Nor does it display the natural and simple and agonistic composition of words, as does that of Lysias, but a composition contrived rather for ceremonial and decorative dignity and in some places more magnificent than Lysias' style, in others rather overwrought. For this man pursues fine diction everywhere and aims at speaking smoothly rather than simply. Isokrates avoids the placing together of vowels as ruining the joinings and the smoothness of the sounds, and he attempts to close his thoughts round in a period and a circle very rhythmical and not far distant from poetic meter, and he is more suitable for reading than for actual use.
For this reason his speeches bear recital as declamations at festivals and reading while held in the hand, but they do not stand up to contests in assemblies and law- courts. The reason for this is that the emotional element in those speeches must be great, but a period allows this least of all. And the paromoioses and parisoses and antitheses and all the trappings of figures of this sort are very prominent with him and often, by presenting themselves to our ears, mar the rest of his artistic effort.
(3) There being altogether three things, as Theophrastos says, from which arise what is grand and dignified and extraordinary in style, the choice of words and the harmony which comes from their joining and the figures which encompass them, Isokrates selects words very well and adopts the most accepted of them, but he joins them in a fussy way, stretching euphony into something musical, and he arranges them in figures vulgarly and for the most part he is frigid, either by reaching too far for his figures or because his figures are not appropriate for their subject since he does not keep control of proper measure.
These things, further, also often make his style prolix--I mean fitting all his thoughts into periods and circumscribing his periods with the same types of figures and seeking everywhere pleasant rhythm. For not all things admit either the same length or the same figure or the same rhythm, so that it is necessary for him to use fillers of words which serve no purpose and to lengthen his speech beyond what is beneficial.
I don't mean that he does this all the time. (I'm not so insane. In fact he sometimes arranges his words simply and breaks up the period nobly and avoids banal and fussy rhetorical figures, especially in his symbouleutic and dikastic speeches.) Rather, in view of the fact that for the most part he is a slave to rhythm and to the circle of the period and seeks beauty of discourse in elaboration, I have stated a fairly common view about him. In this respect, indeed, I say that the style of Isokrates is inferior to that of Lysias, and also in charm. And yet Isokrates is florid, if anyone else is, and allures his listeners with pleasure, but he does not have the same grace as Lysias. He is as much inferior in this virtue as bodies bedecked with added ornaments are to bodies beautiful by nature. For Lysias' style naturally has gracefulness; Isokrates' strives for it. So then, in these virtues he is inferior to Lysias, in my opinion at least.
But he is superior in the following ones: he is more elevated than Lysias in his style and more grandiloquent by far and more dignified. For wondrous indeed and great is the elevation of Isokrates' composition, fit for an heroic rather than an ordinary human nature. It seems to me, in fact, that one would not miss the mark if he compared the rhetoric of Isokrates to the art of Polykleitos and Pheidias in its augustness, artistic elaboration, and dignity, and that of Lysias to the art of Kalamis and Kallimachos for its subtlety and grace. For just as of the artists mentioned the one pair are more successful than the rest in lesser works on a human scale, while the other two are more adept at greater and more divine works, so also of (these) speakers the one is more clever on small topics, the other more remarkable on great ones, perhaps because he is actually by nature a great-spirited person, or if not, in any case because he pursues by choice what is august and awe-inspiring. So much, then, about Isokrates' style.
I do not think this section needs much discussion: I am sure everyone knows that in discourses the most pleasant and more beautiful thing is variety. As an example I offer all the writing of Herodotos, all of Plato, all of Demosthenes. For it is impossible to find others who have employed more additions and more timely variegations and more diverse figures. I speak of the first as (composing in) the mold of history, the second in the gracefulness of dialogues, the third in the exigencies of rhetorical combat.
But the (style of the) school of Isokrates and his associates was not like those styles. Rather, these men, although they composed many works pleasantly and grandiloquently, do not really succeed in variety and diversity: with them there is a single circuit of the period, a uniform arrangement of figures, an unchanging avoidance of the clash of vowels, and many other such things which interfere with hearing. I do not approve that school in this respect. In Isokrates himself, to be sure, there flourished many other graces which tend to hide this deformity, but in those who came after him, because their other successes were lesser, this fault is more apparent.
For, since the hearer is one who does not fear that his trust is being assailed by the wiles of an artful speech, he even is grateful to the orator who serves the pleasure of his ears. This type of speaking, however, is neither to be adopted in its entirety for cases argued in the forum nor entirely rejected. For if you should use it always, it both brings satiety and its nature is recognized even by the inexperienced. Further, it takes away the toil of delivering the speech, it removes the human feeling of the hearer, it destroys completely veracity and persuasiveness.
For before his time there was not a building-up, as it were, of words, and a rhythmical closure, or, if there ever was, it did not appear that this had been sought by deliberate effort. Which may perhaps be grounds for praise; in any case, at that time it happened more by nature and, sometimes, by chance, than either by any deliberate art or by observation. For nature herself bounds and encompasses a thought with a certain enclosure, and when the thought is bound together with well-fitted words, for the most part it also has a rhythmical cadence. For even the ears themselves judge what is complete, what lacking, and the grouping together of words is limited, as it were by a necessity, by the breath of the speaker, in which not only to fail, but even to have difficulty is shameful.
At that time lived Lysias, himself not indeed engaged in public cases, but an outstandingly simple and elegant writer, whom you might now almost dare to call a perfect orator. For you could easily call Demosthenes perfect, and one from whom nothing at all is lacking. In those pleadings which he wrote, nothing could have been cleverly contrived, nothing, if I may so speak, cunningly, nothing expertly, which he did not see; nothing could have been said subtly, nothing concisely, nothing tersely, by which anything of his could be made more polished; nothing grand, moreover, nothing passionate, nothing adorned with weight of words or thoughts, by which a single thing would be more elevated.
To the era of these men Isokrates was successor, who beyond the others of the same genre is always praised by us, while you, Brutus, sometimes mildly and learnedly demur. But you would perhaps concede my point, if you should learn what I praise in him. For, since Thrasymachos and Gorgias, although they are said first to have joined words with a certain art, seemed to him to be cut up by small cadences, and Theodoros, too, seemed rather abrupt and not, so to speak, sufficiently rounded, Isokrates first began the practice of extending his sentences with words and filling them out with softer rhythms. Since he taught in this technique those who, some in speaking, some in writing, became leaders, his home was considered a workshop of eloquence.
Each of these men precedes Isokrates in time, so that he bested them in moderation, not invention. For just as he is more calm in transferring and inventing words, so in his rhythms themselves he is more calm. Gorgias, however, has a greater appetite for this sort of thing and abuses rather arrogantly these festive trappings (for this is his own judgment), which Isokrates nonetheless, when he had heard Gorgias, now an old man, in Thessaly, tempered in a more moderate way.
What is more, Isokrates himself, as he advanced more and more in age--for he completed almost a hundred years--released himself from a too-rigid rule of rhythm, as he states in that volume which he wrote to Philip the Macedonian when he was already quite old, in which he says that he now is less a slave to rhythms than he had been accustomed to be. Thus he had corrected not only his predecessors but also himself.