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Isocrates was the son of Theodorus of Erchia, a citizen of the middle class, an owner of slaves who made flutes, through whom he gained a competence, so that he paid for a public chorusWealthy Athenians performed in turn special services to the state called liturgies. The most expensive of these was the choregy, which involved the payment, training, and equipment of a chorus for a lyrical or dramatic performance. and gave his children an educationSee Isocrates, On the Exchange of Property (Or. xv.), 161. (for he had other sons, Telesippus and Diomnestus, and also a daughter), and hence he is ridiculed on account of the flutes by Aristophanes and Strattis. Isocrates was born in the eighty-sixth Olympiad, in the archonship of Lysimachus436-435 b.c. of Myrrhinus, being twenty-two years younger than Lysias and seven years older than Plato.Plato was born in 428-427 b.c. Lysias, according to this statement, in 459-458. But see note on 835 d above. In his boyhood he was as well educated as any Athenian, for he attended the lectures of Prodicus of Ceos, Gorgias of Leontini, Teisias of Syracuse, and the orator Theramenes; and when the lastnamed was in danger of being arrested by the Thirty and had fled for safety to the altar of Hestia Boulaea,The sanctuary of this Goddess of the Senate’s Hearth was in or near the Prytaneum, which was somewhere on the northern slope of the Acropolis. everyone else was terrified, but Isocrates alone arose to speak in his aid; and at first he was silent for a long time, then afterwards he was urged to be silent by Theramenes himself, who said that his misfortune would be more painful if any of his friends should share it. And it is said that certain rhetorical teachings of Theramenes - those which go under the name of Boton - were of use to Isocrates when he was falsely accused in the courts. But when he became a man he kept away from political affairs, since he had a weak voice and a timid dispositionSee Isocrates, Philip (Or. v.), 81; Panathenaic (Or. xii.), 9. and had lost his inherited property in the war against the Lacedaemonians. It is evident that he composed speeches for others, but he delivered only one, that on the Exchange of Property. He set up a school and turned to philosophy and to writing out the results of his thinking, and he composed his Festival Oration i.e. the Panegyric, delivered at Olympia. and some others of an advisory nature, some of which he delivered himself and some of which he prepared for others to deliver, hoping that in this way he might lead the Greeks to think as they ought. But when he failed of his purpose he gave up that sort of thing and became the head of a school, at first, as some say, at Chios, where he had nine pupils. That was the time when, as he saw the tuition fees counted out, he burst into tears and said, Now I recognize that I have sold myself to these people. He would carry on conversation with all who desired it and was the first to make a distinction between contentious speeches and those of a political character, to which latter he devoted himself. And he also instituted at Chios public offices and the same constitution which existed in his native city. He made more money than any other sophist, so that he was even a trierarch.The trierarchy was one of the liturgies which wealthy citizens were obliged to perform. Being trierarch thus showed wealth.
