Isocrates

Isocrates (436–338 BC) was an Athenian orator and teacher of rhetoric. A pupil of Gorgias, he found that a weak voice and a shy manner kept him from the Assembly and the law courts, and he turned instead to teaching and to writing speeches.

He opened a school at Athens around 390 BC that drew pupils from across the Greek world, and he held that training in the art of speaking was the best education for public life. His discourses were composed to be read rather than delivered, and they plead above all for Greek unity against Persia.

This archive carries six of his discourses in George Norlin's English translation of 1928 (Loeb Classical Library, volume I), given without the translator's introductions and notes.