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Thus Cicero says, that Plato and Demosthenes, Aristotle and Isocrates, might have respectively excelled in each other's province, but that each was absorbed in his own. Specimens of this peculiarity occur every day.
Among the venerable sages are Appolonius of Tyana, a follower of Pythagoras, who lived to over one hundred; Xenophilus, also a Pythagorean, was one hundred and six; Demonax, a Stoic, lived past one hundred; Isocrates was ninety-eight, and Solon, Sophocles, Pindar, Anacreon, and Xenophon were octogenarians. In more modern times we find men of science and literature who have attained advanced age.
This determined the young student of rhetoric. He would make himself an orator. He at once began an energetic course of study. There were then two famous teachers of oratory in Athens, Isocrates and Isæus. The school of Isocrates was famous, and his prices very high.
But, in his Panathenaic oration, Isocrates avows that he diligently kept that object in view; for he composed it not for a contest in a court of justice, but to delight the ears of his hearers.
Moreover, who ever took more pains to oppose Isocrates? Aristotle then, while he warns us against letting verses occur in our speeches, enjoins us to attend to rhythm. And Theophrastus is more distinct still in laying down the same rule. Who then can endure those men who do not agree with such authorities as these? Unless indeed they are ignorant that they ever gave any such rules.
besides what Isocrates says, that defect is nearer allied to moderation than excess: the other is a much more ruffling gamester; for whosoever shall take upon him to choose and alter, usurps the authority of judging, and should look well about him, and make it his business to discern clearly the defect of what he would abolish, and the virtue of what he is about to introduce.
And the Latin language is so particular on this point, that no one can be so ignorant as to leave quantities of open vowels. Though this is a point on which men blame Theopompus, because he was so ostentatious in his avoidance of such letters, although his master Isocrates did the same; but Thucydides did not; nor did that other far superior writer, Plato.
And now the riddle which I have heretofore found troublesome to unfold, is out; that is to say, why Athens and Lacedaemon, consisting each of the Senate and the people, the one should be held a democracy, and the other an aristocracy, or laudable oligarchy, as it is termed by Isocrates; for that word is not, wherever you meet it, to be branded, Seeing it is used also by Aristotle, Plutarch, and others, sometimes in a good sense.
"After Isocrates came Lysias, who, though not personally engaged in forensic causes, was a very artful and an elegant composer, and such a one as you might almost venture to pronounce a complete orator: for Demosthenes is the man who approaches the character so nearly, that you may apply it to him without hesitation.
Did old age then compel this man to become silent in his particular art, or Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, or Isocrates and Gorgias whom I mentioned before, or the founders of schools of philosophy, Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Xenocrates, or later Zeno and Cleanthus, or Diogenes the Stoic, whom you too saw at Rome?
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