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Philosophy,1 moreover, which has helped to discover and establish all these institutions, which has educated us for public affairs and made us gentle towards each other, which has distinguished between the misfortunes that are due to ignorance and those which spring from necessity, and taught us to guard against the former and to bear the latter nobly—philosophy, I say, was given to the world by our city. And Athens it is that has honored eloquence,2
1 For “philosophy” in Isocrates see General Introd. p. xxvi, and Cicero's definition, De orat. iii. 16, “omnis rerum optimarum cognitio, atque in iis exercitatio, philosophia.”
2 Cf. Isoc. 15.295-296; Plat. Laws 641e; and Milton: “mother of arts and eloquence.”
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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