The substance of some of his speeches is transmitted to us by Thucydides; and that excellent writer has doubtless faithfully reported the general line of his arguments.But the manner, which in oratory is of at least as much consequence as the matter, was of no importance to his narration.It is evident that he has not attempted to preserve it.Throughout his work, every speech on every subject, whatever may have been the character of the dialect of the speaker, is in exactly the same form.The grave king of Sparta, the furious demagogue of Athens, the general encouraging his army, the captive supplicating for his life, all are represented as speakers in one unvaried style,--a style moreover wholly unfit for oratorical purposes.His mode of reasoning is singularly elliptical,--in reality most consecutive,--yet in appearance often incoherent.His meaning, in itself sufficiently perplexing, is compressed into the fewest possible words.His great fondness for antithetical expression has not a little conduced to this effect.Every one must have observed how much more the sense is condensed in the verses of Pope and his imitators, who never ventured to continue the same clause from couplet to couplet, than in those of poets who allow themselves that license.Every artificial division, which is strongly marked, and which frequently recurs, has the same tendency.The natural and perspicuous expression which spontaneously rises to the mind will often refuse to accommodate itself to such a form.It is necessary either to expand it into weakness, or to compress it into almost impenetrable density.
The latter is generally the choice of an able man, and was assuredly the choice of Thucydides.
It is scarcely necessary to say that such speeches could never have been delivered.They are perhaps among the most difficult passages in the Greek language, and would probably have been scarcely more intelligible to an Athenian auditor than to a modern reader.Their obscurity was acknowledged by Cicero, who was as intimate with the literature and language of Greece as the most accomplished of its natives, and who seems to have held a respectable rank among the Greek authors.Their difficulty to a modern reader lies, not in the words, but in the reasoning.Adictionary is of far less use in studying them than a clear head and a close attention to the context.They are valuable to the scholar as displaying, beyond almost any other compositions, the powers of the finest of languages: they are valuable to the philosopher as illustrating the morals and manners of a most interesting age: they abound in just thought and energetic expression.But they do not enable us to form any accurate opinion on the merits of the early Greek orators.
Though it cannot be doubted that, before the Persian wars, Athens had produced eminent speakers, yet the period during which eloquence most flourished among her citizens was by no means that of her greatest power and glory.It commenced at the close of the Peloponnesian war.In fact, the steps by which Athenian oratory approached to its finished excellence seem to have been almost contemporaneous with those by which the Athenian character and the Athenian empire sunk to degradation.At the time when the little commonwealth achieved those victories which twenty-five eventful centuries have left unequalled, eloquence was in its infancy.The deliverers of Greece became its plunderers and oppressors.Unmeasured exaction, atrocious vengeance, the madness of the multitude, the tyranny of the great, filled the Cyclades with tears, and blood, and mourning.The sword unpeopled whole islands in a day.The plough passed over the ruins of famous cities.The imperial republic sent forth her children by thousands to pine in the quarries of Syracuse, or to feed the vultures of Aegospotami.She was at length reduced by famine and slaughter to humble herself before her enemies, and to purchase existence by the sacrifice of her empire and her laws.
During these disastrous and gloomy years, oratory was advancing towards its highest excellence.And it was when the moral, the political, and the military character of the people was most utterly degraded, it was when the viceroy of a Macedonian sovereign gave law to Greece, that the courts of Athens witnessed the most splendid contest of eloquence that the world has ever known.
The causes of this phenomenon it is not, I think, difficult to assign.The division of labour operates on the productions of the orator as it does on those of the mechanic.It was remarked by the ancients that the Pentathlete, who divided his attention between several exercises, though he could not vie with a boxer in the use of the cestus, or with one who had confined his attention to running in the contest of the stadium, yet enjoyed far greater general vigour and health than either.It is the same with the mind.The superiority in technical skill is often more than compensated by the inferiority in general intelligence.
And this is peculiarly the case in politics.States have always been best governed by men who have taken a wide view of public affairs, and who have rather a general acquaintance with many sciences than a perfect mastery of one.The union of the political and military departments in Greece contributed not a little to the splendour of its early history.After their separation more skilful generals and greater speakers appeared;but the breed of statesmen dwindled and became almost extinct.
Themistocles or Pericles would have been no match for Demosthenes in the assembly, or for Iphicrates in the field.But surely they were incomparably better fitted than either for the supreme direction of affairs.
There is indeed a remarkable coincidence between the progress of the art of war, and that of the art of oratory, among the Greeks.