It reminds us strangely of the invocations put into the mouth of Euripides by Aristophanes.[298]
CHAPTER IX
DEMOSTHENES
§ 1. Introduction
The art of rhetoric could go no further after Isocrates, who, in addition to possessing a style which was as perfect as technical dexterity could make it, had imparted to his numerous disciples the art of composing sonorous phrases and linking them together in elaborate periods. Any young aspirant to literary fame might now learn from him to write fluent easy prose, which would have been impossible to Thucydides or Antiphon. If the style seems on some occasions to have been so over-elaborated that the subject-matter takes a secondary place, that was the fault not so much of the artist as of the man. Isocrates never wrote at fever-heat; his greatest works come from the study; he is too reflective and dispassionate to be a really vital force.
With Demosthenes and his contemporaries it is otherwise; they are men actively engaged in politics, actuated by strong party-feeling, and swayed by personal passion. This was the outcome of the political situation: just as feeling was strong in the generation immediately succeeding the reign of the oligarchical Thirty at Athens, so now, when Athens and the whole of Greece were fighting not against oligarchy but the empire of a sovereign ruler, the depths were stirred.
A new feature in this period is the publication of political speeches. From the time of the earliest orator—Antiphon—the professional logographoi had preserved their speeches in writing. The majority of these were delivered in minor cases of only personal importance, though some orations by Lysias and others have reference indirectly to political questions.
Another class of speeches which were usually preserved is the epideictic—orations prepared for delivery at some great gathering, such as a religious festival or a public funeral. Isocrates was an innovator to the extent of writing in the form of speeches what were really political treatises; but these were only composed for the reader, and were never intended to be delivered.
Among the contemporaries of Demosthenes we find some diversity of practice. Some orators, such as Demades and Phocion, never published any speeches, and seem, indeed, hardly to have prepared them before delivery. They relied upon their skill at improvisation.