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Isokrates: Style

Isocrates a rhetorical artist

IT has been seen that the end which Isokrates set before himself in all his work was practical, and practical in a high way. His teaching aimed at forming good citizens, not only of Athens, but of Greece. His writings aimed at showing how literary skill might be applied to the treatment of really political subjects. But, except during those few ¹ years of his earlier life in which he wrote for the law-courts, he had nothing to do with practical oratory. Want of nerve and of voice hindered him from coming forward in the ekklesia. With the exception of the six forensic speeches, all his extant compositions were meant to be read, not to be spoken. Considered in regard to subject-matter, he is a publicist. Considered in regard to form, he is a stylist. And his distinction as a stylist is this, that he was the first Greek who gave a really artistic ² finish to literary rhetorical prose.

Rhetoric at Athens about 390 B.C.

Isokrates began the career of his choice—when the labours not of his choice were over—about 392 B.C. Rhetoric was then represented at Athens chiefly by two classes of men. First, there were the writers of speeches for the law-courts. Lysias, ³ then at the height of his fame, was the most eminent of these, and had already set before his brethren a new standard of excellence; though it is not likely that, so early as 390 B.C., the ‘plain style’ had made much way. Secondly, there were ⁴ teachers of rhetoric who professed to impart a method of deliberative or forensic speaking, but who in the exercises which they wrote as models, seem to have preferred subjects of an epideictic character taken from mythology. Extant examples are the Speech of Odysseus against Palamedes, the Defence of Palamedes, the Controversy between Ajax and Odysseus for the arms of Achilles⁵. It was in a half-disdainful rivalry with such efforts that Isokrates wrote his Busiris and ⁶ his Encomium of Helen. But the real ambition of Isokrates was to raise the Art of Rhetoric above such themes as were supplied either by the law-courts or by the myths. He held that the subject-matter of Rhetoric was to be found neither in the petty concerns of to-day nor in a far-off age of heroes, but in the largest practical interests of Greek citizenship. He held, further— and here he was completing the theory of Gorgias— that not only may prose be artistic, but that the utterance of Rhetoric may be, ought to be, a work of art as complete and as substantive as the utterance of Poetry; that it has its own ascertainable laws of rhythm and of harmony; and that the artist who, having mastered these laws, addresses himself to the treatment of a great subject, has with him a power, beside and beyond the strength of his cause or of his genius—a power coming to him, as to the poet, through his art, and springing from an essential music latent in language which his art has shown him how to bring upon the ear.

Dionysios on the ‘smooth’ harmony.

It has been said in a former chapter⁷ that Dionysios distinguishes three principal ‘harmonies’ or modes of composition, whether in verse or in prose, —the ‘austere,’ the ‘smooth’ and the ‘middle;’ Antiphon being his oratorical representative of the ‘austere,’ Isokrates of the ‘smooth,’ Demosthenes of the ‘middle.’ The ‘smooth’ (or ‘florid’) harmony is thus described:—

‘It does not seek that each separate word should be conspicuously seen, as if set on a broad, firm pedestal; or that the pauses between the words should be long. The slow, steadfast manner is not at all to its mind. Rather it likes movement and impetus of language; it wishes word to come on word as wave rides wave, each lending buoyancy to each, like flowing waters that never are still. It requires that all the parts of the context should be taken together and find their power in their whole effect. This result is wrought by a nicety of joining which leaves no pause that can be felt between word and word. In this, the style is like a web of fine warp, or a painting of which the lights melt into the shadows. Then it wishes that all its words should be musical, smooth, delicate, as with the bloom of a fair young face. It may be said to be at feud with rough syllables and all clashing sounds; and to be wary of everything rash and venturesome.

‘Nor is it only between word and word that it seeks this apt juncture and coherence. It desires that clause should be closely knitted to clause; that every sentence should be rounded to a period; that each segment of a period should be neither shorter nor longer than the just mean; and that the whole period should be within the compass of one full breath. A sentence not periodic, a period not jointed into members, or a member not symmetrical with the rest, are thoroughly foreign to its workmanship. The rhythms which it employs are not the longest but the middle or the shorter. It wishes the last words of a period to be rhythmical and firmly set, as on a base squared by line and rule;—thus reversing, in the structure of these final clauses, its practice in the ordinary harmonies of words. Ordinarily it makes word slide into word. But it would have the closing words of a period to stand clear, and be seen, as it were, from every side. The figures which it uses are not those which have an antique air, or which are notable for majesty or impressiveness or ruggedness; but rather the luxuriant and voluptuous, in which the elements of illusion and stage-glitter are strong. To speak generally—this ‘smooth’ or ‘florid’ style is in essentials the opposite of the austere⁸.’

This description may serve at the outset to ⁹ hint the broadest characteristics of Isokrates as contrasted with the elder school represented by Antiphon. The typical poets of the ‘smooth’ style, ¹⁰ according to Dionysios, are, in epos, Hesiod; of lyrists, Sappho, Anakreon, Simonides; among tragedians, Euripides only. When Dionysios comes to ¹¹ name a representive historian, he is at a loss; no one, he says, is strictly apposite; but Ephoros and Theopompos are so ‘more than most.’ This illustrates the degree in which the style of Isokrates was distinctive. The only prose-writers in the ‘smooth harmony’ whom Dionysios finds to mention are Isokrates and two pupils of Isokrates.

Diction of Isokrates

In applying more closely to Isokrates the general description just quoted, the first point to be noticed is his choice of words. His diction is tempered of two opposite elements. It is a compromise between the ‘elaborate’ diction represented by Thucydides and the ‘plain’ diction represented by Lysias¹². But it is infinitely more Lysian than Thucydidean.

Of its Lysian qualities, the first is purity; an ¹³ excellence already¹⁴ explained as including two ideas —avoidance of obsolete, or novel or too poetical words¹⁵,—and correctness of idiom. In this Isokrates was the nearest rival, though not the equal, of Lysias¹⁶. Next, though the general effect of ¹⁷ Isokrates is ornate and the general effect of Lysias is plain, yet the Lysian simplicity belongs in a certain sense to the language of Isokrates. His composition abounds in figures—to be noticed presently; but his diction generally avoids tropes¹⁸; that is, it uses the individual word in the normal sense. Yet here again there is a difference. Lysias prefers common words; Isokrates, though he can distinguish occasions, has a general bent towards grandeur¹⁹. There is far less of this in the six forensic speeches than elsewhere; yet even here there is something²⁰.

Composition of Isokrates.

But choice of words was of comparatively small importance in determining the style of Isokrates, between whom and the elder ‘austere’ school the essential point of contrast was just this, that they relied much on words, while he relied almost wholly on composition. It was Isokrates who developed, though he did not originate, the idea of a literary prose-rhythm. The Greek theory distinguished a ²¹ music proper to the continuous ( συνεχής) exertion of the voice in prose-declamation from the music of its exertion at intervals ( διαστήματα) in singing²². As singing can scarcely charm the ear or make claim to beauty until it has brought itself under definite laws, partly of rhythm, partly of harmony, so oratorical prose cannot give artistic pleasure until it has become, in its proper measure, rhythmical. This implies the bringing out of that musical element which is inherent in all language; and the technical Rhetoric early began to take account of the proserhythm into which this element must be wrought. Thus Aristotle²³ discusses the relative merits for rhetorical prose of the dactyl—which is too epic for ordinary use—the iambus, which is too common to give any distinctive effect—the trochee, which is too light—and the paeon, which he thinks on the whole the most serviceable,—the ‘first’ paeon (¯˘˘˘) for the beginning of the period, the ‘fourth’ (˘˘˘¯) for the end. Poetry has its strict correspondence of rhythms and its precision of metres. Prose has its irregular rhythms and its wandering melody in the fall of syllables—rhythms and metres not bound by any rigid framework, yet reducible to certain general laws which the attentive ear can discover, and which the skilful speaker can apply in ever-varying combinations²⁴. Now the mistake of Gorgias had consisted in trying to bring the essentially free rhythms and metres of prose too near to the strict rhythms and metres of verse. Thrasymachos of Chalkedon was probably more judicious²⁵. But Isokrates was the earliest great artist in the rhythm proper to prose²⁶,—so distinctly so, that Cicero more than once calls him its discoverer²⁷. Great artist as he was, however, he was only a developer, not a perfecter; and the chief reason why he fell short of the highest excellence seems to have been this, that he sought too constantly to base his rhythms on a certain type of composite period.

The Periodic style

With Antiphon²⁸, as we saw, the structure of a period was still a matter of effort—admitting, too, of little variety: in Lysias²⁹ the power of forming terse, compact periods is nearly perfect, and is combined with skill in avoiding monotony; with ³⁰ Isokrates, the periodic style passes into an altogether new phase. The distinctive mark of the new Isokratic period is a certain luxuriant amplitude. Instead of aiming at the vigorous compression fittest for real contests, it rejoices in rich diffuseness—it unrolls itself like a clear river, luring the hearer on from bend to bend through the soft beauties of its winding course³¹. Three kinds of period are distinguished by Demetrios: the Rhetorical, terse and round;—the Conversational, slack and simple;—the Historical, intermediate between these two³². Lysias, as has been noticed, uses what may be called a ‘historical’ period in one special part of his work—in narrative parts of his public speeches. Isokrates, as a rule, uses everywhere the historical rather than the rhetorical period³³—giving to it, however, a certain long and stately flow which is his own. The great fault of his management is monotony. Lysias knew at least how to brace or relax his framework; Demosthenes was a master of structural contrasts; but, in all the speeches of Isokrates, except the forensic, one long and finished period follows another with little variety or relief. He must always round his sentence³⁴. Not only the form but the matter often suffers for this artificial uniformity. A thought has sometimes to be diffusely, and therefore weakly, expressed, in order to afford a symmetry of clauses³⁵. But although there is this grave fault in his handling of the periodic style, it must not be forgotten that Isokrates gave a really important development to the idea of the period itself. Hitherto it had been too cramped: he was the first to give it a large and free expansion. He was the first, too, who showed how the ampler period might be worked up through the series of clauses and members to an artistic climax³⁶.

His use of Figures.

Next to this general characteristic, luxuriance, the special marks of the periodic style in Isokrates depend on his use of figures. In order to see just what Isokrates does here, it will be a help to keep in mind the strict distinction between a ‘trope’ and ³⁷ a ‘figure’ (whether of language or of thought). A trope is the use of a particular word in other than its normal sense—as ‘fire’ for ‘zeal’ (metaphor) or ‘steel’ for ‘sword’ (synekdochê)—to take two of the commonest tropes. A ‘figure’ is an affair of whole clauses or sentences³⁸. The ‘figure of language’ is a combination of words (each of which may be used in its normal sense) for the artificial expression of an idea—as antithesis. The ‘figure of thought’ depends on no special combination of words, but on an assumed attitude of the speaker's mind—as irony. Now Isokrates rarely uses ‘tropes’ —indeed, his avoidance of them was expressly noticed as a cause of tameness in his diction³⁹; nor— with one exception to be noted presently—does he often use ‘figures of thought.’ But he uses abundantly certain ‘figures of language.’ It was Gorgias who first brought a throng of the ‘figures of ⁴⁰ language’ into Greek Rhetoric⁴¹. In so far as Isokrates saw more clearly than Gorgias where the line falls between prose-rhythm and verse-rhythm, Isokrates moderated the Gorgian use of these figures. On the other hand he established some of them as the distinctive ornaments of the ‘florid’ Rhetoric by developing them artistically within certain limits. The specially Isokratic figures of language are those which depend on a parallelism. These are chiefly three⁴². (1) A parallelism in sense—Antithesis: which may arise either (i) from two words of opposite sense used in the expression of a single idea—‘let the rich give to the poor:’ or (ii) from the contrast of two ideas without contrast of words: ‘he did them good, but they took away his good name;’ or (iii) from the contrast both of ideas and of words—‘he did them good but they did him evil.’ (2) A parallelism in form and size merely between two or more clauses or sentences—Parisôsis. (3) A parallelism of sound—Paromoiôsis: when the latter of two clauses gives to the ear an echo of the former, either in its opening or at its close or throughout⁴³.

The idea of all these three ‘figures’ is the same— that idea of mechanical balance in which the craving for symmetry is apt to take refuge when it is not guided by a really flexible instinct or by a spiritual sense of fitness and measure. No one can read Isokrates without feeling with what a leaden weight this elaborately wrought ornament lies on much of his work, often chilling the thought and almost crushing out its life⁴⁴. But a distinction must be noticed between his earlier and his later manner. The ⁴⁵ practical life of Athens had a gradual reflex action on that Sicilian Rhetoric which had been drawn into its sphere; and this was felt even by Isokrates⁴⁶. In the Philippos and still more plainly in the Panathenaikos he intimates that he had outlived much ⁴⁷ of his early taste for the ‘figures of language.’ As for those vivid reflections of the speaker's own mood which are called the ‘figures of thought,’ they belonged, generally, to a later and more animated school⁴⁸; the large use of them by Andokides being precisely one of those points which show how little his natural faculty had been tamed to the technical Rhetoric of his day. Least of all were the figures of thought congenial to the smooth and tranquil manner of Isokrates. There is perhaps but one exception; he is fond of the rhetorical question in concluding an argument⁴⁹.

Avoidance of hiatus.

Before we leave the technical traits of his composition, one striking trait remains to be noticed as the special cause of his ‘smoothness.’ This is the studious, the even pedantic care with which he avoids allowing a vowel at the end of a word to be followed by a vowel at the beginning of the next⁵⁰. Dionysios says that he had gone through the whole of the Areopagitikos without finding one instance of such a collision⁵¹. The artificialism soon makes itself felt; and, as one critic justly says, a possible music of clashing sounds is lost⁵². In this, as in greater things, Demosthenes knew how to hit the mean⁵³.

Treatment of Subject-matter.

Passing from the province of Expression to the treatment of matter with its two departments of Invention and Arrangement, we find that here also Isokrates has his distinctive merits. As regards Invention—the art of discovering the available ⁵⁴ resources of a theme—Dionysios pronounces Isokrates equal to Lysias⁵⁵; Quintilian praises not merely his facility but his effort to bring out the higher aspects of his subject⁵⁶. In analysing the epideictic branch of Rhetoric, Aristotle notices one device as specially frequent in Isokrates—the use of the topic of comparison for the purpose of magnifying or extolling⁵⁷ ( αὔξησις). The Philippos will supply an instance;— in order to show that Philip of Macedon could easily conquer Asia, Isokrates points out that harder things were done with smaller means by Alkibiades, Konon, Dionysios and the younger Cyrus⁵⁸. The author of the Essay on Sublimity blames Isokrates— and rightly—for a too constant and ostentatious effort to heighten rhetorically the greatness of his theme⁵⁹. This effort is akin to the essentially epideictic spirit of all his work, the spirit which is always tending to transform advice, as in the Panegyrikos and Philippos, or apology, as in the Antidosis and De Bigis, into encomium⁶⁰.

In Arrangement Isokrates is very clever. He is ⁶¹ generally said to have invented the fourfold division of the speech—used, however, before him by Lysias—with proem, narrative, proof, epilogue⁶²; but his distinctive skill lay in the management of a more complex system. According to Dionysios, the arrangement of Isokrates excels that of Lysias in two main points—in fineness of subdivision and in variety,—this variety arising either from new combinations within the subject itself or from the introduction of episodes not strictly proper to it⁶³. The use of the latter is illustrated by a remark of Aristotle in regard to the opening of an epideictic speech. Here, he suggests, the speaker may take a hint from the flute-player. The flute-player preludes with anything that he can play effectively, and then knits this on to the keynote of his theme. So it is, says Aristotle, in the proem to the ‘Helen’ of Isokrates; the Eristics have nothing to do with Helen. ‘And here, even if the speaker pass into a foreign region ( ἐκτοπίσῃ), it is better than that the speech should be monotonous.’ The ‘episode’ on Agamemnon in the Panathenaikos (§§ 74—87) is a good instance.

One uniform type of structure may be recognised in all the best discourses of Isokrates. There is a leading idea—generally some large proposition about the affairs of Athens or of Greece—which is worked out on the principle of antithesis. Every contrast which it can yield is developed: but through all divisions and subdivisions the dominant idea is kept before the mind; and, at the close, the simplicity of the original proposition emerges from these intricate, yet never confused, antitheses in the simplicity of the conclusion. Take, for instance, the Panegyrikos. The leading idea is—A Greek war with Persia. ‘Greece’ is dealt with in Part I., ‘Persia’ in Part II. In Part I. Athens is contrasted with Sparta; the services of Athens to Greece are analysed as (1) civil, (2) military—and here, as in wars between Greeks or in wars between Greek and barbarian. Part II. shows that (1) Persia is open to attack while (2) Greece has every motive for attacking. Then the conclusion:—A Greek war with Persia is both just and expedient. It is this power of dealing luminously with a large array of facts grouped round a central idea which Hermogenes praises as the ‘distinctness’ of Isokrates⁶⁴. Like his moral bent towards subjects of practical moment and towards permanence of literary result, this faculty of arrangement set an example useful beyond the sphere of Rhetoric. It helped to show the historian how large masses of material might be wrought into a form at once clear and interesting⁶⁵.

Isokrates compared with the Practical Orator.

But the merits of Isokrates whether on the verbal or the real side are not those which are best fitted to succeed in a law-court or in an assembly. It is true that, as Hermogenes⁶⁶ says, he has in a very high degree that purity of diction and that distinctness of method which are at least two virtues of civil eloquence: it is true that, as Dionysios⁶⁷ says, lessons may be learned from him in everything that goes to form the complete ‘faculty of citizenship.’ Yet his practical rhetoric is not oratory. It is for the palaestra, not for the battle-field⁶⁸. It has not the stamp of vigorous nature. The great speaker in real contests holds his own argument, and can seize that of his adversary, with an iron grasp; he is impassioned and can kindle passion, he can animate the embodiment of his thought with a living soul which seems to come to it, through him, from a present and inspiring power; the artist of the school—and it is as such that Isokrates most often appears—suffers neither keenness of controversy, nor feeling, nor even what perhaps is most divine in the idea which he is enforcing, to agitate him as he marshals the slow and stately pageant of an eloquence which moves with always the same cold brilliancy. One who had tried the experiment of declaiming the discourses of Isokrates says that he had found that they would not bear delivery with raised tones, or passion, or gesture: Isokrates, he says, has dropped his voice to the key in which a slave reads aloud to his master⁶⁹. The disappointed reciter is too severe; but that such compositions should be better suited for reading than for declaiming is natural; and it is worthy of notice that when Isokrates himself complains of his speeches being marred by bad reading, the two points of which he deprecates the neglect are both consistent with a subdued manner—namely, attention to the êthos (general moral tone)—and attention to the cadences of the rhythm. Dionysios has been at pains to contrast a passage of the De Pace (§§ 41—50) with a passage of the Third Olynthiac (§§ 23—32)—the contrast coming to this, that the former is a display of graces and the latter a stirring summons to action⁷⁰. But the fact is that it is unmeaning to compare Isokrates and Demosthenes at all. While practical oratory was parting more and more distinctly into two branches—the pure Deliberative, best represented probably by Kallistratos, the Forensic, by Isaeos, branches of which the excellences were for once to meet in Demosthenes—Isokrates was occupied apart from both in ⁷¹ developing a literary rhetoric, important, certainly, in its influence on the practical oratory of a later day, but of contemporary significance in the way ⁷² of style chiefly for that Rhetorical school of history in which Ephoros and Theopompos are the earliest great names. Chiefly—yet not solely. In so far as merely literary lessons have to be learned by a great speaker, Demosthenes learned much from Isokrates: but the spirit of Demosthenes was not to be bound to any rigid outward law of euphony⁷³. In the epideictic kind we can see from the Funeral Oration of Hypereides just the two points of contact between Hypereides and Isokrates—the large freedom of development, and the tone, sincere in all its rhetorical elevation, of a moralist speaking the language of panegyric⁷⁴. But the best representative of Isokrates in his influence on the ⁷⁵ development of oratory is Cicero. Cicero was intellectually stronger than Isokrates; he had the power for real contests—living force and passion; and the greater width of his mental horizon was not due simply to the age in which he lived. But as a stylist he is inferior to Isokrates. The idea which Cicero got from Isokrates was that of number⁷⁶. To this Cicero added special Isokratic graces with more than the richness but with less than the elegance of the Greek master. Seldom, perhaps, has an unconscious criticism on self told the truth more neatly than does the phrase of Cicero when he speaks of having used ‘all the fragrant essences of Isokrates and all the little stores of his disciples⁷⁷.’ The brilliancy of Isokrates had come to Cicero through the school of Rhodes⁷⁸.

Influence of Isokrates on the Greek Language.

It was inevitable that when such a manner as that of Isokrates was developed and became widely popular it should have a certain reflex action on the language; and the nature of this action was determined by the fact that Isokrates had the Greek impulses in art without the sureness or fineness of the best Greek instinct. The invariable desire of rounding periods led to periphrasis, the craving for antitheses to a bold use of synonyms. Hence came a certain loss of that strict yet always graceful precision which had marked the best Attic, when the accurate expression of a clearly defined thought was the first thing, and the light which played over the words came through the eyes of the thought. That language which had been as a perfect human body to a vivid soul began in these later days to be more like a dress fitting loosely to a form still fair and stately; a dress which Oriental taste gradually changed into a flowing robe, with always ampler folds and heavier embroideries as there was less and less of natural vigour or comeliness beneath.

Yet, if Isokrates does not give the intimate Attic charm, it must not be forgotten that a Greek could still distinguish him from Lysias by saying that Lysias was to Kalamis and Kallimachos what Isokrates was to Praxiteles and Pheidias⁷⁹: his beauty and his majesty are genuinely Greek; and, until the sense of these is wholly lost, Isokrates must always take rank as one of the great masters of expression. The growing divergence of the modern ideal from his has already, perhaps, narrowed the modern faculty of appreciating him; but most readers can still admire his power of feeling, and of honouring, what is admirable. A French scholar has observed that, in ⁸⁰ regard to expression, the grave oratory of the preacher alone preserves for the modern world an image of that in which Isokrates excelled; and has at the same time rendered to Isokrates a tribute as high, perhaps, as the modern world could offer, in bringing proof that Isokrates had some share in forming whatever owed its virtue to form in the eloquence of Bossuet⁸¹.

Three representative passages

Isokrates cannot be represented by extracts; the structure and the total effect are especially important for him just because he is specially an artist. But three passages may be taken as showing the bent rather than the compass of his art,—the contrast, in the Areopagitikos, between the social lives of the old and of the new democracy; the eulogy, in the Panegyrikos, of the first Athenian empire; and the passage on beauty in the Helen.

Areop. [VII] §§ 51—54.

In the Areopagitikos he is contrasting the social Athens of 500 B.C. with that of 355 B.C.:—

‘Under the supervision of that Council, the city was not distracted with law-suits and grievances and taxes and penury and wars; people lived on good terms with their neighbours and peaceably with all men. Athenians were the trust of Greece and the terror of barbarians; they had saved their country, and had so punished the enemy that he was glad enough to be let alone. And so, thanks to this, they lived in such security that the houses and establishments in the country were handsomer and richer than those within the wall,—many citizens never coming to town even for the festivals, but preferring their own snug homes to a share in the bounty of the State. The public spectacles, for which they might have come, were managed sensibly, and not with an insolent profusion. People did not measure happiness by shows, or by rivalries in the equipment of a chorus, or by the like forms of pretentiousness, but by soberness of life, by everyday comfort, by the absence of destitution among citizens. These are the tests of a real prosperity as distinguished from a policy of low makeshifts. Is there any sane man who can help being stung by what goes on nowa-days — when he sees numbers of citizens actually drawing lots for daily bread before the lawcourts, yet condescending to feed any Greeks who will row their ships for them,—coming on the stage in golden apparel, and passing the winter in garments of which the less said the better—with the rest of those economical contrasts which redound to the infamy of Athens?’

Panegyr. [IV] §§ 103— 106.

In the Panegyrikos the first Athenian empire is used as an argument for making Athens equal leader with Sparta in a war against Asia. An implied contrast with the Spartan influence from 405 to 380 B.C. runs through the whole:—

‘All, I think, would expect that State to be the best president of Greece under whose former rule those who accepted it were, as a fact, happiest. Now it will be found that under our leadership private households throve best and cities, too, became greatest. We were not jealous of the growing States; we did not sow the seeds of strife by setting up in them a government adverse to their own, in order that they might be divided by faction and that both factions might pay court to us; rather, holding the concord of our allies to be a common good, we governed all the cities by the same laws, debating their affairs in the federal spirit, not in a spirit of absolutism; watching over the interests of the whole league, but leaving every member of it free,—helping the commons and warring against despotisms,—thinking it a shame that the many should be under the few, that men worse than their fellows in nothing but fortune should be scouted for office, aye, and that, when Greece is the mother of us all, some Greeks should be tyrants while others are barely residents on sufferance, and that a franchise bestowed by nature should be cancelled by law. Finding these vices, and more than these, in Oligarchy, we gave to our allies the same form of government under which we lived ourselves—one which I see no need to praise at much length when it can be described so shortly. Under that government the allies lived for seventy years unvexed by tyrants, independent of barbarians, at unity among themselves, at peace with all the world.’

Helen. Encom. [XI] §§ 54—58.

In the Helen it is interesting to mark both the likeness and the deep unlikeness to a Platonic strain:—

‘They had reason for their choice, and I for the greatness of these praises; for she was gifted above all others with Beauty, the first of all things in majesty and honour and divineness. It is easy to see its power; there are many things which have no share of Courage, or Wisdom, or Justice which yet will be found honoured above things which have each of these; but nothing which is devoid of Beauty is prized; all things are scorned which have not been given their part of that attribute; the admiration for Virtue itself comes to this, that of all manifestations of life Virtue is the most beautiful. The supremacy of Beauty over all other things can be seen from our own dispositions towards it and them. Other things we seek merely to attain, as we may have need of them; we have no further affection of the mind about them; but beautiful things inspire us with love—love, which is as much stronger than wish as its object is better. We are jealous of those who excel in ability or anything else, unless they conciliate us by daily benefits and constrain us to feel kindly towards them: but the beautiful inspire us with goodwill at first sight; to them alone, as to the gods, we are never tired of doing homage, delighting to be their slaves rather than to be rulers of others, and feeling more gratitude to those of them who set us many tasks than to those who lay no commands upon us. We reproach the subjects of any other despotism with the name of flatterers; but we see only a clear-eyed and noble zeal in the lieges of Beauty. Care for that gift is to us so perfectly a religion that we hold the profaners of it in themselves more dishonoured than sinners against others, but honour for all time, and as benefactors to the State, those who have guarded the glory of their own youth in the chasteness of an inviolable shrine.’

The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos. Sir Richard C. Jebb. London. 1876.

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Current edition Perseus

The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos (English) (The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, author. London: Macmillan, 1876.)

Notes on the current edition

The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos

1. Isokrates less an orator

2. than an artist in rhetorical prose.

3. The writers for the lawcourts.

4. The teachers of Rhetoric.

5. For the Ὀδυσσεὺς κατὰ Παλαμήδους προδοσίας, see Sauppe Or. Att. II. 156; for the ὑπὲρ Παλαμήδους ἀπολογια, ib. 132: for the Αἴας— Ὀδυσσεύς, ib. 167. Tho first used to be ascribed to Alkidamas; the second to Gorgias; the third to Antisthenes. H. E. Foss in his Gorgias (pp. 81 f.; 78 f.; 94 f.) has shown each to be the work of a later writer.

6. Distinctive aim of Isokrates.

7. Vol. I. p. 21.

8. Dionys. de comp. Verb. c. 23.

9. Representatives of this style

10. in poetry,

11. in prose.

12. id. Demosth. c. 4.

13. Its Purity.

14. Vol. I. p. 168.

15. As exceptions, note the words οὐρανομήκης, Antid. [XV] § 134: φιλοπροσήγορος (‘courteous’—more general than εὐπροσήγορος, ‘affable’) Ad Demon. [I] § 20: τερθρεία (‘jugglery’), Helen. Enc. [X] § 4: φθόη, Aeginet. [XIX] § 11: τύρβη Antid. § 130: ἐπικήρως, Bus. [XI] § 49. ἐνδελεχέστατος , Antid. § 156: κατασκελετευθεῖσαν, Ant. § 268: διασκαριφᾶσθαι, Areop. § 12. Also the metaphorical use of εἱλωτεύειν ( Pan. § 131), ἐξοκείλας, Ant. § 268 and Ep. II. § 13. (Sandys, Ad Dem. and Paneyr. pp. xi, xxxiv.Aristotle instances ἔτλησαν ( Pan. § 96) and φήμη ( ib. § 186) as poetical words legitimately used in a climax: Rh. III. 7.

16. Dionys. de Isokr. c. 2: Lys. c. 2: Dem. c. 4.

17. Its Simplicity.

18. id. Dem. c. 18—where Dionys. is criticising a passage from the De Pace (§§ 41—50) taken as showing Isokr. at his best—and notices the avoidance of τροπικαὶκατασκευαί as even excessive. Hermogenes ( περὶ ἰδεῶν ά c. 12, Speng. Rh. G. II. 33) observes that the first condition of beauty in expression is purity; now tropes give vividness, but are against purity; hence Isokr., who thought most about beauty, made least use of tropes.

19. σεμνολογία (Dionys. Isokr. c. 20), σεμνοτὴς πομπική ( ib. 2), καλλιλογία ( Dem. c. 4).

20. Speaking of the forensic work of Isokr. generally, Dionys. remarks that here he comes near to the manner of Lysias ( Isocr. c. 18). Then examining the Trapez. [XVII] §§ 1—14 in detail, he points out that the manner is ὅλῳ τω—| γένει distinct from that of I.'s deliberative or epideictic speeches; yet that it is Isokratic still—it bears the predominant stamp of art (c. 20).—Perhaps Or. XVIII (Against Kallimachos) and XIX (Aeginetikos) are the best examples of I.'s plain manner.

21. Prose-rhythm.

22. Volkmann, Die Rhetorik der Griechen und Romer (1872), p. 430.

23. Rhet. III. 8—where he observes that metre in prose is ἀπίθανον, i.e. destroys the rhetorical illusion, but rhythm desirable—simply, he thinks, as the period is—because ‘all men like to see to the end.’ Cf. Volkm. p. 447.

24. Dionys. Dem. cc. 49, 50. Prose is to be εὔρυθμος and εὔμετρος— not like Poetry, ἔρρυθμος and ἔμμετρος, bound. Quintilian (IX. iv. 45) distinguishes the metre ( dimensio quaedam) of verse from the rhythm ( numeri) of prose: and so Cic. has numerus= ῥυθμός, Or. § 67.

25. The artistic use of the pacon in prose is dated by Aristotle from Thrasymachos ( Rh III. 8). Cp. Curtius, Hist. Gr. v. 168 (Ward).

26. For the precept of Isokr. in his own words, see the fragment of his τέχνη in Sauppe II. 225:— ὅλως δὲ ὁ λόγος μὴ λόγος ἔστω ( mere prose), ξηρὸν γάρ· μηδὲ ἔμμετρος· καταφανὲς γάρ· ἀλλὰ μεμίχθω παντὶ ῥυθμῷ, μάλιστα ἰαμβικῷ ἢ τροχαικῷ. Aristotle would have considered this recommendation of the iambus or trochee as retrograde—Thrasymachos having brought in the paeon. In Adv. Soph. (XIII) § 16 Isokr. speaks of the study needed in order εὐρύθμως καὶ μουσικῶς εἰπεῖν.

27. ‘Isokr. was the first to see that in prose too a certain measure and rhythm (modum et numerum) must be observed’: Brut. § 32. In Orat. § 175 he quotes Thrasymachos himself to the same effect.

28. Vol. I. p. 34.

29. ib. p. 166.

30. how developed by Isokrates.

31. This is the image used by Dionysios ( Dem. c. 4) to describe the ὑπαγωγικὴ περίοδος, the meandering period, of Isokrates. Cf. de Isocr. c. 12, τὸ κύκλιον τῶν περιόδων.

32. Demetr. περὶ ἑρμηνείας § 19. (Speng. Rh. Gr. III. 265.) He illustratcs the Rhetorical Period by the opening of Dem. adv. Lept.; the Conversational, by the opening of Plat. Rep.; the Historical, by the opening of Xen. Anab.

33. Dionys. Dem. c. 18 notices the period of Isokr. as being rather ‘like that of the historians’ than ἐναγώνιος fit for real contests.

34. Dionys. de comp. Verb. c. 19 observes that the best style is sometimes more, sometimes less, periodic: but that Isokr. did not understand such variety: cf. his κρίσις τῶν ἀρχαίων, c. 5. This wholly periodic style (with no alloy of εἰρομένη) is essentially epideiktic: cp. Cic. Or. § 207, Volkmann, p. 435.

35. The invariable desire for a period and a rhythm drives Isokr. to use παραπληρώματα λέξεων, padding, as Dionys. says ( de Isocr. c. 3). The critic illustrates this minutely in his analysis of De Pace § 42 ( Dem. c. 19). ‘These drooping folds might have been pinned up more neatly’— ταῦτα κεκολπωμένα σφίγξαι μᾶλλον ἐνῆν.

36. Cp. Müller, Hist. Gr. Lit. c. xxxvi. (Donalds. II. 154—5.)

37. ‘Trope’ and ‘Figure.’

38. See Volkmann, Die Rhet. der Gr. und Römer, pp. 392 f. Cp. Quint. IX. 1 § 4.

39. Dionys. Dem. c. 18: Hermog. περὶ ἰδ. ά, c. 12 (referred to above).

40. Figures of Language.

41. Dionys. Thuc. c. 24. Quintilian (IX. 3 § 2) subdivides the ‘figures of language’ as (1) grammatical— mere peculiarities of pathology or syntax, with no rhetorical purpose —e.g. the schema Pindaricum: (2) rhetorical—where a certain effect is meant to be wrought by the combination. Volkmann (who refers the distinction between σχήματα λέξεως and διανοίας not to Caecilius of Calacte, but back to Theophrastos, p. 392) analyses both kinds in detail, pp. 396—430.

42. Cp. Sandys Ad Dem. and Panegyr. p. xiv.

43. Hermogenes has an excellent remark ( περὶ ἰδ. ά c. 12, Sp. Rh. Gr. II. 331) on the use of these two last figures— παρίσωσις and παρομοίωσις—by Isokr. and Demosthenes respectively. Demosth. has rarely a direct and absolute symmetry or consonance of clauses— Hermog. says he remembers only one instance, In Androt. § 1. Elsewhere Demosth. disguises the παρίσωσις either by ‘cutting it in two’ —inserting a clause ( ἐπεμβολή) between the two balanced clauses— or by taking care that the clauses equal in length shall not be symmetrical in structure: while he avoids the direct παρομοίωσις by shifting one of the two words which would have jingled.

44. Gellius ( N. A. XVIII. 8) quotes some lines from Lucilius in which the satirist ridicules those ‘tasteless persons’ (apirocali) who wish to seem Isokratic, and who accordingly overload their sentences with ὁμοιοτέλευτα, πάρισα and the like. Dionysios, greatly as he admires Isokr., repeatedly blanies his ‘puerile’ or ‘vulgar’ use of the Gorgian figures. He instances Panegyr. §§ 71—81 ( De Isocr. c. 14): Trapez. §§ 9, 11 (especially— ib. c. 20): De Pace, §§ 41—50 ( Dem. c. 20). Nothing, he says, more ‘paralyses his force,’ nothing more averts the ear, than these frigid figures.

45. Earlier and later manner of Isokrates.

46. This is well marked in two passages: (1) Philip. (v) § 27,—346 B.C.; (2) Panath. § 2,—342 B.C.— where he says that he has quite given up attempting ‘antitheses and parisôses and those other figures which compel applause.’ Quintilian expressly recognises the two phases: IX. 3 § 74. Cp. Rauchenstein Introd. p. 12.

47. Figures of Thought.

48. See above, Vol. I. p. 99: cp. Volkmann, pp. 416 f. The great master of the ‘figures of thought’ was Demosthenes: Cic. Orat. § 136.

49. For examples of this ἐρώτησις, see Panegyr. (iv) §§ 121, 183: De Pace (viii) §§ 11, 100, 105, 113: Panath. (xii) §§ 121 f. Volkmann (p. 424) notices an instance of the figure called ἀντίφρασις or παράλειψις—when the speaker says that he will not mention a thing, but does—joined with hyperbole, in De Pace §§ 56, 81.

50. For his own precept, see the frag. of his τέχνη (Sauppe II. 225)— ‘vowels must not come together’ ( δεῖ τὰ φωνήεντα μὴ συμπίπτειν), ‘for the effect is lame,’ χωλὸν γὰρ τὸ τοιόνδε. Benseler, in his work De Hiatu in Oratoribus Atticis et Historicis Graecis, has applied this test to the whole extant text of Isokrates (Bk. I. Ch. 1).

51. De Comp. Verb. c. 23 (where he analyses §§ 1—5). Benseler examines this statement (pp. 7—9). Among the more striking instances of hiatus in our text of the Areopagitikos are ὑμᾶς γε ᾤοντο, § 57: — ὥστε οὔτε, § 80.

52. Demetrios περὶ ἑρμηνειας § 68: who adds, in § 72, that such clashing, σύγκρουσις, suits the μεγαλοπρεπὴς χαρακτήρ. Dionysios ( Dem. c. 4), Quintilian (IX. 4 § 35) and Hermogenes ( περὶ ἰδ. ά c. 12) agree with Demetrios in thinking the solicitude of Isokrates in this matter excessive: while Plutarch, with a somewhat frigid sarcasm, asks how Isokrates, ὁ φοβούμενος φωνῆεν φωνήεντι συγκροῦσαι—could help shrinking from the Macedonian phalanx? ( Deglor. Athen. c. 8, Mor. p. 350 E.) On the other hand, Longinus praises him for avoiding harsh collocations ‘which make the texture of the speech rougher and do not slide into the ear, but offend it, while they also arrest the speaker's breath’ ( Rhet. § 9, p. 560 in Speng. Rh. Gr. I. 306).

53. See Schäfer, Demosth. Vol. III. p. 317 note 2.

54. Invention.

55. De Isocr. c. 4.

56. X. 1 § 79,

in inventione facilis, honesti studiosus.

57. Arist Rh. I. 9. ‘If one has no positive merits to urge, one should give the man relative merit by comparing him with others— as Isokrates used to do, owing to his familiarity with suit-pleading’ ( διὰ τὴν συνήθειαν τοῦ δικολογεῖν—where Spengel's ἀσυνήθειαν is surely made improbable by the general sense, by the testimony of Dionys. Isocr. 18, and by the contemptuous word δικολογεῖν).

58. Philip. [v] §§ 58—67.

59. περὶ ὕψους in Speng. Rh. Gr. I. p. 287.

60. See Dionys. Rhet. c. 9 § 12: Volkmann p 83.

61. Arrangement.

62. Vol. I. p. 180 note.

63. De Isocr. c. 4 ἰδίαις μεταβολαῖς —ξένοις ἐπεισοδίοις.Arist. Rh. III. 14. The keynote ( ἐνδόσιμον) of the Helenae Encomium is, of course, Helen. But Isokr. preludes with an attack on the Eristics (§§ 1—131).

64. εὐκρίνεια· περὶ ἰδεῶν ά c. 4, Sp. Rh. Gr. II. 283.

65. Curtius Hist. Gr. v. p. 175 (Ward).

66. περὶ ἰδ. β’ c. 11, Sp. II. 412.

67. De Isocr. c. 4—where πολιτικὴ δύναμις denotes the complete faculty of being a citizen as distinguished from the power of civil rhetoric.

68. Quint. X. 1 § 79.

69. ἀναγνώστου παιδὸς φωνήν, Hierônymos ap. Dionys. Isocr. c. 13.In Phil. [V] § 26 he complains of one who reads him μηδὲν ἦθος ἐνσημαινόμενος: in Panath. [XII] § 17 of those who read him διαιροῦντες οὐκ ὀρθῶς, κ.τ.λ.

70. Dionys. Dem. cc. 17—22.

71. His real province.

72. Influence of his work on contemporaries.

73. Cp. Curtius, Hist. Gr. v. p. 228 (Ward).

74. The Isokratic elementin Hypereides is well estimated by Cartelier ( Le Discours d'I. sur lui-même p. lxxviii)—who observes that the younger contemporaries of Isokr., generally, must have owed to him in no small degree their greater abundance of development and richness of phrase (p. lxxvi).

75. Its later influence. Cicero.

76. See especially De Orat. III. 44, § 173. The sweetness which he elsewhere praises ( De Orat. III. 8, § 28) as distinguishing this ‘father of eloquence’ ( ib. II. 3, § 10) means chiefly that same smooth, harmonious rhythm. So Quint. X. 1 § 108 says that Cicero had ‘artistically reproduced ( effinxisse) the force of Demosthenes, the wealth of Plato, the charm of Isokrates.’

77. Ad Att. II. 1,

totum Isocratis μυροθήκιον atque omnes eius discipulorum arculas.

78. In concluding this review of Isokr. under the technical aspects of his style, it may be worth while to quote, for those who care to look at it, the criticism of Hermogenes ( περὶ ἰδ. β/ c. 11, Sp. Rh. Gr. II. 412)—a masterpiece (as usual with him) of compression, in which almost every word is pregnant—or rather overloaded—with technical meaning. I have tried to make this version do the work of a glossary:—‘As regards purity of language and perspicuity of arrangement— those characteristics which make a speech luminous—Isokrates is the greatest master of civil eloquence; but want of moral charm and of a natural simplicity lessen his power of persuading. In finish however, and in ornament, he excels; nor is he less distinguished by elevation, save that his vehemence and his asperity—if indeed he can be said ever to employ these—are deprived of nervous force by his elegance. In words he is not very diffuse; but in developing a thought he amplifies to the uttermost. Of fiery earnestness he has not a trace. Further —though the criticism may seem harsh—he is characterised by a certain languor and slackness, as well as by a pervading elderly sententiousness. Just because he is naturally poor in spontaneous impulse he is over-industrious in artifice, as if bent on the display of ingenuity— often for no practical purpose. This may be seen from cases of contrast between the treatment of an argument by Isokrates and by Demosthenes. Compare (e. g.) the opening of the Fourth Speech Against Philip’ [our First Philippic] ‘with the opening of the Archidamos. The proposition is the same in both places—viz. that young men ought to be heard even though they rise before their elders—but Isokrates has made it a distinct thesis, and has demonstrated it at full length; while Demosthenes has been content to support it by a single observation. At the same time the power of exposition possessed by Isokrates is by no means slight.’

79. Dionys Isocr. c. 3.

80. Modern analogue for his oratory— that of the pulpit.

81. Cartelier, Le Discours d'I. sur lui-même p. lxxxvi. Plato, Demosthenes and Isokrates are the three Greeks to whom Bossuet acknowledges a debt in the matter of style.

Sir Richard C. Jebb The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos 2.14