[550] See Aristotel. De Sophist. Elenchis, c. 11, p. 172, ed. Bekker; and his Topica, ix, 5, p. 154; where the different purposes of dialogue are enumerated and distinguished.
[551] See Isokratês, Orat. x; Helenæ Encomium, sects. 2-7; compare Orat. xv, De Permutatione, of the same author, s. 90.
I hold it for certain, that the first of these passages is intended as a criticism upon the Platonic dialogues (as in Or. v, ad Philip. s. 84), probably the second passage also. Isokratês, evidently a cautious and timid man, avoids mentioning the names of contemporaries, that he may provoke the less animosity.
[552] Isokratês alludes much to this sentiment, and to the men who looked upon gymnastic training with greater favor than upon philosophy, in the Orat. xv, De Permutatione, s. 267, et seq. A large portion of this oration is in fact a reply to accusations, the same as those preferred against mental cultivation by the Δίκαιος Λόγος in the Nubes of Aristophanês, 947, seq.; favorite topics in the mouths of the pugilists “with smashed ears.” (Plato, Gorgias, c. 71, p. 515, E; τῶν τὰ ὦτα κατεαγότων.)
[553] There is but too much evidence of the abundance of such jealousies and antipathies during the times of Plato, Aristotle, and Isokratês; see Stahr’s Aristotelia, ch. iii, vol. i, pp. 37, 68.
Aristotle was extremely jealous of the success of Isokratês, and was himself much assailed by pupils of the latter, Kephisodôrus and others, as well as by Dikæarchus, Eubulidês, and a numerous host of writers in the same tone: στρατὸν ὅλον τῶν ἐπιθεμένων Ἀριστοτέλει; see the Fragments of Dikæarchus, vol. ii, p. 225, ed. Didot. “De ingenio ejus (observes Cicero, in reference to Epicurus, de Finibus, ii, 25, 80) in his disputationibus, non de moribus, quæritur. Sit ista in Græcorum levitate perversitas, qui maledictis insectantur eos, a quibus de veritate dissentiunt.” This is a taint no way peculiar to Grecian philosophical controversy; but it has nowhere been more infectious than among the Greeks, and modern historians cannot be too much on their guard against it.
[554] See Plato (Protagoras, c. 8, p. 316, D.; Lachês, c. 3, p. 180, D.; Menexenus, c. 3, p. 236, A; Alkibiad. i, c. 14, p. 118, C); Plutarch, Periklês, c. 4.
Periklês had gone through dialectic practice in his youth (Xenoph. Memor. i, 2, 46).
[555] Isokratês, Or. xv, De Permutat. sect. 287.
Compare Brandis, Gesch. der Gr. Röm. Philosophie, part i, sect. 48, p. 196.