Isocrates' Encomium of Helen: Reply to Gorgias and the Unicity of his Epideictic Discourse

Abstract

Around 390-80 BC, the Athenian Isocrates composed one of his first speeches as an educator, the Helen. According to most scholars, this speech seems to be a replica to the famous Eulogy of Helen by Gorgias, which, according to Isocrates (§14), would have made not an encomium, but an apology on behalf of the Spartan queen. In the Isocratic encomium, we noticed some dissonance between the proemium and the rest of the work. In fact, we do not have in the proemium the expected laudatory tone, but it is configured, on the contrary, as an invective to sophists groups contemporary of Isocrates, and culminates in the end with an allusive criticism of the Leontine sophist. Thus, what the IV century BC sophists have in common with the mythical Helen? In other words, would there be a common thread that would ensure a discursive unity in that epideictic exercise of Isocrates? This study aims to discuss these issues and review how they are being discussed by some commentators of Isocrates, since the Rhetoric of Aristotle to the reception of the matter among some scholars of Classical Rhetoric in the XX century.