‘The acquisition of empire,’ he says, ‘over unwilling subjects, is both unjust and impolitic. Ambition is like the bait which entices a wild beast into a trap. Our administration is rotten; our citizens have lost faith in personal effort, and we employ mercenaries to fight our battles. Our politicians are our worst citizens, and we appoint as generals incompetent men who are not fitted for any position of trust. We hold our own, but only because our rivals are as weak as we are. The follies of our assembly win allies for Thebes; their follies in turn are our salvation. It would pay either State to bribe the assembly of the other to meet more often.
‘Our hope lies in abandoning our empire; it is unjust, and moreover, we could not maintain it when we were rich, and now we are poor. The statesmen of imperial Athens did all that they could to make their city’s policy unpopular. They displayed the tribute extorted from the allies, thus reminding all the world of their tyranny; and paraded the children of those who had fallen in wars in various parts of the world—the victims of national covetousness. Far different was the position of Athens under Themistocles and Aristides. National life is demoralized by Empire. The history of Sparta’s supremacy is another case to the point. Pericles was a demagogue, and led the city on a disastrous career, but he at least enriched the treasury, not himself. Our modern demagogues are merely self-seeking, and their covetousness reduces not only the state but the citizens to penury.
‘Peace, at the price I have indicated, is the only remedy. We must deliver Greece, not despoil her. Athens should hold among Greek States the position that the kings occupy in Sparta; they are not tyrants; they have a higher standard of conduct than any private person, and are held in such respect that any man who would not throw away his life for them in the field is reckoned meaner than a deserter.’
There is much truth in the invectives aimed at the old empire; Isocrates could see behind the glowing colours in which the glories of the Periclean age are sometimes painted, and equally with Demosthenes he realized, and did not shrink from noticing, the weakness of Athens in his own days. But his advice, though noble, is unpractical. He failed, in spite of his knowledge of history, to fathom the depth of Greek selfishness. No State that relied solely or chiefly on moral worth could have a voice in the council of Greece, far less dominate its policy.
The Areopagiticus (Or. vii.), perhaps composed in the same year, in many points supplements the de Pace. It is chiefly devoted to a contrast between the old days of dignified government under the constitutions of Solon and Cleisthenes, and the unsatisfactory conditions of life in the orator’s time. The description of the old constitution is, perhaps, a fancy picture, but the contrast serves to bring out the evils at which Isocrates is aiming in the modern State. The speech deals with the inner life of Athens rather than with her foreign policy, and the chief credit for good government and good life in the old days is given to the Council of the Areopagus, that majestic body which even now ‘has so strong an influence that the worst men of modern times, if promoted to membership of it, are pervaded by its spirit, and, losing the meanness of their own hearts, think and act in accordance with the Council’s high traditions.’
The Archidamus (Or. vi.) is put into the mouth of the Spartan king of that name, for whom, as we know from a letter, Isocrates had a deep respect. It professes to be part of a debate in 366 B.C., on the proposal of the Thebans to grant peace on condition that Sparta recognized the independence of Messenia. It probably contains a fair representation of the feelings of the Spartans at the time when it was proposed to make an independent and permanently hostile state of the Messenians, whom for generations they had regarded as their slaves.
There still remain works of three classes—the ‘hortatory letters,’ the ‘displays,’ and forensic speeches.
Hortatory Letters
To Demonicus (Or. i.), 372 B.C. (?). This letter, addressed to a young monarch, of whom nothing else is known, is destined to be a ‘storehouse’ (ταμιεῖον) of moral maxims, comprising duty to the gods, duty to men, and duty to oneself. It contains a vast number of maxims, mostly of a practical or semi-practical nature—‘We test gold by fire, friends by misfortune.’ ‘Never swear by the gods where money is concerned; some will think you a perjurer, others a covetous man.’ Occasionally the moral tone is higher—‘If you do wrong, never hope to be undiscovered; if others discover you not, your own conscience will discover you to yourself.’
To Nicocles (Or. ii.), 374 B.C., addressed to Nicocles, who became king of Salamis in Cyprus in 374 B.C., deals with the duties and responsibilities of a king. ‘Remember your high position, and be careful that you never do anything unworthy of it.’