38 Facts About Isocrates

1.

Isocrates was an ancient Greek rhetorician, one of the ten Attic orators.

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2.

Isocrates starved himself to death, two years before his 100th birthday.

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3.

Isocrates was born into a prosperous family in Athens at the height of Athens' power shortly before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.

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4.

Suda writes that Isocrates was the son of Theodorus who owned a workshop that manufactured aulos.

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5.

Isocrates had a sister and three brothers; the brothers were Tisippos and Theomnestos (Ancient Greek: Te?µ??st??).

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6.

Isocrates passed his youth in a gloomy period following the death of Pericles, a great Athenian leader and statesman, it was a period in which wealth – both public and private – was dissipated, and political decisions were ill-conceived and violent.

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7.

Isocrates would have been 14 years old when the democracy voted to kill all the male citizens of the small Thracian city of Scione.

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8.

Isocrates's professional career is said to have begun with logography: he was a hired courtroom speechwriter.

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9.

Isocrates had a great talent for this since he lacked confidence in public speaking.

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10.

Isocrates's fees were unusually high, and he accepted no more than nine pupils at a time.

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11.

Isocrates described rhetoric as "that endowment of our human nature which raises us above mere animality and enables us to live the civilized life.

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12.

Isocrates promoted broad-based education by speaking against two types of teachers: the Eristics, who disputed about theoretical and ethical matters, and the Sophists, who taught political debate techniques.

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13.

Also, while Isocrates is viewed by many as being a rhetor and practicing rhetoric, he refers to his study as philosophia—which he claims as his own.

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14.

Isocrates emphasized that students needed three things to learn: a natural aptitude which was inborn, knowledge training granted by teachers and textbooks, and applied practices designed by educators.

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15.

Isocrates stressed civic education, training students to serve the state.

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16.

Isocrates considered natural ability and practice to be more important than rules or principles of rhetoric.

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17.

Isocrates's school lasted for over fifty years, in many ways establishing the core of liberal arts education as we know it today, including oratory, composition, history, citizenship, culture, and morality.

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18.

Isocrates encouraged his students to wander and observe public behavior in the city to learn through imitation.

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19.

Isocrates saw the ideal orator as someone who must possess not only rhetorical gifts, but a wide knowledge of philosophy, science, and the arts.

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20.

Isocrates promoted the Greek ideals of freedom, self-control, and virtue; in this, he influenced several Roman rhetoricians, such as Cicero and Quintilian, and influenced the core concepts of liberal arts education.

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21.

The earliest manuscripts dated from the ninth or tenth century, until fourth century copies of Isocrates' first three orations were found in a single codex during a 1990's excavation at Kellis, a site in the Dakhla Oasis of Egypt.

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22.

Isocrates is said to have compiled a treatise, the Art of Rhetoric, but there is no known copy.

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23.

Isocrates wrote a collection of ten known orations, three of which were directed to the rulers of Salamis on Cyprus.

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24.

Isocrates concludes with the notion that, in finding the happy mean, it is better to fall short than to go to excess.

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25.

Isocrates again stresses that the surest sign of good understanding is education and the ability to speak well.

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26.

Isocrates makes a point in stating that courage and cleverness are not always good, but moderation and justice are.

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27.

Isocrates uncritically applauds Euagoras for forcibly taking the throne of Salamis and continuing rule until his assassination in 374 BC.

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28.

Two years after his completion of the three orations, Isocrates wrote an oration for Archidamus, the prince of Sparta.

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29.

Isocrates considered the settling of the Thebans colonists in Messene a violation of the Peace of Antalcidas.

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30.

Isocrates believed justice was most important, which secured the Spartan laws but he did not seem to recognize the rights of the Helots.

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31.

Ten years later Isocrates wrote a letter to Archidamus, now the king of Sparta, urging him to reconcile the Greeks, stopping their wars with each other so that they could end the insolence of the Persians.

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32.

Isocrates wrote this speech for the reading public, asking that both sides be given an unbiased hearing.

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33.

Isocrates criticized the flatterers who had brought ruin to their public affairs.

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34.

Isocrates' work has been described as proto-Pragmatist, owing to his assertion that rhetoric makes use of probable knowledge with the aim resolving real problems in the world.

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35.

In Panathenaicus, Isocrates argues with a student about the literacy of the Spartans.

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36.

Isocrates is warning his fellow Greeks that it is not enough for them to be of Greek blood; they need a proper Greek education as well, lest their culture be overtaken by barbarians.

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37.

Some claim that Isocrates was merely making an appeal to unite all Hellenes under the hegemony of Athens in a crusade against the Persians (rather than their customary fighting amongst themselves).

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38.

That is, Isocrates was referring to Athenian culture and was not extending the appellation "Hellene" to non-Greeks.

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