Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/528

506 506 HISTORY OF THE times find in them a certain amount of plain-speaking ;* but it is quite clear that Isocrates had none of those profound views of policy which could alone have given weight and efficiency to his suggestions. He shows the very best intentions, always exhorts to concord and peace, lives in the hope that every state will give up its extravagant claims, set free its dependent allies, and place itself on an equal footing with them, and that, in consequence of these happy changes, something great will he undertaken against the barbarians. We find nowhere in Isocrates any clear and well -based conception of the principles by which Greece may be guided to this golden age of unity and concord, especially of the rights of the states which would be affected by it, and the claims which would have to be set aside. In the speech about the peace, which was published during the Social War, he advises the Athenians, in the first part, to grant inde- pendenee to the rebellious islanders ; in the second part, he recommends them to give up their maritime supremacy— judicious and excellent propo- sals, which would only have the effect of annihilating the power of Athens and checking every tendency to manly exertion. In his Areopagiticus he declares that he sees no safety for Athens, save in the restoration of that democracy which Solon had founded and Cleisthenes had revived; as if it were possible to restore, without the least trouble in the world, a constitution, which, in the course of time, had undergone such manifold changes, and, with it, the old simplicity of manner, which had altogether disappeared. In his Panegyricus, he exhorts all the Greeks to give up their animosities, and to direct their ambition against the barbarians; the two chief states, Athens and Sparta, having so arranged as to divide the Hegemony or leadership between them : a plan very sensible at the time, and not altogether impracticable, but requiring a totally different basis from that which Isocrates lays down ; for presuming a violent objection on the part of the Lacedaemonians, he proves to them, from the mythical history of early times, that Athens was more deserving of the leadership than Sparta, t The only true and correctly conceived part of the. speech is that in which he displays the divided condition of Greece, and the facility with which the Greeks, if only united, could make con- quests in Asia. Lastly, in his Philip, a tract inscribed jp the king of Macedon, when this prince, in consequence of the treaty concluded by obey their now ruler; aud his harangue to Nicocles is an exhortation addressed to the young ruler, on the duties and virtues of a sovereign. in his letter to Archidamus (IX.), §13. This letter is undoubtedly genuine ; but the following, that to Dionysius (X.), is, as clearly, the work of a later rhetorician of the Asiatic school. f What Isocrates says in this speech (written about 01. TOO, 1. B.C. 380) : tJ;v fjXv hfjuit'^av -xoXn pfiitv Wi raura *M«.y«.yi7v, at all events does not accord with the result of the negotiations given in Xenoph., Hellen. VI. 5, § 3, 4 ; VII. 1, 8 and 14(01. 102, 4. B.C. 369) ; where Athens renounces the only practical method of sharing the Hegemony, by land and water, which the Lacedaemonians had offered.
 * " I am accustomed to write my orations with plainness of speech," says lie