Isocrates, the Athenian, who was born 436 B.C. and died 338 B.C., represents the perfection of 'epideictic' oratory—i.e. oratory in which form and literary finish count for everything, and matter for very little. Oratory, as a department of literature, was in Athens the outcome of that growth of litigiousness and development of the law-courts which characterised Athens from about the beginning of the Peloponnesian wars. The consequent necessity under which every Athenian was of being able to defend himself in a court of law first fostered the rise of a class of men—the Sophists—who professed to teach the art of argument, even to the extent of making the worse appear the better cause; and next, as the literary taste of Athenian juries increased, fostered the rise of a class who professed to teach the art of literary form, and who taught by example rather than precept. Hence 'epideictic' oratory, show-speeches. Such teachers of rhetoric have existed in other countries, but at no place and in no age have they reached the artistic excellence of Isocrates. This is partly due to the fact that, owing to the peculiar circumstances just explained, teachers of rhetoric in Athens at this time could gain the ear of the public, whilst elsewhere and at other times the teacher's audience has consisted of his pupils, and he has lacked the stimulus and the corrective of competent criticism. But though the hour had come, it might have sounded in vain had not the man been there. A brief summary of Isocrates' life will show that nature had designed him for his work. If his speeches are deficient in practicality to an extent that has irritated Niebuhr for instance, it is because Isocrates was himself so utterly unpractical. The son of a prosperous flute-maker, Isocrates received an excellent education, and in his youth heard the show-speeches made at Athens by the earliest epideictic orator, Gorgias. He also listened to the lectures of the philosopher Prodicus, and joined the circle of Socrates. But he only coquetted with philosophy, and though in the Phaedrus of Plato Socrates expresses the highest expectations of him, Isocrates abandoned philosophy. He then took to speech-writing as a profession, but he had none of the talents required in the composition of speeches having such a practical object as that of winning a case in a law-court. After trying his hand at six such speeches (402-393 B.C.) he abandoned logography. If he failed in writing practical speeches to be delivered by others, he was still less adapted by nature to deliver his own speeches himself and follow a political career; his voice was too feeble, and he was much too nervous. Other people since Isocrates having failed in other pursuits have betaken themselves to schoolmastering, but Isocrates deserves the credit of having been the first to discover this resource. About 390 B.C. he set up as a teacher of oratory, though he did indeed profess, in the speech which served as his prospectus (Against the Sophists), to give a general practical education. In his prospectus he was careful to distinguish himself from such shallow pretenders as the Sophists on the one hand, and on the other from such unpractical teachers as philosophers. This sample of his skill as an artist in words, though it drew from Plato (Euthydemus, 304, D) some contemptuous animadversions on the little knowledge of certain persons who cultivate the domain intermediate between philosophy and politics, succeeded in drawing to him pupils who subsequently became distinguished, statesmen such as Timotheus and Laodamas, historians such as Ephorus and Theopompus, orators such as Isæus, Lycurgus, Æschines, and Hyperides. Pupils paid him 1000 drachmæ, and were put by him through a course of three or four years' duration. He himself composed model speeches for them, such as the Panegyricus (about 380 B.C.) and the Platæicus (373), and corrected the oratorical exercises composed by them. But he also wrote speeches intended to be practical: one of them, the Archidamus (365 B.C.), may actually have been composed for and delivered by the Spartan king, Archidamus, but the majority, for instance the Symmachicus (357 or 355 B.C.), the Arcepagiticus (about 354 B.C.), the Panatheneius (342-339), and the letters to Philip of Macedon, were not designed to be delivered but to be circulated and read—they are in fact the earliest political pamphlets known. As a politician, or rather a would-be politician, Isocrates has only one idea, and that an utterly impracticable one—to unite all Greeks together in a joint attack upon the common foe, Persia. The practical commentary on this ridiculous Pan-Hellenistic panacea was the destruction of Greek freedom on the field of Chæronea by the very Philip to whom Isocrates looked to make his nostrum effective. 'That dishonest victory,' in the words of Milton, 'killed with report that old man eloquent.' Isocrates did indeed die shortly after the news of the battle at the age of ninety-four, but it may be doubted whether it was the news that killed the schoolmaster. Unpractical Isocrates certainly was. Alexander conquered Asia in less time than it took Isocrates to write a single speech (the Panegyricus). But it was this very characteristic which made the oratory of Isocrates what it is. And Milton's tribute to him may serve to remind us that, in the opinion of all competent judges, for melody, artistic merit, perfection of form and literary finish, Isocrates stands unrivalled. He has of course the defects of his qualities. His work may be finished, but it is undeniably laboured. He may have melody, but it is apt to become monotonous. He is always smooth, even where he ought to be stormy. Such perfection of form as he attained could only be produced by an artist who was willing to sacrifice everything else to it, and Isocrates by nature did readily incline to do so. A few obvious generalities and a few moral sentiments were all that he required in the way of matter for a speech—indeed for many speeches. The result is that having read one of his speeches you have read all. The truths of morality are indeed eternal, but they will not bear eternal repetition. Had but one of his speeches survived, his poverty of thought would never have been discovered, but fate with cruel kindness has preserved nearly everything he ever wrote. But if Isocrates is too beautiful to be absolutely perfect himself, we must not forget that to appreciate his services to Greek literature we must not consider him apart from the history of Greek oratory. He demonstrated once and for all, and at precisely the time when the demonstration was necessary, that prose as well as poetry may have an artistic beauty, may have rhythm, flow, and melody of its own. It was worth a lifetime's labour to effect this; and if it was only in Demosthenes that this outward beauty came to be wedded with nobler and with manlier qualities, let us remember that it were as vain to expect the fruit without the blossom as to imagine that we could have had Demosthenes without Isocrates.
The first edition was printed at Milan in 1493. The best edition of the text is that in the Teubner series. There are excellent English notes on the Demonicus and Panegyricus by J. E. Sandys, German notes by Rauchenstein on the latter and the Arcepagiticus. There is an English translation by Freere (1894 et seq.).