[Footnote 75: Isokrates, ad Philipp. Or. v. s. 14, p. 84; contra Sophistas, Or. xiii.; Or. xiii. s. 2-24, pp. 291-295; Encom. Helenæ, Or. x. init.; Panathenaic. Or. xii. s. 126, p. 257; Or. xv. De Permutatione, s. 90, p. 440, Bekk.] Isokrates seems, as far as we can make out, to have been in early life, like Lysias, a composer of speeches to be spoken by clients in the Dikastery. This lucrative profession was tempting, since his family had been nearly ruined during the misfortunes of Athens at the close of the Peloponnesian war. Having gained reputation by such means, Isokrates became in his mature age a teacher of Rhetoric, and a composer of discourses, not for private use by clients, but for the general reader, on political or educational topics. In this character, he corresponded to the description given by Plato in the Euthydêmus: being partly a public adviser, partly a philosopher. But the general principle under which Plato here attacks him, though conforming to the doctrine of the Platonic Republic, is contrary to that of Plato in other dialogues, "You must devote yourself either wholly to philosophy, or wholly to politics: a mixture of the two is worse than either"--this agrees with the Republic, wherein Plato enjoins upon each man one special and exclusive pursuit, as well as with the doctrine maintained against Kalliklês in the Gorgias--but it differs from the Phædrus, where he ascribes the excellence of Perikles as a statesmen and rhetor, to the fact of his having acquired a large tincture of philosophy.[76] Cicero quotes this last passage as applicable to his own distinguished career, a combination of philosophy with politics.[77] He dissented altogether from the doctrine here laid down by Plato in the Euthydêmus, and many other eminent men would have dissented from it also. [Footnote 76: See the facts about Isokrates in a good Dissertation by H. P. Schröder, Utrecht, 1859, Quæstiones Isocrateæ, p. 51, seq. Plato, Phædrus, p. 270; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 23; Plato, Republic, iii. p. 397.] [Footnote 77: Cicero, De Orator. iii. 34, 138; Orator. iv. 14; Brutus, 11, 44.]