TY - BOOK ID - 16813924 TI - A commentary on Isocrates' Busiris PY - 2001 VL - 223 SN - 9004121439 9789004121430 1417590769 9781417590766 9047400925 9789047400929 1280464755 9786610464753 PB - Leiden ; Boston : Brill, DB - UniCat KW - Speeches, addresses, etc., Greek KW - History and criticism. KW - -Greek orations KW - Greek speeches KW - History and criticism KW - Isocrates KW - Discours grecs KW - Histoire et critique KW - Isocrates. KW - Speeches, addresses, etc., Greek. KW - Greek orations KW - Busiris (Isocrates) KW - Speeches, addresses, etc., Greek - History and criticism. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:16813924 AB - This volume contains the first scholarly commentary on the puzzling work Busiris – part mythological jeu d’esprit , part rhetorical treatise and part self-promoting polemic – by the Greek educator and rhetorician Isocrates (436-338 BC). The commentary reveals Isocrates’ strategies in advertising his own political rhetoric as a middle way between amoral ‘sophistic’ education and the abstruse studies of Plato’s Academy. Introductory chapters situate Busiris within the lively intellectual marketplace of 4th-century Athens, showing how the work parodies Plato’s Republic , and how its revisionist treatment of the monster-king Busiris reflects Athenian fascination with the ‘alien wisdom’ of Egypt. As a whole, the book casts new light both on Isocrates himself, revealed as an agile and witty polemicist, and on the struggle between rhetoric and philosophy from which Hellenism and modern humanities were born. ER -