Note 28 — Chapter XXXIII · MENEXENUS.

Isokrates, in his last composition (Panathen. Or. xii.) written in very old age, shows how keenly he felt the aspersions of jealous rivals — Sophists less successful than himself — who publicly complained that he despised the lessons of the poets, and thought no teaching worth having except his own — ἀποδεξαμένων δὲ τῶν περιεστώτων τὴν διατριβὴν αὐτῶν, ἕνα τὸν τολμηρότερον ἐπιχειρῆσαι ἐμὲ διαβάλλειν, λέγονθ’ ὡς ἐγὼ πάντων καταφρονῶ ὦν τοιούτων, καὶ τάς τε φιλοσοφίας τὰς τῶν ἄλλων καὶ τὰς παιδείας ἁπάσας ἀναιρῶ, καὶ φημὶ πάντας ληρεῖν πλὴν τοὺς μετεσχηκότας τῆς ἐμῆς διατριβῆς (sect. 22). That which Isokrates complains of these teachers for saying in their talk with each other, the rhetorical teachers would vehemently complain of in Plato, when he expressed forcibly his contempt for rhetoric in the Gorgias and the Phædrus. One way of expressing their resentment would be to affirm that Plato could not compose a regular rhetorical discourse; which affirmation Plato would best contradict by composing one in the received manner.