Isocrates (436–338 BC): Ancient Greek rhetorician

Isocrates, the son of Theodorus was born in the deme of Erchia , in the first year of the 86th Olympiad , or B. C. 436 , in the archonship of Lysimachus , a little more than half a century before the birth of Demosthenes , and five years before the breaking out of the Peloponnesian War.

He was about seven years older than Plato. Isocrates was a well-conducted youth, eager to acquire information and to get himself thoroughly educated, became a pupil not only of the Sophists Gorgias and Tisias but also of Socrates.

Rhetoric was his main occupation and no age before his had seen so much care and labour expended on this art.

A certain timidity and feebleness in his delivery prevented him form from specking in public and he was therefore debarred from occupying the high stations which were to the ambitions of his contemporaries.

He taught rhetoric both at Chios and at Athens, and his school was attended by numerous disciples, among whom were Xenophon, Ephorus, Theopompus and other distinguished men of his time.
Isocrates (436–338 BC): Ancient Greek rhetorician