Classical World

Parallels allow us to connect many passages in Isocrates to dialogues of Hippias, Antisthenes, and Plato. Although Isocrates articulates a conception of fiction, he treats views voiced by characters in dialogues as the authors'. He also uses fictional elements (e.g. in Or. 3, 12, 15) to express his own views. From Isocrates and Plato I formulate the constructs "story register" and "rhetorical register" for the wavelengths of communication that Isocrates locates in fiction. His treatment presupposes that he and his intended readership understood dialogues as assertoric works. It also indicates that Plato's more literary dialogues circulated more widely than is sometimes supposed.