Praising the King’s Courage: From the Evagoras to the Agesilaus

Abstract

Xenophon and Isocrates share paradigmatic and protreptic conceptions of virtue that are rarely presented in an abstract way, but rather as embodied in heroes and great men. Amongst these models, two can be compared and contrasted: Evagoras, the Cypriot king, and Agesilaus, the Spartan king. Two comparable speeches were devoted to them: both were composed at the same time, in the middle of the fourth century BCE (the Evagoras only slightly precedes the Agesilaus1). Both contribute to define a new literary genre, according to Isocrates:2 the praise in prose of a great contemporary man. This often leads to identify these works as forefathers of the genre of biography.3 Both praise a king, and through him, a form of political role-model as discussed, for example, in Plato’s Politicus. Both speeches have approximately the same length; both are inspired by the epitaphios logos. There is also a kind of stylistic proximity: the same rhetorical devices are used, as the incipit clearly shows, as well as the use of transitional sentences, or the use of a concise style,4 whose aim is to transmit clearly some virtues and ideas which could be sources of inspiration and imitation. Yet they also differ greatly from each other. Isocrates adopts a rather complex outline: Evagoras’ enkomion is embedded in a parenetic speech addressed to Nicocles, the king’s son; Xenophon directly addresses his audience. Evagoras’ virtues are expounded throughout the speech and illustrated by several anecdotes taken according to a rather flexible chronological order; Xenophon favours