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Sixty orations are current under his name, of which twenty-five are genuine according to Dionysius, twenty-eight according to Caecilius, and the rest are spurious. He was averse to public declamation, so much so that once, when three persons came to hear him, he retained two but let the third go, telling him to come the next day, since now the lecture-room had a full audience. And he used to say to his pupils that he himself gave instruction for ten minas, but would give ten thousand to anyone who would teach him self-confidence and a pleasant voice. And when he was asked how he, not being a good speaker himself, could make others so, he replied that whetstones cannot themselves cut, but make iron fit to do so. Some say that he also wrote textbooks of oratory, others that in his teaching he made use of practice, not of method. He never demanded a fee from a fellow-citizen. When his pupils went to meetings of the assembly, he told them to report to him what was said there. He was greatly grieved by the death of Socrates, and the next day he appeared in black clothing. And again, when someone asked him What is oratory? he said, the art of making small things great and great things small. And once when he was a guest at a banquet in the house of Nicocreon, despot of Cyprus, and some of those present urged him to discourse, he said, for subjects in which I am competent this is not the time; in the subjects for which this is the time I am not competent. cf. Moralia, 613 a. When he saw the tragic poet Sophocles amorously following a boy, he said, Sophocles, we must not only keep our hands to ourselves, but our eyes as well. Attributed to Pericles by Plutarch, Life of Pericles, chap. viii., and Cicero, De Officiis, i. 40. 144. And when Ephorus of Cumae had left his school without learning anything and had been sent back by his father with a second tuition-fee, he called him in fun Diphorus (Twice-bringer); he took, however, great pains with him and even suggested to him the subject of his work.The great work of Ephorus was a history of the world (primarily of Greece) from the return of the Heracleidae to the siege of Perinthus in 340 b.c. From this work Plutarch and others derived much of their information. Ephorus was born early in the fourth century and died about 320 b.c. He showred himself also prone to sexual indulgence; he used an additional mattress beside him on his bed and kept his pillow wet with saffron. And when he was young he did not marry, but in his old age he kept a mistress named Lagiscê, by whom he had a daughter who died unmarried at twelve years of age. Then he married the daughter of the orator Hippias, Plathanê, who had three sons, one of whom, Aphareus, as has been said above, he adopted. This Aphareus dedicated a bronze statue of him near the Olympieium on a column with the inscription: Aphareus set up this statue his father Isocrates’ image, Sacred to Zeus, to exalt gods and his ancestors’ worth.Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ii. p. 329. The column and statue existed in the time of Pausanias (Paus. i. 18. 8). A bust in the Villa Albani in Rome may be a late copy of the head of this statue or, more probably, since Leochares was a famous sculptor, of the statue at Eleusis mentioned above. And it is said that he rode a horse in a race when he was still a boy; for a bronze figure of him as a boy riding a horse is set up on the Acropolis in the ballground of the Arrhephoroi,This seems to have been situated near the north-west wall of the Acropolis, west of the Erechtheum: Cf. Judeich, Topographie von Athen ², p. 283. Two maidens were chosen each year to carry the peplos at the Panathenaic festival and were called Arrephoroi. as some have said. In all his life but two lawsuits were brought against him: first when Megacleides challenged him to an exchange of property.See note on 837 f. He did not appear in court in this suit, because he was ill, but sent his son Aphareus and won his case. The second suit was when Lysimachus challenged him to exchange property in connexion with the trierarchy; and this case he lost and performed the trierarchy. There was also a painted portrait of him in the Pompeium.The Pompeium was just inside the Dipylon gate, at which point the processions began. It was the storehouse for objects used in processions. Aphareus wrote speeches, both juridical and deliberative, but not many. He also composed about thirty-seven tragedies, but the authorship of tw o of them is contested. Beginning in the archonship of Lysistratus369-368 b.c. he presented in the twenty-eight years to the archonship of Sosigenes342-341 b.c. six series of dramas at the City Dionysia and won the prize twice, Dionysius as his manager,When a poet (διδάσκαλος) wished to avoid the labour of presenting a play he could delegate the management to a hypodidascalus, another poet experienced in such matters. We have many instances of this practice in the didascalic notices, notably in the case of Aristophanes. and, other poets managing, he presented two other series at the Lenaean festival.The City or Greater Dionysia were celebrated in March, the Rural or Lesser Dionysia in the various demes of Attica in December, and the Lenaean festival in December. At all of these dramas were performed, but new tragedies were not produced at the Rural Dionysia, and for a time the same was true of the Lenaean festival. A series of dramas comprised three tragedies and a satyr drama. The two prizes of Aphareus are recorded in an inscription, I.G. ii.² 2325 b (ed. min.). There were statues of the mother of Isocrates and Theodorus and of her sister Anaco set up on the Acropolis; of these the statue of the mother is now placed, with a changed inscription,Statues erected to honour one person were not infrequently transferred to another by changing the inscriptions. Dio Chrysostom in his Oration to the Rhodians condemns this practice. near that of Hygieia, but the statue of Anaco is gone. She had two sons, Alexander by Coenus, and Sosicles by Lysias.
