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[6] but, because there has been implanted in us the power to persuade each other and to make clear to each other whatever we desire, not only have we escaped the life of wild beasts, but we have come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts; and, generally speaking, there is no institution devised by man which the power of speech has not helped us to establish.1

1 For the power of speech as the faculty which has raised us from the life of beasts to that of civilized man see Xen. Mem. 4.3.11 ff. Cf. Isoc. 15.273, Isoc. 4.48 ff., and Shelley: “He gave man speech and speech created thought.” Isocrates refers to this passage in Isoc. 15.253, and quotes exactly from sections 5-9.

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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  • Commentary references to this page (2):
    • Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Antigone, 354
    • Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Antigone, 360
  • Cross-references in notes to this page (2):
  • Cross-references in notes from this page (4):
    • Isocrates, Antidosis, 253
    • Isocrates, Antidosis, 273
    • Isocrates, Panegyricus, 48
    • Xenophon, Memorabilia, 4.3.11
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (3):
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