ABSTRACT
The foundation of the first schools of higher education was instead left to three figures of the fourth century, Isocrates, Plato and Aristotle. Since the Antidosis is essentially Isocrates’ defence of his life’s work, the speech in its entirety is of great importance for understanding both his place in fourth-century education and the character that education was to assume subsequently in the Greek and Roman worlds. Although Plato taught for forty years in the school which he founded, the only surviving evidence for his teaching practice has to do with a single lecture which he gave during this time. In Against the Sophists Isocrates provides a concise account of his own views on education by criticizing the practices of others. Writing early in the fourth century, the rhetorician and teacher Alcidamas exalted the spoken word over the written. More specifically, he argued for the primacy of extemporized speeches over those which have been worked up in writing.
