CHAP.PAGE
I.THE BEGINNINGS OF ORATORY[1]
II.ANTIPHON[19]
III.THRASYMACHUS—ANDOCIDES[50]
IV.LYSIAS[74]
V.ISAEUS[103]
VI.ISOCRATES[126]
VII.MINOR RHETORICIANS[160]
VIII.AESCHINES[163]
IX.DEMOSTHENES[199]
X.PHOCION, DEMADES, PYTHEAS[268]
XI.LYCURGUS, HYPERIDES, DINARCHUS[271]
XII.THE DECLINE OF ORATORY[308]
INDEX[315]

THE GREEK ORATORS

CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNINGS OF ORATORY

§ 1

Oratory is one of the earliest necessities of society; as soon as men were organised on terms of equality for corporate action, there must have been occasions when opinions might differ as to the best course to be pursued, and, if there were no inspired king whose unquestioned authority could impose his will, the majority must decide whether to flee or to fight, to kill or to keep alive. Thus different plans must be discussed, and, in cases where opinion was evenly balanced, that side would prevail which could state its views most convincingly; and so the need for deliberative oratory arose.

With the Greeks oratory was instinctive; in the earliest semi-historical records that we possess, eloquence is found to be a gift prized not less highly than valour in battle; the kings and princes are not only ‘renowned for their power,’ but are ‘leaders of the people by their counsels, ... wise and eloquent in their instructions’; strength and courage are the property of all, but the real leaders must be the counsellors, βουλήφοροι ἄνδρες. Nestor, who is almost past the age for fighting, is honoured among the first for his eloquence, and whereas Achilles shares with many other warriors the glories of the Iliad, Odysseus, fertile in counsel, is the chief subject of an entire poem. The speech of Phœnix in the ninth book of the Iliad shows us the ideals which were aimed at in the education of a prince. He tells how he trained the young Achilles to be a ‘speaker of words and a doer of deeds’;[1] and Achilles, as we know him, well justified this training. The leading characters in the Homeric poems are already fluent orators, able and ready to debate intelligently on any concrete subject, and, moreover, to seek guidance from general principles. Nestor makes frequent appeals to historical precedent; Phœnix introduces allegorical illustration;[2] many speakers refer to the sanctity of law and custom; though the particular case is foremost in the mind, generalisations of various kinds are by no means infrequent. The Homeric counsellor can urge his own arguments and rebut those of his opponent with a natural facility of speech and readiness of invective which even a polished wielder of personalities like Demosthenes might envy.

From the spontaneous outpourings of Achilles and his peers to the studied artifice of Lysias and Demosthenes is a long journey through unknown country, and it is obvious that no definite course of development can be traced; but a reference to Homer is of twofold importance. In the first place, it may indicate that Greek oratory was obviously of native growth, since the germs of it are to be found in the earliest annals; secondly, Homer was studied with such devout reverence not only by the Athenian orators themselves but by their immediate literary predecessors, the cosmopolitan Sophists and the rhetoricians of Sicily, that his influence may have been greater than would at first sight seem probable.

§ 2

The records of eloquence may be studied from various points of view, which may be roughly classified under the headings ‘literary’ and ‘practical,’ though it is not always easy to keep the elements distinct. A stylistic study of the writings of the Athenian orators must find a place in any systematic work on the development of Attic prose, but in a work like the present, which professes to deal with orators only, such a study cannot be carried out with any attempt at completeness; thus, while it may be possible to discuss the influence of Thucydides or Plato on Demosthenes, there will be no room to consider how far the historian himself may have been influenced directly by Antiphon, or the philosopher by Gorgias, though a cursory indication may be given that such influences were at work. When, however, we regard rhetoric not for its literary value but as a practical art, our task becomes more feasible; in literature there are many eddies and cross-currents, but in oratory, especially of the forensic type, there is more uniformity of flow. Antiphon and Demosthenes had, to a great extent, similar ground to traverse, similar obstacles to overcome or circumvent; and a study of their different methods of approaching like problems may give some reasonable and interesting results which will be a contribution to the history of the ‘Art of Persuasion.’ Even here we shall find difficulties, for one who is reckoned among the greatest orators, Isocrates, is known not to have been practical at all in the sense in which Demosthenes was; his so-called speeches were never meant to be delivered, and depended for their efficacy far more on their literary style than on their practical characteristics. There is, perhaps, only one great factor which is common to all orators alike; they all give us, both directly and indirectly, invaluable materials for the study of Athenian history, information with regard both to public and private life and national character. While the speeches before the assembly and in public causes increase our historical knowledge in the wider sense, the private speeches, often dealing with matters of the utmost triviality, provide a miscellaneous store of information on domestic matters only comparable to that more recently recovered from the papyri of Egypt.