Ἰσοκράτης

Isocrates, Isokrates

Translated by Malcolm Heath20 Oct 2000Vetting: high10 revisions

9 notes · 88 words

Son of Amyclas the philosopher, of Apollonia in Pontus¹ (or Heraclea, according to Callistratus); the orator.² Pupil and successor of the great Isocrates;³ he also studied with the philosopher Plato. This Isocrates took part in a rhetorical contest with Theodectes, the orator and tragic poet,⁴ and Theopompus of Chios,⁵ and also with Erythraeus of Naucratis,⁶ to give the funeral speech for Mausolus, the king of Halicarnassus.⁷ His speeches are five: Amphictyonic Speech; Protreptic; On Not Making a Tomb for Philip;⁸ On Being Resettled;⁹ On His Own Political Career¹⁰.

Notes (9)

This Isocrates is not in the OCD (or the RE). He was also known simply as the Apollonian. See theta 138; Harpocration s.v. e)pakto\s o(/rkos.
([1] Ignore this automatic link, which refers to the Illyrian Apollonia.)

2Or (with Adler's punctuation) 'according to Callistratus the rhetor'; but this epithet (applied to the Athenian orator mentioned e.g. in delta 454) is not appropriate for the historian of Heraclea (RE Kallistratos (39); FGrH 433), and is not applied to him in phi 393. ↩

3[iota 652] Isocrates. See Speusippus, Letter to Philip 11, 14. ↩

4[theta 138] Theodectes. ↩

5[theta 172] Theopompus. ↩

6An error for Naucrates of Erythrae (RE Naukrates (2)). ↩

7The funeral games for Mausolus were held in 353. See Flower pp.56-57. The pseudo-Plutarchean Lives of the Ten Orators claims (838b) that it was the more famous Isocrates who engaged in this competition. ↩

8Boehnecke [Bd.1 p.477] deduced from the title that this work was an attack on Philip II of Macedon, whose memory the Apollonian sought to suppress by arguing that no tomb should be erected to honor him. The Apollonian was motivated by the love he bore Isocrates, whose cherished hopes of Philip had been dashed at Chaeronea. Preferable, however, is the interpretation of Sykutris (Bickermann and Sykutris p.74) that sees the work as praising Philip's achievements in order to render his reputation immortal, as Isocrates foreshadowed in his address To Philip, 134, 143. See web address 1 and web address 2 ↩

9Blass (pp.449-450) deduced that Amyclas had been banished from Heraclea by the tyrant Clearchus and went with his son to live in Apollonia. Perhaps the title of this work refers to the resettlement of the family in Apollonia. Blass felt that the work may be the same as the peri\ tou= katoikismou= *milhsi/ois falsely attributed to Isocrates the Athenian. Apollonia was a Milesian colony. ↩

10Or On the government of his own city ; the word po/lews being understood after e(autou=. The Greeks did not usually encourage autobiographical works as they were considered a form of self-glorification (periautologia).

Ἰσοκράτης

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Greek original · Adler’s text

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Greek original · Adler’s text

Notes (9)

References

External resources

Neighbouring entries