y with more disguise. But,
in his Panathenaic oration, Isocrates avows that he diligently kept
that object in view; for he composed it not for a contest in a court
of justice, but to delight the ears of his hearers.

They say that Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, and Gorgias of Leontini,
were the first men who taught this science; after him Theodorus of
Byzantium, and many others whom Socrates in the Phaedrus calls [Greek:
logodaidaloi]; who have said many things very tolerably clever, but
which seem as if they had arisen at the moment, trifling, and like
animals which change their colour, and too minutely painted. And this
is what makes Herodotus and Thucydides the more admirable; for though
they lived at the same time with those men whom I have named, still
they kept aloof as far as possible from such amusements, or I should
rather say from such follies. For one of them flows on like a tranquil
river, without any attempts at facetiousness; the other is borne on
in a more impetuous course, and relates warlike deeds in a warlike
spirit; and they are the first men by whom, as Theophrastus says,
history was stirred up to dare to speak in a more fluent and adorned
style than their predecessors had ventured on.

XIII. Isocrates lived in the age next to theirs; who is at all times
praised by us above all other orators of his class, even though you,
O Brutus, sometimes object in a jesting though not in an unlearned
spirit. But you will very likely agree with me when you know why I
praise him. For as Thrasymachus appeared to him to be too concise with
his closely measured rhythm, and Gorgias also, though they are the
first who are said to have laid down any rules at all for the harmony
of sentences; and as Thucydides was somewhat too abrupt and not
sufficiently round, if I may use such an expression; he was the first
who adopted a system of dilating his ideas with words, and filling
them up with better sounding sentences; and as by his own practice he
formed those men who were afterwards accounted the most eminent men in
speaking and writing, his house got to be reckoned a perfect school
of eloquence. Therefore, as I, when I was praised by our friend Cato,
could easily bear to be blamed by the rest; so Isocrates appears to
have a right to despise the judgment of other men, while he has the
testimony of Plato to pride himself on. For, as you know, Socrates is
introduced in almost the last page of the Phaedrus speaking in these
word