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Did he not found a school, one more popular in its day than the Academy (of Plato)? Kyk 05:04, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Is it really true that he lived to be 108 years old? This sounds very suspicious. Academic Challenger 09:36, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It was actually 98 years old. You have to count bakwards. Coralhue ( talk) 01:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I am contributing to the Isocrates page. I researched him for a school project and decided to add some contributions. I'd love to hear any feedback. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.77.102.183 ( talk) 15:53, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Was he a sophist and then turned against them, or is the title just a rhetoric device? Was he criticizing what he saw as Vulgar Sophism?-- 87.162.28.69 ( talk) 20:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
The following sentence in the article "[ Isocrates said that "A Greek is he who shares our common culture" (meaning Greek culture) and understand from that that he was an early proponent of multiculturalism who wanted barbarians as well as Greeks becoming a part of the Greek ethnic group.]" is self contradictory. Surely someone who defines Greekness by adoption of Greek culture is an assimilationist which is antithetical to being a proponent of multiculturalism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.20.217 ( talk) 07:32, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
I've made a significant change to the above section. The English translation of Panegyricus 50 is commically false, so I've corrected it and even listed a few key Greek words that make all the difference in the meaning. Anyone who has a different opinion is free to discuss it with me here, so we can reach a consensus. Colossus ( talk) 14:31, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
^ Greeks and Barbarians (Edinburgh Readings on the Ancient World, Edinburgh University Press (25 Oct 2001), ISBN 978-0-7486-1270-3, σελ.139-140 "It has been widely assumed in the past that the word Hellene began by having a ‘national’ sense and later, especially in Hellenistic times, came to mean ‘possessing Greek culture’. For instance, in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt the Hellenes were also known as ol ôô to y4lvuaiou, ‘those from the gymnasium’) and frequently had non- Greek names. From Tebtunis we have a list of five E)Avwv ycwpyIvI, ‘Greek farmers’, of whom only one has a Greek name.’ And it has been thought that the beginning of this extension in the meaning of the word can be traced to the fourth century, when Isocrates wrote,”‘Athens has become the teacher of the other cities, and has made the name of Greek (to tcwE?.Xvwv övopa) no longer a mark of race (yvoç) hut of Intellect (6tãvota), so that it is those who share our upbringing (tiç ltau5c6aEwç) rather than our common nature (tiç coiviIc pioç) who are called Hellcnes.’ This passage has attracted great attention, Jaeger going so far as to claim it as° ‘a higher justification for the new national imperialism, in that it identifies what is specifically Greek with what is universally human’. ‘Without the idea which [Isocrates] here expresses for the first time’, he continues, ‘... there would have been no Maccdonian Greek world-empire, and the universal culture which we call Hellenistic would never have existed.’ Unfortunately for this claim, it has been shown” that in this passage Tsocrates is not extending the term Helene to non-Greeks, hut restricting its application; he is in effect saying, ‘Hellenes are no longer all who share in the yévoç and common qnai; of the Greek people, as hitherto, but only those who have gone to school to Athens; henceforth Greece” is equivalent to Athens and her cultural following.’ Thus Isocrates gives the term a cultural value; but he cannot be regarded as initiating a wider concept of Hellas."
^ James I. Porter, Classical pasts: the classical traditions of Greece and Rome Classical pasts, Princeton University Press, 2006, 0691089426, 9780691089423, p.383-384, "The telos towards which the whole encomium is directed is neither military nor material, but cultural, and in particular linguistic: •toiio4ia (in Isocrates’, not in Plato’s sense) is Athens’s gift to the world, and eloquence, which distinguishes men from animals and liberally educated men (τους ευθύς εξαρχής ελευθέρως τεθραμμένους KINDLY ADD TONOI-PNEUMATA) from uncultured ones, is honoured in that city more than in any other.3° Thus Isocrates can claim that it is above all in the domain of language that Athens has become the school for the rest of the world: “And so far has our city distanced the rest of mankind in thought and in speech that her pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world; and she has brought it about that the name ‘Hellenes’ suggests no longer a race but an intelligence, and thin the title ‘Hellenes’ is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood:’3’ Like Pericles’ funeral oration in Thucydides, upon which this section of the Panegyricus is closely modelled,32 Isocrates’ panegyric emphasizes abstract cultural values but its ultimate goal is in fact more concretely military: the speech as a whole aims at convincing the other Greek cities to grant Athens hegemony and leadership in an expedition against the Pεrsians, which will reunite the Greeks by distracting them from their internecine warfare. But Athens’s present military weakness in the wake of the Peace of Antalcidas (387 B.C.E.) deprives Isocrates of the easiest argument, that leadership should be given to the city that has the greatest military strength. Hence he must appeal to past military and culturall glories in order to justify present claims—indeed, his evident reuse of themes from Pericles’ funeral oration is part of the same rhetorical strategy, designed as it is to remind fourth-century pan-Hellenic readers of Athens’s fifth-century glory. But what passes itself off here as the disinterested praise of a city is in fact the canny self-advertisement of a successful businessman, and Isocrates’ climactic celebration of Athenian philosophy and eloquence is little more than a thinly disguised panegyric for what he saw as his very own contribution to Athenian, Greek and world culture. For φιλοσοφία and eloquence were in fact the slogans of Isocrates’ own educational program.
^ Takis Poulakos, David J. Depew, Isocrates and civic education, University of Texas Press, 2004, 0292702191, 9780292702196, p.63-64, "He crafts onto his predecessor’s analogy Athens as a school of Hellas an enduring bond among the Hellenes and a great divide between them and the Persians: Athens’ pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world” and “the title ‘Hellenes’ is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood” (50). The cultural links Pericles had named as uniting Athenians and their allies lies together are refigured here rhetorically, and in a way that forges a symbolic unification among all the cities of Hellas, including Sparta and its allied states. Relying on and at the same time changing Pericles’ wise words, Isocrates creates the perception of Athens as having been unified with all Greek city-stares from the very beginning, and thereby makes this perception part and parcel of Athens’ glorious history. As a result of this rhetorical engagement of conventional wisdom, current concerns about pan-Hellenism find their way into the city’s timeless traditions. Capitalizing on the propensity of epideictic language to amplify and to augment, lsocrates finesses the stable doxa of the community and enlarges its boundaries 90 as to accommodate the less stable doxa of the present".
(outdent) Personally, I am aware of this debate and its intricacies. However, I fail to see how this discussion can lead to the improvement of the article. (1) The 'Who is a Greek?' question has indeed been under debate in the Greek public sphere since the early 2000s. However, there is much lore surrounding this topic and the relevant discussions have been rarely documented by reliable sources. (2) Leaving aside the problem that there are no reliable sources documenting this debate, Wikipedia is not a soapbox. We cannot start editorializing at length on current affairs and politics in an article about an ancient figure, let alone doing it in an unbalanced way as User:Colossus proposed above. -- Omnipaedista ( talk) 20:38, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
--
Some claim, that Isocrates, judged by modern standards, was a fervent Greek Nationalist. I do not know, but either way, whether this is true or not, historical anachronism is not my favorite area. I have studied Isocrates from his original text and I can confidently say that his whole life and his work support the fact that he believed Athens was culturally superior to any other Greek city-state and of course every other foreign, barbarian, place. In Panigirikos, he is not making a statement that we should call Greeks those who partake in our culture. He is merely lamenting the fact that others (i.e. barbarians) who came and studied the Greek language and culture in Athens, end up being called "Greeks" by their fellow people when they return back to their countries. He is clearly not approving this, he is merely stating that Athens, being the most prominent, Greek city (culturally speaking) has made such a great name for itself that pretty much any foreigner who speaks Greek is considered a Greek NOT by other Greeks or of course the Athenians but the people in other foreign, barbaric, places. The text is so easy to understand for anyone with a basic knowledge of Ancient Greek, e.g. those who had a minimum number of years studying Ancient Greek in high school. Thank you for taking the time to read my comment, dimitriosp (at) hotmail. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.135.91.121 ( talk) 05:53, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
--
This section, even after the discussion a few years ago, overtly editorializes while simultaneously failing to include any substantial reference information or background for those who are not familiar with debates surrounding Greek national identity. Also, this event took place nearly 20 years ago. If every article on a classical author were to include every time a passage was used in a political debate over the past 2500 years in any country, let alone Greece, then we are talking about Wiki pages that would be many times longer than any of them currently are. If this page is going to have a reception section, or even a reception in modern Greece section, than it needs attention of a specialist to write it, and not just someone who is going to cite republished FW Walbank articles written around midcentury to prove a particular--and partisan--point. But I suspect that we would be entering into Oxbridge Companion territory--not Wikipedia--if we did. If nobody objects, this section should be deleted as more or less irrelevant to the topic. 47.16.210.75 ( talk) 03:04, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
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![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 March 2021 and 11 June 2021. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
MinervaNix. Peer reviewers:
Daboom148,
IvanTheVegan.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 00:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Did he not found a school, one more popular in its day than the Academy (of Plato)? Kyk 05:04, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Is it really true that he lived to be 108 years old? This sounds very suspicious. Academic Challenger 09:36, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It was actually 98 years old. You have to count bakwards. Coralhue ( talk) 01:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I am contributing to the Isocrates page. I researched him for a school project and decided to add some contributions. I'd love to hear any feedback. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.77.102.183 ( talk) 15:53, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Was he a sophist and then turned against them, or is the title just a rhetoric device? Was he criticizing what he saw as Vulgar Sophism?-- 87.162.28.69 ( talk) 20:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
The following sentence in the article "[ Isocrates said that "A Greek is he who shares our common culture" (meaning Greek culture) and understand from that that he was an early proponent of multiculturalism who wanted barbarians as well as Greeks becoming a part of the Greek ethnic group.]" is self contradictory. Surely someone who defines Greekness by adoption of Greek culture is an assimilationist which is antithetical to being a proponent of multiculturalism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.20.217 ( talk) 07:32, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
I've made a significant change to the above section. The English translation of Panegyricus 50 is commically false, so I've corrected it and even listed a few key Greek words that make all the difference in the meaning. Anyone who has a different opinion is free to discuss it with me here, so we can reach a consensus. Colossus ( talk) 14:31, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
^ Greeks and Barbarians (Edinburgh Readings on the Ancient World, Edinburgh University Press (25 Oct 2001), ISBN 978-0-7486-1270-3, σελ.139-140 "It has been widely assumed in the past that the word Hellene began by having a ‘national’ sense and later, especially in Hellenistic times, came to mean ‘possessing Greek culture’. For instance, in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt the Hellenes were also known as ol ôô to y4lvuaiou, ‘those from the gymnasium’) and frequently had non- Greek names. From Tebtunis we have a list of five E)Avwv ycwpyIvI, ‘Greek farmers’, of whom only one has a Greek name.’ And it has been thought that the beginning of this extension in the meaning of the word can be traced to the fourth century, when Isocrates wrote,”‘Athens has become the teacher of the other cities, and has made the name of Greek (to tcwE?.Xvwv övopa) no longer a mark of race (yvoç) hut of Intellect (6tãvota), so that it is those who share our upbringing (tiç ltau5c6aEwç) rather than our common nature (tiç coiviIc pioç) who are called Hellcnes.’ This passage has attracted great attention, Jaeger going so far as to claim it as° ‘a higher justification for the new national imperialism, in that it identifies what is specifically Greek with what is universally human’. ‘Without the idea which [Isocrates] here expresses for the first time’, he continues, ‘... there would have been no Maccdonian Greek world-empire, and the universal culture which we call Hellenistic would never have existed.’ Unfortunately for this claim, it has been shown” that in this passage Tsocrates is not extending the term Helene to non-Greeks, hut restricting its application; he is in effect saying, ‘Hellenes are no longer all who share in the yévoç and common qnai; of the Greek people, as hitherto, but only those who have gone to school to Athens; henceforth Greece” is equivalent to Athens and her cultural following.’ Thus Isocrates gives the term a cultural value; but he cannot be regarded as initiating a wider concept of Hellas."
^ James I. Porter, Classical pasts: the classical traditions of Greece and Rome Classical pasts, Princeton University Press, 2006, 0691089426, 9780691089423, p.383-384, "The telos towards which the whole encomium is directed is neither military nor material, but cultural, and in particular linguistic: •toiio4ia (in Isocrates’, not in Plato’s sense) is Athens’s gift to the world, and eloquence, which distinguishes men from animals and liberally educated men (τους ευθύς εξαρχής ελευθέρως τεθραμμένους KINDLY ADD TONOI-PNEUMATA) from uncultured ones, is honoured in that city more than in any other.3° Thus Isocrates can claim that it is above all in the domain of language that Athens has become the school for the rest of the world: “And so far has our city distanced the rest of mankind in thought and in speech that her pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world; and she has brought it about that the name ‘Hellenes’ suggests no longer a race but an intelligence, and thin the title ‘Hellenes’ is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood:’3’ Like Pericles’ funeral oration in Thucydides, upon which this section of the Panegyricus is closely modelled,32 Isocrates’ panegyric emphasizes abstract cultural values but its ultimate goal is in fact more concretely military: the speech as a whole aims at convincing the other Greek cities to grant Athens hegemony and leadership in an expedition against the Pεrsians, which will reunite the Greeks by distracting them from their internecine warfare. But Athens’s present military weakness in the wake of the Peace of Antalcidas (387 B.C.E.) deprives Isocrates of the easiest argument, that leadership should be given to the city that has the greatest military strength. Hence he must appeal to past military and culturall glories in order to justify present claims—indeed, his evident reuse of themes from Pericles’ funeral oration is part of the same rhetorical strategy, designed as it is to remind fourth-century pan-Hellenic readers of Athens’s fifth-century glory. But what passes itself off here as the disinterested praise of a city is in fact the canny self-advertisement of a successful businessman, and Isocrates’ climactic celebration of Athenian philosophy and eloquence is little more than a thinly disguised panegyric for what he saw as his very own contribution to Athenian, Greek and world culture. For φιλοσοφία and eloquence were in fact the slogans of Isocrates’ own educational program.
^ Takis Poulakos, David J. Depew, Isocrates and civic education, University of Texas Press, 2004, 0292702191, 9780292702196, p.63-64, "He crafts onto his predecessor’s analogy Athens as a school of Hellas an enduring bond among the Hellenes and a great divide between them and the Persians: Athens’ pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world” and “the title ‘Hellenes’ is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood” (50). The cultural links Pericles had named as uniting Athenians and their allies lies together are refigured here rhetorically, and in a way that forges a symbolic unification among all the cities of Hellas, including Sparta and its allied states. Relying on and at the same time changing Pericles’ wise words, Isocrates creates the perception of Athens as having been unified with all Greek city-stares from the very beginning, and thereby makes this perception part and parcel of Athens’ glorious history. As a result of this rhetorical engagement of conventional wisdom, current concerns about pan-Hellenism find their way into the city’s timeless traditions. Capitalizing on the propensity of epideictic language to amplify and to augment, lsocrates finesses the stable doxa of the community and enlarges its boundaries 90 as to accommodate the less stable doxa of the present".
(outdent) Personally, I am aware of this debate and its intricacies. However, I fail to see how this discussion can lead to the improvement of the article. (1) The 'Who is a Greek?' question has indeed been under debate in the Greek public sphere since the early 2000s. However, there is much lore surrounding this topic and the relevant discussions have been rarely documented by reliable sources. (2) Leaving aside the problem that there are no reliable sources documenting this debate, Wikipedia is not a soapbox. We cannot start editorializing at length on current affairs and politics in an article about an ancient figure, let alone doing it in an unbalanced way as User:Colossus proposed above. -- Omnipaedista ( talk) 20:38, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
--
Some claim, that Isocrates, judged by modern standards, was a fervent Greek Nationalist. I do not know, but either way, whether this is true or not, historical anachronism is not my favorite area. I have studied Isocrates from his original text and I can confidently say that his whole life and his work support the fact that he believed Athens was culturally superior to any other Greek city-state and of course every other foreign, barbarian, place. In Panigirikos, he is not making a statement that we should call Greeks those who partake in our culture. He is merely lamenting the fact that others (i.e. barbarians) who came and studied the Greek language and culture in Athens, end up being called "Greeks" by their fellow people when they return back to their countries. He is clearly not approving this, he is merely stating that Athens, being the most prominent, Greek city (culturally speaking) has made such a great name for itself that pretty much any foreigner who speaks Greek is considered a Greek NOT by other Greeks or of course the Athenians but the people in other foreign, barbaric, places. The text is so easy to understand for anyone with a basic knowledge of Ancient Greek, e.g. those who had a minimum number of years studying Ancient Greek in high school. Thank you for taking the time to read my comment, dimitriosp (at) hotmail. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.135.91.121 ( talk) 05:53, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
--
This section, even after the discussion a few years ago, overtly editorializes while simultaneously failing to include any substantial reference information or background for those who are not familiar with debates surrounding Greek national identity. Also, this event took place nearly 20 years ago. If every article on a classical author were to include every time a passage was used in a political debate over the past 2500 years in any country, let alone Greece, then we are talking about Wiki pages that would be many times longer than any of them currently are. If this page is going to have a reception section, or even a reception in modern Greece section, than it needs attention of a specialist to write it, and not just someone who is going to cite republished FW Walbank articles written around midcentury to prove a particular--and partisan--point. But I suspect that we would be entering into Oxbridge Companion territory--not Wikipedia--if we did. If nobody objects, this section should be deleted as more or less irrelevant to the topic. 47.16.210.75 ( talk) 03:04, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
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