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

Theopompus of Chios

Theopompus, an eminent Greek historian, was a native of the island of Chios, son of Damasistratus, and brother of Caucaius, the rhetorician.

He was born about 380 BC and instructed in rhetoric by Isocrates during his stay in Chios. Chios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the Aegean Sea, 7 kilometers (4.3 mi) off the Anatolian coast.

Theopompus flourished in the reign of Alexander the Great. Theopompus’ work was known in some form by late anti-Atticist writers and lexicographers. Several of his fragments are taken from Stephanus of Byzantium (6th century AD).
Theopompus of Chios