Plutarch, Vit. x. Oratt. pp. 837-838.
The Athenian Polykrates had been forced, by loss of property, to quit Athens and undertake the work of a Sophist in Cyprus. Isokrates expresses much sympathy for him: it was a misfortune like what had happened to himself (Orat. xi. Busiris 1). Compare De Permutation. Or. xv. s. 172.
The assertion made by Isokrates — that he did not compose political and judicial orations, to be spoken by individuals for real causes and public discussions — may be true comparatively, and with reference to a certain period of his life. But it is only to be received subject to much reserve and qualification. Even out of the twenty-one orations of Isokrates which we possess, the last five are composed to be spoken by pleaders before the dikastery. They are such discourses as the logographers, Lysias among the rest, were called upon to furnish, and paid for furnishing.
[89] Plato, Euthydêm. p. 306. I am inclined to agree with Ueberweg in thinking that the Euthydêmus is later than the Phædrus. Ueberweg, Aechtheit der Platon. Schriften, pp. 256-259-265.
[90] Plato, Hipp. Major, p. 289.
From the pen of Isokrates also, we find various passages apparently directed against the viri Socratici including Plato (though without his name): depreciating,[91] as idle and worthless, new political theories, analytical discussions on the principles of ethics, and dialectic subtleties; maintaining that the word philosophy was erroneously interpreted and defined by many contemporaries, in a sense too much withdrawn from practical results: and affirming that his own teaching was calculated to impart genuine philosophy. During the last half of Plato’s life, his school and that of Isokrates were the most celebrated among all that existed at Athens. There was competition between them, gradually kindling into rivalry. Such rivalry became vehement during the last ten years of Plato’s life, when his scholar Aristotle, then an aspiring young man of twenty-five, proclaimed a very contemptuous opinion of Isokrates, and commenced a new school of rhetoric in opposition to him.[92] Kephisodôrus, a pupil of Isokrates, retaliated; publishing against Aristotle, as well as against Plato, an acrimonious work which was still read some centuries afterwards. Theopompus, another eminent pupil of Isokrates, commented unfavourably upon Plato in his writings: and other writers who did the same may probably have belonged to the Isokratean school.[93]
[91] Isokrates, Orat. x. 1 (Hel. Enc.); Orat. v. (Philipp.) 12; Or. xiii. (Sophist.) 9-24; Orat. xv. (Permut.) sect. 285-290. φιλοσοφίαν μὲν οὖν οὐκ οἶμαι δεῖν προσαγορεύειν τὴν μηδὲν ἐν τῷ παρόντι μήτε πρὸς τὸ λέγειν μήτε πρὸς τὸ πράττειν ὥφελοῦσαν — τὴν καλουμένην ὑπό τινων φιλοσοφίαν οὐκ εἶναι φημί, &c.
[92] Cicero, De Oratore, iii. 35, 141; Orator. 19, 62; Numenius, ap. Euseb. Præp. Evang. xiv. 6, 9. See Stahr, Aristotelia, i. p. 63 seq., ii. p. 44 seq.
Schroeder’s Quæstiones Isocrateæ (Utrecht, 1859), and Spengel’s work, Isokrates und Plato, are instructive in regard to these two contemporary luminaries of the intellectual world at Athens. But, unfortunately, we can make out few ascertainable facts. When I read the Oration De Permut., Or. xv. (composed by Isokrates about fifteen years before his own death, and about five years before the death of Plato, near 353 B.C.), I am impressed with the belief that many of his complaints about unfriendly and bitter criticism refer to the Platonic School of that day, Aristotle being one of its members. See sections 48-90-276, and seq. He certainly means the Sokratic men, and Plato as the most celebrated of them, when he talks of οἱ περὶ τὰς ἐρωτήσεις καὶ ἀποκρίσεις, οὓς ἀντιλογικοὺς καλοῦσιν — οἱ περὶ τὰς ἔριδας σπουδάζοντες — those who are powerful in contentious dialectic, and at the same time cultivate geometry and astronomy, which others call ἀδολεσχία and μικρολογία (280) — those who exhorted hearers to virtue about which others knew nothing, and about which they themselves were in dispute. When he complains of the περιττολόγιαι of the ancient Sophists, Empedokles, Ion, Parmenides, Melissus, &c., we cannot but suppose that he had in his mind the Timæus of Plato also, though he avoids mention of the name.
[93] Athenæus, iii. p. 122, ii. 60; Dionys. Hal. Epistol. ad Cn. Pomp. p. 757.