Forensic work of Isaeos
Isaeos, like Antiphon and Lysias, was a professsional writer of forensic speeches. But a comparative
survey of their work brings out one striking difference. Antiphon was occupied chiefly, Lysias largely, with Public Causes. Isaeos was occupied
almost wholly in Private Causes. |
almost exclusively
1 with Private Causes. These Private Causes were, moreover, principally of the class with which Demosthenes also was so much engaged, and for which Isokrates reserves his principal contempt,—claims to property or money between man and man
2. The Practical Rhetoric, at first busied chiefly with the graver interests of the civic life, had thus in the course of its development come to embrace the smaller interests so completely that it could find in these a distinct and definite field. Among the twelve extant Speeches of Isaeos—since the fragment ‘For Euphiletos’ is now counted as the twelfth—four are of uncertain time. The remaining eight may conveniently be arranged in two groups, as they precede or follow the central event in the life of Isaeos—his connexion with Demosthenes. The first group will comprise the Fifth
Oration, On the Estate of Dikaeogenes, 390 B.C.; the Tenth, On the Estate of Aristarchos, 377—371 B.C.; the Eighth, On the Estate of Kiron, 375 B.C.; and the Ninth, On the Estate of Astyphilos, 369 B.C. The second group will comprise the Sixth Oration,
On the Estate of Philoktemon, 364—363 B.C.; the Eleventh, On the Estate of Hagnias, 359 B.C.; the Second, On the Estate of Menekles, 354 B.C.; and the Seventh, On the Estate of Apollodoros, 353 B.C.
The First and Third Orations, On the Estates of Kleonymos and Pyrrhos, may probably be referred to the later period.
