ORATORY.
Political Eloquence, like the drama, history, and philosophy, attained perfection in the golden age. Public speaking was a natural accomplishment of the Greeks; and from the days of Homer down, soldiers, legislators, and statesmen, had been distinguished as orators. In Pericles, who made eloquence a study, we are introduced to one of the world’s most polished speakers. (Consult Jebb’s “Attic Orators.”)
But the cultivation of rhetoric and oratory as an art was first popularized by Gorgias of Leonti´ni (see Map, p. 304), who about 427 B.C. transplanted it from Sicily and saw it flourish in Athenian soil as it had never flourished before. Gorgias founded a school of eloquence at Athens, which was thronged by the great men of the time, eager to acquire the persuasive arts of the Sicilian teacher. Thus rhetoric became a fashionable accomplishment; and to such account was it turned by the taste and genius of the Attic Greeks that they soon produced the greatest orators of history.
Among these was the graceful and elegant Lysias (lish’e-ăs—458-378 B.C.), compared by Quintilian to a pure fountain rather than a great river; and Isæus, the leading barrister of Athens and preceptor of Demosthenes. Greater than either as a teacher and writer of orations for others, though through timidity he rarely appeared in public himself, was Isocrates, founder of a school from which Cicero said, “as from the Trojan horse, princes only proceeded;” to use his own figure, he was a whetstone which imparted the power of cutting to other things, but cut not itself. Finally, to this category belonged the great rivals Æschines and Demosthenes, foremost of the Attic orators.
Demosthenes (384-322 B.C.—it is worth remembering that his dates are identical with Aristotle’s) stands alone in the power of his eloquence. Born in Attica, he was left fatherless at the age of seven, but inherited a large fortune. The bulk of this his guardians made away with; although they engaged the best talent in the land to superintend the education of their ward. When Demosthenes arrived at his majority, he brought suit against them, and wrote his maiden speeches with such skill as to obtain a judgment in his favor.
The study of oratory now became the passion of his life. By indomitable perseverance he overcame what to many would have proved insuperable difficulties—shortness of breath, a sickly constitution, a weak and stammering utterance, and awkwardness in gesticulating. He practised on the sea-shore till his voice rose clear and full above the breakers; he placed pebbles in his mouth while declaiming to correct his articulation, and improved his breathing by running up steep hills. A friendly mirror helped him to make his gestures effective; and he spent months at a time in a room underground, occupied in study, or in copying the history of Thucydides to strengthen his style. Thus, in spite of every natural disadvantage, he placed himself by his own efforts “at the head of all mighty masters of speech.” He lived to receive the homage, not only of those Athenians who had hissed the early performances of “the stammerer,” but of crowds gathered from all quarters of Greece.
Conciseness, precision, clearness, compact reasoning, power of invective, and vehemence compared to that of a torrent carrying everything before it, were characteristic of the orations of Demosthenes. Sixty-one of these (probably not all genuine) are still extant, the most famous being the twelve “Philippics,” delivered against Philip of Macedon, who was insidiously plotting the subversion of Grecian liberty. Demosthenes penetrated his designs, disdained his bribes, and for fourteen years struggled nobly against him. His impassioned utterances at last roused the slumbering patriotism of his countrymen, and, joined by the Thebans, they met Philip at Chæronea—but only to be hopelessly defeated. The fate of Greece was sealed. Demosthenes fled from the field and escaped to Athens, where he delivered the funeral eulogy on the slain.
The success of Philip strengthened the Macedonian sympathizers in Athens, at the head of whom was the orator Æschines, accused by Demosthenes of being in the pay of Macedon. When, therefore, Ctesiphon proposed that the services of Demosthenes be rewarded with a golden crown, Æschines opposed the measure. After a delay of six years, during which we may be sure both orators strained every nerve to prepare for the decisive struggle, the final contest took place before a vast and excited concourse. The fiery vigor of Demosthenes, in the most splendid effort of ancient eloquence, swept away like feathers the arguments, the wit, the sarcasm, of his opponent; Æschines was utterly discomfited.
The elaborate speech “On the Crown” is the masterpiece of Demosthenes; we give parts of the peroration.
FROM DEMOSTHENES’ ORATION ON THE CROWN.