men.

possibly deny this, that Demosthenes had no power to refrain from looking on the presents which divers kings did offer him, praying him to accept them in good part for their sakes: neither was that the part of a man that did take usury by traffick on the sea, the extremest yet of all other. In contrary manner (as we have said before) it is certain that Cicero being Treasurer, refused the gifts which the Sicilians offered him, there: and the presents also which the king of the Cappadocians offered him whilst he was Pro-consul in Calicia, and those especially which his friends pressed upon him to take of them, being a great sum of money, when he went as a banished man out of Rome. Furthermore, the banishment of the one was infamous to him, because by judgement he was banished as a thief. The banishment of the other was for as honourable an act as ever he did, being banished for ridding his country of wicked And therefore of Demosthenes, there was no speech after he was gone: but for Cicero, all the Senate changed their apparel into black, and determined that they would pass no decree by their authority, before Cicero's banishment was revoked by the people. Indeed Cicero idly passed his time of banishment, and did nothing all the while he was in Macedon: and one of the chiefest acts that Demosthenes did, in all the time that he dealt in the affairs of the commonwealth, was in his banishment. For he went into every city, and did assist the ambassadors of the Grecians, and refused the ambassadors of the Macedonians. In the which he shewed himself a better citizen, than either Themistocles, or Alcibiades, in their like fortune and exile. So when he was called home, and returned, he fell again to his old trade which he practised before, and was ever against Antipater, and the Macedonians. Where Lælius in open Senate sharply took up Cicero, for that he sat still and said nothing, when that Octavius Cæsar the young man made petition against the law, that he might sue for the Consulship, and being so young, that he had never a hair on his face. And Brutus self also doth greatly reprove Cicero in his letters, for that he had maintained and nourished, a more grievous and greater tryanny, than that which they had put down. And last of all, me thinketh the death of Cicero most pitiful, to see an old man carried up and down (with tender.

love of his servants) seeking all the ways that might be to fly death, which did not long prevent his natural course: and in the end, old as he was, to see his head so pitifully cut off. Whereas Demosthenes, though he yielded a little, entreating him that came to take him: yet for that he had prepared the poison long before, that he had kept it long, and also used it as he did, he cannot but be marvellously commended for it. For sith the god Neptune denied him the benefit of his sanctuary, he betook him to a greater, and that was death: whereby he saved himself out of the soldiers' hands of the tyrant, and also scorned the bloody cruelty of Antipater.

THE

PANEGYRICUS

AN ORATION OF

ISOCRATES

TRANSLATED BY

J. H. FREESE, M.A.

FORMERLY FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE SAME

ON THE

LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ISOCRATES

INTRODUCTION

THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF

ISOCRATES

ISOCRATES was the fourth of the "ten Attic orators," the other nine, in chronological order, being Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isaeus, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hyperides, Lycurgus, and Dinarchus. [See page 17.]

He was born in the beginning of the eighty-sixth Olympiad during the archonship of Lysimachus, i.e., in B.C. 436, five years before the commencement of the Peloponnesian war. His father was an Athenian citizen, named Theodorus, belonging to the deme, or district, of Erchia: he was a well-to-do member of the middle class, his income being derived from a flute manufactory. He served the state as choregus:1 in the words of his son, "he made himself useful to the state, and educated us so carefully, that at that time I was more famous and better known amongst my fellow-pupils than I am now amongst my fellow-citizens." When he grew up, Isocrates further studied under some of the most famous sophists, or professors of wisdom, such as Protagoras of Abdera, Prodicus of Ceos, the author of the well-known fable of the "choice of Heracles," Tisias of Syracuse, and above all, Gorgias of Leontini. The Athenian statesman and orator, Theramenes, is also said to have been one of his teachers: at any rate, the story goes that when, during the rule of the Thirty at Athens, Theramenes was unjustly condemned by Critias, Isocrates rose and stoutly defended him, showing that, if the story be true, he could on emergency overcome his natural defect of want of nerve. He was never admitted into the inner Socratic "circle," but his moral and intellectual character was doubtless influenced by the great teacher, with whom he enjoyed a certain amount of

1 The choregia, or duty of defraying the cost of the production of the public choruses, was one of the Athenian public services.

2 See the translation of it in volume four.