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Home  »  library  »  BIOS  »  Isocrates (436–338 B.C.)

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Isocrates (436–338 B.C.)

Isocrates (ī-sok’ra-tēs). A Greek orator and rhetorician; born in Athens in 436 B.C.; died at Athens (?), 338 B.C. He was apparently carefully educated, Socrates having been of the number of his preceptors; and at an early age he was celebrated for the facility with which he used his native tongue, although the weakness of his voice precluded hope of distinction in public life. He therefore opened a school of oratory, the fame of which soon filled all Greece, in consequence of the exceptional attainments of its graduates. The ages have spared to us twenty-one of his compositions, rhetorical and epistolary. He is best represented by the discourses known as the ‘Areopagiticus’ and the ‘Panegyricus.’