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    Contents:
  • Speech 1: To Demonicus
  • Speech 2: To Nicocles
  • Speech 3: Nicocles or the Cyprians
  • Speech 4: Panegyricus
  • Speech 5: To Philip
  • Speech 6: Archidamus
  • Speech 7: Areopagiticus
  • Speech 8: On the Peace
  • Speech 9: Evagoras
  • Speech 10: Helen
  • Speech 11: Busiris
  • Speech 12: Panathenaicus
  • Speech 13: Against the Sophists
  • Speech 14: Plataicus
  • Speech 15: Antidosis
  • Speech 16: Concerning the Team of Horses
  • Speech 17: Trapeziticus
  • Speech 18: Against Callimachus
  • Speech 19: Aegineticus
  • Speech 20: Against Lochites
  • Speech 21: Against Euthynus
    		•

    Isocrates, Speeches and Letters (ed. George Norlin)

    Panathenaicus

    Editions and translations: Greek (ed. George Norlin) | English (ed. George Norlin)
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    [25] The best course, therefore, that I can take under all these conditions is to set before you what I think about the last attempts1 to arouse prejudice against me and then proceed to speak on the subject which I had in mind from the first. For I think that if I succeed by my writing in bringing out and making clear what my views are about education and about the poets, I shall stop my enemies from fabricating false charges and speaking utterly at random.

    [26] Now in fact, so far from scorning the education which was handed down by our ancestors, I even commend that which has been set up in our own day--I mean geometry, astronomy, and the so-called eristic dialogues,2 which our young men delight in more than they should, although among the older men not one would not declare them insufferable. [27] Nevertheless, I urge those who are inclined towards these disciplines to work hard and apply themselves to all of them, saying that even if this learning can accomplish no other good, at any rate it keeps the young out of many other things which are harmful. Nay, I hold that for those who are at this age no more helpful or fitting occupation can be found than the pursuit of these studies;

    1 Obviously he resents bitterly some attack upon him in recent years. Possibly it came from the “Eristics,” to the value of whose teaching he makes a condescending concession in Isoc. 12.26. These are not the “Eristics” mentioned in Against the Sophists (see Isoc. 13.1-8 and notes), who belong to an earlier period, but those referred to in Isoc. 15.258 and Isoc. Letter 5.3 ff.--namely Aristotle and his followers who had been hard on Isocrates (see Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit ii. p. 65). This is supported by the fact that the critics here referred to frequented the Lyceum. Blass, however (ii. pp. 68, 69), thinks that Isocrates has here in mind especially Speusippus.

    2 Cf. Isoc. 15.265 and note.

    There is one comment on or cross reference to this page.

    Cross references from Edward S. Forster, Isocrates Cyprian Orations:
    2, 51

    Preferred URL for linking to this page: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Isoc.+12+25

    The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

    This text is based on the following book(s):
    Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
    OCLC: 17454675
    ISBN: 0674992318, 0674992520, 0674994116

    Buy a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com: vol. 1; vol. 2; vol. 3

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