Canadian Bacon Barbie

I happened across the Loeb Edition (volume II) of Isocrates’ collected works at a used book store and decided to sit down with it today. I bought it because a) It’s I-Soc, and I love I-Soc, and it contained “Against the Sophists” and “Antidosis,” two familiar texts for us rhetoricians. But the volume starts with On the Peace, a text Isocrates wrote during the Social War, in which Athens was dead set on waging war against the Chians, the Coans, the Rhodians, and the Byzantines. I couldn’t help but notice parallels with our contemporary situation, so I thought I’d list some of them for your reading/pondering pleasure:

• “I observe… that you do not hear with equal favour the speakers who address you, but that, while you give your attention to some, in the case of others you do not even suffer their voice to be heard. And it is not surprising that you do this; for int he past you have formed the habit of driving all the orators from the platform except those who support your desires.” Contemporary parallel.
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• “it has become plain to all that you will be better pleased with those who who summon you to war than with those who counsel peace; for hte former put into our minds the expectation both of regaining our possessions in the several states and of recovering the power which we formerly enjoyed, while the latter hold fortn no such hope, insisting rather that we must have peace and not crave great possessions contrary to justice, but be content with those we have… ” (9). Contemporary parallel.
• For some of us appear to me to be over-zealously bent on war, as though having heard, not from haphazard counsellors, but from the gods, that we are destined to succeed in all our campaigns and to prevail easily over our foes” (9). Contemporary parallel.,
  
• Iscorates advises that peace will bring prosperity, that by stopping war with the above-mentioned countries, “we hall have all mankind as our allies–allies who will not have been forced, but rather persuaded, to join with us, who will not welcome our friendship because of our power when we are secure only to abandon us when we are in peril, but who will be disposed towards us as those should be who are in very truth allies and friends”. Other nations viewed Athens as an enemy because “they see that we are not content with what we have but are always reaching out for more. If, however, we change our ways and gain a better reputation […] it will be to their advantage to cherish and support the power of Athens and so be secure in the possession of their own kingdoms” (23).  Contemporary parallel.

Maybe Obama has been reading some Isocrates. Maybe more people should.