3 and (1906), p. lxxxviff. and clviii-dxiii.
34 Mu/ta deesse vidit Augerus.
35 Schiappa (1990), p. 460.
36 Blass (1898), ii, p. 241, n. 1.
kata soph. contained that exposition of the author's own

principles to which these words led up'. 37 Similarly Norlin
laments that the work 'breaks off, however, just at the point
he [Isocrates] proceeds to a more positive exposition of his
"philosophy"' .38
V
The silence at the end of Against the Sophists seems to jeop-
ardise Isocrates' identity as a teacher of rhetoric, particularly
as this is not the only silence which follows a promise of
teaching in the author's corpus (see below). Accordingly,
readers have devised means of supplementing the work by
inventing a series of implicit pedagogies. Some have thought
that the sudden ending of Against the Sophists signifies the
existence of a didactic discourse elsewhere in the corpus.
Ancient critics proposed that the work should be viewed as
a deliberately brief and sketchy treatise on rhetoric which
Isocrates intended to follow with a formal textbook or
techne on the art of persuasion.39 In this view, Against the
Sophists becomes a work sent out in anticipation of a more
detailed text on the same topic - Dobree names it a
propempticon.4° Numerous late antique sources suggest that
the work to follow was a techne or rhetorical handbook.
Cicero believes in the existence of an Isocratean handbook
despite never having seen it (On Invention 2.74 1). The author
of the Anonymous Life reports that 'it is said that [Isocrates]
also wrote a rhetorical treatise (technen rhetoriken) but this
has been lost through time' .4 2 He goes on to cite as further
evidence of its existence Aristotle's reference to this work in
his now lost Sunagi5ge Technon. 43 Philodemus reports in his
37 Jebb (1876), ii, p. 128, n. 1.

8
3 Norlin (1968), ii, p. 160.
39 Cf. M iiller ( 1858), iii, p. 159.
40
Dobree, Adversaria. 1, p. 285, as in Jebb (1876), ii, p. 244, n. 2.
4' artem non invenimus.
42
MyETm OEws OTI Kai TEXVTJV €ypmpE, T0 OExpo'v<t> ETVXEV
PTJTOplKTJV aVTTJV
0:1TOAE0'6at.
43 Anonymous Life 12 and Radermacher (1951), B 24 11.
Rhetoric that Isocrates left behind handbooks (technas)

while other sophists demonstrate the existence of their mar-
vellous skills (Rhetoric II 122, 11S44).In his commentary on
Hermogenes, Sopater places Isocrates in the company of
Gorgias and Antiphon of Rhamnus, and identifies them as
early authors of rhetorical technai (Radermacher A 5 16),
while Corpus P (=Walz II, p. 683 and Rabe, p. 60) records
that 'Gorgias ... and Isocrates wrote treatises (technen)'.45
Several Byzantine authors even paraphrase teachings which
they declare to come from Isocrates' handbook. John of
Sardis (apud Aphthonius) says that the rhetorician instructs
'the speaker (ton legonta)' to learn 'divisions (diaireseis)' and
to be a good critic, composing speeches which are appropri-
ate to the occasions, characters and events.46 Syrianus and
Maximus Planudes refer to the famous prohibition against
hiatus, which has traditionally been attributed to Isocrates. 47
Menander Rhetor refers to the instruction given in the
Theory of Isocrates (Isokratous theorema) regarding both the
style and content of the rhetorical speech. According to this
scholar, an orator should create beauty and grandeur in a
speech through harmony and through figures of speech.48
Still, a handbook is not an entirely satisfactory supple-
ment for Against the Sophists. There is considerable ambigu-
ity over the interpretation and authority of the evidence
regarding this technical work. Kroll, Marrou and Buchheit
observe that Isocrates' biographers report that in Antiquity
there was a controversy regarding the existence of Isocrates'
rhetorical techne.49 Ps.-Plutarch writes that 'there are some
people who say he had composed handbooks (technas), but
others [say] that he employed not method (ou methodoi) but
44 6 6e 1cr0Kpcm7(s Kai) Texvas KaTaA(rrroµe)v(os) O:AAOITE TrOA(t-oi croc:p)1cnai

(0a)vµacrT17(v mh)17v eivm T(ex)vriv (cmoc:pa)ivovTal.
45 Radermacher B 24, 12 = Rabe (1935), p. 60, eha ropyias 6 J\eoVTivoseis 'A0rjvas
(et-0wv) Kai 'lcroKpO:TTJS
eypmpav Texvas.
46 Radermacher B 24 21.
47 Cf. 6ei 6e T,j µev AE~EI TCXc:pwvrjeVTa Radermacher B 24 22.
µ17crvµTrlTrTEIV,
4 8 Radermacher B 24 26.
49 Kroll (1940), coll. rn49-52 at rn49; Marrou (1956), p. 126; and Buchheit (1960),
p. 38.
practice (askesei)'5° (Jsocrates 32). Kroll interprets Ps.-

Plutarch's technai to mean Regeln, 'rules' or 'principles' Y
On Marrou's reading, Ps.-Plutarch employs technai as a syn-
onym for 'method (methodos)' and contrasts both these
terms with 'practice (askesis)', learning by doing. Photius
remarks that 'some people say that he [Isocrates] used prac-
tice (sunaskesei) rather than an art (techne) with regard to
speeches'52 (Photius, Codex 260). Following Ps.-Plutarch,
who distinguishes between methodological and practical
pedagogies, Photius sets up an opposition between techne,
method, and sunaskesis, practice.
Other scholars suggest that a subtle distinction is to be
made between the singular techne and the plural technai, and
see the existence of an Isocratean treatise on rhetoric as
hanging on this distinction. In Socratic Letter 30-4
Speusippus reports on the basis of another source that 'in
his technai' Isocrates stresses the importance of earning the
audience's goodwill; at 30. ro he observes again that 'in his
technai' Isocrates recommends the use of familiar exam-
ples.53 At first glance, the phrase en tais technais affirms the
existence of a text which gives instructions on how to write
speeches. Yet Speusippus' closely juxtaposed statement that
the Athenian author despised techne introduces a complica-
tion (30. ro). If the words technai and techne both mean
'handbook', then Speusippus seems to be saying that
Isocrates wrote treatises despite showing contempt for them.
Barwick attempts to resolve the inconsistency. He argues
that the singular form of the noun techne denotes a treatise
containing theoretical precepts but the plural technai gener-
ally refers to model texts used as the basis for imitation by a
rhetorician's pupils.54
Significantly, reader.s have observed that Socratic Letter
50
Elo-i 6' o\' Kai TEXVOS o-vyyeypmpeva1, oi 6' ov µe066'{) &XX O:O-KtjO-El
OVTOVAEYOVO"l
xpr\o-ao-601.
51 Kroll (1940), col. 1049.
52
µo:/\/\OVi\ TEXVTJxpr\o-ao-6a1KaTO:TOVSMyovs TOV6:v6pa c:pao-i.
oi 6e o-vvao-Ktjo-EJ
53 Radermacher B 24 15-16.
54 Barwick (1963), pp. 46-7.
166
30.4 and 30. 1 o, which both speak of Isocrates' technai, para-

phrase statements to be found in his speeches. The first text
mentions the importance of goodwill (eunoia), and de
Romilly has shown that many of Isocrates' speeches stress
the theme of 'good-will' in political affairs.ss Then,
Radermacher has proposed that Socratic Letter 30.10 refers
to the discussion of imitation found at Evagoras 12ff. and
77. Speusippus thus plays on the different senses of techne
(handbook) and technai (speeches produced by rhetorical art
as an example for the author's students), when he argues
that Isocrates was against the formalisation of rhetorical
method and discourse.5 6 In this context it is interesting to
note that Diogenes Laertius credits Speusippus with a
Technon Elenchos, suggesting the latter's antipathy to pre-
scriptive directions in the teaching of rhetoric (D.L. 4.5). 57
Speusippus is not the only scholar of Antiquity to have cre-
ated a handbook through citation of Isocrates' own
speeches, for the fragments which late Byzantine authors,
such as Maximus Planudes, claim originate in an Isocratean
techne are also first-hand or second-hand distortions of pro-
grammatic statements on speaking and writing in the works
we now have. Cicero observes that excerpting an author's
literary discourse can cause a reader to disregard the origi-
nal context of the excerpt. He observes that in his Sunagoge
Technon Aristotle cited from other authors, improving the
style of the passages which he quoted to such a degree that
people preferred to read his collection rather than the texts
themselves ( On Invention 2.6).
Isocrates' own use of the techne/technai vocabulary is fluid.
At Against the Sophists 19, he speaks of his predecessors
who have had to the gall to write 'so-called technai'. (A
scholion on this passage names Corax and Tisias, the Sicilian
55 de Romilly (1954).
56 Bolgar and Marrou think, however, that the singular techne is ambiguous: it
may indicate either 'theoretical precepts' or exercises for imitation, or both of
these. Bolgar (1969), pp. 23-49, and Marrou (1956), p. 126.
57 Taran (1981), p. 195, suggests a relation between the Techni5n Elenchos and
Isocrates' To Philip.
innovators of the theory of doxa and eikos, Gorgias and

Thrasymachus of Cos as the specific targets of Isocrates' crit-
icism.58) Here technai seems to refer to any rigid rhetorical
method, whether this involves prescriptive treatise or model.
Slightly earlier, at Against the Sophists 12 Isocrates places the
criticism of his predecessors in context. He denies that logoi
politikoi, the phrase he employs as a synonym for rhetorical
language, could be reduced to a rigid art (tetagmene techne),
like that involved in learning how to write the alphabet.
Learning the alphabet in Antiquity involved copying authori-
tative paradigms. In the Platonic dialogue named after him,
Protagoras explains that the child learns to write his letters
by tracing the stencilled shapes of letters (326d2-5), while
several centuries later, Quintilian says that children still learn
their alphabet by tracing model letters (/. 0. 1. 1.27).
In Against the Sophists Isocrates stresses the need for
rhetoric to be taught by other than rigid or theoretical,
abstract means. He specifically criticises the teachers of
'political speech' for failing to see that success in their 'art
(techne)' needs to lie in the following contradiction or para-
dox: the most 'skilful' writer (technikotatos, Against the
Sophists 12; cf. technikoterous, 15; Antidosis 205) must be
one who resists techne in the sense of a 'systematic art'. For
the rhetorician, true 'technicality' paradoxically entails the
avoidance of theory. Isocrates conceives of rhetoric as a
'poetic activity (poietikon pragma)': he implies that it ideally
resists rigidity and fixed forms of teaching (Against the
Sophists 12; cf. Epistle 1.2). At Against the Sophists 13 he
maintains that good speeches will satisfy the particular cir-
cumstance that defines the opportune moment of perfor-
mance (kairos), the requirement of appropriateness (to pre-
pon ), and novelty (to kainon), the last of which presumably
does not transgress the ideal of ta archaia (12). Rhetoric is
for Isocrates what can be termed a conjectural or 'stochas-
tic' art if it is to be an art at all.59This rules out the possibil-
58
Radermacher A 5 7; also Hinks (1940).
59
See Barnes (1986), p. IO and Allen (1993), pp. 88 and 90.
168
ity of the teacher being able to codify specific directions

regarding the production of rhetorical discourse if his stu-
dent is to avoid trotting out exactly the same words already
employed by someone else (12; also cf. Evagoras 75-6).
Indeed, when Isocrates reiterates his programme for rhetori-
cal discourse, he deliberately dramatises it as a language of
difference and variety at section 16 of the same work. He
invokes poikilia, producing phrasing that is more elaborate
than that at section 12 (16-17). 60
Isocrates assumes an anti-theoretical stance with regard to
the teaching of rhetoric, and recent scholarship has called
into question the role of the systematic treatise and theoreti-
cal precept - in short, the prescriptive techne - in ancient
Greek rhetoric. 61 The prescriptive techne is a pedagogical
tool whose authority is called into question by Isocrates
when he criticises fixed forms of teaching, and there is no
conclusive evidence in his extant works that such a work
ever existed. But if this is the case, then why is there a whole
body of testimonial literature which refers so insistently to
theoretical handbooks written by Isocrates and so many of
his predecessors and contemporaries? The reason, I suggest,
has its origins at least in part in the creation of a dichotomy
between rhetoric and philosophy by Plato and Aristotle.
Schiappa and Cole observe that Plato and Aristotle seek to
legitimise their own technical emphasis by finding fault with
the work of other individuals whom they dismissively repre-
sent as non-philosophical rhetoricians. 62 These authors draw
a contrast between their own superior, because philosophi-
cally based, rhetorical technai, and what they depict as being
the deficient technai of others. In the Gorgias, for instance,
Plato demands that rhetoric be taught by theoretical or
abstract principle rather than by or in addition to example.
Socrates requires that to qualify as a techne, rhetoric must
6o ETI OETWV Kmpwv µiJ 01aµapTEIV,O.AAO. Kai Tois evBvµtjµao-1npmoVTWS OAOVTOV

"A6yov KaTaTIOIKiAmKai Tois 6v6µacr1v evpv6µws Kai µOVO"IKWS eineiv, Ta0Ta OE
no"A"Afisfo1µe"Aeiasoeia6m. Also see Panegyricus 7--9.
61 Cole (1991), p. 81; Kennedy (1959), pp. 169ff.
62 Schiappa (1990) and Cole (1991), pp. 2ff.
have a logos (465a3), which Dodds understands to mean a

'rational principle' 63 and Irwin a 'rational account'. 64 At
Phaedrus 266d5ff. Socrates observes that Theodorus of
Byzantium, Evenus, Teisias, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias,
Protagoras and Thrasymachus are all credited with writing
technai on rhetoric. These are inadequate because the
philosopher declares the proper rhetorical techne to be funda-
mentally different from the art practised and taught by the
sophists. It resembles an empirical and scientific skill, like
medicine (269d5; 27ob5-6), although it involves knowledge
of the soul rather than of the body (cf. 271a4-8 and
271c1off.). Aristotle historicises rhetoric in such a way as to
give a privileged position to the sort of theoretical approach
espoused in his own Rhetoric. 65 In the Sunagi5ge Technon, he
cites the work of preceding writers to illustrate particular
rhetorical doctrines which he now systematically presents.
By so doing, he assimilates these authors within his own the-
oretical framework. Modern scholars like Spengel, who pro-
duces a comprehensive collection of rhetorical teachings,
and Radermacher, who gathers the evidence for 'technical
writing' on rhetoric prior to Aristotle, reinforce the impor-
tance given to theory in the development of rhetoric as a
discipline.
Viewed against this background, the invention of an
Isocratean techne is a strategy of authorisation used by later
scholars. It is a means of making the rhetorician's achieve-
ment conform to the technicality that Plato and Aristotle
demand of their predecessors and contemporaries, and of
making him appear to be a fellow proponent of scientific
rhetoric. A handbook is also a clever ploy by subsequent
scholars to empower Isocrates by attributing to him the very
discourse that in one literary tradition supposedly makes
Aristotle the superior teacher of rhetoric. At On the Orator
6
3 Dodds (1959), p. 228.
64 Irwin (1979), p. 33.
65
Compare Kerferd (1981), p. 60, 'What Aristotle does, almost regularly and as a
matter of habit, is to take a current philosophical term or expression already in
use, ~nd then to refine it in such a way as to demonstrate that his own analyses
and ideas were already imperfectly present in earlier ideas already in currency.'
170
3.35. 141 Cicero has Crassus, the advocate of rhetorical

method, trace the origin of his views to Aristotle. According
to Crassus, Aristotle suddenly changed the whole nature of
his teaching after he perceived the success of Isocrates. The
philosopher is credited with the remark drawn from
Euripides, 'it is shameful to be silent when Isocrates is per-
mitted to speak'. 66 The line supposedly dramatises the
moment when Aristotle rejected the position articulated in
his Gryllos, namely an uncertainty as to whether rhetoric
could be formally taught, and embraced scientific method. 67
Similarly, Owen reads this as Aristotle's conversion to a
dogmatic belief that rhetoric should be a 'science (techne)'
and that this techne should be articulated as such, in a
'handbook (techne)', like the Rhetoric. 68 To fashion Isocrates
as an Aristotelian theorist doxographers need to provide
him with a rhetorical theory and, as I have observed, this
they do easily enough by taking away the framing of the
author's individual texts and quoting him out of context.
VI
While abandoning the specific idea that Isocrates composed a
technical treatise on rhetoric, it is still possible to retain
another related form of the propempticon-theory. This time
the silence which constitutes the ending of Against the
Sophists is viewed as being prefatory to a doctrine of rhetoric
not expressed in the works which the author intended for
public consumption. Eucken, following Wilamowitz, regards
the apparently fragmentary text ('den Anschein eines
Fragmentes') as an enticement to the reader to proceed fur-
ther into the rhetorician's doctrine on rhetoric. 69 Underlying
this particular notion of the unwritten doctrine is the sense
that lack of a complete teaching in Against the Sophists ere-
66 turpe ... esse tacere ... cum Jsocratem pateretur dicere; Quintilian repeats this narra-
tive at /. 0. 3. 1. 14.
67 Solrnsen (1929), pp. 196ff.
68 Owen (1986), p. 356.
69 Wilamowitz (1893 2 ), i, p. 324; Munscher (1916), col. 2172; Mathieu and
Bremond (1929), i, p. 141; Eucken (1983), pp. 5-6.
171
ates a desire for more of the author's teaching. Harding sug-

gests that the author is protecting 'trade secrets' .7° Harding's
interpretation might also gather support from Plutarch. In
the parallel life Demosthenes Plutarch refers to a tradition
which has the orator 'apprentice' himself to several rhetori-
cians, including the non-methodical Isocrates and Alcidamas,
without their knowledge (Demosthenes 848c5-8).7 1 According
to this narrative, Demosthenes secretly (krupha) takes the
technai of Isocrates - whether handbooks or speeches in this
representation 72- in order to avoid paying the latter's fee of
ten minae (848b8-r r). The supposed rivalry between these
two rhetoricians might help to explain the origin of this
apocryphal story. According to convention, Isocrates could
not nurture a future political enemy as a student in the way
that he supposedly nurtured Timotheus, for example.
Jaeger observes that, when Isocrates speaks of Athens
establishing philosophia, i.e. rhetoric, he says the city 'made
[it] known (katedeixe)' (Panegyricus 47). The verb katedeixe is
normally used to describe the act of founding a mystery
cult.73 A precedent for Jaeger's characterisation of the rhetori-
cian's doctrine as a religious secret can be found in the work
of Diogenes Laertius, who writes, '[Speusippus] first published
the so-called unspoken things (ta kaloumena aporrheta) of
Isocrates, as Caeneus says'74 (4. r .2). The word kaloumena sug-
gests that certain of Isocrates' teachings were commonly
known as 'unsayables'. It appears to denote things which are
unsayable because they constitute a specially protected doc-
trine known to only a few individuals, in this instance the
pupils of Isocrates. Diogenes Laertius reflects conventions -
one might say, rhetorical conventions - governing the portrai-
70 Harding (1986).
71
However Pseudo-Plutarch does not make any mention of Demosthenes' secret
use of Isocrates' speeches in his Life of Demosthenes (844c).
72
Barwick (1963), p. 47, argues that Texva1 denotes model speeches on the basis of
Isocrates' own comments at To Philip 113 and Evagoras 77.
73
Jaeger (1944), iii, pp. 79 and 308, n. 35; also Jaeger (1948), p. 109, n. I.
74 Kai lTpwTos [Speusippus] TTapc'x 'lo-oKpchovs Ta KaAovµEVacm6ppT)Ta e~tjveyi<ev,ws
Ka1vevs. According to Taran (1981), p. 182 and n. 7, Caeneus is largely
<pT)o-1
unknown but there is a reference to an individual with this name at Aristotle
Anal. Post. 77b41.
172
ture of sophists and philosophers in Antiquity. Originally a

legal term describing what is unspeakable as an accusation in
court, 75 aporrheta is subsequently picked up by Aristotle to
refer to the 'mysteries' which Aeschylus is supposed to have
violated (NE l l ua10) and to describe the secret teachings of
Pythagoras, the archetypal philosopher of Greece, in such a
way as to suggest that they resemble religious mysteries (fr.
192 = Iamb. VP 30; cf. Aristoxenus fr. 43W = Diogenes
Laertius 8.15).76 Aporrheta, no doubt, is also influenced by the
cognate arrheta, which was used by earlier authors to denote
knowledge associated with religious practice or figures.
Herodotus employs this noun for the misogynistic rituals
practised at Epidaurus (5.83) and for the mysteries which the
priestess Timo reveals to Miltiades at Paros (6. 135), while the
cloud-chorus speaks of the arrheton hieron it observes
(Aristophanes Clouds 302).77
The convention of representing rhetorical and sophistic
teaching as a cultic secret to be passed on only to initiates is
invoked by other means. Aristotle had employed the phrase
'from succession (ek diadoches)' to denote the gradual discov-
ery and accumulation of rhetorical knowledge (Soph. Ref
183b30). The third-century historian Hippostratus suppos-
edly distinguished the true Homeridae from the rhapsodes by
the farmer's authorisation to sing Homer's poetry 'by right
of succession (ek diadoches)' (FGrH 568f5 = schol. Nern.
2. 1).78 The phrase ek diadoches originally referred to the suc-
cession of priests and is carried over after the fourth century
to characterise the passing on of knowledge from teacher to
student. Much later, in the Life of Themistocles, Plutarch
also appeals to this iconography of teaching.79 In the bio-
75 Cf. Lysias I0.2; also Owen (1986), p. 358.

16 Burkert (1972), pp. 178-9. On the identity of Pythagoras as an archetypal
philosopher, see Morrison (1958), pp. 208ff. and Owen (1986), p. 363.
77 Burkert (1972), p. 461, n. 69, observes that o:ppTJTadenotes ineffable, because
irrational, secrets.
18 Lefkowitz (1981), p. 16.
79 Plutarch also uses the word cm6ppTJTa to refer to a body of knowledge reserved
for initiates. cm6ppriTa turns up with this sense at Isis and Osiris 25, Generation
of the Soul 4.1013e and Numa 22, which narrates how Pythagoras' secret doc-
trine was betrayed.
173
graphical notice on Mnesiphilus, which Morrison regards as

one of the most important texts for the history of sophistic
education, Plutarch defines the sophistic profession as one
in which a doctrine is handed down by an authority figure
to a carefully selected successor. Plutarch distinguishes
Mnesiphilus, the teacher of Themistocles, from the natural
philosophers by describing his wisdom as political acumen
and a practical understanding (2.4). 80 Plutarch's vocabulary
lends an air of mystery to the figure of Mnesiphilus. He
observes that Mnesiphilus has gained political skill and
knowledge from Solon, the father of Athens' laws and one of
the Seven Wise Men, 'by right of succession (ek diadoches)'. 81
Convention is only a partial explanation for why
Diogenes Laertius and his sources associate aporrheta with
Isocrates. Also implicitly underlying this attribution is a
desire to align the rhetorician with Plato and Aristotle, two
of his pre-eminent intellectual contemporaries. The doxogra-
phy of the Roman and late antique periods insists that both
the philosophers possessed an exclusive, secret doctrine.
Various sources affirm the esoteric nature and epistemologi-
cal complexity of an unwritten work. They tell us of Plato's
Lecture on the Good, which, although open to all who
cared to come, could not even be understood by anyone, let
alone his disciples. 82 Roman writers perpetuate the idea of
an esoteric doctrine in connection with Aristotle. Aulus
Gellius wants to stress the continuity between Aristotle and
his predecessor Plato, and accordingly he attributes an eso-
teric teaching to the former. He declares that Aristotle's
teaching can be divided into two different types: the exoteric
(exoterika) and the acroatic (akroatika). He tells us that the
exoteric doctrine concerns itself primarily with rhetoric and
politics, and was delivered to a general audience of students
80
ovTe pr\Topos ovT05 OVTETWV q:,vcriKwvKATJ0EVTwv q:,tAocrc\q:,wv,
aAAa TTJVTOTE
Ka/\OVµEVTJVcroq:,{av,ovcrav 6e 6EtVOTTJTaTTOA!TlKT)VKai 6pacrTT)ptOVO"\JVEO"lV, ETT-
ntj6evµa TTETTOlTJµEvov Kai 6tacrw~OVT05wcrmp a1pecr1vEK6ta6oxi\s CXTTOLOI\WVOS.
8
' See the discussion of Mnesiphilus in Frost (1971), pp. 20--5 and (1980), pp. 21-2.
82
For the narrative, see Simplicius In Phys. 453.25-455.1ff; Aristoxenes Harm. El.
11.30--1; Ross, pp. 142-3; pace H. Cherniss (1945) The Riddle of the Early
Academy (Berkeley), p. 72.
174
later in the day. We learn from him that the acroatic doc-
trine dealt with philosophical and scientific issues, and was
delivered to a select group of students in the mornings in the
Lyceum (Attic Nights 20.5.1-6). According to Genius'
account, the arcane doctrine was only ever accessible to
those who had been present at the acroatic lectures (20.5.9
and 13).83
The evidence for esoteric philosophical doctrine does not
originate solely in the work of later scholars. Particularly in
the case of Plato, there is some basis for subscribing to an
'unwritten philosophy'. In several dialogues Socrates
declares that books and writing are an inadequate medium
in which to conduct philosophical inquiry. In the
Protagoras, books, like public orators, are faulted for not
being able to answer questions (329a2-4). Above all, the
Phaedrus and the Seventh Epistle draw attention to the inad-
equacies of writing for philosophy. In the first work Socrates
observes that written texts prove an obstacle to their read-
ers' attempts to engage in true anamnesis or recollection,
despite appearing to be memory aids (Phaedrus 274c5-
275b2). As in the Protagoras, written texts cannot properly
respond if questioned (275d4-e5). The Platonic Seventh
Epistle states that none of the author's philosophical discus-
sions with Dionysius were written down or could be written
down (341c4-5). The author of this work goes on to elabor-
ate an epistemology in which verbal modes (onoma and
logos, 342b2) are lower than visual (eidi5lon, 342b2) and
intellectual (episteme, 342b2) modes of cognition. 84
It can be claimed that Plato constructs his doctrine as an
unwritten, esoteric discourse in a number of his dialogues.
In the Sophist, for instance, Socrates lays out a programme
for philosophical discussion that appears to be incomplete.
He, Theodorus and the Eleatic stranger will inquire into
what it means to be a sophist, statesman and philosopher
83 See I. During (1957) Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (Goteborg),

pp. 431-4. A secret doctrine was also associated with the Stoic Zeno (SVF 1.43),
for which see Long and Sedley (1987), p. 430.
84 Morrow (1962), pp. 65ff.
1 75
(217a3). If the Sophist itself satisfies the first part of the

inquiry, its sequel, the Statesman, fashions the statesman or
politikos through division and myth (257a4). 85 As none of
the extant dialogues explicitly portrays the philosopher, the
reader is left with the tantalising possibility that Plato
intended to write yet another dialogue named the
Philosopher but failed to do so as a result of age or some
other incapacity. 86 There is, however, another possible inter-
pretation. Plato has already written the Philosopher in his
representation of Socrates in conversation with his col-
leagues in dialogues such as the Sophist and Statesman, but
this representation of the philosopher is available only to a
few perceptive readers.
The commonplace nature of an esoteric, oral doctrine is
one reason why we should doubt whether this mode of dis-
course should be associated with Isocrates. Another reason
to doubt a secret teaching is the fact that knowing when to
be silent is an important aspect of rhetorical skill. Stobaeus
credits Solon, Plutarch's paradigmatic sophist and
Herodotus' archetypal philosopher and counsellor, with the
advice to 'seal [your] words with silence, and your silence
with timeliness' 87 (DK 10 = Stobaeus 3. r. 172). The character-
isation of silence as a sphragis recalls Theognis' use of the
seal as the identifying mark of the work of a sophizomenos,
namely himself (vv. 19-20, 22-3). In Aeschylus' plays several
characters emphasise the importance of knowing when to
speak and when to be quiet (Libation Bearers 582; Eumenides
85
Plato leads the reader to regard the Statesman as the natural continuation of the
Sophist by referring to the prior work. Socrates begins by thanking Theodorus
for allowing him to meet Theaetetus (thereby also referring to the earlier
Theaetetus) and the Eleatic stranger (257a1-2). Theodorus then refers to their
tripartite programme at 257a4 and 257c1, and reminds his interlocutors that
they still need to construct the statesman and the philosopher.
86
Miller (1980), p. JO and bibliography from p. 124; Skemp (1950) Plato's Statesman
(London), pp. 20-2; Dies (1956) Platon. Oeuvres Completes (Paris), iii.I,
pp. xiii-xvii; Gundert (1971) Dialog und Dialektik zur Struktur des platonischen
Dialogs (Amsterdam), pp. 157ff. and 125-7; Cornford (1935) Plato's Theory of
Knowledge (London), pp. 168-9; Friedlander (1958, 1964) Plato (New York), i,
pp. 152-3; ii, pp. 275 and 281-2; also Plochmann (1954) 'Socrates, the Stranger
from Elea, and Some Others', CP 49, 223-31, at pp. 228ff.
87
crcppayil;ovTovs µEvMyovs crtyij, TTlV6Ecr1yrivKaip4:>.
176
276--8, 571). Aristophanes makes fun of Aeschylean silence in

the Frogs (e.g. 832-3). Along the same lines, the comic poet
Epicharmus (6th-5th century) writes 'you are not clever at
speaking but unable to keep silent' (DK 23 B 29 = Aulus
Gellius 1.15. 15-?38). Here the sense is that those who are
unable to speak well should know to be quiet.
Isocrates provides his reader with several statements
regarding silence; however, none of these supports the idea
that it is a strategy for concealing privileged knowledge. In
To Demonicus he advises the son of Hipponicus on the
virtues of maintaining silence. According to him, only two
occasions justify speech: when one knows what one is speak-
ing about and when it is necessary to speak (41). Isocrates
varies the rules for speech and silence set out by Gorgias
and Plato. Maximus Planudes preserves a fragment of
Gorgias' Funeral Oration which has him declaring the
importance of speaking (legein), being silent (sigan) and act-
ing/doing (poiein) what is necessary at the proper moment
(en toi deonti, DK 86 B 6 = Planudes ad Hermogenes V 548
Walz). 89 Plato later stresses the importance of knowing when
to speak and to be silent at Phaedrus 272a4, and at 275e3
introduces the necessity of also knowing to whom to speak
and to be silent. Rather than knowing when to speak and
when to be silent, Isocrates now places the emphasis on
knowing what to say and when it is necessary to say it. It
makes sense to understand the importance given to silence
in To Demonicus in terms of the author's quietistic politics.
He communicates to Hipponicus his ideal of the voiceless
citizen, the individual who refuses to engage in demagogic
oratory in the lawcourts and Assembly, and so benefits
society.
Another work, the Busiris, is also important for under-
standing the role of silence in Isocrates' rhetoric. In section
29 of this work, the author observes that, when they are
88 Cf. ov Mye1v TVy' focri 6e1v6s, a.AM myav a6vvmo5. Aulus Gellius identifies this
phrase as the origin of the Latin maxim, 'qui cum loqui non posset, tacere non
potuit'.
89 While some critics regard this as an overall theory of kairos (e.g. Vitali (1971),
pp. 103ff.), Loraux (1986), p. 228, calls this reading into question.
177
silent, the followers of Pythagoras are more admired than

those 'who have the greatest reputation (doxan) for speak-
ing' even when they remain silent (sigontas). Historically,
readers have assumed that, since Pythagoras is the arche-
typal philosopher of Greece, the silence of his disciples is to
be viewed as an indication that they possess a specialised
and esoteric knowledge (cf. Busiris 28; To Demonicus 41). 90
Yet I suggest that, if we consider Pythagorean silence in the
context which the Busiris as a whole creates for it, then this
interpretation needs to be called into question. As a whole,
the speech is a critique of an apology of Busiris, the mythi-
cal Egyptian king, written by the sophist Polycrates.9 1
Isocrates observes that, instead of drawing attention to the
achievements of Busiris, as he himself does (cf. 4-6),
Polycrates stressed the crimes of his mythical subject (45-6).
He describes Polycrates' apology of Busiris as if it were a
sycophantic discourse. He names it loidoria (33) and
blasphemia (38), using the terms which also denote
unfounded accusation in the lawcourts. He goes on to blame
his addressee for imitating the poets who produce impious
myths about the gods and thus create bad paradigms for
their audiences to imitate (40): the discourse produced by
such poets is analogous to the legal kakegoria against which
Athens legislates (40). At section 48 Isocrates draws an
explicit analogy between Polycrates' apology and legal dis-
course. He suggests that a litigant is more likely to be
acquitted if he says nothing than if he pleads his case in the
way that the sophist has defended Busiris (48). I venture to
suggest that overall the Busiris constructs language and
silence against the background of the discourse of poluprag-
° Certainly
9 this is how the literature of the Roman period characterises silence. In
Plutarch's On Garrulity silence can communicate something significant; in this
sense it is the 'discourse' of holy, mystical things (504a and 51oe). In the Life of
Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus celebrates Apollonius' ability to maintain
silence and thus to show himself a pupil of Pythagoras (1. 15; cf. Treatise of
Eusebius 12), while in the Apology Apuleius assumes this 'discourse' of the
philosopher by refusing to reveal the identity of the deity he worships to his jury
and audience (64).
91 I must disagree with Owen, who believes that Isocrates only finds fault with the
technicalities of Polycrates' epideictic writing; Owen (1986), p. 360.
178
mosune and in the context of the civic ideals of apragmosune

and sophrosune, respectively.92 Isocrates implies that, as
Polycrates has undertaken to speak and write about Busiris,
he has engaged in a form of verbal meddling and that he
would do better to say no more rather than to elaborate his
defence of the Egyptian king and risk convicting him. If we
grant the coherence of themes in the speech, then the silence
of Pythagoras' disciples in section 29 is to be viewed less as
a preface to an esoteric teaching than as an extension of the
'small voice' and its politics.
The passages I have been examining demonstrate that
ancient authors saw rhetorical skill to lie both in being able
to deploy language skilfully and in being able to know when
not to deploy it: silence is better than talking nonsense. By
themselves, they do not, however, provide us with an inter-
pretation of the end of Against the Sophists. Accordingly, I
shall go on to suggest at the end of this chapter that
Isocrates invokes silence in this work in order to make a
specific point about what he thinks pedagogical discourse
should ideally entail - or not.
VII
If we step back for a moment to consider the broad episte-
mological framework that Isocrates establishes for rhetorical
discourse, then it becomes clear why the author's corpus can
accommodate neither a treatise which is rigidly prescriptive
nor an esoteric doctrine. Conventionally, rhetorical language
rejects all forms of systematic or precise knowledge for com-
mon opinion (doxa), for the beliefs and impressions that the
majority of people hold: rhetoric addresses itself to a wide,
general audience. Isocrates accommodates his writing to this
ideal of accessibility.
92 See the objection in Owen (1986), p. 363, 'Some scholars have professed to see a
mention of it [i.e. Pythagorean secrecy] in a passage from Isocrates' Busiris (29),
but I fail to follow them. What Isocrates seems to say is that the education of
the Pythagoreans is known to be so good that they command more respect when
they are silent than others who try to dazzle the company with rhetorical tricks.'
We see that he makes a point of criticising 'profession-

alised', abstract knowledge. In the Antidosis, he observes
that eristic argument, astrology, geometry and such erudite
subjects have only a limited utility for civic life. If the teach-
ers of these subjects do not benefit their students as much
as they promise, they do at any rate help them more than
others believe (261). According to Isocrates, eristic, astrol-
ogy and geometry are at best propaideutic, like grammar
and music, the subjects taught to children (266). These
subjects predispose their students to learning. They keep
them exercised and sharpened (265; cf. 267) but do not
improve their ability at speaking or at giving political coun-
sel (267). This is because they demand special subtlety and
refinement (perittologia) and precision (akribeia) from those
who practise them. These studies have no connection with
any other form of learning and particularly with that which
Isocrates claims to teach (263-4). They isolate the student
from the normal life of the polis, implicitly identified by
Isocrates as the focal point of an Athenian's existence.
Later in the Panathenaicus, Isocrates again concedes that
the contemporary 'curriculum' of geometry, astrology and
eristic discourse can be beneficial to and suitable for young
people (27-8). If these subjects have no other function, they
at least keep the city's youth out of trouble (27).
Nevertheless, where public life is concerned, they have
severe limitations. Such subjects are not suitable for adults
because they require far too much precision and specialisa-
tion from those who engage in them, alienating these indi-
viduals from everyday affairs (28-30; cf. Busiris 23).
Isocrates brings his diatribe against the current education to
a close by denying that possession of technai, epistemai and
dunameis in themselves makes citizens educated (30). His
position has an analogy. It resembles Callicles' argument in
the Gorgias that because philosophy is a pursuit of spe-
cialised knowledge it must eventually be abandoned to
ensure that the student will not be ignorant of civic affairs,
e.g. of the laws, of the language of public and private trans-
180
actions, and generally of human nature (484c8ff. and

487c6-7). 93
Isocrates directs his polemic against a certain kind of
intellectual and his profession in the fifth and fourth cen-
turies. The subjects whose authority he questions were
widely associated with numerous prominent Greek thinkers
and teachers. He rejects eristic discourse, a subject about
which Protagoras, for instance, supposedly produced an Art
of Eristic. 94 Then, as Burkert observes, the academic curricu-
lum based on mathematics was associated with the
Pythagoreans, whose doctrine ordered the world through
numbers, with Democritus (B 11) and with the sophist
Hippias, who is represented as teaching calculation, astron-
omy, geometry and music (Protagoras 318d-e; Hippias
Major 285b; Hippias Minor 366c, 368e).95 Isocrates distin-
guishes himself from this stereotype of the intellectual since
he resists any educational programme concerned with dis-
crete bodi_es and sources of knowledge. For him rhetoric
remains an art (techne) only so long as it does not concern
itself with the content of any other techne in the particular
way that this latter, specialised techne would. Elsewhere he
faults Gorgias, Zeno and Melissus for vexing themselves
over the useless minutiae of sophistic argument (Helen 5).96
It might appear that there is a paradox involved in this
ideal of rhetoric. The person who engages in rhetoric must
still know what to say and do on every occasion, while
recognising that no knowledge (episteme) in itself permits
this (Antidosis 271). But because rhetoric relies on opinion
(doxa), this language does not undermine its own pro-
93 Jaeger (1944), p. 147 and Dodds (1959), p. 272, observe the similarity between
the views of Plato's Callicles and Isocrates. See also Xenophon Memorabilia
4.7.2-6 for the limits which Socrates places upon the learning of geometry,
astrology and astronomy.
94 See Diogenes Laertius 9.5off. and Robinson (1979), pp. 54-5.
95 Burkert (1972), pp. 421, n. II8 and 422.
96 See Nussbaum (1986), p. 96, on 'precision' as a constituent of 'technical' lan-
guage and practice.
181
gramme.97 In Plato's Phaedrus even Socrates grants that if the

non-philosophical orator is to be successful he must learn not
what is in reality just but what seems just to most people, and
likewise not what is really good but what is apparently good
(259e7-26oa3).98 The philosopher concedes that an orator
needs to appeal to the beliefs and impressions of his audience
rather than to the truth. At Against the Sophists 17 Isocrates
stipulates - whether or not in parodic reminiscence of Plato
Gorgias 463a7 - that the student of rhetoric must have a
psuche doxastike, a soul with an aptitude for doxa. In the same
work he affirms that the individuals who reject episteme or
precise knowledge in favour of doxa are the more successful
ones in knowing what to say and what to advise (Against the
Sophists 8). Elsewhere he draws an analogy between the teach-
ers of gymnastics and the teachers of philosophy, i.e. rhetoric.
Both teach their students thoroughly not a specific body of
knowledge but a method for employing doxa effectively:
When they have made them experienced and completely conversant with
these things, they train them in these matters again; they make them accus-
tomed to labour, and force them to join together each of the things they
have learned, so that they may grasp these things more firmly and come
closer to the opportune moments by opinion. (This is because it is not pos-
sible for them to grasp success by knowledge, for in all actions they shun
knowledge. Yet, those who best pay attention and are able to discern what
happens for the most part most often achieve success.)
(Antidosis 184)99
Athletes and orators are taught how to achieve proximity

to the kairoi, the moments of opportunity which grant one
success, by use of doxa, generally translated as 'opinion' and
'conjecture'. According to Isocrates, the doxastic method is
an empirical one: it lies in anticipating the kairoi from the
97 See the discussions in Rummel (1979), pp. 25-30; Cooper (1986), pp. 77----96;
and
Batstone (1986).
98
Perhaps this is precisely what Socrates criticises Callicles for at Gorgias 513a1-2.
99 eµ,rE(povs 6e TOVTWV1TOl7lO"aVTES Kai 6iaKpl~C.OcravTESEV TOVTOIS"TTM\V yvµv6:-
~0VO"IVavTovs , Kai ,rovE'i'v e6(~ovcr1, Kai crvvEipE1vKae' ev EKacrTov wv eµaBov
6:vaYKO:~OVO"IV, iva TaVTa ~E~aJOTEpovKaT6:crxwcr1Kai TWVKmpwv eyyvTepw Ta'i's
66~ms yevwvTal. T0 µev yap El6evai mp1Aa~EIV CXVTOVS [sc. TOVS Kaipovs l ovx
oTovT' EO"T\Vfol yap O'."TTO'.VTWVTWV,rpayµo:TWV 61a<pEvyovcr1 Tas E"TTIO"TT]µas,
ol 6e
µa/\\O"Ta 1TpocrexovTESTOV voOv Kai 6vv6:µEVOI6EwpE!VTO crvµ~a'i'vov ws E"TTITO
TIO/\v "TT
/\EJcrTCXKI
s avTwv TVYX6:vovcr1.
indications which generally accompany them. At first glance it

may appear that for Isocrates doxa is a precise doctrine. He
writes of the gymnastic teachers training their charges 'pre-
cisely (diakribi5santes)' (Antidosis 184; also akribi5s... dielthein,
Against the Sophists 17). There is no inconsistency, however,
in his representation of opinion as imprecise knowledge and
impression. The phrase 'for the most part (epi to polu)' quali-
fies the participle, reinforcing the idea that both the content
and form of discourse are concerned above all with generali-
ties. Doxa needs to be and is qualified by 'for the most part
(epi to polu)' - a phrase which identifies a conjectural or sto-
chastic art - because it cannot ever be articulated as a
theory. 100 Of course, when Isocrates takes issue with the
authors of the treatises (technai) ( Against the Sophists 19), he
implicitly turns his back upon the tradition which presents
this rhetorical mode of argumentation in an abstract manner.
Other passages in the corpus also articulate the impor-
tance of observation and experience. At Antidosis 271
Isocrates declares that wise people or sophoi are those able
to attain what is best on most occasions or for the most part
(epi to polu) as a result of doxa, again opinion or conjecture.
At Panathenaicus 30--1 he defines the properly educated in
part as individuals who are able to act appropriately, and so
successfully, in the circumstances at hand:
Whom, then, do I call educated, since I take no account of the arts, sci-
ences and specialities? First of all, those who act well in the circumstances
which they come across each day and have a judgement which meets the
occasions and which is able for the most part to target beneficial action;
then, those who associate in an appropriate and fitting manner with those
who are at any time near them, bearing the unpleasantness and harshness
of others tolerantly and easily, and presenting themselves in as amicable
and pleasant a fashion as possible to their colleagues. IOI
100
Barnes (1986), p. I I, and Allen (1993), pp. Sg.-96.
IOI Tivas ovv KaAw 'TTE'TTaJOEvµevovs, E'TTE!OT]
TO:S Texvas Kai TO:S E'TT!O"TT)µas
Ka\ Tas
6vv6:µe1s O:'TTOOOK!µ6:~c.v;
TipWTOVµev TOVSKaAWS xpc.vµevovs TOIS 1Tp6:yµacr1TOIS
KaTO:TT]V77µepav EKO:O"TT)V 1Tp00-'TT1'TTTOVO"l,
Kai TT]V66~av E'TT!TVXfiTWV Kmpwv
exovTas Kai ovvaµEVT)V wsE'TTiTO 'TTOAV O"TOXO:~ecr6mTOVcrvµcpepoVTOS· E'TTE!Ta
TOVS
TIPETIOVTC.VSKai O!Kaic.vsoµlAOVVTasTOIScxei'TTAT)O"!O:~OVO"l,
Kai TO:Sµev TWV aAAC.VV
CXT)Oias
Kai j3apVTT)TaSEVKOAC.VS Kai pc:;xo(c.vs ws OVVaTOV
cpepoVTaS,crcpo:s6' CXVTOVS
eAacppoT6:TovsKai µETptc.vT6:Tovs ToTs crvvoOm ,rap1\ovTas.
The particular body of knowledge held by the educated per-

son consists in everyday experiences, and these provide him
with the ability to judge what is opportune (doxa ... ton
kairon). This judgement or opinion (doxa), in turn, allows
him to achieve what is beneficial (to sumpheron) most of the
time - again the phrase epi to polu announces the generality
of the definition of doxa. In the passages cited above the
author characterises the practical situations in which he sees
doxa to be useful as rhetorical ones. Above all, there is the
emphasis on the kairos, the moment at which one speaks
with greatest effect (cf. Against the Sophists 13 and 16).
Later in the passage of the Panathenaicus in question
Isocrates states that the individuals who utilise judgement
and opinion (doxa) will associate with those around them in
a manner that is appropriate and well measured. The empir-
ical method offers a strategy both for composing texts and
for achieving success in public affairs, for it is implied that
the two activities are in some sense parallel ones (cf. Epistle
6.8-9). At On the Peace 8 the speaker says that doxa com-
pensates for any deficiencies of knowledge about political
events and their outcomes.
VIII
If the handbook and the esoteric doctrine are to be aban-
doned as appendices to Against the Sophists, one further
supplement to the work's silence remains available. This is
the doctrine of mimesis. Modern discussions of pedagogical
imitation take the view that mimesis is a method of training
which involves a student becoming like his teacher through
imitation of the latter and his work. It may consist in a
pupil learning from and copying either an oral performance,
such as the agon in the Clouds of Aristophanes (especially
886-8) between the Stronger Speech and the Weaker Speech,
from which Pheidippides is to learn how to argue. More
often, it entails a student using as a model a written text,
usually of an 'epideictic' nature. Thus scholars consider
Gorgias' Helen and Palamedes, Antisthenes' Ajax and
Odysseus, Alcidamas' Odysseus, Antiphon's Tetralogies, and

Isocrates' own Helen, Busiris, Evagoras and sometimes his
Plataicus and Archidamus as model speeches composed for
the authors' students to learn by heart. 102 In the Phaedrus
Plato queries the effectiveness of this form of training when
Socrates describes Phaedrus repeatedly reading the Lysianic
Eroticus to himself (228a5--c5). To see these works as para-
digmatic texts should not disallow the possibility that they
have a function beyond their status as models for students,
and many of them do indeed raise difficult epistemological
or ethical issues. 10 3
Forms of the verb mimeomai and the noun mimetes turn
up thirty-eight times in eighteen different texts in the
Isocratean corpus. 10 4 In Against the Sophists it occurs in the
author's account of mimesis, which is located within his cri-
tique of the so-called teachers of logos politikos at sections
14-18. Here Isocrates suggests that a student can come to
resemble his teacher if he possesses a suitable nature (phusis)
and receives proper training (melete) and knowledge
(episteme). (He repeats this doctrine at Antidosis 194, leading
Mathieu and Bremond to believe that it is the core of his
didactic method. 10 5) He states the need for both natural
talent and nurture, along with numerous other individuals in
the fifth and fourth centuries. 106 At Against the Sophists 17
he declares that the teacher should go through the subject he
is discussing as accurately (akribos) and as comprehensively
as possible. When he has exhausted his exposition, the
teacher must tum to demonstration of his teaching, offering
102
Cf. Aristotle Soph. Ref 183b36-7. Maidment (1941), p. 35, writes, 'Antiphon
himself is known to have taught rhetoric and to have written upon the subject;
and so it was only natural that he should have published a number of model
speeches for the benefit of pupils'; Kennedy (1959), pp. 169-70; Buchheit
(1960), p. 39; Ober (1989), p. 48; Cole (1991), p. 81.
10
3 Classen (1959), p. 219, is right to insist that the teachers of language also raised
'some basic notions of man's place in the world' by the very nature of their
instruction.
10
4 Sorbom (1966), pp. 12-13 and 56, n. 34, observes that these words were not
employed prior to the fourth century.
10
s Mathieu and Bremond (1929), i, pp. 139-41.
106
Shorey (1909); also Russell (1979).
himself as a model (paradeigma) to be imitated (17-18).

Similarly, at Antidosis 183 Isocrates declares that teachers of
rhetoric, like athletic trainers, will explain the precepts of
their art only as a preface to actual practice of what has
been taught. Imitation appears to be a way of explaining
why Against the Sophists ends as it does, for Isocrates sug-
gests that imitation is a means for filling in gaps in a peda-
gogical discourse.
Isocrates employs a metaphor from plastic art to elabor-
ate the concept of imitation. He communicates the process
of instruction and learning through the metaphor of
'impression' at several points in his corpus. At Against the
Sophists 18 he writes that the students who are educated in
this fashion 'receive an impression (ektupothentas)' and 'imi-
tate (mimesasthai)' those who are able to speak without a
great deal of preparation. The participle ektupothentas sug-
gests that the students will be moulded into a copy of their
teacher. We are to understand this analogy as being reiter-
ated at Antidosis l 94, which cites this passage of Against the
Sophists. The idea of the student as the product of an artis-
tic process is also made explicit at Antidosis 205, where
Isocrates speaks of the teacher 'fashioning (apodeixosi)' his
pupil and so implies that the former is a master craftsman,
and at Antidosis l 86, where he speaks of the 'impression
(tupos) of philosophy' (also cf. sumbolon tes paideuseos at
Panegyricus 49). With this phraseology, Isocrates proposes
that 'philosophy', the term he employs to designate the
whole art and discipline of his rhetoric, leaves its mark upon
the student. 10 7
Isocrates' literary prose, which, according to Misch and
Momigliano, articulates and realises its capacity to represent
the 'self, provides the tupos for imitation: the author, as the
teacher, makes himself available to his students above all
through his written texts. The Evagoras, which is repre-
sented as the encomium of the dead Cyprian monarch,
explains the pedagogical function of the literary text. At
107
See Jaeger (1944), p. 79.
186
Evagoras 73ff. Isocrates declares that his literary biography

of the Cyprian king provides the latter's son Nicocles with a
model to be imitated:
I think, Nicocles, that effigies of bodies are fine memorials; however,
those images of deeds and thoughts which one might observe only in art-
ful discourse are more valuable. I prefer these, knowing first that fine and
noble men pride themselves less on physical beauty than on their deeds
and thoughts, and second, that physical representations must stay where
they were set up, but speeches can be published throughout Greece and,
once disseminated, can be welcomed in gatherings of sensible men among
whom it is best of all to have a good reputation. In addition to these rea-
sons, no one is able to make the bodily nature resemble plastic or graphic
images, but for those who choose to be industrious and wish to be good it
is easy to imitate the characters and thoughts of others as they are present
in language. (sections 73-5) 108
According to Isocrates, because the verbal image is by far

superior to the plastic image, no one, given the option,
would choose to portray another person through plastic and
graphic media, in other words, the more usual arts (75). The
verbal image can depict the inner person, the soul, in con-
trast to the other modes of representation, which can only
portray the body, which the kaloi kagathoi or social elite con-
sider to be of secondary importance. It is also the case that
the verbal image is more useful since a person cannot make
himself resemble statues or paintings, while he can imitate
another individual's character (tous ... tropous) and ideas (tas
dianoias) as represented by literary works (75). Isocrates
states beyond this that, unlike artistic images (eikones), ver-
bal portraits reach a broad, general audience, tacitly applying
108 eyw 8', w N1KOKAEIS, tiyovµai Kai\a µev eTvai µvriµeTa Kai ,as ,wv crwµcrrwv
EiK6vas,1TOA\J µev,01 1TAEIOVOS 6:~{as,as ,wv 1Tp6:~ewvKai Tf\S 81avo{as, as EV,ois
i\6yo1s &v TIS µ6vov ,ois TEXVJKWS exovo-1 0ewp11crmv.1Tp0Kp{vw8e ,av,as 1Tpw-
TOV µev ei8ws TOVS Kai\ovs K6:ya0ovs ,WV 6:v8pwv ovx OVTWS foi ,y KO:AAEI TOV
crwµa.os creµvvvoµevovs ws foi ,ois epyo1s Kai Tij yvwµ1:1<j>IAOTJµovµevovs' foe10'
OT\ TOVS µev TV1TOVS 6:vayKaiov 1TapcxTOVTOIS eTvai µ6vo1s, 1Tap' oTs &v cr,a0wcr1,
TOVS 8e Myovs e~evex0fiva{0' oT6v ,· fo,iv Eis TTJV'Ei\i\6:8a Kai 81a800ev,as EV.ais
,wv EUq>povovv,wv 81a,p1~ais 6:yam3:cr0ai, 1Tap' oTs Kpeh,6v EO"TJV ii 1Tapcx,ois
o:i\i\OJScmacrJV EV80KJµEiV' 1TpOS 8e TO\JTOIScm TOIS µEV1TE1Ti\acrµEVOIS Kai TOIS
yeypaµµEVOIS ov8eis &v TTJV TOV crwµa,os <j>VO"IV 6µ01wcrEJE, TOVS 8e
,p61TOVSTOVS 6:i\i\11i\wvKai ,as 81avo/as ,as EV,ois i\eyoµevo1s evovcras p<;(8J6v
EO"TI µ1µefo0ai TOISµT]p<;(0VµEIV afpovµEVOIS,a:i\i\a XPT")O-TOIS
eTvaJ~OVAOµEVOIS.
to prose the traditional characterisation of poetic discourse

as a 'winged word' (cf. Theognis, vv. 237-54 109).
Isocrates presents himself in his speeches as a figure to be
imitated by pupils, both legitimate and not so legitimate,
and in this way asks to be viewed as a teacher. rro On two
occasions he describes how the sophists, who publicly criti-
cise him, covertly take his works and emulate them (Epistle
9.15 and Panathenaicus 16).111 Here rival intellectuals appro-
priate his works in an attempt to become like him, indirectly
paying him a compliment. Epistle 8 presents him as a model
of apragmosune. Isocrates tells the rulers of Mytilene that,
like him, they can achieve recognition in Greek society even
without engaging in public oratory or taking up a military
post. rrz All that is required is that the recipients of his letter
imitate his tropos - a word which may denote both a way of
life and a manner of speaking (8.10).
The Antidosis develops at greatest length the idea that the
literary text provides the most effective image of Isocrates as
model and teacher, particularly as it is a defence of the
rhetorician as a pedagogue. Court cases, as those involved in
them observe, give defendants the chance to speak about
their lives, and the fiction of a trial provides Isocrates with
the opportunity to portray himself.113 At Antidosis 7 he
announces his intention to present the reader of the present
speech with a portrait (eikon) of himself and his life. In pro-
viding him with a defence against the imaginary sycophant
Lysimachus, his speech will enable his affairs to be known
to his audience. 114 He recalls Evagoras 75 and To Nicocles I
rn9 West (1980), pp. 198--9. .

irn pace Marrou (1956), p. 126, 'In Isocrates' school the basic texts are in point of
fact the master's own masterpieces. There is something slightly embarrassing in
the thought of the old teacher smugly quoting and commenting on his own
works.'
m Cf. Panathenaicus 155, where the same language is used dismissively of other
states which imitate Athens.
m Cf. Epistle 1.9 and discussion of this passage in chapter 4.
" 3 Cf. Gorgias Palamedes 28; Lysias 16.9 and 24.1.
114
1TAT]Vei ypcx<pelriMyos wo-mp EiKWV Tiis eµfis 61cxvoicxs
KCXITWV&Mwv TWVeµoi
~E~lwµevwv· 610:TOVTOV yap f\Aml;ov KCXITO:mpi eµe µCXAICJTCX
yvwo-6r\o-eo-6cx1,
KCXI
Tov cxvTov TOVTOVµvr,µe16v µov KCXTCXAEl<p0r\o-eo-0m 1ro;\v KCXAA1ovTwv XCXAKwv
6:vcx0r,
µmwv.
188
when he observes that this will provide the reader with a

memorial or reminder that is much finer than bronze dedica-
tions. Elsewhere in the speech he draws attention to a
speech's capacity to reveal his identity. In section 13 he
declares that his aim in writing the present apology is to
show the truth about himself to those who do not yet know
him. 115 In section 28 he anticipates that those who already
know him will be more certain of his nature after hearing
his speech; while at section 141 he again insists that the
Antidosis offers a review of his life and actions (cf. 143). 116
In other passages he makes even more explicit the link
between the work that he has composed and his self-por-
trait. Passages are cited from his previous works as proof
texts so that the audience may recognise their character and
in turn that of the author (54). 1 17 In the same section he
goes on to confirm that, when his audience has heard only a
small part of his work, it will learn of his character (ethos)
and the power of all his speeches. Later, at Antidosis 88, he
draws a parallel between his speech and his tropos, a word
which I take here to denote his 'character', when he ques-
tions, 'Is it necessary for you to trust those who know my
word and character (ton tropon ton emon) well or a syco-
phant who knows nothing about me?'. 118 By itself, the word
tropos emphasises the close association between identity and
language, for in addition to denoting a person's character
(also Nicocles 37, Epistle 8.10), it also designates a person's
way of speech (Antidosis l 79), or a rhetorical trope or turn
of phrase (cf. Antidosis 185, 188). 11 9
ll5 l3ov11oµE\IT)V 8e mpl eµoO 8ri11wo-mTT)Va11176e1av, Kai TOVSµev ayvooOVTas ei8evm

rro1f\o-m.
116
TOVTE l3{ovT~)VeµaVTOVKai TOS rrpa~EISE~r\Tal;ov.
11
7 C(/\f\C( o-aq,ws ei86TESOTTOIOI TIVESeio-1TT)V4'i\q,ov OICYETE
mpl aVTWV µ1Kpovyap
1
µepos aKOVO-aVTES pc;t8iws TO T eµov rj0os yvwp!EITEKai TWVMywv TT)V8vvaµ1v
crnavTwv µa6170-eo-6e.
118
XPTlTTICYTEVEIV vµas TOIS o-aq,ws ETTJO-Taµevo1s Kai TOVS 116yovs Kai TOVTp6rrov
TOV eµ6v, fi T0 µT)8Evei86T1 TWV eµwv, rrpo,;ipriµevcp8e 0-VKOq>avTEiv; Cf. TOV
Tp6rrov Twv 11eyoµevwv,Antidosis 179.
11
9 For the sophistry as 'turning', see Euthydemus 288b8 and 302b5-7. Detienne
and Vernant (1978) illustrate the strong association between 'cunning intelli-
gence' (metis) and literary troping, turning and transformation.
189
The Antidosis reiterates the idea of the text as an image of

the author-teacher; however, it is above all the Nicocles
which most explicitly affirms that literary self-revelation is
the vehicle of Isocratean pedagogy. If this work, together
with To Nicocles, demonstrates the similarity between the
voices of the tyrant Nicocles and the adviser Isocrates (as I
have argued that it does), then it also shows that the
Cypriot tyrant has learned from his adviser precisely by
assuming an authorial voice which resembles Isocrates' own.
Just as Isocrates is to be the teacher of Athens, the ruler of
Cyprus is to provide his subjects with his own character (ton
tropon ton emautou) as a paradigm (paradeigma) of social
identity (Nicocles 37). Elsewhere 'Nicocles' impresses upon
the reader that his text provides him or her with knowledge
of its fictional author, 'Of the matters I proposed to discuss
it remains for me to speak about myself so that you know
that your king is such a person' (29; cf. 35, 47). 120 What
Nicocles does is to lend support to a pedagogical ideal in
which the student's identity is assimilated to that of his
teacher. According to Antidosis 205-6, everyone agrees that
the most skilful technicians and craftsmen fashion students
who resemble each other as much as possible - it is impor-
tant to note that here Isocrates does not say that technicians
and craftsmen produce students who resemble them, the
teachers, to the greatest degree. He also observes that, like
artisans, practitioners of 'philosophy' (by which he means
'rhetoric') also demonstrate a similar power if they have
been trained by the same teacher. He implies that this
resemblance is due to the teacher. Cicero lends his support
to the interpretation that in Isocratean pedagogy the student
is assimilated to his teacher. At On the Orator 2.94-5
Antonius offers us his version of the development of
Athenian rhetoric, in which Isocrates, a member of the sec-
ond generation of great orators, is singled out for special
attention. For Antonius, Isocrates becomes the ideal after
120
/\omov ow EO"TIV WV,rpoe6eµ17v'TTEpieµavTOV OIEA0Eivtv' E'TTIO"TT]o-0'
OT\ TOJOVTOS
EO"TJVvµwv 6 ~acrJ/1.EVWV mpi eµavTOV (35); E'TTOIT]CYCXµT]V
(29); 617/1.wcraJ TOVS M-
yovs Kai mpi eµavTOVKai mpi TWVa.A/I.WVTWV1Tpoe1p17µevwv (47).
which a whole generation of historians (Theopompus,

Ephorus, Philistus, Naucrates) and orators (Demosthenes,
Hyperides, Lycurgus, Aeschines, Dinarchus) are modelled:
Isocrates is the basis for a common veritatis imitatio.
There is more to be said about the nature of the pedagog-
ical paradigm than merely that Isocrates, or for that matter
any author of a text, serves as a model for mimesis. It is not
the case that a student learns simply by receiving the prod-
ucts of somebody else's, the teacher's, skill. 121 As Russell
observes, although mimesis is a pedagogy which is inherently
conservative in that it looks to models, ancient authors
reject and strongly criticise the idea of it as a slavish copying
or repetition of the teacher. 122 In this respect Isocrates con-
curs with other contemporary and subsequent writers who
express their opinions on the issue. If he claims to provide a
paradigmatic image of himself in a work like the Antidosis
(cf. ektupothentas, Against the Sophists l 8; Antidosis 194), he
also prefaces his programmatic statement on mimesis in
Against the Sophists by emphasising the need for the student
to reconstruct and rearrange the elements of his material
and to pay attention to particular and appropriate contexts
and opportunities, namely the kairoi (16). 12 3 Rhetorical dis-
course and the rhetorical persona, as the epistemology of
doxa proposes, must be a language that responds to situa-
tions and contingencies. What this implies is that a student
will have to revise and adapt the identity provided by his
paradigm to his particular needs at any moment: he cannot
take his teacher to be a rigidly prescriptive model for rhetor-
ical action.
For this reason, the Isocratean teacher does not provide
his pupil with a tupos that resembles the immobile, static
statues (cf. tupoi), which at Evagoras 74 are contrasted with
the literary portraits that propagate the fame of their sub-
121
Allen (1993), p. 86.
122
Russell (1979), pp. 1-4.
12
3 TO 8e TOVTWVecp' EK0:0-T~TWV Tipayµ6:TWV as 8Ei TipOEAE0-0aJ Kai µ'i'~m Tipos
6:Mrj;\as Kai TO:~aJKaTO:TpOTIOV,ET\8e TWV Kmpwv µ1781aµapTEiv, 0:AAO: Kai TOIS
ev0vµrjµao-J TipETIOVTWS0/\0V TOV;\oyov KaTaTIOIK\AaJ Kai TOIS6v6µacr1v Evpv0µws
Kai µovcr1Kws Elm'i'v(Against the Sophists 16); also Shorey (1909), pp. 193-4.
jects throughout the Greek world. 12 4 Isocrates makes this

point in part by presenting his literary persona as a complex,
even composite one. Closer examination of the Antidosis in
particular also reveals a polysemy in what might be called
his 'identity'. The rhetorician models himself on Socrates,
the individual whom Plato made the subject of what is
regarded as one of the first biographical texts, the Apology.
Scholars point out that numerous parallels exist between the
Antidosis and Plato's Apology of Socrates. 12 5 Most obvi-
ously, both speakers proceed to offer apologies for their
philosophical careers against the charge of corrupting the
youth of Athens (Ant. 89-92; Apo!. 25d-26a) by giving a
portrait of themselves. Isocrates' claim that his defence will
allow his audience to know him properly (7) recalls the
Delphic oracle's injunction (gnothi seauton) and the pro-
gramme of self-discovery which Socrates invokes in the
course of the Apology (21b-d). On more specific points of
argumentation, each speaker points to the support given to
him by the relatives of his students (Ant. 241; Apo!. 33d2ff.),
each argues for the civic benefits of his profession and each
asks to be maintained in the Prytaneum at public expense
(Ant. 95; Apo!. 36d).
Similarities are also apparent in the legal action which the
works purportedly document. Both defendants stress their
lack of experience in pleading in court despite being
advanced in age (Ant. 27, 37-8, 144-5; Apo!. 17d1ff.); both
deny their oratorical 'cleverness (deinotes)' despite showing
evidence of rhetorical brilliance in their speeches (Ant. 33,
35; Apo!. 17b3-6). Both also give the lie to their pleas of
inexperience, for they engage in a rhetorical convention
when they request patience on the part of their jurors (Ant.
179; Apo!. qb). Then, as a demonstration of his innocence,
124
At Euripides fr. 764, the phrase ypcnnoi TVTT01, as Liddell and Scott suggest,
denotes 'painted pediment-figures', while Herodotus previously used TVTTOS on
several occasions to describe a sculpture (2. 106.2, 138.2).
125
See e.g. Norlin (1966), i, p. xvii for a list of parallel passages. Kennedy (1963),
pp. 180-1, draws attention to further parallels between the Busiris and the
Republic, and the Panathenaicus and the Phaedrus.
Isocrates offers to allow his accuser to speak (Ant. 100), fol-

lowing Socrates, who allows Meletus to step forward to
address the jury again (Apo!. 34a). Each of the speakers
finally creates the impression of moral superiority by refus-
ing to appeal to his audience with the stock. pathetic parade
of children and friends (Ant. 321; Apo!. 34c). Kennedy
argues that Isocrates assimilates his own identity to that of
Socrates through references to the Apology because he
wishes to be viewed as a 'follower' of the philosopher. 126
Likewise, one may see this as the explanation for why
Isocrates uses the word philosophia to denote his rhetoric. 12 7
Kennedy provides a model of pedagogical filiation which
implicitly subsumes fourth-century intellectual culture and
activity to the 'school of Socrates' and which presents
Socrates as the classical Athenian teacher par excellence.
This reading assumes that successful pedagogy resides in
the student becoming just like one's teacher. But this fails to
explain why Isocrates has cultivated and exhibited Socratic
traits without becoming precisely like Socrates, namely the
philosopher who does not write and, in fact, undermines the
authority of the written text. I suggest an alternative model
of the successful pedagogy as one which articulates author-
ity. The basis of Isocratean authority, as we have seen, is
'otherness', which expresses itself most explicitly in the
author's dismissal of all other discourses apart from logos
politikos, in his claim to be 'voiceless' as no other Athenian
(Panathenaicus 10), and in his emphasis on the extraordinary
nature of Athenian identity vis-a-vis the barbarian.
'Otherness' also reasserts itself, however, in the pedagogical
relationship, but it is more subtly and perhaps paradoxically
articulated here inasmuch as pedagogy is deliberately and
misleadingly represented as making your students like you.
Isocrates the student and Isocrates the teacher remains dis-
tinct from his teacher and students. As pupil, he does not
126
Kennedy (1963), p. 182.
12 1 Schiappa (1990) and Cole (1991), p. 2, argue that it was Plato who invented the
word rhetorike as a means of differentiating his own discourse, i.e. dialectic, from
non-dialectical language, and of asserting the privileged status of the former.
193
become simply another Socrates, because refusing to become

an exact copy of his implied model articulates a degree of
autonomy and authority. As 'pupil', he can fashion for him-
self a distinctive identity that is to some degree his teacher's
and to a larger degree also his own, so that Socrates remains
other to him. Because Isocratean paradigms are not stable,
this particular teacher-student relationship is not one that
can be imposed unproblematically upon the author's rela-
tionship with his own students. When Isocrates is the
teacher, otherness reasserts itself as the refusal to give a par-
adigm that can be completely assimilated or simply trans-
ferred to the latter. His students are prevented from becom-
ing just like their teacher, in the case of Against the Sophists,
by a truncated text. The teacher's authority is enacted; he
preserves his individuality and his unique position as the
'leader of words' or 'speeches', and they remain 'other'.
IX
I want now to suggest that the accidental loss of text at the
end of Against the Sophists is unlikely. It is a remarkable
coincidence that Isocrates' critique of the sophists and his
self-advertisement is only one of several works in his corpus
which abruptly and suddenly break off after indicating that
they will carry on to present us with a promise of teaching.
Epistles r, 6, and 9 ostensibly characterise their author as a
pedagogue or counsellor only to exhibit the same sort of
abrupt conclusion as Against the Sophists. Epistle r lapses
into silence after promising to display Isocrates' credentials
as a political adviser, 'I shall show without delay if we are
worth anything from what will be said' (r. ro). 128 At Epistle
6. 14 Isocrates produces an injunction to 'pay attention' to
his thoughts on how Pherae should be governed, 'Pay
attention to me on the understanding that I am of this
128
6TjAWCJOµEv 6' OVKEis aval3011as, Ei TIVOS0:~101Tvyxavoµev OVTES,CXAA' EK TWV
µe11MvTwv.. .(Epistle I. 10). The phrase Twv pri6170-ECJ6at
pri0r\o-ECJ0a1 µe11MvTwv
sets up an expectation of further discussion at Panegyricus I 3; Panathenaicus 6,
56; Antidosis 55 and 240.
194
opinion ... ' 12 9 In the sentence which precedes this request, he

assumes a didactic persona with the participle 'counselling
(sumbouleuon)' and the verb 'I would advise (parainoien)';
however, the letter fails to provide us with the author's
advice on the course of political action to be taken by the
children of Jason as the imperative constitutes the final
words of the letter. In Epistle 9 Isocrates offers an
announcement of his intention to deal with the panhellenic
theme of the reconciliation of the Greek states to one
another, 'My present task is to teach how these things are
possible and beneficial for you, the city and all others' (19;
cf. 14).13° The promise is again unfulfilled as the letter ends
here. After allowing the rhetorician's identity as teacher to
emerge with the verb didaxai, the text ceases.
Understandably scholars posit lacunae as an explanation
- or perhaps, in place of an explanation - for why these
three political letters break off after announcing their inten-
tion. In their 1839-43 edition Baiter and Sauppe describe
Epistle 6 as being 'clearly damaged' in response to its abrupt
conclusion and reiterate this same explanation for the state
of epistles I and 9. 131 In his 1889 edition Blass employs
Benseler's authority as evidence that 'much is missing' in the
three epistles in question. 132 In each case, he observes that
his predecessor has seen signs of a lacuna and provides no
further substantial proof of mutilation. 1 33
But there is also a sense that this coincidence is perhaps
too remarkable not to be also extremely significant. Thus a
second response to the letters was to see them as complete,
but only as auxiliary texts in the corpus. This approach was
due in part or in whole to the work of Richard Bentley. In
1699 Bentley published his influential study on classical let-
ter-writing, the Dissertation upon the Letters of Phalaris, in
12 9 'Q5 ovv eµo0 TaVTT]VEXOVTOS TOVvovv (Epistle

TT]Vyvwµriv, OVTWµ01 npoO-EXETE
6.14).
1 3° ws 6' Eo-TiTavTa OVVaTO:Kai crvµq,epovTa Kai croi Kai Tij 1TO/\ElKai TOIS W\/1015
cmao-1v, eµov epyov ,wri 6166:~at mpi aVTWVEO"Ttv... (Epistle 9.19).
13 1 Idem valet de epistola prima et nona.
1 2
3Deesse mu/ta indicavit Bs.
1 33 Blass (1889), ii, pp. I, !iii, lvi.
195
which he proved that several sets of ancient letters (i.e. of

Phalaris, Socrates, Euripides, Themistocles) were forg-
eries. r34 Bentley's Dissertation, which became so central to
the interpretation of ancient letters that it was re-issued in
1817 by Dyce, seems inadvertently to have given rise to sev-
eral unfortunate prejudices against ancient letters. First, the
essay was responsible for the fallacy that, since the collec-
tions of letters which he examined were counterfeit, other
collections of Greek epistles were likely to be counterfeit or
at the least untrustworthy. 1 35 So even Baiter and Sauppe,
who are more sympathetic to Greek letters than many of
their contemporaries, feel the need to be defensive when dis-
cussing the authenticity of Isocrates' letters: 'There cannot
be more doubt that these letters were written by Isocrates
than that those speeches were that admit of no doubt.' 1 36
The second fallacy to which Bentley's rigorous textual and
philological criticism in the Dissertation led is the more rele-
vant one here. This was the view that if ancient letters are
authentic, they deserve only a marginal position in the
author's corpus and thought. (This notion seems to be sup-
ported to some degree by the major codices containing
Isocrates' works, for all of them except the Urbinas omit the
epistles.) Scholarship characterised Epistles l, 6 and 9 as
introductory texts to longer 'political' works. Dobree made
sense of the silence after section l 9 in Epistle 9 by describing
the missive as a preface to a speech (propempticon) which
134 The Renaissance scholar Politian had already cast doubt on the authenticity of
these letters, which scholars now attribute to the Second Sophistic. Cf.
Reynolds and Wilson (1974), p. 167.
135 Bentley's Dissertation did not affect the status of lsocrates' letters as drastically
as it might. Despite the fact that the Laurentianus lxxxvii (= 8) (13th century)
and the Vaticanus 65 (= /\) (AD rn63), amongst others, omit the epistles,
B. Keil (1883), p. 145, n. 1, is the only editor to reject all the epistles.
1 6
3 Quae epistolae quin ab Isocrate scriptae sint, non magis potest dubitari, quam
quin orationes eae, de quibus non potest, Baiter and Sauppe (1839-43), p. vi;
even Mathieu (1962), iv, p. 183 and Vatai (1984), p. 29, feel the need to affirm
the genuineness of Isocrates' letters. Incidentally, Baiter and Sauppe rightly
expunged once and for all a tenth letter from the Isocratean corpus, p. 43. See
Jebb (1876), ii, p. 238, n. 1, for a discussion and translation of the Tenth Letter
apparently composed by Theophylact Simocatta (ft. 610-29). '
196
was later altered and addressed to Philip. 137 He surmised

that the epistle needed to be completed by other texts in
Isocrates' corpus containing political doctrine. Other critics
have been eager to adopt Dobree's approach in explaining
the abrupt endings of the epistles. Jebb cautiously enter-
tained the idea that the three letters in question serve as
introductions, rhetorical prefaces, one might say, either to
longer discourses, such as To Philip, or to essays and pam-
phlets sent along with them. 138 This interpretation, or a
modified version of it, has been endorsed in Germany by
Wilamowitz, Munscher, Jaeger and Eucken; and in France
by Mathieu and Bremond, who speak of the epistles as
'exordes de discours'. 139 The analogy for such 'exordes'
might be the Demosthenic prooimia, generally prefatory
paragraphs in which the author addresses his prospective
audience, justifies his speech and outlines its arguments.
There are a number of good reasons, however, why this
initially attractive explanation of the abrupt endings of the
three epistles cannot be sustained. The most important of
these is the chronology which Isocrates establishes for his
works. According to the sense of order that he creates in his
corpus, the letters are presented as coming at the very end of
his career. He emphasises his extreme old age at Epistles I. 1,
3.6, 4.13, 5.1, and, in particular, he insists that Epistles 2
and 3 were written after the major treatise addressed to
Philip. He contrasts the brevity of these two letters with the
length of the previous work composed for the Macedonian
leader (cf. 2.13 and 3.1). Moreover, Jaeger observes that the
way in which To Philip refers to Epistle I discredits the idea
that the letter could be a preface to the longer speech.
According to him, while section 81 of the speech makes it
apparent that this longer work comes after the letter, it also
137 Propempticon, ut videtur orationis quam postea immutatam Philippo inscripsit,

Dobree, Adversaria. I, p. 285, as in Jebb (1876), ii, p. 244, n. 2.
1
38 Jebb (1876), ii, p. 244, n. 3.
139 Wilamowitz (18932 ), ii, pp. 394-5; Miinscher (1916), coll. 2200 and 2203; Jaeger
(1963), p. 247; Mathieu and Bremond (1962), iv, pp. 164-6; also Vatai (1984),
p. 8.
197
suggests that the letter must have been sent so much earlier
that they must be regarded as two independent texts. 140 Thus
the chronology of the corpus as constructed by Isocrates
suggests that the reader is to regard the letters less as pro-
logues than as epilogues.
Second, the fictionality of Isocratean writing makes it
doubtful that any of the epistles could actually have served
as prefaces to longer works like To Philip, which itself was
less likely to have been sent to the Macedonian king than to
have been circulated amongst a general reading public.
Isocrates gives us reason to believe that his own epistles
were intended primarily for an audience other than their
named addressees. He ostensibly addresses Epistle 5 to
Alexander, the son of Philip of Macedon, but the reference
to the letter's readers in the first section invokes a more gen-
eral audience for the text. The following letter, Epistle 6,
likewise suggests that it might be received by others than
those to whom it is purportedly sent, namely the descen-
dants of Jason of Pherae. Isocrates here cautions his readers
not to treat the letter before them as a rhetorical exercise or
showpiece (epideixis). By introducing the epideixis as a foil
to itself, Epistle 6 subversively invites an interpretation that
we might not otherwise have considered, that the epistle
could indeed be just a rhetorical exercise.
Finally, there is no basis for thinking that ancient writers
in general considered letters a marginal literary form, as
Bentley's study might, deliberately or not, invite one to
believe. Harris is right to say that prior to the fourth century
letters are represented as being sinister in nature but, in
making this observation, he does not give us any reason to
think that epistles necessarily had a marginal quality. 14 1
Writing a letter, if only a fictional one, is one of the primary
ways in which a Greek author dramatises a relationship with
an individual in power. Pindar employs the letter as a
metaphor for his poetry. He describes Pythian 2 as a missive
140
& mp ETTEO"TE\/\a (To Philip 8 I).
Kal TTpos L':.1ovvo-1ovTTJVTvpavvi8a KTT]0-6:µevov
See Jaeger (1963), p. 247.
141
Harris (1989), p. 88.
which is sent across the sea to the Syracusan tyrant Hiero

(67-8), while Olympian 6 is described as a skutala or a
Spartan encoded letter (92). 142 Then, the fact that collections
of letters were later forged by subsequent authors and schol-
ars confirms the importance of the letter as a literary form
in Antiquity and up until the seventeenth century. 143 By
attributing epistles to Phalaris, Socrates or Euripides, the
anonymous writers may reveal that the letter is a literary
structure which might have been employed by significant fig-
ures in Antiquity. Alternatively, these later authors might be
retrojecting the authority that letters had gained in a post-
Roman world onto the classical period.
X
Against the Sophists, Epistles r, 6 and 9 stop after and
despite giving every indication that they will carry on. The
endings of these works cannot be disregarded as an extraor-
dinary result of chance and circumstance, and this proposes
that silence is a deliberate feature of the author's pedagogi-
cal discourse. At Against the Sophists r 7 Isocrates states that
imitation begins where precise teaching ends (cf. akribos ...
dielthein) but he also implies that paradigmatic discourse has
to enact its own limits lest it in turn becomes a rigid, unre-
sponsive pedagogy. Silence then is a calculated strategy
which both announces and enacts a teacher's attempt to
avoid prescribing a singular, inflexible paradigm or dis-
course. Beyond this silence extends the authority of distinct-
ness, allowing the teacher to assert that his students are
never quite like him and therefore always other. In the fol-
lowing and final chapter, I shall demonstrate how Isocratean
pedagogy articulates its structures of authority more explic-
itly in the civic sphere.
1 2
4 See the article by T. Kelly in (1988) The Craft of the Ancient Historian: Essays
in Honor of Chester E. Starr (Lanham, Md.), 141-69; and Harris (1989), p. 113.
1
43 Demetrius (c. 354-283 BC) devotes On Style 223-35 to epistolary composition.
199
6
THE POLITICS OF DISCIPLESHIP
'Taking everything together then, I declare that our city is an education to

Greece, and I declare that in my opinion each single one of our citizens,
in all the manifold aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord
and owner of his own person ... '
'Pericles', Thucydides 2.41. I
I
In the previous chapter, I examined how the nature of
Isocratean logos politikos and the civic identity that the
author constructs for himself invalidates various pedagogies
that scholars might construct to fill in the 'lacuna' in Against
the Sophists. In particular, I showed how the rhetorician
resists prescriptive pedagogies as enacted by the technical
treatise, by the secret doctrine and even by imitation of a
single, fixed paradigm. In the present chapter I intend to
investigate further the dimension of Isocratean pedagogy
which explicitly arrogates power to itself in a way that
makes it, at least initially, foreign to our own ideals of
ancient and modern paideia. If Foucault discloses the inti-
mate relationship between knowledge and power in his work
as a whole, Isocrates reveals to us the possibility of power
through rhetoric articulated as the language of the 'teacher'.
I began to point to the authoritarianism of imitative peda-
gogy, but now I want to examine a more direct way in
which the language of pedagogy provides Isocrates with
another means of expressing the hegemonic authority which
is so central to the civic ideology expressed in his corpus. I
shall consider how pedagogy is depicted as a means of form-
ing the articulated identity of the citizen.
200
II
In an Olympic festival, probably the one held in 416 BC,
Alcibiades entered no less than seven teams in a chariot race.
According to a speech which Thucydides places in his mouth,
he won the first, second and fourth prizes (6.16.2; cf.
Athenaeus r.3e). According to an encomium which Plutarch
says was composed by Euripides to commemorate the victory,
he took the first, second and third places (Alcibiades 11).
After his death, his son, also named Alcibiades, was sued by
an Athenian citizen named Teisias for an incident connected
with this athletic triumph. Teisias charged that Alcibiades'
father had stolen a team of horses from him and entered it as
his own. Concerning the Chariot-team is the speech that
Isocrates writes for the younger Alcibiades' defence.
As a lawcourt speech, and so as a speech which poten-
tially characterises its author as a logographer, Concerning
the Chariot-team should be a marginal text in Isocrates' cor-
pus. I argue, however, that the work calls attention to itself
because of its representation of the Alcmeonids, particularly,
as Athenian 'teachers'. The speaker, the younger Alcibiades,
begins by presenting his text as a lesson to the jury. He
becomes an instructor, declaring that he will inform, literally
'teach (didaskein)', the audience about his father's life and
his family's history (4). The younger Alcibiades' intention is
to let Athens know about the contribution that the
Alcmeonids have made to their city (24). The litigant's char-
acterisation of his case is carefully contrived. He contrasts
his apology with the bad 'teaching' of the sycophants who
are now prosecuting him. These troublemakers pursue
private grievances on the pretext of making an accusation
on behalf of the state and spend more time slandering the
litigant's father than providing valid instruction (cf.
didaskontes) about the charges to which they have sworn (2).
The speaker portrays his meddling opponents in such a way
as to identify them with the sophists who make false claims.
It might be argued that this characterisation of legal
process as a kind of teaching is a conventional feature, a
201
mere far;on de par/er, of legal discourse in classical Athens.

After all, Isocrates and his contemporaries elsewhere employ
similar language to describe dicanic narration. The speaker
of Against Callimachus presents his narrative (diegesis) so
that the reader thinks of him as a teacher and of his audi-
ence as his pupils. He says that he wishes to provide a narra-
tive of events which will enable the jury to learn (mathete)
that he has acted in a way that benefits rather than harms
his fellow citizens (4). The verb mathete constructs at least
this narrative portion of the speech as an instructive
discourse. The litigant of the Trapeziticus likewise speaks
of his narrative as the means by which the audience may
easily know the speaker's circumstances (40), while the
speaker of the Aegineticus announces that he will provide an
account of events which will permit his hearers to 'learn
(mathein)' as quickly as possible what they are still in doubt
about (4). At Antidosis 29 Isocrates uses didactic terminol-
ogy (cf. didaskein humas) to describe the legal process,
emphasising through such language his identity as a teacher
of rhetoric.
Authors apart from Isocrates also employ the language of
pedagogy to refer to the dicanic process and actors. In the
Eumenides Aeschylus offers what might be viewed as an aeti-
ology of legal pedagogy when Athena asks that the chorus, as
prosecutor, assume the role of pragmatos didaskalos in the
formal institution of the Areopagus court (584). The chorus
in tum commands Orestes to teach the jury slightly later
(601), while Apollo orders those present to learn as far as
they are able what is just (619). The speaker of Antiphon
Tetralogy l .2 says that he will 'teach (didaxo)' the fictional
jury that the potential danger which threatens him as a result
of the present murder trial is greater than that posed by the
indictment (graphe). The litigant of Demosthenes 29 says that
he will 'teach (didaxai)' and 'narrate (diegesasthai)' what has
happened to him in making his case against Aphobus (1). In
Demosthenes 35 the forensic process is to be viewed as aped-
agogy which offers a corrective to the unjust teaching of the
sophist Lacritos. The speaker orders Lacritos to 'teach
202
(didaxon)' what is just, and slightly later, has the law read so
that the audience may 'learn' (mathi5sin) more clearly (49).
Litigants in the speeches of Lysias also announce that they
will 'teach' their audiences. The speaker of Lysias 3
announces that he will try to 'instruct' (didaskein) his listeners
about the lies Simon has told them to allow them to recognise
the truth more easily even after hearing what each of the liti-
gants has to say (3.21). Similarly, in Lysias 6 the speaker
announces that he must 'teach (didaskein)' the audience about
the opponent's apology so that they will be able to exercise
judgement correctly after hearing both sides of the case (35).
The speaker of Lysias 10 states that he wishes to 'teach
(didaxai)' the audience about the laws regarding defamation
and goes on to say that the remainder of the matter might be
explained as if a lesson (cf. paideuthei) from the orator's plat-
form (15). At 13.4 the speaker adopts the familiar pose of the
dicanic pedagogue when he promises to 'teach (hemeis ...
didaxomen)' the jury, but he also characterises his audience as
his 'pupils' when he anticipates that they will 'learn (humeis
mathesesthe)' from what he has to say. 1
In Concerning the Chariot-team pedagogical language and
imagery go beyond the speaker's characterisation of his own
discourse to operate as a central feature of the work's pre-
sentation of civic identity. Later in the speech the younger
Alcibiades proceeds to remind his audience of his family's
role in 'educating' Athens and its citizens, the latter to be
useful to the former. At sections 26--7 he characterises his
ancestors Alcibiades (I) and Cleisthenes as the city's law-
givers and constitutional reformers, recalling how they
ousted the tyrants from the state and established the demo-
cratic constitution. The Alcmeonids come to personify
Athenian democracy as well as its paideia, for their constitu~
tion is presented as having educated (cf. epaideuthesan) the
city's inhabitants. Thus Alcibiades and Cleisthenes became
indirectly responsible for the 'schooling' which endows the
Athenians with courage and enables them to resist both the
1
Lysias 7.3; 9.3; 12.3; 62; 78; 13.4; 19.12.
203
internal enemy, the tyrant, and the external enemy, the bar-
barian (27). 2
The deliberateness of Isocrates' Alcmeonid history cannot
be overstated. As Rosalind Thomas observes, in producing
this portrait of the achievements of Alcibiades' ancestors,
the author ignores the role of Harmodius and Aristogeiton
in establishing democracy at Athens,3 while he anachronisti-
cally locates Alcibiades (I) and Cleisthenes in the same gen-
eration.4 Thomas perceives, moreover, that Isocrates invokes
a conventional narrative pattern - namely exile, return and
reform - in the writing of this narrative. 5 The establishment
of democracy at Athens results only after the Alcmeonids
have gone into exile and then returned to remove the state's
despotic leaders.
There is a very specific and immediate motivation for this
characterisation of the Alcmeonid ancestors and the speaker's
own self-presentation. Isocrates has the speaker of Concerning
the Chariot-team acknowledge the view that his father served
as a teacher (didaskalos) to the Spartans, allowing them to
learn (mathein) the art of war from him (10-II). As Robin
Seager notes, one of the stock criticisms of the general
Alcibiades was precisely this representation of him as a
treacherous teacher, although one who remains even for his
critics resolutely a citizen. 6 This portrait of Alcibiades is most
evident in dicanic literature. In his speech Against Alcibiades
Ps.-Andocides observed that the general had become a model
that the youth of Athens imitated when they engaged in liti-
gation (4.22). In effect, this speech-writer brings against
Alcibiades the familiar charge of corrupting the youth. Later
in the oration he faults the general both for ignoring laws and
oaths and for teaching (didaskein) the Athenians to transgress
2
Cf. Areopagiticus 82; Antidosis 306; Evagoras 50; Aristophanes Clouds 986; Plato
Menexenus 238b---239b3;Hyperides 6.8; Lysias 2.3, for the role of Athenian edu-
cation in the defeat of the Persian barbarian.
3 Thucydides 1.20 and 6.53ff.; Thomas (1989), pp. 243ff.
4 Thomas ( 1989), pp. 152-3. Isocrates contrives to associate this Alcibiades (I), who
in all other sources has no part in the establishment of the democracy (see e.g.
Areopagiticus 17; Antidosis 232), with the creation of the democratic constitution.
5 Thomas (1989), p. 151.
6
Seager (1967), pp. 7 and 18.
204
them as well (4.39). At Lysias Or. 14.30 the author charac-

terises Alcibiades as the 'teacher of Athens' ills (didaskalos ...
ton tes poleos kakon)': the general marched against the city
with her enemies rather than against them. Slightly later, the
general is said to have given instruction (didaxeie) in evil
deeds (14.35). Thucydides faults Alcibiades for 'teaching'
(didaxantos) the Spartans military skill and so for substan-
tially increasing their power (6.93.17). At 7.18.r he mentions
that the general taught (edidaske) the Spartans to fortify the
Athenian deme of Decelea, enabling them to persist in war.
III
The didactic motifs of Concerning the Chariot-team are part
of an even larger discourse which is concerned ultimately
with the construction of civic identity and authority. In her
historical analysis of authority 'What was Authority?'
Hannah Ahrendt endeavoured to make a distinction between
authority in political and educational contexts. Ahrendt
maintained that, although there may be apparent similarities
between a ruler's control of the citizens in his state and a
teacher's training of his pupils, the two situations should ulti-
mately be differentiated. For Ahrendt, individuals are ruled
only when they are past the age of education, while they are
educated in childhood in preparation for political life as citi-
zens or subjects, in other words before they are to be ruled. 8
Ahrendt insists upon the separation of the political from the
pedagogical spheres and goes on to propose that after child-
hood the function of 'education' can only be to conceal the
ambitions of a 'teacher' to rule and dominate.
Ahrendt overemphasises the differences between political
and pedagogical authority. With the apparent support of
Aristotle, she regards education as a temporary intervention,
one made in childhood, designed to ensure that the pupil
7 TTOAt-0 µo:Mov emppwcr0ricmv 8186:~aVTOSTCXVTaEKa<YTaCXVTOV

Kai voµ{aaVTES
TTapo:Tov aaq>foTaTa el86TOSOJ<T1Koevm.
8 Ahrendt (1958) 'What Was Authority?' in Carl J. Friedrich (ed.) Authority.
Nomos 1 (Cambridge, Mass.), pp. 96---7.
205
THE POLITICS Or DISCIPLESHIP
becomes someone he would probably otherwise not become. 9

As a result, Ahrendt pays insufficient attention to what is
perceived to be the political function of education. For
fourth-century Greek authors, including Aristotle, education
is not just a method of instruction in a body of knowledge or
truth; it is a process that produced and formed the good and
obedient citizen, as even Ahrendt must concede. Education is
the means by which the state ensured the authority and sta-
bility of its own particular constitution through the creation
of a particular type of citizen or subject. 10
The teacher has the responsibility of constructing the
character of the pupil as citizen and, if he fails in this task, is
deemed a bad teacher. In the fourth century, the archetypal
bad pedagogue is the sophist. Apart from the representation
of the sophist as an individual who makes promises he can-
not keep and who gathers his mercenary fee from unsuspect-
ing students and their parents,1 1 there is also the depiction of
this figure as someone who undermines civic ideology. The
sophist calls into question the state's conventions, its moral
values and religion through his teaching and sets a poor
example by his lack of attachment to any civic community.
As characterised by the argument of the Weaker Speech in
Aristophanes' Clouds, sophistic education is presented as
contriving to speak against the laws and legal judgements
(1039-41), and as rejecting the austere morality of the tradi-
tional pedagogy, e.g. its cold baths and 'toils' (104off.). As
Plato's Apology and Isocrates' Antidosis demonstrate, the
charge against the 'bad' teacher is that he corrupts the city's
youth and introduces strange, new gods to it.
Herodotus offers what might be taken as a paradigmatic
identification of the teacher/wise man as a political agent
who benefits states. The historian idealises as a teacher the
individual who possesses extraordinary wisdom or foresight
which is of value in the running of the state, someone whom
Richmond Lattimore terms the 'tragic warner' or 'practical
9 Cf. Rotenstreich (1987), pp. 207ff.
rn Adcock (1927).
11
See Blank (1985) and chapter 5.
206
adviser'. The Histories emphasises on a number of occasions

the political role of the intellectual in assisting the leader to
govern his state. In the first book, Solon, who both estab-
lishes the laws of Athens and offers Croesus unheeded
advice on the instability of human affairs, affirms the politi-
cal value of knowledge (1.32). In the subsequent Persian
narrative, Artabanus is prominent as the Persian counsellor
who warns Darius not to invade Scythia (4.83) and later
prudently advises Xerxes not to attack Greece (7. ro). 12
In the subsequent literature of the fourth century, the
political teacher or counsellor becomes an integral part of
the political infrastructure. Xenophon invokes the
Herodotean paradigm of the 'wise adviser' when he presents
the individual who possesses knowledge as the state's perfect
ruler, according to the ideal of the pedagogical state out-
lined in Book r of the Cyropaedia, or as the state's most
qualified leader, as Vivienne Gray observes to be the case in
the Hiero. 1 3 Gray notes that here the poet Simonides initi-
ates a discussion on the relative merits of political life and
private life with the tyrant Hiero, making the Hiero a
'Socratic dialogue' without Socrates. 14 Other writers identify
paideia as one of the crucial concerns of the legislator of any
state, implicitly conceiving of him as a civic 'teacher'. 1 5 In
12
Lattimore (1939). Lattimore observes that the advised can also become the
adviser, as the example of Croesus, who subsequently advises Cyrus, demon-
strates, pp. 30--1 and 34.
1
3 Gray (1986).
1
4 Note that Plato identifies Simonides as a wise man along with Bias and Pittacus
at Republic 335e. On the poet as 'wise man', see Gray (1986), pp. 118 and 123,
and Morrison (1949).
'5 Many scholars, e.g. Harris (1989), p. 99, and Schmitter (1975), have pointed out
that there is no evidence of public education existing at Athens prior to the
Hellenistic period. In mythicising biographical traditions of the Roman period
Greek code-makers are also presented as authors of both constitutions and laws
regarding education. Diodorus relates that Charondas, the legislator of Catane,
specifically set out laws governing public education (12. 12). Pausanias provides
us with evidence that there was indeed a school located at Astypalaia in the
early fifth century (6.9.6). Better known, however, is Lycurgus' and Solon's con-
cern with education (Girard (1889), p. 1). The legislation of Lycurgus resulted in
its regimented and communal training of Spartan youth, removing the boy from
his parents at the age of seven (Plutarch Lye. 16). According to Diodorus, Solon
decreed that the state must provide an education for its children, who must, in
turn, be prepared to receive it (12. 11; Adcock (1927), p. 103).
207
Plato's Republic Socrates gives the nomothetes of the Ideal

City the responsibility for legislating on all aspects of a
child's upbringing and education (445e). The philosopher
ensures that when a child is born, he or she becomes the
charge and pupil of the city to be trained up according to its
ethos (46obff.). Socrates places such importance upon the
state's regulation of the child's education because establish-
ment of a democratic or oligarchical character in the young
citizen ensures the stability of a democratic or oligarchical
constitution in the overall state and reinforces the rule of
law (cf. 425b). Education is the basis of political authority in
the Ideal State. A 'correct pedagogy (orthe paideia)' creates
compliant citizens (416c) and trains the state's future leaders
to assume their positions of authority.
The Republic is not the only dialogue to present paideia as
a strategy of social discipline and control. Other dialogues in
the Platonic corpus articulate this notion of education. In
the Minos, a work probably not by Plato himself, Socrates
relates how Zeus, whom he characterises as a sophist or pro-
fessional teacher (319c), instructed the Cretan king Minos in
what was fine and beautiful (320a). He goes on to tell the
reader how Minos then made what he learned from the god
the basis of Crete's laws (320b). In this dialogue Minos, the
legislator, is also a pedagogue, for he trains Rhadamanthys
in the kingly skill of obeying the ruler of the state and
administering the lawcourts, the body which maintains the
laws (320c). In another dialogue whose authorship is in
some question, the Hipparchus, the tyrant Hipparchus is
similarly depicted as the ruler-teacher. The author informs
his reader that Hipparchus educated (cf. paideusai) his sub-
jects, setting up Herms in the fields and along the roadsides
of Attica bearing traditional verses and inscriptions and his
own sayings. 16 Plato characterises even sophistic paideia as a
process of socialisation. In the Protagoras the sophist for
whom the dialogue is named observes that immediately after
leaving the school of the grammatikos pupils are obliged to
16
Ford (1985), pp. 160----2.
208
learn the state's laws (326c). Protagoras' implicit point is

that education is complete when the student has been taught
to live in society.
The affirmation that education serves a political function
is hardly unique to Plato in the fourth century. In the
Politics Aristotle writes of the need for the nomothetes to be
concerned with every aspect of a child's upbringing
(1334b29-30, 1337a1off.). Through the intervention of the
legislator the state replaces the child's natural parents,
assuming the responsibility for his trophe and epitedeumata
(also cf. Ethics 118oa24-6). I7 Like Plato, Aristotle writes in
the conviction that the formation of the individual child's
ethos or character has a direct and significant bearing on the
preservation of the whole state's ethos (Pol. 1337a14-18).
These authors respond to and build on an established tra-
dition surrounding the Athenian legislator. In Aeschines'
speech Against Timarchus Solon, Athens' original legislator,
is presented as being concerned with the education of his cit-
izens. The text preserves what purport to be the Solonian
laws governing paideia, particularly where the relationships
between teachers and pupils are concerned (6ff.). At section
11 of this speech Aeschines declares that Athens' lawmaker
(nomothetes) thought that education needs to ensure that the
child is brought up to be a useful citizen. 18 It is this which
provides the explanation for Solon's legislation in this area.
Demosthenes likewise affirms at On the Crown 257 that the
goal of education is to create the good citizen. He speaks of
the training (didaskaleia) which accustomed an individual of
his standing not to do anything shameful out of need. This
training encouraged a citizen like himself to perform litur-
gies, e.g. choregias and trierarchies, for the good of the city.
In a number of his works Isocrates constructs a history
which authorises the pedagogue as a political figure. If
17 Jeanmaire, (1939), p. 468, observes that Aristotle bases his model of civic peda-
gogy upon the Laconian system of education, which resulted in the annulment
of a family's rights over a child.
18 Avayvwo-ETal ovv vµiv TOVTOVS
> TOVS v6µovs, i'v' e!617TEOT\ 6 voµo6frr1s TJYTlO-aTO
TOVKaAWSTpa<pEVTa ;mica av8pa yev6µevov xprio-1µovfoeo-6m T1J TTOAEI.
209
Concerning the Chariot-team commemorates the Alcmeonids

as civic teachers, the Busiris provides a historical perspective
on how the figure of the teacher gained a political identity.
The Egyptian ruler Busiris, whom Isocrates describes as one
of his society's sensible individuals (cf. eu phronountas, I 5),
founds a state based on knowledge. Under his reign, the
Egyptians learn to regard 'philosophy' as a training for the
soul. Philosophy both legislates (nomothetesai) and investi-
gates the nature of what exists (22). Busiris makes the pur-
suit of knowledge and wisdom an activity of the responsible
citizen. Isocrates states that Busiris ordered the young men
of the state to study astronomy, arithmetic and geometry,
the subjects of the 'scientific' curriculum (23).
The most interesting detail in Isocrates' Egyptian history
comes, however, at section 28, where he recounts the impact
of this pedagogical culture upon Greece. He relates how
Pythagoras of Samos journeyed to Busiris' Egypt. Here
Pythagoras becomes a student of the land's religion, and he
later returns to Greece to introduce the study of philosophy
there. According to this narrative, Busiris effects the educa-
tion of Pythagoras, who is to become the archetypal Greek
philosopher. Moreover, he provides his Greek visitor with
knowledge about how to exercise political control over a
people. The Egyptian religion, which Pythagoras studies,
functions in part as a strategy for defining relationships
between rulers and ruled. Isocrates states that Busiris passes
laws demanding that his subjects worship animals for two
related reasons, first to gauge how his citizens will conduct
themselves with regard to commands more important than
these and second to accustom them to obeying the com-
mands of their leaders (26-7). This section of the narrative
thus redefines Pythagorean wisdom as a technique of politi-
cal control, substantiating the view that Pythagorean silence
is a political discourse (29).
Isocrates elaborates the political identity of the Greek,
and particularly Athenian, intellectual in the Antidosis. This
work, which is to be read as the author's own defence as a
teacher of rhetoric, strategically highlights the role of older
2IO
sophists in assisting the political process as the teachers of

the state's leaders or as the leaders themselves. At Antidosis
235 the rhetorician identifies two sophists (sophistai),
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and Damon - whom he
describes as 'most sensible (phronimotatos)' - as teachers of
the general Pericles. What this biographical detail suggests is
that, in their capacity as intellectuals, these individuals
played an important role in the creation of the general who
was to be Athens' foremost statesman during the
Peloponnesian War. At Antidosis 3 r 3 Isocrates recalls that
Solon was both a sophist and the 'leader (prostates)' of the
state. He provides these examples of sophists as good citi-
zens, salvaging the reputation of the intellectual at a period
when this figure is otherwise represented by the litigious
sycophant and untrustworthy professional teacher. He pro-
poses these earlier individuals as venerable precedents for his
own position as a teacher who renders service to his city
precisely because he trains other citizens, such as the general
Timotheus, who go on to benefit their states (93-4, rorff.).
In the pedagogical discourse I am recovering, the teacher
or his analogue is an individual who creates and reinforces
the authority of the state. This language implies an under-
standing that the intellectual need not be detached from
political activity, as Straussians believe he should be (see
below), and, by corollary, that the language of the laws and
constitution need not be separate from that of the wise or
educated citizen. The teacher becomes a civic figure because
he is deemed to provide others with instruction on how to
be a citizen or on how to rule other citizens, and he is even
assimilated to the city inasmuch as the city itself becomes
the teacher. In An seni gerenda respublica Plutarch credits
the poet Simonides, one of Greece's poet-teachers, with the
statement that 'the city teaches the man' (784b), implying
that it is a state's laws and constitution which provide the
privileged instruction about what it means to be a citizen. 19
In Plato's Crito Socrates reports a dialogue with the laws,
'9 TTOAIS
&vopa 6166:01<:EI.
21 I
who remind him of their role in nurturing and educating

him. 20 At 5od5-er the laws characterise themselves as the
Solonian legislation which requires parents to provide their
children with an education in Athenian culture. 21 At
5rc8--dr the laws have assumed the role of the family in the
upbringing of the child. They declare that they have borne
(gennesantes), raised (ekthrepsantes), educated (paideusantes)
and instructed Socrates in what the citizens of the state
deem fine things, attempting to persuade him to abdicate to
them all parental responsibilities over his children. 22 In a
later passage the laws again counsel Socrates to hand over
the upbringing and care of his children to them and to con-
cern himself only with justice (54b2-3). The Laws succinctly
pronounces that it is the city's responsibility to nurture the
citizen's child. Here the Athenian stranger says that educa-
tion must result in the child belonging 'to the city rather
than to his parents' (804d5-6 2 3).
In speeches apart from Concerning the Chariot-team, in
which the Cleisthenic democracy is said to train the
Athenians in their virtues at 26-7, Isocrates represents the
state as an institution which educates its citizens. His
Archidamus invokes this ideal of a civic pedagogy at the
close of the Archidamus. Here the speaker concludes by ask-
ing his audience to imagine their parents urging them to
undertake war so as not to disgrace the name of their state
and 'the laws in which we were educated (tous nomous en hois
epaideuthemen)' (r ro). But the most extensive statement of
the pedagogical po/is is to be found in the Areopagiticus. At
Areopagiticus 20 the speaker declares that the pristine democ-
racies of Solon and Cleisthenes 'educated (epaideue)' their
citizens to be better and more moderate by punishing those
who took advantage of the democratic ethos, for instance,
20
Morrow (1960), p. 321, thinks that Socrates is speaking of 'customs' rather than
actual 'laws' here.
21
r\ ov Ka;\ws npocreTCCTTov T)µwv oi eni TOVTCf> TETayµevo1 v6µ01, napayyeAAOVTES
Tep 1TaTpiTep crepCJEEVµovcr1K,'jKai yvµvaCJTIK,'j nm6EVEIV;
22
T)µE'isyap CJEYEVVT)CJOVTES, EK0pE4'0VTES, nm6EVCJOVTES, µna66vTES CCTTCXVTWVWVo1o{
T' r'jµev KaAwv croi Kai To'is a;\;\01s ncxcr1vno;\hms; cf. 51a7ff.
23
ws TT)S1TOAEWS µo:AAOV r\ TWVYEVVT)T6pwv OVTas,nm6EVTEOVE~cxvcxyKT)S-
212
misinterpreting 'democracy (demokratia)' as 'intemperance

(akolasian)' and 'freedom (eleutherian)' as 'lawlessness (para-
nomian)'. Isocrates extends the contrast between the ancestral
constitution and contemporary Athens which he proposed in
the opening sections of the work (cf. 3-10): he implies that
the present democracy fails to instruct its citizens in the civic
ideals. It is this portrait of contemporary inadequacy which
pleads the rhetorician's case for the restoration of the
Areopagus, the court which he describes as continuing the
regime of moral supervision and regulation that the ancestral
Athenians would have experienced during their childhood
years into adulthood (37ff.). He emphasises the pedagogical
function of the Areopagus later in the speech when he down-
plays the ancient court's role as a retributive body. He
observes that the court was concerned less with the punish-
ment of lawlessness than with its prevention (42). He por-
trays the Areopagus as an institution which reinforced the
very paideia that inscribed the city's laws on the hearts of the
citizens. 2 4 Government, as characterised by the Areopagus
court, functions as a process which continues the political
instruction a citizen received in childhood.
IV
If education is a process by which civic character is created
and reinforced, it follows that an individual's identity as a
citizen can be assessed in terms of the education he received.
Thus the literary sources characterise the general Alcibiades
also as a good or a bad pupil of Athenian culture and law
according to their bias.
The majority of fourth-century authors present the future
general as a poor student, as an individual whose nature is
so innately corrupt that it cannot be changed for the better
2
4 8eiv 8e TOVS6p0ws 1TOAITEVOµEvovs OUTCXS0-TOCXS Eµm1Ti\avm ypaµµmwv, ai\i\' EV
Tais 'flvxais EXEIVTO 8/KatOV. OU yap TOIS 'flT)cpicrµacr1v
ai\i\cx TOIS 176ecr1Kai\ws
oiKeicr0at TCXS1TOAEIS,
Kai TOVS µev KaKWS TE0paµµevovs Kai TOVS aKpl~WS TWV
v6µwv avayeypaµµevovs TOAµr\cre1v1Tapa~aive1v, TOVS 8e Kai\ws 1TE1Tat8evµevovs
Kai TOIScmi\ws KElµEVOISe0EATJO-EIV (Areopagiticus 41-2).
EµµEVEIV
213
by his teachers, Pericles and/or Socrates, according to differ-

ent authors. 2s In the Memorabilia Xenophon narrates how
Alcibiades controlled his desires only while he was with
Socrates but then gave in to them once he left the philoso-
pher's presence (1.2.24). 26Xenophon portrays Socratic peda-
gogy as the antithesis of Alcibiades' intemperance. Plato
suggests a negative characterisation of Alcibiades when he
minimises the influence that Socrates held over the youth as
the latter's teacher. At Alcibiades I I 03a 1-7 Socrates is made
to explain to Alcibiades how his divine sign had previously
forbidden him to engage in conversation with his interlocu-
tor.27 At rn5a3-4, he indirectly hints at the youth's unteach-
ability when he declares that only god can be an adequate
guardian, kinsman and teacher for him. His subsequent
remark that god is his own teacher is to be taken within the
dialogue's argument about the inadequacy of conventional
pedagogy (124c8).28
At the end of the Symposium, the mature Alcibiades turns
up at a dinner party to offer an encomium of Socrates.
Hatzfeld describes this discourse as the general's farewell to
philosophy, and like him, I see the oration as discrediting its
speaker. 29 Alcibiades compares the philosopher to a Silenus
statue, which appears ugly on the outside yet contains beau-
tiful images of the gods within (216c3---e),namely his virtues
(e.g. sophrosune, 216d7). He gives an example of Socrates'
moderation and self-control by describing an episode in his
25 Hatzfeld (1951), p. 27, characterises these figures respectively as '!'action et la

pensee'.
26
Alcibiades II, which scholars regard as an inauthentic text and date to the
Hellenistic period, also emphasises Alcibiades' latent political ambition. The
philosopher, raising the question of what a mortal should ask of the gods
(14ia5-7), imagines that his interlocutor would pray to be the tyrant (turannon)
not just of Athens or Greece but also of the whole of Europe (14ia6-b6).
27 On the question of the authenticity of this dialogue, see the discussion in
Tigerstedt (1965), pp. 562ff.
28
Hatzfeld (1951), p. 44. The dialogue continues with an examination of the
Spartan and Persian systems of education, which Plato deems superior to
Athenian pedagogy yet inferior to divine instruction.
29 Hatzfeld (1951), p. 56, 'n'est peut-etre qu'un adieu magnifique adresse par
Alcibiades a l'homme qui Jui a montre un chemin ou decidement ii ne s'engagera
plus'.
214
life which inadvertently casts him in a less than creditable

light. Alcibiades recalls how he failed to persuade the
philosopher to sleep with him after prolonged pressure in
the wrestling ring (2r7d2-3, cf. 2r7b3ff.) and even after pre-
vailing upon him to stay the night at his house after dinner
(217d). He credits Socrates' self-control with causing his
conversion from physical to philosophical erotics, to a love
of Socratic discourse. Plato is careful, however, to undercut
Alcibiades' commitment to philosophy by highlighting his
embarrassment in speaking about his new-found activity.
The speaker compares himself to the victim of a snakebite
who will only relate his injury to others who have suffered
the same experience (2r7e7-2r8a2), and orders the slaves at
the party to shut the 'gates of their ears' (2r8b6-7). What
this implicitly negative characterisation of Alcibiades serves
to do is to confirm his role in the profanation of the
Mysteries and the mutilation of the Herms, the two scandals
which were to precipitate his exile and condemnation to
death by an Athenian lawcourt.3°
Pericles' failure to teach Alcibiades the virtues of a citizen
also plays a prominent part in the biographical traditions. In
Book I of the Memorabilia Xenophon reports a 'conversa-
tion' between the future general and his guardian Pericles.
In this exchange both speakers discount the validity of the
law, assuming what the reader must take to be an oligarchi-
cal standpoint (r.2-40-6). Alcibiades is made to betray an
inherent desire for tyrannical power when he expresses
regret at not being given the opportunity to learn from the
famous statesman when the latter was at the peak of his
power (r.2-46). In the Platonic dialogues Pericles' failure
with Alcibiades in turn increases the authority of Socrates as
philosophical teacher. In the Protagoras Socrates states that
3° Dover (1980), p. 10, dates the composition of the dialogue between 384 and 379,
but Hatzfeld (1951), p. 51, suggests that the historical setting of the dialogue is
certainly in 416 BC, just after Agathon won the prize at the Lenaea and the year
before the two infamous affairs. The profanation of the Mysteries also takes
place after a symposium (Andocides 1.61; Alcibiades 19.1), which Plato perhaps
asks us to regard as the antitype of the philosophical symposium.
215
Pericles did not educate or pass on knowledge to those in

his care but rather allowed them to wander at will in the city
(32oa1-3). As an admission that he was unable to instruct
those in his care, Pericles placed Cleinias, the brother of
Alcibiades, in the house of Ariphron so that he would not
be corrupted by the future general (32oa3-7). The author of
the Alcibiades Major also prefers Socrates to Pericles as
teacher. Socrates has Alcibiades admit that not even his own
sons have become wise by being in Pericles' presence -
sunousia conventionally denotes a teacher-student relation-
ship (118d10-19a6). Unlike the Persians, who train up their
future leaders in the company of their most esteemed citi-
zens (121bff.), Pericles is the guardian who appoints an inef-
fectual old slave named Zopyrus to be the future general's
paidagogos (122b1-2). Underlying Plato's criticism is per-
haps an anti-democratic prejudice against the convention of
allowing slaves to be in the company of citizens when they
are children.
Against these contemporary depictions the Isocratean cor-
pus offers a more positive portrait of Alcibiades as student-
citizen. Countering the assumptions of his addressee
Polycrates, Isocrates in the Busiris explicitly rejects the cur-
rent tradition which holds that Alcibiades was the pupil of
Socrates (5). This is a deliberate move. Socrates' civic iden-
tity is at best ambiguous. His trial and the various literary
texts subject his activities in the city to scrutiny and suggest
that he is an inappropriate teacher of Alcibiades. Instead the
rhetorician makes Alcibiades wholly the pupil of Athens'
most prominent citizen, Pericles (cf. Ale. I 104b6--8; Ale. II
143e9-10). The speaker of Concerning the Chariot-team
relates how his father had been orphaned when the latter's
own parent Cleinias perished during the battle of Coronea
in 447 (28)Y This detail is significant, first, because it draws
attention to the services which the Alcmeonid clan rendered
31
Bowra (1960), p. 75. This detail is more obliquely recalled by Euripides' use of
the patronymic in his encomium and by subsequent sources including A/cibiades
Major I 12c and Nepos Ale. 10.6
216
to the state and, second, because it presents Alcibiades' edu-

cation as an education provided by the city.
Isocrates asks the reader to view Pericles' tutelage of the
young general as the fulfilment of a law which enacts the
ideal of the civic education of orphans. The law obliges the
state to take care of the upbringing of the children of
Athenian citizens who have died in war.32 The orphan
becomes the child of the city until he achieves the age of
majority, when, as Loraux observes, he resumes his identity
as the son of his biological father; no provision is made for
the support of daughters.33 He is handed over to a civic
leader - the orphanophulax according to some sources
(Xenophon Poroi 2.7; Suda s.v. orphanistai) or the archon
according to Plato M enexenus 248e. In Concerning the
Chariot-team Alcibiades is made the responsibility of
Pericles, the pupil of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and
Damon (cf. Antidosis 235), and a paradigm of the civic
virtues of moderation, justice and wisdom to a degree sur-
passed by no other citizen: 'He was raised by Pericles, whom
everyone would agree to be the most moderate, just and
wise citizen. And I consider this to be a fine thing, to have
come from such origins, to be nurtured, raised and educated
by [an individual of] such character.' (28).34
The speaker of Concerning the Chariot-team deliberately
omits to mention Pericles' Alcmeonid connection on his
mother's side.35 This omission, I suggest, constitutes one of
the many moments in the speech when the defendant subor-
dinates family tradition to what Thomas terms 'polis tradi-
tion', namely the assimilation of genealogical narrative to
the history of democratic Athens. The litigant goes out of
32 Cf. Aristophanes Peace 82; Aeschines Against Ctesiphon 154; Thucydides 2.46.1;
Lysias fr. 6.35-40; Plato Menexenus 249a; Laws 926d7-e; Aristotle Politics
1268a5-11; Ath. Con. 24.3; Stroud (1971), pp. 290; Loraux (1986), pp. 26--7;
Rahe (1992), pp. 64-7 and 826 for references.
33 Loraux (1986), p. 27.
34 ETIETPOTIE\161'1
6' V'TTO ov'TTCXVTES
TTeplKAEOVS, av oµor-oyr\cmav Kai o-wcppovfoTaTOV
Kai O!Kat6TaTOVKai 0-0<j>WTaTOV yevfo6m TWV 'TTOAITWV. riyovµa1 yap Kai TOUT'
eTva1TWV Kar-wv, eK TotovTwv yev6µevov VTIOTo1ovT01sfi6eo-1vETI1Tpo,rev6fivmKai
Tpacpfivm Kai Tiat6ev6fivm.
35 For 'family tradition', see Thomas (1989).
217
his way to draw attention to Pericles' civic status, particu-

larly as a model citizen, so that in effect he emphasises the
role of the constitutional pedagogy created by the general's
own ancestors in educating his father.3 6 As the personifica-
tion of Athenian virtues, Pericles is to be understood as the
individual who can best carry out the city's promise to care
for the children of the war dead and to provide his pupil
with an excellent example of civic service and leadership. In
particular, the verb epitropeuthenai conveys the idea that
Pericles inculcates in his ward his own tropoi, here to be
understood as his 'way of life' or 'disposition' (e.g. To Philip
82; Evagoras 75; Antidosis 179, 323). Inasmuch as Pericles is
an ideal citizen, his education of Alcibiades implies the
orphan's allegiance to Athenian values and ideals.37 The
speaker offers this depiction of his father's upbringing in
response to the literary tradition, which portrays Alcibiades
as the treacherous Athenian, indeed as the antithesis of the
citizen. By so doing, he takes issue with the iconography,
which presents the general as the student who betrayed what
Athenian education and culture had to off er him.
The connection between the elder Alcibiades' upbringing
and his civic identity is put to use at Concerning the Chariot-
team 32ff. Here the litigant makes direct reference to the
Olympic festival (possibly of 416 BC) in which, as it is
charged, his father stole a team of racehorses. The younger
Alcibiades uses the accusation of horse-theft as a point of
departure for his defence of the general as a 'good pupil' of
Athens. He observes that his father disdained gymnastic
contests because their athletes included men of low birth, of
insignificant states and of poor education (cf. 33); instead,
the elder Alcibiades preferred to compete in the equestrian
races because these were open only to the eudaimonestatoi
36
Thomas (1989), p. 262; Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 15.17.1 wrongly designates
Pericles the avunculus of the elder Alcibiades.
37 Possibly, the younger Alcibiades invites his audience to regard Pericles as acting
according to a law referred to by Dinarchus in his speech Against Demosthenes
which requires the orator or general who asks for the people's trust to declar~
that he will 'beget children according to the laws (paidopoieisthai kata tous
nomous)' (71).
218
(33), those blessed with considerable good fortune and

wealth (cf. Xenophon Cyr. 8.8.13). The general's participa-
tion and victory in the equestrian competition become part
of the portrayal of the responsible Athenian citizen, personi-
fied earlier in this oration by the figure of Pericles. It is
worth noting that in the epinician tradition, particularly as
represented by the poems of Pindar, the praise of an athletic
victor is an affirmation of a particular society, its political
structures (e.g. family, household, city), its traditions (often
made explicit by the embedded myth) and its future.
Recently, Leslie Kurke argues that praise poetry communi-
cates awareness of the social value of the event it commem-
orates. She proposes that we might see an analogy between
the liturgies that an Athenian citizen might perform and the
athlete's victory, regardless of whether or not he is
Athenian.3 8 So Kurke observes that in the first four lines of
Pythian 7, a poem that Pindar composed in 486 BC to cele-
brate the chariot victory of the Alcmeonid Megacles, the
victor and his family and the city of Athens all help to
define one another. The glory of the Alcmeonidae proceeds
from the fact that they are Athenian, while the reputation of
the city derives in part from the distinguished accomplish-
ments and character of this family.39
Fourth-century prose, no less than poetry, makes explicit
the civic value of athletic success. The speaker in Concerning
the Chariot-team discloses the political meaning of his
father's cultural accomplishment by the narrative with which
he brackets it. In section 25, the younger Alcibiades makes
reference to the eponymous ancestor of the clan, Alcmeon,
who is presented as the first Athenian to win a chariot race
at Olympia. This detail is framed by a characterisation of
this ancestor and his family in very positive terms. The
speaker introduces Alcmeon's accomplishment by telling his
audience to regard this victory as the 'greatest memorial
(megiston mnemeion)' to Alcmeonid wealth, indeed, as a
38 Kurke (1991), pp. 182ff.

39 Ibid., p. 191.
219
liturgy performed in the interests of the city. Later he sug-

gests that his distant ancestor's athletic victory should be
viewed as an act of good citizenship. After his reference to
the victory at Olympia, he mentions that the Alcmeonids
preferred to go into exile during the Peisistratid rule despite
being related to the tyrant (25). 40 Alcmeon's achievement is
contextualised as responsible CIVIC action. Later in
Concerning the Chariot-team the speaker makes mention of
his father's liturgic contributions, both those specifically for
the festival itself (32) and those for other occasions - a
choregia, gymnasiarchy and trierarchy (35). The elder
Alcibiades, according to his son, was a champion of the peo-
ple; he was an exceptional citizen, preferring, like his ances-
tors, to suffer exile rather than to betray the democracy
(36-9).
Isocrates is not alone in alleging a political significance for
Alcibiades' athletic success and the particular culture from
which this proceeds. Two other contemporary texts provide
a similar interpretation of the Olympian victory. In a speech
which Thucydides places in the mouth of the general at
6.r6-r8, the speaker aims to persuade the Athenians to
undertake an expedition against Sicily. He reminds his audi-
ence how his accomplishments in the past augmented the
power of the city. He draws attention in particular to the
effect that his remarkable chariot victory in the Olympic
Games had in boosting the citizens' self-confidence and in
giving the impression of power to his audience (6. 16.2). As
the younger Alcibiades refers to his father's benevolence to
the city in Concerning the Chariot-team, the general now
proceeds to remind the Athenians of the liturgies that he has
performed for the city. Although these public services may
arouse the envy of fellow citizens, they nevertheless display
his strength to non-citizens. Alcibiades sets his athletic
achievements side by side with his civic services. In this way,
40
The Isocratean account omits to mention that Alcmeon stole from Croesus the
gold which enabled him to train his team. This detail, found at Herodotus
6.125.5, would only assist the prosecution's case that the Alcmeonidae serve
their city through deceit.
220
he suggests that his equestrian success should be viewed as a

liturgy. Similarly, at Demosthenes Against Meidias the
speaker presents Alcibiades' success in the Olympic festival
as one of the numerous benefactions and services provided
to the city by the Alcmeonid family. In particular, he juxta-
poses Alcibiades' athletic glory with his superlative perfor-
mance as general and orator. He too proposes that the first
achievement is to be regarded as no less valid a form of civic
participation (21. 145).41
My interpretation of Concerning the Chariot-team dis-
closes what is for Isocrates the fundamentally political
nature of education. For him, paideia is less a process which
inculcates a particular kind of knowledge (as we saw in the
previous chapter) than one which creates and forms social
identity. It produces the good citizen who, like the
Isocratean Alcibiades, has acquired the talents and virtues
that can benefit his state, and so will ensure the well-being
of the state as a whole. Education perpetuates what is good
in the city, making possible relationships, above all those of
teacher and student, which enable the skills and qualities of
outstanding older citizens, such as the general Pericles, to be
passed on to and recreated in their younger proteges. The
Isocratean discourse on pedagogy is an elitist language con-
cerned with the civic identity of a privileged few, such as the
aristocratic figures of Concerning the Chariot-team. As such
it shows itself to be wholly another aspect and an extension
of the author's logos politikos.
V
In the final pages of this study, I would like to show the
relevance of Isocrates' construction of pedagogy for contem-
porary discussions of education. Recent arguments for the
need to reform the contemporary academy, namely the
American state school system and the universities, and for
41 See Bowra (1960) for evidence that Euripides wrote an epinician to commem-
orate Alcibiades' chariot victory.
221
the need to raise 'standards' offer points of contact with

Isocrates' pedagogical discourse. The year 1987 saw the pub-
lication of two books by two different individuals who can
be perceived as working within the traditions of Western
rhetoric and Greek political thought, respectively, E. D.
Hirsch's Cultural Literacy and Allan Bloom's The Closing of
the American Mind.
Howard Felperin assesses these works as a response to the
marginalisation of 'literacy' as they attempt to make it a more
central issue once more by calling for a back-to-basics
approach and as they reappropriate the traditions in which
their authors see themselves as working.42 For Felperin, they
mark a political tum in literary and literacy studies initiated
from the Right, one which is perhaps to be preferred to what
he sees as the insulating tendencies of a professionalised disci-
pline. I want to expose the appeal to the hegemony of tradi-
tion and historical coherence in the educational programmes
of Hirsch and Bloom. I shall argue that these individuals
assume an ideal of culture which is in many ways analogous
to that we find in the works of Isocrates, but in other ways
marks a radical departure from it. Hirsch and Bloom each
offer a blueprint for the transformation of the academy, pre-
supposing, as did Isocrates, that education plays an important
role in the formation of the citizen, in this instance, the
American; however, where they diverge from the Isocratean
programme is in insisting upon the need for comformity.
In arguing that the figures of teacher and pupil may offer
an author a means of laying claim to a civic identity, I
intend to highlight the implicit construction of these roles in
terms of their relationship to power. While Ahrendt is mis-
taken in distinguishing as clearly as she does between the
figure of the teacher and that of the political ruler, I believe
that she is nevertheless right to observe that the teacher's
authority may conceal a desire to dominate where it is exer-
cised over fellow citizens who are potential equals.43 Indeed,
2
4 Felperin (1990), p. 187.
43 Ahrendt (1958), p. 97.
222
I shall suggest that, when Hirsch and Bloom propose to

teach and to set out a pedagogical programme which is
predicated on a body of cultural knowledge, they advocate a
mode of pedagogy which has the authoritarian tendency to
arrogate to itself the privilege of preferring one body, a
canon, of language and/or literature to an infinite number of
other such possible bodies.
In Cultural Literacy Hirsch states that education accultur-
ates. It enables an individual to function well within
(American) society by supplying a basic vocabulary and a
body of knowledge that is shared by all the other citizens in
that society. 44 'Cultural literacy' is not simply the ability to
read books to a certain level. Rather it consists in the pos-
session of a basic repertoire of common knowledge. It
means that the student knows who J. F. Kennedy and
George Washington were and what, for instance, NATO
and the NAACP are. Since Hirsch's 'cultural literacy'
locates its language and terms so explicitly within a social
context, it might be described as an epistemology of a new
rhetoric, a return to the classical orator's doxa and eikos.
This is an epistemology based on what the general public
knows and thinks and, as the author himself observes, any-
one who addresses the general public (or is addressed as the
general public) will be obliged to use its terms.45 Hirsch
makes the rhetorical basis of his ideal of literacy explicit. He
suggests that this basis of public language in what he terms
the 'modern republic' has an analogy in Ciceronian liter-
acy. 46
Hirsch's position in Cultural Literacy is a development of
thought that the author had presented in several earlier
works. In The Validity of Interpretation (1967) he argued
that the meaning of a text is unstable.47 This is not only
because an interpreter, who may even be the author himself,
will perceive the work's significance differently at different
44 Hirsch (1987), pp. xvi and 1ro.

45 Ibid., p. 134.
46 Ibid., p. 109.
47 Hirsch (1967), p. 6.
223
moments, but also because texts are always the products of

particular social contexts and their languages. Hirsch went
on to stress the fact that the way in which one interprets a
text will itself also be context-bound inasmuch as the reader
is also constrained by the verbal norms of his or her society.
Even so, he refused to entertain the radical historicist posi-
tion which holds that we are unable to understand texts
belonging to a past age because that age and its language
are so different.4 8 Later in The Politics of Composition (1977)
he explored how the process of writing requires the author
to envisage an audience and to establish a moment of
address precisely because the writer cannot rely on the pres-
ence of actual persons.49 He anticipated the message of
Cultural Literacy when he claimed that literacy, both read-
ing and writing, is always contextual. Referring to research
into how we read, Hirsch demonstrated that the reader will
remember the general meaning of a passage rather than its
actual form or syntax.5° He concluded from this material
that the art of composition must defy codification, concur-
ring with Isocrates in his rejection of the techneY
I suggest that as a whole, and especially in Cultural
Literacy, Hirsch sets out a programme for defining and,
indeed, policing social identity. In his latest work in particu-
lar, he identifies and canonises the knowledge which makes
one a bona fide American citizen, and for this reason sees
the discourse of cultural literacy as being especially impor-
tant for minority groups. Knowing society's common terms
and the contexts in which its language is constructed and
produced provides otherwise marginalised minorities with
the tools that will grant them much-needed opportunities.
Hirsch suggests imposing cultural literacy by means of edu-
cational reform. He blames the drop in shared knowledge
on a fragmented curriculum, on a school system in which
students can pick and choose subjects to suit their own indi-
8
4 E.g. ibid., pp. 40--3 and 127.
49 Hirsch ( 1977), p. 31.
5° Hirsch (1977), pp. 121ff.
s, Ibid., p. 191.
224
vidual interests but not necessarily their needs. Accordingly,

for him, the remedy lies in a more uniform curriculum in
which 'facts', rather than methods and transferable skills,
are taught.52 Hirsch is careful to avoid the charge that he is
proposing a single, unitary 'core curriculum' by offering a
two-tier course of study. More able students will undergo a
more intensive course of study, while less able ones will take
a less demanding course of study, which is nevertheless con-
structed around the same, shared body of knowledge.53
In Hirsch's programme of reform, education has become
a political discourse in that it creates and privileges a partic-
ular identity. Being 'literate' in Hirsch's sense of the word
means being properly American. Yet the author's educa-
tional philosophy is also a political language in that it
locates this identity within a certain hierarchy. One of the
underlying aims of Hirsch's ideal of education is that peda-
gogy should be a tool for subsuming local and individual
identities into a national identity which, because it will then
not be challenged, can in turn challenge other identities.
Education ultimately becomes a means for distinguishing
'us' from 'them', just as fourth-century authors, including
Isocrates, set 'Greek' in opposition to 'barbarian', and less
overtly 'Athenian' in contrast to 'Greek'. There is, of course,
an implicit chauvinism in this, for Hirsch does not and can-
not entertain the discourse of the minorities he hopes to
empower in order to promote a white, male and largely
Eurocentric culture as 'American'. Hirsch's ideal of literacy
arrogates to itself the privilege of declaring one particular
body of language and knowledge preferable to any number
of other such possible bodies of language and knowledge.
More overtly political in his educational programme than
Hirsch is Bloom. In The Closing of the American Mind
Bloom defends study of the classics - by which he means
fourth-century Greek texts and above all the Platonic dia-
logues. Like his teacher Leo Strauss, he attempts to reclaim
52 Hirsch (1987), pp. II5-28.

53 Ibid., p. 128.
225
the 'old books' for a contemporary audience, ideally an

intellectual elite, who will understand them 'properly', rather
than for the masses. Bloom follows Strauss in proposing
that these 'old books' should be understood only in terms of
what the author wanted them to mean and as the author
understood them himself.54 He claims, perhaps paradoxi-
cally, that the 'classics' should continue to be read and stud-
ied at the end of the twentieth century because they are irrel-
evant to modern society. For Bloom, classical texts do not
have anything immediate to say to 'our' culture since they
are so different from anything we experience in Western
society. Accordingly, they offer us an alternative, freeing us
from the modern democratic ideal. Bloom regards Plato's
Republic, a work on which he produced a lengthy commen-
tary in 1968,55as the liberating work par excellence, as the
text at the very centre of his classical canon. Less favoured
texts and their authors, however, also have their part to play
in ensuring the freedom of the modem Western soul, in
which Bloom locates the guarantee of the continued exis-
tence of democratic society. Bloom writes in a prefatory
essay to a translation of the Hipparchus, a dialogue ascribed
to Plato:
Writers like Isocrates and Xenophon have fallen into disfavor, but it is
precisely from their rhetoric and restraint that we could learn of the taste
of Thucydides and Plato and of the capital importance of the virtue of
moderation in the political thought of ancient authors. When we do not
understand Isocrates and Xenophon, we do not understand Thucydides
and Plato. We see in these latter concerns of our own, and they lose their
liberating effect.56
He regards Isocrates and Xenophon, traditionally marginal

figures for classicists and still deservedly marginal figures for
him, as important buffers which prevent the assimilation of
ancient to modern political thought. His underlying assump-
tion is that the 'rhetoric and restraint' of these authors are
supposedly resistant to contemporary strategies of interpre-
54 Cf. Burnyeat (1985), p. 31.
55 Bloom (1968).
56
Bloom (1987a), p. 32.
226
tation, by which he means modes of reading which fall

under the general rubric of relativism. These diverse modes
of reading have opened up new ways of approaching texts.
Yet Bloom views them as one of the reasons for the fragility
of the modern soul, just as Hirsch blames the diversity of
curricula for the decline in 'literacy'. Bloom regards these
interpretative strategies as the tools of 'cultural relativism' .57
They acknowledge non-European, non-male achievements,
and so, according to Bloom, are destructive of 'the West's
universal or intellectually imperialistic claims, leaving it to
be just another culture' .5 8 What Bloom implicitly demands is
a literary canon in which the centre - i.e. Plato - and the
margins construct a static, immovable hierarchy that affirms
the privileged position of someone like himself, namely a
reader of Plato. Like Hirsch, he requires a common, shared
culture, this time based on Plato, or rather a particular read-
ing of Plato, rather than on a certain body of facts.
There are numerous deficiencies and weaknesses in
Bloom's position. For one thing, the otherness he attributes
to classical Greek texts is far from unproblematic. Derrida,
most prominently, shows that the twentieth century has
appropriated rather than alienated the very works Bloom
claims to be so 'different'. The critical strategy we have
come to know as deconstruction takes its starting point
from Platonic texts, the Phaedrus and the Sophist. But
Bloom simply and simplistically dismisses deconstruction
because it assimilates ancient texts to our own ways of
thinking. He subscribes to a historical fallacy which assumes
that the past must be distinct from, and therefore irrelevant
to, the present - although paradoxically calling for the past
to provide the present with a political model. We see this
clearly in his treatment of Isocrates. He regards Isocrates as
a marginal figure in the fourth century and therefore even
more irrelevant to our society, although, even in his distinc-
tive construction of a written voice for himself, the rhetori-
57 See Pelikan (1992), p. 29.

58 Bloom (1987a), p. 39.
227
cian addresses some of the concerns that have come to

occupy a central place in the modern academy, namely the
politics and the epistemology of oral and written speech.
Isocrates asks us to consider what it means to speak and
what it means to write rather than to speak, albeit in the
specific context of fourth-century Athens. Isocrates presents
us with an alternative answer to the Derridean perspective.
Accordingly, he enables us to engage with the contemporary
Derridean problem of writing as a self-undermining dis-
course, a discourse that is not present and, therefore, unable
to defend itself adequately.
Isocrates reveals his relevance to contemporary critical
issues in another, perhaps surprising way. Isocrates, as mis-
read by Bloom, is the author who, even more than Plato,
sheds light on the latter's own pedagogical and cultural
agenda. Indeed, he produces the discourse that proves itself
so ironically pertinent to an author who claims that classical
texts are distant and alien from our own culture. While
Bloom would have us believe that Isocrates is a peripheral
author for him, it is crucial to recognise that this has not
always been the case. As a student at the University of
Chicago, he wrote in 1954 under Leo Strauss a dissertation
entitled The Political Philosophy of Isocrates. The stated
aims of the study were to rehabilitate the rhetorician, to
take issue with the received view that Isocrates was only a
'founder of rhetoric' and to assimilate his work to the more
important Platonic project of political philosophy. Bloom
begins the dissertation by asking that Isocrates be reinte-
grated into a rhetorical tradition which prides itself on the
practical politics of Pericles and Demosthenes.s9 He goes on
to suggest that the rhetorician be seen to represent a philo-
sophical tradition which presents a genuine alternative to
Plato and Socrates in advocating a broadly based education
of the gentleman, but fails to tell his reader exactly what this
might consist in. 60 In the Appendix to his study, he observes
59 Bloom (1954), pp. I and 103.

60
Ibid., pp. 2 and 75.
228
'we must never give way to the delusion that the rhetorical
Isocrates is the whole Isocrates'. 61 Here Bloom acknowl-
edges Isocrates' importance for an understanding of Greek
political theory precisely because for him politics, which he
understands as being elitist to the point of being tyrannical
while also being concerned with the public good, is central
to the rhetorician's work. Later, however, he does no more
than to raise this author's name once in The Closing of the
American Mind and then in his essay on Plato's Hipparchus.
On both occasions, he mentions the rhetorician as a fringe
author whom we do not fully understand. 62 Moreover, he
recants some of his earlier interpretations, now finding
Isocrates to be one of the fourth-century authors who, like
Plato but also in subordination to him, disempower philoso-
phy by refusing to allow it to participate in civic power. 63
In assigning Isocrates such a minor part in his construc-
tion of the classical canon Bloom is guilty either of an egre-
gious misreading of this author or of a deliberate cover-up.
It is the case, I suggest, that Bloom's vision for the rehabili-
tation of Western culture and his assessment of the Western
soul retraces and revives the politics of Isocrates' pedagogy.
Isocrates asserts the hegemonic authority of Athens through
her rhetorical culture, and because his own works enjoy the
status of civic discourse - logos politikos - he is able to claim
authority for himself as an Athenian citizen. For Isocrates,
Athenian culture and pedagogy operate as metaphors for
the city's control over Greek identity, which in tum enjoys a
superior status to barbarian identity (esp. Panegyricus
49-51). Bloom likewise sees privileging the 'classics' of
fourth-century Greece as a means of ensuring what he per-
ceives to be the superiority of Western culture, and he
implicitly arrogates their superiority by presenting himself as
the guardian of this culture. For Bloom, Athenian culture
and pedagogy, as transmitted in a conservative American
liberal arts degree and its 'core curriculum', continue to
61 Ibid., p. 103.
62 Bloom (1987b), pp. 32-52.
63 Bloom (1987a), p. 274.
229
serve as terms of political superiority over the other.

Literary classics, such as the Bible and Homer, actually have
power and influence: because they transcend any particular
period - the irrelevance argument is again invoked - these
texts have the potential to assert their authority and influ-
ence over subsequent cultures. 64 For Bloom, literary classics
are ultimately indistinguishable from political discourse, as
his decontextualised citation of Shakespeare in The Closing
of t~e American Mind and in an earlier study of the poet
(Shakespeare's Politics) suggests. 65
Bloom's project is revealed by Isocrates, precisely because,
unconsciously or consciously, he is, more obviously than
Hirsch, a latter-day Isocrates. Isocrates is after all the fourth-
century author who, like Bloom, regards irrelevant literature,
namely literature which is not contemporary with the reader,
as an important medium for political thought and action.
Isocrates is the author who writes regardless of occasion, as
the lengthy period for the composition of the Panegyricus
highlights so well. He is thus the author who seems to have
no obvious function for his society; yet he makes frequent
claims for the usefulness of his discourse. M. Carter demon-
strates just how this disregard for occasion might create a
utility for a text. Language which does not cater for any fixed
occasion Carter characterises as 'epideictic'. He compares this
mode of discourse to ritual, declaring 'epideictic discourse
possesses the potential for achieving an even greater value
than more obviously pragmatic discourse precisely because it
does not have the clear and practical consequences of the lat-
ter'.66 Even if we would not employ Carter's generic terminol-
ogy to describe Isocratean discourse, his analysis points us
towards a reading of the function of irrelevant and apparently
non-functional or non-performative language. The language
that Carter views as a certain form of classical rhetorical dis-
course - for Bloom all of classical discourse - creates and
ensures its validity by dispensing utterly with context.
6
4 Bloom (1978a), pp. 252-3.
65 Ibid., pp. I l~I I.
66
Carter (1991), p. 217.
When an ancient author refuses to address himself to a

particular historical event or problem, he produces the
Thucydidean 'eternal possession' (ktema ... es aiei, r .22.4), a
text which transcends the moment of its production and can
therefore speak to subsequent audiences. According to this
view, because Isocrates' literary project is contextually irrele-
vant, it safeguards and preserves its voice for a later age.
Isocrates also helps to reveal a more sinister aspect of
Bloom's cultural agenda. When the rhetorician defined his
own writing as 'political discourse', he implicitly set a limit
on it, namely the corpus of his own works. Everything else
is to be regarded as other, as being without benefit for the
Athenian city-state and its political identity. In other words,
Isocrates defines a canon of texts which articulate Athenian
culture and power, arbitrarily claiming for himself the
authority to do so. Although Bloom states that he wishes to
place a check on the closing of the Western democratic soul,
he does so by setting constraining limits on what can be
termed culture. Just as Isocrates has recommended his own
logos politikos to the Athenian reader, Bloom has written or
rather reinscribed his corpus, presuming that he has the
authority to define the texts, the Great Books of Western
culture, that are to be studied in the universities. 67
Nonetheless, there is a crucial distinction to be drawn
between these authors. Bloom's model of cultural authority
assumes that curricular coherence, i.e. a central canon (of
Great Books) read by all students, will produce a cultural
coherence, a shared body of knowledge, of morals, of politi-
cal persuasions. 68 Graff observes that, when conducted on
the grounds of what should be read, the contemporary
canon debate is misdirected, for it ignores the possibility
that people can read the same books in different ways. 69
Isocrates proposes that consensus is quite alien to his model
of cultural and political authority, and goes on to show us
67 Bloom (1987a), p. 344.

68 Cf. Graff (1992), pp. 118ff.
6
9 Graff (1992), pp. 72-3.
231
that, even when people are confronted with the same peda-
gogical paradigm, they do not necessarily conform to this
model nor should they.
If the educational programmes of Hirsch and Bloom
recall to lesser or greater extents the Isocratean view of ped-
agogy as a process for determining political identity, they
also differ from the Athenian rhetorician in making author-
ity derive from making others like, rather than distinct from,
oneself. Perceiving themselves as working within an ideology
that retains more or less explicitly a degree of continuity
with classical Athenian thought - although each may deny
this for slightly different reasons - they have also shown
how this ideology resists portability into contemporary
Western democracy. The suggestion is that political identi-
ties and the particular strategies for creating them are cul-
turally relativistic: they proceed out of particular social con-
texts, and out of an individual author's own manipulation
and embellishment of the language and terms that belong
to these contexts. Together Isocrates, Hirsch and Bloom
show that education need not be a disinterested search for
knowledge and truth: it may also be an element, more or
less coercive, of a discourse about what it means to belong
to a particular society.
232
BRIEF AFTERWORD
In this study I hope to have shown that Isocrates under-

mines a standard portrait of the classical po/is and the con-
ventional paradigms of how the individual should engage
with his society. He is a figure who constructs his authority
in terms of otherness. He dismisses the possibility of all
other literary discourses being identified with his own logos
politikos, of all other Athenians citizens being regarded as,
like him, the responsible quietist with a small voice, and
even of his students being taken as a likeness of their
teacher. In so doing, Isocrates is a figure who disturbs mod-
ern readers and forces them to rethink the privileged schol-
arly topos of 'fourth-century Athens'. He requires that we
interrogate the boundaries that define the citizen and his
society and their respective authorities. In demonstrating
that he engages with and diverges from a more conventional
role for the intellectual - the rhetorician, the writer, the
teacher - I propose that Isocrates can no longer be regarded
as a convenient point of reference, a peripheral figure,
against whom to confirm or assert the centrality of more
popular authors. As the rhetorician par excellence of
Antiquity he necessarily appeals to, if only to subvert on
more than a few occasions, what are presented as the cul-
tural norms and expectations. It is by means of this ironic
engagement that he creates alternative modes of positioning
oneself within the political community.
While offering this rereading of Isocrates, or more specifi-
cally of his personae, I also withstand the temptation to
replace the better known paradigms of Athenian civic iden-
tity derived from, say, Plato, Aristotle and Thucydides, with
a model derived from Isocrates. To do so would be merely
to displace more familiar models with previously less acces-
233
BRIEF AFTER WORD
sible ones. It would also be to reinforce for fourth-century

Athens the idea of a centred canon with its focal point and
margins by simply relocating or reidentifying the privileged
texts and authors, rather than to enlarge the canon to which
readers in the academy now give authority. In fact, to treat
Isocrates as the normative voice of classical Athens would
be to establish a whole new set of modes of exclusion, for
his corpus imposes a number of authoritarian silences on the
discourses of his contemporaries. He promotes his own dis-
course as logos politikos in order to destroy the authority of
other genres of writing, while in empowering the 'small
voice' of the writer and his writing he cuts out and muffles
so many other voices that are depicted as previously sound-
ing loudly in the Athenian city. Beyond this, he excludes a
series of prescriptive pedagogies in order to establish his
own pedagogy as the language of the hegemonic city and its
leading teacher.
I do not mean to suggest that Isocrates should become the
only model for fourth-century Athens. In fact, his authori-
tarianism and his devaluing of other or alternative para-
digms of civic identity and behaviour make him a less than
ideal standard, let alone an ideal representative 'voice', for
any society which wants to make room for diversity and to
enable different individuals within it to dissent from one
another, precisely because other forms of discourse are
monolithically denied as 'other'. Rather Isocrates offers us a
means of expanding the range of discourse which we associ-
ate with classical Athens. He shows us how an individual,
above all a writer, can invoke and comply with a dominant
cultural language, namely that of democracy, but at the
same time also subvert and question it. Moreover, he shows
how rhetoric, the shared discourse of the community, can be
fashioned almost paradoxically into the discourse of the
individual. It is on these terms that we should tolerate and
accommodate the political 'voice' of this author in our con-
struction of ancient Greece.
2 34
APPENDICES
1. Isocrates and Gorgias
I
Eager to locate Isocrates within a rhetorical tradition, scholars have main-
tained that Isocrates was the pupil of the fifth-century sophist, Gorgias. 1
They regard as evidence for this the statements in the biographers which
say that Isocrates 'listened to' Gorgias:
When he was a young man, he had heard (audivisset) Gorgias, now an old
man, in Thessaly.
(Cicero Orator 176)
But the most famous individual to listen to [i.e. to be listener (auditor) to]
Gorgias [was] Isocrates.
(Quintilian 1.0. 3.1.13)
[Isocrates] heard (genomenos de akoustes) Prodicus of Ceos, Gorgias of
Leontini, Tisias of Syracuse, those having the greatest reputation for wis-
dom among the Greeks, and as some say, Theramenes, the orator, as
well ...
(Dionysius of Halicarnassus Isocrates 1)
As a child, [Isocrates] was educated (epaideueto) by Athenians of consid-
erable stature and listened (akroi5menos) to Prodicus of Ceos, Gorgias of
Leontini, Tisias of Syracuse and Theramenes, the orator.
(Ps.-Plutarch, Isocrates 2)
[Isocrates] heard (ekouse), among others, Prodicus of Ceos and Gorgias of
Leontini.
(Anonymous Life 92-3)
The Plutarchan life also goes to particular trouble to emphasise the link
between the two rhetoricians. The biographer tells us that Isocrates' tomb
bore representations of poets and of his various teachers (didaskalous). Of
these figures, he singles out Gorgias, gazing at an astrological sphere and
standing next to Isocrates (Ps.-Plutarch 25-6).
' Blass (1898), ii, p. 14; Norlin (1966), i, p. xii; Marrou (1956), p. 123; Kennedy
(1963), pp. 174-5.
235
APPENDIX I
II
There is some doubt whether these passages can be taken as evidence that
Isocrates was the pupil of Gorgias. D. M. Schenkeveld has recently shown
that from the Hellenistic period onwards to say that an individual 'heard
X saying ... ' often means no more than that individual 'read in the works
of X'. 2 He cites, for instance, a passage of Galen (Thrasybulus 5.879.12,
Kuhn) in which the author says that he 'just now heard Plato saying
that.. .'.3 Clearly it is impossible to understand the verb in a literal sense
given that Galen writes in the second century AD. Schenkeveld proposes
as the rationale for akoui5/audire = 'to read' the practice of reading aloud
in Antiquity - though following Bernard Knox, he sensibly does not insist
that individuals always read aloud in Antiquity. A slightly different con-
vention for denoting reading the works of X is to say simply an individual
'heard X', where X is designated by the name of the author. For example,
in the Phaedrus Socrates says 'I heard beautiful Sappho, wise Anacreon
and certain writers of treatises' when he means 'I read beautiful Sappho,
etc.' or more precisely, 'I read [in/in the works of] beautiful Sappho, etc.'
(235c2-3). 4 At Epistle 1.5 Isocrates refers to his literary addressee,
Dionysius of Syracuse, as 'listener of the treatise (sungrammatos
akroates)'. Significantly, in this letter akroates is a word so closely associ-
ated with mathetes that it is virtually a synonym for it (cf. 1.4).5 I suggest
that, when biographers say that Isocrates 'heard' Gorgias or any of the
older sophists, they may well be making use of an idiom which denotes
'reading [the works of] X' as 'hearing X'. To assume that Isocrates actu-
ally 'heard' Gorgias, and furthermore to infer that he attended classes or
lectures by the older sophist, as modern readers often do, is to subject the
biographers to an overly literalistic interpretation. 6
In addition to this linguistic point, there are other reasons to suspect the
identification of Isocrates as Gorgias' pupil. Indeed, Quintilian concedes in
any case that the sources do not agree about who Isocrates' teacher was
(1.0. 3.1.137). Apart from this comment, it must strike the modern reader
2
Schenkeveld (1992).
3 f\Kovo-as6rprov 6:pTiwsTTAchwvosMyoVTos ws...
4 Schenkeveld (1992), p. 141. He also mentions as similar examples of the idiom
Phaedrus 261b, 268c, 275a; Alcibiades 1.112b; Laws 629b; Xenophon Mem.
2.6.11; Aristotle EN 1095b8; and Diodorus Siculus 19.8.4; Polybius 1.163.4.
5 See the discussion above on this epistle in chapter 4.
6
In theory Isocrates had several occasions to hear Gorgias in person. In 427, when
Isocrates was only nine years old, Gorgias came to Athens as the ambassador of
Leontini. The Platonic dialogues suggest that the he returned to the city in subse-
quent years to lecture (e.g. Gorgias; Hippias Major 282b). Cicero says that
Isocrates listened to Gorgias as an old man and makes Thessaly, not Athens, the
venue for the meeting between the rhetoricians ( Orator 176).
7 quamquam de praeceptore eius inter auctores non convenit.
!SOCRATES AND GORGIAS
that all the authors who are cited as evidence for this biographical detail
write in the Roman period more than four hundred years after both
rhetoricians lived. These authors, moreover, are not disinterested scholars
of intellectual tradition, but are engaged in the production of 'genealogies'
which explain their own intellectual enterprises. Cicero, Dionysius of
Halicarnassus and Plutarch are writing histories of rhetoric which implic-
itly narrate the origins of their own critical and pedagogical writings, while
Quintilian is composing an art of rhetoric that supplies its own 'etymol-
ogy'. As etymologies, their accounts stress the continuity between the past,
i.e. Greek, rhetorical culture and the present, i.e. Roman, one by maintain-
ing the continuity from one generation of rhetoricians to the next.
In this mode of intellectual history, there can be no unattached or iso-
lated figures. Prominent and important individuals are linked up with
each other; they are connected across generations in what might be taken
to be teacher-student relationships, as in the case of Gorgias (or Prodicus,
Tisias and Theramenes) and Isocrates, or they are associated by stories
of rivalry, within the same generation, e.g. with Isocrates and Aristotle
(cf. Quintilian I 0. 3. 1. 14). Some narratives have elements of both
the pedagogical relationship and rivalry. Cicero suggests a 'generation
gap' between Gorgias and Isocrates, declaring that the latter toned
down the figures of speech for which the older sophist was so notorious
(Orator 176).
Cicero's presentation of Isocrates in works other than the Orator
demonstrates the extent to which the biographer's own programme deter-
mines how a subject will be portrayed. While Cicero presents him as the
pupil of Gorgias in the Orator, it is worth noting that he downplays their
relationship in his earlier writings. In On the Orator and Brutus he depicts
him as emerging independently of the previous generation of intellectuals.
In the former work Antonius makes a point of rejecting the doxographi-
cal tradition which makes Isocrates the student of fifth-century intellectu-
als such as Gorgias, while in the latter text Cicero suggests no connection
between Isocrates and the professional teachers of his time, including
Gorgias (Brutus 3off.). I argue that Cicero is not simply being inconsis-
tent. In both On the Orator and Brutus he wishes to emphasise Isocrates'
status as the ultimate teacher-model for the florid, periodic or Asiatic
style which he himself advocates, and seems to think that to present influ-
ences on Isocrates would detract from his authority as a pedagogical
model for subsequent pupils of rhetoric. Both of these works, accordingly,
emphasise Isocrates' own influence on later individuals as the 'perfect
teacher (perfectus magister)' (On the Orator 2.95 and Brutus 32). In the
later Orator, Cicero replaces the pedagogical paradigm with an ideal pro-
duced through phantasia (cf. 7-10). Because Isocrates' importance as a
teacher is now diminished, he can now be linked, although somewhat ten-
tatively, with Gorgias (167, 176).
237
APPENDIX I
III
My earlier analysis of the biographical traditions regarding Isocrates' lack
of voice (chapter 3) showed that subsequent authors rarely invent details
ex nihilo. Rather they take as their starting point for elaboration and fic-
tionalisation the work of their subjects. Hence, although there is no evi-
dence that Isocrates was taught by Gorgias in any conventional sense, the
association is the product of invention on the basis of details in the
Isocratean corpus.
On three different occasions Isocrates mentions the older sophist by
name (Antidosis 155-6, 268; Helen 3). Each time he has something critical
or dismissive to say about his predecessor. At Antidosis 155ff. he cites the
example of Gorgias to prove that being a professional teacher does not
entail that one will amass great wealth. An itinerant teacher, Gorgias had
no family and fulfilled no liturgic obligations, yet left only 1,ooo staters at
his death despite earning more than any other contemporary sophist
( 156). Isocrates implicitly underscores a contrast with his predecessor;
unlike Gorgias, he has benefited Athens and supported its welfare from
far smaller earnings (158). At Antidosis r68 Gorgias comes under fire as
an author who wasted his time writing useless works. In arguing that
nothing exists, he produced perittologia that resemble 'jugglers' tricks'
(269). It is worth noting that Isocrates will again use this vocabulary to
describe the deeds of the Greeks which hindered Hellenic unity in
Agamemnon's time (cf. peritta ton ergon, Panathenaicus 77; thaumatopoi-
ias, 78). At Helen 2-3 he reiterates criticism of Gorgianic writing. Here
Gorgias' thesis that nothing exists is dismissed as a falsehood and as the
sort of verbal quibble which hinders pupils from learning about the gov-
ernment of the state (Helen 3-4). According to Isocrates, the 'teaching' of
Gorgias and other sophists like Protagoras, Zeno and Melissus only
short-changes students, depriving them of the teaching they hoped to
obtain (6).
What might be construed as indirect references to Gorgias in the corpus
are more numerous. The whole of the Helen can be seen as a response to
Gorgias' Encomium of Helen. In sections 14-15 of the speech Isocrates
states that his work serves to correct the attempts of an unnamed author
who composed a defence of Helen while intending to write an encomium
of her. This unnamed author critics take to be Gorgias. 8 At Panegyricus
8-9 Isocrates declares that speeches are of such a nature that they can
make small things great, old things new and so on. In the Phaedrus Plato
attributes this art of rhetorical inversion to Tisias and Gorgias (267a),
although Herodotus gives us reason to believe that such transformations
8
Helen was a commonplace topic of fifth-century writing, particularly poetry; cf.
Alcaeus (42) and Plato's Phaedrus 243, where Socrates tells us that Stesichorus
wrote both a condemnation of Helen and a recantation of this ode after being
punished by the gods with blindness.
238
ISOCRATES AND GORGIAS
might be a more general feature of fifth-century prose (Histories 1.5). At

Panegyricus I 58 Isocrates declares that war with the barbarians inspires,
while war with other Greeks is an occasion for mourning songs.
Philostratus Lives 493 suggests that this sentiment is an echo of a passage
from Gorgias' Funeral Oration. Finally, at Panathenaicus 2, Isocrates
states that his prose makes use of antitheses and parisoses amongst other
figures (ideaz). Antithesis or opposition and parisosis or balanced phrasing
are devices which Gorgias is both traditionally credited with inventing
and criticised for overusing (Suda s.v. Gorgias; Diodorus Siculus 12.53-4;
Quintilian 9.3.74).
That these passages provide us with specific 'references' to Gorgias is
uncertain. That they supply evidence that Gorgias was the teacher of
Isocrates is even more tentative. The older sophist is not directly named in
these passages in Isocrates' texts. Furthermore, the supposed link between
the two rhetoricians is often supplied by a third source, often much later,
as in the case of Philostratus, and there is no certainty that the mediating
text is making reference to a detail from the biographical tradition con-
cerning Gorgias rather than to the rhetorician's works themselves.
239
2. Concerning the Chariot-team
Concerning the Chariot-team seems to be at first glance, like Against the

Sophists, Epistles r, 6 and 9, a fragmentary text. This work supplies us
with only the diegesis or narration of events and lacks, as many critics
observe, an initial section which would have contained proofs, e.g. testi-
monies, witness speeches, laws, wills and the defendant's discussion of
them, to which the first sentence refers.' Sauppe conjectures that at least
one page is missing from the beginning of the oration, and proposes that
the word MAPTYPIA stood before what is now section r. Jebb, however,
points out that there is no mark of a lacuna. 2
Indeed, closer examination reveals that generic expectation is the only
evidence for seeing Concerning the Chariot-team as an incomplete text. A
stronger case can be made for the integrity of the work. Mathieu and
Bremond account for the form of the work, proposing that Isocrates'
intention was to write an exemplary text for his 'students', in this case an
encomium of the elder Alcibiades. 3 To sustain their reading the editors of
the Bude edition draw an analogy with another speech apparently written
for the lawcourt, Against Lochites. Observing that this work also lacks an
initial evidentiary section, they argue that this is deliberate. Isocrates
intended to supply his reader with a model of rhetorical deinosis or
auxesis, demonstrating how to exaggerate a case for indignity into a
charge against assault and battery.4
In assigning the status of paradigm to Concerning the Chariot-team and
Against Lochites Mathieu and Bremond imply that Isocratean pedagogy
consists in imitation. Yet because the rhetorician resists the temptation to
make paradigms prescriptive, I prefer to seek an alternative explanation
for the role of silence in these lawcourt speeches. I suggest that it would
be an extraordinary coincidence for accidental lacunae to occur in
Concerning the Chariot-team and in Against Lochites precisely at the point
when the presentation and discussion of proofs breaks off and the narra-
tive section begins. Each of the speeches, moreover, commences with a
complete sentence which states the topic of the case in question. For such
a remarkable occurrence to happen twice in the same corpus is even more
unlikely. These points aside, it is also significant that literary convention
can help to explain why Isocrates should deliberately begin his speeches
when he does. Greek dicanic discourse consistently demonstrates 'blind
' Cf. TWV TE 1rpfoi3ewv TWV EKEi0EvTJKOVTWVKm' TWV a/\1\WV TWV el66TWV al<TlKOCXTE
µapTVpovVTwv. Also see Antiphon Herodes 25, where the litigant announces a
transition from 'what happened' (Ta yev6µeva) to Ta EiK6Ta, and comments by
Gagarin (1989), p. 25.
2
Cf. Jebb (1876), ii, pp. 228-9.
3 Mathieu and Bremond (1929), ii, p. 49.
4
Mathieu and Bremond (1929), ii, pp. 37-8; cf. van Hook (1968), iii, p. 333, and
Eucken (1983), p. 6.
CONCERNING THE CHARIOT-TEAM
spots' where 'proof is called for: lawcourt speeches, and their fictional
counterparts, leave blank spaces where the citation of witness speeches,
laws, wills or letters has been signalled. For example, in the Isocratean
corpus, the speaker invites his martures or witnesses to verify their depo-
sitions, but this is followed by empty spaces on seven occasions in the
Trapeziticus (12, 14, 16, 32, 37, 41 and 52). Isocrates denotes the 'citation'
of a will at Aegineticus 12, and of various laws at 12, 13 and 14 of the
same speech, first by issuing a command for the document to be read out
and then by leaving a gap in the text.5 We should not, however, expect to
find such a marker signalling the omission in either Concerning the
Chariot-team or Against Lochites because the author omits far more than
the quotation of a single document.
Modern readers of Greek legal texts tend to diminish the significance of
such silences in legal discourse. They explain and justify these 'omissions'
in terms of the introduction of writing into dicanic process only in 380, or
possibly 378/7. They observe that after this period the law required liti-
gants to deposit written documents prior to their being read out at the
trial (cf. Demosthenes 45.55 and 47.48). 6 This change was marked by a
shift in legal vocabulary, as the language of the dikasterion increasingly
stresses the literary nature of forensic procedure,? and by the inclusion of
witness speeches (marturia) in published texts. (Isaeus On Hagnias (12) is
commonly regarded as the first published speech to contain genuine mar-
turia in full.)
Nevertheless, this account of the transition from 'orality' to 'literacy' is
flawed. It assumes that the change-over was complete and virtually instan-
taneous once legislation came into effect in the early fourth century.
Evidence reveals, however, that Athenian speechwriters continued to
withhold witness speeches and other forms of proof from their texts long
after the law requiring the written documentation of evidence came into
effect. Gernet points to gaps where we might expect the citation of docu-
ments in numerous speeches of Demosthenes, for instance. 8 In the partic-
ular case of Trapeziticus 52, Isocrates omits to quote a letter, a piece of
evidence to which he could easily have had access. Yet it is the Antidosis,
generally dated to his later years in 355/4, which most clearly shows that
an author had the option of not representing proofs in his published texts
even if they were available to him. As I remarked earlier, he uses passages
from his earlier works in place of the more conventional forms of literary
5 Examples of markers preceding missing µap-rvpia are 1ml µ01 Aa~e ,as'
8ia6r\1<ar;',
Aeg. 12; /\a~e 8r\ µ01 1<ai ,ov Keiwv voµov, Aeg. 13; Kai µ01 Aa~e ,6 ~1~Afov,
Aeg. 14.
6 See Calhoun (1919), p. 191; Bonner (1905), p. 47; Bonner and Smith (1938), ii, p.
134; Thomas (1989), p. 43; Harris (1989), p. 72, dates the change between 380
and 364; West (1989), p. 541.
7 Calhoun (1919), p. 188, and West (1989), p. 541.
8 Gemet (1954), i, p. 271.
APPENDIX 2
evidence. He uses as marturia texts which he has shown himself capable of

citing, whether verbatim or more loosely, elsewhere in the corpus; how-
ever, rather than cite from works to which he clearly has access, Isocrates
prefers to leave blanks in the speech in defence of himself.
In his Art of Rhetoric Aristotle draws a distinction between atechnic
(atechnoz) and entechnic (entechnoz) proofs. According to him, the former
are those which pre-exist, like witnesses, tortures, contracts and so on, and
which the rhetorician manipulates to suit his argument, while the latter are
manufactured through method and skill by the rhetorician for his own use
(cf. 1355b35-40 and 1375a22ff.). He complains that, while theorists claim
to be producing technai which lay out rhetorical methodologies, they by
and large fail to deal with the properly technical matter of rhetoric, as he
indeed does not in his work. I suggest that, if theorists other than Aristotle
deal with atechnic concerns, writers of speeches nevertheless engage in
entechnic arguments. When prose authors withhold evidence from their
speeches, it would appear that they do so out of unwillingness, rather than
inability, to offer a literary depiction of 'proof. This is because this pro-
vides the opportunity for them to create a discursive supplement which
takes the place of and serves as an alternative to 'proof. Intentional
silences in lawcourt speeches allow themselves to be supplemented, in par-
ticular, by a mode of argumentation on which rhetorical writers place a
high premium - to eikos or probability. There are numerous fourth-cen-
tury discussions of to eikos. From these, we see that it is conventionally
described as what the majority of people think to be plausible or likely.
Plato makes this clear in the Phaedrus. At Phaedrus 273b3ff. Socrates
recounts the events leading up to and occurring in a trial. A small but
brave man beats up a strong but cowardly man and steals his cloak. In the
courtroom, each litigant must take into account the expectations of his
audience and is forced to contrive a plausible, though false, retelling of the
story (cf. Phaedrus 273b1 and 273d3-4). The jury is unlikely to believe that
the smaller and weaker man could have been the aggressor and that the
stronger and cowardly individual was the victim, as they actually were.
The litigants must construct their account of events, keeping in mind what
their audience assumes to be the case. The small man will accordingly
defend himself by reference to his size, while the bigger man will have to
present himself as the victim of several attackers.
The fourth-century texts which discuss to eikos also make clear the rela-
tion of this mode of argumentation to proof. They present probability as
the supplement for the proofs or tekmeria which are absent from a
speech. It is significant that when Socrates presents his exemplary narra-
tive of probability in the Phaedrus, he remarks at its outset that both liti-
gants were alone and without any other individuals they could later call
as witnesses (273b8). The lack of witnesses and their discourse is what
makes the probability argument possible. Earlier examples of dicanic writ-
CONCERNING THE CHA RIOT-TEAM
ing reveal the connection between the absence of witness speeches or

other forms of literary proof and to eikos as the basis for argumentation.
The Tetralogies of Antiphon show that probability must predominate
when proofs are unavailable. 9 In Tetralogy I. I the prosecutor explicitly
states that he uses to eikos to prosecute a murderer owing to the lack of
other corroborating factors. He declares that owing to the absence of wit-
nesses he must convict his opponent by use of this mode of argumenta-
tion (1.1.9-10). In Tetralogy 1.3.8 the prosecutor again argues that the
defendant must be proven guilty by to eikos on the grounds that murders
tend to be committed in secret and in the absence of any witnesses. In the
Stepmother Antiphon suggests that the probability argument might also
be used in place of a detailed narrative. The prosecutor announces that
since his speech would be rather long if he related at length the meal
which resulted in his father's death, he will proceed by a short cut (I 8).
The litigant then appeals to probability as the authority for his recon-
struction of the murder in the very next sentence of the speech. ro
Against Euthynus is the Isocratean speech which makes the most
explicit use of the probability argument. It is no accident that the text is
described as being 'without witnesses (AMARTUROS)' in the codices.
The individual who speaks on behalf of Nicias comments that he cannot
employ witnesses (martures) or torture (basanoz) as proofs since his friend
had no one present with him when he made his deposit with the defen-
dant Euthynus (4). In place of martures and basanoi, which, he observes,
will not in any case help his cause (7), the litigant must employ argumen-
tative proof, especially probability. The speaker proceeds to make his case
through probability. In sections 5 and 6 of the speech he suggests that
Nicias is unlikely to try to recover from Euthynus a deposit which he
never made. This is both because Nicias is the richer of the two and
because genuine lawsuits were inclined to fail at the present time. The
prosecutor continues by pointing out that it is improbable for Nicias to
concern himself with fabricated proceedings when his life was already
being endangered by the activities of the Thirty ( 14-15). At sections I 7
and 21 of the speech the litigant employs to eikos to anticipate and refute
a probable defence that could be made by Euthynus. Euthynus might
state in his defence that he would reasonably have taken all, not just part,
of Nicias' deposit if he had really wanted to rob him. The prosecutor pre-
empts this line of argument by observing that it is probable for people
intending to commit crimes to act in such a way as to provide themselves
with a plausible defence.
9 Cf. Antiphon Tetralogies 1.1.4, 5, 6, 10; 1.2.3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; 1.4.4, 5, 8, 9, ro;

2.2.7; 2-4.1; 3.1.3; 3.2.1, 2. Witness speeches are also referred to at 1.2.7 and
3.1.7.
10
Also Stepmother 2, 7, 11, 17, I 8.
2 43
APPENDIX 2
Gaps and lacunae in published lawcourt speeches both create a space

and provide a justification for the use of probability. Thus the conven-
tions of dicanic discourse suggest that the absence of a 'first section' con-
taining witness speeches and other evidentiary material in Concerning the
Chariot-team constructs the discourse of that speech as an argument
based on to eikos. In other words, Concerning the Chariot-team presents
itself as a text which has the status of supplement, and what it supple-
ments is, I suggest, the truncated pedagogies found elsewhere in the
Isocratean corpus. The speech in defence of Alcibiades provides a way of
speaking about the abrupt endings of Sophists and the three epistles con-
sidered in chapter 6 as a representation of teaching and of being a teacher
that differs radically from our own usual perceptions of classical paideia.
244
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Helena orationes inter se succedant et quid Plato ad eas responderit',
Mnemosyne 44, 373-95.
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Vitali, R. (1971) Gorgia. Retorica efilosofia, Urbino.
Volkmann, R. (1963, reprint) Die Rhetorik der Griechen und Romer in sys-
tematischer Obersicht, Hildesheim.
Wade-Gery, H. T. (1945) 'The Question of Tribute in 449/448 B.C.',
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(1952) The Poet of the Iliad, Cambridge.
Walberer, G. (1938) Isokrates und Alkidamas, Hamburg.
Welles, C. B. (1966) 'Isocrates' View of History', in L. Wallach, ed., The
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wooten, C. W. (1987) Hermogenes' On Types of Style, Chapel Hill and

London.
Wyse, W. (1904) The Speeches of Isaeus, Cambridge.
Zucker, F. (1954) 'Isokrates' Panathenaikos', in Seek (1976).
259
GENERAL INDEX
Adkins, A., 92 authorship, 11-12

Aeschines, 91, 115, 209
Aeschines, pupil of Socrates, 70 Bacchylides, 57, 135
Aeschylus, 101, 173, 177,191,202 Baiter, G. and Sauppe, H., 163,
Agamemnon, 40, 132-8, 146 195-6
Ahrendt, H., 5, 8, 205-6, 222 Bakhtin, M., 18
Alcibiades, 106-7, 121, 201-21 passim, barbarians, 136-9, 147
244 Barrilli, R., 82
Alcibiades the Younger, 106-7, 201-21 Barron, J.P., 145
passim Barwick, K., 166
Alcidamas, 114, 120 Baynes, N., 61-2
Alcmeon, 219 Bekker, I., 48, 163
Alcmeonids, 201-4, 210 Benseler, G., 12-18 passim, 195
Alexander, 44, 46 Bentley, R., 195-6
Allison, J., 92 Blass, F., 246
alphabet, 167; as analogy for oratory, Bloom, A., 222-32 passim
33, 167 book culture, 73 n. 81
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, 211, 217 Buchheit, V., 165
Anaximenes, 27 ,. Buchner, E., 63, 80
antilogy, 7, 70-3; see also contradiction Bundy, E., 33
Antiphon, 28, 55, 71, 202 Burgess, T., 28
Aphareus, 118 Burkert, W., 21
Apollodorus, 142 Busiris, 118, 178, 210
archaism, 54-61
Archidamus, 39, 58, 66, 97-8, 212 Caecilius of Caleacte, 11
Areopagus, 202, 213 Callicles, 30, 180
Aristophanes, 2, 54-5, 90, 92, 101, 145, canon, 9, 11,223,229
184 Carter, M., 230
Aristotle, 14, 32-3, 90, 98, 103, 118, Cave, T., 10
139, 156-7, 164, 167, 169, 170-1, Chantraine, P., 3
174,205,209,233,242 chronology, 41-53 passim, 73, 152-6,
arts of rhetoric, 157-99 esp. 164, 184; 198
see also technical discourse Cicero, 143, 167, 171, 190, 237
assembly, 3, 8, 28-9, 95, 116, 177 Clavaud, R., 27-8
Athenian Tribute Lists, 145 Cleisthenes, 93, 203-4, 212
Athens, 1, 5, 74-112passim; as empire, Cleon, 7, 30, 90
8, 62-4, 102, 129-40; public space Cleophon, 90
at, 3; scholars' image of, 1 coherence, 36-73 passim
Auger, A., 163 Cole, T., 169
Aulus Gellius, 174-5 Connor, R., 90
authority, 2, 5, 8, 74-112passim, contradiction, 62-73, 125, 158, 168
129-51, 199, 232 Corax, 167
of pedagogue, 151-232 passim, esp. corpus, 7, 10-15, 22, 35, 41-2, 61, 73,
211-13 198
of technicality, 170-1 Culler, J., 18
260
GENERAL INDEX
'cultural literacy', 223-5 Gill, C., 78

curriculum, 9, 180, 229 Gorgias, 32, 58, 88, 108, 160-1, 168,
170, 181, 235-9
Damon, 211,217 Graff, G., 231
Davison, J., 143-5 Gray, V., 207
Delian League, 145 'great books', 231
Demades, 116 Greenblatt, S., 86
Demetrius, 70 Guthrie, W., 128
Demonicus, 58-9
Demosthenes, 1, 47, 91, 116, 128, 152, Hall, E., 101
191,202,228, 241 Hansen, M., 29
Derrida, J., 7, 227 Harding, P., 66, 172
dicanic/legal speeches, 28, 46, 81-4, Harpocration, 141
116, 126-7, 150, 240-4 Harris, W., 145
Diogenes Laertius, 81, 167, 172, 174 Hatzfeld, J., 214
dialogues, Plato's, 41-2, 153-6 Heath, M., 49
digression, 40-9 passim, 129-40 Heilbrunn, G., 103
Dinarchus, 115, 191 Helen, 162
Dionysius of Halicamassus, 11, 24, 29, Heliastic Oath, 68
76-7, 82-3, 117-18, 154,237 Heracles, 46, 59, 130
Dionysius of Syracuse, 122-4 Hermippus, 12
disposition of speeches, 79 Hermogenes On Style, 27
doctrine, oral, 174-5; secret, 172-9 Herodotus, 34, 114, 173, 206
passim Hesiod, 99
Dodds, E., 155, 170 hiatus, 40
Dover, K., 117-18 Hiero, 207
drama, 37, 69, 136 Hieronymus, 83
Drerup, E., 16, 47, 163 Hippias, 40, 170, 181
Hirsch, E. D., 223-32 passim
elitism at Athens, 6, 103-12; see also Homer, 33, 87, 138, 140, 143
oligarchy Hudson-Williams, H. L., 29
Encomium of Mausolus, 12 Hyperbolus, 90
Ephorus, 191 Hyperides, 152, 191
Epicharmus, 177
epideixis, 12, 14, 22, 28, 80, 184, 198 identity, 1, 6, 11-12, 38, 75, 189-94;
epistles, Greek, 123, 196-9 Athenian, 8, 98-112 esp. 106, 113,
Eucken, C., 153-5, 171, 197 127, 200; Greek/national, 113,
Euripides, 101, 171, 199, 201 127-50 esp. 139 and 147
Evenus, 170 imitation, 59, 63, 184-94, 199, 200,
240; see also mimeisthai and
Fairweather, J., 77 paradigm
Felperin, H., 222 Isocrates
forgery, 10-13 passim, 195-9 autobiography of, 22, 45, 84-112
Forster, E., 149 passim, 121-4, 133-9, 150
Foucault, M., 10, 200 biographical tradition, 75-112, 235-9
Four Hundred, the, 104, 116 and scholarly tradition, 1, 83
Fowler, A., 12 as an old man, 43-8, 125
funeral oration, 27, 80 career, 42-5
of Gryllos, 12 doubtful works, 12
literary style, 11, 31, 82-3, 165
Galen, 13, 236 on trial, 80, 153, 192-4
genre, 7-39 passim, 73, 116; taxonomy political aspirations, 76
of genres, 13-21 reputed education, 111, 235-9
Gentili, B., 69 Isocrates of Amyclas, 79
Gemet, L. 241 Isocrates of Apollonia, 12
GENERAL INDEX
Jaeger, W., 155-6, 172, 197 Nagy, G., 140

Jason of Pherae, 130 new politicians, 90--2, 103, 112, 113, 115
Jebb, R., 12, 16, 40, 56, 83-4, 163, Nicocles, 46, 57, 59, 78, 103, 149,
197 186-7, 190
John of Sardis, 165 Nicocreon, 78
Norlin, G., 17, 56,133,157
Kaster, R., 74 North, H., 101
Kennedy, G., 62, 72, 193 novelty, 54-7
knowledge, 182-4
Kroll, W., 165-6 Odeion, 143
Kurke, L., 219 a?uvre, 10
oligarchs, 95, 104; see also 'the Thirty'
lacuna, 8, 162-71, 194-5, 240-4 and 'the Four Hundred'
Lanham, R., 85 oligarchy, 6, 103-4
Lattimore, R., 206 Oliver, J., 142
lawcourt, 3, 8, 116, 152 opinion, 179-84
lawsuits, imaginary, 67, 107-9, 192-4 orality/oral discourse, 6, 86-9, 112;
Ledger, G., 44 critique of, 90--113
Lefkowitz, M., 160 orator, 7, 30, 89-112 passim
Lentz, T., 118 oratory, 32-3, 87-112 passim, 228
litigant, 7, 68, 117 order, literary, 40-73 passim
litigation, 67 orphans, war, 217
liturgy, 80, 93, 104-11, 220 other/otherness, 35, 194, 231
logographer, 61, 115, 117, 154 Owen, G., 160, 171
logography, 12, 150
Loraux, N., 28, 217 pacifism, 63, 65-6, 96
Lycurgus, orator, 191 pacifist, 63-5, 96
Lycurgus, Spartan, 101 Panathenaia, 136, 139-47
Lysianic Eroticus, 38, 48 Panathenaic Rule, 37, 143-4
Lysias, 1, 82, 91, 105--6, 121, 152, 203, panegyric, 31
205 panhellenic gathering, 3
panhellenic oration, 32
Maidment, K., 154 panhellenism, 60, 69, 130-48 passim
Marrou, H., 1, 165-6 paradigm, 46, 130-40, 186-94, 235-40
Mausolus of Halicamassus, 79 Peace of Antalcidas, 64
Mathieu, G., 127; and Bremond, E., Peace of Callias, 64-5
185, 197, 240 pedagogue/teacher, 8, 9, 109-10, 124,
Maximus Planudes, 164, 167, 177 151-232 passim, 235-9; analogous
Megacles, 219 to host, 110; advertisement/
Meiggs, R., 142 promise of teacher, 157-8, 161-4;
Melissus, 160-1, 181, 238 as legislator, 208; pay of, 108-9,
Menander Rhetor, 165 158
Merritt, B. and Wade-Gery, H., 145 pedagogy, 9, 108-111, 151-232 passim;
metaphor, 186-7 as metaphor for legal process,
metre, 32 201-3; as mode of socialisation,
Misch, G., 186 205-34 passim; through laws,
Mnesiphilus, 88, 174 211-13
moderation (see siiphrosune), 90-112 Peisistratus, 142
passim, esp. 99-102, 157 Pericles, 143-4, 211, 214-21, 228,233
Momigliano, A, 186 Perlman, S., 137
Morrison, J., 174 Persians, 147, 216; see also 'barbarians'
Moysey, R., 66 persona, 6, 8, 24, 45, 49, 65, 67, 112,
Mi.inscher, K., 197 233; see also 'lsocrates
Mysteries, the, 215 autobiography of and 'self-
myth, 57 fashioning'
GENERAL INDEX
persuasion, 2, 5, 15, 120, 242-4 Sappho, 23, 25

Phalaris, 199 Schenkeveld, D., 236
Pheidias, l l 7 Schiappa, E., 163, 169
Philip of Macedon, 45--6, 52, 59, 75, Schmitt-Pante!, P., 4
130, 132-3, 197 Seager, R., 204
Philodemus, 164 self-fashioning, 86-7, 103
philosophy, 30, 108, 126, 164, 180 silence, 164--79, 199, 210
Philostratus, 76-9 Simonides, 211
Photius, 11, 13-14, 18, 79-80, 166 slander, 135, 160, 178
Pindar, 57, 134--5, 198, 219 Socrates, 2, 30, 38, 41, 48-9, 80, 90,
Plato, 1, 11, 26, 37-54 passim, 61, 88, 108, 121, 153, 155, 157, 175,
119-20, 153-6, 169-70, 174--7, 208, 192-4, 199, 211, 214--21, 242
226-8 Solon, 93, 100-1, 128, 174, 176,
pleasure, 30-2 212
Plutarch, 76-80, 88, 92, 143-4, 172-4, sophists, 30, 55, 128-9, 135, 137-9,
201,211 148, 153, 155, 158-60, 176, 181,
poetry, 23, 26, 32-3 187, 194, 207, 209
political discourse, 10-35 passim, 233-4 Sophocles, 84
political involvement, 87-9; see also Sparta/Spartans, 39-40, 59, 63-6,
quietude 69-73, 96-8, 101, 147-8
political meddling, 92, 159; see also speech, see also 'logos'; as animal/
'polupragmosune' living-creature, 38-40, 49-50; vs.
Polycrates, 160, 178-9 statues, 187-8
priamel, 23-5 Spengel, L., 27, 170
Pringsheim, F., 162 Speusippus, 166-7
probability, 242-4 Strauss, L., 225-6, 228
Prodicus, 170, 237 Suda, 11, 77, 79
proof, 46- 7, 60, 240-4 sycophant, 92, 95, 107-8, 110, 187
propemptikon, 164, 171, 196 Syrianus, 165
prose, 20-35 passim
Protagoras, 58, 161, 156-7, 158, 170, technical discourse, 13, 158, 164--71;
181, 209, 238 see also 'techne'; critique of,
Ps.-Andocides, 204 179-84
Ps.-Plutarch, 11, 12, 76-81, 111, 165-6 Thebes, 62
publication, 114, 127-9 Theodorus, father of Isocrates, 111
pun, 63 Theognidea, 25, 99
Pythagoras, 178, 210 Theognis, 176
Theophrastus, 104
quiet Athenian, 93-112 passim, 177-9 Theopompus, 191
quietude, 8, 90-112 passim, 178-9; in Theramenes, 77, 237
Lysias, 105-6 Theseus, 57, 59, 102, 130, 142, 162
Quintilian, 22, 27, 79, 168, 236 Thirty, the, 89, 104, 107, 116, 153, 163,
243
Race, W., 134 Thomas, R., 204, 217
repetition, 7, 47-8, 53-61, 73 Thompson, W., 64
rhapsodes, 36-7, 136, 143 Thrasymachus of Cos, 168, 170
rhetoric, 1-6, 24, 42, 54, 85, 87, 168-9, Thucydides, 1, 32, 33, 51, 97, 121,
179-84; and epistemology, 179-84; 200-1, 220, 233
as flattery, 31, 122-3; as means to Timotheus, 31, 119, 130-2, 172, 211
a public career, 90-1; as oral Tisias, 167, 170, 237-8
discourse, 82-4 Todorov, T., 17-18
Romilly, J. de, 2, 167 Trojan War, 130, 134--8
Russell, D. A. F. M., 85, 191 Turner, E., 127
Sandys, J., 128 unity, Hellenic, 136-48 passim

GENERAL INDEX
unity, literary, 36-73 passim writing/written language, 6, 31, 35,

Usher, S., 56 113-50 passim; as memorial, 48;
utility of discourse, 29-31 comparison to speaking, 114-5,
119; invention of, 114
Van Hook, L., 17
Verdam, H., 155 Xenophon, 1, 30, 58, 101, 110, 207,
voice, 7, 8, 74-112 passim, 131, 233--4; 214-15, 226
and writing, 122--4
Zeno, 160---1,181, 238
Wilamowitz, U., 171, 197 Zeuxis, 117
Wilcox, S., 19 Zosimus, 77
Wolf, H., 12, 15-16, 18 Zucker, F., 70---1
INDEX OF GREEK WORDS
For reasons of consistency with the main text of the book indexed Greek
words have been transliterated. The list of words follows alphabetical
order in the original Greek; rough breathings are represented by 'h' in the
transliteration.
agathoi, 99 didaskein, 55, 195, 201-5 passim
agon, 67-9, 184 dikazesthai, 116
akribeia, 180; cf. 185, 199 dikaiosune, 96-7
akroates, 123-4, 235-6 dikasterion, 28
amphibetesis, 71 dike, 16; ereme, 121
anankaion, 33 dissoi logoi, 66, 68
ananke logographike, 38 doxa, 110, 135-7, 153, 178-84 passim,
antidosis, 110 191, 223
antilegein, 61
apologia, 80 eikei, 39 n. 10, 50-1, 70
aporia, 71, 162 eikos, 33, 67, 223, 242-4
aporrheta, 172-4 eikon, 187-8
apragmon/-osune, 98-111, 116-27 eirene, 64
passim, 159, 179, 188 eiro, 3
archaios/-tes, 54-8, 168 eisangelia, 95
arche, 51, 63-4 ekklesia, 28, 95 n. 58
arete, 87 H ellenismos, 139-40
askesis, 166 epainos, 34
auxesis, 240 epangelma, 156-63
epi to polu, 183-4
barbarizein, 140 epidikasia, 16
barbaros, 147 epideixis, 198
basanos, 243 episteme, 175-81 passim, 185
bema, 74, 89, 103 eunoia, 167
blasphemia, 178
bouleuterion, 95 n. 58 hegemonia, 63
ethos, 208
graphe, 202 hesuchia, 97, 105
deinosis, 240 idea, 20, 26

deinotes, 192 isegoria, 99
dean, 177 historia, 126
demagogos, 94
demagorein, 83 kainos/kainotes, 54-8, 168
demokratia, 213 kairos, 51-2, 128, 168, 182, 184, 191
demos, 28 kakegoros, 96
diabole, 135 kaloi kagathoi, 187
diadoche, 173-4 kategoria, 178
diadonai, 127 kephalaion, 52-3
INDEX OF GREEK WORDS
kephale, 52-3 pragma, 96-8, 114

kleos, 141 pragmateia, 42, 152
kosmios, 106 prepon, 168
propemptikon, 164, 171, 196
legein, 3; eulkali5s, 87 prostates, 95, 95 n. 57, 211
logopoios, 118-19
logos, 3-4, 14, 23, 32, 40, 4&--7,88, rheti5r, 3, 28, 94, 95 n. 57
131, 147, 175; amphibolos, 70--1, rhetoreuein, 89
125; epitaphios, 27, 80; muthi5des,
30, 32; politikos, 7, 23-35 passim, skutala, 199
36, 73, 83, 148-9, 159, 168, 185, sophia, 88
193, 221, 229, 233 sophistes, 160; cf. 'sophist'
loidoria, 178 sophos, 183
sukophantia, 95; cf. 117
mathetes, 123, 236 sumboulos, 128-9, 149; cf. 195
marturial-es, 241-3 sunousia, 124, 216
methi5dos, 165-6 sphragis, 176
melete, 185 si5phri5nl-osune,99-108 passim, 179, 214
metron, 32, 101, 111
mikrophi5nia, 7-8, 78-111 passim, 121 tarache, 135, 137
mimesis, 184-94 passim; cf. 59-60 tekmerion, 242
teleute, 51
nomothetes, 96, 268-9; cf. 210 techne, 13, 156, 164-71, 180, 224
nomos, 3-4, 46, 212 topos, 46
tropos, 187-90, 218
xenia, 110 tupos, 186, 191
homologia, 147 hubris, 91

homonoia, 130, 137, 147-8; cf. 72 huposchesis, 161-2
orphanophulax, 217
phthonos, 135
paideia, 208-9, 213, 221, cf. 203, 235 philosophia, 126, 172, 193
paidia, 114 phusis, 185
paneguris, 79 phone, 91
paradeigma, 186, 190
perittologia, 30, 180, 238 charis, 109-10
plethos, 95 chuden, 39, 39 n. 10, 50
poiema, 20, cf. 33, 83, 168
poikilia, 21, 21 n. 32, 126, 169 pseudologia, 30, 126, 135-6
politeuein, 89 psuchagogein, 34
politika, 24 psuche, 50, 153, 156, 182
politikos, 28
polupragmi5n/-osune, 92-102 passim, 129 zoion, 38, 49, 50
266
INDEX OF PASSAGES
AELIUS ARISTIDES 1.2.11: 28

Panathenaic Oration 1.3.8: 243
362: 141 1.3.9: 55
AESCHINES l .6ff.: 209 1.4.2: 55
1.19-20: 89 n. 42 1.4.4-10: 243 n. 9
1.94: 118 n. 12 2.1.2: 28
2.165-7: 116 2.2. 7: 243 n. 9
3.154: 217 n. 32 2.4.1: 243 n. 9
3.172: 116 3.1.3-7: 243 n. 9
3.173: 118 n. 12 3.2.1-2: 243 n. 9
AESCHYLUS 3.2.6: 67
Eumenides 276-8: 177
APOLLODORUS
571: 177
3.14.6: 142
584ff.: 202
Libation Bearers 582: 176 APULEIUS
Prometheus Bound 317: 54 n. 47 Apology 64: 178 n. 90
459-62: 114
ARISTOPHANES
926-7: 149 n. 81
Acharnians 38: 90
ALCAEUS 680: 90
42: 238 n. 8 Clouds 302: 173
386-7: 145, 145 n. 75
ALCIDAMAS
886-8: 67, 184
On the Sophists 4-15: 114-15
901-38: 67
[ANAXIMENES] 929: 54 n. 47
Rhetoric to Alexander 1421b: 21, 27 998: 54 n. 47
1437a-b: 44, 92 986: 204 n. 2
ANDOCIDES 1039-41: 206
1.61: 215 n. 30 Ecclesiazusae 583-5: 55
1.75: 89 n. 42 Frogs 775: 67
832-3: 101, 177
ANONYMOUS
878: 67
Life ( of /socrates) 1-3: 111 n. 90 916: 101
12: 164 n. 43 927: 101
92-3: 235 998: 67
ANTIPHON 1076: 67
Herodes 13: 121 1500ff.: 101
16: 71 Knights 60: 90
25: 240 Wasps 725: 68 n. 78
Stepmother 2-18: 243 n. 10 919: 68 n. 78
4: 28 Wealth 912-21: 92
Tetralogy 1.1.4-10: 121, 243, 243 n. 9 ARISTOTLE
1.2: 202 Athenian Constitution 5.3: 100
1.2.2-3: 28 12.1: 100
1.2.3-9: 67, 243 n. 9
INDEX OF PASSAGES
24.3: 217 n. 32 DEMETRIUS

28.1-3: 90, 104 On Style 205: 70
60.1-2: 144 223-35: 199 n. 143
Nicomachean Ethics 1095b: 236 n. 4 291-7: 70
lllla: 173
DEMOCRITUS
l 164a-l 18la: 156 n. 19, 209
Bl 1: 181
Poetics 145la-b: 33
1453a: 21 DEMOSTHENES
1457b-58a: 140 Orations 18.212: 129
Politics 1268a: 217 n. 32 18.280: 91
1334b-1137a: 209 18.257: 209
Posterior Analytics 77b: 172 n. 73 18.267: 40 n. 12
Rhetoric 1355b: 242 18.308: 91, 91 n. 47
1357b: 143 18.312: 40n. 12
1358b: 14 19.6: 68 n. 78
1373b: 25 n. 40 19.250: 118 n. 12
1375a: 242 19.255: 91
1389a: 156 19.273: 65 n. 71
1390a: 43 19.336: 91
1392b: 13 21.87: 121
1397a: 25 n. 40 21.145: 221
1402a: 156 21.195: 91
1403b: 98 21.200: 91
1404b: 140 22.47-52: 47
1407a: 140 24.151: 68 n. 78
1408a: 118 n. 12 24.160---4:47
Sophistic Refutations 165b: 140 29.1: 202
183b: 195 n. 102 35.49: 202-3
fr. 37.52: 91
140: 118 39.40: 68 n. 78
ARISTOXENUS
45.27: 40 n. 12
Harmony of Elements 11.30: 174 n. 82
45.55: 241
47.48: 241
ATHENAEUS 57.63: 68 n. 78
l.3e: 201 58.19: 118 n. 12
DINARCHUS
AUGUSTINE
The City of God 19.7: 139 n. 53 1.35: 118n.12
5.3: 115
AULUS GELLIUS
DIODORUS SICULUS
Attic Nights 1.15.15-7: 177
15.17: 218n.36 12.4.5: 65 n. 71
20.5.1-9: 175 12.11-12: 207 n. 15
12.53.4: 239
CICERO 19.8.4: 248 n. 4
Brutus 30ff.: 237
DIOGENES LAERTES
Concerning the Orator 2.94--5: 190
2.95: 237 1.57: 37 n. 2
3.34.137: 143 2.55: 12
3.35.141: 171 3.5: 76 n. 6
3.42.3: 140 n. 55 4.1.2: 172
On Invention 2.6: 167 4.5: 81, 167
2.7: 164 6.15: 81
Orator 7-10: 237 8.15: 173
167: 237 DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS
176: 235, 237 Isocrates 1: 24, 76--7, 235
268
INDEX OF PASSAGES
2-13 passim: 82-3 148, 153--62passim, 167-9, 183-6,

18: 154 191, 199
19: 115, 148, 152, 159-160, 167-83
DISSOI LOGO!
passim, 196
6.6: 158 22: 162--4
FGRH Antidosis 2: 115
323aF2: 141 n. 58 4: 80
324F2: 141 D. 58 7: 150, 188
334F4: 141 D. 58 8: 80, 96
9-38 passim: 107-8
GALEN 11-12: 39 n. 8, 47
Thrasybulus 5.879.12: 236 13: 199
GORGIAS
17: 68, 137 n. 48
Funeral Oration DK 86 B6: 177 27: 192
Helen 9: 32 29: 46, 190, 202
11: 58 33-41 passim: 109, 117, 192
Palamedes 28: 188 n. 112 45-6: 19-25, 114, 148
30: 114 47: 31
48: 96
HARPOCRATION 50: 110
12.17: 141 D. 58 54: 47, 150, 199
55: 56
HERODOTUS
59: 47
Histories 1.5: 239 60: 110
1.29ff.: 128 66: 47
1.32: 207 68: 52
1.94.3--4: 114 69: 150
2.106.2: 192 D. 124 73: 47
2.134.3: 118 n. 12 74: 60
2.138.2: 192 n. 124 76-7: 129
4.83: 207 80: 24
5.83: 172 89-92: 192
6.93.1: 205 93-4: 109, 211
6.135: 173 95: 192
7.10: 207 99: 109
HESIOD 100: 193
Works and Days 199-200: 99 1Olff.: 211
106: 109
HOMER 107-39: 31, 70, 118-19, 118 n. 13,
Iliad 9.413: 141 129-32
9.443: 87 141-3: 199
Odyssey 11.489-91: 141 144-5: 192
155-6: 108, 239
HYPERIDES
158: 109,238
Orations 6.8: 204 n. 2
161: 111
!SOCRATES 168: 238
AegineticuS 4: 202 179: 189, 192, 218
Against Ca//imachus 4: 202 183: 21, 186
42: 60 184: 182-3
45: 163 185: 189
58-67 passim: 109 186: 186
Against Euthynus 4ff.: 241 188: 189
Against the Sophists 1: 148 193-5: 42-3, 47, 124 D. 20, 127, 152,
3-8: 124 n. 20, 153, 157-8, 182 156, 162, 186, 191
9-18: 32-3, 47, 118, 118 n. 13, 120, 199: 124 n. 20
INDEX OF PASSAGES
205-6: 138, 186, 190 25: 219-20

224-6: 108, 117 26-7: 203-4, 212
232: 204 n. 4 28: 216-17
234: 94 32ff.: 107, 109, 218-20
235: 211,217 Epistles 1.1: 44, 128, 197
240-1: 109 1.1-9: 122-34
251-3: 147, 158 1.2: 168
253-7: 4, 47, 150 1.4: 236
261-7: 180 1.5: 39 n. 9, 236
268-9: 30, 238 1.9: 138, 188 n. 112
271: 181, 183 1.10: 194
285: 29 2.1: 45
296: 147, 147 n. 79 2.13: 45, 197
306: 204 n. 2 3.1: 45, 197
313: 96, 211 3.4: 44, 46
315: 96 3.6: 43-4, 197
320-3: 110, 193, 218 4.13: 44, 197
Archidamus 1-6: 44, 97-8 5.1: 44, 46, 110, 197
15: 97-8 5.5: 46
40: 162 6.1: 110, 123
42: 55 6.2: 44
82: 59 6.4: 110
89: 64 6.6: 43
94: 64 6.8-9: 40, 114, 184
110: 212 6.14: 194
Areopagiticus 3-10: 213 8.7: 74-89 passim, 128
4: 102 8.10: 123, 188-9
13: 102 9.1-4: 59
16: 104 9.5: 39, 51
17: 204 n. 4 9.14-19: 43, 60, 129, 135 n. 41,
20: 94 n. 55, 104, 212 137-8, 188, 195
20-128: 63 Evagoras 8-11: 34, 118
22-5: 93 12ff.: 59, 167
37ff.: 213, 213 n. 24 46: 149 n. 82
50: 104 50: 204 n. 2
80: 65 73-5: 43-4, 186-9, 192
82: 204 n. 2 74-7: 59, 83, 169, 172 n 191,218.
84: 59 72
133-86: 63 Helen 1: 30, 156 n. 17
Busiris 1-8: 160 2-6: 89, 124 n. 20, 161, 181, 238
4-5: 62 14-15: 238
4-48 passim, esp. 29: 178-9, 179 n. 18ff.: 57
92 29-37: 59, 102, 129-32, 149 n. 82
5: 216 38: 163
15-29: 210 67: 130, 137 n. 48, 146 n. 77
20: 96 Nicocles 4: 155
23: 180 5-9: 47, 147, 150
37-8: 118,118n.13 11: 39 n. 8, 149-50
38-48 passim: 178-9 21: 103
47: 124 26-8: 57
Concerning the Chariot-team 1-3: 107 29: 39 n. 8
2-4: 201-2 35-47: 189-90
10-11: 204 62: 46
15: 109 On the Peace 8: 184
24: 201 9: 137
INDEX OF PASSAGES
10: 29 237: 31
11: 68 240: 71, 125
16ff. : 47, 63-4, 96 243: 96
58: 102 246---7:31, 71 n. 86, 125-7
64: 137 251: 70
77-9: 67 263: 80
80: 39 n. 8 265: 71
82: 217 n. 32 267-70: 43, 125
101: 51, 63 272: 72
104: 102 Panegyricus 3: 137 n. 48
114: 62, 65 7-9: 48, 54, 169 n. 60, 238
118: 65 10: 56
126---30:93-5, 111 11: 115
132-45: 45, 47, 51-2, 95 13: 51
Panathenaicus 1-2: 19-25, 30-1, 33, 20-128: 63
44, 114-15, 126 n. 23, 129, 148, 27ff.: 56---8
239 45-6: 144
3: 43, 125 47: 172
5-33: 50-1, 133-8 passim 49-50: 147, 186
7: 111 51-99: 47, 162
9-10: 75-89 passim, 98, 193 104: 137
11: 12, 21, 159 119: 51, 63
13: 137 n. 48, 138, 146 158: 239
14: 102 159: 37 n. 2, 138, 146 n. 77
15: 95 173-4: 137 n. 48
16: 188 188: 61 n. 57
17: 39, 140 Plataicus 17: 59
18: 142 To Demonicus 2: 58, 111, 136 n. 43
20: 148 8: 59
27-30: 180 9-11: 58
30-1: 183 34: 58
39-40: 69 41: 177
42: 137 44: 58
42ff.: 57 52: 59
55: 44 To Nicocles 1: 188-9
59: 65 2: 111
72-88: 40, 50, 129-38, 238 6: 39 n. 8
103: 162 n. 31 14-39: 47, 58, 60, 136 n. 43
107: 147 41: 56, 58
126: 57 42-9: 31-3
132: 103 53: 149
135: 32 54: 111
145-6: 93 To Philip 1: 124
151: 102 9-10: 45
155: 188 n. 111 11: 60
156ff.: 64, 65 n. 71 12: 80
159-60: 69 16: 137 n. 48
164ff.: 57 18: 45
190-1: 57 25-9: 21, 45, 83, 115, 119-21
197: 102 63: 162 n. 31
209: 69 75: 118 n. 12 and n. 13, 119
224ff. : 68 n. 79, 69, 147 81: 13, 45, 74-89 passim, 138, 197
231-2: 125 82: 124, 218
233: 127 83: 137 n. 48
234-63: 70 84: 45
INDEX OF PASSAGES
91: 162 n. 31 7.1--4: 219

94: 61 8.79: 141
105-31: 138 PLATO
109-15: 45, 119, 129-32 Alcibiades I 103a: 214
113-28: 45---6,59 104b: 216
130: 138 105a: 214
135: 46 112b: 236 n. 4
141: 137 n. 48 112c: 216 n. 31
152-3: 46 118aff.: 216
154: 52 124c: 214
Trapeziticus 12-37 passim: 214 Alcibiades II 141a-b: 214 n. 26
40: 202 143e: 216
41-51 passim: 214 Apology 17b: 192
LYSIAS 17d: 43, 192
Orations 2.3: 204 n. 2 18c: 121
3.21: 68, 203 21b-d: 192
3.35: 203 25d-6a: 192
6.35--40: 68, 217 n. 32 31b: 108
7.1: 105 34a---c: 193
7.3: 203 n. 1 36b: 108
9.3: 203 n. 1 36d: 193
10.2: 173 n. 75 37e: 108
10.15: 203 Crito 50d-54b: 212
12.2-3: 105 Epistles 2.310e-315a: 124 n. 20
12.3ff.: 106, 203 n. 1 7.341c-342b: 175
13.4: 203, 203 n. 1 Euthydemus 273d-274a: 157
14.30-5: 205 288b: 189 n. 119
16.9: 188 n. 114 302b: 189 n. 119
16.19: 91 305c: 2
19.2: 105 306a-b: 2
19.12: 203 n. 1 Gorgias 449a: 88
19.55-64: 105 452d-e: 88
24.1: 188n.114 456d: 155
29.1: 121 463a: 153, 155-6, 182
465a: 170
NEPOS
484c: 181
Alcibiades 10.6: 216 n. 31
487c: 181
PAUSANIAS 505c-<l: 52
6.9.6: 207 n. 15 513a: 182 n. 98
8.21: 141 513b-d: 30-1
PHILODEMUS
515b: 124 n. 20
II 122: 165 519d: 153, 153 n. 8
Hippias Major 282b: 236 n. 6
PHILOSTRA TUS THE ELDER 285b: 181
Lives of the Sophists 493: 239 285d-e: 57
505: 77, 79 304a: 40
PHILOSTRATUS THE YOUNGER
Hippias Minor 366c-368e: 181
Life of Apollonius 1.15: 178 n. 91 Ion 541a: 139
Treatise of Eusebius 12: 178 n. 91 Laws 629b: 236 n. 4
797a: 55
PHOT!lJS 804c-<l: 109 n. 88
Cod. 260.486b--487b 77-80 804d: 212
PINDAR
926d-e: 217 n. 32
Pythian 2.67-92: 199 Lysis 205b---c: 54 n. 47
INDEX OF PASSAGES
M enexenus 238b: 204 n. 2 Isis and Osiris 25: 173 n. 79

248e: 217 Lycurgus 16: 207 n. 15
249a: 217 n. 32 Moralia 523b: 92
249e: 27 Numa 22: 173 n. 79
Meno 81d-86b: 155 On Garrulity 504a: 178 n. 90
9 5b-c: 157 n. 20 510e: 178 n. 90
Minos 319a-320c: 208 Pericles 11.3: 104
Phaedrus 228a-e: 38, 48, 185 13.6: 143--4
234e-35a: 38, 48 Protagoras 9.51: 67 n. 76
235c: 236 Themistocles 2.4: 88, 174
243: 238 n. 8 Theseus 1.24: 143
243e-257b: 48-50
PSEUDO-ANDOCIDES
257d: 115
Against Alcibiades 4.22: 204
259e-60a: 182
4.39: 205
261b: 236 n. 4
261c: 67, 70 PSEUDO-PLUTARCH
264a-d: 38, 49-55 passim Demosthenes 844c: 172 n. 71
266d: 170 Jsocrates 1 = 836e: 111 n. 90
267a: 239 2ff. = 836f ff.: 77-80, 235
267c: 88 20 = 838b: 12
268c: 236 n. 4 25-6 = 838d-e: 235
269d-71d: 50, 170, 172 32 = 838f.: 166
273b-d: 242
QUINTILIAN
274c-75e: 38, 119, 175
I. 0. 1.6.3: 54 n. 47
274d: 114
3.1.13: 235-6
275a: 236 n. 4
3.1.14: 171 n. 66,237
276a: 50
3.4.9: 27
Protagoras 318d-19a: 88, 156-7, 181
3.4.11: 22
320a: 216
9.3.74: 239
325e-26a: 58
10.4.4: 79
326c: 209
326d: 149 n. 81, 168 SAPPHO
329a: 175 16.1--4: 23
Republic 416c: 208
SOLON
425b: 208 13.7-8 (West): 101
445e: 208 13.71-73: 101
460bff.: 208 24.7-10: 101
494e: 3
600ab: 137 n. 50 SPEUSIPPUS
Sophist 217a: 176 Socratic Letter 30.4--19: 166-7
Statesman 257a-c: 176, 176 n. 85 STOBAEUS
305d: 149 n. 81 3.1.172: 176
Symposium 195b: 54 n. 47
216-18b: 214--15 THEOGNIDENTHEOGNIS
Timaeus 34c: 39 n. 10 19-23: 176
69b: 53 237--45: 188
331-756 passim 99-100
PLUTARCH
1082: 99
Alcibiades 11: 201
19.1: 215 n. 30 THUCYDIDES
An seni gerenda 784b: 211 1.20: 204 n. 3
Cimon 13.4: 65 n. 71 1.21.1: 30, 32
Demosthenes 848b-c: 172, 172 n. 71 1.22.4: 30, 48, 231
Generation of Animals 4.1013e: 173 n. 2.41.1: 147 n. 79, 200
79 2.46: 217 n. 32
273
INDEX OF PASSAGES
2.61.3: 56 XENOPHON
2.65.7: 94 n. 54 Constitution of Athens 3.4: 101
3.38-40: 30 Cyropaedia 1.6.20: 149 n. 81
3.82.4ff.: 94 n. 55, 102 n. 73 8.8.13: 219
6.16.2: 201, 220 Memorabilia 1.2.7: 110, 157
6.16--18: 220 1.2.24: 214
6.53ff.: 202 n. 3 1.2.40---6:60, 215
6.61.7: 121 2.6.11: 236 n. 4
6.93.1: 205 4.1.2: 30
7.18.1: 205 4.7.2-6: 181 n 93
7.69.2: 54 n. 47 Poroi 2.7: 217
2 74

Yun Lee Too - The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates - Text, Power, Pedagogy-Cambridge University Press (2009)

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Yun Lee Too - The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates - Text, Power, Pedagogy-Cambridge University Press (2009)

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The rhetoric of identity in Isocrates offers a sustained interpreta-

tion of the Isocratean corpus, showing that rhetoric is a language

THE RHETORIC OF IDENTITY IN !SOCRATES

© Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge 1995

First published 1995

Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge

Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

ISBN o 521 47406 x hardback

1 Isocrates and logos politikos 10

Brief afterword 233

I owe a debt of gratitude to many people for their encour-

AJA American Journal of Archeology

TAPA Transactions and Proceedings of the American

Every society has a particular language or languages which

meme, Isocrate ne saurait etre mis sur le meme plan que

legein) - deceptions, lies, force and so on - to achieve its goal

built cities, established conventions [or 'laws' (nomous)] and

Hannah Ahrendt has declared that persuasion is irrelevant to

does so as a language of sophisticated and subtle codes.

erary genres according to distinct styles and literary forms. 11

He names the 'genre' of his literary discourse as logos poli-

the Assembly and lawcourts as civic institutions. In chapter

'political discourse'. I show that he affirms the overall conti-

!SOCRATES AND LOGOS POLIT/KOS

Literary taxonomy, like numerology, is a spendthrift affair: one can find

lights the fragility of authorial and literary identity. There is

tive texts for him, giving emphasis to dicanic and sym-

dicanic texts (Antidosis and the forensic speeches, apart from

Hieronymus Wolf published his Greek edition of Isocrates

account the codices which contained the epistles.

for the 'game' of reading.

author's works in a proper place as constituted by these literary

systematic. 28 In effect, this critic resists typology and calls for

28 Bakhtin (1986), pp. 60-102, especially p. 79.

When I was younger I decided not to write mythological speeches (1), or

In these two passages Isocrates names a number of different

JI NEWTEposµev WV Tipo,:ipovµ11vypaq>EIVTWV r,.oywv O\J TOVS µv6w6EIS ov6e TOVS

(also Antidosis 183), are virtually innumerable. He has no

to some of the different prose forms that he employs, and

Isocrates enumerates the various prose genres using a strat-

Here the speaking persona observes first that some people

being mentioned last, this symbouleutic discourse is singled

end of his life.39 Muller's interpretation can only be sus-

of his own works. Interestingly, while earlier scholars did

that the phrase logos politikos at Menexenus 249e4 denotes

'demegoric' and 'dicanic' speeches.49 As Burgess observes,

49 l:::,.voyevri TWV TIOAITIKWV

struction of political discourse for reasons that will later

52 Hansen (1983), pp. 33-6.

of the students of the older sophists because they prevent

ence, since listeners dislike orations which are different from

Nevertheless, they derive no pleasure from this type of writ-

assumes metre it qualifies as poiesis. In the light of this, it is

and Pindar's poetry59). At first glance he portrays himself as

that the traditional generic (and piecemeal) approach to

THE UNITIES OF DISCOURSE

was, implicitly understood to order literary works in this

how the text will be structured by its audience (cf. 275e3-5).

must fail if he attempts to impose order upon them (cf.

7 mpi WV µ17 Koµ41ws' Cl.AA'O:TIAWSO!EA.6wv,µ176e Tij /1.E~ElKOO-µT]O"as, a/I.A'

Apology, Crito and Phaedo as a 'trilogy', at least to ancient

which Isocrates explicitly says were composed at the initial