Besides poetical words—words which may, as we see, have been used intentionally, in preference to their ordinary equivalents in everyday speech—he employs, for the same reasons, a certain number of unusual words and forms not necessarily poetical. Every conscious stylist makes experiments: some of his innovations may become current coin; others may never pass into general circulation, but remain unused until, perhaps, after many generations an archæologist discovers and uses the hoard.[49] A few familiar words occur in unusual forms which are generally regarded as un-Attic; unless they are to be removed by emendation, we must suppose that they were used intentionally to give an archaic tone.[50]
Another noticeable characteristic of Antiphon’s language is the frequent employment of circumlocutions both for verbs and nouns; a neuter participle or adjective in combination with the definite article does duty as a substantive, while a verbal noun joined to an auxiliary takes the place of a verb. Thus, by an artifice which becomes very common in later writers, ‘the beautiful’ is used as a synonym for the abstract noun ‘beauty,’ and to ‘be judges of the truth’ is substituted for ‘judge the truth.’ These artificialities are often to be noticed in Thucydides, especially in the speeches, and are probably derived from Gorgias, who seems to have instituted the fashion.[51]
§ 4
Aristotle and subsequent critics distinguish, in prose, the running style (εἰρομένη λέξις) and the periodic (περιοδική). The characteristic of the former is that a sentence consists of a succession of clauses loosely strung together (εἴρω), like a row of beads; generally by τε, δέ and other copulae; the sentence begins and ends with no definite plan, and may be of any length. In the word period (circuit) the metaphor is rather that of a hoop; the sentence does not stretch out indefinitely in a straight line, but after a certain time bends back on itself so that the end is joined to the beginning. It must, according to Aristotle,[52] be of limited length, not longer than can be taken in at a glance or uttered in one breath, and have a definitely marked beginning and end.[53]
Aristotle finds the loose, running style tedious, because it has no artistic limit of length, and never gets to an end until it has finished what it has to say. To us it seems to have this slight advantage, that it can always stop when it has said what it means, and has no temptation to plunge itself into antithesis or lose its way at the cross-roads of chiasmus before it arrives at its destination; for though, in the periodic style, the end of the sense should ideally coincide with the end of the period, there are in practice many instances where the sense is fully expressed and the sentence might end before the ‘circuit’ is artistically complete.
The baldest examples of the ‘strung together’ style must be sought in the fragments of the early historians; but Herodotus is sufficiently near to them to provide us with an object-lesson.
Take, for instance, the following:
‘When Ardys had reigned forty-nine years, Sadyattes his son succeeded him, and he reigned twelve years, and Alyattes succeeded Sadyattes. And he made war on Cyaxares, the descendant of Deioces, and the Medes, and drove the Cimmerians out of Asia and took Smyrna, a colony of Colophon, and attacked Clazomenae. Here he had not the success he desired, but met with grave disaster. And during his reign he did other noteworthy deeds, as follows. He fought with the Milesians ...’ etc., etc.[54]
Yet even Herodotus, the most obvious exponent of the loose style, shows a tendency towards the greater compression of periodic writing; this tendency is at times strongly marked, e.g. in the speeches of the Persian nobles in debate.[55] Here there is a continual movement towards the balance of clauses; it is very far from the harmonious structure of Isocrates, and is perhaps unconscious, but the elements of the periodic style are there.
The particular faculty of this latter style is that it can be more emphatic and precise than the other. It must be concentrated (κατεστραμμένη)[56] if the sentence is to be of moderate length; it tries, as Dionysius says, ‘to pack the thoughts close together, and bring them out compactly.’[57]