Sir Richard C. Jebb The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos 2.20.5

It remains to notice one minor trait of the Isaean composition which is not without historical interest. Isokrates, as we saw, studiously shuns allowing a vowel at the end of one word to be followed by a vowel at the beginning of the next ² . The fashion thus set seems gradually to have found a modified acceptance in contemporary or later prose. In the earliest speech of Isaeos—the fifth—there is no trace of it: and in seven others (II., III., IV., VI., IX., X., XII.) there is very little. On the other hand, the avoidance of hiatus is marked in VIII. (375 B. C.), XI. (359 B. C.), VII. (353 B. C.), and I., as well as in two of the longer fragments ³ ; though it is nowhere so systematic as with Isokrates ⁴ .