the Jewish patriarch, and an example of filial obedience, died 1716 before Christ, aged one hundred and eighty years.

ISÆUS, a celebrated Greek orator, whose birth-place was uncertain even in the time of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who treats of him at considerable length. Some thought him a native of Athens, and others of Chalcis, in the island of Eubœa. The precise dates of his birth and death are not given, but we know that he flourished after the Peloponnesian war, about B.C. 400, and continued to take part in public affairs till the reign of Philip, B.C. 364. He was the pupil of Lysias and Isocrates, but he is chiefly distinguished as being the master of Demosthenes, who seems to have preferred him to all the orators of that age. The style of Isæus so much resembled that of Lysias, that Dionysius says it was difficult to distinguish them. It is simple, elegant, and full of vivacity, so that it has passed into a proverb, *Isæo torrentio*. (Juv. iii. 74.) He was chiefly employed in courts of law, and all the orations of his which have been preserved, were delivered in defence of his clients. Of sixty-four which were attributed to him, of which fourteen were considered as apocryphal in the time of Photius, there are only ten now preserved. The most esteemed edition of his works is that of Reiske, Leipzig, 1775, and of Schömann, Gryphiswald, 1831. They have been translated into English by W. Jones, London, 1779; into French by Auger, Paris, 1783; and into German by Schömann, Stuttgart, 1830. Another discourse of Isæus (*De Meneclis Hereditate*) was discovered in a manuscript of the Library of St Lawrence, at Florence, and published by Tyrwhit, London, 1785.

This Isæus ought not to be confounded with Isæus, another celebrated orator, who lived at Rome in the time of Pliny the younger, about the year 97.