The Greek orators

by J. F. Dobson

These qualities, concentration of thought and preciseness of expression, are essential for a pleader in the courts, and so it was not unnatural that the development of the periodic style should coincide at Athens with the rise of forensic oratory. Antiphon, the first practical pleader on scientific lines, is also the earliest of extant writers known to have been a careful student of periodic expression.

It must not be supposed that all his work consisted of periods carefully balanced: on the one hand, perfection could not be attained at the first onset; many of the sentences are crude; in some cases there is a weakness of emphasis due to imperfect mastery of the form; on the other hand, there are cases where the style is freer and more analogous to the simple fluency of the εἰρομένη λέξις. The plain fact is that the method of Herodotus is the most appropriate for telling a straightforward narrative from one point of view only; while the periodic style comes spontaneously into being for purposes of criticism, or where we contrast what is with what might have been; or of debate, where we put up alternatives side by side with the object of choosing between them.

The first object of history, to the mind of Herodotus, is to tell a story; and Herodotus mostly keeps this end in view. Thucydides in some parts of his narrative does the same, but whereas he has a greater tendency to consider each event not by itself but in relation to other circumstances, such as the motives for the action, its effects and influences, he is often periodic even in narrative. He is still more so in speeches. The object of a deliberative speech is not usually to tell a plain story but to produce a highly-coloured one; it mentions facts chiefly with the object of criticizing them and drawing an inference or a moral.

If this is true of the speeches in Thucydides, it must be still more applicable to those of a forensic orator. In Antiphon we find short passages in the simple narrative style—for instance, in the statement of facts in the Herodes case; but a short section of this nature is followed by criticism and argument expressed in the more artificial period. This is inevitable; there is no time to spend on long narratives.

Closely connected with the desire for a periodic style is the tendency to frequent use of verbal antithesis, an artistic figure which provides a happy means of completing the period and the sense. It is useful because the second part of the antithesis supplies the reader or hearer with something which he is already expecting. It is the application in practice of a familiar psychological law of association by contrary ideas. Such contrast is emphasized in Greek by the common use of the particles μέν and δέ, and is of unnecessarily frequent occurrence in Athenian writers. All readers of Thucydides will remember that author’s craving for the contrast between ‘word and deed.’ In judicial rhetoric this kind of opposition must inevitably occur very often. From the nature of things each speaker will want to insist on his own honesty and the dishonesty of his opponents; the truth which he is telling as opposed to their lies, and to contrast the appearances, which seem so black against him, with the transparent whiteness of his character as revealed by a true account of the case. But Antiphon, like the speakers in Thucydides, carries this use of antithesis too far, for a sentence which contains too many contrasted ideas is difficult to follow, and so loses force.

A fair example may be taken from the third speech of the second tetralogy:

‘I, who have done nothing wrong, but have suffered grievously and cruelly already, and now suffer still more cruelly not from the words but the acts of my adversary, throw myself upon your mercy, Gentlemen—you who are avengers of impiety but discriminators of piety—and implore you, in view of plain facts, not to be over-persuaded by a malicious precision of speech, and so consider the true explanation of the deed to be false; for his statement has been made with more plausibility than truth; mine will be made without guile, though at the same time without force.’

This outburst is part of a sentence in which the prosecutor expresses his indignation that the opponent whom he has accused of murder has had the audacity to defend himself at some length.

One more example—from the speech on the charge of poisoning—is almost ridiculous.

‘Those whose duty it was to play the part of avengers of the dead and my helpers, have played the part of murderers of the dead, and established themselves as my adversaries.’