Isokrates: The Forensic Speeches (Nos. 16–21)

1166 Pages·2022·4.775 MB·English

by  David Whitehead

ISOKRATES: THE FORENSIC
SPEECHES (Nos. 16–21)
Volume I & II
The Athenian Isokrates (436–338 BC) is well known for his long
career as an educator and pundit; but originally he wrote ‘forensic’
speeches, i.e. for delivery in court. Six of them survive (five from
Athens, one from Aigina), on issues including assault, fraud and
inheritance. Here for the first time, after a General Introduction,
they are presented and analysed in depth as a self-contained
group. The Greek text and a facing English translation – both
new – are augmented by commentaries which juxtapose this
material with surviving texts by other writers in the genre (and
with Isokrates’ own later output). In the process, too, the speeches’
historical background, personnel, legal context, rhetorical strat-
egies and all other relevant topics are explored.
david whitehead mria is Professor Emeritus of Ancient
History at Queen’s University Belfast. After monographs on
Athens’ metics and demes, he has specialised in commentar-
ies on Greek prose authors, including Aineias the Tactician (1990),
Hypereides: The Forensic Speeches (2000), Philo Mechanicus: On Sieges
(2016), and Xenophon: Poroi (2019).
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Published online by Cambridge University Press
ISOKRATES:
THE FORENSIC
SPEECHES
(Nos. 16-21)
INTROduCTION, TExT,
TRANSlATION ANd COmmENTARy
VOlumE I & II
dAVId WHITEHEAd
Queen’s University Belfast
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doi: 10.1017/9781009214506
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First published 2022
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A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Whitehead, David, 1949- author.
title: Isokrates, the forensic speeches (nos. 16-21) : introduction, text,
translation and commentary / David Whitehead, Queen's University
Belfast.
description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
identifiers: lccn 2021060966 (print) | lccn 2021060967 (ebook) | isbn
9781009214506 (hardback) | isbn 9781009214506 (ebook)
subjects: lcsh: Isocrates–Translations into English. | Forensic
orations–Translations into English. | Forensic orations–Greece. |
Isocrates–Political and social views.
classification: lcc PA4217.E5 W48 2022 (print) | lcc PA4217.E5 (ebook) |
ddc 885/.01–dc23/eng/20220124
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021060966
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021060967
isbn - 2 volume set 978-1-009-21450-6 Hardback
isbn - volume I 9781009100618 Hardback
isbn - volume II 9781009100625 Hardback
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CONTENTS
Preface page vii
CONVENTIONS ANd ABBREVIATIONS x
GENERAl INTROdUCTION 1
1.1–5: The Accidental Dikographos 1
2.1–3: Image and Reality 21
3.1–7: Forerunners, Rivals, Successors 32
PREAmBlE TO THE TExT 55
PRIVATE PROSECUTION OF EUTHyNOUS
FOR (?)WITHHOldING A dEPOSIT:
SUPPORT-SPEECH By A FRIENd
OF THE PlAINTIFF NIKIAS (No. 21) 60
Introduction 60
Text and Translation 98
Commentary 108
SPECIAl PlEA TO BlOCK KAllImACHOS’
PRIVATE PROSECUTION FOR (?)dAmAGES
(No. 18) 153
Introduction 153
Text and Translation 166
Commentary 196
PRIVATE PROSECUTION OF lOCHITES
FOR BATTERy (No. 20) 347
Introduction 347
Text and Translation 366
Commentary 376
v
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CONTENTS
ON THE HORSE-TEAm (PERI TOU
ZEUGOUS): dEFENCE OF AlKIBIAdES
THE yOUNGER AGAINST TEISIAS’
PRIVATE PROSECUTION FOR
(?)EJECTmENT (No. 16) 427
Introduction 427
Text and Translation 460
Commentary 482
BANKING SPEECH (‘TRAPEZITIKOS’):
PRIVATE PROSECUTION OF PASION
FOR WITHHOldING A (BANK-)dEPOSIT
(No. 17) 615
Introduction 615
Text and Translation 626
Commentary 654
AIGINETAN SPEECH (‘AIGINETIKOS’):
ClAIm TO INHERIT THE ESTATE OF
THRASylOCHOS OF SIPHNOS (No. 19) 775
Introduction 775
Text and Translation 792
Commentary 816
Appendix 1: The late-fifth-century iustitium 905
Appendix 2: The ‘Amnesty’ of Autumn 403 and Its
Relevance to Isok. 16–21 914
BIBlIOGRAPHy 920
INdExES 953
Passages cited 953
Greek (select) 1128
General 1131
vi
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PREFACE
It has been the fate of Isokrates 16–21, his six forensic speeches,
to be plundered (by students of Athenian political, social,
economic and legal history) for discrete items of information
more often than to be read and assessed in their entirety. When
considered in the round they are often found wanting. They
struggle for a place in the mainstream, whether the evaluative
context is the oeuvre of Isokrates or Athenian lawcourt oratory.
Under the first of these heads experts sometimes ignore them
altogether: witness for instance the studies selected by F. Seck
for reprinting in his 1976 Wege der Forschung Isokrates. Others
do mention 16–21, but only to condescend. ‘Though Isocrates
composed, in his youth, a few forensic speeches, it is not by such
compositions that he must be judged ... They may be dismissed
in a few words’: J. F. dobson, The Greek Orators (london 1919)
129 and 158. And even when forensic oratory is the criterion,
Isokrates’ efforts again tend either to be passed over in silence
or else called derivative and second-rate, especially when com-
pared with those of his contemporary lysias.
While commentators are not duty-bound to be cheerleaders
for their author (or material), I do join Blass, Jebb, Kennedy
and others who have seen merit and significance in Isokrates
16–21. Here are six early compositions from an Athenian ora-
tor of pivotal importance. They deserve close attention, col-
lectively as well as severally. To that end I provide here: a new
translation (facing a new text) and a commentary on all matters
that I feel competent to treat – vocabulary, idiom, rhetoric, law,
history, Realien. If I have done a good job, the results should
make profitable reading for both types of stakeholder identified
above. Specialists in Isokrates himself know that what absorbs
them about his ideas is not much on display in 16–21 (where,
even had he wished to put more of himself into the writing,
courtroom constraints inhibited this); but links of language
and expression between forensic and post-forensic Isokrates
vii
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PREFACE
have often gone unappreciated. And to those who feast on the
banquet of Athenian rhetoric and law surviving between the
420s and the 320s (especially in its earlier, pre-Isaian phase),
I respectfully say: look again at Isokrates 16–21; give him the
credit he is due.
my work has been long in the making. Its genesis belongs
in 1998–2000, when, holding a British Academy Readership
awarded for a commentary on a similar group of forensic
speeches by Hypereides, I had time left for planning the pres-
ent book as well. Here I can offer belated thanks to All Souls
College, Oxford, where a Visiting Fellowship (michaelmas
Term 1999) made this possible. Regrettably martin West, who
welcomed me to All Souls, was never to know that my sojourn
there would ultimately bear fruit. I did write a first draft by the
end of 2001, but then (and Vorarbeiten aside) progress slowed;
routine academic duties re-encroached. Recruiting a collab-
orator looked like the best way forward. The agreement of
lene Rubinstein to fill that role, from 2004 onwards, seemed a
guarantee that my draft could be bettered, especially on legal
matters. We set to work enthusiastically, with a much-enhanced
treatment of the short speech no. 21; later, though, complicating
distractions crowded in. So I must thank Cambridge University
Press’s Classics Editor michael Sharp for his encouragement –
in 2016 – to produce this present volume, brought to com-
pletion by me alone. Also let me place on record my debt to
lene Rubinstein (and her husband Jonathan Powell, who spent
some of his own research time exploring the textual basis of
16–21). Her imprint on this book goes deep. many of the ways
in which my drafts have improved over the years are her doing.
If now, in the finished product, a specific point or line of argu-
ment is unadulterated Rubinstein (and nowhere published), it is
declared as such, whether by direct quotation or by summary;
in either case the material is credited to ‘lR’. more broadly, the
transmitted form and procedural context of the five Athenian
speeches, and the jurisprudential issues they raise, are probed
viii
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PREFACE
here with an analytical rigour that connoisseurs of her oeuvre
will instantly recognise.
In 2017 I began a correspondence with Stefano martinelli
Tempesta, editor-in-chief of the new Oxford Classical Text of
Isokrates and himself responsible for 16–21. Besides keeping
me abreast of the closing stages in that project’s progress,
from 2018 onwards he took the extraordinarily generous step
of sending me his new text (with apparatus criticus) in advance
of publication. A ‘finished’ version of my own typescript was
submitted to Cambridge University Press at the end of 2020.
There it was sent to two independent experts, whose anony-
mous comments tempered encouragement with advice for
improvement on many levels. most of this counsel I have been
glad and grateful to implement, so now it is a pleasure to be
permitted to thank them by name: James diggle and michael
Gagarin.
Conversion from typescript to book occupied the closing
months of 2021. Here Katie Idle and liz davey discharged
their roles with dispatch; and Bethan lee was a splendid
copy-editor.
last and most personal thanks must go to my wife Arlene
Spiers, mortally ill as I write. Though it was three rescue-dogs
ago when we began sharing my hopes and intentions for this
project, she has never lost her serene faith that it would eventu-
ally see the published light of day.
ix
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009214506.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press
CONVENTIONS ANd
ABBREVIATIONS
1. The names of most ancient writers and, if applicable, their
works, are abbreviated in accordance with the conventions of
two standard reference-works: the OCD and, when necessary,
lSJ (for which, in themselves, see 4 below). Where I have gone
my own way, I hope that the results are intelligible, and at any
rate internally consistent. (The same applies to toponyms.) As
already illustrated on my title page, I favour some transliter-
ated forms over latinised ones (e.g. for all of the Attic Orators);
and if common forms of foreshortening seem excessive they
are expanded. So for instance demosthenes is not dem. (let
alone lSJ’s ‘d.’) but demosth. There should be no confusion
between Isai. and – the main focus of my endeavours – Isok.
my firm view that Isok. was the author of all six forensic
speeches attributed to him is not one that can hold good for
all of his fellow Orators. Though a material point (for my pur-
poses here) will rarely arise, it may be convenient for readers to
have the relevant information stated in this one place. I accept
the face-value attribution of speeches in all but the following
cases: [Andok.] 4; [lys.] 6, 11, 20; [demosth.] 7, 12, 17, 26, 34,
44, 46, 47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 58, 59, 61.
The fragments of lysias are cited by their numbers in the
2007 Oxford Classical Text by C. Carey.
The six speeches of Hypereides preserved on papyrus are
cited not by number – a matter on which there is no agreement –
but by abbreviated title, as follows (in probable chronological
order): Phil., Lyk., Eux., Ath., Dem., Epit. (For Isok. in this regard
see below, para. 2.)
The Rhetorica ad Alexandrum attributed to Aristotle is cited, by
the sections and subsections of m. Fuhrmann’s Teubner edition
(leipzig 1966), as Anax. Tech., i.e. Anaximenes of lampsakos,
Techne Rhetorike.
x
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