The Greek orators

by J. F. Dobson

The Pseudo-Plutarch is less severe on the orator:

‘He is simple and inartificial in his narratives, straightforward and free from “figure.”’[99]

It must at once be granted that many of the criticisms aimed at Andocides hit their mark; but it is open to doubt whether they can penetrate deep enough to deal a vital blow at his reputation. The ancient critics were academic and tended to lose sight of practical details. They were, as a rule, more concerned with the impressions that a speech produced on the reader than with its effect on the hearers; they laid great emphasis on the artistic side, and in examining a speech looked carefully to see how closely the orator had followed the artificial rules of the rhetorician. But this kind of estimate may lead to injustice, for not only must the critic refer to an artificial standard established by convention, a standard which might not have been recognized by the orator’s contemporaries, but, even granting that certain rules of rhetoric should generally be followed, we may maintain that particular circumstances justify a speaker in departing from them. Rhetoric is a practical art, whose object, as Plato tells us, is persuasion; and though most people who practise it will do best to move on the accustomed lines, there may be some who can succeed without following the beaten track.

Andocides is not to be compared to his predecessor Antiphon in the points which are the latter’s chief characteristics—dignity of manner, balance of clauses and verbal antithesis; but, on the other hand, he has command of a fairly lucid style, and a gift for telling a straightforward narrative of events, two matters in which the older orator was not conspicuously successful. Again, Andocides starts with one signal advantage. If we read the tetralogies of Antiphon, excellent as they may be in showing the writer’s grasp of the technique of his trade, and turn from them to one of the real speeches, the Herodes, for instance, we feel at once how great a gain it is to have the human interest before us. A speech in which real persons are concerned must always have this advantage over a declamatory exercise. But we still feel that the personal element is not so prominent as it might be, simply because the orator is not giving voice to his own thoughts on an occasion where his own interests are deeply concerned, but stringing together sentences which an obscure young man from Mitylene may clumsily stumble through without, perhaps, in the least comprehending their cleverness. But Andocides is a real live man speaking in his own person and in his own defence on a most serious charge. He is in grave danger, and must exert himself to the utmost; he must rise to the great occasion, or expect to pay the penalty—perhaps with his life. This is an occasion, if there ever can be one, when style may be completely put in the background, where matter is of more importance than method, where the means are of no account unless the end can be attained; for epigram cannot temper the hemlock-cup, and the laws of Athens are stronger than the rules of oratory.

It was natural to Antiphon to pay attention to details of style, and his style is of a rather archaic tone. Andocides, on the other hand, was not a trained orator, except in so far as every Athenian was trained in youth in the elements of speaking. He was not either a professional pleader or a frequent speaker in public—indeed, from the fact that he lived long in exile he cannot have had many opportunities of appearing either in the law-courts or the assembly. Possessing a convenient fluency of speech and a thorough command of the language of daily life, he finds in it a satisfactory means of expression. In most cases he seems to have by nature what Lysias obtained by art—a clear and direct way of expressing his thoughts, a simplicity of language in which nothing strained or unfamiliar strikes the ear. On the other hand, there are inconsistencies in his style; there are times when, apparently without premeditation, he does use words or phrases slightly foreign to the speech of common life. We have a feeling that this was done without affectation; that in the course of his fluent and rapid utterance he used just those words which naturally occurred to him as appropriate.[100] In this he differs from Lysias, who took the common speech and perfected it into a literary form, attaining by study a refined simplicity and purity which only careful practice could produce.

On the whole, Andocides is most effective when he is most simple; when he uses common words and makes no attempt at the rhetorical artifices which do not come natural to him. The following narrative will emphasize my point:

‘When we had all been taken to prison, and it was night and the prison gates were shut, and one man’s mother had come, and another’s sister, and another’s wife and children, and sounds of lamentation were heard as they wept and bewailed our miserable state, Charmides spoke to me—he was a cousin of mine, of the same age as myself, and he had been brought up in our home from childhood.

‘“Andocides,” he said, “you see what serious trouble we are in; and though I did not want to say anything, or to annoy you at all before, I am now forced to do so on account of the misfortune we are come to.

‘“Your other friends and associates, apart from us who are your relations, have some of them already been executed for the charges on which we are being done to death, while others have admitted their guilt by fleeing from the country.