THE silence which surrounds the life of Isaeos, in contrast with the reputation of his work, has a meaning of its own. Dionysios, in setting forth those few and barren facts which the Augustan age could discover to his search, unconsciously indicates the chief cause of their scantiness. ‘I cannot tell,’ he says, ‘what were the politics of Isaeos, —or whether he had any politics at all ¹ .’ Unlike Antiphon or Andokides, unlike even Lysias or Isokrates, Isaeos, so far as is known, had no definite relation, literary or active, with the affairs of Athens. Nothing could better illustrate the workings of that deep change which was passing over the life of Athens and of Greece. Half a century earlier, a citizen with the like powers could not have failed to find his place in the history of the city; and a resident who, like Lysias, did not possess the citizenship, would at least have left some evidence of his interest in Athenian or Panhellenic affairs, even if it had not been his fortune to impeach an Eratosthenes or to address the Greeks at Olympia. But, with the progressive divergence of Society from the State, the separation of the man from the citizen naturally expressed itself, not merely in apathy or in organized frivolity, but also, and with a graver meaning, in the clearer definition of all those pursuits which could be called professional. ‘Let the ekklesia be the care of the statesmen—my profession is to write for the courts’;—this is what the life of Isaeos, by the fact that it is almost hidden, declares. That change has set in which is to lead, without a break, from the old life of the republics to a cosmopolitan Hellenism, and thence to the modern world.

The date of his birth can only be guessed from ² the dates of his works. Of those extant speeches which can be placed chronologically, the earliest (Or. V., On the Estate of Dikaeogenes) may be assigned to 390 B.C.; the latest (Or. VII., On the Estate of Apollodoros) to 353. In 366 his reputation was fully established. The conjecture which places his birth about 420 B. C. is probably not far wrong ³ . One account represents Isaeos as a Chalkidian ⁴ , another as an Athenian ⁵ ; and the ⁶ theory which harmonises these statements by supposing the family to have migrated from Chalkis to Athens becomes something more than a mechanical compromise when it is recollected that, in 411, Euboea (except Oreos) revolted from Athens, and ⁷ that at such a time, residents in Euboea whose sympathies were Athenian might well have crossed the Euripos ⁸ . About 509 B. C. ⁹ , after an Athenian victory over the Chalkidians, the lands of the ¹⁰ Chalkidian Hippobotae, or Knights, had been shared among four thousand Athenian kleruchs ¹¹ . If the family of Isaeos was descended from one of these settlers, the account which represents Isaeos as ‘an Athenian by descent’ would be justified, and the fact that the name Diagoras ¹² , attributed to his father, is not Athenian, would be explained. It might, indeed, be argued that the case of Isaeos is analogous to that of Deinarchos, who was certainly a resident alien, and who yet was represented by one account as an Athenian citizen ¹³ . But the cases would be really parallel only if the foreign birthplace assigned to Deinarchos had been the seat of an Athenian settlement. Nor can abstention from political life be urged as disproving citizenship in the case of one who had a distinct and an engrossing occupation ¹⁴ .

In 400 B. C.—when Plato was twenty-nine years old, Isokrates thirty-six, and Lysias fifty-nine (or, according to the modern view of his birth-date, forty-four at most ¹⁵ ), Isaeos was probably about twenty. That subtle and eager mind, destined to a narrow field, may well have had its early place in the most liberal converse that Athens could afford ¹⁶ . But the only master to whom Isaeos is given as pupil by a tradition at once definite and trustworthy is Isokrates. Their intercourse may be referred to ¹⁷ the years 393—390, when Isokrates was just beginning to teach, or when Isaeos was about to enter on his own career as a writer of speeches for the lawcourts. Both these facts—that the teacher's manner was not matured, and that the discipleship must have been comparatively short—may help to explain why Isaeos kept so few traces of Isokratic expression. As we shall see, however, the Isokratic influence on Isaeos may clearly be traced in another province—in his handling of subject-matter ¹⁸ . Isokrates asserts that, of all the numerous writers of speeches for the courts, no one was ever honoured with pupils ¹⁹ . If Isaeos had been the pupil of Lysias, at least one ²⁰ notable exception would have been established. It is worth observing, however, that the best authority speaks of Isaeos, not as the scholar, but as the student of Lysias; and this is undoubtedly the true account ²¹ .

Isaeos, like Antiphon and Lysias, was a professsional writer of forensic speeches. But a comparative survey of their work brings out one striking difference. Antiphon was occupied chiefly, Lysias largely, with Public Causes. Isaeos was occupied ²² almost exclusively ²³ with Private Causes. These Private Causes were, moreover, principally of the class with which Demosthenes also was so much engaged, and for which Isokrates reserves his principal contempt,—claims to property or money between man and man ²⁴ . The Practical Rhetoric, at first busied chiefly with the graver interests of the civic life, had thus in the course of its development come to embrace the smaller interests so completely that it could find in these a distinct and definite field. Among the twelve extant Speeches of Isaeos—since the fragment ‘For Euphiletos’ is now counted as the twelfth—four are of uncertain time. The remaining eight may conveniently be arranged in two groups, as they precede or follow the central event in the life of Isaeos—his connexion with Demosthenes. The first group will comprise the Fifth ²⁵ Oration, On the Estate of Dikaeogenes, 390 B.C.; the Tenth, On the Estate of Aristarchos, 377—371 B.C.; the Eighth, On the Estate of Kiron, 375 B.C.; and the Ninth, On the Estate of Astyphilos, 369 B.C. The second group will comprise the Sixth Oration, ²⁶ On the Estate of Philoktemon, 364—363 B.C.; the Eleventh, On the Estate of Hagnias, 359 B.C.; the Second, On the Estate of Menekles, 354 B.C.; and the Seventh, On the Estate of Apollodoros, 353 B.C. The First and Third Orations, On the Estates of Kleonymos and Pyrrhos, may probably be referred to the later period.

Demosthenes was born in 384, and came of age in 366. Before attaining his majority he had resolved on the contest with the guardians who had abused their trust. The two orations Against Aphobos belong to 363 B. C.; the two orations Against Onetor to 362. Now, in 366, Isaeos must have been known for upwards of twenty years as a successful writer of forensic speeches, and also as a master of Attic law, especially in the department of claims to property. No one could be better fitted to arm Demosthenes for his first encounter. There is no doubt whatever that Demosthenes had recourse to the aid of Isaeos. Afterwards, when that relative obscurity in which the critics left the elder orator was hardly broken save by this stray gleam from the glory of the younger, friendly biographers naturally welcomed everything that could add brightness to the borrowed ray ²⁷ . It is due quite as much to Isaeos as to Demosthenes that we should be on our guard against exaggerations. According to one story, Demosthenes, on coming of age, took Isaeos into his house, and studied with him for four years ²⁸ . He is further said to have paid Isaeos 10,000 drachms (about £400) on condition that the teacher should withdraw from a school of Rhetoric which he had opened, and should devote himself wholly to his new pupil ²⁹ . ‘It was a close personal relation,’ writes a brilliant historian, ‘into which they entered, an intellectual armed alliance, in order with their united strength to carry on the contest of vengeance which Demosthenes, like the Heroes of ancient mythology, undertook against the desolaters of his paternal home ³⁰ .’ It would be agreeable thus to conceive Isaeos,—as a Pylades divided by nothing but, perhaps, thirty-six years from his young partner in the chastisement of a triple Aegisthos. Plutarch, however, says merely that Demosthenes—‘employed Isaeos as his master in Rhetoric, though Isokrates was then teaching, either (as some say) because he could not pay Isokrates the prescribed fee of ten minae; or because he preferred the style of Isaeos for his purpose, as being vigorous and astute’ ( δραστήριον καὶ πανοῦργον) ³¹ . The school of Isaeos is nowhere else mentioned ³² , nor is the name of any other pupil recorded.

The Sixth Oration, On the Estate of Philoktemon (364—363 B. C.), falls in the midst of those years (366—362) which the tradition supposes Isaeos to have reserved for Demosthenes; showing that, if Isaeos had no other disciples, he had at least concurrent occupations. Then another version claims for Isaeos the credit of having taught Demosthenes gratis ³³ . But the decisive argument is furnished by the speeches Against Aphobos and Onetor. These are not the compositions of one who had given himself wholly to the guidance of Isaeos, who was sitting at the master's feet, who was working under the master's eye. On the contrary, these earliest speeches of Demosthenes have a stamp of their own as marked as it is original. Some valuable hints Demosthenes unquestionably got from Isaeos, and an attempt will be made presently to show what these were. But the limits of the influence forbid us to think that the intercourse between Isaeos and Demosthenes as teacher and learner can have been either very intimate or of very long duration ³⁴ .

The death of Isaeos is conjecturally placed about 350 B.C. In a general view of his career, we are ³⁵ irresistibly struck with a resemblance and a contrast. Antiphon and Isaeos are brothers in accomplishment, in calling, in bent of genius, in subjection to the general disfavour which recognized but survived their success. Each was deeply versed, not only in rhetoric, but in law; each, too, was eminent in a branch—Antiphon in the law of homicide, Isaeos in the law of property. Each used his art for his client, not, indeed, without some attempt at persuasive simplicity, but with a masterful force which rendered the attempt little more than a tribute to usage. Each had a sinister reputation; Antiphon ‘lay under the suspicion of the people through a repute for cleverness,’ and never came before the people when he could help it; Isaeos, too, was deemed ‘clever in elaborating pleas for the worse part ³⁶ ,’ and, with the exception of the Greek Argument to his Oration On the Estate of Nikostratos—and that Argument is a worthless authority ³⁷ —there is no evidence that he ever spoke in a law-court ³⁸ . Each was the object of a public satire which reflected this unpopularity; Antiphon figured in the Peisandros of Plato Comicus, Isaeos in the Theseus ³⁹ of Theopompos. But, if thus far the personal analogy is close, there is a strange divergence of fates beyond it. Antiphon worked patiently, indeed, at his disliked and suspected calling through long years of judicious abstention from every battle-field of the civic life. But his climax was political; the strife of parties was the focus on which his disciplined powers were finally concentrated; and when the keen weapon which had so often served others was at last bared in his own hand, it was for no single combat, but for the encounter of oligarchy with democracy, for a struggle which filled Athens with bitterness, as it drowned his own life in blood. Isaeos, subtle and patient, but not, like Antiphon, passionate also, was congenially placed in days when an Athenian had ceased to be primarily a citizen. The early application of rhetorical art to politics—so natural, even so necessary, yet so crude—had long given place to a conception of the rhetorical province in which politics made only one department. With this department Isaeos recognised—probably with the indifference of the time—that he had nothing to do; the intellectual ardour which he clearly had was of a kind that his tasks at once satisfied and limited—making it enough for him to live and die the laborious, successful, rather unpopular master of Attic Law; not the first at Athens who had followed a calling, but perhaps the earliest Athenian type of a professional man.