Isocrates Bc

ISOCRATES B.C.), Attic orator, was the son of Theodorus of the deme of Erchia. He received the best education Athens provided, and Plato (Phaedrus, 278 E) makes Socrates prophesy a brilliant future for him, saying that he will leave the whole of his generation behind in oratory, and that even greater things may be hoped from him, as "a certain philosophy is inborn in him." The dramatic date of the dialogue is about 41o. He took no part in public life, for which he was unfitted in physique as well as by temperament, and under the Thirty he withdrew to Chios. He had already started teaching rhetoric, having lost his I .

inherited fortune in the tumult of the end of the Peloponnesian.

War. He returned about the time of the restoration of the De mocracy in 403. For the next ten years he continued to write occasional speeches for the law courts, of which six are extant. He himself despised this branch of his work.

His real vocation was teaching; about 392 he founded his famous school near the Lyceum, where for the rest of his life he may be said to have had the Greek-speaking world from the Black sea to Sicily for his pupils. They include Ephorus, Theopompus and Androtion among historians, Isaeus, Lycurgus and Hypereides among orators. Forty-one names are still known. (See P. Sanneg, De schola Isocratea, Halle, 1867.) There is a tradition that at the panegyric contest on the death of Mausolus of Caria in 351 there was not a competitor who had not been trained by Isocrates. The instruction given, though based on rhetorical composition, was not confined to it. It seems to have been as much a system of general culture as Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria.

Meanwhile he was also active as a publicist. The dominant idea of his public writings was the policy of uniting Greece in a concerted attack on Asia. In Greece there was peace neither between the cities nor inside them ; a panhellenic invasion of the Persian empire would obliterate political enmities ; its success would contribute to the solution of the economic problem. The difficulty was to find a leader to direct the enterprise; in the Pane gyricus (38o) he looks to a coalition between Athens and Sparta, whose leadership Greece would be proud to follow now as before. When this failed him, he looked in turn to Dionysius I. of Syra cuse, Agesilaus III., and finally to Philip of Macedon. His faith in Philip lasted down to Chaeronea (Phi/iPPus, 346 B.C. ; Epist.

? 342

B.C.) ; the question whether it survived that depends on the view taken of the authenticity of Epist. iii. There is nothing against it except the tradition that on hearing of Chaeronea Isocrates killed himself by voluntary starvation. On the whole it seems better to discard the tradition than the letter; it is easy to see how the legend could have grown supposing, as seems prob able, that he died soon after the battle. He was then 98.

Isocrates amassed considerable wealth at his profession, and fulfilled the usual public services of the rich man at Athens. He married Plathane, widow of the sophist Hippias of Elis, and adopted her son Aphareus. He had one lawsuit in 355, being challenged to undertake a trierarchy or exchange properties. (See the Antidosis.) We have to estimate his position from the political and the literary points of view. In the first place, his political views were in tune with the prevailing tendency of Greek political thought at the time. Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle (in the Politics) all lean at times to the idea of a monarchy to rule a united Greece. The special bent given to this tendency by Isocrates is the prominence of the attack on Asia in his scheme. And here he was not far wrong ; Alexander did not lead a panhellenic army into Asia; but the extended field brought under the influence of Greek civilization produced indirectly the results Isocrates desired. He deals in two speeches, On the Peace and the Areopa giticus (both 355 B.c.), with Athenian politics; in the first he advocates a policy of equality and alliance between Athens and the subject cities of the empire, in the second he appears as a Cato mourning the moral degeneracy of the republic. Whatever may be thought of his political tenets, there is no doubt of his place in the history of literature. He was regarded by the Greeks as representing the smooth or florid school of prose style (yXackpa, ItvOnpet ap,uovi,a), which phrase was designed to describe his periodic, antithetical style, in contrast to the "aus terity" of Antiphon. His real eminence consists in the fact that by giving an artistic finish to the literary branch of rhetoric he set a standard in form and rhythm for prose style. This prose style of his creation, based on the periodic sentence, and subject to rules of rhythm comparable to those of verse, though of course less strict, is his legacy to Cicero, and through him to the litera ture of modern Europe.

Works.

The extant works of Isocrates consist of 21 speeches or discourses and nine letters. Among these the six forensic speeches represent the first period of his literary life—belonging to the years B.C. These are Or. xvi.–xxi. Among the forensic speeches, we must, on the whole, give the palm to the Aegineticus (or xix.)—a graphic picture of ordinary Greek life in the islands of the Aegean. Here—especially in the narrative Isocrates makes a near approach to the best manner of Lysias. The remaining 15 orations form two clearly separated groups— the scholastic and the political.

Under the head of scholastic writings we have, first, three letters or essays of a hortatory character. (I) The letter to the young Demonicus—once a favourite subject in the schools— contains a series of precepts neither below nor much above the average practical morality of Greece. (2) The letter to Nicocles —the young king of the Cyprian Salamis—sets forth the duty of a monarch to his subjects. (3) In the third piece, it is Nicocles who speaks, and impresses on the Salaminians their duty to their king—a piece remarkable as containing a popular plea for mon archy, composed by a citizen of Athens. These three letters may be referred to the years B.c.

Next may be placed four pieces which are "displays" (iriZELEts) in the proper Greek sense. They are the Busiris (Or. xi., 391-390 B.C.), Encomium on Helen (Or. x., 37o B.c.), containing the celebrated passage on the power of beauty, Evagoras (Or. ix., 365 B.c.) and Panathenaicus (Or. xii., 339 B.c.), his last work.

The third subdivision of the scholastic writings is formed by two most interesting essays on education—that entitled Against the Sophists (Or. xiii., 390-391 B.c.), and the Antidosis (Or. xv., 353 B.c.). The first of these is a manifesto put forth by Isocrates at the outset of his professional career of teaching, in which he seeks to distinguish his aims from those of other "sophists." As this piece is the prelude to his career, its epilogue is the speech on the Antidosis—so called because it has the form of speech made in court in answer to a challenge to undertake the burden of the trierarchy, or else exchange properties with the challenger. The discourse Against the Sophists had stated what his art was not; this speech defines what it is. His own account of his 01,XocroOta "the discipline of discourse" (7) XOycov ratoeta) —has been embodied in the sketch of it given above.

His political writings, again, fall into two classes—those which concern (I) the relations of Greece with Persia, (2) the internal affairs of Greece. The first class consists of the Panegyricus (Or. iv., 38o B.c.) and the Philippus (Or. v., 346 B.c.). The Pane gyricus urges that Athens and Sparta should unite in leading the Greeks against Persia. The Philippus is an appeal to the king of Macedon to assume that initiative in the war on Persia which Isocrates had ceased to expect from any Greek city. In the view of Demosthenes, Philip was the representative barbarian; in that of Isocrates, he is the first of Hellenes, and the natural cham pion of their cause.

Of those discourses which concern the internal affairs of Greece, two have already been noticed—that On the Peace (Or. viii.), and the Areopagiticus (Or. vii.)—both of 355 B.C.-as dealing respectively with the foreign and the home affairs of Athens. The Plataicus (Or. xiv.) is an appeal to Athens to restore Plataea, destroyed by Thebes. The Archidamus (Or. vi.) is a speech pur porting to be delivered by Archidamus III., son of Agesilaus, in a debate at Sparta on conditions of peace offered by Thebes in 366 B.C. It was demanded that Sparta should recognize the inde

pendence of Messene, which had lately been restored by Epamei nondas (370 B.c.). The oration gives brilliant expression to the feeling which such a demand was calculated to excite in Spartans who knew the history of their own city. Xenophon witnesses that the attitude of Sparta on this occasion was actually such as the Archidanvus assumed (Hellen, vii. 4. 8-11).

Of his letters the first—to Dionysius I.—is fragmentary; but a passage in the Philippus leaves no doubt as to its object. Isocrates was anxious that the ruler of Syracuse should undertake the command of Greece against Persia. The date is probably 368 B.C. Next in chronological order stands the letter "to the Children of Jason" (vi.). Isocrates urges Thebe, the daughter of Jason, and her half-brothers to set up a popular government. The date is 359 B.C. (See R. C. Jebb in Journal of Philology, v. 266, 1874.) The letter to Archidamus III. urges him to execute the writer's favourite idea—"to deliver the Greeks from their feuds, and to crush barbarian insolence." It is remarkable for a vivid picture of the state of Greece; the date is about 356 B.C. The letter to Timotheus (vii., 345 B.c.), ruler of Heraclea on the Euxine, introduces an Athenian friend who is going thither, and at the same time offers some good counsels to the benevolent despot. The letter "to the Government of Mytilene" (viii., 35o B.c.) is a petition to a newly established oligarchy, begging them to permit the return of a democratic exile, a distinguished musi cian named Agenor. The first of the two letters to Philip of Macedon (ii.) remonstrates with him on the personal danger to which he has recklessly exposed himself, and alludes to his beneficent intervention in the affairs of Thessaly; the date is probably the end of 342 B.C. The letter to Alexander (v.), then a boy of 14, is a brief greeting sent along with the last. The letter to Antipater (iv.) introduces a friend who wished to enter the military service of Philip. The later of the two letters to Philip (iii.) appears to be written shortly after the battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C.

the exception of defects at the end of Or. xiii., at the beginning of Or. xvi., and probably at the end of Letters i., vi., ix., the existing text is free from serious mutilations. It is also unusually pure. The smooth and clear style of Isocrates gave few opportunities for the mistakes of copyists. On the other hand, he was a favourite author of the schools. Numerous glosses crept into his text through the comments or conjectures of rhetoricians. This was already the case before the 6th century, as is attested by the citations of Priscian and Stobaeus. Jerome Wolf and Koraes successfully accomplished much for the text. But a more decided advance was made by Immanuel Bekker. He used five mss., viz., (I) Codex Urbinus III., P (this, the best, was his principal guide) ; (2) Vaticanus 936, A ; (3) Laurentanius 87, 14, 0 ; (13th century) ; (4) Vaticanus 65, A ; and (5) Marcianus 415, E. The first three, of the same family, have Or. xv. entire ; the last two are from the same original, and have Or. xv. incomplete.

J. G. Baiter and H. Sauppe in their edition (185o) follow r "even more constantly than Bekker." Their apparatus is enriched, however, by a ms. to which he had not access—Ambrosianus 0. 144, E., which in some cases, as they recognize, has alone preserved the true reading. The readings of this ms. were given in full by G. E. Benseler in his second edition (1854-55). The distinctive characteristic of Benseler's textual criticism was a tendency to correct the text against even the (as strontium carbonate) in aragonite. The two different methods of crystallization of calcium carbonate in calcite and in aragonite could therefore be attributed to the determining action of these impurities, since ferrous carbonate does in fact form crystals of the same general type as calcite, while crystals of strontium car bonate have the same general form as aragonite. Since, however, these impurities are not essential to the production of either mineral, Haily's postulate has long since been abandoned. It is, for instance, ob viously untenable in the case of sulphur, where the type of crystallization depends on the temperature, and not on the com position of the sample, since the same sample of sulphur can be made to change from one crystalline form to the other with out any change of composition merely by heating and cooling above and below 96° C. This is the phenomenon described as polymorphism, and affords a simple ex ample of those variations of properties which lie outside the scope of chemical analysis, and which form the main subject of this article. Further examples of this phenomenon are described in the article ALLOTROPY.

Structural Isomerism.

The type of isomerism which de pends on a dissimilar arrangement of equal numbers of atoms in the molecules of an element or compound is known as structural isomerism. It is therefore a mere truism to assert that it can only exist in polyatomic molecules. Thus among elements, since the majority of them contain only one atom in the molecule, poly merism (which depends on the formation of polyatomic molecules of two different sizes) is rare, although polymorphism is relatively common and isomerism (which depends on the formation of poly atomic molecules of equal size but different structure) is so scarce that soluble and insoluble sulphur (q.v.) still stand alone as the only case in which the existence of two forms of equal molecular weight has been clearly established. Since, however, carbon is unique in the readiness with which complex structures can be built up from the elementary atoms, it is not surprising that differences of properties depending on differences of molecular structure, in compounds of identical composition, should have ' been discovered amongst organic compounds at a very early period—antedating by nearly a century the discovery of the same phenomenon in elementary sulphur.

The first example of a pair of organic compounds of identical percentage composition, but having totally different properties, was recorded in 1820 by Dalton, who, by the distillation of fatty oils, prepared a gas which resembled olefiant gas (see ETHYLENE) in combining with chlorine, but appeared to contain twice as much carbon and hydrogen in a given volume. When, therefore, W. Henry in 1821 discovered a similar constituent in coal gas, best ms., where the ins. conflicted with the usage of Isocrates as inferred from his recorded precepts or from the statements of ancient writers. Thus, on the strength of the rule ascribed to Isocrates Ocoviievra would remove from the text every example of hiatus (on the mss. of Isocrates, see H. Biirmann, Die handschriftliche Uberlieferung des Isocrates, 1885-86, and E. Drerup, in Leipziger Studien, xvii., 1895.

Editions: in Oratores Attici, ed. Imm. Bekker (1823-28) ; W. S. Dobson (1828) ; J. G. Baiter and Hermann Sauppe (185o). Separately Ausgewiihlte Reden, Panegyrikos and Areopagitikos, by Rudolph Rauchenstein, 6th ed., Karl Miinscher (1908) ; in Teubner's series, by G. E. Benseler (new ed., by F. Blass, 1886-95) and by E. Drerup (1906, etc.) ; Ad Demonicum et Panegyricus, ed. J. E. Sandys (1868) ; Evagoras, ed. H. Clarke (1885). Extracts from Orations iii., iv., vi., vii., viii., ix., xiii., xiv., xv., xix., and Letters iii., v., edited with revised text and commentary, in Selections from the Attic Orators, by R. C. Jebb (188o) ; vol. i. of an English prose translation, with introduction and notes by J. H. Freese, has been published in Bohn's Classical Library (1894). See generally Jebb's Attic Orators (where a list of authorities is given) and F. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit (2nd ed., 1887-98), and the latter's Die Rhythmen der attischen Kunstprosa (1 got) There is a special lexicon by S. Preuss (19o4). On the philosophy of Isocrates and his relation to the Socratic schools, see Thompson's ed. of Plato's Phaedrus, Appendix 2. (R. C. J.; X.)