Alcidamas

Alcidamas, of Elaea, in Aeolis, was a Greek sophist and rhetorician who flourished in the 5th-4th century BC. He was the pupil and successor of Gorgias and taught at Athens at the same time as Isocrates, to whom he was a rival and opponent. We possess two declamations under his name: 'On Sophists' (Περὶ Σοφιστῶν), directed against Isocrates and setting forth the superiority of extempore over written speeches; and 'Odysseus' (perhaps spurious) in which Odysseus accuses Palamedes of treachery during the siege of Troy. According to Alcidamas, the highest aim of the orator was the power of speaking 'ex tempore' on every conceivable subject. Aristotle criticizes his writings as characterized by pomposity of style and an extravagant use of poetical epithets and compounds and far-fetched metaphors. Of other works only fragments and the titles have survived: 'Messeniakos,' advocating the freedom of the Messenians and containing the sentiment that 'God has left all men free; nature has made no man a slave'; a 'Eulogy of Death,' in consideration of the wide extent of human sufferings; a 'Techne' or instruction-book in the art of rhetoric; and a 'Phusikos logos.' Lastly, his 'Mouseion' seems to have contained the narrative of the 'Contest of Homer and Hesiod,' of which the version that has survived is the work of a grammarian in the time of Hadrian, based on Alcidamas. This hypothesis of the contents of the 'Mouseion,' originally suggested by Nietzsche, appears to have been confirmed by three papyrus finds.