influence of rhetoric, and degenerated into the florid style that characterized the later Sophists.

In a brief sketch it is possible to note only the most signal steps in this process. The artificial manner of a Gorgias was soon felt to be unsuitable for a pleading at law, and the first impulse to use a more simple and natural style came from forensic speaking.

This appears clearly first in the orations of Andocides, in which are found vivid and picturesque narrations. But the merit of naturalness and ease mingled with grace belongs especially to Lysias, who excelled as a writer of speeches for others to recite in making their pleas in court. The logographer, as he was called, concealed himself behind his client, who was generally a plain citizen, and so played the part of a dramatic poet: like a Euripides he had to identify himself with the person who appeared on the scene. The aim of the orator was accordingly to appear as simple and natural as possible, and to conceal his art. Lysias employed therefore a simple style, short sentences, and a periodic structure that was clear and harmonious.

The more ornate and artificial style of Gorgias, chastened but not subdued, came into prominence again in the hands of Isocrates, who was essentially a Rhetorician. While Isocrates, like Lysias, wrote in the language of the people, he cultivated the ornate and declamatory style suitable for public celebrations and festive occasions. The best example of an oration of this kind, called by the Greeks the epideictic style, is his famous Panegyric, which, like all his didactic and epideictic speeches, was written to be read and not spoken, and should therefore be called a political essay or pamphlet. Isocrates was the inventor of the long oratorical period, which is so skilfully constructed that all subordinate ideas are grouped around the central thought which is never obscured. He was excessively fond of appealing to the ear by the flow of his diction and the stately rhythm of his periods. The influence of Isocrates on Greek prose writing was lasting and great.

It was reserved for Demosthenes, by means of the severest self-discipline and most arduous labor, to combine the grace of Lysias with the logical grasp of Isæus and the stately

elegance of Isocrates. The acknowledged master of Greek eloquence, Demosthenes was especially great in political and deliberative speech. This phase of his greatness is better appreciated in his Philippics and other political speeches than in the more commonly read oration "On the Crown." In the time of Demosthenes Athens afforded the ideal atmosphere for the cultivation of political oratory. The world has probably never seen another State in which the political education of its citizens was so complete. It needed only a great occasion or crisis to bring forward the great political orator. Such a crisis was upon Athens when Demosthenes came to manhood.

The losing conflict, in which he defended the freedom of his country against the attacks of Philip of Macedon from without and the treachery of foes at home, gave birth to that resistless eloquence that "fulmin'd over Greece from Macedon to Artaxerxes' throne." The great debate between Æschines and Demosthenes drew an audience from all parts of Greece as to a public spectacle. The reader of the oration "On the Crown" is impressed with the variety of the style of the orator. The manner of Demosthenes is characterized by the old critic Dionysius in the following words: "Now he speaks in short sentences, now in extended periods. All softness and uniformity of sound are foreign to him; yet there prevails in the discourse of Demosthenes harmony and rhythm changing in a thousand ways. Demosthenes is manifold; he excels the older school in clearness, the plain school in gravity, in penetrating and pungent force, the middle school in variety, in symmetry, in felicity, in pathos, above all in propriety and effectual strength. Sometimes he stings, sometimes he soothes the mind of the listener; sometimes he appeals to reason, sometimes to passion." His eloquence has been likened to a mountain torrent that often overflows its banks.

In conclusion let us notice briefly the leading points in which ancient Greek differs from modern oratory.

It has become already apparent that the fundamental difference lies in the fastidious finish of style and careful arrangement so characteristic of Greek oratory. This peculiarity accounts for occasional repetitions by the writer in one speech

from another speech of his own, or borrowed from another orator. The Greeks believed that a thing can be well said only in one way, but not in two ways, and that therefore to change the form of a sentence once best expressed was to lose something of its perfection.

Hence, too, the readiness with which rival orators in addressing assemblies criticize each other's style. No modern statesman or advocate would think of calling attention to the stylistic defects of an opponent. To this scrupulous attention paid to external form is due another peculiarity of Greek oratory. An orator in view of this would naturally shrink from speaking extemporaneously. Demosthenes was most unwilling, as he put it, "to put his faculty at the mercy of fortune." The modern presumption, on the contrary, is always that a speech is extemporary, and its effectiveness is likely to be weakened in so far as it is felt to have been composed beforehand and committed to memory. The modern orator is accordingly often tempted to give the semblance of spontaneous and unpremeditated utterance to a speech carefully prepared, and in doing so is likely to disregard the artistic form and symmetry of the whole. Hence we find in modern speeches sudden bursts of eloquence which are extempore as regards the form, but which from the very nature of its being are impossible to ancient oratory. Where so much attention was paid to qualities of style it would be natural also for the hearer to attach undue importance to trivialities very much in the same frame of mind as he would a rhapsodist and to listen to an oration more for the sake of getting pleasure than of being convinced. The Greek heard an orator as an actor. We may well believe that the style of delivery, the elocution, played no small part in the success of a speech. We know in fact that Demosthenes and Eschines criticized each other's delivery, doubtless very much to the delight of the Athenian audience. To pander to this desire to be entertained and amused must have been a frequent temptation, under the spell of which the orator was sometimes led to indulge in abusive personalities that are more becoming to the writer of the old comedy than to the pleader at the bar or the statesman on the bema.

THE TEN GREAT GREEK ORATORS

So preeminent was Athens in oratory that the ten greatest orators of Greece as enumerated in the Alexandrian Canon, which listed and classified the Greek authors, were all selected from the Athenians. These "Ten Attic Orators," as they were called, are given in what was then considered the chronological order as follows: Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isæus, Demosthenes, Eschines, Hyperides, Lycurgus of Athens, and Dinarchus. To these should be prefixed PERICLES, the substance of a few of whose great speeches is preserved in the works of Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War (see volume five of the present work).

ANTIPHON was born B.C. 480 in Attica. He was the son and pupil of the sophist Sophilus. Taking up his father's profession he achieved great fame as a rhetorician, developing political eloquence into an art, and thereby attracting many to his school who desired to become successful advocates in law cases. He also wrote out speeches for others to deliver in court, though he afterwards published them under his own name. Entering into politics he became a leading member of the oligarchical party, being the deviser of the establishment of the Council of Four Hundred which sounded the knell of democracy in B.C. 411. He also went as ambassador to Sparta in the interest of the Athenian oligarchy to sue for peace on any terms. On the fall of the Four Hundred he was accused of high treason, and, in spite of a masterly defence the first speech he ever made in publicwas condemned to death B.C. 411. Of the sixty orations attributed to him, only fifteen are preserved-all on trials for murder; but only three of them are about real cases. The rest (named tetralogies because every four are the first and second speeches of both plaintiff and defendant on the same subject) are mere rhetorical exercises. In both substance and style the speeches of Antiphon are representative of the rudimentary stage of the art of oratory.

ANDOCIDES was born B.C. 439 of a noble family, and upon attaining manhood joined himself to the aristocratic party.

However, becoming involved with others in B.C. 415, in a charge of mutilating the statues of Hermes, to save his own and his kinsmen's lives he betrayed his aristocratic accomplices. Although promised immunity for thus turning "State's evidence," he suffered partial loss of civic rights. Accordingly he left Athens and embarked in trade in Cyprus. Upon the fall of the Thirty Tyrants in B.C. 403, when a general amnesty was proclaimed, he returned to Athens, where he successfully struggled to live down his evil record, and at last gained the esteem of his fellow citizens, so much so, that, during the Corinthian War in 390 B.C., he was sent to Sparta to negotiate peace. He brought back the draft of a treaty, for the ratification of which he earnestly pleaded in a speech that is still extant. The people repudiated it, however, as too favorable to Sparta, and banished Andocides as an enemy of the State. He died in exile. Besides the above-mentioned oration, we have two delivered on his own behalf, one pleading for his recall from his first exile, B.C. 410; another against the charge of unlawful participation in the mysteries, B.C. 399. His speeches are representative of a decided advance over Antiphon's in the art of oratory. They are less academic, being simple and direct, and expressed in the language of the people.

LYSIAS was born at Athens, B.C. 458 or 459. His father, Cephalus, was a wealthy native of Syracuse, who had settled at Athens during the time of Pericles, with whom he became on intimate terms; he was also a friend of Socrates, so much so that Plato laid the scene of his Socratic dialogue, the Republic, in his house. Lysias, at the age of fifteen, went with his brother Polemarchus, to Thurii in Italy at the founding of the colony, where he remained for thirty-two years. He was a staunch supporter of Athenian interests, and so was obliged to leave Italy after the failure of the Athenian expedition to Sicily. He returned to Athens B.C. 411, and carried on, in partnership with his brother Polemarchus, an extensive manufactory of shields, in which they employed as many as 120 slaves. Their wealth excited the cupidity of the Thirty Tyrants, who sent an armed force into their house one evening while Lysias was entertaining a few friends at