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Isocrates

Isocrates

c. 436 BCE–c. 338 BCE · Athens

Isocrates (436 - 338 BCE) was an Athenian orator and teacher, counted among the canonical "Ten Attic Orators." Rather than speaking in the law courts or assembly himself, he ran an influential school and wrote polished essays and orations meant to be read, promoting a broad education in rhetoric as preparation for public life. He is also known for urging the often-warring Greek city-states to unite, and his ideas shaped both ancient education and later notions of the well-rounded citizen.

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Stop 1 of 1436 BCE–338 BCETaught

AthensAttica (Greece)

What they did here

Ran an influential school of rhetoric in Athens.

About Athens

Athens, the capital of Greece since 1834, was the leading intellectual centre of the classical Greek world. Socrates taught there, and four major philosophical schools took root in the city: Plato's Academy, founded around 387 BCE, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Stoa of Zeno, and Epicurus' Garden. Under Hellenistic and Roman rule Athens remained a place of study that drew students from across the empire; in the 4th century CE the Christian writers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus studied there together, while Neoplatonist teachers kept lecturing. Emperor Justinian's ban on pagan teaching of philosophy in 529 is generally taken to mark the end of the city's ancient history.

In Athens at the same time

Anaxagoras, Sophocles, Gorgias of Leontini, Herodotus, Euripides, Antiphon

Across the traditions, in Athens at the same time

See other sages who lived in Athens→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Isocrates’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Isocrates’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(30)