Isocrates (436–338 BC), Greek rhetorician. Though he didn't speak himself, due to his weak voice and stage fright, he made many contributions to rhetoric and education in ancient Greece through his teaching and written works. Of the 60 orations in his name available in Roman times, 21 were transmitted by ancient and medieval scribes. Another three orations were found in a single codex during a 1988 excavation at Kellis, a site in the Dakhleh Oasis of Egypt. We have nine letters in his name, but the authenticity of four have been questioned. One of his most enduring influences has been to the field of liberal education.
Isokrates' client (again a rich man) is attempting to thwart Kallimachos' efforts by activating, apparently for the first time, the new blocking procedure of paragraphe: this amongst other things requires him, the erstwhile defendant, to take the initiative and speak first.
(vi) Isokrates 16 On the Chariot-Team (peri tou zeugous) - hereinafter Zeug.
To make the case for Isokrates as a writer of more important and more innovative lawcourt speeches than he is normally given credit for need not be built on a blinkered attempt to deny their indebtedness to already-existing conventions of the genre.
Isokrates certainly does not neglect sound, but such extremes simply are not present (the passage cited makes some use of isokolon, brief alliteration [mikrois megethos] and parechesis [thei and ei]).
The point is that in Isokrates they are tools to be used at some times, but not others.
Isokrates' sentences are also very carefully structured, but simply more elaborate.
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