Isocrates

Isocrates (B.C. 436-338), one of the ten Attic orators born at Athens, was the greatest "epideictic" orator - i.e. a composer of show-speeches and model orations, to whom literary finish and form and rhetorical effect were all-important. He was the son of a wealthy flute player, Theodoras, who gave him an excellent education, and when still young he studied under Tisias and the first epideictic orator, Gorgias, and also under the sophist Prodicus. He was not himself a public speaker, but wrote 60 speeches, of which 21 (8 only for law-courts) are extant. About B.C. 390 he began to teach rhetoric, and instructed a hundred pupils, amongst whom were Timotheus, Laodamas, Ephorus, Theopompus, Isaeus, Lycurgus, AEschines, and Hyperides. His greatest speeoh, the Panegyrious, 380 B.C., claims supremacy in Greece for Athens. Isocrates was very impracticable, his one political idea being to unite the Greeks under Athens for an attack on Persia; and he was a zealous opponent of Philip of Macedon. He is said to have died of grief upon Philip's decisive victory at Chseronea.