38 Facts About Isocrates

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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).

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