REFERENCES TO ISOCRATES IN ARISTOTLE’S
REFERENCES TO ISOCRATES IN ARISTOTLE’S

Summary/Abstract: The connection between Isocrates and Aristotle, two outstanding educators and rhetorical theorists of the 4th century BCE Athens, is a matter of interesting long-lasting discussion dating back to Greco-Roman antiquity. There is an opinion, based on doxography and anecdotes (cf. Philodemus II, 50, 21 (Sudhaus),1 Cic. De oratore III, 141, Quintilianus III, 1, 13–14), that Aristotle, after he had arrived to Athens in circa 367 BCE, first attended the school of Isocrates, but later, under the priority of stylistics, moved to Academy and started his pedagogical career by giving public lectures on rhetoric; on the basis of these lectures the dialogue Gryllus (ca. 362 BCE, now lost) emerged, in which he supposedly attacked Isocrates2. About ten years later (ca. 350 BCE), Aristotle wrote Protrepticus in defense of the Academic concept of philosophy as a response to the Isocratean view presented in Antidosis3. Biographical data recorded in ancient sources testify their competitive rivalry and perhaps certain enmity to each other4. The latter assumption occupies even more attention in recent studies of early Greek rhetoric and education, focusing on the similarities and dissimilarities between educational programs, ethical and political views, attitude towards rhetoric and theory of style5. Both of them are credited originality: Isocrates, for instance, for connecting rhetoric with ethics, emphasizing a well educated personality able to make proper decisions and contribute to the prosperity of the state (his idea that good speech reflects good soul later was picked up by Cicero and Quintilian)6, and Aristotle for paralleling rhetoric with dialectics, for emphasizing argument; for him, rhetoric is a counterpart and necessary completion of dialectics, which is “mostly absent in ordinary human communication”7. However,in his rhetorical theory, Aristotle inevitably makes use of inventions of previous rhetoricians, not excluding Isocrates. The same (the just mentioned reliance upon earlier authors) is true about Isocrates. However, the attitude of these two thinkers towards each other’s literary production is still relatively little explored. Therefore, the question follows: how much did Aristotle depend on Isocratean rhetoric and Isocrates on Platonico-Aristotelian dialectics?8 The purpose of the following discussion is not to answer this complex question; instead, it will contribute only to the first half of the question, dealing with the aspects of Isocratean quotations in the Aristotelian theory of eloquence as it is read in the three books of his Art of Rhetoric.

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