Paradoxology and Politics: How Isocrates Sells His School and His Political Agenda in the Busiris

Interpreters of Isocrates’ Busiris tend either to think it is an unsuccessful work because it represents the very sort of paradoxical literature that Isocrates frequently criticizes, or to take the speech to be a serious work only insofar as it demonstrates pure encomiastic form. I argue that the Busiris is an educational tract whose content Isocrates takes seriously. In his encomium of Busiris (XI.10-29) and his defense of that encomium vis-à-vis Polycrates’ Defense of Busiris (XI.30-43), Isocrates uses an engagement with the rival rhetorician Polycrates to advance two pieces of propaganda: the superiority of his own education in persuasive speeches on important political matters over the education offered by Polycrates as well as the relevance and importance of the Panhellenic political agenda that his education ultimately serves.