Isocrates was born in 436, not long before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, and died - of natural causes or, some say, by his own hand - in 338, the year of the battle of Chaeronea. He came from a well-to-do family (his father owned a musical instrument factory). He was thus able to enjoy the fruits of a rounded education from an early age. This included studying with famous Sophists of the time (such as Protagoras or Gorgias) and with Socrates. He started his career as a professional speech-writer, but in 390 or thereabouts he gave this up in order to open a school. His ambition was more than just to teach youngsters rhetoric: he wanted to make them into rounded personalities able to deal with all the problems of the era. It seems he succeeded: the state rewarded pupils of his with the Golden Crown for services rendered. |
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Of Isocrates' oeuvre, which comprised speeches in all the genres, twenty-one speeches and nine letters survive. One of his main speeches was the Panegyric. Written in 380, this contains Isocrates' political creed, from which he never wavered in any of his speeches: the union of all Hellenes, devoid of envy and hatred, in a campaign against their natural enemy, Persia, and with Athens at the helm. This speech gave him the opportunity to plait the following encomium to his city (Panegyric, 50):
"...So far has our city distanced the rest of humankind in thought and in speech that her pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world; and she has brought it about that the name Hellenes suggests no longer a race but an intelligence, and that the title Hellenes is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood...".
In the same speech he was to take the Lacedaemonians to task for their conduct during their hegemony. He particularly criticized their signing of the 'Peace of Antalcidas' with Persia, in 387. It was by this treaty that the Hellenic islands and littoral of Asia Minor had been ceded to Persia, giving her the right to intervene in Hellenic affairs. Isocrates thought, lastly, that a campaign against Persia would resolve all the Hellenes' problems - political, social and economic.
Others of his speeches show Isocrates' preference for monarchy. he believed that only a sole ruler could unite the Hellenes, and the ideal such ruler he found in Philip of Macedon. In one of his speeches - Philip - and in three of his letters, he calls on the king of Macedon to lead a campaign of Hellenes, united under him, against Persia - a position which set Isokrates at loggerheads with Demosthenes. In his last work - the Panathenaicus - Isocrates, who now had actual experience of Philip - arrived at the view that the best constitution is a synthesis of the three types: monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. This is a view reminiscent of Aristotle, although the two men did not get on together at all.
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