The concepts of arche and hegemonia in Isocrates have the following features in the light of analysis conducted from a politico-historical perspective. In the first place, Isocrates attributed a highly moral and ethical value to the concept of hegemonia. In his Panegyricus, he claimed that Athens alone deserved the title of supreme leader of the Greeks because the city had been a benefactor of the Greeks and a protector of all those who had suffered. This claim never changed throughout his political discourses. Secondly, Isocrates located the essence of arche in sea-power which he criticized as bringing misfortune to Greece, and stressed the ethical superiority of land hegemony. He came to this conclusion in his On the Peace as a result of the downfall of Sparta after the battle of Leuctra and the defeat of Athens in the Social War. His position is in sharp contrast to that of Thucydides and Old Oligarch, who insisted on the superiority of Athens as a sea-power. In the third place, he considered the problem of constitutional reform in the light of his concept of hegemonia. He sought the model of the ideal constitution in the age of hegemonia of Athens and Sparta, and described it in contrast to the age of arche. The concepts of arche and hegemonia in Isocrates reflect the political situation of Greece in the middle of the fourth century when Sparta, Thebes and Athens fell one after the other, and differ from those of historians such as Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon.
