"Phaedrus" 279A: The Praise of Isocrates Coulter, James A Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Fall 1967; 8, 3; ProQuest pg. 225

Phaedrus 279 A: The Praise of Isocrates 
James A. Coulter 

I s SOCRATES' praise of Isocrates at the end of the Phaedrus sincere? 
There is no unanimity, but many are inclined to take plato at his 
word.1 For Isocrates was no ordinary rhetorician or logographer; 

one can discern in him a clear propensity to general, if not to profound, 
speculation. But this very exactitude of Socrates' characterization has 
misled. Scholars, taking a false cue from Plato, have in general been 
led to emphasize the superficial similarities between his point of view 
and Isocrates', and to overlook or minimize irreconcilable points of 
difference. More important, not all evidence has been assembled 
which bears on the question of whether, in the context of the entire 
last portion of the dialogue, Socrates' words could possibly have been 
taken by contemporary readers as without irony (in the modern, not 
Socratic sense of the word). For a characterization of another, although 
it contains nothing but "praise," may be composed of such elements 
as are known will infuriate the recipient. The vain, and Isocrates 
indubitably was such, must be praised in a way which satisfies their 
own expectations, contains no jarring nuances, and corresponds to 
their own over-nourished image of self. In praising Isocrates one would 
surely have had to say the right things. To show that the final scene 
of the Phaedrus contains some wrong things which have been generally 
overlooked is the purpose of this brief study. 

The most successful recent attempts to show that on grounds of the 
sheer irreconcilability of the views of plato and Isocrates about rhetoric 
it is most unlikely that we should take Socrates' encomium seriously 
are those of Howland, de Vries, Raeder and Buchheit.2 Even here, 
however, the case lacks final cogency, since, while it is clear that 

1 See the bibliography in V. Buchheit, Untersuchungen zur Theorie des Genos Epideiktikon 
(Munich 1960) 232. 

2 R. L. Howland, "The Attack on Isocrates in the Phaedrus," CQ 31 (1937) 151-9; G. J. de 
Vries, "Isocrates' Reaction to the Phaedrus," Mnemosyne 6 (1953) 39-45; Hans Raeder, "Pla­
ton und die Rhetoren," Filosofiske Meddelelser: Kong. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab 2 no.6 
(1956) 10--7; V. Buchheit, op.cit. (supra n.l) 90--108 passim, 232-3. Paul Friedlander, Platon III 
(Berlin 1960) 221, disagrees to a greater or less extent with the views of these scholars and 

225 



226 PHAEDRUS 279A: THE PRAISE OF ISOCRATES 

Plato ca. 370-365 B.C. disagreed in almost all basic matters with the 
theory of rhetorical education that Isocrates had been advertizing for 
the past twenty years or so, it is also just conceivable that Socrates' 
words of praise, set in the time of Isocrates' youth, were intended to 
convey a poignant sense of lost opportunities. Isocrates, so unlike 
Alcibiades in other respects, would be like him in that he also mis­
used rare gifts. On this view, the implicit attack on the Isocrates of the 
370's throughout the second half of the Phaedrus would be unam­
biguous, but so too would the encomium of the closing scene. It would 
not be routine praise, but it would at least not have been conceived 
with inimical intent. Such an attitude on the part of plato would be a 
complex one, made up of intellectual dissent tempered by compas­
sion. Can such a conception stand? In my opinion, it cannot. The 
evidence suggests, almost to a certainty, that it was Plato's intention to 

wound someone he found vain and tiresome through a complex of 
allusions that were unmistakably hostile in their connotations and 
dearly designed to hurt. Indeed, Isocrates, who habitually responded 
to criticism with considerable petulance, was just the sort of victim 
one finds irresistible. 

Buchheit in an appendix (232-33) to his study on the theory of the 
epideictic genos in the fifth and fourth centuries argues briefly a point 
which will stand as our first piece of evidence. These arguments, as 
well as some of my own, are as follows. At the time of the composition 
of the Phaedrus (ca. 375-365), Isocrates was already about seventy years 
old, an author of great reputation and even greater pretensions: be­
hind him were the Panegyricus and the Plataicus, and his influence as the 
head of an important school was great. He possessed a clear confidence 
in the rightness and importance of his ideas, which he had brought 
before the public in a series of influential works, although the final, 
most profound statement of his own philosophia was not to appear 
until some fifteen years later with the publication of the Antidosis. 
And one point to which he recurred was his unambiguous view that 
the sort of philosophy, i.e. logic, epistemology and metaphysics, 

sees Plato as extending to Isocrates praise, which though conditioned by Plato's belief in the 
superiority of dialectic over rhetoric, is still sincere and well intentioned. 

This is not the place to attempt to argue the matter out. The hypothesis on which I shall 
proceed is that Howland et al. are correct. And if the evidence presented here is convincing, 
it will serve, in turn, to reinforce the hypothesis on which it was based. This is good Platonic 
method. 



JAMES A. COULTER 227 

practiced by Antisthenes and Plato was virtually useless. As illustra­
tion, one passage may serve (Helena 5):3 KP€tTT6v JUT£ 7T€P~ TWV XPTJUL/LWV 

• ~ '" i:.'y " \ ~ " , Q~ " e €7TL€LKW~ OOsa~€LV TJ 7T€PL TWV aXPTJuTwV aKpLt-'w~ €7TLUTau aL. 

If one keeps this in mind, and recalls that Socrates predicts that the 
young Isocrates will make a great mark, provided he gives free play 
to his natural aptitude for philosophy-the very kind of philosophy 
Isocrates so often rejected, since Socrates clearly means «serious" 
philosophy, i.e. dialectic-we must surely suppose that Isocrates, as he 
read this, was angered and offended.4 Anyone would have been. It 
was the same as to say that one had not turned out in a way one 
should have in order to merit praise. For Isocrates to be patronized in 
this way, to be found fault with, by implication, because he had not 
pursued what he so often rejected, and, on top of it all, to be taunted 

I Compare. for example. the Antidosis of about thirty years later (258-69). There Isocrates 
magnanimously allows that there is some value in the study of dialectic. mathematics and 
the like. but only as propaideutic studies. 

4 This interpretation depends on the reading of B. fi'n fl. which. for the reasons which 
follow. seems beyond much doubt to be the correct one. The alternative reading, En Tf fl. 
must, I think, be deemed impossible, since it implies, in the form of a vatieinium ex eventu, 
that Isocrates, having written speeches far superior to any others, and it is surely such 
speeches as Contra Sophisms and Panegyricus which are meant (see below), became dissatisfied 
(!) with his work and was inspired to greater things. This interpretation cannot be taken 
seriously, unless the implausible expedient is employed of taking the first part of the 
sentence as a description after the event of what did happen, and the second as a descrip­
tion of what did not happen, or might yet happen (cf R. Hackforth, Plato's Phaedrus [Cam­
bridge 1952] 168). It is, however, as impossible for a modern reader ofIsocrates as it was for 
Plato to imagine that Isocrates was often dissatisfied with what he had written. much less 
with a work like the Panegyric us , passages from which he quoted in extenso twenty-five years 
later in the Antidosis. Surely Plato's point (reading B) is that Isocrates never did become 
dissatisfied and turn to more serious matters. such as a study of dialectic, on which a more 
profound rhetoric might be based. The contingency denoted by the fl atiTcti p.~ a7r0XP-rlaa£ 
never arose. Thomson's excellent note ad loe. properly points out that our oldest witness 
to the text, Cicero's translation at Orator 13.41, clearly presupposes the reading ofB. There 
is another important question. To what class of Isocrates' composition is Plato alluding 
when he speaks of TOU, '\6you, oC, "i}v J7r£XHpfii? It is barely possible that Plato, adhering to 
the dramatic date of the dialogue, has in mind Isocrates' early forensic speeches, some of 
which were written before 400. It could then be said that Isocrates became dissatisfied with 
these and turned to his own distinctive kind of oratory. Perhaps. But it is then extremely 
difficult to see why Plato should have praised Isocrates' forensiC speeches in such an exag­
gerated way. The natural interpretation is to see a reference, despite the anachronism, to 
the series of works which began with Contra Sophistas in ca. 390. It is worth noting that 
Isocrates himself often alludes to the superiority of his work and that in this context 
3,at$'pw is a favorite word (e.g. Pan. 4). Is Plato joking here too? 

S-G·R.B.S. 



228 PHAEDRUS 279A: THE PRAISE OF ISOCRATES 

with the word, philosophia, which was the very one he had chosen as a 
general term for his ideal of rhetorical education, all this cannot 
reasonably be construed as anything but an intentional insult. To 
assume otherwise would be to attribute to plato an obtuse lack of tact 
which is entirely inconsistent with the clearly discernible qualities of 
his mind. If Socrates' remarks have mockingly condescending under­
tones, as they surely do, we must, I think, assume that this stemmed 
from no unintended lapse in courtesy. 

So much for Buchheit's point. Unsupported, it is perhaps not yet 
absolutely cogent, since as we noted it may still be argued, against all 
likelihood, that although condescension may be discerned, it is a 
condescension not of hostility but of pity or superior wisdom. We 
may react uncomfortably, and perhaps Isocrates did, but this does 
not prove that plato aimed at such an effect.5 In view of the tenacity 
of this sort of interpretation, we must consider two other pieces of 
evidence whose relevance has not yet, to my knowledge, been satis­
factorily exploited. These bear on Isocrates' relationship to two con­
temporaries whom we know that he found vexatious, Alddamas and 
Antisthenes. 

Alddamas, the pupil of Gorgias, was one of the competitors with 
whom Isocrates had to contend at the beginning of his career as a 
eacher of rhetoric. The work of Alddamas which is relevant here is 

his treatise IIEp~ TWV U0cP'UTWV; with its attack on those who endlessly 
polished their speeches and were without skill in public improviza­
tion, it was primarily directed against Isocrates.s And we have a 
probable terminus ante quem, since it is all but certain that it is to 
Alddamas that Isocrates addresses his angry words of self-defence in 
the prologue to the Panegyricus, a work which was completed by 
380.7 It is also likely that Alddamas' treatise was preceded by 

Ii This is Klaus Ries' view, Isokrates und Platon im Ringen um die Philosophia (Diss. Munich 
1959) 161. Ries is not unaware of the condescending character of Plato's position, but shows 
nevertheless some vexation that Isocrates did not react to Plato's offer in a more kindly 
and cooperative spirit. Perhaps Isocrates knew better than some modern scholars what 
Plato was really about. See W. Burkert's remarks, Gnomon 33 (1961) 352-3. 

• The text of this work is conveniently available in L. Radermacher's Artium Scriptores 
(Vienna 1951) 135-41. 

7 The critics are referred to anonymously, as was the custom. The point of censure, 
however, to which Isocrates replies is in general that of Alddamas' treatise, i.e. that those 
who spend too much time on perfecting their written speeches are at fault. More pre­
cisely. Isocrates counters with a criticism which exactly reflects Alddamas' position. Those 
who chastise him are guilty, he says, of a serious error in that they hold up as models 



JAMES A. COULTER 229 

Isocrates' Contra Sophistas, and that it was an answer to this, an essay in 
self-justification, in which Alcidamas attempted to reply to Isocrates' 
criticism of the rhetoricians.s The grounds for supposing the priority 
of Isocrates' Contra Sophistas are that Alcidamas, in the final section 
of his work, makes taunting use of a phrase which appears to have 
been coined by Isocrates and is found for the first time in Contra 
Sophistas. The phrase is '\6ywv 7TOt1]T~S, rather pretentiously used for 
the more usual '\0Y07TOtOS' or '\oyoypacpoS', in the sense of <writer of 
speeches'. At §34 (cf §§2 and 12) Alcidamas scornfully contrasts with a 
P-1TWP 8€WdS, such as himself, the laborious composer, whom he calls 
the 7TOt1]T"f]S' '\6ywv. 

This phrase, as was suggested, was coined by Isocrates, and it would 
appear that Alcidamas, perhaps struck by its oddity and suspecting 
that Isocrates was likely to be proud of it, seized upon it and turned it 
with sarcasm against its inventor. It may, of course, be argued that 
Alcidamas' work preceded Contra Sophistas and that he, not Isocrates, 
was the inventor, or was merely drawing upon a common phrase 
which is unattested in the extant literature. There is, however, one 
consideration which reinforces our argument. If Alcidamas' work was 
prior, it is improbable that Isocrates, preternaturally sensitive to 
criticism, would have used what was by then a painful expression in 
the off-hand and complimentary way that he does. Of the two pas­
sages, it is Alcidamas' which is the more pointed, and if we assume, as 
we must, a close familiarity on the part of each man with the other's 
work, it is more reasonable to suppose that it is Alcidamas who is 
attempting to nettle Isocrates than that the latter should have been 
capable of using, in so undramatic a way, a phrase which had been 

speeches which have been written for the courtroom; their notions of excellence are thus 
based on the demands of forensic oratory. This is, in fact. a major point in Alcidamas' 
critique ofIsocrates. Isocrates, who was by this time no longer a logographer, was right to 
object to its irrelevance. 

S It is conceivable that Isocrates. in his condemnation (§§12-I3) of those who think of 
rhetoric as a "fixed art" made up of unchangeable "elements", had Alcidamas, among 
others, in mind. For despite points of agreement in the positions of the two rhetoricians, 
it might just be that Alcidamas' theory of av.roGX£1)uxap.ol. £711. TWV £v8up:11JLaTWv (§lS) was 
misunderstood or misinterpreted by Isocrates as being a mechanical deployment of such 
elements (here. EvOvJL~JLaTa). Or it is possible that Alcidamas, who was himself not without 
vanity (ef §§2. 32, 34), saw a reference to himself in Isocratcs' broad3iJc. It is mo:;t likely 
of all of course that A1cidamas, as rhetorician, fdt obliged to reply to Isocratcs' Progrum­
schrift; cf. Miinscher, RE 9.2 (1916) 2176-7 S.V. ISOKRATES. 



230 PHAEDRUS 279A: THE PRAISE OF !SOCRATES 

applied in a mordant fashion to writers such as himself. Indeed, 
Isocrates never does use the phrase again-I should suggest out of 
pique-with the single exception of a passage in the Antidosis of some 
thirty years later.' 

There is further evidence in support of this view which suggests 
that the phrase 1ToL'T}'TTJr; '\6ywv, now charged with a certain unmis­
takable nuance, had become a current element in the ironic banter of 
Athenian intellectual life of the 380's. The well-known passage in the 
Euthydemus (304c-306c), of about this date, describes someone whose 
intellectual position is compounded of what seemed to Plato a futile 
mixture of philosophy and politics, and who was a despiser of dialectic 
but also a despiser of the rhetoricians. This, of course, is precisely the 
position of Isocrates in Contra Sophistas. Now what makes the 
supposition likely that Plato is not drawing upon his general 
knowledge of Isocrates' position but is alluding to precisely this work, 
is the form of the question that Socrates puts to Crito about his 
anonymous interlocutor.1o Is he, Socrates asks, 'TWV aywvlaaa8a, 
SELVWV €V 'Toir; StKaa'T'T}ploLr;, P~'Twp 'TLr;, or is he a 1TOt'T}~r; 'TWV '\&ywv? 
In view of what has been said, this ought, I think, to be taken as a clear 
allusion to Isocrates' work. Crito's interlocutor, moreover, is called 
"one of those who attack the rhetoricians, an artificer of words with 
whom the rhetoricians contend." All of this is as precise a reference 
as we might wish to the Contra Sophistas, both as regards that work's 
polemical character and the curious phrase picked up by Alcidamas. 

But it is not only to Isocrates' polemical activity that plato alludes, 
for he speaks also of the rhetoricians, in their tum, as contending with 
the likes of this anonymous figure. Does plato here have Alcidamas' 
work spedficall y in mind? That the treatise II EP' 'TWV aogJLa'Twv was a 
work which falls under Plato's general description is obvious. But 
there is also evidence that Plato, at the time of the Euthydemus, was 
already familiar with Alcidamas' treatise; that he knew it later is 
clear from the Phaedrus, as we shall see. 

In the first place, a precise point in the IIEp' 'TWV aocpLa'TWV is paral­
leled in the Euthydemus (306A-C), and that is that such men as our 
anonymous interlocutor-and it is surely, above all, if not exclusively, 

11 Antidosis 192. The phrase has a sense very close to that in which Alcidamas uses it, i.e., 
a merely "literary" orator, with no skill in public speaking. It is difficult to explain this 
'conciliatory gesture, except to observe that it is not unique; if. supra n.3. 

10 See Ries, op.cit. (supra n.5) 35-46, for further evidence for the priority of Contra $ophistas. 



JAMES A. COULTER 231 

Isocrates who is intended-occupy the mid-ground between philo­
sophy and rhetoric, and in trying to combine these two pursuits, and 
thus surpass both the philosophers and the rhetoricians, they instead 
fall somewhere between: wishing to be first, they end up third. So, 
too, Alddamas (§Z), HI have written this work because I am convinced 
that men who squander their lives on writing speeches with great 
care are completely deficient in both rhetoric and philosophy." To be 
sure, what Alcidamas means by philosophia will be something dif­
ferent from what plato means. Now, Alcidamas is, I should suggest, 
referring to Isocrates' words at the end of Contra Sophistas. There, 
Isocrates, after an acerbic attack on the rhetoricians, makes the pom­
pous claim for his philosophia that it will, in fact, improve his students' 
morals even sooner than it will perfect their rhetorical skill. Did 
Alcidamas, who was, after all, a student of Gorgias,n find this confu­
sion of rhetoric with philosophia, i.e. general intellectual and moral 
culture, rather absurd? Alcidamas, rejecting Isocrates' profession to 
improve the morals of his students by his philosophia, and at the same 
time finding Isocrates lacking in what he considered the true skills of 
rhetoric, could well have said of him that he was <C deficient in both 
philosophy and rhetoric." 

It might, of course, be argued that the Euthydemus preceded Alci­
damas' treatise and that Alcidamas saw through, as anyone of the time 
would have, the anonymous interlocutor, and parrotted Socrates' 
condemnation. Possibly. But a sentence elsewhere in this same pas­
sage suggests that Plato, not Alcidamas, was the borrower. 

It should first of all be made clear that even though Plato may have 
shared Alcidamas' annoyance with Isocrates' pretensions, it does not 
follow from my suggestion that he approved of the rhetorical theory 
of Alcidamas or of the general aims of rhetoric. It is, in fact, certain 
that he did not. In this small sally against Isocrates in the Euthydemus 
Alcidamas' views are something which plato exploits, but infuses 
with quite a different meaning. This, as we shall see later, he also does 
in the Phaedrus. For Plato, at the same time he is laughing at Isocrates 
with Alcidamas, will also be laughing at Alcidamas. <CHow presump­
tuous of you, Alcidamas, to say that Isocrates is without philosophy. 
Do you know what philosophy is?" If this hypothesis is correct, in the 
passage cited above (305B) we can see an allusion to Alcidamas' 

.. . 
11 See especially GQrgia~' deprecating remarks on the pretensions of sophists to teach 

virtue, Meno 95c, 



232 PHAEDRUS 279A: THE PRAISE OF ISOCRATES 

pretentious and self-laudatory final words, OCl'rL~ o~v E7n()vJL€i P"1TWP 
'() ~ \ '\\\ \ \ \' f , \ Y€V€O' <XL O€WO~ <XI\I\<X JL'Y} 7TOL'Y}TTJ~ I\O')IWV LK<XVO~, KTI\. 

If we are to posit some connection between the two works-and the 
precise similarity in the criticism of Isocrates as well as the juxta­
position of the 8ELVOS P"1TWP with the unusual 7TOL'Y}tijS AbYWV suggest 
that we should-is it not more plausible to see Plato as the borrower, 
using the words of a recent critic of Isocrates as a further irritation in 
an already pointed attack, but using them in such a way that the critic 
of Isocrates is himself implicitly criticized? Of course, the reverse 
situation is possible, with Alcidamas taking his cue from plato. In this 
matter I am far from insisting on the priority of the one work over 
the other with the same emphasis as in our earlier discussion of the 
connection between Isocrates' Contra Sophistas and Alcidamas' n€pt 
TWV O'oc/>£ClTwv. 

To return to the dosing scene of the Phaedrus. It is a fact, first 
recognized by Teichmiiller in 1881,12 that Alcidamas and his treatise 
(although they cannot be said to have been a subject agreeable to 
Isocrates) are demonstrably the immediate source of the chief points 
which Socrates puts forth approvingly in the discussion of the faults of 
written logos which is found near the end of the Phaedrus, immediately 
before the passage where Isocrates is "praised." Friedlander,13 most 
recently, has gone in sufficient detail into the question of Plato's debt 
to Alcidamas, so that we need only recall the most obvious points of 
similarity: that the spoken word is superior to the written word, 
especially the written word which has been put together with infinite 
and laborious care (§4 and 278B-E); that the written word is like a 
statue or painting, mute and useless (§27 and 275D); that in view of 
this, writing is at best a mere pastime, a 7T<XL8LCf (§34 and 227E). That 
Plato's conception of the spoken word is radically different is obvious. 
But, again, Alcidamas is convenient, because he takes a position 
with which Plato can formally agree, and takes this position against 
Isocrates, whom Plato is also concerned to attack. 

The whole discussion from 275c to the mention of Isocrates (278E) 
brings the treatise of Alcidamas irresistibly to mind, whether we 

12 Literarische Feltden in IV Jahrhundert I (Breslau 1881) 96-7. It cannot of course be argued 
that Plato needed Alddamas to formulate his ideas in the matter of the spoken versus the 
written word. Nevertheless. the use of 'l1a,1),& in precisely this context is all but certain proof 
that Plato knew this work. Why he chose to allude to it immediately before his "praise" 
of lsocrates is obvious. 

13 P. Friedlander. Plaw tr. H. Meyerhoff. I (New York 1955) 111-2. 



JAMES A. COULTER 233 

choose to believe, and this is by far the more plausible, that Plato is 
directly indebted to Alcidamas, or that both men independently 
reflect contemporary discussion of rhetorical questions. It is in any 
case certain that Isocrates would not have failed to see the ghosts of a 
debate of some twenty years before, a debate in which his opponent 
had outlined a theory of rhetoric with which he disagreed au fond. 
The passage, as a whole, must therefore be viewed as a red flag which 
Plato intentionally waved in the face of Isocrates. Consequently, if 
just before Isocrates is named (278B) Socrates speaks of those poor 
people who have nothing more worthwhile to show than their written 
compositions-whether one is to call such a man a 7TOL'f}'T1]V 7j A6ywv 

uvyypcupla-can one really maintain that the "praise" of Isocrates 
which follows is anything but the most outrageous condescension? 

In this matter one point must be made quite clear. To translate 
7TOL'f}T~S; as 'poet' simply, as is done, for example, by Hackforth and 
Robin, is to render merely the surface sense and to rob the passage of 
a crucial nuance. 'Poet' is, of course, a correct translation; the three 
categories-poet, speech-writer, and writer of laws-are obviously 
based on 278B-C. We have seen, however, that A6ywv 7TOL'1}T~S; in the 
sense of writer of speeches had become, well before the time of the 
Phaedrus, a phrase of uncomfortable connotations for Isocrates. But 
not only A6ywv 7TOL'f}T~S;. Both Alcidamas and Plato, in the Phaedrus, 
use 7TOL'f}T~S; by itself to denote the creator of polished written com­
positions, i.e. as a shorter, allusive equivalent to A6yWV 7TOL'1}T~S. The 
term is so used twice earlier in the Phaedrus with reference to Lysias 
(234B and 236D); it means there, clearly, composer of written speeches. 
Alcidamas, too, uses 7TOL'f}~S; in exactly this sense and with clear 
reference to Isocrates. In the opening of his treatise (§2), in a passage 
reminiscent of the one under discussion in that it takes to task those 
who laboriously consume their time in perfecting written works (cf. 
also §§4 and 16), Alcidamas writes: 7TOAO 8LKaL6T€pOV 7TOL'1}TaS ~ UOc/JtUTaS 

7Tpouayop€V€uf)aL vOJLl,wv. It therefore seems likely, in the light of 
this passage of Alcidamas as well as of the fact that plato uses 7TOL'f}T~S; 
twice earlier in the Phaedrus in the odd, almost certainly Isocratean, 
sense of 'writer of speeches', that Isocrates would surely not have 
failed to see this play on words. In this passage 7TOL'f}T~S; clearly means 
'poet'. But following directly on the description of one who "spends 
hours on his phrases, twisting them this way and that, pasting them 
together and pulling them apart" (Hackforth adapted), 7TOL1J~S must 



234 PHAEDRUS 279A: THE PRAISE OF ISOCRATES 

have brought back to Isocrates the passage in which Alcidamas mock­
ingly hints at the full phrase, .\oywv ""Ot"1-n7~' which he is to attack 
later at the end of his treatise. And the allusion would have been 
irresistible, not only because of the identity of context but also be­
cause of the similarity of external form: .".o.\v aUCatoTEpoV «v ""Ot1JTa~ ~ 

.I.. ' , (J d ' ~, , A 

U0'l'tUTa~ ""pouayop€VEU at an EV otKTJ .".OV ""O£1JT'1}V • • • ""pOUEpE'~. 
In view of the evidence relating to the quarrel between Alcidamas 

and Isocrates one may confidently assume that by the time Isocrates 
had reached the passage where he was "praised," he was in no doubt 
about Plato's intentions. 

There is another piece of evidence which affects the interpretation 
of the final scene of the Phaedrus. For in addition to the patronizing 
form into which the encomium is cast and the undoubtedly irritating 
allusions to Alcidamas' criticisms, there is good reason to believe that 
another adversary of Isocrates is brought quietly onto the scene­
Antisthenes. Again, the relationship between these two men was one 
of nastiness concealed only by the cloak of anonymous address. Who 
the initiator was we do not know, but is clear that it is Antisthenes 
who is specifically attacked in the treatise Contra Sophistas about 390. 

We also know that the irascible Antisthenes returned fire. A famous 
trial ca. 400 B.C. between a certain Nicias and Euthynous, involving a 
deposit of three talents which the plaintiff Nicias charged had not 
been returned in its entirety, apparently generated considerable 
interest, perhaps because the two logographers on opposing sides 
were Lysias and Isocrates. Lysias' speech, save for the opening lines, 
has been lost (fr.70 Thalheim). Isocrates' speech is extant, although 
the authenticity of the speech IIpo~ Ev(Jovovv ap.apTvpo~ in the Isocra­
tean corpus is, with some justice, open to question. In any event, 
Antisthenes, for reasons on which we can only speculate, found some~ 
thing about Isocrates' speech which was vulnerable to his especially 
savage brand of attack, and wrote a work, now lost, entitled, IIpo~ 
TOV IuoKpaTov~ ap.apTVpov.14 What he said is not known, but that he 
wounded Isocrates' vanity is clear from the agitated remarks which 
Isocrates, at the conclusion of the Panegyricus of 380, addresses to 
those who neglect matters of great moment and compose rubbish 
about deposits of money (§188). 

Nor was this the end of the quarrel. There is evidence of another 
work of Antisthenes (whether it followed the Panegyricus rebuke is not 

1& Diog.Laert. 6.15. 



JAMES A. COULTER 235 

known) which again baited Isocrates. This was the work with the 
extraordinary title llEP~ TWV fHKo'Ypacpwv' ..dwtas ~ 'Iao'YpacpTfs.15 A 
play on AvaLas ~ IaoKpaTTfS, it may be rendered HPettifogger (i.e. the 
man who complicates things) or The One who Always Writes The 
Same," or perhaps "The One Who Writes in Balanced Clauses."16 
The juxtaposition of Lysias and Isocrates suggests that Antisthenes 
was still engaged, at least in part, in mocking Isocrates' role and 
speech in the trial of Euthynous and Nicias. And it should be noted 
that Antisthenes was not the only philosopher contemporary with 
Isocrates who found the eXf1-apTvp0S; an inviting target. Plato's nephew, 
Speusippus, also wrote a work attacking this speechP It would be 
extraordinarily interesting to know what it was that so amused the 
philosophers. 

In the light of this evidence, the pairing ofIsocrates and Lysias in the 
final scene will necessarily assume a different aspect. It has, of course, 
been noted that it must have been galling to Isocrates to be linked with 
Lysias at all, since Isocrates constantly insisted that he was far above 
the mere logographers.18 His adopted son, in fact, maintained with 
some vehemence that his father had never been engaged in such a 
sordid business as writing speeches for hire, and maintained that the 
speeches that circulated under his father's name were forgeries. This 

15 .1f:ula, ~ 'Iuoypa</>'Y/' is the plausible emendation of M. Pohlenz (Hermes 42 [1907] 
157-9) of the corrupt passage in Diogenes Laertius 6.15: luoypa</>~ ~ Smla, Ka~ laOKpaT7]'. The 
most recent editor, H. S. Long, rejects (is unaware of?) the emendation; he accepts Wytten­
bach's Avala, for I3mla> of the codd. Pohlenz, and in this I think he is correct, sees the name 
as a punning reference to the orator's skill in verbal entrapment: "Neque sanus quisquam 
negabit hie de Lysia agi; quis autem verbo admonitus dubitabit, quin Antisthenes eodem 
ioeo usus-si modo ioeus appellandus est-quo contra Platonem Sathonem seripsit, Lysiam 
non Solutorem sed Ligatorem nominaverit? Quod tamen eum fecisse ... ut oratorem reos 
cireumvenientem atque vincientem cavillaretur, consentaneum est. Quae si vera est, 
abicienda est Wyttenbachii conieetura, ... " 

It would seem natural rather to emend to' Iuoypa</>'Y/> ~ ..df:u{a,. 'IuoKpaTT]> would then be 
a gloss. So Radermacher, op.cit (supra n.6) 120, who wrongly attributes to Pohlenz, how­
ever, this variation of the emendation. For the name-play, cf Antiochus IV Epiphanes, 
called by Polybius (ap. Athen. 2.45e) 0 'EmfJ-avr},; and Chrysippus of Soli, called by 
Carneades Kpvt/mmo> (Diog.Laert. 7.182). 

16 Surely, the amusing parody of Isocrates' style at Rep. 6.498D-E is relevant; note 
especially WfJ-0LWfJ-tva( -ov) and 1TaptaWfJ-tvov. See Adam ad loc., The Republic of Plato (Cam­
bridge 1902, repro 1965) and Appendix to Book VI (pp.77-8). 

17 Diog.Laert. 4.5; see P. Lang, De Speusippi Academici scriptis (Diss. Bonn 1911, repro 
Frankfurt 1964) 38-9. 

18 Compare, for example. Antidosis 32-41. 

6-G.R.B.S. 



236 PHAEDRUS 279A: THE PRAISE OF ISOCRATES 

contention, as we know, amused Aristotle.19 Nevertheless, the evi­
dence concerning Antisthenes suggests that a more precise insult was 
intended. As was the case with Alcidamas, so here too the alert reader 
-and Isocrates, touchy and personally concerned, was one of these­
would surely have been reminded by the pairing of Lysias with Iso­
crates of the series of attacks which Antisthenes had launched against 
Isocrates, and which had their origin in the trial in which Lysias and 
Isocrates were the antagonists. 

It is likely, then, that Isocrates, an old man and a famous one, was 
not pleased with Socrates' words of praise, especially as there stood, 
just off stage, the two silently mocking figures of Alcidamas and 
Antisthenes. 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

April, 1967 

19 Dionys,Hal. Isocrates 18 (U-R 1.85)=fr.122 Rose.