While reading Isocrates, I've been struck by the difference in tone and style (as compared to Plato or Aspasia). I've been trying to pin down how or why I feel like Isocrates is different, but I'm having a hard time really articulating it.
In the introduction we read, the author claimed that "Isocrates' prose has generally been admired for its smoothness and charm." I'm not so sure I agree. Smoothness? yes. But charm? I don't think I buy that.
What I /have/ notices is that in Helen's encomium, for example, the author feels much more present. It's hard to compare this to Plato, of course, since he's writing in Dialectic, but what I'm thinking of is places where Isocrates brings the author to the moment. At 29, he says "I am at a loss what to use to make of the rest of the story." And then continues to be quite self-conscious about the act of composing the next section. "I have decided to leave aside most of it..." Or at 54, "I could use many superlatives about her." And at 59, "Why spend my time discussing human opinion?"
But in the Menexenus, we don't see moves like this. The author comes through the text in a different way. Aspasia writes, "With the birth and education I have described, the ancestors of these men lived under a polity that they had made for themselves, of which it is right to make brief mention." This /does/ make the author present, but the utterance is less...performative, maybe? I'm not sure.
I find Helen's encomium and Aspasia's funeral oration an interesting pair because both were written by logographers--neither Aspasia nor Isocrates meant to read their own speeches out loud. Isocrates' choice to write "I am at a loss..." offers the speaker a sense of kairos--in the moment, or perhaps the feeling that he is reacting to himself in a specific moment. The two are also stock genres. I wonder if Isocrates' encomium is akin to what others were writing at the time, or if these moves to really bring the author to the forefront were atypical.