The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates: Text, Power, Pedagogy [Paperback ed.] 0521124522, 9780521124522

The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates provides an interpretation of an important, but largely neglected and disregarded,

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The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates: Text, Power, Pedagogy [Paperback ed.]
 0521124522, 9780521124522

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The rhetoric of identity in Isocrates offers a sustained interpretation of the Isocratean corpus, showing that rhetoric is a language which the author uses to create a political identity for himself in fourth-century Athens. Dr Too examines how Isocrates' discourse addresses anxieties surrounding the written word in a democratic culture which values the spoken word as the privileged means of political expression. Isocrates makes written culture the basis for a revisionary Athenian politics and of a rhetoric of Athenian hegemony. In addition, Isocrates takes issue with the popular image of the professional teacher in the age of the sophist, combating the negative stereotype of the greedy sophist who corrupts the city's youth in his portrait of himself as a teacher of rhetoric. He daringly reinterprets the pedagogue as a figure who produces a discourse which articulates political authority. This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to ancient rhetoric and should appeal to people with interests in the fields of classics, history, the history of political thought, literature, literary theory, philosophy and education. All passages in Greek and Latin have been translated to ensure accessibility to non-classicists.

CAMBRIDGE

CLASSICAL

STUDIES

General Editors M.

F.

M.

THE

RHETORIC

D.

BURNYEAT, REEVE,

A.

M.

K.

M.

SNODGRASS

OF IDENTITY

HOPKINS,

IN !SOCRATES

THE RHETORIC

OF IDENTITY

IN !SOCRATES

Text, power, pedagogy

YUN LEE TOO Lecturer in Classics, University of Liverpool

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP 40 West 2oth Street, New York, NY IOOI 1-4211, USA IO Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge 1995

First published 1995 Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Too, Yun Lee. The rhetoric of identity in Isocrates : text, power, pedagogy/ Yun Lee Too. p. cm. - (Cambridge classical studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o 521 47406 X (hardback) 1. Isocrates - Criticism and interpretation. 2. Speeches, addresses, etc., Greek History and criticism. 3. Athens (Greece) - Politics and government. 4. Political oratory - Greece - Athens. 5. Rhetoric, Ancient. 6. Oratory, Ancient. I. Title. II. Series. PA4218.T66 1995 885'.01 - dc20 94-20628 CIP ISBN

o 521 47406 x hardback

UP

For my family

CONTENTS Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1

2 3 4 5 6

XI

XU I

Isocrates and logos politikos The unities of discourse The politics of the small voice Isocrates in his own write The pedagogical contract The politics of discipleship

10

36

74 113 151 200

Brief afterword

233

Appendix 1 Isocrates and Gorgias Appendix 2 Concerning the Chariot-team

235 240

Bibliography General index Index of Greek words Index of Passages

lX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe a debt of gratitude to many people for their encouragement, patience and the generosity of their learning. In particular, I would like to thank Robert Wardy, who from 1989 to 1992 watched over the writing of the Cambridge PhD thesis which forms the basis of this book, casting his scrupulous and discerning eye over its contents. John Henderson gave me the opportunity to try out some of my more daring interpretations at an early stage. During the 'conversion' of the thesis into a book Myles Burnyeat provided opportunities to discuss and debate issues, challenged the arguments and gave much appreciated support, while Michael Reeve offered himself as both a rigorous and sympathetic audience and critic. From them I learned a lot about what the 'teacher' and what critical reading might be. I would also like to mention and thank the following for the comments, suggestions and criticisms which made the writing of this book an ongoing dialogue: the late Charles Brink, Paul Cartledge, Simon Goldhill, Richard Hunter, Geoffrey Lloyd, Donald Russell and Malcolm Schofield (the latter two as examiners and, later, as generous commentators). Clare Brant and Iain Macpherson also lent patient ears and provided the support good friends give. I apologise to anyone I might have forgotten to mention. Finally and not least of all, I would like to thank the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College for a hospitable environment provided in the form of a Junior Research Fellowship.

XI

ABBREVIATIONS

AJA AJAH AJP AS BICS CA CJ CP CQ CR CSCA CV/EMC

cw

CWeekly FGrH GRBS HPT HSCP /CS JG

JHP JHS LCM NLH QJS R-E REG RhM RPh

American Journal of Archeology American Journal of Ancient History American Journal of Philology Ancient Society Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Classical Antiquity Classical Journal Classical Philology Classical Quarterly Classical Review California Studies in Classical Antiquity Classical Views/ Echos du monde classique Classical World Classical Weekly Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies History of Political Thought Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Illinois Classical Studies Inscriptiones Graecae Journal of the History of Philosophy Journal of Hellenic Studies Liverpool Classical Monthly New Literary History Quarterly Journal of Speech Real-encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft Revue des etudes grecques Rheinisches Museum Revue Philologique

Xll

LIST

TAPA

YCS ZPE

OF

ABBREVIATIONS

Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association Yale Classical Studies Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik

Xlll

INTRODUCTION

I Every society has a particular language or languages which an individual can invoke to demonstrate that he or she is a member of that community. This book is about the making of identity in the classical Greek city. It concerns itself with the complex rhetoric of self produced by the author and intellectual Isocrates in defining himself as a citizen of fourth-century Athens. The study examines how Isocrates constructs a language within which he proceeds to fashion and authorise his own identity. What I hope will emerge from my analysis is an awareness that language can serve as a potent non-material basis for an individual's authority within society. Isocrates is at once an obvious and unobvious choice for the present book. Scholars in Antiquity and in the Renaissance regarded Isocrates (436-338 Be) as the preeminent rhetorician of ancient Athens and accordingly made him a central figure in their picture of fourth-century Athens. For the majority of modern scholars, however, he is a figure of inadequacy. He is an exception in a moment of otherwise remarkably self-aware literary, political and intellectual achievement that we have come to know as 'classical Athens'. Isocrates loses out on several counts. He is relegated to the margins of a particular Athens. This Athens features Demosthenes and Lysias as its preferred orators, Thucydides and Xenophon as its historians, and Plato as its privileged philosopher, as perhaps the Athenian intellectual of the fourth century. Even Marrou, who admits Isocrates' significance for the development of rhetoric in the West, must concede: 'De quelque point de vue qu'on se place: puissance de seduction, rayonnement de la personnalite, richesse du temperament, profondeur de la pensee, art I

INTRODUCTION

meme, Isocrate ne saurait etre mis sur le meme plan que Platon ... ' 1 In the same vein de Romilly concludes an article which implicitly seeks to establish goodwill towards the rhetorician, 'Isocrates, it is true, is not very intelligent: but, all the same, it must be said: we all take after him, in some way or other.' 2 My study attempts in part to restore authority to Isocrates. My intention will be to recover not the authority which readers in Antiquity and in the Renaissance attributed to the author but that which the author's own rhetorical discourse creates for him. Given what many observe to be our own mistrust of rhetoricians and rhetoric the project may initially appear self-defeating. Indeed, one may speculate that scholars subsequent to the Renaissance regard Isocrates as such a peripheral individual precisely because he was Athens' rhetorician par excellence. This description of the author enables critics to lay against him the charges that he is more style than content, more text than substance, in short that he is more rhetoric than anything else, particularly philosophy. Perhaps Aristophanes originates this view of rhetoric when he attacks the rhetorical education of the sophists in the Clouds. In any case it is certainly Plato who gives the most authority to the negative stereotypes of rhetoric. In one passage of the Euthydemus Socrates offers an attack on rhetoric which many scholars believe to be aimed specifically at Isocrates. 3 Here the philosopher dismisses the rhetorician's profession as an inauthentic pursuit of wisdom. Rhetoric, he observes, occupies an intermediate position between philosophy and politics (cf. 305c7; 306a-b). In other dialogues Socrates offers the definition of· rhetoric which many now take for granted, casting it as an 'art of persuasion' .4 From this follows a baggage of moral judgements, namely that rhetoric is the art of going to any and every length (panta 1 2

3 4

Marrou (1956), p. 131. De Romilly (1958), p. 101. Hawtrey (1981), p. 190 and Canto (1989), pp. 34-5. Note Kennedy (1963), p. 7, 'Wherever persuasion is the end, rhetoric is present'; ~!so G~thrie (1971), p. 50; Vickers (1988), p. 1. Also, Dodds (1959), p. 4, Rhetoric was the Art of Success.' 2

INTRODUCTION

legein) - deceptions, lies, force and so on - to achieve its goal of persuasion (e.g. Republic 494e4). Rhetoric is a language of inauthenticity, and so it is the antithesis of 'philosophy', of the discourse that Plato wants to be viewed as the language of what is real, true and just. Plato has caricatured rhetoric and rhetoricians, painting a portrait of bad language practised by insincere individuals. Because etymology tends to decontextualise, it is a mode of reading which may begin to free us from Platonic notions and prejudices about (Isocratean) rhetoric. Pierre Chantraine may or may not be justified in connecting the Greek word for rhetorician, 'rhetor', with eiro, which supplies some of the parts of the verb legein, 'to speak'. He defines a 'rhetorician' simply as 'celui qui parle en public' or 'orateur a l'assemblee, homme politique' .s For Chantraine, a rhetorician is first and foremost an individual who speaks in a public place: the lawcourt, the Assembly, the marketplace, the panhellenic festival gathering, all of which perhaps with the exception of the last - represent the civic community. 6 In providing this definition of the rhetorician, Chantraine recognises a basic function of this individual's discourse. Indeed, when Isocrates and later authors write of the role of language in creating society, they implicitly indicate that the fundamental purpose of their discourse, as rhetoricians, is to address the civic sphere. 7 In a frequently cited passage from the Antidosis Isocrates speaks of the role of logos in creating civic communities and their institutions. He narrates how through logos men persuaded one another, associated with one another, created cities, established nomoi, the cities' conventions or laws, and invented arts: 'Since present in us was the ability to persuade one another and to make clear what we wanted, we not only departed from the life of wild animals but we came together, s Chantraine (1968), I, p. 326, viz. 2 ei'pw; also Benveniste (1948), pp. 52-4. 6 Gorgias 502d2-e8; Euthydemus 305b6-c2. 7 Also cf. Isocrates Nicocles 6-9; Antidosis 253-7; Panegyricus 48ff.; Xenophon Memorabilia 4.3.rrff. (on Aoy1crµ6s);Cicero On Invention r.2. Spence (1988), pp. 13ff., regards Isocrates as the paradigm of the 'humanist rhetoric' which orders society into being.

3

INTRODUCTION

built cities, established conventions [or 'laws' (nomous)] and created arts; and speech (logos) is what formed for us nearly all the devices we discovered' (Antidosis 254). 8 In the narrative of this paragraph logos is introduced as a language of persuasion. As such, it creates public space and is in turn redefined within this public space, evolving, for instance, as nomos or law or as a technical, i.e. artistic, language. What this narrative suggests is that once logos has brought people together into a community, it becomes less a language of persuasion than a particular language or discourse which is designed to operate within that particular community to reinforce it. As a public discourse, as rhetoric, logos is to be perceived as a special language designed both to constitute and to announce the deliberate strategies that individuals use to devise images - whether good, bad, beautiful, ugly, truthful, misleading, and so on - of their societies, such as we have in Antidosis 254. It both constructs itself around, and sometimes also consciously rejects, discursive conventions which may be distinct from those, say, of dialogue, poetry, and so on. As rhetoric, logos also constitutes a whole 'language' by which an individual declares himself or herself to be part of a particular society through its use: it provides him or her with a mark of his or her membership in that society. In Isocrates' case, the particular society to which allegiance is affirmed is a democratic one. If SchmittPantel is right to see democratic ethos as being constituted precisely by the willingness of the individual to see himself and to be seen as a member of a group, then democracy is a society that supports and encourages rhetorical discourse.9

8

eyyevoµevov 8' 17µ1vTO\Jmi6e1v a:AAT]/\OVS Kai 8T7AOVV TTpos17µ6:sCXVTOVS mpi WV av [3ovAri6wµev, O\J µ6vov TOV 6rip1w8ws ~ijv CXTTT7AA6:yT7µEv, 6:Ma Kai 0-VVEA66VTES TTOAEIS 0Kio-aµev Kai v6µovs e6eµe6a Kai Texvas Evpoµev, Kai o-xe86v cmaVTa TO. 81' 17µwvµeµrixavriµeva Myos 17µ1vEEIVTWV r,.oywv O\J TOVS µv6w6EIS ov6e TOVS TEpcrreias Kai 4IEV6or,.oyias µEO"TOVS, ors oi TIO/I.A.OJ µaMov xa/povow fi TOIS mpi Tf\s avTWV 0-WTT)piasA.Eyoµevo1s,ov6e TOVS TCXSTiaA.atCXS Tipa~EISKai TOVS TIOA.Eµovs TOVS'EMT)VIKOVS E~T)yovµevovs,Kaimp ei6ws 6tKaiws a\JTOVSETiatvovµevovs, 6oKOVVTase!pf\o-6at Kai µT)6Eµtas KOµljJOTT)TOS µETEXOVTas, ov6' au TOVS O'.TIA.WS EiTIEpf3ovr,.ovovs oi 6Etvoi TIEpiTOVS&ywvas Tiapatvovo-t Tois VEWTEpotsµEA.ETCX\/, Tat TI/1.EOV EXEIV TWV O'.VTt6iKWV, O'./\A.CX m:nnas TOVTOVS eao-as TIEpiEKEIVOVS ETipayµaTij TE TIOA.Et Kai Tois ar,.r,.01s"EAAT)o-t o-vµTEVOµT)V, Tovs TIEpi Twv o-vµq>Ep6VTwv Kai f3ovA.EvovTas,Kai TIO/I.A.WV µev ev6vµ11µ6:TwvyeµoVTas, OVK6Mywv 6' O'.VTt6E'o-Ewv TiaptO-WO-EWV Kai TWV CJ.A.A.WV i6EWVTWV EVTa'is flT)TOpeiats61ar,.aµTIOVO-WV Kai TOVS O'.KOVOVTas emo-11µaivE0-6atKai 6opvf3E'iVavayKal;ovo-wv.

20

ISOCRATES

AND

LOGOS

POLIT/KOS

(also Antidosis 183), are virtually innumerable. He has no intention of listing (exarithmein) them as this would involve a great labour. It is important to realise that elsewhere the author makes disparaging remarks about enumeration, comparing the unpersuasive and uncommitted reading of a text to the reeling off of a list (aparithmon) at To Philip 26. In his study of the Pythagorean tradition Burkert observes that the word arithmos strongly connotes a unit in a system of rational, logical ordering.32 Like enumeration, literary categorisation is a form of systematic and systematising language (cf. Aristotle Poetics r453ar7-r8; Rhetoric to Alexander r42rb7ff.), which we shall see in chapter 5 Isocrates rejects as a whole. In place of an exhaustive catalogue of prose at Antidosis 45-6, he invokes a rhetorical device: he engages in a preterition, the trope which summarily enunciates what will remain unsaid. At Panathenaicus r-2 Isocrates continues to dispel any idea that he means to supply a definitive schema of genres. Instead of a theoretical or precise articulation of prose categories he now provides us with autobiography, a portrait of his youth drawn according to the types of logoi which he decided not to write then (cf. Panathenaicus r). At section r r he implements rhetorical poikilia or variety to designate his prose, again discrediting the notion that he offers any systematic taxonomy of genre.33 He now divides prose between speeches concerning private contracts (peri ton idion sumbolaion) and those concerning Greek, royal and civic, perhaps public, affairs (peri ton Hellenikon kai basilikon kai politikon pragmaton). The observation that Isocrates provides an unsystematic naming of genres at Antidosis 45-6 and Panathenaicus r-2 is important because it invites the question whether the various categories mentioned provide authoritative ways of naming or describing his own prose. Ancient and modern readers have understood him to be referring in these passages 32 33

Burkert (1972), pp. 265-6 and 455, n. 42. At p. 265, n. 130, he observes that at Busiris 16 Isocrates uses ap10µ6s in this sense. See the reference to rro1K1Aia at Panathenaicus 246; also Race (1983), pp.95-112. 21

ISOCRATES

AND

LOGOS

POLIT/KOS

to some of the different prose forms that he employs, and thus as being in some sense programmatic. 34 Nevertheless, his cavalier attitude towards the 'taxonomies' he offers implies that, if he does seek a specific or fixed way of designating his writing, it is not in terms of these schemata. Indeed, one anonymous critic in Antiquity even perceived Isocrates to be challenging the very distinctions of genre presented in the Antidosis and Panathenaicus. This individual attributed to him the following sentiment, now preserved in Quintilian: 'he thought that praise and blame were present in every genre' (/. 0. 3.4. n35). According to this passage Isocrates - if this is indeed the same Isocrates3 6 - believed that all genres had elements of praise and blame, so that his writing was distinguished and unified by an epideictic element. Quintilian's source suggests that epideixis helps the reader to recognise Isocratean discourse inasmuch as it reveals itself in every work of his corpus. In so doing the critic perhaps suggests that the more obvious encomia, the Helen, Busiris and Evagoras, are more obviously Isocratean than the other works. When Quintilian's nameless critic asserts 'he [Isocrates] thought that praise and blame were present in every genre', he clearly believes that Isocrates produced different prose genres but that each of these shared the elements of praise and blame with the other genres. There are, however, several problems with this view. First, this critic draws particular attention to epideixis comprising both praise and blame, although this is nowhere named in the rhetorician's own discussion of genres in the two passages I cited earlier. Second and more importantly, Antidosis 45-6 and Panathenaicus 1-2 both reveal a very specific structure which provides the reader with a description of the author's work quite different from that suggested by the critic. In both passages 34

35 36

E.g. Dionysius of Halicamassus lsocrates 1 with discussion below and HudsonWilliams (1951), esp. p. 69. in omni genere inesse laudem ac vituperationem existimavit. Barwick (1963), p. 54, argues that Quintilian confuses the Athenian Isocrates with the younger namesake. 22

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AND

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Isocrates enumerates the various prose genres using a strategy that originates in Greek lyric poetry, the praeambulum or, by its abbreviated name, 'priamel'.37 A priamel consists of a list in which the final item is privileged to the extent that all the preceding terms stand as negative foils for what is mentioned last. An example of the priamel occurs m Sappho 16: 0Ji µEv hTTTT)WV cr,p6-rov oi OETTEO'OWV v]cxv oi OEvawv .

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276--8, 571). Aristophanes makes fun of Aeschylean silence in the Frogs (e.g. 832-3). Along the same lines, the comic poet Epicharmus (6th-5th century) writes 'you are not clever at speaking but unable to keep silent' (DK 23 B 29 = Aulus Gellius 1.15. 15-?38). Here the sense is that those who are unable to speak well should know to be quiet. Isocrates provides his reader with several statements regarding silence; however, none of these supports the idea that it is a strategy for concealing privileged knowledge. In To Demonicus he advises the son of Hipponicus on the virtues of maintaining silence. According to him, only two occasions justify speech: when one knows what one is speaking about and when it is necessary to speak (41). Isocrates varies the rules for speech and silence set out by Gorgias and Plato. Maximus Planudes preserves a fragment of Gorgias' Funeral Oration which has him declaring the importance of speaking (legein), being silent (sigan) and acting/doing (poiein) what is necessary at the proper moment (en toi deonti, DK 86 B 6 = Planudes ad Hermogenes V 548 Walz). 89 Plato later stresses the importance of knowing when to speak and to be silent at Phaedrus 272a4, and at 275e3 introduces the necessity of also knowing to whom to speak and to be silent. Rather than knowing when to speak and when to be silent, Isocrates now places the emphasis on knowing what to say and when it is necessary to say it. It makes sense to understand the importance given to silence in To Demonicus in terms of the author's quietistic politics. He communicates to Hipponicus his ideal of the voiceless citizen, the individual who refuses to engage in demagogic oratory in the lawcourts and Assembly, and so benefits society. Another work, the Busiris, is also important for understanding the role of silence in Isocrates' rhetoric. In section 29 of this work, the author observes that, when they are 88

89

Cf. ov Mye1v TVy' focri 6e1v6s, a.AM myav a6vvmo5. Aulus Gellius identifies this phrase as the origin of the Latin maxim, 'qui cum loqui non posset, tacere non potuit'. While some critics regard this as an overall theory of kairos (e.g. Vitali (1971), pp. 103ff.), Loraux (1986), p. 228, calls this reading into question.

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silent, the followers of Pythagoras are more admired than those 'who have the greatest reputation (doxan) for speaking' even when they remain silent (sigontas). Historically, readers have assumed that, since Pythagoras is the archetypal philosopher of Greece, the silence of his disciples is to be viewed as an indication that they possess a specialised and esoteric knowledge (cf. Busiris 28; To Demonicus 41). 90 Yet I suggest that, if we consider Pythagorean silence in the context which the Busiris as a whole creates for it, then this interpretation needs to be called into question. As a whole, the speech is a critique of an apology of Busiris, the mythical Egyptian king, written by the sophist Polycrates.9 1 Isocrates observes that, instead of drawing attention to the achievements of Busiris, as he himself does (cf. 4-6), Polycrates stressed the crimes of his mythical subject (45-6). He describes Polycrates' apology of Busiris as if it were a sycophantic discourse. He names it loidoria (33) and blasphemia (38), using the terms which also denote unfounded accusation in the lawcourts. He goes on to blame his addressee for imitating the poets who produce impious myths about the gods and thus create bad paradigms for their audiences to imitate (40): the discourse produced by such poets is analogous to the legal kakegoria against which Athens legislates (40). At section 48 Isocrates draws an explicit analogy between Polycrates' apology and legal discourse. He suggests that a litigant is more likely to be acquitted if he says nothing than if he pleads his case in the way that the sophist has defended Busiris (48). I venture to suggest that overall the Busiris constructs language and silence against the background of the discourse of poluprag° Certainly

9

91

this is how the literature of the Roman period characterises silence. In Plutarch's On Garrulity silence can communicate something significant; in this sense it is the 'discourse' of holy, mystical things (504a and 51oe). In the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus celebrates Apollonius' ability to maintain silence and thus to show himself a pupil of Pythagoras (1. 15; cf. Treatise of Eusebius 12), while in the Apology Apuleius assumes this 'discourse' of the philosopher by refusing to reveal the identity of the deity he worships to his jury and audience (64). I must disagree with Owen, who believes that Isocrates only finds fault with the technicalities of Polycrates' epideictic writing; Owen (1986), p. 360.

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mosune and in the context of the civic ideals of apragmosune and sophrosune, respectively.92 Isocrates implies that, as Polycrates has undertaken to speak and write about Busiris, he has engaged in a form of verbal meddling and that he would do better to say no more rather than to elaborate his defence of the Egyptian king and risk convicting him. If we grant the coherence of themes in the speech, then the silence of Pythagoras' disciples in section 29 is to be viewed less as a preface to an esoteric teaching than as an extension of the 'small voice' and its politics. The passages I have been examining demonstrate that ancient authors saw rhetorical skill to lie both in being able to deploy language skilfully and in being able to know when not to deploy it: silence is better than talking nonsense. By themselves, they do not, however, provide us with an interpretation of the end of Against the Sophists. Accordingly, I shall go on to suggest at the end of this chapter that Isocrates invokes silence in this work in order to make a specific point about what he thinks pedagogical discourse should ideally entail - or not.

VII If we step back for a moment to consider the broad epistemological framework that Isocrates establishes for rhetorical discourse, then it becomes clear why the author's corpus can accommodate neither a treatise which is rigidly prescriptive nor an esoteric doctrine. Conventionally, rhetorical language rejects all forms of systematic or precise knowledge for common opinion (doxa), for the beliefs and impressions that the majority of people hold: rhetoric addresses itself to a wide, general audience. Isocrates accommodates his writing to this ideal of accessibility. 92

See the objection in Owen (1986), p. 363, 'Some scholars have professed to see a mention of it [i.e. Pythagorean secrecy] in a passage from Isocrates' Busiris (29), but I fail to follow them. What Isocrates seems to say is that the education of the Pythagoreans is known to be so good that they command more respect when they are silent than others who try to dazzle the company with rhetorical tricks.'

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We see that he makes a point of criticising 'professionalised', abstract knowledge. In the Antidosis, he observes that eristic argument, astrology, geometry and such erudite subjects have only a limited utility for civic life. If the teachers of these subjects do not benefit their students as much as they promise, they do at any rate help them more than others believe (261). According to Isocrates, eristic, astrology and geometry are at best propaideutic, like grammar and music, the subjects taught to children (266). These subjects predispose their students to learning. They keep them exercised and sharpened (265; cf. 267) but do not improve their ability at speaking or at giving political counsel (267). This is because they demand special subtlety and refinement (perittologia) and precision (akribeia) from those who practise them. These studies have no connection with any other form of learning and particularly with that which Isocrates claims to teach (263-4). They isolate the student from the normal life of the polis, implicitly identified by Isocrates as the focal point of an Athenian's existence. Later in the Panathenaicus, Isocrates again concedes that the contemporary 'curriculum' of geometry, astrology and eristic discourse can be beneficial to and suitable for young people (27-8). If these subjects have no other function, they at least keep the city's youth out of trouble (27). Nevertheless, where public life is concerned, they have severe limitations. Such subjects are not suitable for adults because they require far too much precision and specialisation from those who engage in them, alienating these individuals from everyday affairs (28-30; cf. Busiris 23). Isocrates brings his diatribe against the current education to a close by denying that possession of technai, epistemai and dunameis in themselves makes citizens educated (30). His position has an analogy. It resembles Callicles' argument in the Gorgias that because philosophy is a pursuit of specialised knowledge it must eventually be abandoned to ensure that the student will not be ignorant of civic affairs, e.g. of the laws, of the language of public and private trans-

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actions, and generally of human nature (484c8ff. and 487c6-7). 93 Isocrates directs his polemic against a certain kind of intellectual and his profession in the fifth and fourth centuries. The subjects whose authority he questions were widely associated with numerous prominent Greek thinkers and teachers. He rejects eristic discourse, a subject about which Protagoras, for instance, supposedly produced an Art of Eristic. 94 Then, as Burkert observes, the academic curriculum based on mathematics was associated with the Pythagoreans, whose doctrine ordered the world through numbers, with Democritus (B 11) and with the sophist Hippias, who is represented as teaching calculation, astronomy, geometry and music (Protagoras 318d-e; Hippias Major 285b; Hippias Minor 366c, 368e).95 Isocrates distinguishes himself from this stereotype of the intellectual since he resists any educational programme concerned with discrete bodi_es and sources of knowledge. For him rhetoric remains an art (techne) only so long as it does not concern itself with the content of any other techne in the particular way that this latter, specialised techne would. Elsewhere he faults Gorgias, Zeno and Melissus for vexing themselves over the useless minutiae of sophistic argument (Helen 5).96 It might appear that there is a paradox involved in this ideal of rhetoric. The person who engages in rhetoric must still know what to say and do on every occasion, while recognising that no knowledge (episteme) in itself permits this (Antidosis 271). But because rhetoric relies on opinion (doxa), this language does not undermine its own pro-

93

94 95 96

Jaeger (1944), p. 147 and Dodds (1959), p. 272, observe the similarity between the views of Plato's Callicles and Isocrates. See also Xenophon Memorabilia 4.7.2-6 for the limits which Socrates places upon the learning of geometry, astrology and astronomy. See Diogenes Laertius 9.5off. and Robinson (1979), pp. 54-5. Burkert (1972), pp. 421, n. II8 and 422. See Nussbaum (1986), p. 96, on 'precision' as a constituent of 'technical' language and practice.

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PEDAGOGICAL

CONTRACT

gramme.97 In Plato's Phaedrus even Socrates grants that if the non-philosophical orator is to be successful he must learn not what is in reality just but what seems just to most people, and likewise not what is really good but what is apparently good (259e7-26oa3).98 The philosopher concedes that an orator needs to appeal to the beliefs and impressions of his audience rather than to the truth. At Against the Sophists 17 Isocrates stipulates - whether or not in parodic reminiscence of Plato Gorgias 463a7 - that the student of rhetoric must have a psuche doxastike, a soul with an aptitude for doxa. In the same work he affirms that the individuals who reject episteme or precise knowledge in favour of doxa are the more successful ones in knowing what to say and what to advise (Against the Sophists 8). Elsewhere he draws an analogy between the teachers of gymnastics and the teachers of philosophy, i.e. rhetoric. Both teach their students thoroughly not a specific body of knowledge but a method for employing doxa effectively: When they have made them experienced and completely conversant with these things, they train them in these matters again; they make them accustomed to labour, and force them to join together each of the things they have learned, so that they may grasp these things more firmly and come closer to the opportune moments by opinion. (This is because it is not possible for them to grasp success by knowledge, for in all actions they shun knowledge. Yet, those who best pay attention and are able to discern what happens for the most part most often achieve success.) (Antidosis 184)99

Athletes and orators are taught how to achieve proximity to the kairoi, the moments of opportunity which grant one success, by use of doxa, generally translated as 'opinion' and 'conjecture'. According to Isocrates, the doxastic method is an empirical one: it lies in anticipating the kairoi from the 97 See the discussions in Rummel (1979), pp. 25-30; Cooper (1986), pp. 77----96; and 98

Batstone (1986). Perhaps this is precisely what Socrates criticises Callicles for at Gorgias 513a1-2.

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