Hippias of Elis is of less importance. He was ready to discourse on any subject under the sun, and could teach his pupils a similar glibness; abundance of words was made to conceal a lack of ideas.
§ 5
Cicero has preserved, from Aristotle, a statement that forensic rhetoric came to its birth at Syracuse, when, after the expulsion of the tyrants in 465 B.C., many families, whose property had been confiscated by them, tried to re-establish their claims.[26] Certainly Corax, the founder of rhetoric, was teaching about the year 466 B.C., and composed a τέχνη, or handbook of rhetorical principles.[27] He was followed by his pupil Tisias, who also wrote a treatise which Aristotle pronounced to be better than his master’s, and was in turn soon superseded by a better one.[28] Both Corax and Tisias attached great importance to εἰκός (probability) as a means of convincing a jury. A sample of the use of this argument from the work of Corax is the case of the man charged with assault, who denies the charge and says, ‘It is obvious to you that I am weak in body, while he is strong; it is therefore inherently improbable that I should have dared to attack him.’ The argument can of course be turned the other way by the prosecutor—‘the defendant is weak in body, and thought that on that account no one would suspect him of violence.’ We shall find that this argument from εἰκότα is very characteristic of the orator Antiphon; it occurs in his court speeches as well as in his tetralogies, which are model exercises. It seems, indeed, that he almost preferred this kind of argument to actual proof, even when evidence was available.[29] Tisias improved on the theme of Corax; supposing that a feeble but brave man has attacked a strong one who is a coward, he suggests that both should tell lies in court. The coward will not like to admit his cowardice, and will say that he was attacked by more than one man. The culprit will prove this to be a lie, and will then fall back on the argument of Corax, ‘I am weak and he is strong; I could not have assaulted or robbed him,’—and so on.[30]
An anecdote of these two rhetoricians further indicates the slipperiness of the ground on which they walked.[31] Tisias took lessons from Corax on condition that he should pay the fee only if he won his first case in court. After some lapse of time Corax grew impatient for his money, and finally brought an action—the first case, as it happened, on which Tisias was ever engaged. Corax asserted, ‘If I win the case, I get my money by the verdict; if I lose it, I claim payment by our contract.’ ‘No,’ said Tisias, ‘if I win, I don’t pay, and if I lose I don’t pay.’ The court dismissed the case with the remark, ‘A bad crow lays bad eggs’;[32] and this was obviously to the advantage of the younger man, who had nine points of the law on his side.
Though no writings of either are preserved, we can form an idea of their methods. They were wholly immoral or non-moral, and perversely sophistical. The plausible was preferred to the true, and the one object was to win the case. Their method of teaching was, according to Aristotle, ‘quick but unscientific,’[33] and consisted of making the pupil learn by heart a large number of ‘commonplace’ topics and standard arguments suitable to all kinds of legal processes. They do not appear to have paid any attention to style on the literary side.
§ 6
Gorgias of Leontini, a contemporary of Protagoras, started out, like the Sophist, from the position that nothing can be known, and the pursuit of philosophy is a ploughing of the sand. He is said to have been a pupil of Tisias, and occupies a place between the early rhetoricians and the Sophists usually so-called. Like the former, he studied and taught oratory, but whereas they were only concerned with the struggle for mastery in debate, he entertained, like Protagoras, a broad view of education, and, while continuing to regard rhetoric as the art of persuasion,[34] attached more attention to the artistic side than any other educator had done. He became the first conscious artist in prose style.
Like the other Sophists he travelled from town to town giving displays of his art, and gained riches which he spent freely.[35] In 427 B.C. he came to Athens as an ambassador from his native city,[36] and produced a remarkable impression on his hearers, not only the multitude before whom he spoke, but the highly educated class who could appreciate his technique. Thucydides owed something to him, and the poet Antiphon showed traces of his influence.[37] We hear of his sojourn at Larissa, where the Thessalians, in admiration, coined from his name the word which Philostratus uses to express his exuberant style.[38]
His first work is said to have been a sceptical treatise on Nature, or the Non-existent.[39] This was followed by a certain number of speeches, the most famous of which was the Olympiac, in which, like Isocrates at a later date, he urged on the Greeks the necessity of union. The Funeral Oration, to which we shall recur, is supposed to have been delivered at Athens, but this can hardly have been the case, as such speeches were regularly delivered by prominent Athenian statesmen, and there would be no occasion for calling in a foreigner. A Pythian speech and various Encomia are recorded; some on mythical characters, which may be regarded as mere exercises, some on real people, as the Eleans.[40] He seems not to have written speeches for the law-courts; his tendency, as in his personal habits, so in his speech, was towards display, and so he originated the style of oratory known as epideictic, which Isocrates in a subsequent age was destined to bring to perfection. Though an Ionian by birth, he instinctively recognized the great possibilities of the Attic dialect, and chose it as his medium of expression; it was not, however, the Attic of everyday life, but a language enriched by the exuberance of a poetical imagination. We possess of his actual work only one noteworthy extract from the Funeral Speech; but from this, joined to a few isolated criticisms and phrases preserved by commentators, as well as from the language ascribed by Plato to his imitator Agathon,[41] we can form some idea of his pompous exaggerations.
He was much addicted to the substitution of rare expressions—γλῶτται, as the Greek critics called them—for the ordinary forms of speech. His language abounded in archaic and poetical words, striking metaphors and unusual compounds. He frequently employed neuter adjectives and participles in preference to the corresponding abstract nouns; he liked to use a verbal noun accompanied by an auxiliary in places where a simple verb would be naturally employed. Finally, though he could not aspire to composition in elaborate periods like Isocrates or Demosthenes, he developed the use of antithesis, word answering to word and clause to clause, pointing his antithetical style not only by the frequent use of μὲν and δέ, but by the use of assonance at the ends of clauses, corresponding forms of verbs in similar positions, and by some attention to rhythm and equality of syllabic value in contrasted clauses.