I have always had a question about Isocrates. Is it possible that when he wrote the Phillipus he didn’t know what the result of Philip’s hegemony would be? It seems to me that any child in Athens could, at once, have seen that given power over southern Greece, Philip would not just do what was required and then smiling benevolently , go back to Pella and sit down. The naiveté is overwhelming. It is hard for me to imagine that Isocrates was that stupid. His writings had, for some time been turning away from democracy. His oration to Nicocles and his letter to Dionysus I seem to indicate to me that he was becoming enamored of a strong central government rather than the vagaries of democracy. It appears to me that both Aristotle and Isocrates were becoming disenchanted with the idea of democracy at its core. I wonder that Isocrates was not fully aware of what would happen if Philip was given power over Hellas and was seeking to instigate it anyway. Both men were living in the time of the worst abuses of democracy. Isocrates had written in his, “Politics”, that democracy was in danger of becoming a polity ruled by demagogues. both he and Aristotle lived in the time of Demosthenes and lived with the the most flagrant abuses of democratic powers and demagoguery. I wonder that he was not seeking to overthrow the very thing he had for so so long advocated because of disillusionment and I wonder that this disillusionment was his alone.