Isocrates: Speeches I

Panegyricus
and
Philippus
Isocrates
Translated from the Greek by George Norlin
(Loeb Classical Library, 1928) [380 BC; 342 BC]
226 p.

Oratory is not an art that flourishes in our own time, and, perhaps in consequence, I find it difficult to judge good from mediocre on this terrain. Isocrates was an Athenian orator — a contemporary of Plato, more or less — who gained a sterling reputation in his time, and his later admirers have preserved for us about twenty speeches and a handful of letters. As part of an ongoing reading project in Greek literature and history, I thought I would pluck a few samples.

The Panegyricus is a speech given in Athens in order to try to convince the Athenians to ally with the Spartans in an attack on Persia. Isocrates believed that the sally of the Ten Thousand had demonstrated, among other things, that the Great King was vulnerable and not so great as he was reputed. An alliance, he thought, would have the benefit of uniting Greece against a common enemy, healing the wounds of the Peloponnesian War, and then, in their victory, conferring great glory upon the Hellenes.

The speech was, from a certain point of view, a success, for he tells us in a later speech To Philip that “even my detractors imitate and admire it”, but in a larger sense it was a failure, because the Athenians listened more to his manner than his matter, caring, he says, “less for what I said than for the ravings of the platform orators”. Nonetheless, let’s take a look inside.

Much of the speech is occupied with recalling the glorious achievements of the Greeks of earlier times, and especially of the Athenians. Isocrates wants to praise principally their cultural achievements and their military triumphs. Of the former, he sees Athens’ primary discovery and gift to the world to have been philosophy:

Philosophy, … which has educated us for public affairs and made us gentle towards each other, which has distinguished between the misfortunes that are due to ignorance and those which spring from necessity, and taught us to guard against the former and to bear the latter nobly — philosophy, I say, was given to the world by our city.

It’s not entirely clear to me just what he means by “philosophy” here; perhaps mostly the pre-Socratics, since Plato was just then beginning to write. He seems to have in mind moral counsel more than high metaphysics, but the point still stands: the Greeks applied reason to life in a particularly clear and fruitful way. Philosophy, he saw, had the capacity to transform life, and was a truly revolutionary gift to the world:

If all the athletes should acquire twice the strength which they now possess, the rest of the world would be no better off; but let a single man attain to wisdom, and all men will reap the benefit who are willing to share his insight.

Furthermore, this gift is so characteristically Greek, while being of universal value, that those who inherit it from them become, in a sense, themselves akin to the Greeks:

So far has our city distanced the rest of mankind in thought and in speech that her pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world; and she has brought it about that the name Hellenes suggests no longer a race but an intelligence, and that the title Hellenes is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood.

He might have been speaking of us.

But Greece was great not only because of the good things that she cultivated, but also because of the bad things that she repelled — specifically, the Persians. Isocrates looks back at those heroic days when Greece, and, not to put too fine a point on it, Athens repelled Xerxes and his vast armies against the odds. This excerpt is a bit long but captures, maybe, some of Isocrates’ rhetorical power:

What words can match the measure of such men, who so far surpassed the members of the expedition against Troy that, whereas the latter consumed ten years beleaguering a single city they, in a short space of time, completely defeated the forces that had been collected from all Asia, and not only saved their own countries but liberated the whole of Hellas as well?

For when all the allies were in a state of dejection, and the Peloponnesians were fortifying the Isthmus and selfishly seeking their own safety; when the other states had submitted to the barbarians and were fighting on the Persian side, save only those which were overlooked because of their insignificance; when twelve hundred ships of war were bearing down upon them, and an innumerable army was on the point of invading Attica; when no light of deliverance could be glimpsed in any quarter, but, on the contrary, the Athenians had been abandoned by their allies and cheated of their every hope; and when it lay in their power not only to escape from their present dangers but also to enjoy the signal honors which the King held out to them, since he conceived that if he could get the support of the Athenian fleet he could at once become master of the Peloponnesus also, then our ancestors scorned to accept his gifts; nor did they give way to anger against the Hellenes for having betrayed them and rush gladly to make terms with the barbarians; nay, by themselves they made ready to battle for freedom, while they forgave the rest for choosing bondage. For they considered that while it was natural for the weaker states to seek their security by every means, it was not possible for those states which asserted their right to stand at the head of Hellas to avoid the perils of war; on the contrary, they believed that just as it is preferable for men who are honorable to die nobly rather than to live in disgrace, so too it is better for cities which are illustrious to be blotted out from the sight of mankind rather than to be seen in a state of bondage.

Those are stirring thoughts, and high ideals for the Athenians to live up to. And having stoked those fires, Isocrates exhorts his fellow citizens to turn their eyes toward Persia again, a kingdom grown soft and easy, too large and too loose to really inspire the hearts of its people, and ripe for plucking. Indeed, what other venture could better suit the Greek temper?

For against whom, pray, ought men to wage war who crave no aggrandizement, but look to the claims of justice alone? Is it not against those who in the past have injured Hellas, and are now plotting against her, and have always been so disposed towards us? And against whom should we expect men to direct their envy who, while not wholly lacking in courage, yet curb this feeling with prudence? Is it not against those who have compassed powers that are too great for man, and yet are less deserving than those who are unfortunate among us? And against whom should those take the field who both desire to serve their gods and are at the same time intent on their own advantage? Is it not against those who are both their natural enemies and their hereditary foes, who have acquired the greatest possessions and are yet, of all men, the least able to defend them? Do not the Persians, then, fulfill all these conditions?

*

A second speech, To Philip, is on the same theme, but this time is a written address intended for Philip of Macedon, the leader of the greatest regional Greek power of the time. Isocrates argues that Philip is the only one with the power and the wealth to “champion the cause of concord among the Hellenes and of a campaign against the barbarian”. He argues that Philip has the diplomatic finesse to bring Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Argos together, and that, so united, they could together take down Persia rather easily.

Isocrates’ dream was not realized, not in his lifetime, at least. But be careful what you wish for, because Philip had, I expect, rather different ideas about what unifying Greece should look like. Rather than persuasion he thought it better to use force.

I wonder if Isocrates’ speech might have had some effect, later, on Philip’s ambitious son? The kingdom of Persia was indeed a tempting prize, and Isocrates was proved right in his assessment of the Great King’s inability to withstand attack. I simply don’t know if Alexander knew of Isocrates.

*

Two interesting speeches, then, but, as I said earlier, I find it hard to judge if they are five-star speeches or just three-star speeches. I’m not even sure what to be looking at: the logical or rhetorical structure? the rhetorical embellishments? the beauty of the language? These latter features, if they are present, are inevitably obscured by the process of translation. Some introductory notes to my volume speak of Isocrates’ “remarkable power of grasping a complex subject, of articulating it distinctly, of treating it, not merely with effect but luminously, at once in its widest bearings and in its most intricate details.”  That goes to structure and logic. But he was also praised for his style — “the first Greek who worked out the idea of a prose rhythm” — and was. on such grounds. reputed to be a great influence on Cicero’s Latin. Perhaps it is so.

I believe I’ll linger a little longer with Isocrates, perhaps reading another speech or two before I move on.

*

[On hearing vs reading a speech]
“When a discourse is robbed of the prestige of the speaker, the tones of his voice, the variations which are made in the delivery, and, besides, of the advantages of timeliness and keen interest in the subject matter; when it has not a single accessory to support its contentions and enforce its plea, but is deserted and stripped of all the aids which I have mentioned; and when someone reads it aloud without persuasiveness and without putting any personal feeling into it, but as though he were repeating a table of figures,— in these circumstances it is natural, I think, that it should make an indifferent impression upon its hearers. And these are the very circumstances which may detract most seriously also from the discourse which is now presented to you and cause it to impress you as a very indifferent performance; the more so since I have not adorned it with the rhythmic flow and manifold graces of style which I myself employed when I was younger and taught by example to others as a means by which they might make their oratory more pleasing and at the same time more convincing. For I have now no longer any capacity for these things because of my years.” (To Philip)