The Greek Isocrate’s long life spanned the second and third centuries, BC. Although he founded a renowned school of rhetoric in Athens, he eventually came to spend the bulk of his time as a pamphleteer. It is said he unconsciously invented the essay as a literary form. [Durant.]
He saw Greece not as a race, but a proud culture pre-eminent in the world, despite its diversity and the autonomy of its various states. But the Greeks continued to consume themselves in civil war, while outside her gates, the ‘barbarians’ of Italy, the Balkans, Sicily, Africa and the Ottoman Empire grew ever stronger and more menacing. “If we must fight,” Isocrates seemed to say, “Fight those who threaten us, not each other, not Greek upon Greek.” But it was too late; his efforts failed.
Tradition holds that Isocrates escaped Death’s leveling scythe for ninety-eight years; no mean feat now or then; but when he heard news that his native city had been defeated in war, he, weary of contesting an unwinnable fight to bring peace to his own land, took from Fate the final word and starved himself to death two years shy of a century.
But what had he fore-warned about the cycles of man and history?
First, Will Durant [historian]: Athens had ruined itself by carrying to excess the principles of liberty and equality.
Let us permit the final words come from Isocrates: The ultimate defeat of ancient Greece was occasioned by “… training the citizens in such fashion that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and broad license to do what they pleased as happiness.”
This according to Durant and Isocrates is how great nations are bought low.
If there is a unifying, over-arching theme to history, it is this: in the affairs of men, what has been will be again. History mocks our sense of originality; we are too wise to fall into the old snares. Durant would smile with an enlightened indulgence at that innocent self-deception.
For anyone who thinks these two men were in error, that it couldn’t happen in modern America, just turn on the evening news and watch the ever-turning cycle of history come yet again . . .
This time, to us.
– Lucky Garvin
