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CLASSICAL GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
LONDON : PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO, NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET 
 
A HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 CLASSICAL GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. J. P. MAHAFFY, M.A. 
 
 KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF THE SAVIOUR 
 
 FELLOW AND PROF. OF ANCIENT HISTORY, TRIN. COLL. DUBLIN 
 
 HON. FELLOW OF QUEEN'S COLL. OXFORD 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'SOCIAL LIFE IN GREECE* ' PROLEGOiVIENA TO ANCIENT HISTORY' ETC. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. II. 
 THE PROSE WRITERS 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 .REVISED THROUGHOUT 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 1883 
 
 All rights reserved 
 

PREFACE 
 
 TO 
 
 THE SECOND VOLUME. 
 
 As the English critics of this book were addressed in the 
 Preface to the First Volume, so a word may here be said to 
 soothe the anger felt by most of the Germans who have chanced 
 to examine it. One of the Homeric chapters, together with 
 Mr. Sayce's Appendix, has already appeared in a German form, 
 but the learned translator could not be induced to preface his 
 work with the remarks which here follow, and which are due 
 both to the book and to the worthy people who were offended 
 by it. The great English scholars of former days have not 
 left fit successors during the last forty years, and English 
 philology, with a few honourable exceptions, has followed 
 very servilely in the wake of the Germans, most editors of 
 Greek classics copying, whether confessedly or not, the most 
 recent German work on the subject. Hence the very natural 
 contempt with which the newer English philology is spoken of 
 in Germany. But our Teutonic neighbours are not only very 
 overbearing ; they are curiously sensitive to praise or blame, 
 and nothing puts them more out of temper than to be them- 
 selves criticised, even by those whom they despise. They are 
 mostly specialists, living in an atmosphere little wider than 
 their studies, whose very minuteness and depth of research 
 makes them purblind in the light of common day. Hence the 
 very ablest of them are guilty of such vagaries in criticism, such 
 obtuseness in matters of practical common sense, that respect 
 and admiration for their genius may justly alternate with 
 positive amusement at their mistakes. Hitherto the attitude of 
 
vi PREFACE TO 
 
 English criticism has been too often one of timid veneration ; 
 the time has come for free speaking on the subject. But no 
 one has a right to treat with disrespect our guides and masters 
 in Greek philology, who has not taken honest pains to read 
 and weigh carefully what they have said. This condition has 
 been honestly fulfilled in collecting the materials for the 
 present work. Yet it is hardly possible to read a dozen of the 
 recent monographs on what is called Quellenkritik, or the 
 inquiry into the sources used by the Greek historians, without 
 being astonished at the amount of baseless theory and unlikely 
 conjecture which prevails among German philologists. The 
 same may be said of what I venture to call Compositions-Kritik 
 — the inquiry into the way and the order in which an author 
 composed his work, and how far he may have revised it. Even 
 in the wildest of these tracts there is always estimable research ; 
 there are generally one or two acute and convincing inferences ; 
 there is also that quality, so wanting in the English Universities, 
 boldness and independence of judgment. But the authors 
 must not complain if the same temper appears in the criticism 
 of their theories. I here add a few details. 
 
 The capital document on the question of the age of writing 
 in Greece — the mercenaries' inscription on the colossus at Abu- 
 Simbel — still fails to convince Mr. Paley, who regards it as a 
 triviality or hoax of a later age. This scepticism, opposed to 
 the verdict of every other competent critic, will go far to injure 
 his authority on the question. It should be added here, that the 
 frequent proposal to read the OYAAMOY of the inscription, ' son 
 of XJdamos/ and to avoid the jocular rendering ' son of nobody ' 
 by the introduction of a Doric form, is directly in the teeth of 
 the whole character of the writing. The * son of Amoebicos ' is 
 not 6 'A/iot/3ifco, but A/jlol(diko. The problem before us is not to 
 invent a new text, but to translate what we have. 
 
 But while the age of writing does not seem likely to be 
 lowered, the accurate dates given for early events in Olympiads 
 — especially the dates of early colonies — are not likely to 
 withstand the destructive criticism brought to bear upon them 
 in my article on the subject which has appeared in the second 
 volume of the Journal of Hellenic Studies. 
 
THE SECOND VOLUME. vii 
 
 Mr. Jowett's Translation and notes to Thucydides have now 
 supplied the English reader with a fine edition of this great 
 author. Unfortunately, that part of the work which would 
 have been of inestimable service in the literary estimate of the 
 man is for the present delayed. But it is clear from the tone 
 of the Preface and Commentary that Mr. Jowett's forthcoming 
 Essays will be far more conservative than the general review 
 in this volume, and that they will present to the reader in the 
 best and most attractive form that account of Thucydides 
 which refuses to adopt the newer German Quellenkritik alto- 
 gether. This already appears in the case of Antiochus of 
 Syracuse, who is the only earlier writer on Sicilian antiquities 
 known to have discussed the politics of the various towns, and 
 whom it is almost certain that Thucydides, if he consulted any 
 authorities at all, must have consulted. There seem to be even 
 traces of Ionic diction, possibly transferred from Antiochus by 
 Thucydides. If Mr. Jowett is not convinced that Antiochus 
 was an authority used by Thucydides, still less will he accept 
 the arguments of Adolf Schmidt {das fierikleische Zeitalter), 
 that the estimate of Themistocles, and many other points, were 
 borrowed from Stesimbrotus, or those of Muller-Striibing, on 
 the deliberate omissions of important facts in the History. 
 The Thukydideische Forschungen of the latter contain some 
 acute essays on deep and ancient corruptions of the text. 
 
 It is very common to allege, that because Thucydides was 
 dependent on his own inquiry for his account of contemporary 
 affairs, and because he is silent about his authorities, that in 
 his digressions on past history he trusted altogether to tradition 
 and his own sagacity. Mr. Jowett, for example (Preface, 
 p. xvi), quite underestimates the amount of obligation he owed 
 to previous writers. He certainly knew Herodotus' history ; 
 he can hardly have avoided Antiochus' archaeology in speaking 
 of what happened centuries before his day in a country not 
 known to him as Athens was ; it is equally probable that he 
 had before him Stesimbrotus' memoirs of Themistocles. To 
 assume that he did not use these authorities is to assume a 
 great improbability, and indeed to lower his authority as a 
 historian of past generations. 
 
viii PREFACE TO 
 
 Similarly, the excuse for his obscurity, that Attic prose 
 style was as yet unformed, is met by the objection that 
 Antiphon, Lysias, Critias, and the author of the Tract on the 
 Athenian State, do not show this feature. To admit both charge 
 and excuse together, as Mr. Jowett does (Preface, p. xv), is 
 surely to halt between two opinions. If any writer be great 
 enough to have his faults freely admitted, it is Thucydides. 
 But it is surely uncritical praise to say that we have no 
 right to borrow lights on this period from later and inferior 
 writers, because he ' stands alone among the historians, not 
 only of Hellas, but of the world, in his impartiality and love 
 of truth.' The means of proving such a statement do not 
 exist, as he is our sole authority for most of what he tells. 
 If we had good contemporary evidence to control him, I ven- 
 ture to say his standard of impartiality and truth, though very 
 high for his day and his nation, would not stand one moment's 
 comparison with such a history as ThirlwalPs. But it is the 
 undying reward of his literary genius to produce this strong 
 confidence in his readers. This is the Thukydidescultus of 
 which Adolf Schmidt speaks with impatience, but which we 
 should rather respect and reckon with as a natural consequence 
 of the writer's isolation and greatness. 
 
 The treatment of Plato and Aristotle has been in some 
 quarters censured as superficial. It is only necessary to repeat 
 in self-defence that whatever could fairly be said of their works, 
 as literature, should find its place here, and nothing else. The 
 history of philosophy is a separate subject, the study of which 
 has been so long one of my official duties, that I was less likely 
 than my critics to confuse it with the History of Literature. The 
 same may be said of the History of Greek Music and Rythmic, 
 dry and abstruse speculations quite unsuited to the general 
 reader. When literary materials are so superabundant that 
 one can with difficulty compress them into a moderate compass, 
 these collateral but foreign studies must necessarily injure, by 
 overcrowding, a history of Literature. So far as the philo- 
 sophers come strictly within this particular scope, they have 
 been treated perhaps more fully than other prose authors. 
 
 The literature on the polity of Athenians, once ascribed to 
 
THE SECOND VOLUME. ix 
 
 Xenophon, has been since enriched by an excellent recension 
 translation and commentary from the pen of Muller-Striibing 
 {Philologus for 1880, pp. 1-170). He lowers its date to 
 415 B.C., considering 414, not 423, the minor limit, and thinks 
 it the production of Phrynichus, replying to an argument of 
 Critias before the oligarchical members of an Athenian club. 
 Whatever we may think of this positive theory, which rests on 
 very hypothetical grounds, his discussion of the facts, and his 
 criticisms of Kirchhoff's subtleties, are excellent. On the 
 polity of tke Lacedczmonians we have also a good monograph by 
 E. Naumann (Berlin, 1876), who defends the authenticity and 
 completeness of the tract, and argues it to have been written 
 about 385, with the last chapter added in 378. He thinks it 
 was followed by the Hiero, and then by the ideal sketch of the 
 Cyropcedia. No chapter in this volume has been so much 
 recast as chapter xii., the recent publication of the final volume 
 of Blass' attische Beredsamkeit affording valuable materials for 
 improving it 
 
 If Dr. Sayce's new edition of Herodotus (i-iii) had appeared 
 in time, the chapter on Herodotus would have been similarly 
 improved. I can only say here, that the general tendency of his 
 criticism is to confirm that of Blakesley, which I had drawn from 
 its ill-merited obscurity. 
 
 The changes in both volumes of this work are much more 
 considerable than appears at first sight, as they have been made 
 so as to avoid needless expense in re-casting the stereotype 
 plates. Thus, within the same number of pages the reader will 
 find considerable additional information. I regret that, a. the 
 Publishers' desire, the addition of a chronological index has 
 been postponed. 
 
 VOL. 11. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGK 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION— EARLY USE OF WRITING — THE IN- 
 FLUENCES OF RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY AND THE 
 DAWN OF HISTORY IN THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C. . I 
 
 II. HERODOTUS AND THE CONTEMPORARY IONIC PROSE 
 
 WRITERS l6 
 
 III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE RISE OF 
 
 TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN THE FIFTH CENTURY — THE 
 SOPHISTS AND SOCRATES 53 
 
 IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF ORATORY AND THE RISE OF ATTIC 
 
 PROSE COMPOSITION — GORGIAS, ANTIPHON ... 72 
 
 V. THUCYDIDES — ANDOCIDES, CRITIAS .... 98 
 
 VI. ATTIC LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION — LYS1AS AND 
 
 IS^EUS I34 
 
 VII. PLATO . . . . . 160 
 
 VIII. ISOCRATES 211 
 
 IX. THE LESSER CONTEMPORARIES OF ISOCRATES — ANTIS- 
 
 THENES, ALKIDAMAS, ANAXIMENES .... 24I 
 
 X. XENOPHON 252 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XI. DEMOSTHENES 292 
 
 XII. THE ORATORS CONTEMPORARY WITH DEMOSTHENES . 354 
 
 XIII. ARISTOTLE 384 
 
 XIV. THE LOST HISTORIANS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY, B.C. 429 
 
 INDEX . ... c ...... 439 
 
HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 GREEK PROSE LITERATURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION — EARLY USE OF WRITING — THE INFLUENCES OF 
 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY AND THE DAWN OF HISTORY 
 IN THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C. 
 
 § 295. Introductory. — The history of Greek prose literature, 
 as we possess it, begins almost at the close of the poetical 
 development of the nation, at least at the close of its original 
 development, for though many poets flourished later than our 
 earliest prose writers, no new species of poetry, except possibly 
 the bucolic, dates its origin from this time, and the later poets 
 were in few cases men of remarkable or enduring originality. 
 Hence it is that, in a logical survey of Greek literature, we may 
 allow ourselves to treat all the poetry before we approach the 
 consideration of prose writing. This, indeed, is now the 
 accepted order among the German writers on the subject. 
 
 I have in the former volume stated my belief that the 
 composition of any long or elaborate poem postulates the use 
 of writing, and I therefore proposed this condition as giving us 
 the earliest limit for the date of the Iliad as we have it ; but 
 many eminent critics have thought differently, and have argued 
 that poetry can be composed and preserved without any such 
 aid. Fortunately this divergence of opinion does not exist in 
 
 VOL. 11. B 
 
2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. I. 
 
 the case of prose literature. Everyone admits that prose is 
 impossible without writing — nay, even without the well-estab- 
 lished habit of fluent and sustained writing. A few words on 
 the history of the alphabet in Greece may therefore suitably 
 introduce our present subject. 
 
 § 296. The materials for the investigation of early Greek writ- 
 ing are to be found in many various and scattered inscriptions, of 
 which all those discovered up to a certain date are to be found 
 in Boeckh's Corpus Insc?'iptionum Gr&cai'um, but the later are 
 scattered through various archaeological journals. The stricter 
 study of these documents must be prosecuted by means of 
 photographs or facsimiles, as the shape and character of the 
 letters are generally our only means of determining the age of 
 the inscription. Investigations of this kind, when reduced to 
 method, are called the science of Epigraphik, and, with the 
 constantly increasing excavations and discoveries through the 
 Hellenic East, have become the most important and fruitful 
 branch of recent Greek studies. But in England the Univer- 
 sities have hardly awakened to this study, and the best English 
 Hellenists, with a very {qw brilliant exceptions, are as helpless 
 in the face of an old Greek inscription as if it were in a Semitic 
 tongue. I can only refer the reader to a German summary of 
 the main results — Kirchhoff's Studien zur Geschichte des griech- 
 ischen Alphabets (3rd ed. 1877). In this very able book he 
 will find it shown that oui earliest inscription of determinable 
 date — that of the Greek mercenaries on the leg of a colossal 
 figure at Abu-Simbel — is by no ' means written in the most 
 primitive form of the Greek alphabet. And yet this inscription 
 cannot have been made later than 589 B.C., and possibly 
 about 640 B.C. 1 The sepulchral inscriptions found at Melos 
 
 1 BA2IAEO2EA0ONTO2E2EAE<1>ANTINAN¥AMATIXO 
 
 TATTAErPA¥ANTOl2TN¥AMATIXOITOieEOKA02 (sc. raj ©eoKAeos) 
 
 EnAEONHA0ONAEKEPTIO2KATTnEP0ENl2 (sc. is) OTIOTAMOS 
 
 ANIHAAOrA0202AHXEnOTA2IMTOAirTnTI02AE AMA2I5 
 
 ErPA*EAEMEAPXONAMOIBIXOKAinEAE9020TAAMO (sc. son of nobody). 
 
 Cf. Lepsius, Denk. xii. 99, for a facsimile ; also Boeckh, iii. p. 507 (No. 
 5126). Wiedemann, Rhein. Mus. xxxv. p. 364, and Abel, Wiener Stud. 
 1881, p. 160, refer it to Psammetichus II., though on different grounds. 
 
CH. I. EARLY WRITTEN CODES. 3 
 
 and Thera, though perhaps not older in date, are far more 
 archaic, and point to a condition of writing at least half a 
 century older among the Ionians, who had modified their 
 writing into the character found at Abu-Simbel. These and 
 other facts collected by KirchhorT with great care show that the 
 Phoenician alphabet of twenty- two letters must have been 
 adopted by the Greeks, and quickly modified to suit the 
 different character of their language before 700 B.C., and per- 
 naps considerably earlier. But for our purposes we need not 
 claim an earlier origin than 700, though perhaps the constant 
 discoveries of old inscriptions at Olympia will soon afford us 
 clearer and fuller evidence. I predict that if such evidence be 
 forthcoming it will tend to increase rather than to diminish the 
 age of the use of writing in Greece. 
 
 § 297. These considerations are confirmed by another phe- 
 nomenon which we find in Greece about the same period. 
 The rise of lawgivers and of codes of law points distinctly to 
 writing, for we can hardly conceive the ordinances of a states- 
 man entrusted to vague tradition. The date and character of 
 Zaleukos, Charondas, and Lycurgus are indeed subject to dis- 
 pute, and the extant Spartan rhetra may be suspected to be 
 later in form, 1 but no one can doubt that the Locrian and 
 Spartan constitutions were early fixed in writing, certainly a 
 considerable number of years earlier than those of Drako 
 and Solon, which are fairly determined as shortly before and 
 after the year 600 B.C. Quite in concert with this develop- 
 ment of law we hear of the sayings of the Seven Wise Men, 
 whose varying catalogue includes rather the politicians than the 
 early philosophers, and whose wisdom was not only laid down 
 in verse but in those short proverbs which easily fasten on the 
 popular imagination. When Herodotus speaks of iEsop as a 
 
 1 It is cited and explained by Plutarch {Lycurgus, c. 6) : Atbs 'SvWaviov 
 Kal "AQavas ~2,v\\avias lephv Idpoffd/xevov, cpvAas (pv\d^avra Kal wy8as wfid^avra 
 TpidKOVTa,yepovff(av crvu apx<ryeTcus Karaffr^ffavTa, &pas e| &pas <X7reAAa(!W 
 fizra^v BafivKas re Kal KuaKioovos, ovrcos elacpepeiv t€ Kal acpiaracrdai • Sducp 
 8e rau Kvpiav -fj/xeu Kal Kpdros' at 8e (TKokiav o Sa/xos eXoiro, robs irpeafivyei/eas 
 Kal apxayeras airocrTaTTJpas ^/J.ev. Cf. on this Rawlinson's Herodotus, iii. 
 p. 346 ; or Grote's Greece, vol. ii. p. 465, sq., and notes. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH..I. 
 
 \ayo-Koi6q of early date, he seems to point to some form of 
 prose fable far older than his own time. It is remarkable that 
 savage races in our own day have made beast-fables their first 
 literary effort on the discovery of the use of writing. 1 But all 
 these things have left us but faint and doubtful traces ; for the 
 wisdom of the Seven Wise Men, and the fables of iEsop, have 
 come down to us in a rehandled and modern form, and we 
 know nothing of any early prose form in which these things 
 were originally composed. But on the whole, we have ample 
 evidence for the common use of writing throughout the seventh 
 century, evidence which is, in my opinion, necessary to account 
 for the development of Greek lyric poetry, the construction of 
 codes of law, and the general literary culture of the age. 
 
 In fact, the wonder is, not that prose writing came so early, 
 but so late in the history of Greek literature. But the national 
 taste was so well satisfied by poetry that it required special 
 influences, other than the mere familiarity with writing, to 
 induce men to set down their thoughts in unmetrical form. 
 To these we may now turn. 
 
 § 298. We cannot embrace in this volume either the history 
 of Greek religion or of Greek philosophy, both large and inter- 
 esting subjects, and demanding special investigation. We are 
 here concerned with them only so far as they produced a direct 
 effect in moulding either the form or the tendencies of general 
 literature. But as religion underwent great changes in the sixth 
 century, and philosophy then originated, our sketch of Greek 
 literature must embrace the remoter effects of both on the 
 writers of that and succeeding generations. 
 
 We have already noted 2 in Pindar the allusions to a future 
 world, and to its rewards and punishments, and that this 
 doctrine was due to the Orphic mysteries, which were com- 
 .mon through Greece in this century. The origin of these 
 mysteries is uniformly referred to Pieria in Thrace, from which 
 they are said to have been brought to Lesbos, and then spread 
 over Greece. They are closely identified, on the one hand, 
 with the worship of Dionysus, which also originated in Thrace, 
 
 1 Cf. my Proleg. to Arte. Hist., pp. 118, 391. 2 Vol. I. p. 213. 
 
CH. I. THE ESOTERIC RELIGION. 5 
 
 but had assumed, by contact with Phrygia, an enthusiastic and 
 orgiastic nature, so that the dithyrambs to the god, of old sung 
 to the cithara, were adapted to flute and cymbal accompani- 
 ments ; on the other hand, the Orphic rites were bound up 
 with the widely spread mysteries of Demeter and Persephone, 
 celebrated at Eleusis. But still more remarkable, and more 
 important than either of these indications, is the identification 
 of Orpheus, as the priest of Apollo, with Dionysus, and the 
 evidences that he and Apollo, with whom he is identified, once 
 in hostility with Dionysus, became reconciled with that god, 
 who, under the title of Zagreus, was made a sort of nightside 
 to the sungod, and ultimately confused with him. This secret 
 doctrine, the identification of Apollo and Dionysus, is said to 
 have been that disclosed in ^Eschylus' trilogy about Lycurgus 
 of Thrace, for which he was indicted as guilty of impiety. It 
 is accordingly evident that the Delphic priests had recognised 
 and adopted the Orphic rites as in harmony with their own 
 creed, so that they must have been of real importance in Greece, 
 and widely spread through the hearts of men. 
 
 § 299. We may infer, however, from the scanty evidence of 
 later writers that this religion of mysteries and rites, whether 
 Orphic or Eleusinian or Dionysiac, was fundamentally distinct 
 From the popular creed. It preached the identification of the 
 most diverse gods, perhaps even the unity of all the gods. It 
 approached the dogma of a world-soul, and of the divinity of the 
 soul of man, if not of all the world, as a manifestation of God. 
 It portrayed the wonder of a suffering deity, and of good over- 
 borne by the powers of darkness for a season. It held out the 
 hope of immortality to those who embraced the faith, and made 
 them a chosen people. It replaced, in fact, the old Homeric 
 society of obvious human gods, with their vulgar amours and 
 passions, by mystic principles and half-understood devotions. 
 There seems little doubt that the established Delphic priesthood 
 who adopted it borrowed from Egypt not only many elements 
 of the new creed, such as the murder of the god and his resur- 
 rection from the dead, but more distinctly the policy of the 
 Egyptian priests, who are known to have been monotheists or 
 rather pantheists, yet who not only tolerated but taught a most 
 
6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. I. 
 
 complicated polytheism to the people. Thus the established 
 religion went on : temples were built and statues consecrated, 
 sacrifices offered and feasts celebrated to all the gods ; but the 
 select, the initiated, the higher classes in religion found their 
 comfort in far different beliefs, which could not be made public. 
 
 Yet they could not but make themselves felt. Inasmuch 
 as perhaps all the literary men of the age knew these mysteries, 
 we find among them, at least, two leading ideas engendered by 
 their faith : the conception of law and order in both nature 
 and the life of man, an order resulting from the control of one 
 supreme principle, untouched by caprice or passion ; and the 
 conception of mystery, of something unexplained in the world, 
 of something revealed to privileged classes and hidden from the 
 vulgar. 
 
 § 300. While the belief in a future state takes but transient 
 hold of the Greek mind, and even disappears in its vulgar form, 
 these other larger notions seem to me to dominate most writers 
 from Pindar onward, but above all to have affected the early 
 philosophers, concerning whose views we must also say a few 
 words. Most of them have unfortunately left us no fragments 
 whatever • but if they had, we should treat them as literature, 
 not as philosophy. 
 
 The very same tendencies which suggested in religion the 
 identification of various gods, and an increased appreciation of 
 unity in worship, seem to have acted on the secular thinkers of 
 Miletus, and set them to seeking unity in the substance or 
 matter of the world. The doctrine of Thales that moisture 
 was the common element of which all things were variously- 
 compounded, is directly analogous to the cult of Dionysus, the 
 god of moisture, to whom all growth and fruitfulness are due, 
 and who, in combination with Apollo, the god of light and 
 heat, generates all the conditions of change in nature. The 
 theories of the sixth century started in Ionia, and have this 
 common point, the search after unity, as their leading feature. 
 The followers of Thales found moisture too coarse a primeval 
 substance, and substituted the more subtle air (Anaximenes) or 
 imperceptible fire (Heracleitus). Others, such as Xenophanes 
 and Pythagoras, advanced beyond the conception of mere 
 
CH.I. EARLY PHILOSOPHIES. 7 
 
 matter, and sought their single principle either in number, with 
 its eternal and certain laws, or in some higher abstract Unity, 
 which embraced all apparent contradictions. 
 
 § 301. The effect of these theories on literature was twofold: 
 they taught that the matter of thought was worth recording 
 apart from its literary form, and knowledge as such was to be pur- 
 sued apart from elegance in diction ; secondly, they corroborated 
 the religious teaching of the mysteries, that ' all things are not 
 as they seem,' that public opinion and ordinary sense miss the 
 truer and deeper meaning of experience, that there are secrets 
 and difficulties in human knowledge, and many things hard to 
 understand and still harder to explain. The first resulted in 
 the origin of prose literature, 1 which according to consistent 
 tradition was due to the wonder-working Pherecydes of Syros, 
 son of Babys, who lived about the middle of the sixth century, 
 and is called the teacher of Pythagoras. His semi-theological 
 semi-philosophical book called 'E7n-ap;xoc, on theogony and 
 the revelation of the gods to the world, was the first attempt at 
 a prose treatise. 2 
 
 Neither Thales nor Pythagoras left anything written, and it 
 is remarkable that Xenophanes, though he was a great adver- 
 sary of the poets and of public opinion in general, and led the 
 conflict between philosophy and poetry, nevertheless employed, 
 not only the poetic form, but even the poetic habit of public 
 recitation to disseminate his views. Perhaps there was as yet 
 no reading public in the newer colonies of Italy and Sicily 
 when he lived; but the fact remains certain, and also the 
 similar practice of his follower Parmenides. 
 
 If, indeed, Theagenes of Rhegium, the 'first literary critic, 
 
 1 The Greeks said prose writing, as they were fond of ascribing every 
 step in culture to a definite inventor. But, as we have shown, and as 
 the inscriptions above cited have since proved, mere prose writing must 
 have long been in use for simple inscriptions, and for laws. But the use 
 of prose for literary purposes was a distinct step, and much later than 
 might have been expected. 
 
 2 We have the opening sentence of it quoted by Diogenes : Zevs n*v 
 Kal XpSvos i<racl Kal Xdkv l\v XQovlri 8e ovvofxa eyevero Trj, e7ret§^ avrr} 
 Zeus- yipas StSoT. And again (Clem. Strom.) : Zas iroiel <papos jxiya re Kal 
 utikiv Kal iv avr§ iroiKlhXzi yr\v Kal hyt\vbv Kal ra, ayrjvov Sdjxara. 
 
8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. I. 
 
 who wrote on Homer and introduced the principle of allego- 
 rical interpretation, really flourished about 525 b.c, the reason 
 just assigned would not hold good ; but the date rests on the 
 single authority of Tatian, and I hesitate to reckon a literary 
 critic among the earliest pioneers of prose literature. 
 
 § 302. On the contrary, Heracleitus of Ephesus * was 
 perhaps the first great prose writer among the Greeks, and the 
 source of a new current in the literature of his country. His 
 treatise on Nature, 2 though not published by himself, was 
 copied from the MS. he had deposited in the temple of Artemis 
 at Ephesus, and was early known and read in Sicily, as appears 
 from the fragments of his Sicilian contemporary Epicharrnus, 
 and from Attic references down to the days of Socrates. The 
 whole philosophy of the man .who had discovered that all 
 organism grows, and that all growth implies motion, turned 
 {like the Eleatic theory of Xenophanes) upon a contempt of 
 ordinary opinions — nay, even a contempt of our ordinary 
 senses, which are witnesses only to what is dead, as they per- 
 ceive not the inner motion of every substance in the world. 
 He therefore appealed to a select public, and made a severance 
 among the members of society which had, perhaps, been un- 
 known in Greek cities heretofore. 
 
 But what is more important as regards literature, he was 
 the first Greek who ventured to write obscurely, and to profess 
 to do so without apology. This is, to my mind, the important 
 and novel side of Heracleitus in Greek literature ; for from his 
 day onward we find obscurity not uncommon even in the next 
 generation, whereas in older literature it is unknown. In the 
 following age we find it affected by his followers, and even in 
 Thucydides and in Sophocles, but banished again by the good 
 sense of the Athenian public. It does not reappear till the 
 Alexandrian epoch, with which we are not concerned. When 
 
 1 He was apparently of noble family, and certainly an exclusive aristo- 
 crat in sentiment. He flourished about 500-480 B.C., and seems to have 
 been a morose and unsocial man. Diog. Laert. ix. I, gives various stories 
 about him and some quotations, with spurious letters. 
 
 2 Also said to have been called Movaai, being in three books, which 
 was the old number of these goddesses. 
 
CH. I. HERACLEITUS. 9 
 
 I speak of obscurity the word may, of course, be taken in differ- 
 ent senses. First, there is the obscurity of allusions not clear 
 to the reader ; and Pindar is full of this, but of this only, as 
 he was one of the ordinary crowd in philosophy, and was not 
 capable of any thoughts in themselves profound. Secondly, 
 there is the obscurity of a crabbed or affected style. In 
 ^Eschylus, on the contrary, we have not only the first kind of 
 obscurity — the allusions to mysteries — but we have obscure 
 thoughts, difficult to express and unintelligible to the most 
 advanced Greeks ; for we have the evidence of Aristophanes, 
 which I here believe, that ^Eschylus thought even the Athenians 
 no judges of poetry, and would not accommodate his writing 
 to their comprehension. 
 
 It has not, perhaps, been sufficiently remarked how im- 
 portant was the example of Heracleitus, and how easy it is 
 to lead the fashion in obscure writing. We must remember 
 that Heracleitus was really a quaint and original thinker, and a 
 remarkable innovator, not only in thought, but in style ; for he 
 wrote a rythmical, picturesque prose, at a time when prose was 
 in its infancy. His fragments are far more poetical in the 
 higher sense than the verses of Xenophanes, and for this very 
 reason he may have scorned the shackles of metre, and set 
 down unchanged the utterances of his teeming mind. This 
 accounts for the remark of the rhetor Demetrius, 1 who says 
 that the frequent asyndeta were the greatest cause of his 
 obscurity. Each thought was thrown out by itself, and the 
 reader must find its logical connection with the rest for 
 himself. 2 
 
 In addition to Zeller's exhaustive chapter on Heracleitus, 3 
 I may recommend the various brilliant essays of J. Bernays, 
 reaching from 1848 to 1869 ; some separately published, others 
 
 1 § 192. 
 
 2 Specimens of Heracleitus' style are the following : efxireSov ovdiv, 
 aXKa kws is KvKewva irdura crvveiXzovTai. iarl rcovrb repipis ar^p^ii}, yyaxrls 
 ayvtoffiri, fiiya fwcp6v, &uw Kara) irepix^peovra koX afieifidfieva ev rjj tov alcovos 
 ira&iy, alcov irais eari iraifav Treffffevwv <rvvdia(pcp6fiej/os. ra 5k irdvra. 
 olani^ei Kepavv6s. ov i-vviacri okws diacpepSfievou ewvrip 6fio\oyeei ' iraA'tv- 
 rpoiros apfiovirj Sxrvep to'|ou ical Xvprjs. 
 
 8 Phil. d. Griech. i. 566-677. 
 
io HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. I. 
 
 in the seventh and ninth vols, of the Rhein. Afus. We have also, 
 from Mr. I. Bywater of Oxford, a new critical and more com- 
 plete edition (1877) of the fragments, 130 in number, with 
 Diogenes' Life, and the spurious Letters, done with that con- 
 scientious care which distinguishes all his work. 
 
 § 303. The example of the theologians and philosophers was, 
 however, active in another direction ; for it stimulated writers on 
 the genealogies of gods and of men to set them down in prose. 
 The earliest of these are enveloped in mist ; it is even doubtful 
 whether Cadmus of Miletus, the reputed father of history, ever 
 existed, or whether his account of the settlement of Ionia was 
 not a late forgery. Acusilaus, of the Boeotian Argos, near Aulis, 
 the son of Cabas, who devoted himself to mythical genealogies 
 chiefly adapted from Hesiod, is a real personage, of whose 
 work some thirty notices are preserved in the scholiasts ; but 
 we know nothing more about him. Equally obscure is Dio- 
 nysius of Miletus, the reputed author of a Persian history ; and 
 the prose works attributed to Eumelus of Corinth were certainly 
 later paraphrases from poetical treatises. Pherecydes of Leros 
 (the second of the name) certainly did some service in genea- 
 logies, which even at his time (b.c. 460) were the only phase of 
 history esteemed and understood. A society consisting of 
 clans always lays the greatest stress on genealogies ; as, for 
 example, the ancient Irish, whose histories are little more 
 than enumerations of names. 1 Xanthus, Charon, and Scylax 
 are only of interest in connection with Herodotus (below, p. 26). 
 
 § 304. But the second or critical element of history was added 
 presently by a greater man, Hecat^eus of Miletus, who seems 
 to me to have the best right to be called the Father of History 
 among the Greeks. For he was the forerunner of Herodotus 
 in his mode of life and his conception of setting down his ex- 
 perience. He attained such eminence as to be consulted pub- 
 
 1 Those who ridicule these Irish genealogies are ignorant that they 
 were practically title-deeds, for any man proving himself an O'Neill or a 
 Maguire had a right to graze cattle in the O'Neill and Maguire country, and 
 to till it. Hence these genealogies were early kept, and no doubt early 
 disputed, and this gives them an exceptional value. I perceive the same 
 anxiety to show hereditary rights in all the usurpers of power throughout 
 early Greek history. 
 
CH. I. HECATE US. 
 
 II 
 
 licly by the Ionians at the time of their revolt (incited by 
 Aristagoras) from the Persians. He knew the Persian empire 
 from personal examination, and advised strongly against any 
 revolt. When he could not persuade them, he advised them to 
 secure the supremacy of the sea, a common capital, and a cen- 
 tralisation of forces ; which could only be done, he considered, 
 by applying the treasures given by Crcesus to Apollo's temple 
 at Branchidae to supply the sinews of war. These views show 
 him to have been a man of large political insight. He also 
 advised Aristagoras, at the end of the revolt, to fortify the 
 island of Leros, 1 and there await the tide of events ; but 
 for the third time, his advice was unheeded. These facts all 
 rest upon the authority of Herodotus, who mentions him else- 
 where, and systematically, as \oyoiroibq avrjp, or 6 Xoyowoios. 
 In one place he tells us that Hecatseus boasted to the priests of 
 Egyptian Thebes that he could trace his origin through fifteen 
 generations back to a god, which they denied, saying that 
 at least 345 generations could be proved by them to have 
 lived on the earth since the reign of the gods. Herodotus also 
 mentions without criticism his theory of the unjust expulsion of 
 the Pelasgi from Attica, and he often alludes to his prede- 
 cessor slightingly, without expressly mentioning his name. 
 
 From these facts, along with the notices of Suidas, it ap- 
 pears that the historian was born about 01. 57-8, and died after 
 the conclusion of the Persian war, about 01. 76. His high 
 position in society is proved not only by the story just men- 
 tioned, but by his wide and careful travels, which imply good 
 means and connections. Whether he learned from Pythagoras 
 we cannot tell His travels apparently embraced Egypt, Persia, 
 Pontus, Thrace, as well as the Greek world, and were probably 
 made before the Ionian revolt in 500 B.C., when his wide ex- 
 perience was publicly recognised, and after 516 B.C., when the 
 town of Boryza in Thrace became Persian, which he states it 
 to be in a geographical fragment. Thus the settled and orderly 
 
 1 There is an inscription published in Ross's collection (ii. p. 28), in 
 which some Hecataeus is honoured as a founder and benefactor by the 
 Lerians. Whether this person be the historian, or a relative, I am unable 
 to tell. The fact is mentioned by Mure (iv. 143). 
 
T2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. I. 
 
 condition of the Persian empire, when Darius was established 
 on the throne, seems to have enabled Hecatseus to acquire his 
 geographical materials. It has been inferred from a story pre- 
 served in a fragment of Diodorus that he was sent as an am- 
 bassador to Artaph ernes after the conquest of Ionia, and that 
 he obtained good terms for his countrymen. He is men- 
 tioned as a man of exceptional learning (along with Hesiod, 
 Pythagoras, and Xenophanes) by his younger contemporary 
 Heracleitus, and classed by Hermogenes with the great histo- 
 rians of Greece. 
 
 § 305. Of his works we can recognise two : a geographical 
 description of the known world, and an historical work, some- 
 times called Genealogies. He seems to have had one predeces- 
 sor in each — Scylax of Caryanda, who explored the Indus for 
 Darius Hystaspes, and wrote a Periplus which was soon lost, 
 and Acusilaus of Argos. He completed and improved the map 
 first constructed by Anaximander, and it was, doubtless, this 
 copy which Aristagoras brought with him to exhibit at Sparta. 
 He narrated curious natural phenomena, just as Herodotus, but 
 naturally believed more than Herodotus did, and is accordingly 
 criticised by him for credulity. But he was, nevertheless, the 
 first Greek historian who did apply rational criticism x to test 
 
 1 The following are the chief specimens : — 
 
 Muller, frag. 346 : 'Eiroirio-av Se 'EAAf)voov rivhs d>s 'HpaKArjs avaydyoi 
 ravrrj rov "AlSov rbv Kvva, ovre virb yrjv oSov Sidrov cnrrjAaiov (pepovcrr)s, ovre 
 eroi/JLOV ~bv irei(xQrjvai dewv inrSyaiov eivai riva o1k7)<tiv, is %v adpoi(e<rt)ai ras 
 tyvxds' aAAa 'Ek<xtcuos fJt-ev MiA^aios A6yov eupev eiKora, ' o<piv (prjtras iirl 
 Taivdpw rpa<pr)vai $eiv6u, KAr)0r)vai 8e"Aidov Kvva, Sri edei rbv Brjxdevra 
 reOvdvai irapavr'iKa virb rov lov' Kal rovrov e<pr) rbu ocpiv virb 'HpaKAeovs 
 hj(Qr\vai Trap' EbpvaQia. ' 
 
 Frag. 349 : ' Fripvovrfv 84, i(p' '6vriva 6 'ApyeTos 'RpaKA^s iffrdAr) npbs 
 EvpvaOius, ras fiovs aTrekdcrai ras rrjpv6uov ical ayaye?v is MvKi)vas, ovhiv 
 ri irpoa-f)Keiv rfj' yrj rwv 'IfirjptoV,' 'Eicaralos 6 Aoyoiroibs Keyet, ' ovSe iirl 
 vr)a6v riva 'EpvOeiav e|a> rr)s /xeyaAris 6a\d(T<Tr}s araAijvai 'HpcucAe'cr aAAa 
 rrjs r)rrdpov rrjs rrepl ' AjxfipaKiav re Kal ' 'A/u<piA6xovs fiacnAia yevicrOai 
 TripvSvriv Kal e/c rrjs r)rreipov ravrr)S aireAdcai 'HpaKAea ras fiovs, ovSh rovrov 
 <pavAov MAov ri6i/j.€vov.' 
 
 Frag. 357: 'H iroAAr] 56£a Kare"x* L M eAdelv rbv Atyvirrov €is"Apyos, 
 KaQdirep aAAoi re cpacrl Kal 'EKaraios ypdcpwv ourws' ' Se A'tyvirros avrbs fiev 
 ovk r)A0ev els*Apyos' Aeyerai 8e n.s iv "Apyei. irpav, b'irov SiKa^ovaiu 'Apyelot.' 
 
CH. I. HECAT&US' STYLE. 13 
 
 popular beliefs ; and his originality in this point, the result, no 
 doubt, of the contemporary philosophy at Miletus, must not be 
 overlooked. From his geographical work some 330 citations 
 have been collected by Carl Muller, most of them names of 
 towns in Stephanus of Byzantium, and a few in Strabo. l From 
 his Genealogies (of which the genuineness was disputed by Cal- 
 limachus, but defended by Eratosthenes and Strabo) a smaller 
 number of more interesting passages still survive, bringing up the 
 total number (together with the fragmenta incerta) to almost 400. 
 The very opening sentence of the Genealogies is characteristic. 2 
 On his style we have three very interesting notices : Strabo 
 says 3 that the school of Cadmus, Pherecydes, and Hecataeus, 
 though abandoning metre, were in other respects poetical 
 writers. Hermogenes 4 has a general description of his style, 
 which is somewhat as follows : ' Hecataeus of Miletus, from 
 whom Herodotus profited most, is a pure and clear writer, 
 and in some respects possesses no ordinary charm. Using 
 
 Mure says (iv. 71) that while his^oreign geography was full of good ob- 
 servations of an historical kind, his genealogies and his Greek notices were 
 confined to the mythical period The passages just cited show that he ap- 
 plied criticism here also, and that Mure's distinction is probably un- 
 founded. 
 
 1 C. Muller thinks it unlikely that the genuine work survived till 
 Stephanus' time, and holds that he used an interpolated and modified copy. 
 Thus Capua was called Vulturnum in Hecataeus' day, and yet is cited from 
 his work (fr. 30) with its new name. A map of his views is published in 
 most good ancient atlases, and also in the appendix to Mure's fourth 
 volume. The gap in his description of the coast from Naples to Genoa 
 is well noted by the latter, and points to some distinct prohibition on the 
 part of the Romans and Tyrrhenians, which kept Greek vessels from land- 
 ing on their coasts. Probably Greek ships were compelled to sail from 
 Naples by way of Sardinia to Mentone, the first town mentioned on the 
 coast above Naples, at least in the fragments we have in Stephanus. But 
 the like omission of Athens, Argos, and other renowned Greek towns, shows 
 that there was some other cause of gaps either in Hecataeus' book, or in 
 Stephanus' quotations from it. 
 
 2 Frag. 332 (from the rhetor Demetrius) : Olov as 'ExarcuSs <pri<riv ey 
 rf) apxy ttjs Iffropias' * 'Ekotojos NIl\4](Tios atie /tvdetrcu.' Cf. also § 12 : 
 'E/caTatos MiK-fi<rios a>8e /ti/fletTar Ta5e ypdcpw, as /tot a\r)6ea Soiceei elvac ol 
 yap 'E\X7\vav \6yoi iroWoi re ical ye\o?oi, as c/tol (palvovrai, el<riv. 
 
 3 i. p. 34. * De gen. die. ii. 12. 
 
14 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. I. 
 
 the Ionic dialect pure, and not mixed with epic and other 
 elements, as Herodotus did, he is in diction less poetical. 1 
 Neither is he so finished a writer. His charm is, therefore, not 
 comparable to that of Herodotus in treating similar subjecs ; 
 for the matter of a book is not its only element as regards de- 
 lighting the reader, but the diction, in all its details, is of great 
 importance. Thus Hecatseus, not having given equal thought 
 and care to his diction, was completely surpassed by his suc- 
 cessor.' The modern reader will of course observe that the last 
 remark is wrongly put. No doubt, Hecatasus, with ten times the 
 labour, could not have attained the elegance in style of Hero- 
 dotus, who did not write till Greek prose had been studied and 
 practised for nearly a century longer ; but the facts on which 
 Hermogenes based his remark are doubtless strictly true. 
 Lastly, in Longimis de Sublim., chap, xxvii., the author says : 
 ' Sometimes when a historian is speaking of a person, he sud- 
 denly leaves his own attitude and passes into that of the 
 person he is describing. This figure should be used when a 
 sudden crisis brooks no delay in the writer, and, as it were, com- 
 pels him to pass at once from person to person. So it is in 
 Hecatseus. ' Ceyx being grieved at this, immediately requested 
 the Heracleidse, his descendants, to leave the country. For 
 I am not able to help you ; in order then that ye may not be 
 yourselves destroyed, and, moreover, injure me, go 2 to some 
 other community.' 
 
 § 306. I have dwelt at considerable length on Hecatasus, 
 who represents most distinctly the positive tendencies of the 
 sixth century as opposed to its speculative and mystical aspira- 
 tions. With him all was matter of fact, observation, and plain 
 
 1 This is quite in a different sense from Strabo's remark. 
 
 2 Frag. 353 : ^Etj ye /a^u ecr0' ore irepl irpocrcoirov di7]yov/nevos 6 crvyypa- 
 (pevs, i^ai(f>U7]S irapevexQds els rb avrb irpoawirov avriixeQiararai. — Aib Kal tj 
 Trp6xpi]Gis tov (rxvV-aTos Tore 7)VLKa o|us 6 Kaipbs &v dia/ueWeiu rep ypd<t>ovTi 
 fj.7] 8i8£, aAA' evdvs eiravayKa^y (JLerafSaiveiv e/c irpocrojircov els irpocrooira' cos 
 Kal irapa t<2 'EKaraiof ' Kr)u| Se ravra deiva iroiovfxevos, ain'iKa etceXeve robs 
 'HpaK\eidas iiriyovovs e/c%£»pe«'" Ou yap vfxiu 5vuaros eljxi apTjyeiv cos /xrj 3>v 
 avroi re aTrohrjaOe Ka/xh rpcoo"r]Te, is a\Kov riva Srjfxov airoix*G$u-i? 
 
 Note the infin. airolxeo-Oai. Did he return here to the narrative form ? 
 
CH. I. THE DESTRUCTION OF MILETUS, 15 
 
 recording of observations. Thus the positive tendencies, which 
 culminated in the splendid histories and geographies of later 
 days, owed their origin to this early school of practical enquirers. 
 But I will not prosecute this side of Greek literature further here, 
 and shall consider the successors of Hecatseus in relation with 
 their most illustrious and perfect type, Herodotus. We are 
 justified in doing so, not merely because the Persian wars form 
 so great a crisis in Greek history that no sort of literature, save 
 the choral lyric poetry, passed through it unchanged, but also 
 because Miletus — the great intellectual hothouse of Greece, the 
 centre of her art, her philosophy, and her history — was com- 
 pletely destroyed by the Persians at the opening of the fifth 
 century, and so the splendid continuity of Greek thought re- 
 ceived a disastrous check. Up to this date, the title Milesian 
 meets us in every field of thought ; from henceforth it dis- 
 appears for centuries from our studies. Simple stories of rude 
 shepherd life, and the loves of rustic swains, were known long 
 after as Milesian tales — a faint and wretched afterglow of the 
 most lurid and stormy sunset in the history of Greek intellect. 
 Prose literature received a blow from which it never recovered ; 
 for while the tendency of Ionic prose had been (as it ought to 
 be) to assume the narrative, or the philosophical form, the de- 
 struction of its proper home threw the balance into Attica, 
 where the rhetorical element became so predominant as to 
 control all descriptions of prose writing. Hence, as Mure 
 observes, 1 Greek prose has permanently suffered, and we have 
 only one great specimen of what narrative prose might have 
 been but for the injurious influences of Athens. Herodotus, 
 with all his genius, was unable to stem the tide of Attic in- 
 fluence ; yet his great work shows us clearly what might have 
 been expected but for the subjugation of Ionia and, above all, 
 the destruction of Miletus. 
 
 I have here left untouched another hidden but powerful 
 tendency in the religious mysteries of the sixth century, espe- 
 cially in the worship of Dionysus — I mean their dramatic 
 elements. But this has been treated in a separate chapter, 2 
 when discussing another phase in the history of the subject. 
 1 iv. 127. 2 Vol. I. chap. xiv. 
 
16 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. ix. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HERODOTUS AND THE CONTEMPORARY IONIC PROSE WRITERS. 
 
 § 307. Though Miletus, the great centre and mainspring of 
 Ionic culture, was untimely destroyed, the influence it had 
 already exerted over eastern Hellas could not disappear in an 
 instant. A series of men attempted to utilise prose for historical 
 purposes, and communicated the old Milesian spirit to Herodo- 
 tus, who, although he lived to see the Peloponnesian war and to 
 witness the teaching of the sophists and the rise of rhetoric at 
 Athens, was, nevertheless, so strictly a writer of Ionic genius, 
 so completely a coequal in spirit and in culture of Epicharmus, 
 and Pindar, and ^Eschylus, that in a rational survey of Greek 
 literature he must be placed among his predecessors as one 
 born out of due season. But the culture of Athens had, per- 
 haps, not yet swallowed up all the rest of Greek literary genius, 
 and the style of Hellanicus, a younger contemporary, or, at 
 least, not older than Herodotus, makes us suspect that Herodo- 
 tus WoS not so unique as he is generally considered. 
 
 We have the late, but respectable, authority of Dionysius 
 of Halicarnassus, that he was born ' a little before the Persian 
 wars,' which would make him older than the account of 
 Pamphila, who gives B.C. 484 as his birth year. As it seems 
 likely, from the absence of later allusions, that he died before 
 420 B.C., he may have been born before the battle of Marathon. 
 It is generally agreed that Halicarnassus was his native town, 
 though from his long residence at Thurii he is called the 
 Thurian by Aristotle, when quoting the opening words of 
 his history in the Rhetoric} He is also called the Thurian 
 
 1 iii. 9. 
 
CH. ii. LIFE OF HERODOTUS. t 7 
 
 logopoios in a passage cited from an epistle of Julian by 
 Stiidas. But Strabo mentions both titles, and explains them 
 in the obvious way just mentioned. Suidas says his parents' 
 names were Lyxes and Dryo, or Rhoeo, through one of whom 
 Panyasis was his uncle. An extant epitaph or epigram con- 
 firms his father's name, and the obscurity of both, though 
 Suidas calls them illustrious, seems some warrant for the trust- 
 worthiness of the tradition. 
 
 I see no reason for doubting the relationship with Panyasis, 
 which is rendered internally probable by the peculiar and ex- 
 ceptional education which Herodotus must have received. His 
 intimacy with Homer's poems has been shown from a compara- 
 tive table of phrases l to be such as we should not expect from 
 ordinary circumstances, but can easily explain by his intercourse 
 with Panyasis, the learned reviver of epic poetry. In the same 
 way he quotes the cyclic poets, Hesiod, the gnomic and lyric 
 poets, and the earlier tragedians, ^Eschyhis and Phrynichus. 
 It seems by accident, rather than from ignorance, that he omits 
 Callinus, Tyrtaeus, the elder Simonides, Stesichorus, Epime- 
 nides, and Epicharmus, from references which otherwise em- 
 brace all the older literature. The two Sicilian poets may 
 possibly not have been known to him till he went to Thurii, 
 but he writes like a man with all the greater authors at hand, 
 as they may have been in the house of Panyasis and, of course, 
 at Athens, which he visited in mature age. Suidas, indeed, 
 says that he was exiled to Samos by Lygdamis, grandson of the 
 Artemisia whom he delights to honour in his history ; that he 
 returned and obtained his country's liberty by expelling Lyg- 
 damis, but finding himself disliked, left for Thurii, where he 
 settled and died. But all these facts, if true, could hardly have 
 escaped corroboration by his own allusions, or, at least, by 
 early witnesses. 2 We hear nothing of Herodotus having married 
 or left any descendants. 
 
 § 308. We can therefore assert nothing, save that a good deal 
 
 1 Mure (vol. ii., Appendix Q) gives an imperfect list. 
 
 2 All these legends are rejected by A. Bauer, in his researches, as in- 
 vented when Herodotus began to revive in popularity after long oblivion. 
 But this ground for scepticism is refuted by H. Weil in the Kevue Critique 
 for Jan. 1, 1880. 
 
 VOL. II. C 
 
 \> 
 
iS HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. II. 
 
 of his earlier life was spent in travelling, and apparently travel- 
 ling for the purpose of his history. l This he must have brought 
 with him to Athens in sufficient completion to make him 
 famous, if Sophocles, as Plutarch and Suidas tell us, composed 
 an ode to him in the year 440 B.C. It is probable, therefore, 
 that before this time he had visited Upper Egypt, Susiana, 
 Babylonia (as far as Ardericca and Ecbatana), Colchis and 
 Scythia, Thrace, Dodona, Zakynthos, and Cyrene, with most 
 of the countries within this great circuit The spread of mer- 
 cantile enterprise from Miletus and Phocaea, and the security 
 afforded by the Persian conquests and good administration of 
 Asia and Egypt, made such voyages not only possible, but 
 perhaps not unusual. Even in the days of Solon it was part 
 of a perfect education to visit, at least, the Lydian court and 
 the wonders of Lower Egypt. 
 
 Herodotus' eastern travels seem to have been made before 
 his retirement to Thurii, but we cannot fix the years and order 
 of them, except that he saw the battle-field of Papremis after 
 the year 460 B.C., 2 probably while the Athenian armies were 
 in possession of part of the country. He is said by the pseudo- 
 Plutarch to have recited his history when he came to Athens, 
 and (by Suidas) afterwards at Olympia • but the latter tale is 
 plainly an invention suggested by the later fashion of exhibiting 
 there, and the earlier is not much more probable, unless a mere 
 reading among distinguished friends were intended. But if this 
 were so, the alleged public vote of ten talents would of course 
 be inconceivable. 3 Yet I see that most recent German critics 
 accept both the public recitation and the state reward. 4 
 
 It is probable that he resided at Athens for some years 
 until he joined, with many other celebrated men, the colony 
 
 1 Travelling for literary purposes was so rare in those early times, that 
 I do not share the confidence of K. O. Muller and others, who assert 
 positively that Herodotus had no other object. Commercial reasons may 
 have existed, though it is not easy to imagine such various voyages con- 
 ducive to any systematic business. As Stein observes, his personal 
 wanderings seem to have extended precisely to the limits of the Persian 
 dominion ; beyond them he only speaks from hearsay. 
 
 2 iii. 12. ' 3 Cf. Euseb. Chron. ad Ol. t 85 (Ed. Schone). 
 4 Stein, Inirod, to his Edition, i. p. xxii, note. 
 
CH. II. HERODOTUS AT ATHENS. 19 
 
 which founded Thurii, near the old site of Sybaris, in 443 e.c. 1 
 There can be little doubt that at Athens he learned to know 
 many of the splendid intellects then collected there, besides 
 Sophocles, who seems indebted to him (cf. § 185) for several 
 passages : that in the Antigone, brought out in 440, where the 
 greater loss of a brother than a husband is curiously discussed ; 
 the attack on the habits of Egyptians in the (Edipus Col. 
 337, sq., as well as the rehearsal of human misery in the chorus 
 (1211, sq.), if this be not modelled on Theognis, 424, sq. 2 
 
 It also appears from the strongly democratic temper of the 
 later part of his history, in spite of his aristocratical antecedents 
 and parentage, that he came under the influence of Pericles 
 and his policy. Yet if we assume this, and even that he re- 
 visited Athens after the Propylaea was built (430 B.C.), we are 
 astonished at the small effect which Attic thought and Attic 
 style made upon his history. The compressed logical speaking 
 of Antiphon, the stately emphasis of Pericles, the subtlety of 
 Euripides, and the whole sophistical school, seem the offspring 
 of another age and another atmosphere. In this society we 
 may conceive him, intellectually at least, a sort of Oliver Gold- 
 smith, often ridiculed by his friends for simplicity, and no doubt 
 underrated, but, withal, far exceeding his clever critics in direct- 
 ness, in grace, and in pathos, and so gaining a place in the 
 literature of his country which his contemporaries never antici- 
 pated. But perhaps this is too fanciful, and I would rather 
 
 1 As K. O. Miiller observes, there is no evidence that he left Athens 
 in 443 ; it is even possible, according to the same authority, that he did not 
 leave till after the opening of the Peloponnesian war. But this would 
 throw the composition of his history far too late, if we suppose with Miiller 
 that it was not written till his retirement to Italy. 
 
 2 Cf. further, frag. 380, on the discovery of games to stave off the pangs 
 of hunger ; and frag. 967, on the melting snow causing the inundation of 
 the Nile. The passage above mentioned in the Antigone is considered 
 spurious by some critics, but is defended on very reasonable grounds by 
 Kirchhoff, Ent. des herodot. Gesch., pp. 8-9. Though, as he says, we 
 can conceive no later time at which such an interpolation would be 
 popular, it is more likely that Sophocles obtained the story privately from 
 Herodotus than that he copied it from a just published history. Cf. 
 Stein's Introd., p. xxv. 
 
 C 2 
 
20 HISTORY OF CREEK LITERATURE. ch. n. 
 
 infer from this curious want of influence that the main body of 
 his work was finished when he came there, and that he spent 
 his leisure in completing and perfecting it. There are, it is 
 true, a good many references to current events after 431 b.c., 11 
 and these notices, are woven into the tenor of the narrative ; 
 but, nevertheless, these later allusions which touch the opening 
 of the Peloponnesian war, and some events which may not 
 have occurred till 425 b.c, are easily severed from the main 
 narrative, and are probably additions made to a corrected 
 copy, in which he even refers to the incredulity with which 
 one of his statements had been received. He alludes 2 to a 
 separate work on Assyria, of which hardly any trace seems to 
 have survived, so that many have thought he only referred to 
 a longer episode which he intended to introduce in his book. 
 
 § 309. His life, which some critics have prolonged beyond 
 all probability into the next century, was ended either at Thurii, 
 where he was even said to have been buried in the market- 
 place, or at Athens. The restless and troubled state of Thurii, 
 together with the late allusions i:o Athens, make the latter alter- 
 native probable enough. A third account transfers his tomb to 
 Pella in Macedonia, which is incredible. The complete absence 
 of allusions to the Sicilian expedition, coupled with his habit 
 of 'writing up' his book to recent times in its allusions, is 
 strong evidence for his death before that event. It has been 
 debated whether the work was finished, and, as usual, critics 
 have held opposite views on the subject : some alleging that 
 the capture of Sestos is a natural and proper end ; others that 
 he must have intended to proceed to other events in connec- 
 tion with it. I can only state my opinion that though the 
 author meant to add some details, as is proved by an unful- 
 filled promise, 3 the main subject was completed with the 
 
 1 v. 77 ; vi. 91, 98 ; vii. 137, 233 ; ix. 73 and elsewhere. 
 
 2 \. 106 and 184. Prof. Rawlinson cites a passage in Aristotle's Natural 
 History, and some notices of Parthian manners in John of Malala, which 
 may possibly be taken from it ; but according to the best MSS., which 
 Kirchhoff supports by the expression ireiroiriKe, used by Aristotle, the pas- 
 sage comes from the poet Hesiod. 
 
 2 vLL 213. 
 
chap. II. KIRCHHOFF'S THEORY. 21 
 
 repulse of the Persians from Europe, and the work substan- 
 tially and properly concluded. 
 
 Similarly it has been debated whether he wrote his work 
 in middle or in advanced life \ and, as Mure has observed, 
 its tone and style, in the absence of outward evidence, are 
 certain to produce the impression of an aged man telling his 
 long experiences to a younger generation. This feeling is en- 
 hanced by the strong contrast to his Attic contemporaries 
 which has already been mentioned. Most of the debates about 
 his life are of this vague and uncertain character, and are after 
 all but waste of time. I will only observe that his most elabo- 
 rate biographer, Dahlmann, seems to me more unfortunate and 
 illogical than the rest in his conjectures, none of which I have 
 here adopted. 
 
 § 310. But of late years A. Kirchhoff has taken up the 
 question with his usual acuteness, and has discussed in a special 
 pamphlet l the evidences in the work itself, which are, as he 
 r'ghtly says, our only real evidence. He thinks the earlier 
 part of the work shows traces of familiarity with Athens, from 
 the comparison of the circuit of Ecbatana with that of Athens, 2 
 from the comparing of a distance with that from the agora at 
 Athens to Olympia, 3 from his knowledge of ^Eschylus' poetry, 
 and from his reducing Persian measures to Attic. 4 Hence he 
 infers that the historian arrived at Athens from his travels 
 about 446 B.C., and finished up to hi. 119 (the story of Inta- 
 phernes' wife) at Athens early in 442 B.C., so that Sophocles 
 came to know it. He thinks that the criticism of his dia- 
 logue among the Persian conspirators, 5 to which he afterwards 
 pointedly refers, 6 may have been one of the causes for his 
 suspending his work and going, in the interests of Pericles, 
 whom he admired greatly, to Thurii. From there he visited 
 Sicily and Magna Graecia, and thus resumes his history with 
 special knowledge of Crotoniate legends. From v. 77, in 
 which the Propyleea at Athens, which were not finished till 
 
 1 Die Entstehungszeit des herodotischen Geschichtswerkes, 2nd ed., 
 Berlin, 1878, ably criticised by Mr. E. Abbott ( Iransact. Oxf. Philol. Soc. 
 for 1880, p. 31). 
 
 2 i. 98. 3 ii. 7. 4 Op. cit., p. 12. 
 
 5 iii. 80. s vi. 43. 
 
22 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. 11. 
 
 431 B.C. are mentioned, and from other hints in the later 
 books, the historian seems to have returned to Athens about 
 that time, and proceeded with his work up to 428 B.C., which 
 contains the latest references to contemporary events. Kirch- 
 hoff holds that the work was then interrupted by the death of 
 Herodotus, as it should have included the victory at the 
 Eurymedon. 1 
 
 But the whole of this acute argument is based on the 
 hypothesis that our text stands exactly as it was originally 
 composed, and that allusions were not afterwards inserted. 
 The argument from silence used to limit the last year of 
 Herodotus' writing to 428 B.C. is also very precarious. It is 
 also certain that a successful recitation, followed by public 
 rewards at Athens, which Kirchhoff accepts, cannot possibly 
 have been a reading of the first three books, but rather of the 
 last three, in which Athens is really glorified. This conside- 
 ration upsets either the tradition or KirchhofPs theory. 
 
 There are two busts of Herodotus in the Naples Museum, 
 neither of which is of good workmanship, and which are, 
 moreover, not duplicates or referable to the same original 
 One is a double Herme, with Thucydides at its back ; the 
 other is a smaller and plainer bust, but with a peculiar ugly 
 and friendly face, not unlike the bust of Socrates, and with 
 much of the gentle and gossiping expression which we might 
 expect in the historian. I should be disposed to consider 
 this as our best authority, but for the recent confirmation of 
 the Thucydides on the double Herme (cf. below, § 363). 
 
 § 31 t. Turning from the historian to his work, it must be at 
 once premised that no abstract of each book will here be at- 
 tempted, because such an account gives a false idea of the work, 
 which, while following a general plan, abounds in so many digres- 
 sions, small and great, in so many stray remarks of interest in 
 literature and archaeology, in so many anecdotes of national or 
 individual peculiarities, that any reader can take it up any- 
 where, and find it both instructive and amusing. Even a care- 
 ful and lengthy digest of the general argument, such as is 
 given by Mure, 9 conveys no idea of the general effect, which 
 
 1 Op. cil, ; cf. his summary, p. 26. 2 iv. 276-94. 
 
ch. ii. PLAN OF THE WORK. 23 
 
 can be far better appreciated by a perusal of any twenty 
 chapters. 
 
 The plan is distinctly stated at the opening. It is to 
 narrate the great conflict of Greeks and barbarians ; so that 
 the glorious deeds of both may not perish, and that their true 
 causes may be known. Herodotus thus chooses no petty quar- 
 rel between neighbouring Greek cities, no dispute of transitory 
 moment, but the great shock of East and West, of liberty 
 and despotism, which has lasted in many Protean phases up 
 to the present day. The first result of this large conception, 
 which rises above the narrow nationalism of his successors, is 
 that his history gives us more information about the state of 
 ancient nations and their culture than all the other Greek his- 
 torians put together. 
 
 § 312. His preface is on the mythical conflicts between the 
 Greeks and the Asiatics ; but after a very brief sketch in five 
 chapters he boldly lays aside the mythical point of view, with- 
 out caring to decide upon the question of aggression there dis- 
 puted, and states his intention of starting from the first Eastern 
 aggressor upon the Greeks for whom he can vouch from his own 
 knowledge, not forgetting to tell of cities, both great and small, 
 as he proceeds, seeing that the fortunes of men change, and 
 their glory waxes and wanes with the lapse of time. He enters 
 at once upon Croesus of Lydia, and proceeds to give an account 
 of the kingdom since its foundation by Gyges to its destruc- 
 tion by Cyrus, turning aside constantly to explain its gradual 
 encroachment upon and conquest of the Ionian cities. The 
 antiquities of Ionia, and its connection with Attica and Achaia, 
 are probably drawn from his uncle Panyasis' poem, and are 
 highly interesting as regards the federal constitution, the dia- 
 lects, and the culture of the early Ionians. l But there are also 
 interwoven digressions of dramatic interest— the legends of the 
 visit of Solon to Croesus, and the affecting story of Atys ; others 
 of historical importance, such as the reign of Peisistratus, the 
 rise of Sparta through Lycurgus, and her early struggles with 
 
 1 Ice. 142-51. Niebuhr thought the grand catalogue of the Persian 
 forces was borrowed from Choerilus (cf. § 109). But this poet was younger 
 than Herodotus, though contemporary. 
 
24 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. n. 
 
 Tegea. The conquest of Lydia by Cyrus leads him to go back 
 to the rise of the Median empire, and its merging into that of 
 the Persians by the revolt of Cyrus. The customs and religion 
 of the Persians are described, and then their conquest of Ionia, 
 Caria, and Lycia, with constant notes on these latter nations 
 and their customs. The next war of Cyrus leads the historian 
 to Babylon, which is carefully described and its later history 
 sketched. 1 The first book ends with the death of Cynis in. 
 battle with the northern barbarians. 
 
 § 313. Herodotus passes through these and a vast number 
 of other subjects with the most perfect ease and mastery. The 
 reader is never disappointed at the delay of a result, or annoyed 
 at the irrelevance of a digression. When Croesus comes in 
 contact with Cyrus, he reverts to the older history of Cyrus" 
 empire ; when Cyrus attacks Babylon, he reverts in the same way 
 to the older history of Babylon and of Assyria ; but finding this 
 episode too cumbrous, he relegates it to a separate l Assyrian 
 history.' The second, third, and fourth books are a detailed 
 account of the progress of the Persian empire under Cambyses, 
 the false Smerdis, and Darius ; but the campaigns against 
 Egypt, Arabia, Scythia, and Libya afford a proper place for 
 a full and interesting discussion of the geographical features, 
 natural peculiarities, or society of these countries. These 
 digressions, which occupy the whole of the second book (on 
 Egypt) and almost all the fourth (Scythia and Libya), are so 
 complete in themselves as to suggest the theory that Hero- 
 dotus, when he first travelled, intended to put his careful and 
 systematic observations together into a geographical work — 
 on the model of Scylax, but something far greater, which would 
 describe the less known countries of the East and South, not 
 only in their natural, but in their political history. This plan 
 must have been abandoned before he went to Thurii, or he 
 would certainly have composed a similar digression on the less 
 known parts of Italy, and probably on the Carthaginians. But 
 as the work proceeds, and the interest in the coming catastrophe 
 grows warmer, the episodes and halting places are sparingly 
 admitted, and the great struggle advances with epic grandeur 
 
 1 cc. 178-88. 
 
CH. II. VALUABLE DIGRESSIONS. 25 
 
 to its close. The narrative finds its natural conclusion in the 
 capture of Sestos, the last point which the Persians held in 
 Europe, and their repulse into that Asia which they always 
 claimed as their own. There is, therefore, no reason to doubt 
 whether the author lived to finish his task. The very last chapter 
 is, indeed, a sort of appendix, like several in the work, which 
 a modern author would have thrown into the form of a foot- 
 note ; but as this device was then unknown, all these collateral 
 points find their place in the text. 1 Yet even in these parts 
 of the work we should deeply regret the omission of the short 
 notes on the character and privileges of Spartan royalty, on 
 the Athenian acquisition of Lemnos, and on older Attic his- 
 tory; nay, even the scandalous anecdotes about the courts of 
 Periander and of Xerxes are agreeable diversions, though by 
 most critics censured as beneath the dignity of history. On 
 the affairs of Samos 2 he is so explicit in several places that he 
 was supposed to have retired there when in exile from Hali- 
 carnassus, and learnt the Ionic dialect; but the affairs of 
 Samos, especially under Polycrates, the greatest of Greek 
 despots, if we except those of Sicily, are sufficiently impor- 
 tant in themselves to warrant the share assigned to them ? 
 and the inscriptions found on the site of Halicarnassus by 
 Mr, Newton are in the Ionic dialect. 
 
 A fuller inventory of this great and complex work is acces- 
 sible in many good editions and translations mentioned 
 below ; nor is it the duty of a historian of literature to dis- 
 cuss the many historical problems raised by a comparison 
 of the statements of Herodotus with those of other ancient 
 authorities, or with the evidence of inscriptions newly dis- 
 covered in our own times. We must here confine ourselves to 
 the literary character of his book, and his qualities as an 
 author and an artist. 
 
 1 It is, moreover, noticeable that very few of the historical works left 
 us by the Greeks have formal conclusions — a fashion which seems some- 
 how contrary to literary taste in those days, and of which the absence is 
 perhaps connected with the practice which many authors followed of tack- 
 ing on their narratives to that of a predecessor by taking up the thread 
 where he had dropped it. 2 iii. 120, sq., &c. 
 
26 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. II. 
 
 § 314. The extant fragments of Xan thus show that Hero- 
 dotus used his History of Lydia less than might have been ex- 
 pected, there being no extant coincidence between them, al- 
 though Ephorus states that Xanthus afforded a starting point 
 to our author. The case is only different in degree with Charon 
 of Lampsacus, whose fragments (on the annals (upoi) of Lamp- 
 sacus) show a good many points of identity in subject with 
 Herodotus, though there are equally points of difference ; and it 
 has been argued from Herodotus' missing the point of a joke on 
 the old name of Lampsacus (Pityusa), made by Croesus, 1 that 
 he cannot have read Charon's annals of the town, in which this 
 older name is prominently mentioned. Charon's annals of the 
 Spartan kings are not definitely referred to in vi. 55. The 
 works of Hippy s of Rhegium, and of Antiochus of Syracuse, were 
 chiefly devoted to the affairs of Magna Graecia, which Herodo- 
 tus does not touch at length ; and this is, I think, a strong 
 argument against the composition of his work at Thurii in his 
 later years. Had the whole scheme and plan of it not been 
 matured before he settled in Italy, it is more than probable 
 that he would have gathered materials for more interesting 
 episodes, and told us something of the early fortunes of the 
 Hellenes in the West. The memoirs of Ion and Stesimbrotus, 
 and the history of Hellanicus, must have been later than the 
 date to which his history is here assigned, and do not therefore 
 require notice in this place. As to geographical literature, 
 Herodotus cites 2 the Arimaspea, a geographical poem of 
 Aristeas, as an authority on Scythia ; and Scylax of Caryanda's 
 Periplus on Arabia and India. He also criticises the maps 
 then current, and I have already noted (p. n) his references to 
 the work of Hecataeus. It is, indeed, notable, at the dawn of 
 an epoch of research, how often men despise their immediate 
 and ablest predecessors, while they treat with respect the 
 earlier and weaker attempts of the same kind. Herodotus 
 appears to feel in Hecataeus a rival, while the rest were hardly 
 in the same plane of literature. 
 
 § 315. The books now enumerated, together with the poetical 
 library above described, were all the literary sources accessible 
 
 1 vi. 37. (Muller, FHG. i. p. 33, frag. 6.) a iv. 14. 
 
CH. II. STATE REGISTERS AND INSCRIPTIONS. 27 
 
 to Herodotus, if we except the personal intercourse with all the 
 high culture and knowledge to be found at Periclean Athens. 
 Commanding these materials, Herodotus had set to work from 
 an early period of his life to enlarge and complete them by a long 
 series of travels and careful observations ; endeavouring, where 
 it was possible, to see both geographical curiosities and monu- 
 mental records with his own eyes, or else giving us the evidence 
 of those who had seen them, often with careful scrutiny and 
 cautious reserve, when they were beyond his personal ken. 
 Thus, in the Greek world he consulted those ancient registers 
 or lists of kings, priests, or victors, which were preserved in 
 various temples. Charon had already published the list of 
 Spartan kings ; Hellanicus added the priestesses of Juno at 
 Argos and the Carnean victors, probably after Herodotus' 
 researches were concluded. These lists were of the last 
 importance to early chronology, and were collateral with the 
 system afterwards adopted in Greece — that of reckoning by 
 Olympiads. There were also a vast number of inscribed pillars 
 in important cities, and of rich offerings dedicated to ancient 
 shrines, on which the donors had told their circumstances, and 
 so left records of their life and acts. The treasury at Delphi, 
 for instance, was full of such offerings, one of which, the tripod 
 dedicated by Pausanias to the Greeks after the battle of 
 Platasa, was lately found in the hippodrome at Constantinople. 1 
 By means of these documents, as well as by sifting the tradi- 
 tions of the nearer times orally, the historian attained consider- 
 able accuracy and clearness about the earlier portions of Greek 
 history, properly so called. The trivial points at which Thu- 
 cydides sneers show how free of serious errors Herodotus must 
 have been in this part of his work, and we may safely say that, 
 with all his love of the marvellous and his taste for gossip, he 
 has told us more, and told it better, than his critical followers 
 contrive to tell us with far greater compression and the omission 
 of endless points of interest. 
 
 § 316. When he goes beyond the Hellenic world, his want 
 of linguistic knowledge causes a great difference in his power of 
 attaining truth. He takes care, indeed, to express doubt con- 
 1 Cf. Rawlinson's Herod., vol. iv., Note A (p. 483). 
 
28 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. II. 
 
 cerning the many wonders told him of the ends of the earth 
 — northern Scythia and southern Arabia — which he repeatedly 
 tells us he could not learn from an eye-witness ; but con- 
 cerning these nothing trustworthy was perhaps then attainable. 
 But in the case of ,the old cultures of Asia, and in Egypt, 
 where ample records positively teemed on rocks, and pillars, 
 and public buildings, his ignorance of the languages threw him 
 into the hands of cicerones — inferior priests, mercenary soldiers, 
 and other incompetent and untrustworthy persons — who often 
 did not know the truth, and, perhaps, sought deliberately to 
 mislead the curious Greek enquirer. Hence, while his pictures 
 of the life and manners of these nations are of inestimable 
 value, his attempts to sketch their past history have often been 
 corrected, or even reversed, by the recent deciphering of in- 
 scriptions which he could have seen and transcribed. Even 
 here he is generally right ; it is hard for an honest enquirer not 
 to discover a great deal of truth ; but he is not reliable, and 
 it is one of the great boasts of modern research to have been 
 able to extract the truth where the venerable Greek enquirer 
 was fain to be content with a cross-examination of doubtful 
 witnesses and a comparison . of their negligences and igno- 
 rances. 
 
 It has often been urged in addition, that even under his 
 untoward circumstances, Herodotus might have done better 
 had he been endowed with the critical faculty of Thucydides, 
 and had he not started with a theory of Divine interference, 
 and an innate love of the marvellous and the quaint. This 
 so-called childishness of Herodotus has been unduly mag- 
 nified by the fact that we do not possess his forerunners, but 
 only his most sceptical successor, wherewith to compare him. 
 This is evidently unjust ; for while he appears credulous from 
 this point of view, he was probably far in advance of the 
 Greeks of his day, if we except the Periclean circle. He is 
 constantly sceptical, and even disposed to censure others as 
 too easy of belief ; but as is natural with all nascent scepticism, 
 this feeling breaks out only here and there, and is illogically co- 
 ordinated with credulity on kindred points, which the author 
 has not thought of disputing. A most interesting catalogue 
 
CH. II. MR. BLAKESLETS CRITICISM. 29 
 
 might be made of such survivals of credulity in the works of 
 the sceptics of all ages. 
 
 § 317. But no German editor has approached the question 
 of Herodotus' credibility with such boldness and originality 
 as Mr. Blakesley in the very remarkable introduction to his 
 edition. Of course others have pointed, as he does, to the 
 influence of Sophistic on the historian, to his wandering life, 
 like Protagoras or Gorgias, to his alleged reading out of his 
 performances, to the conventional turns of his moral advices, 
 and the repetition of the same ethical commonplaces in the 
 mouths of divers and dissimilar characters. He is the first to 
 lay proper stress on the close identification of Herodotus, 
 by Thucydides and other ancient critics, with the logopoioi 
 who composed not to instruct but to please} He believes that 
 this class of men, as soon as they attained any facility in prose 
 composition, selected such events, and attributed such motives, 
 as they thought would be striking and popular without any 
 misgivings as to the accuracy of their statements ; for the 
 historic sense is a late and gradual acquisition which Thucy- 
 dides acquired only by his extraordinary genius and circum- 
 stances in those early days. If this be so, the credibility of 
 Herodotus as to particular facts will stand on a very different 
 basis from that of modern historians. It has been hitherto 
 assumed that wherever he speaks as an eye-witness his faith- 
 fulness is beyond dispute ; but if he be a mere story-teller, 
 which is our nearest English to a Xoyoxowc, nothing is so 
 universal an attribute of such people in all times as to narrate 
 secondhand facts as if they were personal experiences. It is 
 done without the least bad faith, for the teller may firmly 
 believe his authority, and merely wish to complete his picture 
 without critical statements as to his authorities. Mr. Blakesley 
 is clearly of opinion that Herodotus did this, and that he 
 copied personal narratives from other people and set them 
 down as his own. He gives as an example the alleged 
 copying 2 from Hecatasus of facts about the crocodile, the 
 
 1 He compares the speeches of Solon and Croesus (i. 23 and iii. 36) 
 with the notions ascribed to I ippias in Plato's Hipp. Ma/., p. 236. 
 
 2 ii. 68-73. 
 
3 o HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch: II. 
 
 hippopotamus, and an account of the phoenix. This Herodotus 
 does without acknowledgment, and with such deviations from the 
 truth as seem to preclude a personal investigation. If these 
 considerations be well founded, a vast deal of learned talk 
 about the travels of Herodotus and his valuable evidence as 
 an eye-witness will be blown to the winds. But of course it 
 would not place him in the rank of a modern novelist, or even 
 in that of De Foe, which Mr. Blakesley suggests. The real 
 parallel he gives is that of Marco Polo, whose work at first cir- 
 culated in MS., like that of Herodotus, and underwent curious 
 alterations, not only at the hands of interpolators, but at the 
 author's own, before it was printed. There is the same 
 mixture in both of credulity and scepticism, of veracity in 
 spirit, and yet ready acceptance of the doubtful or the false, 
 of effort to be historical in an age when strict history was hardly 
 yet denned. 
 
 § 318. This speculation belongs to the estimate of his genius, 
 which it may properly introduce, and is naturally suggested 
 by the contrast of the Father of History with his greatest and 
 most immediate successor, Thucydides ; nor is it reasonable to 
 waive the question by merely insisting upon the contrast of 
 their natural characters, and the different social and political 
 atmosphere in which they were educated. Had Herodotus 
 been a cold and sceptical critic, a despiser of all the domestic 
 and personal features in great men or in dominant nationalities, 
 a Periclean Athenian whose exclusiveness raised the pettiest 
 Greek quarrel above the largest, revolutions among barbarians, 
 he might, no doubt, have sifted such materials with greater 
 acumen, but he certainly would have had neither the desire to 
 possess them nor the temper and the patience to collect them. 
 The genial simplicity and wide sympathy of Herodotus not 
 only supplied him with the stimulus to seek, but his informants 
 with the inclination to impart, what they knew, and thus vastly 
 counterbalanced any inferiority of judgment by the larger field 
 of knowledge which he embraced. 1 His just estimate of the 
 
 1 The only authority I can quote for this view, which I have implied 
 long ago in my Prolegomena to Ancient History, is that of the Comte de 
 
CH. ii. STYLE OF HERODOTUS. 31 
 
 older civilisations of the Lydians, the Medes, the Persians, and 
 the Egyptians, has made his great work a picture, not of Greece, 
 but of the old world at one of its most interesting periods. To 
 the student of ancient history in any large and comprehensive 
 sense, it must be pronounced a work of infinitely greater 
 value and more permanent interest than the struggle for 
 ascendancy between the two leading states of Greece, which 
 had no general effects upon the changes of the world. While, 
 therefore, the conceptions of history in Herodotus and Thucy- 
 dides were mainly the consequence of the temper of the men 
 and of their surroundings, it must be declared that, for an 
 historian, the atmosphere in which the latter lived, while giving 
 him critical acumen and freeing him from theological preju- 
 dices, narrowed his view and distorted his estimate of the 
 relative importance of events. We may indeed feel very grate- 
 ful that Herodotus was not attracted in early life by this bril- 
 liant exclusiveness, and that he remained an Ionic instead of 
 becoming an Attic historian. 
 
 § 319. There is a like contrast between the style of the earlier 
 and the later historians. Herodotus was thought the master of 
 the Xife elpofjiivri, or style of simple co-ordination of clauses, 
 while Attic rhetoric brought them into complex connections, 
 so as form ingeniously constructed periods. 1 There are, indeed, 
 speeches introduced by Herodotus, such as the discussion on 
 the best form of government by the fellow-conspirators of 
 Darius, 2 where he shows ample acquaintance with the rhetoric 
 of the day, and where the periods are formed with some skill 
 
 Gobineau, in his exquisitely written but fantastic Histoire des Perses (i. 247, 
 sq.). He goes further than I do, and makes a curious apologia for the 
 Oriental chroniclers in connection with the receptive and uncritical temper 
 of Herodotus. 
 
 1 Dionysius Hal. gives, as an example, Herodotus' words : Kpoiffos r)v 
 Avdbs fihp yevos, iraus 5e 'AXvdmai, Ti/pavuos 8s iOvewv twv ivrbs "AXvos 
 TOTap-ov ; which, if periodically constructed, would be : K. l\v vlbs /xev 'A., 
 yevos 5e A., rvpavvos Sh t£>v iyrbs" AAvos irorajxov £Qva>v. He even adds 
 a forced and unnatural construction. This loose and easy style was some- 
 times affected by Attic rhetors, as, for example, by the tyrant Critias, and 
 may be seen in fragment 25 of his Lacedcemonian Polity. 
 
 2 iii. 80, sq. 
 
32 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. n. 
 
 and intricacy. This intermediate sort of writing was the historic 
 period as opposed to the stricter rhetorical or logical period. 
 These speeches, which are a common feature of all the classical 
 historians, are by no means so signal a blemish to his work as 
 are the rhetorical harangues in later literature ; for his speeches 
 are well contrasted with those in Thucydides as dramatic, and 
 coming in so naturally as to produce a lifelike picture of scenes 
 and characters. 1 I add a passage from one which strikes us as 
 very peculiar, from its Thucydidean tone, and which proves 
 
 1 The most elaborate instance just referred to is most severely cen- 
 sured by all the critics, who think it absurd that the great Persian nobles 
 should discuss aristocracy and democracy after the manner of Greek so- 
 phists. Nevertheless Herodotus insists, in spite of the disbelief of his 
 contemporaries, that this discussion really took place. It seems to me a 
 veiy bold thing to deny flatly the truth of an assertion which Herodotus — 
 a man of undoubted honesty and intelligence — makes in the face of hostile 
 criticism ; and, even had I no stronger reason, I should hesitate to disbelieve 
 him. But Gobineau has clearly shown the elements of truth in the story, 
 and how the historian puts in a Greek form the really vital problem of the 
 Persian empire. It is usual to regard it as an Oriental despotism, which was 
 occasionally the case, when the central power came into strong hands ; but 
 this is really a false view. The Iranian nobles were a feudal aristocracy, 
 divided into classes, within which each member was really free, though 
 bound by immemorial customs to render certain dues of respect and service 
 to the chief. The independence of all these clans and families really con- 
 stituted a democracy, not of course a city democracy, with an agora and 
 public debates, but a country democracy, with liberty and equality of rights, 
 and this was somewhat the form of constitution into which Persia relapsed 
 under the Arsacidae, when the tyranay of the central king of kings was 
 found too oppressive. Cambyses, succeeding to the wealth of Cyrus, and 
 to the possession of his conquests, which of course did not belong to the 
 hereditary nobles of Iran, began to make them feel this tyranny. Hence 
 the discussion of the conspirators : were they to continue this imposing 
 but dangerous monarchy ? Could the seven lords in council control the 
 other feudatories, and maintain the empire ? or should they revert to the 
 natural condition of old Iranian society, and let all the clans live under 
 their immemorial customs ? It is also to be noted that they do not resolve 
 on a monarchy, without limiting it beforehand by reserving to themselves 
 certain hereditary privileges, thus showing their appreciation of the danger. 
 I must again refer for an excellent statement of this matter to Gobineau, 
 Histoire des Perses, i. 583, sq. 
 
CH. II. HIS CHARACTER-DRAWING. 33 
 
 how fully Herodotus sympathised with the enterprise of im- 
 perial Athens, as expounded in Thucydides' speeches. 1 
 
 But the general character of his writing, with its gossiping 
 resumptions (e7ravaA?7tktc)and its natural anacolutha (which old 
 grammarians noted and admired), is that of a peculiarly easy and 
 artless flow, more like a charming conversation than a set compo- 
 sition ; and this is characterised by a constant passage from nar- 
 rative to dialogue, which comes in so naturally as to be often 
 unperceived. There is reason to believe (above, p. 14) that 
 Hecatasus followed the same practice, which may have been a 
 typical feature of Ionic historical prose. But it is not likely 
 that many writers could have attained this art to such perfection 
 as Herodotus. He employs it constantly to paint characters, 
 which he never describes in a formal paragraph, but brings, as 
 it were, living and speaking upon his stage. It has, never- 
 theless, been justly remarked that he is more successful in 
 portraying types than individuals, national characteristics than 
 personal features. His Persians, and Lydians, and Spartans 
 are very distinct ; but his Croesus becomes a Solon in captivity, 
 and his Eastern grandees all use the same formulae of contempt 
 for unknown Hellenes of the West. This monotony was doubt- 
 less fostered by the gentle fatalism which prevails throughout 
 early Greek literature, and which finds its perfect expression in 
 the dialogues of Artabanus and Xerxes. 2 But this same feeling 
 
 1 vii. 50 : 'A/ieijSeTat aep^r)s roicrtde " ' ' Aprdfiave, oIk6tws fiev av ye 
 rovriav eKaara Siaipeeai' arap pA\Te irdvTa (pofieo, firjre irav 6/xoiws imAeyeo. 
 Et yap S7J fiovAoio eirl rep alel iireacpepo/xevq} Trp^yfiari rb irav 6p.oiw% 
 eiriAeyeaQai, iroirjaeias av ovoap.a ovoev ' Kpeaaov Se iravra Oapaeovra rjfxiav 
 rwv oeiv&v irdffx^v fiaAAov, fj irav XPW 01 wpooeifialvovTa /xijSa/ia firjdhp iraQelv 
 el Se epifav irpbs irav t6 Aeyop,evov p.r] rb fSefHaiov airode£eis, a<paAAeadat 
 6(peiAeis ev avToilai 6/xoiws Kal 6 virevavTia tovtokti A.e|as. tovto p.ev vvv eV Yai)S 
 £;£€i ■ eiSeVai Se dvOpcairov £6vra kcos XPV T b fiefiaiov ; ooKeca fxev ovdap-ws. 
 To7ai Toivvv /3ovAop.evoiai iroieeiv 00s rb eirivav (piAeei. yiveaOai to, Kepoea, 
 Tolai Se iTciAeyop.evoi.cri re iravra Kal oKvevai ov p.dAa e'fleAe:. 'Opas ra 
 Uepcrewv irp^yfiara es rb ovvdfxios irpoKex&priKe ■ el toivvv eKelvoi ol npb ifiev 
 yev6pevoi fiaaiAees yvcvjxrjai expeovTo o/xoiyai Kal av, $ fity xp^o/nevoi yvdo/uLTjcri 
 roiavTrjcri tiAAovs av/ufiovAovs elxov tolovtovs, ovk &v Kore eloes avra es 
 tovto irpoeAdSvra • vvv Se kivovvovs avappiivreovres es tovto a<pea irpoT\yd- 
 yovTO. ueyaAa yap irpiiyp-ara fieydAoiai Kivoivoicn edeAei KaTaipeeaQai. 
 
 2 vii. 10, sq. ; and thus in 46, sq. : Mad&v de p.iv 'ApTaflavos 6 irdrpws, 
 VOL. II. D 
 
34 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. II. 
 
 of the transitory nothingness of life — Euripides' to fxr/cev elg 
 ovdev pirrei — may have aided his candid nature in the very 
 just and impartial view he takes of the virtues and vices of 
 men. He has often been accused, but never convicted, of 
 bias or unfairness. He -is most explicit in telling the good 
 points of those who suffer his severest censure. Perhaps the 
 most disagreeable personage in his history is the deity ' who 
 permits no one to feel proud but himself 1 — a sort of singular, 
 but impersonal Providence, in whom a leading attribute is 
 jealousy, a curious and early reflection of the most ingrained 
 national vice of the Greeks from Homer to the present day, 
 The enigmatical warnings of this Providence, through dreams 
 and oracles, occupy, no doubt, too prominent a place among 
 his causes for great events, but, nevertheless, convey to us the 
 feeling of the Greek public, even of later days, far more faith- 
 fully than the uncompromising positivism of Thucydides. If, 
 also, he assigns trivial origins to great consequences, such as the 
 selfishness of Demokedes involving his whole race in misfor- 
 tune, we must remember in palliation that the caprices of 
 
 os rb -KpwTOV yv(a[xn]v a7reSe'|aTO eKevOepas ov crvfifiovXevap "Septy o~Tparevecrdai 
 eirl tV 'EAAaSa, ovtos wv)\p (ppacrdels "Zep^ea Sanpiffavra elpero raSe ■ ^fl 
 f$affi\ev, ws TToXXbu a\\i\\(i)V Kexoopic/Meva epyaaao vvv re /cat oAiycp irp6repov ; 
 /xaKapicas yap creavrbu SaKpveis. 'O Be e?7re • 'E<rrjK0e yap fie Koyiffdfxevov 
 KaroiKreTpai ws fipax^s etr] 6 iras avQpdnnvos @ios, el rovrecav ye eSvrav rocrov- 
 T(ov oi/Bels is etcaTOffrbv %tos Trepieffrai. 'O Be apei/Hero Xeyav "Erepa 
 tovtov irapa tV (6r]v ireTr6vQa/JLev olnrpSrepa. ev yap otirco Ppax*i fiicp ovBeh 
 ovtw &vOpu)iros ikv evSai/uLcav irecpvue, ovre rovrewv, ovre twv dKkwv, t$ ov 
 irapa<TTi]aerai iroKkaKis, koX ovkI a7ra|,' reQvdvai fiovXetrOat fiaWov $ tyeiv. 
 aire yap ffv/jupopal irpoo~ir'nnovo~ai, na\ at vovo~oi ffvvrapdo'o'ovo'ai nal ftpaxvv 
 e6vra jxaKpbv Boneeiv elvai iroievffi rbv fiiov. ovrw 6 /mev ddvaros fioxOrjpvs 
 iovo~t)S rrjs £6r]s Karacpvyr) aiperwrdTf] t<jS avOpdoircp yeyove' 6 Be debs y\vKvv 
 yeixras rbv al£>va <p6ovepbs ev avrcp evpiffKerai icav. The author of the 
 Epitaphios, ascribed to Lysias, has used this passage with great effect, and 
 without any servile imitation, in his admirable peroration, §§ 77-78. 
 
 1 vii. 10. It is, however, but just to add that he thinks the gods (6eoi) 
 have their name from setting in order (kSc/jlcp Oevres), and that he recog- 
 nises in many places a wise and benevolent Providence. Thus, iii. 108, 
 Kai kcos rod Qeiov 7) irpovolrf, axrirep Kal oIk6s eari, iovo'a ffocpi], makes harm- 
 less and edible animals prolific, whereas the reverse is the case with birds 
 of prey. 
 
CH. II. HIS DIALECT. 35 
 
 despots, however contemptible in themselves, may be as vast 
 in results as the rational policy of deliberative assemblies. 
 
 The same tendency makes him attentive to female charac- 
 ter, and to the indirect influence of women on public affairs. 
 His sketches of Queen Artemisia and the Spartan Gorgo, of 
 Amestris and of Labda, are very spirited, and full of feeling ; 
 but here again, like a tragic poet, he rather paints types than 
 peculiar individuals. If he is anywhere peculiarly felicitous in 
 individual features, it is in such scenes as Cleisthenes' feast for 
 the suitors of Agariste, or the attempt on this very tyrant in his 
 infancy. Here it is that a certain humour, which almost passes 
 for mere simplicity, makes him paint small and comic detail, 
 and so fill in with definite and peculiar colour the outline of 
 the fixed types which generally occupy his pages. We natu- 
 rally associate this humour with its opposite, the pathetic, as 
 both are the offspring of a quick and delicate sympathy. Nor 
 are we disappointed in Herodotus, whose profound pathos is 
 not surpassed by any tragic poet. The legend of Atys, the 
 story of the Periander's family troubles, and the dramatic fore- 
 bodings of the great catastrophe in the dreams and confessions 
 of Xerxes and Artabanus, are prominent among many instances 
 of this rare and splendid quality in Herodotus' narrative. 
 
 § 320. Turning to the dialect of Herodotus, we find ourselves 
 in presence of a problem which has been raised by the minute 
 criticism of the present day, and which seems not likely to 
 receive a satisfactory solution. We can perceive from the 
 author's careful observations l on the four subdivisions of the 
 Ionic dialect of Asia Minor that he had studied the question, 
 and that his language was not unconsciously determined by 
 the circumstances of his education, but was the carefully chosen 
 and purified instrument in which he determined, for aesthetic 
 reasons, to clothe his thoughts. This agrees with the repeated 
 observations of Greek grammarians, that his dialect was mixed 
 or various, as opposed to the pure Ionic of Hecataeus and Hip- 
 pocrates ; it is therefore idle to assert that his history represents 
 the Samian or any other local speech. But beyond this the ob- 
 servations of such critics as Hermogenes and Dionysms are un- 
 
 1 i. T4.2. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. n. 
 
 fortunately confined to general statements that he is the chief 
 master of Ionic — as Thucydides of old Attic — prose. They do 
 not determine in any detail what combinations or variations 
 were admitted by Herodotus. This silence was probably 
 owing to the absence of any special studies among the Alexan- 
 drian critics, 1 who left so much material on Homer and on the 
 Attic writers. As a natural consequence the readings of our 
 texts seem regulated by no fixed principles, and not only are 
 various dialects admitted, but the same word appears, even in 
 oui best MSS., in divers forms. While there are thus difficulties 
 about the original form of individual words which will probably 
 never be solved, we can indicate two certain sources of variety. 
 The first is the rise of epic language, with which Herodotus 
 was always acknowledged to have been thoroughly imbued. 
 This strong tincture, not only of epic phrases, but of thoughts, 
 seems to result from his earl}'- intercourse with Panyasis, a learned 
 student of epic diction, who may possibly have educated his 
 nephew, and endeavoured to induce him to follow in his own 
 footsteps. If this be so, seeing that Panyasis must have 
 studied epic diction critically, we should have ample reasons 
 for this complexion in the dialect of Herodotus. It is, how- 
 ever, carefully to be remembered that all the later researches 
 into Homeric language tend to the theory of an old Attic 
 recension, and to the consequently old Attic character of the 
 diction as we have it. There can be little doubt that this old 
 Attic and the Ionic dialects of Asia Minor were closely allied, 
 so that many apparently epic forms may be mere archaic words 
 in the language of Herodotus' parents. The theory that our 
 Homer was recast in the days of Herodotus, and so brought 
 into accord with his language, is part of Mr. Paley's doctrine 
 of the late composition of our Iliad and Odyssey which has 
 been above rejected (§ 48). 
 
 The second source of variety in Herodotus seems to be the 
 adoption of Attic forms, and of some Doric forms, almost 
 all of which are, however, in use with Attic writers. It is even 
 
 1 Abicht, i. p. 9, says the Alexandrians were much occupied with him, 
 and that to them we owe the division into nine books. If so, why have 
 we no body of scholia extant ? 
 
ch. ii. HISTORY OF HIS TEXT. 37 
 
 doubtful whether the dialect of Halicarnassus was Doric in 
 Herodotus' day ; its exclusion from the Hexapolis, which he 
 mentions, and the discovery of two early Ionic inscriptions 
 by Mr. Newton during his researches, make it unlikely that 
 it was. And as regards the Attic forms, we are uncertain 
 both how far old Attic and Ionic forms may have coincided, 
 and how far our present MSS. may have been tampered with 
 by Atticising transcribers. The difficult problem of determining 
 the dialect of the book has, nevertheless, been attempted by a 
 series of scholars, beginning with Struve in 1828, who worked 
 out the evidence of the MSS. on a few very frequent forms, 
 such as the declension of BaaiXevg ; Dindorf followed in his 
 preface to the Didot edition (1844), and even gave an alpha- 
 betical catalogue of proper Ionic forms ; then comes Bredow 
 (1846), and the later German editors of the text. They start, 
 in my opinion justly, from the principle that Herodotus did not 
 vary in his writing of the same word, and that therefore the 
 balance of MS. evidence in favour of one form should make 
 us correct the less authenticated variants of the same word. 
 There are cases where the evidence is so evenly balanced that 
 no decision seems possible, and there are still editors, such as 
 Mr. Wood, who will not accept the principle, and think that 
 Herodotus carried his epic imitations so far as to use various 
 forms for euphony's sake. This question is therefore likely to 
 remain open, and it is a matter of great satisfaction that it inter- 
 feres hardly at all with the understanding of the text. The age 
 immediately succeeding Herodotus drifted away so rapidly from 
 his tone of thought and style that he soon lost his popularity. 
 Thucydides and Ktesias still think him worth criticism, but the 
 rest snub him as a mere story-teller, and in the days of Theo- 
 pompus (a century later) he was so forgotten that that rhetorical 
 historian published an abstract of his work in two books. 1 
 
 § 32 1. As already observed, there is no evidence that the text 
 of Herodotus occupied the Alexandrian critics like those of 
 Homer or Aristophanes. But the Roman rhetoricians, especially 
 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, fully appreciated his perfection in 
 style, though they, of course, set it down to a conscious theory, 
 
 1 But Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, speaks of him as a typical historian. 
 
38 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. it 
 
 and not to the natural conditions of early prose. It was rather 
 in the age of Hadrian, when the popular taste turned from 
 over-refinement and polish to naive simplicity, that the father 
 of History again revived in general estimation, and became the 
 object of much comment and admiration. Thus we may thank 
 the taste of a degraded and artificial age for having saved us 
 this splendid monument of early genius. Porphyry mentions 
 Miscellanies on the Emendation of Herodotus, by the grammarian 
 Philemon, who notices even in his day the many corruptions 
 of the existing texts. I suppose all Greek literature affords 
 nothing else so like a smart and adverse modern review as 
 the tract on the Spitefulness of He7'odotus, which has reached 
 us under Plutarch's name. The author takes all the history to 
 pieces, especially the Hellenic history, and endeavours to show 
 at every turn a spirit of malevolence and injustice, which is 
 so strong as to result in self-contradictions and inconsisten- 
 cies of various kinds. Some of the points made, especially 
 as regards the Corinthians, seem very good, and perhaps 
 the attack has not been sufficiently considered ; but the 
 smartness of the writing is singular for a Greek criticism. 2 
 At the same time the writer insists upon the extraordinary 
 charm exercised by Herodotus' style, and thus bears witness to 
 his popularity in that day. Accordingly, he was constantly 
 imitated in late Roman and Byzantine days. 2 But no body of 
 scholia seems to have reached us in any of the extant MSS, 
 Of these some thirty are known, the oldest and best of which is 
 the Codex Mediceus of the tenth century. There are also good 
 texts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries at Rome. But ever 
 since Gaisford's edition the peculiar codex S (Sancroftianus), 
 which he first made known, was considered of higher authority, 
 and was made the basis of all the recensions down to Stein's 
 earlier text ; while Abicht has in our day argued successfully 
 
 1 Here is a specimen (c. 33) : 0??j8«iovs Se koI firjSi^ovTas \4ya>p iv 
 QepfioTTvkais <rrixQyvai, Kal (TTixO^ras av6is iv UKaraiais firi5t£eiv irpoQvfiw% y 
 SoKel fioi, KaOdirep 'linroKAeiSris 6 ro?s aic4\e<ri x^y 01 ' /*® 1 ' ^ T *? s rpaitefys, 
 ilirelv av, i^opxovfievos tV aA^Qeiav, ov (ppovrls 'H/>o5<Jt<j>. He refers to 
 the story of the marriage of Agariste (vi. 129). 
 
 2 Cf. the curious references in Nicolai, LG. i. p. 271. 
 
CH. ii. EDITIONS AND TRANS LA TIONS. 39 
 
 against this course, and has again asserted the Mediceus as 
 the proper groundwork for a critical text. This is admitted in 
 Stein's larger critical edition, and the third edition of his com- 
 mentary. 
 
 Herodotus was first printed in the Latin version of Laur. 
 Valla at Venice, in 1474. The princeps of the Greek text is 
 that of Aldus (1502), but it is based on a Paris MS. not of the 
 highest authority. Gronovius (17 15) first collated the Lauren- 
 tian codex, but Wesseling (1763) commenced the really critical 
 labours on the text by a larger collation of many MSS. Early 
 In the present century there are two laborious and learned edi- 
 tions by Schweighauser and by Gaisford, followed by that of 
 Bahr (second ed 1856). Blakesley's (Bib. Class. 1854) does 
 not give any of the newer lights, but shows great acuteness in 
 the appendices on various historical questions. The best critical 
 books of the newer school are the annotated editions of Abicht 
 and Stein, with German notes. The former has also written 
 important monographs on the text ; l the latter has published 
 a large critical edition (Berlin, 1869), in which he has discussed 
 and classified the MSS., and given the fragments of lexicogra- 
 phy and the few scholia attached to our extant copies. He 
 promises (in a third volume) a full lexicon Herodoteum. Both 
 have given at the close of the preface to their editions an ex- 
 cellent conspectus of the peculiar forms used by Herodotus. 
 Schweighauser's Lexicon Herodoteum is a painstaking book, but 
 was published before the later labours in the text. Moreover, 
 all the exegesis before 1,850 is rendered obsolete by the reading 
 of the cuneiform inscriptions, which have thrown immense light 
 on the Persian and Assyrian histories. The same may be said 
 as regards the results of Egyptology, which are brought to bear 
 on the second book in Stein's edition by the learning of Brugsch. 
 Besides the early version of Valla, there is an excellent French 
 translation by Zaccher, and a fine English edition by Prof. 
 George Rawlinson, which is illustrated with the learning and 
 research of Sir Henry Rawlinson and Sir G. Wilkinson : this 
 gdition is the only English one up to modern requirements in 
 
 1 Especially in the Philologus, xxi. pp. 79, sq. 
 
4o HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. II. 
 
 exegesis, pending Mr. Sayce's forthcoming edition of books 
 i-iii. Mr. Wood's preface to his school edition of book i. gives 
 a good summary of the recent controversies on the critical side 
 in Germany. 
 
 § 322. The most important rival of Herodotus as a writer of 
 Ionic prose history was Hellanicus of Mitylene, who was 
 older in years, according to Pamphila, and prior, according to 
 Dionysius ; but who mentioned circumstances concerning the 
 battle of Arginusse (408 B.C.), 1 and must therefore be regarded 
 as* a later writer than Herodotus. Nevertheless, he seems not 
 to have been so perfect an artist, and to have fallen short as 
 regards the conception of welding all his various researches into 
 one great whole. Some thirty titles of his works are mentioned 
 in various citations, and though some of these may be amalga- 
 mated, there can be no doubt that he was author of many 
 distinct books, of which some were even in poetical form. 
 Carl. Miiller discovers in their subjects something of a plan 
 like that of Herodotus, first handling Persian and other 
 barbaric nations, and then approaching Greece. The Greek 
 legendary history of Argolis, Thessalia, Arcadia, and Attica, 
 would come under the titles Phoroneus, Deucalion, Atlas, and 
 Cecrops, whose genealogies were handled after the manner, we 
 may suppose, in which the * Annals of the Four Masters' treated 
 early Irish history ; but the Attic history was carried down to 
 the historian's own days. The later events of other Greek 
 states may have been noted in connection with the lists of 
 the priestesses of Argos and the Carnean victors. This scheme 
 is ingenious, and in itself probable, though it can hardly be 
 proved from the scanty and indirect citations which remain. 
 But this much seems plain, that Hellanicus, like Herodotus, 
 
 1 This appears from schol. Aristoph. Ran. 706, robs <rvvvavn.ax^](ravTas 
 dovXovs 'EWauiicSs <pr\<riv ekevdepaOrji/ou, aa\ iyypacpeuras ws riAaTaiets 
 ffvfMTroXirevea-dai avrois (fr. 80, Miiller). The schol. on Soph. Philoct. 201, 
 makes him use the work of Herodotus, and therefore distinctly younger 
 as a writer. He is also cited by Plutarch, and in the Life of Andocides 
 as having shown that orator's descent from Hermes. This again points to 
 the latest decade of the century, before which time Andocides could hardly 
 have been prominent. Nevertheless, in the tract on the Spitefulness of 
 Herodotus (c. 36) he is apparently refeired to as older than that writer. 
 
CH. ii. HELLANICUS. 41 
 
 pursued at the same time historical and geographical researches. 
 His history did not however escape, like that of Herodotus, 
 the vice of dwelling upon the mythical period, from which little 
 but genealogies could be related. But these mythical accounts 
 of the old poets were not merely transcribed into prose ; they 
 were apparently compared with and corrected by the local 
 traditions. It may have been originally to extend and im- 
 prove this local knowledge that geography was studied, and 
 no doubt commercial reasons added their force. Thus geo- 
 graphy and mythical history became combined in the same 
 hands, and in the case of Herodotus the avoidance of myths, 
 and descent to real history, made the combination natural and 
 artistic. Though we know that Hellanicus wrote in the Ionic 
 dialect, the 179 allusions collected by Miiller do not contain 
 any materials for a criticism of his style or for any judgment of 
 his literary merits. 
 
 Hermogenes and Dionysius both rank him below Hero- 
 dotus, and no doubt justly. Whether he wrote a few years 
 before Herodotus or after him, the fact that a distinguished 
 literary rival in the same field made so widely different a figure 
 tends to increase our respect for our father of history, and our 
 conviction that his work was not the natural outcome of a 
 general progress in prose literature, but the discovery of an 
 original and unique genius. As to mere research, Hellanicus 
 may possibly, as Mure asserts, 1 have been superior, seeing 
 that he had some notion of the Latin language, and mentions 
 Spina, Cortona, and Rome, which belonged to a part of Italy 
 almost unknown to the Greeks of his day. But these, and his 
 other notices of Italy and Sicily, may have been borrowed 
 from Hippys of Rhegium, or Antiochus of Syracuse, who is 
 cited (fr. 7) by Dionysius of Halicarnassus as mentioning 
 Rome. All these lost authors do not properly belong to a 
 history of extant classical literature ; their statements, quoted 
 at second hand, and in altered phrase, are important to the 
 historian who is sifting the age and character of the authorities 
 for some alleged fact, but they have no claim whatever to be 
 called literature. I refer all those who desire a full list of these 
 
 1 iv. 237. 
 
42 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. it 
 
 writers, and the conjectures of the learned about them, to Mure's 
 fourth volume, or to Carl Muller's first volume of his inestimable 
 Fragmenta Historicorum Gracorum. 
 
 § 323. But I will not pass on without saying a few words 
 about two other contemporaries who were among the Ionic 
 prose writers (though also otherwise celebrated), because they 
 seem to have struck out a new vein in literature, and one which 
 did not find favour for a long time after they made their essays. 
 I refer to the personal memoirs of Stesimbrotus of Thasos, 
 and Ion of Chios. The latter has already occurred (§ 228) in 
 the list of the lesser known tragic poets, and he might have 
 achieved in this direction an undying fame but for the exces- 
 sive splendour of his rivals. He may have been a good poet ; 
 6 nevertheless he did not attain unto the first three.' As an 
 historian we find him cited as the author of two works — the 
 Settlement of Chios, in which he gave the antiquities and 
 early history of his native island, and a book variously called 
 his virofivrifjiaTa or eTr^rj/jLiai, his memoirs or foreign travels, 
 that is to say, his travels to Athens and other famous towns. 
 He seems to have made notes of the eminent men he met, and 
 their social qualities, and these he put together into piquant 
 chapters, which are occasionally cited by Athenaeus and Plu- 
 tarch. The long fragment on Sophocles (fr. 1) is very curious, 
 and so are the notes on Kimon and Pericles ; but the utter 
 silence of all early writers concerning this work, and some 
 chronological difficulties about the campaign of Sophocles, 
 have made Ritter suspect that the whole treatise is a later 
 forgery. If we consider the undeveloped state of Greek prose 
 before the year 421 B.C., when Ion is alluded to as already 
 dead, it is indeed somewhat strange that familiar memoirs 
 should have been written, and still more strange that such a 
 branch of prose should have found no school of cultiva- 
 tors ; for Stesimbrotus (born 01. 72), who was a contemporary 
 sophist, and wrote about Homer and about the mysteries, is 
 quoted by Plutarch in a very similar way for gossiping anec- 
 dotes, but is never cited in the better days of Greek litera- 
 ture. He wrote a book about Themistocles, and Thucydides 
 (son of Melesias), and Pericles, from which a good deal is 
 
ch. ii. STESIMBROTUS—KTESIAS. 43 
 
 quoted about Kimon, and Pericles and Themistocles. But 
 these memoirs seem, even from our scanty fragments, of a 
 very different complexion from the pleasant social sketches of 
 Ion. Plutarch ranks Stesimbrotus with the comic poets in his 
 savage attacks on Pericles, nor did he give even of Kimon so 
 agreeable a picture as Ion's. According to Adolf Schmidt 
 (Perikl. Zeit. vol. ii. ) this is unjust, and not only is he amain au- 
 thority of Plutarch, but even of Thucydides, as regards Themis- 
 tocles' life. We cannot say whether Stesimbrotus, who doubtless 
 spoke Ionic at Thasos, but who lived from about 470 at Athens, 
 wrote in that dialect ; however, the distinctly Ionic character of 
 Ion's fragments leads us to suppose that this familiar sort of prose 
 was not composed in severe Attic purity, but in the easy dress 
 of Herodotus' co-ordinate constructions and semi-poetical dia- 
 lect. But the days of Ionic prose were numbered : not even 
 the splendour and variety of Herodotus' great history could 
 stay the influence of Attic taste, of Attic rhetoric, of Attic preci- 
 sion, which invaded Greek literature at this time and overcame 
 all other tendencies. Thus it may possibly be the form in 
 which they wrote which condemned these two anecdotists 
 to oblivion for centuries. Rhetorical prose became the only 
 prose tolerated ; even narratives were regarded as species of 
 eloquence, and so the familiar homeliness and artless charms of 
 the chroniclers gave way to political oratory and political his- 
 tory. It is indeed not unlikely that Stesimbrotus formed a 
 sort of connecting link, and that under the pretence of writing 
 memoirs he composed a bitter political pamphlet against the 
 liberal policy of the day. His trade as a sophist, and the 
 strong protests of Plutarch against his unfairness, make us sus- 
 pect that we are drifting away fast from the candid spirit and 
 the large views of Herodotus. 
 
 § 324. For even Herodotus had his early and formidable 
 detractor, who set himself deliberately to contradict the histo- 
 rian's accounts of Persia and Assyria, and to show their general 
 untrustworthiness. As this man, Ktesias, the private physician 
 of Artaxerxes at the battle of Cunaxa, wrote in Ionic prose, 
 and in the style of earlier historians, it will be well to include 
 him in the present chapter, though his work cannot have 
 
44 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. 11. 
 
 appeared till after the year 400 B.C. But both his opposition 
 to Herodotus and his general attitude, which owing to many 
 years' residence in Persia was not affected by the revolution of 
 taste at Athens, bring him together logically with the earlier 
 prose of Asia Minor. 
 
 We know that he was the son of Ktesiochus of Knidos, and 
 Galen describes him as a relative of Hippocrates the physician ; 
 so that he may have been an eminent practitioner attracted by 
 high pay to the court of Ochus, where he remained fourteen 
 years (41 5-1 B.C.), as well as the first three of Artaxerxes' reign. 
 He described himself as a person of great importance at that 
 court, and as an envoy, not only to the Greeks after the 
 battle of Cunaxa, but to Evagoras, prince of Cyprus, and 
 afterwards to Sparta. His two principal works, the Persica, 
 which included Assyrian and Median histories leading on to 
 the Persian, and his Indica, or description of the wonders of 
 India, were composed after his return home. A Periplus and 
 a tract on Mountains and Rivers are also quoted. We do 
 not possess a single direct quotation from these works, our 
 knowledge of him being derived from copious paraphrases in 
 Photius, who gives the facts in his own language. Hence we . 
 can only take on trust the statement of ancient grammarians 
 that he wrote in good Ionic, and with elegance, but without the 
 simplicity of Herodotus, for he was always seeking for sudden 
 and striking effects and pathetic contrasts. These features 
 sometimes appear even in the cold paraphrase of Photius. 
 But he set himself deliberately to overthrow the authority of 
 Herodotus on Eastern history by asserting that he himself had 
 access to the royal records, the ficMrikucal di^ipat, of the ar- 
 chives of Artaxerxes ; and he remodels all the Median history, 
 changes the names of the personages allied with and opposed 
 to Darius, and in every point makes it his duty to show 
 Herodotus a liar. Though successful for a time, and perhaps 
 to some extent causing Herodotus to be neglected, he did not 
 satisfy critics like Aristotle, or even Plutarch, who in the Life 
 of Artaxerxes throws doubts on his authority. But the pseudo- 
 Plutarch follows him in his tract On the Spitefulness of Hero- 
 
CH. II. KTESIAS AT LAST EXPOSED. \$ 
 
 dotus, so does Diodorus, 1 and in later classical times his 
 audacity rather turned the balance of critical opinion in his 
 favour. 
 
 His fragments were first edited and his credibility upheld 
 by Stephanus in 1566, and this is the attitude of the two learned 
 editions of Dindorf (Didot's Herodotus) and Bahr, both of which 
 were published just before the newly deciphered cuneiform in- 
 scriptions were brought to bear upon the question. The learned 
 arguments and the judicial attitude of these critics, who insist 
 upon the better sources of information of Ktesias, and the im- 
 possibility of his being quite incredible where he insists upon a 
 distinct version, have been rendered amusing by the reading of 
 the inscriptions, which prove that Herodotus was nearly always 
 right, and that the colossal errors of Ktesias must have arisen 
 from a deliberate attempt to deceive. 2 From this point of view 
 the work is a literary curiosity, and it is to be hoped that some 
 learned German will think it worth his while to re-edit the 
 fragments, with all the monumental evidence appended, in 
 order that we may know what residuum of truth is left in them, 
 and whether it is worth while discussing their authority where 
 they contradict Herodotus only, and are not themselves con- 
 tradicted by monumental evidence. For my own part, I do 
 not believe it is possible to lie consistently, and think there 
 must be some elements of real history in every such fabrication. 
 
 § 325. It is, however, very remarkable that while the Ionic 
 dialect found little favour in history or in any kind of poetry 
 during this epoch, and the resuscitation of its old epic form 
 was not more successful than its very perfect narrative style 
 in the hands of Herodotus, still in the department of pure 
 science this dialect was dominant, and maintained itself far into 
 the next century. The earlier Ionic philosophers and their 
 
 1 The latter tells us (xiv. 16) that Ktesias brought down his Persian 
 history to the year of the Sicilian Dionysius' declaration of war against 
 the Carthaginians (398 B.C.). ^Elian, Arrian, and Lucian, however, all 
 suspect him of falsehood. Cf. the references in Clinton's Fasti, sub an. 
 398 B.C. 
 
 2 Cf. the trenchant decision of the venerable dispute between the his- 
 torians in Rawlinson's Herodotus (i. 77), where the evidence of the in- 
 scriptions is brought to bear for the first time. 
 
46 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. II. 
 
 Eleatic offshoot had used epic hexameters to convey their 
 speculations. From the time of the profound Heracleitus, 
 Ionic prose, and probably the dialect of Miletus, came into 
 use j and we find in the latter half of the fifth century, not 
 only the Samian Melissus, 1 and the Clazomenian Anaxagoras, 
 but the Thracian Democritus, the Cretan Apollonius, and the 
 cosmopolitan Protagoras 2 writing in this accepted philosophic 
 tongue. It is remarkable, too, how the many actual quotations 
 from these men show that terseness and vigour were perfectly 
 attained in the language which strikes us as so diffuse and 
 easy in Herodotus. Perhaps the most splendid specimen of 
 this incisive and almost more than Thucydidean force and 
 brevity is found in the genuine works of Hippocrates, who, 
 though he may have taken that historian for his model, writes 
 in pure Ionic, and approaches the style of Heracleitus far more 
 than he does that of the Attic politician. The many treatises 
 by later hands, which are transmitted to us under the name of 
 Hippocrates, are composed in the same dialect, which had 
 evidently become the established language of the school or 
 medical guild of Kos. Such guilds are very tenacious of 
 language, and Latin is not more universal in the medical pre- 
 scriptions of the present day than Doric became at Athens in 
 the next century, when Doric schools of medicine were highly 
 esteemed. 
 
 The scientific development of the Greek mind at this epoch 
 does not belong to our subject, but I have called attention 
 to the prevalence of Ionic prose among the most serious 
 
 1 Though it seems that the Elean Zeno, the comrade of Melissus in 
 philosophy, agreed with him in adopting prose (instead of the epic verse 
 of his master Parmenides) as his method of conveying his subtle dialectic, 
 there is still no evidence that he wrote in Ionic prose. The citations 
 from his book are in Attic, but may possibly have been all paraphrased 
 by Aristotle, Simplicius, and Diogenes. The silence concerning his 
 dialect is, however, good negative evidence that he wrote in old Attic. 
 Blass [Att. Bar. i. 52) speaks of Gorgias as the first Attic orator, on some- 
 what similar evidence. But if the Sicilian rhetor, who only visited Athena 
 in old age, was able to compose in Attic, Zeno, who came there in middle 
 age, may have also done so, though he was not a professional orator. 
 
 2 ZeUer, Phil, der Griechen, i. p. 1020, note. 
 
CH. II. HIPPOCRATES. 47 
 
 thinkers, as well as among the most frivolous anecdc tists, to 
 show how easily we may make rash judgments about Greek 
 dialects, and talk of the softness and weakness of the Ionic 
 speech as an evidence of luxury and mental relaxation, whereas 
 all the really earnest science of the day — I here waive the claims 
 of the sophists — was expressed in this very dialect, and with a 
 strength and compression which savours rather of harshness 
 and obscurity than of simple and artless transparency. 
 
 § 326. The life of Hippocrates is shrouded in a strange 
 mist, considering the extraordinary celebrity of the man. In the 
 late biographies which remain to us the following facts seem 
 worthy of record. A certain Soranus of Kos, otherwise unknown, 
 is said to have made special researches among the records of 
 the Asclepiad guild, in which Hippocrates was set down as the 
 seventeenth in descent from the god Asclepios, and born on 
 the 26th of the month Agrianus, in the year 460 b.c The 
 inhabitants were still offering him the honours of a hero. He 
 seems to have travelled about a good deal, particularly in the 
 countries around the northern ^Egean, and to have died at an 
 advanced age at Larissa in Thessaly, leaving two sons, Thes- 
 salus and Drakon. Many of his descendants and followers in 
 the school of Kos were called after him— Suidas enumerates 
 seven in all — so that this additional uncertainty of authorship 
 attaches to his alleged writings. The many statues of him 
 agreed in representing him with his head covered, a peculiarity 
 which excited many baseless and some absurd conjectures. Ab- 
 stracting carefully from the numerous Hippocrates mentioned 
 in contemporary Attic literature, there are two undoubted refe- 
 rences to the great physician of Kos in Plato, 1 and one in Aris- 
 tophanes, 2 which confirm the epoch assigned to him in the 
 biographies. He is said to have been instructed by Herodicus 
 of Selymbria, and Gorgias of Leontini, a legend arising merely 
 from the confusing of this Herodicus with another physician 
 who happened to be the brother of Gorgias. There is no 
 vestige of either Herodicus' practice or Gorgias' rhetoric in 
 the extant treatises ; but Hippocrates assuredly, like Pericles, 
 
 1 Protagoras, 311, A; Pkcedrus, 270, c. 2 Thesmoph. 274. 
 
4 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. II. 
 
 trained himself for a large knowledge of his special pursuit by 
 a familiarity with the metaphysic of the day. His alleged study 
 of the great plague at Athens is not corroborated by a com- 
 parison with Thucydides' account. The works pronounced 
 genuine by Littre in the large collection of Hippocratic writings 
 which still survive are these : the treatises on Ancient Medicine, 
 on Prognosis (which includes our diagnosis in the largest sense), 
 the Aphorisms, the tract on Climate (air, water, and situation), 
 the Epidemics (i. and hi.), the Treatment of Acute Diseases, the 
 tracts on joints, fractures, and surgical instruments applied to 
 them, on head wounds, and the Oath and Law of the guild. 
 
 It need hardly be added that several of these are disputed 
 by more sceptical critics ; but some of them, for example, 
 the tracts on Climate and the Epidemics, are certainly genuine, 
 and show that Hippocrates was not only a great physician 
 and philosopher, but a literary genius of the highest order. 
 It is, of course, quite mistaken to say that he originated Greek 
 medicine ; a large body of recorded facts, and of contesting 
 theories, were before him ; a great deal of practical know- 
 ledge had been accumulated, and had guided the treatment 
 of 'disease among his predecessors. In the Asclepeia or tem- 
 ple hospitals established at Athens, Epidauros, Knidos, Kos, 
 Cyrene, and elsewhere, a great many cases were recorded in an 
 empirical way. On the other hand, the physical philosophers, 
 such as Empedocles, Democritus, and Anaxagoras, were con- 
 stantly putting forth theories on the nature of man and the 
 composition of the body. What was perhaps more important 
 than either was the close study of physical conditions by the 
 trainers in the palsestras. These men made hygiene and diet 
 a matter of first-rate importance, and both they and the philo- 
 sophers banished superstition from the study of health, and 
 introduced that purely human and rational method of discus- 
 sion which is so prominent in Hippocrates, and which gives 
 his reasoning so strong a likeness to that of his contemporary 
 Thucydides. 1 From all these sources we can see materials 
 
 1 Here is a specimen : 
 
 {De ae're, aquis, locis. cap. 29.) Ol fx\v oiv imxcopioi rr\v aWa]v Trpoa- 
 Tt9ea<TL Gey, Kal crifiovrai tovtovs tovs avdpdnrovs koX irpoaKwiovai, dedoitcdres 
 
CH. II. HIPPOCRATES ON CLIMATE. 49 
 
 drawn together to form a large and comprehensive system of 
 medicine. Discarding all assumptions of abstract elements, or 
 of various phenomena being deduced from one substance, 
 Hippocrates seems to have insisted upon taking man as he 
 appears in experience, and from an accurate induction of par- 
 ticular cases to establish the laws of health and disease. The 
 gymnasts had taught him to lay stress on hygiene, and he 
 insists that an accurate analysis of health is vital for teaching 
 us the true symptoms of disease. But while thus starting from 
 particulars, and building his inferences on them, he learned 
 from the philosophers that large view which, as it were, neglects 
 local symptoms, and seeks to classify each case under general 
 conditions of disease, bringing out the common features in 
 each, and comparing them with the general conditions of nor- 
 mal health. Hence he paid special attention to climate and 
 situation, and his most interesting tract is that on the effects of 
 air, water, and situation, in which he compares Asiatic and 
 European races, and suggests to Plato and Aristotle the cele- 
 brated political division of mankind so often quoted from the 
 Politics. The minute noting of cases in his Epidemics shows 
 
 trepi ye ecavTwv eiccurrot. 'E^uol Se Kal avTcp SoKe? ravra to. irdOea 6eia efaai 
 Kal rctAAa irdvTa, Kal ovSev erepov e-repou QeibTepov, ovSe avdpcairtvdoTepov, 
 aXXa irdvTa oixola Kal irdvTa Qeia' %k<x(Ttqv Se e^et <pvo~iv to>v toiovtojv Kal 
 obSev &vev (piHTios yiyveTai. Kal tovto rb irdOos as fxoi doneei yiyveaQai 
 (ppdaco. 'Tirb rr^s lirira<rir\s aiirobs zceS/Accra Xafifidvet, are ael Kpefx.afj.hcov 
 airb rau 'Ltrnoiv to7s irocri- eireira airoxcoXovvTai Kal eXKovvrai to. tV^ia o'l av 
 <r<p68pa voo"i)0~wffi. Tovto Se irdo~xovo~i 2/cu0eW ol irXovo'ioi, obx oi kokio~toi, 
 aXX' ol ebyeveffraroi Kal lo~xbv vXeiffTyv KeKTrj/nevoi, diet. t^v iTTTao'irju' oi Se 
 Treutjres fjo'o'ov, ob yap iinrd^ovTat. Ka'iTOi expW, e""^ Oeiorepov tovto Tb 
 v6ffev[xa tS>v Xoiirav eort, ob to?s yevvaiOTaTois tu>v 2ft:u0eW Kal toIs irXov- 
 aitoTaTOis irpoffiriiTTeiv fxovvois, aXXa. tois airao~i bfxoicas Kal /xaXXov TO?at 
 bxiya KeKTrifievoiGi' el 8^ Tifxci/nevoi x al P ov<Tl °* $ 60 ^ K °d Oavjua^ofxevoi utt' 
 avOpoairav Kal clvtI tovtoov x°-P iras airoSiSovffi. Ewbs yap tovs fiev irXovaiovs 
 Qveiv iroXXa, tols 6eo7s, Kal avaTiQivai a.vadr}fxaTa, ovtoov xp^/iaTcej/, Kal Tijxav' 
 Tobs Se irevriTas t)0~q~ov, Stcfc Tb fify ex 6n/ j ^ena Kal eTri/j.e/n<()Ofj.evovs, '6ti ob 
 BiSSacri xp'hpm'a avToTcrc acrTe tS>v toiovtcov a/napTicov to.s frlfJ-ias tovs bxiya 
 KeKTrj/xevovs cpepeiv fxaXXov $} tovs irXovo'iovs. 'AXXa yap, o&oTrep Kal irpdTepov 
 eXe£a, 0e?a fxev Kal TavT~d eWi dfioias to?s aXXois ■ yiyveTai he KaTa <pvaiv 
 eKacTTa ' Kal 77 ToiavT-q vovaos airb ToiavTrjs irpo<pd(rios toIs 2/cu0aty yiyveTai 
 o'irjv etpr\Ka. "Exet Se Kal KaTa tovs Xonrovs avQpcairovs 6/j.oiws. 
 VOL. II. E 
 
50 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. ii. 
 
 the other side of his mind • and there are points of diagnosis 
 (' prognosis,' as he called it) on which modern physicians have 
 nothing to add to his observation. 
 
 Turning from details to the general features of the man, 
 so far as we can discern them in the acknowledged treatises,, 
 we are struck with the honest, earnest, scientific spirit of all 
 his researches. He is in direct antagonism with the spirit 
 of charlatanism, and of seeking after sudden effects and sur- 
 prises, which must have been a very general feature among 
 medical men when they had but lately separated themselves 
 from priests and soothsayers — in fact, from the 'medicine 
 men ' who impose upon early and superstitious societies. The 
 celebrated opening sentence of- the Aphorisms is a memorable 
 manifesto against this spirit, ' and in a hundred places he warns 
 against ostentation, recommends simplicity and patience, aud 
 confesses with true and deep modesty his errors and his 
 failures. Here, again, we are reminded of Thucydides' de- 
 scription of his own work, no ay uviffpa eg to Trapa^pfjfxa, but a 
 KTrj[j.a eg kei. In fact, as Littre has observed, the polemic 
 of Hippocrates against the charlatans is as serious and sus- 
 tained as that of Socrates against the sophists. 
 
 § 327. The style of Hippocrates is nervous, exceedingly 
 compressed, and, at times, obscure from its brevity ; but, on the 
 other hand, profoundly suggestive, picturesque, and full of 
 power and pathos. He uses poetical words and images freely, 
 but always to increase the fulness of his meaning, never for 
 mere ornament. He is far terser in thought than Thucydides, 
 though he resembles him in shortness of expression ; indeed, 
 as I have before said, he more resembles Heracleitus than any 
 other Greek prose writer. 
 
 The questions about his dialect are quite similar to those 
 which beset the text of Herodotus. Though dwelling in the 
 Doric settlement of Kos, he used the Ionic dialect. It ap- 
 pears, however, not only from our texts, but from the remarks 
 of ancient critics, that his language was closer to old Attic 
 than that of Herodotus, and we do not know whether it 
 
 1 6 [itos fipaxvs, r\ 5e rsyy<\ fiaKpi], 6 Se ncupbs 6£vs, r) Se ire7pa c^aAepir?, 
 }} 5e Kpicris xaA€7nj, 
 
CH. II. HISTORY OF THE TEXT. 51 
 
 was merely another of the four dialects distinguished by 
 him, or whether it was an artificial language with Atticisms 
 introduced. Our MSS. are hopelessly vacillating in their 
 various transcriptions of the same words ; and here, as with 
 Herodotus, the ignorance of scribes, who substituted a familiar 
 for a provincial form, has destroyed the evidence which we 
 might have had concerning the literary dialects of Asia Minor. 
 The whole history of the text of this author is, indeed, 
 full of doubt and difficulty. The researches of Littre have, 
 disentangled the following facts. Ktesias of Knidos, though 
 said to be a relation of Hippocrates, belonged to a rival 
 school, and is reported by Galen to have criticised some 
 points of practice recommended by Hippocrates. As these 
 physicians were contemporary, Ktesias cannot have referred to 
 any later or spurious writings. But such soon came into exis- 
 tence. The sons and the son-in-law of Hippocrates, as well as 
 other members of the school, edited, enlarged, and circulated 
 his writings. Some of the tracts are evidently mere rough 
 notes thrown into shape ; and thus a body of Hippocratic 
 writings, not unlike the collection of Aristotelian writings, 
 began to be formed, in which the genuine and spurious were 
 almost inextricably combined. Aristotle, who shows many 
 traces of intimacy with Hippocrates, quotes one of the existing 
 tracts (On the Nature of Man) under the name of Polybus, his 
 son-in-law. We hear in the succeeding generations of Diokles 
 of Karystus, Apollonius and Dexippus of Kos, as commentators 
 upon his doctrine. With Herophilus, who founded a celebrated 
 school at Alexandria, the real criticism of the text seems to have 
 begun \ for the lists of Hippocratic writings varied, and the 
 learned men, called ' sifters ' (x<opiZovrse), drew up a short list of 
 what they held genuine. No author was more commented on, 
 both as to style and as to matter, than Hippocrates. While the 
 school of Herophilus carried on fierce polemics on his princi- 
 ples, and on the genuineness of certain tracts, the verbal critics, 
 like Aristarchus, discussed his dialect and style. I must refer 
 the reader to Littre's fifth chapter for a full list of all these 
 critics down to Galen, who is our best authority upon Hippo- 
 crates, but whose medical criticisms only have survived; atrea- 
 
52 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. II. 
 
 tise on the genuineness of the several tracts, and another on the 
 historical allusions in them, are unfortunately lost. We may 
 pass in silence the few later names which follow upon Galen, 
 the last of the great ancient physicians. Three Lives are to be 
 found : in Suidas (very full), in Tzetzes, and one ascribed to 
 Soranus (not Soranus of Kos). 
 
 § 328. Bibliographical. A great number of MSS. of Hippo- 
 cratic writings remain, but we are still in want of any com- 
 plete catalogue of them. Those in Paris have been collated 
 with exemplary care and diligence by M. Littre, who dis- 
 covered that one of them (No. 2253), of the tenth century, 
 contains a text far superior to all the others, and is derived 
 from a purer archetype. He also shows that none of our 
 MSS. represents the texts of Artemidorus, Rufus, and Sabinus, 
 prepared in Hadrian's time, and criticised for their innovations 
 by Galen, who comments, even in his day, on the variations 
 in the MSS. Concerning the Viennese, Marcian, or Vatican 
 copies I can find out nothing certain. The text first appeared 
 in a Latin translation of Fabius Calvus, the friend of Raphael, 
 in 1525 (Aldus); the Greek text in 1526 {ibid.). Then come 
 the great Basle and Dutch editions of Cornarius and Foes. 
 The only modern editions of note are Littr^'s (4 vols. Paris, 
 1839), based on the Paris MSS,, and Ermerins' Dutch edition 
 (1859-64), which only adds a collation of two trivial Leiden 
 MSS., and many notes of Cobet on a Marcian codex. The 
 Histories of Medicine, such as SprengeFs and Daremberg's, 
 must be consulted for closer informatioa 
 
ch. in. 53 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE RISE OF TECH- 
 NICAL EDUCATION IN THE FIFTH CENTURY — THE SOPHISTS 
 AND SOCRATES. 
 
 § 329. We now proceed to consider the speculations and 
 the teaching of Greek philosophy — a large and special study — 
 so far as they had a direct influence upon letters. There was 
 a time when Greek philosophy assumed the garb of epic 
 poetry, and though very novel in subject, did not modify the 
 form which it adopted, or create a new kind or species in 
 literature. I have mentioned Xenophanes, Parmenides, and 
 Empedocles as the most remarkable representatives of this 
 epoch in Greek thought. There came also a time when prose 
 had long been the received organ for earnest thinking, when 
 philosophy, with equal indifference about the form, used that 
 received organ without adding any other feature to literature 
 than seriousness of tone and the introduction of some tech- 
 nical terms. Such, for example, was the prose of Chrysip- 
 pus and of Aristotle. But at the crisis in the Greek mind 
 which we have reached with the middle of the fifth century — a 
 period of seething restlessness in politics and in speculation, of 
 scepticism in religion, of vagueness in the yet unformed theory 
 of morals — philosophy must necessarily become an important 
 thread in the variegated tissue which the historian seeks to un- 
 ravel. The rise of a new character in Greek literature produced 
 by these causes must of course have been gradual, and marked 
 off by no gap of time from what preceded, and we might 
 expect to find even contemporaries variously affected by it — 
 some adhering to the old, and some to the new ideas. But by 
 
54 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. ill. 
 
 a peculiar good fortune we still have two remarkable pairs of 
 writers, contemporaneous in most of their life, who illustrate 
 the wide gap in style and in sentiment which may be produced 
 by a very small difference in age. Sophocles and Euripides 
 were not twenty years apart in age, Herodotus and Thucydides 
 not more, and yet the mellowness of the old, and the crude- 
 ness of the new ; the acquiescence of the old, and the scepti- 
 cism of the new ; the clearness of the old, the depth of the 
 new, are shown in them as if there were a century intervening. 
 It is for this reason that, having concluded our survey of 
 Herodotus and Sophocles, the last and most perfect bloom of 
 Ionic and of old Attic culture, we ought not logically to pass 
 to their rivals and younger contemporaries, Thucydides and 
 Euripides, without pausing to survey the remarkable intellectual 
 forces which had come into play throughout Greece, and 
 which found in them their earliest and greatest exponents. 
 But for the severance of prose and poetry in this work I should 
 accordingly have assigned to the Sophists a place which might 
 seem peculiar in literary history. 1 
 
 There are periods in the life of men when a few years 
 make little difference in intellectual matters. If a new theory 
 or a new way of thinking is broached to men of forty and men 
 of sixty, the former are nearly as unlikely to embrace it as the 
 latter. The case is widely different if we compare men of 
 twenty with men of mature and settled convictions. For the 
 time of opening manhood and growing intellect is the time 
 when the mind is for a very few years peculiarly open as well as 
 retentive, when passion intensifies study and inflames enthusi- 
 asm, and thus the prominent teachers of our earliest manhood, 
 whether preachers, or poets, or politicians, have an influence 
 upon us which seems absurd to our elders, who keep quoting 
 the leaders of their own youth as the ideals for our imagination. 
 Thus a very few years make a wide gap in our intellectual 
 sympathies, and this is probably the most natural account of 
 the gap between Sophocles and Euripides. Sophocles heard 
 the same philosophers or sophists whom Euripides heard, but 
 
 1 Viz, between Caps. XVI. and XVII, of Vol I, 
 
CH.iii. ANAXAGORAS. 55 
 
 they were not fashionable at Athens till his education was com- 
 pleted, and his career and artistic style determined. 1 Thus 
 they would have but little effect upon him in comparison with 
 their effect on the rising Euripides, who may have met ZenO 
 and Anaxagoras before his genius had found its expression, or 
 at least before he had adopted his philosophic creed. 
 
 § 330. If we enquire what influences were at work when 
 the dominion of Athens in literature, as well as in politics, 
 was secured, and every leading thinker, whatever might be his 
 home, came to Athens as the natural field for preaching his 
 system, we shall find several distinct schools— Grote enume- 
 rates twelve — whose main object was physical speculation 
 carried on to some extent by observation, but mostly by deduc- 
 tion from certain metaphysical hypotheses. Among the latest 
 of these was the teaching of Empedocles of the four hete- 
 rogeneous elements, and their mixture by Love and Hate ; 
 there was the atomic theory of Leucippus and Democritus, of 
 the homogeneity and indivisibility of all the particles of matter 
 which are mechanically combined in the void. But there were 
 also two theories which probably had far deeper influence on 
 such men as Euripides — the one on account of its striking and 
 fruitful dogma; the other on account of the new method 
 whereby its tenets were maintained. 
 
 Anaxagoras, while agreeing with the Eleatics on the im- 
 possibility of creation or annihilation, and with various of his 
 other predecessors on the qualities of the elements of matter, 
 could not explain the composition and harmony of the world 
 without assuming as the prime cause of motion NoDc, or spirit. 
 This postulate of a heterogeneous, non-material cause to ac- 
 count for' the harmony and order, as well as the composition 
 
 1 The dates of all the leading earlier Sophists are not accurately deter- 
 minable, but I think the weight of evidence is in favour of the assertion in 
 the text, which has, moreover, general reasons in its favour. This is the 
 general result of the careful and elaborate discussions of the dates in the 
 ■notes to the last edition of Zeller on the Sophists {Phil, der Griechen, vol. i. 
 sect. iii.). Of course I do not put Diagoras of Melos in 01. 78, as Suidas 
 does, but about 01. 98. On this point cf. Meier's article Diagoras in 
 Ersch una 1 Grtiber^s Encyclop. 
 
56 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. III. 
 
 of material nature, though only assumed in the most timid way, 
 and for the purpose of introducing physical explanations, was 
 nevertheless an innovation of capital importance, and opened 
 the way to a philosophic adoption of the unity l of God, and the 
 general idea of a divine Providence which we have already met 
 in its popular form in the history of Herodotus. It moreover 
 caused the gradual abandonment of that habit of personifying 
 natural objects which was the universal feature of the untutored 
 Greek mind ; and though the contemporaries of Anaxagoras 
 held it gross impiety to call the sun a mass of white-hot metal, 
 these views must infallibly prevail as soon as the unity of God 
 was seriously adopted, and his action required to explain the 
 course of the world. 
 
 We have secondly, among the metaphysicians of the day 
 the Eleatic doctrine in the hands of Zeno, who did not add to 
 the theory of the unity of Being, and the unreality of variety 
 and change, but merely strengthened it by a polemical method 
 of reasoning which had a vast effect on the style as well as the 
 thought of his day. He sustained his somewhat unintelligible 
 and abstract dogma by attacking the opinions of his opponents, 
 and showing that what they assumed as obvious — such notions as 
 variety and change — involved greater absurdities and contra- 
 dictions than the doctrine which he professed. This negative 
 dialectic, this habit of puliiag to pieces the doctrine of the 
 adversary by question and answer, was carried out to its full 
 completeness by Socrates, who made it the most powerful 
 instrument of philosophic teaching ever known in the history 
 of human intellect. It must be carefully kept in mind that 
 Zeno did not use this dialectical method for the purpose of 
 teaching scepticism; he was no sophist or technical rheto- 
 rician, but nevertheless his method was naturally adopted by 
 them, and they used it as a model. 
 
 § 331. This leads us to consider the influence upon lite- 
 rature of the Sophists, the practical teachers of education in the 
 fifth century, who sprang up to meet a sudden and pressing 
 want, and who professed each in his own way, and without any 
 
 1 The reader will remember that this does not necessarily imply His 
 Personality. 
 
CH. III. ATTACKS ON THE SOPHISTS, 57 
 
 concerted plan or system, to instruct for money, and to train the 
 youth of any city in the political and literary acquirements 
 necessary for attaining and holding a prominent place in 
 society. Only one of these celebrated men, Gorgias of 
 Leontini, takes an actual place in the history of Greek litera- 
 ture, and that from his rhetorical side, in which he was the 
 direct forerunner ■ of Attic eloquence. This rhetorical side 
 of the Sophists, and their grammatical and linguistic studies, 
 will properly be treated when we come to another department 
 of Greek prose literature. I am here only concerned with their 
 indirect effect on literature, and especially upon history and 
 tragic poetry, by means of their metaphysical and ethical 
 speculations. These are, indeed^ not easy to sever from their 
 rhetoric ; for as with them form seemed always more important 
 than matter, and an immediate result than a permanent gain, 
 they were perpetually turning philosophy into rhetoric, and 
 proclaiming rhetoric as philosophy. 1 
 
 Grote was the first to dispel the cloud of misconception 
 which had been diffused about the Sophists by ancient calumny 
 and modern dulness, nor is there any part of his monumental 
 history of Greece more enduring in value than the famous 
 sixty-seventh and sixty -eighth chapters on this subject. While 
 all the works of the Sophists have perished, there have remained 
 to us the ablest and the most systematic attacks ever made 
 upon them, and from opposite sides. Aristophanes, repre- 
 senting the old Conservative party, which hated all enlighten- 
 ment and progress, attacks them in his Clouds, where he makes 
 Socrates, as the most familiar at Athens, their representative, 
 though attributing to him many tenets which he is well known 
 to have opposed. Still Socrates, though he did oppose the 
 Sophists and ridiculed them, and did not travel about or take 
 pay, was, broadly speaking, one of them. He was a profes- 
 sional educator, he kept shaking old prejudices and received 
 opinions, he practised dialectic, he trained men to think and 
 speak accurately, and so he might fairly be made by the comic 
 
 1 Thus Philostratus, at the opening of his Lives of the Sophists, says-rV 
 apxaiav arcxpHTTiK^v prfropiK^v rjyelcrdai xph <pi\o(ro<pov(rav, and this theory was 
 carried out strictly down to the time of Isocrates and proclaimed by him. 
 
58 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. in. 
 
 poet a vehicle for his furious onslaught on all the weaker and im- 
 moral features in the Sophistic education, though it was Socrates 
 who had really reformed and rendered it the noblest outcome 
 of the age. On the other hand, Plato, representing the ultra- 
 Radical party, which advocated not the reform but the recon- 
 struction of society, attacked them for the opposite fault — for 
 not being thorough enough, for preaching mere hand-to-mouth 
 expedients, and having no systematic principles at the basis of 
 their slipshod philosophy. For this purpose he represents in 
 his Dialogues such men as Callicles and Polus and Euthydemus 
 as impudent assertors of a selfish morality or as mere intel- 
 lectual mountebanks, who are overthrown and humbled by the 
 denchus of Socrates. But even Plato, the professed enemy of 
 the Sophists, does not venture to traduce the great leaders 
 who had inaugurated the movement, and made it popular and 
 lucrative. Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus are even in 
 Plato's Dialogues treated as important and respectable thinkers, 
 who though not a match in argument for Socrates, yet advocate 
 reasonable and moral theories, and advocate them with ability. 
 But all these circumstances, which Grote has brought out into 
 clear daylight, were jumbled together by the former editors of 
 Plato, and by most of the historians of philosophy, into a 
 stupid tirade against all the Sophists whom Plato chose to 
 oppose. Critics ascribed to them the lowest and most impos- 
 sible motives, and attributed to their influence a complete 
 degradation of Greek society, which, as a fact, is historically 
 false, and even if true could never have been produced by a 
 few wandering teachers of open immorality. The dramatic lam- 
 poons of the old comedy, and the hardly less dramatic pictures 
 in Plato's Dialogues, are used indiscriminately as absolute proofs 
 against the Sophists, and yet as quite untrustworthy or merely 
 ironical when they record anything in their favour. There is no 
 more prominent proof of the prejudiced estimating of evidence 
 common among distinguished classical scholars than the 
 German literature on this subject, and it is an equally curious 
 evidence of either preoccupation, or perhaps of the slow 
 effect which an argument in a foreign tongue produces, that 
 though most of them cite Grote's arguments, they fail to see 
 
OH. ill. THE SOPHISTS. 59 
 
 their force, and set down his logic to his democratic party- 
 spirit. 1 
 
 § 332. These Sophists, who sprang up to meet the want of 
 their age, and were morally neither better nor worse than the 
 public they addressed, attempted to give practical instruction 
 to such as desired it in philosophy, in morality, and in politics. 
 They did not form a sect or school, but nevertheless resembled 
 one another in certain important features, which they had indeed 
 — be it noted — in common with the older and more profound 
 philosophers, such as Xenophanes, and more particularly Em- 
 pedocles. They travelled about from city to city, because in 
 those days of city states it was not convenient to send youths to 
 a special university town, where they must have lived as aliens; 
 and therefore, as they could not go to their university teaching, 
 it must come to them. For the sophistic teaching corresponds 
 very closely to what we should call university teaching, and in 
 later days a ' pupil of Isocrates ; is spoken of as we should say 
 1 an Oxford man.' In the next place they were said to make 
 very great fortunes by their profession, which Isocrates opposes 
 by the bad argument that Gorgias, the richest of them, left but 
 a small property. For though they were men of good morals and 
 temperate habits, we perceive in them all a certain ostentation 
 and expensive style of dress and living, which they evidently 
 thought necessary to their importance, and which doubtless 
 absorbed their profits. 
 
 These external points, along with their encyclopaedic pre- 
 tensions and practical system of teaching, make it just to 
 call them by a definite class-name. Honoured and feted by 
 the richer youth, suspected and mostly despised by the older 
 and more staid people, a brilliant and yet a second-rate pro- 
 fession, they afford an exact parallel to the artists of the pre- 
 sent day — I mean especially singers and actors, who travel 
 about the world in great luxury, and are received with much 
 ambition and pride by younger people of the highest class, but 
 who, nevertheless, spend great fortunes and acquire brilliant 
 reputations without rising to that position in society which the 
 
 1 To this Oncken, and Zeller in the latest edition of his Histoiy of 
 Greek Philosophy, are honourable exceptions. 
 
60 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. Hi. 
 
 better classes assert for themselves * An Athenian gentleman 
 whose son turned sophist, however celebrated, would have felt 
 as an English squire whose son turned operatic singer. The 
 worship of these merely material artists-— actors and dancers 
 —appeared in Greece also, at a later and degenerate time ; 
 in the classical epoch even such a social position could only 
 be attained by artists in intellectual perfections. 
 
 § 333. But, as might be expected from their somewhat 
 superficial character, which resulted naturally from the number 
 of subjects which they professed, the Sophists found scepti- 
 cism very convenient where positive theories were abstruse and 
 disputed, or when moral objections were brought against purely 
 intellectual education. Protagoras of Abdera, the earliest and 
 perhaps the greatest of them, asserted in the opening of his 
 book : ! Respecting the gods, I neither know whether they 
 exist nor what are their attributes ; the uncertainty of the 
 subject, the shortness of human life, and many other causes, 
 debar me from this knowledge.' This statement, which is not 
 verified by any allusion in Plato's portrait of the man, is said 
 to have so offended the orthodox public of Athens that they 
 exiled Protagoras, and had his book publicly burnt. More 
 certain is his theory that ' man was the measure of all things ; ' 
 in other words, that all knowledge was relative, and depending 
 upon the faculty of knowing — a statement of vast importance, 
 and the basis of all idealism and of most scepticism from that 
 day to our own. Profound as these dogmas appear in them- 
 selves, they were peculiarly convenient for a teacher who de- 
 sired to draw his pupils from theological and moral speculation 
 into the more positive and practical pursuit of rhetoric and of 
 politics. If individual man is the measure of all he can know, 
 and of all he ought to do, the moral consequences are doubtless 
 very serious, and they became obtrusive enough in the sequel ; 
 but the earlier Sophists did not teach these developments. 
 
 1 I should be stating an absurdity were I to say, or imply, that there are 
 not thorough gentlemen, in every sense, pursuing these artistic callings j 
 but it is notorious that this is not the rule, and that it is possible to be a 
 renowned artist without more than a special cultivation of a particular 
 dexterity. 
 
CH. in. ANTIPHON THE SOPHIST. 61 
 
 Similarly, Gorgias, as a philosopher, wrote a book denying 
 any possibility of a scientific knowledge of nature, apparently 
 in the absolute sense. It was called On the non-existent or on 
 Nature (^spl rov fx>j ovtoq r) wepl ^uo-ewc), 1 and argued, (i) that 
 nothing exists, (2) that if it does it cannot be known, (3) 
 Or even if known cannot be communicated. These propo- 
 sitions were sustained by a negative dialectic similar to that 
 of Zeno, offering the adversary an alternative and then 
 disproving both members. In morals these two sophists 
 seem to have taught nothing peculiar, though the logical 
 result of their psychological scepticism could not be doubtful. 
 Prodicus of Keos, on the contrary, to whom the apologue 
 of the Choice of Heracles between Virtue aiid Vice is ascribed, 
 was apparently a teacher of the orthodox sort, and merely 
 graced with the ornament of rhetorical diction the principles 
 of popular morality. I will not here follow the history or 
 the catalogue of the Sophists further. But in the absence of 
 any philosophical treatises written by the Sophists, or of any 
 closer information than mere titles on their method, we may 
 say a word here upon the fragments of one of the more obscure 
 of their number, which are nevertheless preserved in no incon- 
 siderable number. 
 
 § 334. Antifihon, the sophist, also called TeparoaKoirog and 
 oveipoKpiTriQ, often confused with the contemporary rhetor, is in- 
 troduced by Xenophon disputing with Socrates ; 2 but he is not 
 there represented as preaching any opinions save a contempt 
 for asceticism and a vindication of human pleasure, as well as 
 being the advocate of paid teaching. Hermogenes criticises 
 his style only, and thus we are reduced to his fragments to 
 tell us the nature of his teaching. He wrote a work in two 
 books about Truth, which, as in . Protagoras' treatise, meant 
 Being or Reality, and in this work seems to have embraced 
 most of the physical enquiries of the day. Its tendency was 
 sceptical, for he denied Providence, and there were scientific 
 
 1 Perhaps this title was intentionally parodied from the title of Prota- 
 goras' work, which seems to have been inscribed irepl aAydeias 3) irepl rod 
 ovros. I do not think this remarkable resemblance is noted by the historians. 
 
 2 Mem. i. 6. 
 
62 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, gh. m. 
 
 (as opposed to theological) explanations of astronomical phe- 
 nomena. To this physical treatise he added a moral or 
 ethical discourse, as is plain from the elegant extracts quoted 
 from him, without special reference, by Stobaaus, which illus- 
 trate worldly wisdom and human fortunes in graceful and 
 poetical diction, and with anecdotes possibly in the style of 
 Prodicus. But the tone is not so much that of a preacher as 
 of a mere painter of human life. I would call special attention 
 to frag. 13 1, 1 which is closely analogous to the speech of 
 Medea in Euripides, 2 with additional points of considerable 
 merit, on the balance of happiness and misery in marriage. 3 
 There was a third book, called Politicus, which was probably 
 a handbook for a young citizen who desired to prepare himself 
 for public life. These fragments are sufficiently full to show 
 us both the encyclopaedic turn of the man and his super- 
 ficiality, so that his aim was rather to clothe knowledge in an 
 attractive form than to stimulate to deep enquiry. Hence we 
 can still see the justice of his nickname Xoyo/jayeipoc, which 
 Suidas has preserved. If he recommended pleasure, and to 
 snatch the happy moment as it came, his pictures of human 
 sorrow and labour may have been meant to enforce this view, 
 as well as the denial of Providence with which he is credited. 
 But still the moral fragments are elegant in expression, and 
 refined in the feeling which they show, so that we may be sure 
 this forerunner of Aristippus did not choose to pass for anything 
 else than a moral and respectable teacher. His fragments 
 can best be studied in Blass V edition of the orator Antiphon, 
 and in the discussion 4 in which he has considered their con- 
 trasts with his namesake's speeches. 
 
 § 335. It seems established that the successors of these men 
 gradually degenerated into polymaths and then into mounte- 
 banks in education, and that they soon sank in importance. 
 
 1 Ed. Blass (Teubner). 2 Medea, vv. 200, sq. 
 
 3 It ends with the words <p4pe 8^7 ical ircuSes yej/zffdwaav <Ppovri^(av fjfiri 
 ttAvtol irXia koX H-oixsrat rb VkOT^aiov aKiprri/jLa in rrjs yvct>fir]s Ka\ rb 
 Trp6<ro)TTov ovk€tl rb aur6. Blass thinks these extracts belong to his book 
 Trepl bfjiovoias, from which the express quotations only prove that it was an 
 exhortation to harmony among citizens. 
 
 4 Aft. Ber. i. 99. 
 
CH. ill. TRAGEDY AND SOPHISTIC 63 
 
 Before Plato composed his later Dialogues they had become 
 too insignificant to merit refutation, and in the following gene- 
 ration 1 they completely disappear as a class. This is of 
 course to be attributed not only to the opposition of Socrates at 
 Athens, but to the subdivision of the profession of education. 
 Its most popular and prominent branch — that of Rhetoric — was 
 taken up by special men like the orator Antiphon, and developed 
 into a strictly defined science. The Philosophy which they had 
 touched without sounding its depths was taken up by the 
 Socratic schools, and made the rule and practice of a life. 
 The Politics which they had taught were probably found too 
 general, nor were these wandering men, without fixed home, 
 or familiarity with the intricacies of special constitutions, likely 
 to give practical lessons to Greek citizens in the art of state 
 craft. Thus they disappear almost as rapidly as they rose — a 
 sudden phase of spiritual awakening in Greece, like the 
 Encyclopaedists of the French. 2 
 
 These were the intellectual disturbers of society, who began 
 to tell on poetry when Euripides approached the problems of 
 the drama. It is indeed absurd to say that moral and meta- 
 physical difficulties had not been agitated by earlier poets. 
 The conflict between the duties of avenging a murdered father 
 and of filial affection to the murderess, is one which might 
 make the most thoughtful doubt and hesitate. The conflict 
 between obedience to the law and obedience to the holiest 
 affection, in the Antigone, is an antinomy far deepei and more 
 interesting than those of Zeno. But the tragic poets did not 
 press for a general solution, they did not insist upon a full 
 statement and argument on both sides ; they taught, after their 
 manner, philosophy, but not dialectic. Euripides could no 
 
 1 Isocrates indeed in his speech vepl avTidSosces (especially §§ 198, sq.), 
 not delivered till 353 B.C., says a great deal about popular objections to him- 
 self, and to the Sophists, as a class to which he was supposed to belong. But 
 probably he was merely repeating the arguments of his youth, which were 
 important enough when he opened his school, about 408 B.C., but were 
 quite obsolete in his later years. Isociates shows the peculiar tenacity of a 
 narrow intellect in repeating a once acquired idea. 
 
 2 Cf. Zeller, Phil, der Griechen, i. pp. 1027, sq. 
 
64 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. in. 
 
 longer avoid these explicit controversies. The physical theories 
 of Anaxagoras, and his theological difficulties, were current 
 among thinkers at Athens, and demanded a more popular 
 exponent than a dry prose treatise. If man be indeed the 
 measure of all things, the passions and the miseries of man 
 take their place in philosophy, and require exposition and 
 analysis as well as his higher principles. Above all, the weak 
 and the ignorant, the woman and the slave, have their rights in 
 the democracy where all men have been already equalised, and 
 their wisdom, their fortitude, and their temperance are not less 
 suitable to excite our terror and our pity than the sufferings of 
 heroic men. Such were the altered conditions of tragedy in 
 the hands of Euripides. 
 
 § s$6. But I must add a word, lest it should be imagined 
 that the great poets and prose writers, whom I have de- 
 scribed as rising just before the movement, had remained 
 absolutely untouched by it. Both Sophocles and Herodotus 
 were too clear-sighted and too sympathetic to permit of their 
 standing altogether aloof from the current of thought in their 
 maturer years. Hence we find in Sophocles Eristic, as in the 
 dispute of Teucer and the Atridae (Ajax), we find in Herodotus 
 scepticism, we find in both a rhetorical skill which, though con- 
 cealed by the garb of poetry or of conversation, shows that 
 neither was insensible to the charms of the new artistic study 
 of diction. The appearance of a break with the old beliefs in 
 Herodotus, and the insistance upon personal evidence, have 
 caused him to be named, though unjustly, the sophist of Greek 
 history. There is in Sophocles an approximation even to the 
 compression and obscurity of Thucydides, which indicates (I 
 suppose) the reaction of Antiphon and his school against the 
 obvious and stilted periods of Gorgias. But nevertheless, 
 when all due allowances have been made, the broad fact 
 remains, that Sophocles and Herodotus belong to a different 
 generation and a different school of thought from Euripides 
 and Thucydides. Hence it is not only justifiable, but even 
 necessary, to separate them in treatment, though they stand 
 almost side by side in chronology. 
 
 § 337. If this history were a history of Greek philosophy, we 
 
CH. III. SOCRATES. 65 
 
 should class Socrates not with the Sophists, but as the head 
 of a new movement, and the father of Ethical philosophy, and 
 of critical method in the succeeding century. But from a lite- 
 rary point of view, it must not be forgotten that he was a man 
 of the Periclean age, and the contemporary of those who 
 made the fifth century the most splendid in Greek literature. 
 Nevertheless we cannot trace his effect upon the books of his 
 own day, except in the attacks of the Old Comedy, and the 
 many traditions which make him a friend and admirer of 
 Euripides. It is only after his death that all Hellas begins to 
 ring with his name. We may therefore connect him either 
 with the influence which brought him forth, or with those 
 which were derived from him. I prefer the former, though 
 less usual course, as being best suited to show his position in 
 Greek literature. 
 
 It must be remembered that Socrates never wrote anything, 
 and that his literary prominence is solely due to the extraor- 
 dinary stimulus he gave to others. For he not only suggested 
 all the philosophy of the succeeding centuries, but he really 
 created a new form of Attic prose — the philosophical dialogue, 
 which in the hands of Plato outshines every other form of 
 Greek writing in the fourth century, except perhaps the speeches 
 of Demosthenes. Let us first consider what he owed to his 
 predecessors, and then what were his special points of origi- 
 nality as compared with them. 
 
 § 338. It is hardly true to say that he was the first to bring 
 down philosophy from heaven — from abstruse physical specula- 
 tions — to earth — to ethical questions concerning the rules of 
 human life. More than one of the greater sophists, such as Pro- 
 dicus, had concerned themselves with morality, and professed 
 the teaching of virtue. It is not less inaccurate to say that he 
 invented negative dialectic, or the method of arguing with an 
 adversary by raising difficulties, and proving absurd conse- 
 quences, for this had been the special field in which Zeno had 
 already attained remarkable results. But Zeno had only ap- 
 plied his dialectic to purely speculative metaphysic, and the 
 Sophists had only regarded moral lessons as a small part of the 
 cycle of practical education. The novelty in Socrates was the 
 
 VOL. II. F 
 
66 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. in. 
 
 application of the scientific method of dialectic to practical 
 questions, and his severance of these, of ethical enquiries, from 
 the physical and theological speculations of older philosophers. 
 This was accordingly another step in the severance of the 
 branches of education, which was perhaps commenced by 
 Antiphon's exclusive adherence to rhetoric. Now this latter 
 was the very branch which Socrates wholly avoided, and which 
 he protested against in the pursuit of clear ethical notions. He 
 insisted upon perpetual question and answer, upon keeping up 
 the pupil's attention by making him join as an equal or fellow 
 enquirer in the research, and he sought, from an induction of 
 the particular uses of any term, to arrive at some general defini- 
 tion which should comprise them, and thus convey a clear and 
 consistent idea to those who used that term. Thus he not 
 only laid the foundations of the science of ethics, but he stimu- 
 lated his followers to an accurate use of abstract terms, and to 
 set down their enquiries in the form of question and answer ; 
 in other words, philosophical accuracy, and the conversational 
 form, were his positive contributions to literature. 
 
 His negative importance was his wholesome antagonism 
 to the taste for rhetoric, for flowing periods, and plausible 
 statements, which infected and had almost completely lea- 
 vened Attic literature at the close of this period. His whole 
 life was a protest against rhetoric as an engine of educa- 
 tion or of self-culture. Talking well about a subject was a 
 mere disguising of ignorance to oneself and others. The 
 real thing was to sift each point, and discuss each state- 
 ment. So deeply did Socrates feel this necessity of clearing 
 up one's own mental condition, that he held all virtue to 
 be knowledge, and that vice arose not from passion, but from 
 ignorance, or perhaps rather from confusion of thought. This 
 part of his teaching was indeed as it were an inheritance from 
 the Sophists whom he combated all his life, for they too pro- 
 fessed to make good citizens by teaching, and if virtue can be 
 taught, it must be a kind of knowledge. But the whole spirit 
 of Socrates' teaching was nevertheless directly opposed to the 
 rival educators, with whom he was often classed. They were 
 brilliant and superficial ; he was homely and thorough ; they 
 
CH. ill. PORTRAITS OF SOCRATES. 67 
 
 rested in scepticism, he advanced through it to deeper and 
 sounder faith ; they were wandering and irresponsible, he was 
 fixed at Athens, and showed forth by his life the doctrines he 
 preached. 
 
 § 339. But I will not digress into Socrates' philosophy or 
 into his life. These things are fully discussed not only in the 
 philosophical, but in the political history of Greece. It may be 
 sufficient here to state that he was the son of the sculptor 
 Sophroniscus and Phaenarete (a midwife), and that having 
 followed his father's trade for a short while — a specimen of his 
 work was said to be preserved in the Acropolis, where Pausa- 
 nias saw it — he turned to ethical speculation. But he started 
 with self-examination, and rejected all superficial solutions, and 
 he soon came to test his researches by examining those around 
 him, and seeking from them answers to the moral questions 
 which puzzled him. He performed the public duties which 
 fell to his lot with constancy and bravery, and bore with great 
 equanimity the extreme poverty — fxvpla irevla — which was the 
 result of his devotion to the training of others. But as all 
 the foremost young men of Athens — Alcibiades, Critias, Char- 
 mides — attended him, he was attacked by the orthodox and 
 democratic party after the Restoration, on the charge of cor- 
 rupting the youth and teaching the worship of strange gods. 
 His defence, which we must not identify with the famous 
 Apology of Socrates by his pupil Plato, justified his conduct, 
 and assumed so bold and patronising a tone to the jury, that 
 he was condemned by a small majority, and executed 399 B.C. 
 The real causes and the significance of this sentence have 
 much occupied modern critics, but do not belong to our present 
 subject. Thus Athens lost a striking and familiar figure, which 
 had for half a century frequented the market-place ; but his 
 spirit lived on in the schools which sprang from his teaching. 
 
 § 340. The many extant busts agree with the indications in 
 Plato's Symposium concerning the very ugly type of his face — 
 round eyes, snub nose, and thick protruding lips. But if the 
 type was that of a Silenus, there was much kindliness and geni- 
 ality about him, along with great bodily vigour and endurance. 
 We have two detailed portraits of his life and conversation in the 
 
68 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. nr. 
 
 Dialogues of Plato, and in the Dialogues of Xenophon, who also 
 wrote memoirs of his master. These latter are by modern scho- 
 lars thought the less idealised portrait of the man, but in many 
 traits they agree with the more elaborate and grander picture 
 suggested in the Dialogues of Plato. There is a peculiar group 
 of these Dialogues specially devoted to drawing a true picture 
 of Socrates in his last days — the Euthyphron, a discussion on 
 his views concerning piety at the moment when he was charged 
 with impiety by Meletus ; the Apology, which professes to give his 
 defence in court; and the Crito, in which he refuses the chance 
 of escaping, and lays down the strict duty of obedience to the 
 law as the great civic virtue. This last dialogue shows us 
 clearly enough the Xenophontic side of the man, who together 
 with intellectual scepticism inculcated plain orthodox morality 
 in practice. The Phcedo, which completes the dramatic picture, 
 and paints the last hours of his prison life, seems a later com- 
 position, and attributes to him metaphysical theories, which 
 were rather Platonic than Socratic. But the scenery is no 
 doubt fairly accurate. This group then gives us Socrates in 
 his death. The best Platonic picture of him in his life is to be 
 found in the introductions to the Lysis and Charmides, and in 
 the latter portion of the Symposium, where the drunken 
 Alcibiades draws that wonderful, audacious, and unparalleled 
 portrait of him in his most secret moments. 
 
 It is suspected that Plato has introduced many of his 
 own theories under the aegis of Socrates' name. This very 
 probable conclusion is, however, apparently opposed to the 
 testimony of Aristotle, who constantly in his extant writings 
 quotes the opinions of Socrates, and quotes them from his 
 words in the Dialogues of Plato. But he probably assumes 
 it as known that the Platonic Socrates is an idealised 
 portrait. Nor does he ever quote the Socrates drawn by 
 Xenophon or any other of the numerous authors of Socratic 
 dialogues. 1 There is a third sketch of the man in the fragments 
 of Aristoxenus, who states on the authority of his own father 
 that he was a man of strong passions and irascible temper, 
 taking money for teaching, and altogether of a lower type than 
 
 * In the chapters on Plato and Xenophon I will return to this question. 
 
CH. ill. SOCRATES' TEACHING. 69 
 
 the fuller accounts compel us to believe. This shows us at 
 least that he had many opponents and detractors, who looked 
 upon him as anything but a great moral and social reformer. 
 
 § 341. It is indeed not difficult to see injurious ten- 
 dencies suggested by his teaching, which might alarm more 
 earnest thinkers than the old conservatives, who feared that he 
 was shaking all the foundations of traditional morality and 
 religion. There is no doubt that by his discouraging the pur- 
 suit of practical politics, of oratory, and of physical science, 
 until men had cleared up all their first principles by ample dis- 
 cussion, he encouraged a strong and very mischievous tendency 
 among all social people — that of wasting their time in conver - 
 sation, the \L<ryj)% repirvov kcikov of Euripides. It is no doubt 
 very well to say that these dialectical talks were all-important. 
 Even in the Dialogues of Plato, which are of course vastly 
 better than the actual discussions, there is much prolixity, and 
 much waste of time and ingenuity. Accordingly the charge that 
 Socrates taught young men to idle in talking over what they 
 ought to do — adoXecrx^y as the Greeks called it — is not un- 
 founded. Again, the doctrine that each man's first and most 
 absolute duty was to purify his own soul from moral ignorance, 
 and attain to that knowledge which was virtue — this doctrine 
 asserted the infinite value of each man's own good as contrasted 
 with the good of others and of the State. Hence Socrates 
 preached what the Germans call that absolute subjectivity which 
 was ultimately the destruction of the whole ancient idea of 
 the State. Though himself an exemplary citizen, it may be 
 asserted that none of his pupils ever turned out even a mode- 
 rately good one. Young aristocrats like Alcibiades, Critias, 
 and Charmides set up their 'absolute subjectivity' as above 
 the laws, and endeavoured to use other men as slaves or play- 
 things. Men of pleasure like Aristippus used the virtuous and 
 vicious alike for their own convenience, and escaped by volun- 
 tary exile from the intolerable duties of promoting the welfare 
 and good government of their fellows. Last of all the Cynics, 
 such as Antisthenes and Diogenes, broke with society altogether, 
 lived as strangers under the protection of laws which they 
 despised, and offended and shocked their fellow-citizens by the 
 
yo HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. ill. 
 
 grossest rudeness and the most shameless indecencies. No 
 doubt these men were parodies of Socrates. They omitted all 
 the refinement, all the grace, all the wonderful attractiveness, 
 which his threadbare cloak and naked feet could not impair. 
 They exaggerated his somewhat prosy homeliness about 
 cobblers and tinkers and tailors as the proper illustrations in 
 moral enquiry. They travestied his noble contempt of a false 
 and unjust public opinion into an insolent disregard of all the 
 traditional decencies of social life. Still they wei-e parodies. 
 They followed up his rejection of the ordinary culture of 
 sophistic, education with a rejection of all culture, and thus for 
 the first time that closest of all alliances in Greek social life 
 was dissolved. Unfortunately, perhaps indeed fortunately, the 
 books of all the Socratic philosophers, except those of Xeno- 
 phon and Plato, have perished. The myriad tracts enumerated 
 by Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of Euclid of Megara, of 
 Stilpo, of Antisthenes, of Diogenes, of Aristippus, and of the 
 other viri Socratici are gone, and have hardly left a trace 
 behind. But though we thus have escaped commenting upon 
 their style and method, it was necessary to say a word in passing 
 on the extraordinary revolution produced by Socrates in Greek 
 thought. Had these men lived a century earlier, they would 
 assuredly have been Sophists. In the fourth century they were 
 all developed in antagonism to the general features of the 
 Sophists. 
 
 § 342. But we must now take up another thread in the com- 
 plex woof, and show how great men of a totally different stamp 
 stood out at Athens, together with the poets, the historians, and 
 the Sophists. We have seen in the last chapters how, from the 
 writing of treaties and drawing up of registers, the first 
 attempts had been suggested of setting down first mythical 
 histories, and then annals in unfettered or prose diction — 
 a very important and late step in a society whose poetry 
 had long reached a splendid literary form, and had been 
 employed for politics and for philosophy as well as for more 
 emotional and romantic subjects. These bald and dry at- 
 tempts were gradually refined into the narrative form by 
 Hecatseus, and perfected by the introduction of dramatic 
 
CH. in. DECAY OF IONIC PROSE. 71 
 
 elements — of humour and pathos in the matter, and mixture 
 of dialogue with narrative in the form, by the great and 
 consummate genius of Herodotus. But with him this branch 
 of Greek literature reached its highest point. The later 
 attempts to write Ionic historical prose, such as that of Ktesias, 
 strove merely to enhance the effects attained by Herodotus, 
 and made no lasting impression upon their age. Indeed, it is 
 very remarkable how little even his splendid work is cited 
 among contemporaries, and how intent the men of his day were 
 upon a different style and a different ideal in prose writing. 
 Not even the great body of Greek speculation which was 
 written in Ionic prose, and which contained the deepest 
 thoughts of their deepest thinkers— Heracleitus, Democritus, 
 Anaxagoras — could stay the current which set in a new direc- 
 tion. 
 
 Perhaps an account of the Sophists should not close without 
 a word about Hippias of Elis, whom the Platonic dialogues 
 called after him describe as an ostentatious, but clever and ver- 
 satile man, accomplished in many arts, but specially in rhetoric. 
 His writings are completely lost, and there remain from him 
 but a couple of antiquarian notes, such as that in the Argument 
 of the CEdipus Rex on the history of the word tyrant. Among 
 his other researches, he undertook to publish for the Eleans a 
 complete list of the Olympic victors, and this list, surviving 
 in Eusebius' Chronicon, has ever since been quoted as the 
 earliest and most authentic register of events kept in Greece. 
 But Plutarch (Mtma, cap. 1) says expressly it was a late work 
 (that is, resting on no ancient or earlier researches), and that 
 Hippias started from no trustworthy foundation. If so, the 
 learned world has been mistaking a sophistical tour deforce for 
 an authentic record of facts. I have discussed the question in 
 the Journal of Hellenic Studies^ ii. 164, sq. 
 
72 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. IV. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF ORATORY AND THE RISE OF ATTIC PROSE 
 COMPOSITION — GORGIAS, ANTIPHON. 
 
 § 343. The new direction was itself determined by two great 
 causes — the spread of education among the masses, and the in- 
 crease of democratic constitutions throughout the Greek world. 
 For the consequent importance of conversation and discussion 
 raised eloquence above all other branches of literature, and no 
 sooner was critical attention directed to its power and charm, 
 than they were found to be reducible to a theory which could 
 be taught to a degree impossible in the case of poetry. This 
 was the teachable or artificial element in oratory, by which 
 the speaker, in addition to the natural gifts of genius and of 
 outward grace, adds the technical skill derived from the science 
 of rhetoric, the r£x vr i, as the first inventors called it. 
 
 In the simpler sense eloquence had always been at home 
 among the Greeks. The Homeric poems assume it as a great 
 gift in their heroes, and one not generally possessed by them. 
 Odysseus, and Nestor, and Phcenix are the orators of the 
 heroic age, and the specimens of their persuasive speaking in 
 the poems show how keenly the rhapsodists and their audiences 
 appreciated this high quality. In Hesiod it is an inspiration 
 of kings by the muse. The deficiency of the Spartan Menelaus 
 almost seems suggested by Doric, not by Achaean Sparta. 
 But in early historical days, it is remarkable how little we hear 
 of eloquence. None of the early tyrants is reported to have 
 owed his power to this quality, not even Peisistratus, who was 
 a literary and perhaps an eloquent man. In the pages of 
 Herodotus we can only find the Athenian Hippocleides, who 
 outshines the other suitors of Agariste in social eloquence at the 
 
CH. IV. ORIGIN OF LEGAL ELOQUENCE. 73 
 
 feast, and Themistocles — the first notable historic instance, which 
 the evidence of Thucydides corroborates. Though Herodotus 
 does not remark upon it, his dramatic narrative leaves us in no 
 doubt as to the secret of Themistocles' influence. It is, however, 
 certain that his speaking was not more based on technical know- 
 ledge than that of the orators in the Iliad, and that, like the 
 many other speakers in Herodotus, he trusted to a persuasive 
 manner, and to weighty facts to produce the effect he desired. 
 The period after the Persian wars was that which we have 
 already discussed in connection with tragedy, and the develop - 
 ment of philosophy and sophistic. The democratic right of 
 free speech, and the love of talking and disputing, so dear to 
 Greeks of all ages, comes out everywhere. Tragedy is the 
 poetry of argument and of eloquence, rival systems of philosophy 
 are the arena of polemic and exposition ; sophistic is little 
 more than the setting up of this formal readiness as the highest 
 and most perfect accomplishment of life. But far more im- 
 portant than all these luxuries of education were the practical 
 uses of eloquence, not only in public deliberation, but in plead- 
 ing before democratic assemblies or courts of justice. Hence 
 the necessities of the age must produce teachers of eloquence 
 in all these branches. 
 
 § 344. The earliest practical development was due to the 
 Sicilians, who seem to have been always remarkable among 
 the Greeks for their Attic qualities, their quickness of intellect, 
 and love of clever speaking. There are signs of this talent even 
 in the scanty fragments of Epicharmus and Sophron ; nor did it 
 become extinct down to the days of Cicero, who specially 
 notes it in many places through his Verrine speeches and 
 his rhetorical writings. But the introduction of democracy 
 at Syracuse in 466 B.C., and at Agrigentum a few years later, 
 gave a great impetus to the study of oratory ; and so it comes 
 that while Aristotle, speaking loosely, mentions Empedocles 
 of Agrigentum as the master of Gorgias and the father 
 of rhetoric, Syracuse certainly produced in Korax the first 
 founder of the art of preparing court speeches, with a view 
 to persuading the judges by artful attack and defence. It 
 is said that the expulsion of the tyrants produced so many 
 
74 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. iv. 
 
 claims for property wrongfully seized and transferred by them, 
 that Korax wrote his techne, and probably prepared speeches 
 for pay, to meet this public outburst of litigation. But the 
 special point about him and his successor Tisias, was their 
 avoidance of the trade of sophist, and their strict adherence 
 to the practical profession of rhetor. We are told in the Lives 
 of the Orators, ascribed to Plutarch, that Tisias gave lessons to 
 Lysias at Thurii, and to Isocrates at Athens. Pausanias even 
 says that he came with Gorgias on his celebrated embassy (427 
 B.C.) to Athens. All these anecdotes are of little authority. 
 There is no good evidence that Korax, who taught early, and 
 Tisias, who taught late, in the fifth century, wandered about 
 like Gorgias. It is also certain that they composed their 
 speeches for Syracusans in Doric dialect, and were therefore 
 inconvenient models for Attic orators. A techne, or rhetorical 
 treatise, by Tisias was extant in antiquity, in which he de- 
 veloped the importance of the cikos, or putting probable points, 
 which Plato adopts and developes in his Phczdrus. 
 
 It is evident that these Rhetors, just like the Sophists, cared 
 nothing for truth and falsehood, but altogether for persuasion. 
 This was generally called i making the worse argument appear 
 the better,' and is attacked by both Plato and Aristophanes, 
 as if the whole profession of advocates were not necessarily 
 founded upon the principle of leaving the truth to be ascer- 
 tained by the judge, and of confining themselves to the 
 strengthening of the side on which they have been retained. 
 This charge against the Sophists, which all the German scholars 
 repeat with great devoutness, might be brought with equal 
 justice, and equal irrelevancy, against the great profession of the 
 law in the present day. It is Machiavelli's adherence to this 
 scientific neglect of moral considerations in a general policy, 
 instead of a particular cause, which has excited against him 
 the same kind of charge with greater force. 
 
 As has been just observed, we have no evidence of the influ- 
 ence of Korax and Tisias on Attic judicial oratory, and yet it is 
 almost certain that Antiphon must have studied them. For 
 he was essentially their successor, and not the successor of the 
 Sophists, strictly so called, who taught at Athens during the fifth 
 
CH. iv„ THE ELOQUENCE OF PERICLES. 75 
 
 century. Protagoras was indeed supposed by some to have made 
 advances in rhetoric, but it was not in forensic, but in dialectical 
 speaking. He discussed the accurate sense and use of words, 
 and noted grammatical anomalies ; he expounded poets, and 
 discussed politics — in fact, he did everything but lay down strict 
 rules for judicial argument. Nevertheless, his general studies 
 must have greatly influenced style ; and if Pericles thought 
 it worth while spending a day in discussing with him the real 
 cause of an accident, he can have been no mean or unsuggestive 
 thinker. But neither he, nor Prodicus, nor Hippias of Elis, 
 though the one set forth the praise of virtue with elegant 
 diction, and the other brought together an encyclopaedia of 
 knowledge in his lectures, can be called special masters in the 
 art of Attic prose. It is indeed possible that they all, like 
 Protagoras, continued to use the Ionic dialect. 
 
 § 345. But while these men were promoting in a formal 
 way accuracy of diction and elegance of form, political oratory 
 of a more solid kind, such as had been employed by Themis- 
 tocles, was receiving a great impulse at the hands of Pericles. 
 There can be no doubt as to the extraordinary effect of his 
 public speaking. Even the comic poets who upbraid his 
 policy, and assail his motives, cannot deny it. They speak 
 of him as the Olympian, whose eloquence was very thunder 
 and lightning ; they speak of him as charming the audience 
 with magic power, and alone of the speakers of that day 
 leaving a sting behind. 1 Yet we know that he left nothing 
 written save a few decrees, that he never thought of publish- 
 ing his speeches, and that the wonderful effects produced 
 were not by a violent or impassioned manner, but by the 
 weight of his character, the dignity and calmness of his de- 
 meanour, and the solid and convincing nature of his argu- 
 ments. The few sayings remembered of him are remarkable 
 for pithiness, and for a deep poetic feeling, and we know that, 
 in addition to his political speeches, he made some of those 
 semi-political harangues at public funerals, which were of the 
 nature of an epideictic display, and which excited an ungovern- 
 able enthusiasm in the Athenian women then present, whose 
 
 1 Cf. Vol. I. p. 431, note. 
 
76 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. IV. 
 
 seclusion debarred them from hearing elsewhere the great orator. 
 But we may be certain that, though we have no remains of the 
 speeches which he delivered, the compositions put into his 
 mouth by Thucydides have no resemblance to them except in 
 the policy they advocate. The rhetorical antitheses and verbal 
 subtleties of Thucydides were quite foreign to the genius of 
 Pericles, who clearly owed his power to his profound thoughts, 
 which were doubtless clothed in poetical and figurative, but 
 clear diction. This purely political oratory, which despised the 
 trammels of rhetorical form, was probably the oratory aimed 
 at by such democratic speakers as Cleon and Lysicles and 
 Hyperbolus, though we know that the first of them added vul- 
 gar and extravagant action — a thing quite contrary to Greek 
 taste. In after days there may have been a few proud and 
 careless aristocrats who trusted to natural gifts in public speak- 
 ing, and this would seem also to have been the case with 
 Phocion ; but on the whole, even political oratory could not save 
 itself from the inroads of rhetoric, and thus we have in Demos- 
 thenes the highest combination of both, but probably a political 
 eloquence inferior to the more pregnant and more poetical, 
 though less elaborated, eloquence of Pericles. 
 
 During the period of Pericles' greatness as a political 
 orator, judicial eloquence was shaping itself, as we shall 
 presently see, into an exact science in the hands of Anti- 
 phon. But at the same time, the third prominent branch 
 among the Greeks, epideictical oratory, or the eloquence of 
 display, was rapidly developing in the hands of Gorgias. It 
 was of course impossible that these three branches of oratory 
 should keep perfectly distinct, for great distinction in any 
 one of them must naturally lead to the others, as Pericles 
 was called upon to deliver panegyrics, and Antiphon to defend 
 himself by a political speech. Still the parentage of the ' Attic 
 orators ' from Antiphon, and of Antiphon from Korax, is direct 
 and certain ; so is the descent of Isocrates from the school of 
 Gorgias. Equally certain is it, that in Themistocles, Pericles, 
 Alcibiades and Phocion we have a practical kind of public 
 speaking, which did not condescend to rhetorical artifices, and 
 was probably more like the best speaking in the English House 
 
CH. iv. GORGIAS. 7j 
 
 of Commons than anything else which I can suggest. But of 
 course, from the very nature of this eloquence, which was not 
 written out by the speakers, and never reported (a device 
 unknown to the Greeks), we can trace in it no development 
 or necessary progress. 
 
 § 346. We therefore turn at once to Gorgias, whom we 
 merely mentioned (p. 60) in speaking of the philosophic side of 
 the Sophists, as his real importance belongs to the history of 
 oratory. Aristotle speaks of Empedocles as his forerunner ; but 
 does not imply that Empedocles actually prepared a rkyvt], or 
 devoted himself to rhetoric, but that his reputation in this direc- 
 tion arose both from the splendid diction with which he recom- 
 mended his physical theories, and from his democratic action 
 at Agrigentum. If Empedocles was the teacher of Gorgias in 
 philosophy, 1 this may have been an additional reason for the 
 remark. But the slight difference of age, as Blass remarks, 
 between the two men, as well as between Protagoras and Tisias, 
 makes the relation of master and pupil between any of them 
 unlikely. For Empedocles seems to have become prominent 
 about 470 B.C., and the birth of Gorgias, who lived all through 
 the fifth century, cannot have been much after 490. All our 
 authorities agree that he lived over too years, and that he came 
 to Athens as a celebrated man in 427, apparently for the first 
 time, as his speaking then made so wonderful an impression. 
 He was born at Leontini, the son of Charamantides, and had a 
 brother Herodicus, a physician whom Plato mentions, and a 
 sister, whose descendants set up a memorial statue, which 
 Pausanias describes, to the rhetor at Olympia. His other 
 remarks in connection with it 2 are curious, but not very trust- 
 worthy. Though Gorgias was justly counted a sophist, and 
 published a celebrated sceptical treatise, he seems to have 
 preferred to call himself a rhetor. He travelled much about 
 Greece, and was reputed to have amassed great wealth — yet 
 he only left a very small fortune, though he was unmarried, 
 
 1 The testimony of Plato (Menon, 76 c) is decisive that Gorgias and 
 Empedocles were advocates of the same doctrines, and must therefore have 
 been in some way connected. 
 
 2 vi. 17, 8 : this inscription has been found lately at Olympia (Blass^ 
 Att. Ber. iv. 324). 
 
78 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. iv. 
 
 and had frugal habits. But frugal habits, as I explained (p. 59), 
 are consistent with luxury and even extravagance in other 
 directions. He seems to have died in Thessaly, whither so 
 many celebrated men of letters resorted. 
 
 A great number of eminent men are named among his 
 pupils : Menon and Aristippus in Thessaly, who are mentioned 
 in Xenophon's Anabasis; Likymnius, Polus, Alkidamas and 
 Isocrates, the rhetors, with good reason ; Thucydides, Critias 
 and Alcibiades, on doubtful authority. Though he shared with 
 all the other Sophists the boast that he could make the weak 
 appear the strong, and that no professional man could argue 
 even concerning his profession against a trained dialectician, he 
 seems to have been a man of good moral character and high 
 aspirations, and is said to have designated as a lampoon, and the 
 work of a young Archilochus, the celebrated dialogue {Gorgias) 
 in which Plato attacks his theory of rhetoric. He left several 
 technical essays, but they are supposed to have been ready- 
 made commonplaces rather than scientific expositions of prin- 
 ciples. He is besides reported to have composed political 
 speeches and harangues ; probably the former were merely 
 accidentally political, and belonged properly to the epideicticai 
 species, the harangue, of which he was the real founder, and in 
 which his great merit lies. 
 
 § 347. The subjects of these oratorical displays are pre- 
 served to us. Two of these, called the Olymfiicus and Pythicus, 
 were, like Isocrates' Panegyricus, intended as a sort of poli- 
 tical pamphlet, except that Isocrates was unable to deliver 
 them with effect, while Gorgias evidently trusted to the 
 power and grace of his voice and presence. The subject 
 of the once famous Olympicus was an exhortation to the 
 assembled Greeks to give up internal feuds, and combine 
 in attacking and appropriating the territory of the barba- 
 rians. This subject was a favourite one with the Rhetors, and 
 gave them opportunity to flatter the Greeks on their national 
 advantages as compared with the surrounding barbarians ; but 
 it is a great mistake to confound this Panhellenism, either in 
 Gorgias or in Isocrates, with the Hellenism of a later age, 
 which sought to infuse Greek culture into the surrounding 
 
CH. iv. STYLE OF GORGIAS. 79 
 
 empires. Similarly there was an Epitaphios of Gorgias, which 
 probably served as a model to succeeding orators, for, in addi- 
 tion to the lost epitaphios delivered by Pericles and other lead- 
 ing Athenian citizens, we have five extant — that in Thucydides, 
 that in the Menexenus of Plato, that of Hypereides, and those 
 ascribed to Lysias and to Demosthenes, which are late and 
 poor. 1 We know from these how stereotyped was the form of 
 such harangues, and it is more than probable that it is to Gor- 
 gias that we owe its first establishment. There was also a 
 panegyric on Elis, beginning, we are told, without preface 
 (proem) with the words 7 H\tc 7ro\i£ evlai^v. The farther 
 allusions in Aristotle's Rhetoric to his use of digressions in 
 these harangues make us imagine them not unlike Pindar's odes 
 in a prose dress, wherein the mythical ancestors and former 
 greatness of the victor's family formed the chief ornament of 
 the encomium. 
 
 § 348. Gorgias' style was far more flowery and poetical than 
 the chaster taste of succeeding generations could tolerate even 
 as a display, for of course the judicial orators, who spoke in 
 court and for a fixed purpose of persuading a jury, must 
 have been from the beginning more ordinary in their lan- 
 guage, and tamer in their reasoning. But in addition to the 
 license of his subject, and the occasions of his display, there 
 seems in our extant fragments a striving after alliteration 
 and riming in sound, and antitheses in sense, which show 
 how prose in his hands still felt afraid to abandon the 
 aids by which poetry seeks to charm the ear. The compo- 
 sition seems far too attentive to form, and the display of inge- 
 nuity in this respect is so conscious and excessive as to be 
 considered childish by the Greeks, who laid him aside, till the 
 Roman rhetors took him up, and studied him afresh. The 
 grammarians who write about style censure him gravely for this 
 excess of irdpiaa and o/doioTeXevra, just as Plutarch censures 
 Aristophanes for using them, as compared with Menander. 
 
 1 Isocrates also mentions that the subject of the Panegyricus, so far as 
 it consisted in the praise of Athens, brought him into direct competition 
 with these encomia. His Evagoras was often called, though wrongly, an 
 Epitaphios, because it dealt with the virtues of the deceased monarch. 
 
So HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. IV. 
 
 His metaphors also were so frequent as to be tedious. Most of 
 these very superficial devices were called Gorgian figures. I here 
 quote the principal fragment given by Dionysius, as it is not 
 easily accessible, except in Mullach's Fragmenta or Clinton's 
 Fasti, though a curious and early specimen of Attic prose. 1 For 
 Gorgias appears to have adopted this dialect, and thus in another 
 important respect to have marked an epoch in Greek eloquence. 
 There are two speeches preserved among the orators under 
 his name, the Encomium of Helen, and the Defence of ' Palamedes, 
 which have much exercised critics as to their genuineness. 
 Elass, after a careful examination of them in his first volume, 
 cannot make up his mind to accept them, though they have many 
 likenesses to his certain fragments, and there is no decisive ana- 
 chronism in style or matter to expose them ; but when he comes 
 to discuss the Helen of Isocrates 2 he is so impressed by the argu- 
 ments in favour of its being a reply to the Encomium, and to a 
 speech of GorgiaSj that he decides in favour of its genuineness. 
 Nothing can better prove to us the difficulty of deciding the 
 
 1 SchoL ad Hermog. 412 : Tt yap farriv ro?s u.vo'pdo'i rovrois, &v 8e? 
 ikvSodcri 7rpeo~eivai ; rl Se Kal Trpoffrjv, ay ov Set irpo&eivai ; elirelv §vva{p.r\v 
 & ffovXop.ai, $ovXoip.f\v Se a SeT, Xadav p.ev rh\v Beiav vep-eaiv, (pvywv Se rbv 
 avQp&Ttivav <p06vov. Ovroi yap eiteKrrjvro evdeov p.ev rfyv aperJiv, avQp&irivov 
 Se rb %vi\rbv iroXXa pJev Srj rb Laptev eiiteiK.es rod avOddovs Sucaiov irpoKpl- 
 povres, iroXXa. Se vojxov aiepifieias ASytev opd6ri)ra' rovro vop.i(ovres Qei6rarov 
 Kal mivdrardv vSp.ev, rb SeW eV t$ deavri Kal Xeyeiv teal criyav Kal iroielv' 
 Kal Sitraa acrK^ffavres pdXiara wv Se?, yv<hp.r\v Ka\ pd>p.riv, rtyv p.ev 0ovXevovres, 
 T7/J/ Se airoreXovvres' Oepdirovres piv ra>v adiKas dvcrrvxovvrav, KoXacrral 
 Se r&v aSiKtas ebrvxovvrwv, avdddeis irpbs rb crvp.<pepov, adpyrjroi irpbs rb 
 irpeirov, r(p <ppovlp.ip rrjs yvd>p.f)s iravovres rb &<ppov, vfipiaral els robs vfipiards, 
 KotTfitoi els robs Kocrp.iovs, &<po$oi els robs acpofiovs, deivol ev rois Zeivots. 
 Maprvpta Se ravrwv rpoirala esr-inaavro rwv iroXep.'iwv, Albs p.ev ayaXp.ara, 
 rovrcov Se avaQ^p-ara' ovk ciireipoi ovre ep.cpvrov'Apeos, otire vop.ip.wv 'EpArvv, 
 ovre ivoirXlov"Epidos, oijre cpiXonaXov Elp-fjvrjs' o~ep.vol p.ev els robs deobs rep 
 St/cataj, '6o~ioi Se irpbs robs roKeas ttj Oepaireia, Zinaioi irpbs robs aarobs rip 
 Xo~(p evcref5e?s Se irpbs robs tyiXovs rfj iriarei. Totyapovv avrwv airodavSvruv 
 o ir69os ov avvaireQavev, aAA' aQdvaros obit aawp.drois cdp.ao'i £fj ov tyvrwv. 
 
 'Sep.vas yap (says Dionysius) evravda crvp,(popj}o~as Xe£eis 6 Topyias, evvoias 
 iiriiroXaiorepas vire^ayyiXXei, ro7s re irapiaots Kal 6p.otoreXevrois Kal dfioio- 
 KardpKrois KaXXwirifav 8S ZXov irpbs Kopov rbv XSyov. 
 2 AB. ii. p. 222 ; and more decidedly, iv. 326. 
 
ch. iv. POLUS, LIKYMNIUS. Sr 
 
 question than these doubts and changes of opinion in such a 
 critic as Blass, who is not, like most German, over-sceptical, or 
 disposed to make light of all evidence against his own subjec- 
 tive opinions. Still, as all early critics seem to ignore them, 
 they are probably clever forgeries, at least on me they produce 
 that impression, as on most of the German critics. 1 These 
 speeches are now printed in the Teubner Antiphoti (ed. Blass), 
 but he has unfortunately not added the fragments, which must 
 be sought in Mullach's Fragmenta Philosqphorum, vol. ii. The 
 MSS. are very numerous for the Hekn, and in general found 
 with the speeches of Antiphon. Their value is discussed by 
 Blass in his Preface to Antiphon, p. xi, sq. 
 
 § 349. It is unnecessary in this place to make more than a 
 passing mention of Polus of Agrigentum, and of Ltkymnius, 
 (perhaps the Chian lyric poet cited by Bergk, FLG. p. 1251), 
 pupils and followers of Gorgias. For of neither have we any re- 
 mains, nor do the ancients quote any works of Polus save a rhe- 
 torical treatise. The picture of the man in Plato's Gorgias is 
 disagreeable, forward, and insolent ; but perhaps here too Plato 
 is playing the Archilochus. Likymnius is even more obscure, 
 and only survives in stray allusions of Aristotle and Dionysius 
 as the inventor of ' Likymnian words ' of more sound than 
 meaning. The greater pupils of Gorgias, Alkidamas and 
 Isocrates, belong to a later generation, and a newer epoch of 
 literature than that with which we are now occupied. 
 
 § 350. We turn to the clearer and far more important figure 
 of Antiphon the orator, the real father of Attic judicial ora- 
 tory, who may indeed have heard Gorgias, and learnt from 
 him, as some of the ' Lives ' assert, but who was neverthe- 
 less the founder of a very different and far more solid branch 
 of Attic prose composition. Plato in his Phcedrus (257 d) says, 
 that distinguished statesmen in Greek cities were ashamed to 
 
 1 In the preface to his Antiphon 'Teubner, 1870), Bias?, in recording 
 his change of opinion on both orations (after Reiske), regards the Pala- 
 medes as a valuable specimen of early Attic judicial oratory, which is quite 
 true, so far as accurate dissection of the subject goes. He adds, that even 
 if forgeries, these speeches give us as good an idea of the genuine Gorgias, 
 as the Roman copies give us of old Greek sculpture. 
 
 .VOL. II. G 
 
 T" 
 
 ^r 
 
82 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. IV. 
 
 commit to writing and leave behind them speeches, lest they 
 might hereafter be called sophists. Though his evidence as 
 regards the Sophists is always suspicious, it is not unlikely that 
 this sort of teaching was at first classed with other teaching, 
 and the office of schoolmaster or pedagogue (in our sense) 
 has never ranked high among the 'upper ten' of any society. 
 It is probable from Thucydides' expression (though not cer- 
 tain, as Blass implies) that at first Attic counsel, who were 
 not allowed to speak for their clients, aided them with verbal 
 instructions. But it was inevitable that they should come to 
 write down the speeches in full, and practise their clients 
 in delivering them, so that this species of eloquence soon 
 outran the political speeches on the bema, which remained for a 
 long time the composition of mere practical politicians. Hence 
 it was that when a professional rhetor like Antiphon did happen 
 to make a political speech in the course of a judicial debate^ 
 the effect of it was so extraordinary. The Germans think that 
 this practice of retaining a professional advocate by litigants was 
 the result of what they call the ochlocracy, which invaded Attic 
 politics about 420 b.c, and which is supposed by them to have 
 rapidly corrupted all morals and principle in the state. But 
 this, as Mr. Grote has long since shown, is a mere servile sub- 
 mitting to the evidence of the comic aristocrats, who traduce 
 and malign the completed democracy. It required no special 
 revolution or degradation of public opinion to produce written 
 court speeches, when the habit of retaining counsel was once 
 sanctioned. 
 
 § 351. Antiphon the son of Sophilus, of the deme Rhamnus * 
 in the north of Attica, was born early in the fifth century, about 
 480. His grandfather was said to have been an adherent 
 of the tyrants, so that his origin was probably aristocratic, 
 as is to be also inferred from his politics. The authors of 
 the ' Lives ' are at variance as regards his education, concern- 
 ing which they evidently knew nothing; his style shows, as 
 might be expected, evident traces of the study of Tisias and 
 Gorgias — the reasonable presumptions (ehora) of Tisias, and the 
 
 1 Cf. the picturesque description of the district in M. G. Perrot's 
 
 Eloquence politique et judiciaire a Alhenes, i. p. 106. 
 
CH. IV. LIFE OF ANTIPHON. 83 
 
 antitheses of Gorgias being prominent in his speeches. He 
 was evidently a celebrated teacher of rhetoric, as appears 
 from an allusion in Plato's Menexenus, and from Thucydide^' 
 statement we know that he was the leading advocate at 
 Athens. But it appears from the hint of his being self-taught, 
 from his appellation Nestor, and from other allusions in the 
 Lives, that he did not become celebrated as a practical ora- 
 tor or politician till he was advanced in years. We possess 
 none of his speeches which seem to date before 420 B.C., ex- 
 cepting possibly the indictment of the stepmother, which in my 
 opinion is not genuine. He appears, from his traditions, and 
 perhaps from constant associating with young nobles as their 
 teacher, to have acquired a profound hatred of the Athenian 
 demos ; he wrote speeches for the allied cities in disputes 
 about the tribute, and wrote a violent attack on Alcibiades, 
 who, as being a renegade, was of course exceptionally hated 
 by the aristocratic party. But it is probable that this speech 
 was spoken by some client, for all through his life this wily and 
 able man kept in the background, and pulled the strings of 
 public affairs through weaker men whom he put forward. He 
 was in fact a sort of Athenian Baron Stockmar, who made 
 excursions from education, or perhaps still more a Richard 
 Wagner, who made excursions from art, into politics. This is 
 the picture drawn of him in a famous passage by Thueydides, 
 who was, according to common tradition, his pupil and friend, 
 and who evidently regarded him with no common admiration. 
 The circumstances in which he became a moving force are 
 a prominent part of Greek history. After the Sicilian disaster, 
 when he was now an old man, he undertook the organising 
 of the oligarchical revolution, which resulted in establishing 
 the Four Hundred at Athens. We know from Thucydides' 
 graphic picture that this was done by a huge conspiracy, which 
 worked by means of the aristocratic clubs in Athens. These 
 clubs, called eraipLai, were purely political, and may perhaps 
 be compared to the Orange societies in the north of Ireland, 
 which while they profess loyalty to the constitution in their own 
 sense, and to their own order, hardly conceal their hatred of 
 their political opponents in the very formulae of their party 
 
84 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. iv. 
 
 creed. We know that these clubs carried out their object by 
 political assassination, and that they intimidated the populace 
 by their prompt and daring crimes. For this policy Thucy- 
 dides makes Antiphon responsible, and if indeed he proceeded 
 to call him ' second to no man of his day in virtue] we might 
 well doubt the historian's morality as well as his veracity. But 
 of course Thucydides meant intellectual ability, as well as a 
 generous devotion to the oligarchy. Horses or dogs which 
 performed their allotted functions properly possessed an aper-q of 
 their own quite analogous. After describing the plots and mur- 
 ders perpetrated by the oligarchical conspirators, he adds, 1 that 
 Peisander was apparently the chief actor and public head of the 
 movement ; ' but the man who devised the whole thing so as 
 to bring it to this point, and had watched it longest, was An- 
 tiphon, a man second to none of the Athenians of his day in 
 merit (apery), and abler than any to devise a plan, and to ex- 
 press his thoughts ; who never came before the (assembled) 
 people, nor so far as he could help it into any debate, but (yet) 
 was an object of suspicion to the masses on account of his re- 
 putation for cleverness ; for, indeed, he was the one man able 
 to give most help as an adviser to those who were contending 
 in debate both in court, and in the assembly.' 
 
 It is not our province to detail the fortunes of the leaders 
 of the Four Hundred ; how they despatched a deputation, in 
 which Antiphon took part, to Sparta, to put Athens completely 
 in the hands of the Lacedaemonians ; how when they re- 
 turned after the failure of this, embassy, the moderate party 
 with Theramenes obtained the ascendancy, and how most of 
 the conspirators fled to Dekeleia. Antiphon and Archeptole- 
 mus remained, for reasons which have not been preserved. 
 They were forthwith tried for their treasonable negotiation with 
 the enemies of the city, and we are fortunate in still possessing 
 the text of the indictment, as well as of the sentence, which in 
 Plutarch's Life is copied from the rhetor Caecilius, who found it 
 in Craterus' collection of state documents. 2 It appears that 
 
 1 viii. 68. According to the parallel passages quoted by Classen in his 
 Introduction (p. lxvii), dpei-7? also implies unselfishness. 
 
 2 Both these statements are quoted by Blass, AB.'\. pp. 88-9, notes. 
 
ch. iv. VARIOUS ANTIPHONS. 85 
 
 Antiphon put forth all his strength in his own defence. The 
 veteran rhetor, who had for years been the acknowledged master 
 of judicial eloquence, at last found himself obliged to apply in 
 his own case the arts and arguments with which he had sup- 
 plied his clients. His speech, which was famous in antiquity, 
 is an irreparable loss to us, as he did not adopt a technical or 
 narrow ground of defence, but reviewed the whole revolution of 
 the Four Hundred, and probably his own political life, in his 
 harangue on the coup d'etat (nepl rrjg /ifraoTacewf). Thucydides 
 goes on to say, when describing his character as above quoted, 
 that the defence was the finest oration of the kind known 
 up to his day. Agathon is said to have specially praised it 
 to the orator, who replied that the approval of one competent 
 judge atoned for its ill-success with the many. But of course 
 the case was too clear, and the general distrust of the 
 dangerous rhetor must have felt itself thoroughly justified by 
 the evidence of his antidemocratic policy. 1 He and Arche- 
 ptolemus were condemned to death, their descendants to loss 
 of civic rights ; their bodies were refused burial in Attic soil, 
 and their houses razed to the ground. 
 
 § 352. These events happened in 411 or 410 B.C. (01. 92, 2). 
 We have no other evidence whatever of the personal character of 
 this remarkable man. The Greek lives have sought to afford 
 it by confusing him with several other men of the same name, 
 first with Antiphon the democrat, whose services in war and 
 politics brought him death at the hands of the Thirty, who 
 were the successors of the Four Hundred in policy at Athens. 
 There was also Antiphon the tragic poet, murdered by Diony- 
 sius of Syracuse for an anti-tyrannic joke, and (omitting ob- 
 scure persons) the sophist Antiphon, already mentioned (p. 61). 
 Didymus ascribed none but the speeches on homicide to the 
 rhetor, to the sophist not only essays on truth and con- 
 cord, but even what he calls the ^rj^yopiKol and the ttoXltikoq — 
 political harangues. This judgment, which Hermogenes quotes 
 from Didymus, is shown to be correct from the careful exami- 
 nation of the fragments by Blass, 2 and they are accordingly 
 
 1 See the elegant sketch of the temper and feelings of the Athenian 
 people at this moment in M. G. Perrot's ELquence, i. p. 1 1 7, sq. 
 
 2 AB. i. 97, sq. 
 
86 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. iv. 
 
 printed as an appendix, under the sophist's name, in his 
 edition of Antiphon. I have spoken of these fragments in 
 connection with the Sophists. If the rhetor left no political 
 speeches, we must understand Thucydides to mean that on 
 these subjects his advice was given orally, and not by writing 
 — a probable supposition, as the litigants might be obscure 
 people, but the politicians already speakers of some experi- 
 ence. 
 
 § 353- We pass to the consideration of the still extant 
 speeches which are ascribed to him. These are obviously divis- 
 ible into two classes, the theoretical exercises, and the practical 
 or actual court speeches. The former are peculiarly interesting 
 as affording a specimen from early times of the training given 
 by the rhetors — training of a strictly real and practical ten- 
 dency, and very different from the idle declamation upon 
 impossible cases which was fashionable in the later schools. 
 On the other hand, they show plainly the professional spirit 
 then disseminated by the Sophists, who advocated the theory, 
 so naturally acceptable to the over-subtle and not over-con- 
 scientious Greek, that rhetoric was a sort of magic art, and 
 that by unlocking its secrets a man could ply at will the assent 
 and obedience of his hearers. Now a-days, when a great part 
 of eloquence consists merely in feeling intensely upon a subject, 
 and letting the heart find its most simple and natural utter- 
 ance, we cannot easily put ourselves into this curiously arti- 
 ficial attitude, which allows the conviction of the speaker in his 
 cause to go for little, and makes his eloquence a mere play 
 of intellectual dexterity. But such was indeed the case in the 
 days of Antiphon. His exercises, called tetralogies, because 
 they contain a double attack and reply on each case, are all 
 upon murder cases, as indeed are all his extant speeches ; but 
 though this branch of them was particularly famous, the unity of 
 subject in his remains is rather to be ascribed to the accidental 
 preservation of that portion of his collected speeches in which 
 this class of cases had been brought together. They are meant 
 to show how a master of the art could frame arguments with 
 equal persuasiveness on either side of a given case. 
 
 One pair of the first tetralogy will here be sufficient as an 
 
CH. iv. ANTIPHON'S FIRST TETRALOGY. 87 
 
 example. A distinguished man has been found in the way 
 murdered by night, but his person not plundered. His 
 attendant slave is found lying beside him, mortally wounded. 
 Before dying, he attests that he recognised one of the murderers, 
 the man who is now charged with the crime. Moreover, the 
 latter was known to be at enmity with the deceased, and just en- 
 gaged with him in personal litigation. As the accused denies 
 the charge absolutely, the case would come for trial before 
 the Areopagus. It should be remembered that as it is an 
 imaginary one, there is no stress laid on the narrative of the 
 facts, which are assumed as undisputed on both sides ; the pro- 
 blem is simply to argue from them in the best possible manner. 
 
 The accuser, who is a relative of the deceased, opens with 
 reminding the court how an offender of known talent and 
 mature experience will be sure to commit a crime in such a 
 manner as to avoid easy conviction, and that for this reason, 
 as direct evidence is almost sure to be wanting, the greatest 
 importance must attach to ekora, or probable inferences. He 
 adds a reminder of the public pollution resting upon the state 
 until the murderer has been prosecuted and punished. This is 
 the exordium. The argument opens by rejecting successively 
 all causes for the outrage except that of premeditated murder, 
 and shows that, such being the case, the accused had the 
 strongest motives to prompt him to the act, both from old 
 antipathy, and from the fear of condemnation in the pending 
 suit. Added to this, there is the only possible evidence, that 
 of the dying slave. On these grounds the speaker presses for 
 a verdict of condemnation, repeating in conclusion the religious 
 aspects of the question, and picturing the defilement of all the 
 temples and altars frequented by a blood-stained criminal. 
 
 To this very strong case the accused replies by opening 
 with a bitter complaint of his singular misfortune. While 
 others are relieved by a cessation or change from a pressing 
 danger, the defendant, whose property has been ruined by the 
 persecution of the deceased, has not escaped him even now, 
 but has his life still threatened and annoyed, so much so, that 
 it is actually no longer sufficient to establish his own good 
 character, but he is in danger of condemnation if he cannot 
 
88 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. iv. 
 
 discover and convict another man's murderers. He proceeds 
 at once to show that, granting his hostility to the deceased, 
 the certainty of being suspected was to him on prudential 
 grounds the strongest dissuasive from attempting it. But he will 
 undertake to retort the probable arguments set up against 
 him. In the first place, the deceased may have been slain by 
 robbers, who did not strip him because some one approached, 
 or by some criminal whom he had surprised in the commission 
 of another crime, or by some other personal enemy. Nor is 
 the evidence of the slave trustworthy ; for his excitement 
 must have made it hard to recognise the murderers, and he 
 would naturally name any person suggested by his master's 
 relations. Moreover, the evidence of slaves is at all times 
 doubtful, being never accepted without the test of torture. 
 But as regards the probabilities of the case, they are clearly 
 against the accuser, for how could a man in danger of being 
 condemned to a mere fine risk his life and liberty to avoid it ? 
 and if he did, he would do it through another, and not expose 
 himself to direct detection. His having strong reasons to 
 commit the deed rather show that he was suffering injustice at 
 the hands of the deceased, and it were indeed hard if this 
 injustice were to entail the still greater injustice of a capital 
 condemnation. The defendant concludes with retorting the 
 charge of impiety upon those who leave the real culprit un- 
 punished, and endeavour to convict an innocent man, who is 
 also a man of high public character and of blameless life. 
 
 Such are the two speeches which open the debate, carried 
 on through another attack and defence. They are all very 
 short, in fact mere skeletons to be filled out, as occasion 
 might suggest, but are so able and subtle as to show us how 
 natural was the distrust of such an art on the part of the 
 Athenian public, and how invaluable must have been the help 
 of such a counsel, if the opposite side was not furnished with 
 similar weapons. 
 
 § 354. The second tetralogy is on a case of homicide by 
 an accident in the palaestra, when a lad, throwing a dart in 
 accordance with all the rules of the school, hit another who 
 ran across him at the instant. The case is interesting as 
 
CH. IV. ANTIPHON S POISONING CASE. 89 
 
 showing the Greek sentiment concerning the pollution or 
 blood-guiltiness of any man or thing which was the cause of 
 death, w T hether intentionally or not. Hence the constant 
 subtleties as to the real cause of the event which we find 
 here, and in the speech on the chorister, and which are re- 
 ported to have occupied the attention of Pericles and Prota- 
 goras for hours together. The third tetralogy is a dispute 
 about a homicide during a quarrel. The question argued 
 is that the accused merely defended himself against the 
 attack of the deceased, who thus succeeded in causing his 
 own death ; and moreover, that his wounds not being mortal, 
 he deliberately, and against professional advice, had himself 
 treated by an incompetent physician, who caused the fatal 
 result. All these curious rhetorical exercises are evidently 
 from the same hand, and there have not been wanting attempts 
 to prove them of later date and inferior authorship than that 
 of Antiphon. But there is no reasonable ground for such 
 scepticism. The faults of over-subtlety and of crudeness attri- 
 buted to them are exactly those which we should expect from 
 his age and character, and their similarity in style, in spite of a 
 few peculiarities, to Antiphon's certain speeches and to Thucy- 
 dides' history are satisfactory evidence of their genuineness,, 
 
 § 355. I feel much more doubt about the Charge of Poisoning 
 against a Stepmother, which comes first in our MSS. This speech 
 has no doubt many features very similar to the acknowledged 
 pieces, such as the Trpo/caraoxeu??, or short summary before the 
 narrative of facts, which was usual with Antiphon, and the 
 artificial antitheses and assonances. But it is certain that 
 other rhetors of the same age used these devices. On the 
 other hand, the narrative of the facts obtains a prominence and 
 a picturesqueness in this speech which are foreign to what we 
 know of Antiphon, while the argument is neither forcible nor 
 ingenious, as his arguments are wont to be. There is, moreover, 
 a predominance of pathos in the speech which seems to me 
 strange to him. But the best modern critic, Blass, is not 
 convinced by these objections to reject the speech, and the 
 reader may therefore regard my opinion as having the weight 
 of authority against it 
 
90 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. iv. 
 
 § 356. As the speech about the chorister is on the subject 
 handled in the second tetralogy, so the speech On the Murder 
 of Herodes is in character very similar to that of the first. He- 
 rodes was an Athenian, and a relation of the accuser, who 
 became a cleruch,at Mitylene after its capture in 427 b.c. 
 While on a journey to ^Enos, he left his ship at Methymna by 
 night, apparently in a state of intoxication, and never returned, 
 nor could his body be anywhere discovered. His relatives 
 charged with the murder the only companion of his voyage, a 
 Mitylenaean, who was supposed to be incited by an enemy 
 of Herodes called Lykinos, who also lived at Mitylene. As 
 additional evidence there was adduced a letter supposed to be 
 written by the accused to Lykinos, and the declarations of a 
 slave on board, who was tortured by the relatives, and con- 
 fessed against the Mitylenaean, but was forthwith put to death, 
 having revoked his evidence when he saw that he gained 
 nothing by it. It is in this interesting case, and for a citizen of 
 a subject town, accused with murdering an Athenian citizen, 
 that Antiphon composed his admirable speech. We perceive 
 that the accused had been harshly and unjustly treated. Upon 
 coming to Athens, he had been at once cast into prison, and 
 been refused the alternative of offering bail for his appearance, 
 or of standing a second trial on appeal, though such refusal 
 was illegal. The orator must therefore not only disprove the 
 charge, but overcome a strong bias in the jury, arising from his 
 inferior condition, and the feeling against Mitylene, which had 
 not died away since the memorable crisis described by Thucy- 
 dides. I will not here pursue the intricacies of the argument, 
 in which there is, as usual, little narrative, but rather a subtle 
 discussing of the probabilities of the case. The trial is in- 
 teresting in showing the constant and stupid application of 
 torture, and the little faith which was put in slaves' evidence 
 even with this precaution. Moreover, a free man who was on 
 board was also tortured, which seems very strange, and one of 
 the speaker's points is the fact that while the slave confessed 
 and criminated him, the free man would confess nothing. 
 
 § 357. Particularly interesting is the argument which shows 
 that mere probability is an unsafe guide, especially in capital 
 
CH. iv. ANTIPHONS ASSUMED PIETY. 91 
 
 cases, and this is illustrated by several cases of false condemna- 
 tion, where the truth came out afterwards. 1 The conclusion is 
 also very characteristic, as showing the religious character of the 
 Athenian public, to which Antiphon perpetually appeals. The 
 speaker urges that had he been guilty, the gods must have 
 shown their displeasure by unfavourable weather when he was 
 sailing, or unpropitious signs when he was sacrificing with 
 others ; whereas the contrary was the case. 2 This and other 
 like appeals in Antiphon's speeches have been used with great 
 simplicity by Blass 3 to prove that the orator was a man of 
 antique sanctity, and an advocate of the national and estab- 
 lished religion. We may be sure that the follower of the great 
 sophists, and the master of Thucydides, held no such views. 
 His political career, and the practice of substituting clever 
 arguments for a just cause, especially when it first arose, are 
 anything but the marks of an old-fashioned and conservative 
 piety. But of course Antiphon, as a skilled rhetor, knew the 
 audience he was addressing, and especially in cases of homicide 
 the religious superstitions of the people were very strong, and 
 sustained by a wholesome instinct. Hence he takes the utmost 
 care that his case shall not be ruined by disclosing the least 
 irreverence or scepticism on such matters — the least hint of 
 which would have been to an elderly and sedate jury the 
 strongest eko'c that the speaker was a lawless and guilty person, 
 
 1 § 69, sq. HStj 5° eycoye Kal irpSrepov anor) imcTa/Mai yey avos, tout© 
 uhv tovs cnroQavSvTas tovto Se tovs a-KOKTeivavTas ou% evprjdevTas .... 
 auTt/ca 'E(pid\Tr]u rbv vfieTepov tto\'it7]v oi58eira> vvv evprfvrai ol airoKTeivavTes 
 
 .... tovto 8' ivrbs oil iroWov xp^ vov i"a*s ifflrrjo'ev ovSe SclSSe/cci erri 
 yeyovws rbv 8€o"it6t7)v airoKTsivaf Kal et fx\] <f>o@r}dds, &s avefiorjo-ev, iyKara- 
 Kiircov t V fxaxaipav iv rrj ffcpayfj &x eT0 <p*vya>v aAA. 5 eToA/X77ere /j.e?vcu, olttuXovt 
 av 01 evSov opres airavTts' ouSets yap av $>?to rbv 7rc«8a roX/xricrai ttots tovto. 
 He adds a curious condemnation of all the Hellenotamise on a false 
 charge, when only one escaped through the delay of his sentence. 
 
 2 From the fact of Andocides (De Myst. §§ 137-9) urging similar 
 points in favour of his own innocence, I infer that it was a commonplace 
 at Athens to argue that fair weather was a proof of favour from the gods, 
 and that a sea voyage was supposed to afford them a peculiarly convenient 
 opportunity for punishing the guilty. 
 
 3 AB, i. 135. Cf. also Professor Jebb's Attic Orators, i. p. 40. 
 
92 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. iv. 
 
 § 358. Though the subject-matter of Antiphon's speeches 
 is not without interest, there can be little doubt that the most 
 important feature about him, especially in a history of Greek 
 literature, is his form. For he is the earliest master of that 
 artificial and technical prose, which reached its climax in De- 
 mosthenes, and which is one of the most remarkable develop- 
 ments of the genius of the race. Nor is there any depart- 
 ment of Greek Literature so foreign to modern taste or to 
 modern ideas. We would willingly attribute all the minute 
 analysis of sentences in Greek orations to the barren subtlety 
 of the rhetors of Roman times, and believe that the old ora- 
 tors scorned to compose in gyves and fetters, and study the 
 syllables of their periods, and the prosody of them, as if they 
 were writing poetry. But all these details seem to have been 
 handed down in the reyvai which each of them published, 
 and Antiphon's was not the least-known among them. It 
 seems that every sentence was to be weighed and measured 
 in these orations, which were indeed not long but yet very 
 intricate, and which were constructed with so close an adher- 
 ence to rules, both in matter and in form, that we cannot 
 imagine any parallel now-a-days. Not even French prose, the 
 most polished and artificial organ of thought in modern Europe, 
 can compare with Greek rhetoric in this respect. The Greek 
 orator composed m. periods, each of which was divided into one 
 or more kCjXu, or members, four being the major limit. These 
 cola implied one another in construction, and were summed up 
 or completed by the last member, which was longer and 
 weightier in sound than the rest. This is the Karearpafx/jLivr) 
 -Xe^e, of which Antiphon is the earliest official representative, 
 though Gorgias was probably its originator, and there are not 
 wanting examples of it in Herodotus. The relative length 
 of the cola, their cadence, their ending syllables— all these 
 matters were made subject to rules. Antiphon, standing at 
 the opening of this peculiar study, has by no means attained 
 all its refinements •; he often offends against the canons of the 
 Roman critics by allowing the natural course of expression to 
 carry him away. But this is only in comparison with later 
 Attic eloquence. In comparison with our eloquence, we per- 
 
CH. IV. STYLE OF ANTIPHON. 93 
 
 ceive at once a stiff and artificial tone about him, enhanced by 
 the antique flavour . of his language, wherein he and Thucy- 
 dides affected the old and unusual, in contrast to the beautiful 
 spoken Attic of their day. ' I will not trouble the reader by 
 going into more minute details on these technical points, which 
 rather injure than help our enjoyment of Attic prose, but re- 
 commend the full discussion in Blass' chapter on Antiphon, 
 with the special tracts to which he refers. In an official history 
 of Greek oratory these are essential details, however dry and 
 uninteresting they may be to the general student. 
 
 To us moderns much of the force of Antiphon consists 
 perhaps in his having not refined his style into complete 
 accordance with these technical laws. The austere harmony 
 which we find in him and in Thucydides is far more impressive 
 than the smooth harmony of Isocrates. 2 This character is sus- 
 tained by his choice of words, which are dignified and often 
 poetical without the excess of metaphors censured in Gorgias. 
 He uses the older aa, though it had been already replaced by 
 tt, and the expression tovto j.iiv — tovto Se, so common in Hero- 
 dotus but abandoned in later Attic prose. As to the method 
 of his orations, we notice that the arrangement is simple and 
 natural. After a proem, he throws in a sort of -KpoKaTaoKevri, to 
 prepare the mind for the narrative of facts which follows. But 
 here is his weak point, particularly as compared with Lysias, 
 while his strength lies in argument, especially in the urging and 
 retorting of a priori probable proofs. He reiterates, however, 
 a good deal, and comes back on points already argued. Besides 
 
 1 Thus, while such writers as Dionysius and Demetrius are constantly 
 showing anacolutha in the use of particles (fieu repeated, or without 8e, or 
 vice versa, &c), we are rather struck with such sentences as this : £yw S' 
 riyov/xcu ttoAv aviocTidirepov tivai acpelvcu tov redveaiTOS t)\v Tijxoipiav, aX\ws 
 re Kal tov fiev £k irpof$ov\ris aKovaioos airodavovros, ttjs Se eKovaiws £k irpo- 
 voias airoKTdvdcrris (i. 5) — or this : ov yap ZUaiov ovr' epycv a/xaprovTa dia 
 p-fljuara (rwOrjvai, ovt' epyw opdoos irpa^avra Sta. p-fifxara airoKeadai ' to /xev 
 -vap pri/xa ttjs yXdoaaris a^apT^a iffTi, to 8e epyov ttjs yvdijx-^s. And yet this 
 latter is found fault with by the critics for having the last clause too short, 
 and nothing corresponding to a/j.dpT7]/xd £<rri I 
 
 2 We have no better word than harmony to use here for the Greek 
 ap[j.ovia, which is not at all the same in meaning. 
 
94 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. iv. 
 
 the figures of language, as the rhetors called them, that is to say, 
 balanced antitheses, alliterations at the end of clauses, and such 
 like, he made but sparing use of figures of thought, such as 
 indignant questions, invocations of the gods, and such indica- 
 tions of emotion as we should certainly leave to nature, but 
 which these strict theorists had discussed as mere rhetorical 
 devices. It was remarked that five of these, the aposwpesis, the 
 assumed hesitation (hiairopriaiQ), the emphatic repetition of a 
 word {dvaliirXiaeriQ), the climax, and the use of irony, were un- 
 known to him. But this is not true of irony, which is prominent 
 enough in the Herodes speech, when the speaker is refuting 
 the point that, as no murderer had yet been discovered, he is 
 bound to clear himself by making the discovery. 
 
 The sum of these remarks leads us to the conclusion, 
 that while the early condition and incomplete development of 
 oratory made Antiphon adhere more closely than his more 
 subtle and variously trained successors to a fixed and symme- 
 trical plan, he did not equal them in the smoothness and grace 
 of their structure, or in the artful simplicity of their narratives. 
 Nevertheless he makes an august and haughty impression, 
 even when pleading in the person of others. His tone is severe 
 and dignified, his language strong and clear, without being 
 fervent or passionate ; and he stands before us not only as 
 the fit organiser of an anti-democratic revolution, but as the 
 master and model of the historian Thucydides, 
 
 § 359. Turning to the external history of Antiphon's work, 
 we note that, though greatly esteemed by his actual contem- 
 poraries, he was soon eclipsed by succeeding orators, whose 
 developed graces were more agreeable than the harsh har- 
 monies of the antique rhetor. His commonplaces are men- 
 tioned by Aristotle as of the same kind as those of Gorgias, 
 and it is probable that Aristotle refers to the extant tetralo- 
 gies, which may have been part of the well-known ri^'V- 
 But the other earlier writers on rhetoric do not seem to have 
 paid any attention to him. He was not a model for either 
 late Attic or Roman eloquence. Dionysius often refers to 
 him as being, like Thucydides, a writer of the old rough 
 style, and as being with Lysias and Isocrates a leading orator 
 
CH. IV. MSS. AND EDITIONS OF ANTIPHON. 95 
 
 of Thucydides' day — as being a fine writer, but not plea- 
 sant. Caecilius of Calacte appears first to have made a special 
 study of him, and we have many good things cited from his 
 criticisms in a special treatise on Antiphon and in his Lives 
 of the orators. Hermogenes speaks of him with equal care 
 and appreciation. The Life in Plutarch's Lives of the Ten 
 Orators, the Greek arguments, and many citations of phrases 
 in the Lexica show that he was studied if not generally read 
 in late Greek times. There was even a special book on Anti- 
 phon' s figures by Caius Harpocration, and we have extracts 
 given by Photius from the orations. 
 
 § 360. Bibliographical. As to MSS., Aldus tells us, in the 
 preface to his Ed. Princeps, that Lascaris was sent to the East 
 to look for Greek books, and brought back one containing the 
 orators from Mount Athos. This MS. was evidently different 
 from any of those now extant, but not, I think, superior to 
 the best we possess, though in some passages it alone pre- 
 serves the true reading. Foremost is the Crippsianus (A) ? 
 used by Bekker as the basis of his text, which is in the British 
 Museum, and of the thirteenth century. But since Maetzner 
 collated the Oxford (N), of about the same age, it has been 
 found, after much controversy, to be a better copy of the same 
 archetype as A. l Others are the Laurentian and Marcian, 
 (B and L), and a Breslau copy (Z). After the Ed. Princeps 
 (15 13), which contains all the orators save Demosthenes, as 
 well as the speeches attributed to Gorgias and Alkidamas, 
 and is the first edition of them all save Isocrates, there are 
 texts by Stephanus and others; but of highest authority, in 
 our own time, are those of Bekker, Baiter and Sauppe (the 
 Zurich Ed.), Msetzner, and Blass (Teubner, 18 71). If these 
 are not professed commentaries on the author, there is a host 
 of critical monographs by Sauppe, Franke, Brieglebe, Spengel, 
 and others, with occasional flashes of light from Cobet in the 
 Mnemosyne. An exhaustive account of both the man and his 
 writings is given by Blass 2 and in Mr. J ebb's Attic Orators. 
 
 1 Cf. the discussion in Blass' Preface to his text of Antiphon, which 
 differs from his earlier history of Attic oratory in some points. 
 
 2 AB. i. ch. iii. 
 
96 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. IV. 
 
 § 361. In connection with the technical development of rhe- 
 toric by Antiphon, it may be well to add a word on some con- 
 temporary or immediately succeeding men, whose main activity 
 is to be placed before the archonship of Eucleides, and who are 
 specially noted in Plato's dialogues, in Cicero's rhetorical works, 
 and by Dionysius, as marking epochs in the history of Attic 
 eloquence. The fact that their writings are almost wholly lost 
 prevents their claiming any considerable space in this short 
 history. Foremost stands Thrasymachos of Chalkedon, who 
 can be inferred from the extant notices to have nourished during 
 the later years of the Peloponnesian war. He figures as a lead- 
 ing personage in Plato's Republic, where he appears in the cha- 
 racter not of a rhetor, but of a bold and vulgar sophist, of 
 blustering manner, and of low moral tone. But whether this 
 portrait is indeed a fair one may well be doubted. In the 
 Phcedrus he is mentioned with Theodorus as a cunning rhetor, 
 and this is more in consonance with our other notices of him. 
 His technical treatises are referred to as cKpopfial p-qropiKai (which 
 probably do not differ from his great techne), as in id 'euctikoI, 
 and as iralyvia. Perhaps the deliberative speeches, of which 
 a fragment remains, were also technical models. From his 
 afop/j.a.1 were cited various set proems, vTrepjjaXXovTec, or cli- 
 maxes, and eXeoi, or appeals to pity ; Plato l speaks of him as 
 able to excite to rage, and to soothe again the minds of his 
 hearers, and this praise seems not ironical. But more generally, 
 Blass has shown from a comparison of the ancient authorities 2 
 that he was regarded as the real founder of the newer Attic elo- 
 quence, inasmuch as he adopted in style the just mean between 
 poetically artificial diction, on the one hand, and vulgar col- 
 loquialism, on the other. Secondly, he determined more ac- 
 curately the rhetorical period, a proper rounding of sentences 
 for proper effect, where everything is subordinate, and related to 
 the main thought, no loose or disconnected clauses being ad- 
 mitted. Thirdly, according to Aristotle, he first used the paeonic 
 rythm, beginning his period with a first pseon, and ending with 
 a first or fourth — a subtlety which is now of little interest, 
 
 1 Phcedrus, 266-7. 2 AB. i. 246. 
 
ch. iv. THEODORUS, EUENOS. 97 
 
 and, as Blass shows, not verified by the extant fragments, but 
 which tells how profoundly artificial was Greek oratory in 
 comparison with ours. Cicero, however, also observes in 
 Thrasymachus this strict attention to rythm, but observes that 
 both he and Gorgias made their clauses too short, and there- 
 fore their rythms too manifest. This Blass illustrates from 
 Gorgias' remains (AB. iv. 331). Thrasymachus seems accord- 
 ingly to have been a valuable guide to Lysias, and other prac- 
 tical orators of the next generation. Only two short fragments 
 remain. 
 
 We have the same sort of praise in Plato's Phczdrus x of 
 Theodoros of Byzantium, and of Euenos of Paros, who seem 
 to have been fertile in separating each part of an oration into 
 subdivisions, such as ir policy -qtTLQ, %ir]yr]<Tic, and e7ri%iriyr)(Tig, 
 
 TriaroHTiQ, and ETwricrroHriQ \ Euenus also suggested indirect and, 
 as it were, accidental effects, which he called irapiiraivoi, 
 irapa-^oyoi, and the like. But all these subtleties belong strictly 
 to the history of Greek rhetoric, and require no special treatment 
 in a general history of literature. 
 
 1 266 E. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
98 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, CH. V. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Thucydides — Andocides, Critias. 
 
 § 362. Thucydides is said, upon late and doubtful authority,, 
 to have been born in 471 B.C., and to have been therefore forty 
 years old at the opening of the Peloponnesian war. This agrees, 
 however, fairly well with the two passages in his work l in 
 which he states that he began his study of the war from its 
 commencement, being then of mature age, and having per- 
 ceived its importance ; that he wrote down the events as they 
 occurred, and lived all through it to the close. As to the 
 historian's early life, we can only affirm that, while he is not 
 known to have taken any active part in politics, and yet had 
 sufficient means to permit perfect leisure, he must have studied 
 with care in the rhetorical schools of Gorgias, and still more of 
 Antiphon, as well as in the sophistical schools of philosophical 
 scepticism. He further tells us that he was the son of Oloros, 
 that he himself suffered from the plague at Athens, which he 
 so graphically describes ; 2 also that he was appointed general 
 for the protection of Athenian interests in Thrace, and that he 
 was sent for from Thasos, where he was occupied, by his col- 
 league Eukles to save Amphipolis, but that having failed in this 
 object, owing to Brasidas' promptness, he secured Eion. 3 He 
 tells us that, owing to his possession of gold mines in Thasos 
 and on the opposite coast of Thrace, he was ol great influence 
 in that country, 4 but that he was banished after the affair at 
 Amphipolis (b c. 424) for twenty years, and thus had the 
 opportunity of studying the other side of the conflict, especially 
 the Peloponnesian affairs. 
 
 1 i. 1, and v. 26. 2 ii. 48. 3 iv. 104-6. 
 
 4 This circumstance may have caused his appointment as strategus, 
 without any expeditionary force, in that region. 
 
CH. v. LIFE OF THUCYDIDES. 99 
 
 These are then the indisputable facts which we possess on his 
 own authority — moreover, we may infer that he outlived the cap- 
 ture of Athens by Lysander in 405 B.C., perhaps for some time, as 
 these confessions occur early in the fifth book, and we must 
 allow him time to complete the remainder. On the other hand, 
 his assertion that he witnessed and recorded the whole war is not 
 borne out by the close, which ends abruptly, and shows evi- 
 dence of being broken off by the death of the author, or some 
 other untoward circumstance. Indeed his observation 1 that 
 the eruption of iEtna in the year 426 was the third recorded, 
 and the last known up to the date of the remark, seems to fix 
 his death, or the limits of his revision of his work, before 396 
 B.C., when another eruption took place. However, his long 
 absence from Athens, as well as his severe and perhaps surly 
 character, kept him from being affected by the rapid changes 
 of style and taste which mark the later years of the fifth cen- 
 tury. Hence, though his work was, in part at least, written 
 after new Attic prose had been developed, and when Lysias 
 was delighting the juries with translucent simplicity, Thucydides 
 kept up certain austerities of style, which make him and 
 Sophocles peculiar among all the extant Greek writers. 
 
 According to the most current tradition, he was assassinated 
 in Thrace, where he lived in retirement on his property, and his 
 unfinished work, which passed into the hands of his daughter, 
 was edited either by her or by Xenophon, to whom she en- 
 trusted it. As we shall presently see, there are some points of 
 style in the last and unfinished book which make Xenophon 
 a possible editor. There is a great controversy among the 
 Germans, some arguing that he considered the war concluded 
 with the peace of Nicias, and had actually composed the first 
 four and half books when he found that he must continue his 
 task, and so he began again 2 with a new proem. Others, 
 among whom is the latest editor, Classen, consider that the 
 so-called inconsistencies in his work, on which Ullrich based 
 this theory, can be explained away, and that there is a clear 
 proof of the whole work being the outcome of one deliberate 
 
 1 iii. 116. "v. 26. 
 
 H 2 
 
ioo HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. v 
 
 plan, not carried out till the end of the war, though evidence 
 was taken, and notes made, all through its course. The con- 
 troversy is, however, neither interesting nor profitable, and by 
 modifying our purely subjective opinion as to the degree of 
 completion which the earlier books may have attained before 
 the later were written, we may indefinitely approximate the 
 one hypothesis to the other. 1 
 
 Two other more fanciful inferences are drawn from his work. 
 When he contrasts it with those which are intended for imme- 
 diate display, and speaks 2 of them as composed by the logo- 
 graphers rather to afford pleasure than profit to the hearer, he 
 is supposed to refer to the recitation of Herodotus at Athens. 
 The earliest possible date for any such performance, and that 
 of only parts of his work, is 446 B.C., which may serve to mark 
 the time when the two historians came in contact, not when 
 Thucydides was a child (according to a current anecdote), but 
 a grown man, and able to criticise. But all this is doubtful, and 
 still more so is the notion of Ullrich, that his remark on Anti- 
 phon's defence of himself, being the finest known twv pixpi- fyov 
 points at the defence of Socrates. This conjecture assumes 
 that Socrates' defence was esteemed an oratorical performance, 
 which it certainly was not. 
 
 There is a note of Plutarch, in his life of Kimon, which is 
 of more value, and apparently trustworthy. After detailing the 
 descent of Kimon through his mother from a Thracian king 
 
 1 The legends about Thucydides' life have been lately examined (apart 
 from Classen's Introd.) by Petersen, De Vita Thucyd., Dorpat, 1873 5 
 by Wilamowitz-Mollendorff in Hermes (xii. p. 326, sq.) ; by O. Gilbert 
 {Philol. 38, 2), and by Firmani, Revista di Filologia, for 1877, p. 149., sq. 
 pyut no new facts have been established. The newer tracts on the composi- 
 tion of his history, and the relation of the earlier to the later part, are 
 enumerated by L. Herbst, in the first part of his elaborate Jahresbericht 
 (Pkilologus, 38, p. 504). The result of his very dry and intricate discussion 
 is to show that while Thucydides regards and speaks of the first ten 
 years of the war as a separate war, he did not compose its history, nor 
 even his general introduction, without a knowledge of the whole twenty- 
 seven years of its course. Whether the allusions which prove this were 
 originally in the narrative, or inserted on revision, no man can tell. 
 
 2 i. 21 : aywvHTfia is rb napaxpri/m-a aKoveiv . . . us Xoyoypacpoi |we0e<rai> 
 iirl rb Trpocraycoyorepov rfi aKoodaei 7) aXridearepov. 
 
CH.V. BUSTS OF THUCYDIDES. 101 
 
 Oloros, he adds : ' Therefore the historian Thucydides, being 
 related to Kimon's family, was the son of an Oloros, called 
 after his ancestor, and owned gold mines in Thrace. He is 
 said to have been murdered at Scaptesyle (in Thrace), but the 
 monument over his remains, which were brought to Attica, is 
 shown among the tombs of Kimon's family, next the tomb of 
 his sister Elpinike. But Thucydides was a Halimousian as to 
 his deme, whereas Miltiades' people were Lakiadse.' There is 
 also a very explicit and credible statement in Pausanias l that 
 his return from exile was due to QEnobius, son of Eukles (appa- 
 rently his old colleague in Thrace), who carried through a 
 deciee that he should be restored to Athens, but that having 
 been assassinated as he was returning, a statue was erected to 
 him in the xAcropolis, and a monument set up to him not far 
 from the Melitean gate. 
 
 § 363. On a double Herme in the museum of Naples we have 
 representations of Thucydides and Herodotus, which represent 
 the former as a somewhat mean, surly-looking person ; yet the 
 type is so unlike an ideal Greek head, and so thoroughly in- 
 dividual, that it was always believed to have some authority. 
 The printing of photographs of the splendid bust at Holkham, 
 by the Earl of Leicester (in May 1878), along with a translation 
 of Prof. Michaelis' essay upon these portraits, 2 proves that the 
 Naples portrait is a poor and shabby copy of the same (pro- 
 bably bronze) original from which the Holkham bust is taken. 
 The latter is in splendid condition, and expresses all the stern- 
 ness and strength, together with the peculiar modernness, which 
 marks the character of Thucydides. I am of course far from 
 thinking that a bust which did not express these qualities could 
 not be genuine ; some men are very disappointing in their ap- 
 pearance. But it is very satisfying to have the portrait corres- 
 ponding to our ideal, and in no conventional way. It is the 
 opinion of Otto Gilbert 3 that this is a copy of the portrait 
 statue set up by CEnobius. 
 
 1 i- 23, 9. 
 
 2 I must here record my thanks to the Earl of Leicester for sending rae 
 a copy of this valuable but unpublished contribution to archaeology. 
 
 8 Pkilologus, 38, 2, p. 259. 
 
io2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. V. 
 
 § 364. Turning to a survey of his work as we have it before us, 
 we must adhere to the now received division into eight books, 
 though it is nowhere countenanced by the author, and though 
 we hear of divisions into nine and into thirteen books as known 
 in old days. But the existing arrangement is convenient and 
 well devised. Thucydides intends his work to be a military 
 history of the Peloponnesian war, compiled from original docu- 
 ments, and from a careful record of personal observations, 
 as well as a comparison of the fresh reports of eye-witnesses. 
 That he has carried out this plan perfectly, and that his book 
 is the most complete and careful record of the details of a long 
 war, cannot be for a moment questioned. It is a work infinitely 
 more complex, and more difficult than Xenophon's account of 
 his Retreat from Cunaxa, but is like it in being a contemporary 
 history. The chronological method which he prefers, and 
 specially vindicates, 1 as superior to the ordinary plan of quoting 
 archontates and priesthoods, is that of successive summers and 
 winters. Nevertheless, his starting-point 2 must be determined 
 on the old method, and his strict adherence to summers and 
 winters leads him at times to break off a connected account of 
 military operations to notice some distant and unimportant, 
 but synchronous transaction. This defect of arrangement has 
 been commented on by Mure and others. Unfortunately it 
 has led the author to record a vast number of petty raids and 
 resultless movements in outlying parts of Greece, while he 
 has omitted the whole of the literary and artistic, as well as 
 almost the whole of the social and political, history of the great 
 epoch on which he wrote. This is the more to be regretted 
 as the few digressions he does make into archaeological or 
 political subjects are, in proportion to their extent, the most 
 valuable and interesting parts of his work. 
 
 § 365. But the author himself is by no means of that opinion. 
 His preface opens with the assertion that the Peloponnesian 
 war, as he had from the very commencement expected, turned 
 out by far the most important crisis in Hellenic, and therefore 
 in human, history. It is almost impossible that in making this 
 statement Thucydides should not have had the great work of 
 1 v. 20. z ii. 1. 
 
CH. v. THUCYDIDES' PREFACE. 103 
 
 Herodotus in his mind's eye, especially if he did not begin to 
 write, as many critics maintain, till the close of the war. But 
 whether this be so or not, his proof of the bold assertion as to 
 the importance of his subject is singularly sophistical. He turns 
 first to the very ancient times, and in what is called his Archce- 
 ologia reviews the condition of early Greece, and especially the 
 resources displayed in the Trojan war, which he holds to have 
 been but small, for want of the real sinews of empire — xPVf xara 
 teal vavriKov, money and a navy. The same was in a lesser degree 
 the case with the states which became prominent under tyrants 
 from this time to that of the Persian wars, as he shows by a 
 series of most interesting observations. 
 
 But when he comes to this crisis * he shirks a fair esti- 
 mate of its comparative importance with his own subject ; he 
 gives a very meagre extract to show its effects upon Sparta 
 and Athens, and concludes 2 by saying that the ancient affairs 
 were difficult to ascertain on proper evidence, because of the 
 uncritical way in which people hand down tradition. He 
 illustrates this by three examples : first, that of the Athenian 
 misconception about Harmodius and Aristogiton, to which he 
 again reverts more fully, 3 and then to the popular Greek errors 
 about two trivial matters, which had not past into oblivion, 
 the Ao'xoc Uirai'drriQ, and the double vote of the Spartan kings, 
 in one at least contradicting an opinion of Herodotus. ' So 
 little pains do the many take in seeking after truth, and rather 
 turn to what is ready at hand ! ' 4 In c. 23 he returns to the 
 
 1 c 18. 2 c. 20. 3 vi. 54. 
 
 4 Herbst, in a very minute examination of this preface [Philologus, 
 38, pp. 534-45), gives a new exposition of the whole argument, and de- 
 fends Thucydides against the charge of having endeavoured to slight the 
 importance of the Persian war in the history of Herodotus. He considers 
 that Thucydides divided his retrospect into two portions, that of the 
 iraKaid, reaching from mythical times down to the battle of Marathon, and 
 that of the MySticd. The iraAaid, which he reviews in cc. 2-1 7, embrace 
 the Troica, which have been exaggerated by fables, and the period of 
 the tyrants, in which a careful examination of facts shows want of the re- 
 sources of war. He then sketches the MtjSj/cci in cc. 18, 19. The criticism 
 which follows (cc. 20-2), and which contains the disrespectful remarks on 
 the logographers, and the general untrustworthiness of old traditions, is 
 
104 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. v. 
 
 comparison of the Medic affairs, and observes that they were 
 settled by four battles, whereas the later war was more pro- 
 tracted, severe, and full of horrors. He speaks of cities being 
 now destroyed by barbarians, of which we know only a single 
 small instance (Mycalessus). He also asserts that this war 
 greatly affected barbarians as well as Greeks. Historically 
 this is not provable, but I fancy Thucydides' opinion was 
 rather that any war, however petty, among Greeks was vastly 
 more important than the most momentous struggle with bar- 
 barians. This is the real cause of his exaggerated estimate of 
 the Peloponnesian war — a war which was perhaps of less im- 
 portance in the world's history than any other struggle of 
 similar length, for it was not a struggle of either opposed races, 
 or religions, or great ideas ; and had its issue been reversed, 
 it would not have materially affected the general course of 
 human history. But an exaggerated notion of his subject is 
 a good fault in an author, and only to be blamed when it 
 leads him to invidious comparisons with his rivals. With the 
 twenty-fourth chapter the real history of the war begins, and in 
 an excellent narrative he tells us of the quarrel between Corinth 
 and Corcyra about Epidamnus, followed by other preliminary 
 movements and the discussion at Sparta. * But before entering 
 upon the actual war. he again reverts to the past, and resumes 
 the sketch of Greek history — this time Athenian— from the 
 capture of Sestos to the outbreak of the war. 2 There follow 
 
 directed, according to Herbst, wholly against the historians of the waXcud — 
 poets and poetical logographers — and has nothing to say to Herodotus. 
 Thucydides then turns (c. 23) to a parallel criticism of the really important 
 M7?5iKa, and though allowing their greatness, nevertheless maintains the 
 greater importance of his own period, because of the brief crisis of the 
 Persian war, and because of the lesser number of Greeks engaged. But 
 this presupposes that he is comparing the MrjSiiccL with the whole twenty- 
 seven years war, and not with the Archidamic alone. I think this general 
 sense may be read into the passage, but it is certainly not the obvious 
 one, and I do not believe that Thucydides intended to avoid censuring 
 Herodotus' method of writing history, as distinguished from the early 
 logographers. Cf. A. Bauer's Themistocles, pp. 31, sq., siiice published 
 (1881). 
 
 1 cc. 24-55, 56-88. 
 
 2 cc. 89-118. This was known among old critics as the YvivTt\KQvn- 
 TTipia of Thucydides. 
 
ch. v. STRIKING PASSAGES. 105 
 
 additional preliminaries to the war, again interrupted by the 
 episodes of Pausanias and Themistocles ; l and the book ends 
 with the completion of the preliminary matter. 
 
 § 366. It is remarkable that in the latter chapters Thucy- 
 dides not only implies a knowledge of Herodotus, but also 
 some respect for him. He starts his second retrospect from the 
 capture of Sestos, where Herodotus had paused ; he says that 
 while the Medic affairs had been fully treated, the succeeding 
 period was neglected, even by Hellanicus, who was inaccurate 
 in his chronology ; 2 he, moreover, in his digressions about 
 Pausanias and Themistocles, expressly fills up the points 
 omitted by Herodotus. This seems to me to denote a differ- 
 ence of date in the composition of the early preface and these 
 later portions of the first book. We see, however, that this 
 book is full of digressions and of prefatory matter, all in the 
 author's opinion strictly necessary to the understanding of the 
 Peloponnesian war. I have also omitted all mention of the 
 speeches — a peculiar and somewhat foreign feature in the 
 history, to which we will revert presently with more detail 
 
 Passing on to the succeeding books, we find in every one 
 of them some brilliant piece of narrative ; indeed, wherever 
 the subject is worthy of the writer, his talent for nervous and 
 spirited description responds fully to the occasion. Thus we 
 have in the second book the night attack upon Platsea (at 
 the opening), then the graphic and affecting account of the 
 plague, 3 which has been the model for so many subsequent 
 writers ; and the naval operations of Phormion off Naupac- 
 tus. 4 We have in the third book 5 the night escape of the 
 Platseans from their city, which has been reproduced in our 
 own day by Sir E. Creasy in his Attic novel, The Old Love 
 and the New ; the terrible tumults at Corcyra, with the his- 
 torian's reflections, 6 and a very interesting chapter 7 on Delos. 
 The fourth book opens with the brilliant Athenian success 
 at Sphacteria, and contains not only the equally disastrous 
 failure at Delium, 8 but the active operations of Brasidas 
 
 1 cc. 128-38. 
 
 2 c 97. 
 
 3 cc. 47, sq. 
 
 * cc. 83, sq. 
 
 5 cc.20, sq. 
 
 6 cc. 75, sq. 
 
 7 c. 104, 
 
 8 cc. 77, sq. 
 
 
106 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, CH. v. 
 
 in Thrace, including the historian's own failure to save Am- 
 phipolis. 1 
 
 This passage, which is curt and stingy in detail, has given 
 rise to much discussion among critics. Most of the Germans, 
 whose enthusiastic reverence for Thucydides will allow no flaw 
 in his character, maintain that he did all that could be done to 
 save Amphipolis, and that his exile, to which he alludes casu- 
 ally in another place, was an unjust sentence, caused by the 
 disappointment of the Athenians at Brasidas' success. The 
 most prominent supporters of this view are Classen (in his 
 Commentary) and Ernst Curtius (in his History). On the 
 other hand, the reticence of the historian on the date and 
 nature of his appointment to the command, and the uncon- 
 cealed dislike and contempt he shows for Cleon, who probably 
 caused his exile, have led critical English scholars, such as 
 Mure in his chapter on Thucydides' life, and Grote in his 
 History, followed (as usual) by Oncken, to declare that the his- 
 torian was remiss and dilatory up to the last moment, and 
 probably deserving of his punishment. We have not sufficient 
 evidence to settle the question with any certainty. It seems to 
 me that the historian honestly thought he was not to blame, 
 but that the Athenians, perhaps just as honestly, differed with 
 him in opinion. His silence as to the sentence passed upon 
 him is quite in keeping with his usual reticence on the disap- 
 pearance of leading men from the scene. Thus he merely 
 tells us that Pericles lived two years into the war ; he only 
 lets out accidentally that Phormion was dead, by stating that 
 the Acarnanians applied for his son to be sent to command 
 them. 
 
 § 367. Returning to our catalogue of remarkable passages, 
 we have the celebrated reflections on the close of the Archida- 
 mian war, and the new proem to the rest of the work in the 
 fifth book ; 2 and later on, after the long and complicated in- 
 trigues of Alcibiades in the Peloponnesus, the description of the 
 battle of Mantinea, apparently from personal observation. 3 
 The sixth and seventh books, by far the finest portion of 
 the work, are mainly concerned with the preparation and 
 1 cc. 104-6. 2 c. 26. s cc. 64-75. 
 
CH. V. CHARACTER OF THE HISTORY. 107 
 
 outfit of the Sicilian expedition, its interruption by the out- 
 rage on the Hermae, its gradual progress, and disastrous close. 
 Indeed, the sustained splendour of the narrative in the seventh 
 book makes it impossible to specify passages. The eighth 
 book, in which we miss the finishing hand of the author, is 
 mainly interesting for its accurate account of the oligarchical 
 revolution at Athens in 411 B.C., a political crisis so closely 
 connected with the war as to form part of it, and thus fortu- 
 nately to find its way into the narrative. 
 
 But it must be remembered that these remarkable narratives 
 are interrupted both by barren chronicles of petty raids and in- 
 effectual campaigns, which are given in most conscientious 
 detail, and by political speeches inserted at intervals, in order 
 to expound the feelings and passions which formed the atmo- 
 sphere in which the facts occurred. While the former details 
 arise from a too minute and careful registering of the facts, 
 which Thucydides no doubt overrated in importance, the se- 
 cond are of a very different kind, and are rather violations of, 
 than servile submissions to, historical accuracy. I need only 
 say one word about the former. The various raids about 
 ^Etolia and Acarnania, among the Sicilian cities before the 
 arrival of the great Athenian armament, or in the Peloponnesus 
 after the peace of Nicias, though they are of little moment, and 
 are now passed over by most readers, nevertheless serve to give 
 us a very living picture of Greek warfare and of Greek politics, 
 with their perpetually shifting intrigues and varying aspects; 
 and although we should gladly have taken instead a few more of 
 his invaluable digressions on antiquities or on changes of consti- 
 tution, we must acknowledge that they give his narrative of the 
 war great completeness. There is indeed only a single passage 
 in which he betrays weariness of these trivial movements, and 
 says he will not chronicle them concerning Sicily, except when 
 the Athenians were directly concerned. 
 
 § 368. But wherever the facts become important, his narra- 
 tive is not content with a mere chronicle, it adds the motives of 
 the actors, and describes their most secret thoughts, as if the 
 historian had been present and had heard them declared. This 
 drawing of human character in accordance with the suggestions 
 
108 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. V. 
 
 of the facts, is particularly remarkable in the 8th book, where 
 there are no set speeches, and is a striking example of the 
 dramatic way in which Greek historians identified themselves 
 with their subject. We moderns make our reflections con- 
 sciously, and separate them from the narrative. Thucydides 
 seldom does so, but lets his subjective opinions come out in 
 the drawing of character, and the attribution of motives as his- 
 torical facts. As his basis is strictly the human, as opposed to 
 the divine so often admitted by Herodotus, these motives are 
 generally verified by the results, and are never improbable, but 
 yet they are not history in our sense. 1 This is far more dis- 
 tinctly the case with the speeches, where he absolutely leaves 
 the domain of sober narrative, and assumes the person of a 
 rhetorician, from which point of view he is justly criticised by 
 all competent and complete historians of Attic eloquence. It 
 is indeed most probably his great example which has led subse- 
 quent classical historians to interlard their narrative with imagi- 
 nary harangues, and which gave to Greek and Roman history 
 that rhetorical flavour noted by Mure as the main defect of 
 Attic prose literature. It is generally admitted that these 
 speeches have no claim to any accuracy ; and though most 
 historians long to find at least Pericles' Funeral Speech in the 
 second book authentic, Mure has shown in this particular case 
 how the mannerisms of the historian are specially prominent, 
 and how he uses arguments which could not possibly have 
 been spoken by a Greek political leader who possessed the 
 secret of fascinating his audience. 
 
 There is even very little apparent effort made to preserve 
 character in these speeches. Thus the Lacedaemonian speakers 
 are as voluble and as lengthy as the rest, and their Doric dialect 
 is exchanged for the old Attic diction of the work. Thucydides 
 himself 2 notes the difficulties of preserving accuracy in these 
 speeches, and says he endeavoured to reproduce the general 
 sense of what was really spoken, that is to say, really spoken in 
 his opinion; but we may be quite sure that no such speeches 
 could ever have had any effect upon a large audience. Ac- 
 
 1 Cf. the excellent remarks of Herbst, Philol 38, p. 556-9. 
 
 2 i. 22. 
 
CH.V. THE SPEECHES. 109 
 
 cordingly he toned them all to the uniform dress required by 
 his history as a work of art, and only suggests peculiar features 
 by the short and rude speech of the ephor Sthenelaidas, 1 or 
 by the lively style of Athenagoras, 2 or by the egotism of 
 Alcibiades. But more frequently they are so general and im- 
 personal as to be ascribed to ' the envoys ' or ' the speakers ' of 
 a certain city or policy. The best analysis of them has been 
 given by Blass, in the first volume of his work on Attic elo- 
 quence, in which he follows closely the well-known criticism 
 by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. 
 
 § 369. Excluding the dialogues, which we shall consider pre- 
 sently, there are forty-one speeches, of various length, inserted 
 in the first seven books, the eighth being peculiar in possessing 
 none. They may be classed as panegyrical, of which the famous 
 speech of Pericles 3 is the only specimen, juridical, of which 
 the demurrer of the Plataeans and reply of the Thebans 4 are 
 specimens, and thirty-eight deliberative harangues. About 
 fourteen of these are exhortations to soldiers by their general, 
 and are mostly short and to the point. There remain twenty- 
 four strictly deliberative speeches, inserted generally in pairs 
 or threes, and sometimes even so constructed that the answer 
 follows a long time after the first speech, and not professedly in 
 reply to it. A careful reading of these speeches will show a 
 gradual improvement in clearness as the work advances ; those 
 of the sixth book being much more to the point and freer from 
 obscurity than the earlier ones, the speeches of Hermocrates 
 especially being very good specimens of the deliberative style. 
 It seems indeed not unlikely that Thucydides in his exile made 
 the acquaintance of the great Syracusan, to whom he is every- 
 where very favourable, and from whom he may have obtained 
 the outlines of his policy. Colonel Mure thinks that the same 
 sort of relations with Alcibiades, when in exile, are to be in- 
 ferred from the minuteness with which his secret policy is de- 
 scribed. O. Miiller has the same idea about Athenagoras, and 
 most critics about Pericles and Nicias. These conjectures only 
 prove how much character Thucydides has succeeded in in- 
 
 1 i. 86. 2 vi. 36. 
 
 3 ii. 35-46. 4 iii. 53-9 ; 61-7. 
 
no HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. v. 
 
 fusing into these speeches, though conceived in his own form 
 and diction. 
 
 § 370. Dionysius, whose judgment as a rhetorician is of value, 
 however modern scholars may despise his notions of composing 
 history, gives us a very complete criticism of many of them, 
 with a full appreciation of the glaring defects which require 
 the genius of the author to palliate them. The chief of these 
 is obscurity ) which most critics think a natural and unavoid- 
 able result of the early and undeveloped condition of Attic 
 prose, combined with the perpetual striving of the author to 
 pack his sentences as full as possible with meaning. Hence 
 even his censors have perpetually admired his marvellous 
 power of conveying substance in the smallest amount of words, 
 and of pressing on the reader a new thought before the former 
 one is fully expressed. Next to this compression and conse- 
 quent obscurity, the historian has been justly censured for 
 many sophistical mannerisms^ such as the perpetual antithesis 
 of nominally and really (\6yy and epyw ), which in the Funeral 
 oration occurs sixteen times, and nearly one hundred times in 
 the course of the work. There are also needless definitions of 
 obvious words, and subtle distinctions, not to speak of the 
 affected use of neuter adjectives for nouns— a practice for which 
 his latest German commentator finds reasons which will ap- 
 pear, to such as are not pedants, invented to sustain a bad 
 case. 1 Colonel Mure and Dr. Blass have also noted curiously 
 inappropriate arguments in some places, where an orator of 
 common sense could not possibly have followed the course 
 assigned to him. Such are the opening words of Pericles' 
 Efiitaphios, in which he ascribes a spirit of niggardly detrac- 
 tion to his audience, and the speech of the Corinthians, 2 where 
 the changes and chances of war are insisted upon by those 
 whose object was to urge it, and not to dissuade from it. 
 
 To these criticisms, which seem to me well founded, I 
 
 have two remarks to add. In the first place, when Classen and 
 
 others speak of the undeveloped condition of Attic prose, and 
 
 the difficulties of wrestling with an unformed idiom to express 
 
 1 Cf. Classen, i. p. lxxiii, quoting the authority of Hermogenes. 
 
CH. v. THE NATURE OF HIS ELOQUENCE. in 
 
 adequately great and pregnant thoughts, they altogether over- 
 state the matter in their efforts to defend Thucydides. Eu- 
 ripides and Cratinus had already perfected the use of Attic 
 Greek in dramatic dialogue. Again, not only was it quite 
 feasible to transcribe into Attic the excellent models in Ionic 
 prose already subsisting, but in Attic prose Antiphon had al- 
 ready attained clearness, as we can see in his extant speeches. 
 Possibly his example may have aided in making the speech 
 of the Plataeans and the Theban answer, which are essentially 
 court speeches, the best in the work. But apart from dramatic 
 poetry and oratory, it seems perpetually forgotten that the tract 
 on the Athenian polity », which we have among Xenophon's 
 works, must have been published before 415, and more pro- 
 bably about 428 B.C., and therefore years before Thucydides' 
 history, and that whatever faults the tract may disclose, it shows 
 an easy and complete mastery of the Attic prose idiom. 1 
 
 Secondly, when critics, both ancient and modern, reiterate 
 their praise and wonder at the extraordinary compression of 
 thoughts in these speeches and in the descriptions of the his- 
 torian, and speak of his hurrying on from new thought to new 
 thought without waiting to express himself clearly, they seem to 
 me to misstate altogether the true nature of his eloquence. I 
 cannot find that there is this crowding of ideas in his orations, 
 but rather a crowding of curious and distorted aphorisms about 
 some leading idea, which is reiterated in all sorts of forms. 
 The real keynote to his style is to be found in the characteristic 
 description of his Athenian audience which he puts into the 
 mouth of Cleon. 2 There appears, in fact, as before observed in 
 
 1 Dionysius notes the same thing in comparison with the prose of 
 Critias, whom he calls one of the new Attic school, but who wrote before 
 Thucydides. 
 
 2 iii. 38 : airioi S' v/xeTs Kattws aycauoOerovuTes, oirives elwQare Beared 
 juej/ raj]/ Xoywu yiyueffdai, aKpoaral Se r&v epycov, ra jxkv fieWoj/Ta %pya airb 
 rav ev dirovrwv o-kottovvtgs, ws Swara yiyueaOai, to, Se ireTrpay/xepa -J7S77, 
 ov rb SpcxrOev iu<TT6Tepou o^ei Xafiovres 7) rb aKovcrdey, ctTrb r£>v Koyuv KaXSis 
 iTriTLfiricrcivTcov Kal fiera Kaiv6rit]T0S fxeu Xoyov airaTaffdcu apiaroi, /xera 5e5o- 
 Kiixaa-fxeuov Se fir] ^vueirecrdai id4\eiv, Sov\ot ovres reap aet aroiroiv, uirepuirTcu 
 Se tSiv elcoOdrwv, Kal /xaAicrra fxev avrbs elireTu eKacrros fSovXojxsvos SvvaaOai, 
 el Se yu.77, avTaywvi^ofisvoi ro?s ra rotavra Xeyovai, /jlt) vcrrepoi aKoXoudrjcrai 
 
112 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. v. 
 
 the case of Sophocles (Vol. I. p. 316, § 194), a sort of tendency 
 to play hide-and-seek with the reader, and, while expounding 
 an obvious or familiar idea, to astonish him by the new and 
 strange way in which clause after clause is brought out. 
 
 § 371. In support of this opinion, that Thucydides is only 
 condensed in expression but not in thought, a great number of 
 passages could be cited, but I must content myself with a few. 
 The famous picture of the excitement of the land forces during 
 the last great battle in the harbour of Syracuse ! may serve as 
 the first It has elicited the profound admiration of Grote, 
 and the ridicule of Mure for the same reasons. And though 
 we cannot but agree with much of Grote's praise — ' the modern 
 historian strives in vain to convey the impression of it which 
 appears in the condensed and burning phrases of Thucydides ' 
 — there is real truth in the words of Mure : { The specification 
 of the modes in which the assembled crowd displayed its emo- 
 tions ; of the exact position of the groups of which it consisted ; 
 of the precise amount that each saw and heard, with the vicis- 
 situdes of their feelings and gestures, even to the nervous 
 " bobbing " and " ducking " of their heads or bodies in sym- 
 pathetic response to the critical turns of the combat, are over- 
 stated to superfluity or triviality.' He shows too in a note the 
 greater tendency to antithetical jingle of structure and sound 
 in this part of the narrative. 
 
 I will next refer to an equally well-known passage, both as a 
 good specimen of the style, and as an illustration of my position. 
 It is the account of the Athenian character as contrasted with 
 the Spartan by the Corinthian envoys. 2 Now in this passage, 
 
 doKe7v Trj yve&firiy o|ecos 84 ti Xiyovros irpoeTaiveaai, Kal irpoaiffOiffOai re 
 irp6dvfj.oi elvai to Xeyo/xeva, Kal irpovorjcrcu fipadels to, e| avrobv airo^Tiaofxeva' 
 (■qrovures re 8.XX0 ri, ws elireTv, ?) iv oh G&ftev, (ppovovvre- 8e ovSh irepl tqov 
 ■napSvTwv iKavws. airXws re, aKorjs rjdovrj i](ro'wfj.ej/oi, Kal ffotiiffTuv Oearcus 
 4olk6t€S Ka67}/j.evoLS fxaXXov, fy irepl iroXews fiovXevofAevois. 
 
 1 vii. 71. 
 
 2 i. 70 : oi jxiv ye vecorzpoiroiol Kal iirivortaai d£e?s kmI iirireXeaai epyep 
 av yvSxriv' vfxeis 5e tb vtcapxavra re o~ct>£eij/ Kal kinyvcavai fj.r]Sev, Kal epyep 
 ouSe ravayKota i!;iKeo~Qai. avOis Se oi fj.lv Kal irapa Svvafiiv ToX/nr)Tai, Kal 
 irapa yvd/J.rjV KivSwevrai, Kal eV rols dewo'is eveXirides' rb Se vfxerzpov rrjs 
 re dwduicos ivSea 7rpa|ai, rrjs re ypdofxrjs /j.r)de to?s fiefiaiois iricrTevo-ai, rwv 
 
CH. v. PERICLES' EPITAPHIOS. 113 
 
 not only is the contrast very much over-strained (instead of being 
 qualified by such cases as those of Nicias and Brasidas), but the 
 whole description plays round the single idea that the Athenians 
 are a very enterprising, and the Spartans a very conservative, 
 society. Again, in the fine speech of the Plataeans in defence of 
 their lives, the appeals to the generosity of Sparta are repeated all 
 through the argument till they become wearisome. An endless 
 number of similar instances, and of the repetitions of the same 
 ideas and the same phrases, even in different speeches, indicate, 
 if anything, rather a poverty than a richness of ideas. 1 
 
 The fullest and most suggestive is, perhaps, Pericles' Epita- 
 pfo'os, though it too has its reiterated antitheses of in word and 
 in deed; but even here we may perceive one great reason both 
 of the obscurity and of the constant playing with a few ideas 
 which characterise almost all the harangues. It is the fixed 
 purpose of the historian to make them quite general in appli- 
 cation, and hence the careful avoidance of all details and all 
 particulars which give point and flavour to every great speech 
 of every real orator. Thus the allusions of Pericles to the art 
 education and aesthetic pleasures afforded at Athens lose much 
 point by the avoidance of every detail concerning the great artists 
 or the great works which were within the sight and in the mind 
 
 re fieivwv fiydivoTG ofeffQai aTroXvd-fiaeadai. Kal fx.)]V Kal &okvoi npbs vfias. 
 fieXXTjrds, Kal cwroSTj/MjTai npbs £vdr)iuLOTa.Tov$. olovrai yap ol fx.ev tjj dirovaia 
 dv n KrdffOai, fyiets 8e t$ iireXQeTv Kal rd kroijxa av fiX&ipcu. Kparovvres n 
 tS>v e-)(Qpwv ztcI irXeicrrov i^4pxovrai, Kal viK&fJLevoi e7r' iXaxiCTOv avaTr'nrrovaiv. 
 en $e, ro?s fiev cwfiaffiv aXXoTpiiOTdrois inrep rrjs irSXews xP® VTal ) T V 
 yvw/xr) $e olKeioTarri is rb rrpdcrcreiv ti virep avrTJs. Kal a fjihv av iirivo^ffavTes 
 utj i^iXdcocriv, o'lKela ffrepeaOai rjyovvTai, a 5' av eTreX66vres KTi}ffa)VTai, 
 i\iya irpbs ra jxiXXovra Tu%e«/ irpd^avres, ?jv 8' dpa irov Kal ireipa <T<f)aX£>ffiv, 
 avTeXiricravTes dXXa iirX^pcocrav r\\v xpt'iav. fiovoi yap e^ovai re Kal d/xoiws 
 iXiri^ovffiv a av iirivo{)o~ai(n, did rb rax^av rrjv iTrixeipyariv iroietaQai a>v dv 
 yvwffi, Kal ravTa /xerd irdvoov irdvra Kal kivSvvwv <5t UXov tov alwvos p.oxQov<ri, 
 Kal diroXavovaiv iXaxurra ra>v inrapx6vTwv Sid rb del KTacrdai, Kal /ultjtg 
 foprfyv &XX6 ti yyelcrOai ^ rb rd Siovra irpal-ai, j-vjupopdv re oi>x ^Cffov 
 7}(rvxiav dirpdy/Jiova, 7) dcrxoXiav iiriirovov. ware et ris avrovs j^vveXkv <pair) 
 ire<pvKevai inl r<$ /^re avrovs %X €lv VO' v X iav pj\T* fobs &XXovs dvdpwirovs ear, 
 opOws dv e'lTroi. 
 
 1 Cf., for example, the latter half of iii. 37, iii. 44, and the appendices 
 to Mure's fifth volume, on the rhetorical mannerisms of Thucydides. 
 VOL. II. I 
 
ii4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. cav. 
 
 of all his supposed hearers. Indeed, throughout the whole 
 work not a single contemporary artist, or poet, or literary man is 
 mentioned, except Hellanicus, and that for his inaccuracy ; not 
 a single public work or monument, save the Propylsea, and that 
 perhaps because it was a needless expense in the way of mere 
 ornament, without the excuse of religion. But if this adher- 
 ence to generalities has damaged the rhetorical effect of the 
 speeches, it has made them a better and more enduring monu- 
 ment of the philosophy of history as the author conceived it 
 
 Finally as to the form of the speeches, the rhetorical critics 
 have observed that while there is a general attention paid to 
 the rules prescribed in the early handbooks, while there is 
 generally a fixed exordium, a prothesis, a. narrative of facts, and 
 a formal conclusion, there is no such slavish adherence to them 
 we should expect rather in professional court-speeches than 
 in the deliberative addresses of political leaders. While figures 
 of diction, such as rimed endings, artificial antitheses, and the 
 like, are frequent, figures of thought, such as indignant questions,, 
 irony, aposiopesis, and the like, are rare, as if beneath the 
 dignity of the historian, and chiefly admitted in the harangue 
 of the demagogue Athenagoras ;* whereas even in the speeches 
 of Cleon, whom the author hated and despised, no attempt 
 has been made to portray his vulgarity in his language. 
 
 § 372. Passing to the dialogues, the first to be mentioned, on 
 account of its length and prominence, is the so-called Melian 
 dialogue at the close of the fifth book. The form of this 
 passage is that of a court-speech interrupted by replies to each 
 point, and is an ingeniously constructed method of expounding 
 the brutal policy of the Athenians as expressed in a private 
 conference. Grote has raised special objections to its historical 
 value, and thinks it rather a sort of tragic climax of insolence, 
 intentionally dramatised before the disastrous peripeteia of the 
 Sicilian expedition. While agreeing fully with his objections, I 
 think he need not have contrasted it, as less genuine, with the 
 speeches, many of which rest on just as little evidence, and 
 
 1 They are, however, much more frequent than is to be inferred from 
 Elass's account, who speaks of Athenagoras' speech as affording the only 
 examples. 
 
CH. v. THE EIGHTH BOOK. 115 
 
 have just as little internal probability. But in any case the 
 obscurities and outlandish contortions of expression in the 
 discussion have struck all commentators, and elicited from 
 Dionysius special censure. It is properly ranked with the 
 speeches on account of its rhetorical and sophistical tone, and 
 may be regarded as one of the weakest points in the great 
 history. The other two examples, the dialogue of Archidamus 
 with the Platseans, 1 and that of the Ambraciot herald and the 
 Acarnanian soldiers of Demosthenes, 2 are both admirable, the 
 former being formal and stately, the latter very brief and 
 dramatic ; and it is to be regretted that there are not more such 
 passages in the work. 3 For on the whole this dramatic quality 
 is a feature which we miss in Thucydides, after perusing the 
 more picturesque Herodotus ; the genius of the Father of 
 history has not been here equalled by his great Attic rival. 
 
 § 373. The absence of both speeches and dialogues from the 
 eighth book has caused much discussion in ancient and modern 
 times, and is generally considered to be due to the accident of 
 the work being unfinished at the author's death. There are 
 several summaries of opinion throughout the book which would, 
 it is thought, have been expanded and transformed into speeches 
 had he lived to revise and complete it. Cratippus, his contem- 
 porary, is reported to have said that Thucydides deliberately 
 omitted them, finding that they did not suit the prevailing taste. 
 But this seems to imply that the earlier books were published by 
 the author himself, unless we interpret Cratippus to mean that 
 Thucydides observed such a change in Attic eloquence with 
 the rise of Lysias that he felt what he had already composed 
 was becoming antiquated. On the other hand, Xenophon, in 
 the first two books of the Helknua, which are a professed 
 continuation of Thucydides, inserts several speeches — a proof 
 that he at least did not consider the eighth book showed a 
 change of style in its author. The later books of the Hellenka, 
 written years subsequently, have no speeches in them, so that 
 there seems really to have been a change of fashion, but not 
 
 1 ii. 71-4. 2 iii. 113. 
 
 3 Perhaps i. 53 should be added as another case, but there is here only 
 a single protest and reply. 
 
 1 2 
 
Ii6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. v. 
 
 in Thucy elides' time. There are, moreover, a good many- 
 peculiarities in this book, a good many words not elsewhere 
 occurring in the history, but common in Xenophon, and a 
 prominence of personal expressions of opinion, which have been 
 sufficient to suggest its spuriousness to many ancient critics, 
 and which have led some moderns to believe that the editor, 
 probably Xenophon, had some share in reducing it to its present 
 form. The reader will see most of the peculiar phrases in an 
 appendix to Mure's fifth volume. I would especially add the 
 violent sentence about Hyperbolus, 1 which is so different from 
 what the historian says even about Cleon, and so historically 
 false and misleading when we consider the real circumstances 
 (preserved by Plutarch) of Hyperbolus' ostracism, that I wonder 
 how Grote can quote it in a foot-note 2 without perceiving that 
 it either overthrows his own theory of ostracism or the trust- 
 worthiness of his infallible guide. So also the emphatic com- 
 mendation of the Athenian Five Thousand 3 seems to me too 
 personal and explicit for the usual manner of the historian. 
 
 The last discussion of this question is in Classen's intro- 
 duction to the eighth book, in which he of course adopts the 
 theory most honourable to Thucydides, and most favourable to 
 the dignity of the text on which he has spent so many years of 
 his life. He has pointed to the peculiar recension of the text of 
 this book in the Vatican B, as showing an early feeling that it 
 had not received the author's final revision, but this recension he 
 attributes (at earliest) to some Alexandrian grammarian, though 
 he joins Bekker in accepting it, as approaching what Thucy- 
 dides would have produced had his labours not been cut short 
 by death. This may be reasonable enough, but when he goes 
 on to argue (p. x. sq.) that the historian deliberately omitted 
 speeches here, as in a large part of the fifth book (which, by 
 the way, also shows want of a final revision), he will not carry 
 conviction to any unprejudiced mind. It is all very well to 
 say that the political movements were too fleeting and intricate 
 
 1 C. 73 : Kt 4 *¥irepl3o\6p re riva ra>v 'AOrjvaiwv, fAoxQypbv <xvQp<airov^ 
 oxtt pa.Kiap.ivov ov dia Suvdfxews KaX a^dofiaros (pofiov, aAAa Stoi irovripiav ko.1 
 aicrx^ v ' f ) v T V S T^Aews, airoKreivovcri p-era Xap/xivov (a strategus). 
 
 2 vii. 145. 3 C. 97. 
 
CH. v. CHARACTER OF THE WORK. 117 
 
 for set declarations, but surely nowhere in the work can we 
 see better scope for a great harangue than in the stirring events 
 at Samos (c. 76) where the fleet became in fact the Athenian 
 democracy. Classen thinks that Thucydides only inserted 
 speeches where they had really been made. I do not agree 
 with him that Thucydides was restrained by any such conside- 
 rations, but even taking up Classen's ground, does he imagine 
 that the events both at Samos and at Athens were carried out 
 without both vigorous and plausible speeches at every meet- 
 ing ? But there is endless room for this not very profitable 
 subjective criticism. 1 
 
 § 374. It remains for us to gather up the details, and to form 
 some general estimate of the genius and character of the great 
 historian. Whatever faults of style, whatever transient fashion 
 of involving his thoughts, may be due to a sophistic education, 
 and to the desire of exhibiting depth and acuteness, there can- 
 not be the smallest doubt that in the hands of Thucydides the 
 art of writing history made an extraordinary stride, and attained 
 a perfection which no subsequent Hellenic, and few modern 
 writers, have attained. If the subject which he selected was 
 really a narrow one, and many of the details trivial, it was 
 nevertheless compassed with extreme difficulty, for it is at all 
 times a hard task to write contemporary history, and more 
 especially so in an age when published documents were scarce, 
 and the art of printing unknown. Moreover, however trivial 
 may be the details of petty military raids, of which an account 
 was yet necessary to the completeness of his record, we cannot 
 but wonder at the lofty dignity with which he has handled every 
 part of the subject. There is not a touch of comedy, not a point 
 of satire, not a word of familiarity throughout the whole book, 
 and we stand face to face with a man who strikes us as strangely 
 un-Attic in his solemn and severe temper. 
 
 This dignity was, perhaps, even more strongly shown by his 
 reticence on topics which excited the interest, and filled the 
 thoughts, of ordinary men. We can hardly think that he de- 
 spised the great artistic and literary life at Athens, which was so 
 
 1 Cf. another ingenious attempt by Cwiklinski in Hermes, xii. pp. 23- 
 87. 
 
nS HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. v. 
 
 dear to his ideal hero, Pericles ; yet, as already remarked, he 
 never turns aside, except in a passing clause, to mention it, or to 
 notice any of the great rival intellects which were fascinating the 
 Athenian public of the day. It would have been strictly to the 
 point, when he insists upon the elastic and irrepressible hope- 
 fulness and energy of Athens, which astonished all her enemies, 
 to have noticed that even during the invasions of the land, and 
 the long dolours of* siege and of sickness, not only did Sopho- 
 cles, Euripides, and their many tragic rivals continue to hold 
 the attention and the interest of the Attic public, but even the 
 buffoonery and broad farce of the Old Comedy found in war and 
 distress a subject for fun and banter, and a people ready to en- 
 joy and delight in it. All this would have enhanced his argu- 
 ment, but he merely mentions this side of Athens in passing, 
 and by the mouth of Pericles, who probably made a far different 
 use of so great and fruitful a topic. 
 
 § 375. Far more distinct and unmistakeable is his contempt 
 for the social gossip and scandal of the day, which encompassed 
 the two prominent Athenians of the period — Pericles and Alci- 
 biades — with a perfect cloud of anecdote. The older comedians 
 — we hear the echo of it in Plutarch and Athenseus — were aris- 
 tocratic and conservative, and never ceased attacking in Pericles 
 his policy, and his private life. The attacks on Alcibiades, 
 who seems to have either bullied or cajoled the comic writers, 
 still remain to us in the form of orations which are very libel- 
 lous accounts of his private life, but are corroborated by the 
 allusions of Thucydides and other good authority. The later 
 aristocratic thinkers also were adverse to Pericles' policy, and 
 it seems to me as if Thucydides, in composing his history, had 
 among other objects this in view, that he should vindicate from 
 these objections the statesman whom he regards as the ideal 
 leader of Athens. But concerning the private scandals told 
 about the life of Pericles, concerning the very existence of 
 Aspasia, concerning the heresies of Damon and Anaxagoras, and 
 their persecution as Pericleans, on all these topics he is contempt- 
 uously, perhaps indignantly, silent. Indeed, as regards women, 
 he seems to have summed up his views in a single sentence at 
 the close of Pericles' speech, when he said that ' she was best 
 
CH.V. ABSENCE OF SCANDAL. 119 
 
 who is least spoken of among men, whether for good or for 
 evil.' It is not unlikely, indeed, that a conscious antagonism 
 to Herodotus led him to a faulty reserve in this respect, and we 
 cannot but regard it as a defect of over-dignity, when he leaves 
 us to discover from a late epigram of Agathias, that a jury of the 
 same Athenian assembly which condemned the whole popula- 
 tion of Mitylene to death, forced Paches to suicide for violating 
 the honour of two of the women who had been condemned to 
 slavery by the same decree. It is not, indeed, his habit to allude 
 to the death of any leading men unless it took place in battle, 
 but it was here the duty of an impartial observer, who disliked 
 the democracy, and often records things against it, to mention 
 the example of a just and upright feeling. 1 It has been very 
 common to praise Thucydides for the wonderful impartiality of 
 his statements ; it is not at all so certain that he was strictly 
 impartial in his reticence. This question has been discussed 
 with great ingenuity by M. Miiller-Striibing in his works on 
 Aristophanes and Thucydides, and he has made out a case 
 against the historian or against the purity of our text. 2 
 
 § 376. Parallel to this dignity of reticence on social matters 
 and on political scandal, is the historian's neglect of religious 
 matters, and his somewhat contemptuous allusions to oracles 
 and other manifestations of Providence. This may be referred 
 to the strictly modern character of his history, in which it differs 
 strongly not only from that of Herodotus, but from the subse- 
 quent histories of Xenophon and others who relapsed into a re- 
 ligious attitude. The age and society in which Thucydides grew 
 up were probably the most sceptical in all Greek history ; it was 
 a period like the close of the eighteenth century in France, from 
 
 1 I am bound to add that Mr. Bury has since led me to doubt the 
 whole story in Agathias as a late invention. 
 
 2 1'he arrogance of this author, who professes to have learned political 
 insight by long residence in England, but who is certainly in every other 
 respect un-English enough, has elicited from Classen a vigorous reply, as 
 regards Thucydides, in the Introduction to his Commentary on the fifth 
 book. But to attack Thucydides is such high treason with Classen, that 
 even the strongest arguments of this kind could have no effect upon him. 
 Nevertheless his rejoinder, though short, is valuable, though Mr. Striibing 
 has shown many fresh reasons for his views in his Thuh. Forschtmgen 
 (Vienna, 188 1). 
 
120 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. V. 
 
 which society afterwards recoiled, and returned to the more 
 natural condition of either belief or acquiescence in the national 
 faith. But Thucydides will only admit religion where the fears 
 or the hopes it raises become moving springs of human action ; 
 there is no trace in his work of any positive faith, no hint of 
 ruling power in the world beyond that of human intellect. 
 Appeals to Divine aid are only the appeals of the weaker side, 
 who have no solid argument at their back, and are contempt- 
 uously set aside as idle by those who insist on the motives of 
 self-preservation and of self-interest as the real guiding princi- 
 ples of society. He uses indeed frequently the term aperrj 
 apparently for a moral quality in men, or at least for that 
 generosity and unselfishness * which obtain a good report in 
 society, sometimes perhaps for that reputation itself. But 
 when he applies it to a deliberate political assassin — Antiphon 
 — we feel that he must have meant it in some widely different 
 sense from its later use, and that even this word must be applied 
 in an intellectual way, and mean generally ability or reputation. 
 Of course no man has ever been able to banish the notions of 
 right and wrong from his language or his thoughts, and perhaps 
 it fared with aperf 2 as with the terms ayadog and jcarag, which 
 Mr. Grote asserts to have had at first a political meaning 
 only, whereas the moral meaning is really the ground of their 
 application in politics. However this may be, it is more than 
 likely that with the belief in the religion of his day, and the 
 belief in rewards and punishments from on high, Thucydides 
 abandoned the belief in the intrinsic worth of moral excellence, 
 and that he especially points to the fate of Nicias to show that 
 these qualities availed nothing when combined with want of 
 vigour and ability. Hence the clearness with which he ana- 
 lyses motives and explains policy from the single ground of 
 selfishness and a regard to material interests. It was left 
 indeed for Classen, his latest commentator, to discover in 
 Thucydides a hidden wealth of piety and virtue, which leads 
 
 1 Cf. the list of passages given in Classen, i. p. lxvii. 
 
 2 It is specially noted by Suidas that Thucydides and Andocides used 
 aper-f} in the sense of evdoicia, and this seems to me true in several places 
 throughout both authors. 
 
CH. V. HIS TRUSTWORTHINESS. 121 
 
 him to set forth the evil results of passion and selfishness, and 
 to show the fatal consequences of impiety and neglect of the 
 gods. There is no use in arguing the point with a man who 
 after long and laborious study, perhaps owing to this study, 
 adopts such views. But it is one more instance of the simplicity 
 of mind and partial appreciation of evidence for which the 
 Germans are no less remarkable than for their industry and 
 their enthusiasm. I trust that in refuting this undue glorifying 
 of a favourite author, I have not detracted aught from the great 
 and enduring merits of the historian who has taught us to know 
 more of Greek interpolitical life than all other Greek authors 
 put together. In acuteness of observation, in intellectual force 
 and breadth, in calmness of judgment, in dignity of language, 
 there has never been a historian greater than Thucydides. 
 
 § 377. As regards the historian's trustworthiness, it has been 
 so universally lauded that it is high time to inquire how far his 
 statements are to be accepted as absolute truth. We may be 
 confident, I think, that on contemporary facts his authority is 
 very good, and so far there has been no proof of any inaccu- 
 racy brought home to him. The discovery three years ago of 
 the original text of the treaty, which he reproduces in v. 47, 
 has indeed shown that our MSS. differ considerably from the 
 actual wording of the original. I agree with Classen that these 
 variations were probably due to an originally inaccurate trans- 
 cription, and not with Kirchhoff, that they prove a great cor- 
 ruption of our texts. But what is more important for us to 
 note is this, that the variations, though many (thirty-one in all), 
 are very trifling, and do not in a single case alter the sense. 
 This is the outcome of Kirchhoffs careful discussion in the 
 twelfth volume of Hermes} So far then the authority of 
 
 1 This is not KirchhofFs opinion. He cannot believe for one moment 
 that such a man as Thucydides would make or insert in his work a 
 ' slovenly copy ' of a document. I think that is exactly the difference be- 
 tween the most accurate of ancient historians and the moderns. Thucy- 
 dides, whose speeches were no doubt very wide of the mark, and repre- 
 sented very vaguely what the various orators really said, was not in my 
 mind the least disposed to quarrel about trifling details in the transcription 
 of any document, and I think we are very fortunate to find that he or his 
 informant did it as accurately as it has been done. 
 
122 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. v. 
 
 Thucydides is unassailed. But when he goes into archaeology, 
 the case is very different His admirers have not indeed ven- 
 tured to establish the reality of the Trojan war on his authority, 
 but they all assume that his Sicilian history is as accurate as 
 his history of the war in his own day, though it reaches back 
 300 years, nay even to 300 years ' before the advent of the 
 Greeks.' It is only lately that his sources for this early history 
 have been examined, and it appears that he copied from 
 Antiochus of Syracuse, a Xoyonowq of the stamp of the fore- 
 runners of Herodotus. Hence in this portion of his work he 
 has really no more authority than Antiochus, and the whole 
 tradition requires careful reconsideration. But this would lead 
 us too far from our subject, and I will refer the reader to the 
 second appendix of my first volume, where I have discussed it 
 in relation to the knowledge of western geography shown in the 
 Odyssey of Homer. 
 
 § 378. Turning to the external history of the text, we find 
 that though it is not mentioned by any of the writers of the suc- 
 ceeding generation, it must have at once attained a high repu- 
 tation, for several historians — Xenophon, Cratippus and Theo- 
 pompus — set themselves to continue or complete it, without 
 venturing to handle over again the epoch treated by the master 
 hand. The later encyclopaedists of Greek history refer to 
 him as the best authority. In Roman times we know from the 
 manifest imitations of Sallust, from the praise of Cicero and of 
 Quintilian, that they admired the man, and were offended at his 
 obscurities, just as we are. 1 But the Alexandrine critics had 
 declared him the highest model of the older Attic dialect, and 
 commented copiously on his text. So also the schools of rhe- 
 toric established at Rome turned their attention to him ; and we 
 have already frequently made mention of the judgments of 
 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, whose remarks upon our author 
 are full of acuteness, and often very just, though he judges alto- 
 gether from a rhetorical point of view, and therefore fails to 
 comprehend the higher merits of Thucydides as the first philo- 
 sopher in historiography, 
 
 § 379. Bibliographical. The body of scholia which we pos* 
 1 Plutarch, De Gloria Ath. t is full and appreciative on his merits. 
 
CH. v. MSS. AND EDITIONS. 123 
 
 sess, and which, in contrast to those on Herodotus, are often 
 very full, seem to be derived from a variety of commentaries 
 (e^y^o-we) by Asclepius, Antillus, Evagoras, Phaebammon, 
 Sabinus and Didymus, most of them of unknown date, but 
 some very old and of value. From these we have excerpts of 
 various value, and often contradictory, so that the study of them 
 is one of difficulty. They are to be found in most of the MSS., 
 which are many, and by no means of ascertained value, Poppo, 
 Bekker, and Arnold differing broadly as to their relative import- 
 ance. Nor do the MSS. seem all as yet collated, and we may 
 expect new results from a critical appendix to Classen's edi- 
 tion, which would form the proper conclusion to the work. Thus 
 Haase (in the Didot ed. 1842) says that a twelfth century copy 
 with good scholia had just been acquired at Paris, but too late 
 for his edition. There is preserved at Monte Cassino a fine 
 and early MS., which I cannot find mentioned in any of our 
 editions. So far as I can make out, a Laurentian codex (69, 2) 
 is the earliest, but the Vaticanus (B) is the best. A lost ' Italus ? 
 (Bekker's A), a Cassel MS., an Augsburg (Augustanus), now in 
 Munich, and a Clarendonius at Cambridge, are all about the 
 twelfth century in age, and all of value for the recension of the 
 text. The Vatican (B) is peculiarly valuable for its recension 
 of the eighth book, in which it constantly differs from the other 
 copies, but whether these variations are early and clever 
 emendations, or due to an originally purer text, is difficult to 
 determine. The former is the opinion of Classen, and the 
 German critics generally. Hence Schone still proposes to 
 make the Laurentian (C) the basis of the text, but Classen 
 prefers the Vatican recension. 
 
 The editions are very numerous. The princeps is that of 
 Aldus (1502), then there is a Juntinewith scholia (1526), but 
 they had already been printed with Xenophon by Aldus in 
 1503. The edition of Stephanus (1564, and often reprinted) 
 gives the scholia round the text, and Valla's early translation. 
 Hudson's folio of 1696 (Oxford) is a handsome book. Then 
 we have Duker, Poppo, Goller, Haack, and in our own time 
 Bekker, Arnold, Haase, Kriiger, G. Boehme, and Stahl. The 
 most recent commentary is that of Classen, a careful and 
 scholarly work, but sadly in want of an index and of a critical 
 
124 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. v. 
 
 preface on the MSS. and older editions. The notes are mainly 
 grammatical. Messrs. Bigg and Simcox have given us four books 
 in the Catena Classicorum, Shilleto a learned edition of two. 
 The scholia are most conveniently studied in the Didot edition. 
 The translations of Thucydides are in themselves a curious 
 study. The earliest Latin version was that of Valla (1485), 
 corrected by Portus (1594), then Casa (Florence, 1564), and 
 Baron Hoheneck (16 14). There are two very early English 
 renderings, that of Nicholls, ( citizen and goldsmith of London,' 
 in the fourth year of Edward VI. (1550, who mentions the 
 older French edition of Claude de Seysell, Archbishop of 
 Turin), and that of Thomas Hobbes, about 1670. We have 
 since, Smith (1753), Bloomfield (1829), Dale (ed. Bohn, 1848), 
 Crawley (1874), and also the speeches done separately by 
 Wilkins. All are now eclipsed by Mr. Jowett's Translation and 
 notes (2nd ed. Oxford, 1881). There are Italian versions by 
 Cellario (Verona, 1735), an ^ Strozzi (Venice, 1735), wno can " s 
 the book, as might be expected at Venice in those days, ' the 
 war of the peoples of the Morea with the Athenians.' The 
 German version by Boehme, and the French by Betant and by 
 Zevort, are in good repute. The Lexicon of Thucydides 
 (London, 1824) seems to me of little value, 1 and that of Betant 
 is out of print (Geneva, 1843-57). 
 
 § 380. It seems fitting to close the splendid epoch of Attic 
 literature which has so long occupied us with two very distinct 
 and characteristic names — one -of whom sums up in his single 
 person almost all the literary tendencies of his age, but was too 
 strong and ambitious in character to rest content with such 
 glory, and who accordingly lived and died in the violent con- 
 flicts of party politics — the notorious Critias. The second, 
 Andocides, was involved in public affairs from apparently the 
 very opposite cause, a certain weakness and instability of 
 character which would not let him rest content with an ancient 
 name and an ample fortune, but which involved him in troubles 
 and wanderings, and in the bad repute of being an uncer- 
 
 1 The review of Thucydidean literature up to 1877 in Bursian's Jahres- 
 bericht (by A. Schone) has been long delayed, and has not yet reached 
 
CH. V. ANDOCIDES. 1 2 5 
 
 tain friend and, under pressure, a betrayer of his party. But 
 in another way he shows the results of Attic culture in that he 
 attained, under these circumstances, a place in the Attic Ten 
 who were models for subsequent eloquence, and that although, 
 like Critias, he was thought an amateur by professionals, 
 he was quite a first-rate professional among amateurs. The 
 life of Critias ends with the second restoration of the demo- 
 cracy, as that of Antiphon with the first, but, as beseemed his 
 more violent character, on the field of battle, and not by the 
 verdict of the court. Andocides, whose activity and whose 
 eloquence are concerned with the same period, prolonged an 
 inglorious life after the Restoration. But he is in no sense a 
 connecting link between the old and the new. He was not, 
 like Thrasymachus, a stepping-stone beyond Antiphon leading 
 to Lysias. He was rather a weak echo of the school of 
 Antiphon, modified by the subjects which he treated, or perhaps 
 owing to these subjects, different from Antiphon, and interesting 
 as the earliest specimen we have, along with Thucydides, of the 
 deliberative as contrasted with judicial style of Attic eloquence. 
 
 But we must first gather the facts known to us concerning the 
 life of Andocides. In this case we are not in want of full 
 information, at least on the important moments of his career, 
 but unfortunately our information is untrustworthy from the 
 fact of its being conveyed either in the bitter attack preserved 
 among the speeches of Lysias, or the impassioned defence of 
 his character by the orator himself. On both sides we can 
 even now detect exaggerations and inaccuracies, so that it is 
 not easy to say how far the rest may not be equally vague or 
 misleading. Thucydides, for example, will not assert many 
 things which Andocides claims to have been clearly proved. 
 The following sketch has accordingly been compiled by modern 
 historians from the somewhat conflicting evidence of lying or 
 at least prejudiced witnesses. 
 
 § 381. Andocides was an aristocrat of ancient family, 
 deduced by the genealogist Hellanicus from the god Hermes 
 through Odysseus, which belonged to the Kydathenaean deme, 
 and the tribe Pandionis. The orator asserts that his great-grand- 
 father Leogoras commanded an attack upon the Peisistratids, 
 
126 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. v. 
 
 which we find it hard to verify. This man's son (the elder) 
 Andocides was employed as strategus with Pericles and Sophocles 
 against Samos, also at Korkyra, and in the negotiations for the 
 thirty years' peace previous to this time. These facts are cor- 
 roborated by Thucydides. 1 The elder Andocides' son was 
 Leogoras (the younger), a man of luxurious and hospitable 
 habits, who begat the orator, and a daughter, married to Callias, 
 the son of Telekles. Thus the boast of the orator that his 
 family had been celebrated both in war and peace, and was 
 well known and respected at Athens, is fairly justified. 
 
 The pseudo-Lysian attack upon him, which seems a genuine 
 speech delivered in 399 B.C., states that, though some forty 
 years old, he had never done any public state-service. This 
 assertion, while attributing to him a character inherited from 
 his father rather than his remoter ancestors, contradicts the 
 date of his birth (467 B.C.) given in the Greek Life, which is a 
 most untrustworthy compilation, and probably confounds the 
 elder and younger Andocides. The orator seems rather to have 
 been born about 440 B.C. We know nothing of his training, but 
 can hardly conceive him not to have profited by the teaching of 
 Antiphon. then the foremost sophist of the day, and, moreover, 
 of known aristocratic sentiments. Having joined the political 
 club of Euphiletus, he became involved in the affair of the 
 Hermse, and hence in various troubles, which lasted most of 
 his life. The details of the affair belong rather to Greek 
 history than to literature. It is certain that after several inferior 
 persons — slaves and metics — had informed, a certain Diokleides 
 informed against the family and friends of Andocides, who 
 were all thrown into prison, and were in the utmost danger of 
 immediate execution. Under these circumstances, Andocides, 
 pressed by his relatives, and under promise of a free pardon 
 gave such informations as satisfied the public and restored 
 public confidence. 2 Our authorities vary widely as to how 
 many they embraced, and what credit they deserved. His 
 opponents said he accused his own father and himself. The 
 orator asserts that this is false, and that he only added four 
 names to those already implicated, and these he specifies. 
 1 i. 51. ._ 2 Cf. the quotation below. 
 
CH. V. ADVENTURES OF ANDOCIDES. 127 
 
 He confessed to have known of the plot, but to have opposed 
 it, and so accounted for the escape of the Hermes before his 
 own door, which Euphiletus had given the conspirators to 
 understand would be mutilated by Andocides, while he was in 
 bed with a broken collar-bone, both unable to stir and opposed 
 to the conspiracy when he first heard it broached. Thucy- 
 dides says L that the real truth was never ascertained, but, as 
 many commentators observe, he wrote before the speeches of 
 Andocides could have been known to him, and may thus have 
 been less well informed than we are. Of course this informing 
 made the orator an object of hatred to his companions, and 
 presently, by a decree of Isotimides, entry into the agora and 
 temples was forbidden to those who had committed sacrilege, 
 even though freed from penalties in consequence of the Hermse 
 affair. 
 
 It is piain that as soon as the high premium for inform- 
 ing about this matter was offered, a perfectly distinct set of 
 informations was given concerning the violation of the Eleu- 
 sinian mysteries, and in these Alcibiades was involved, when hig 
 enemies failed to connect him by any evidence whatever with 
 the mutilation of the Hermse. The two charges were accord- 
 ingly intentionally confused, and the man who had escaped the 
 one was implicated in the other. Thus Andocides, who merely 
 confessed some knowledge of the latter, was assumed by his 
 adversaries to have admitted guilt concerning the former. This 
 he steadily denies ; but the decree of Isotimides compelled him to 
 leave Athens and wander abroad, where he made his living by 
 mercantile speculations. His adversaries told ugly stories of 
 his dangers and adventures in Cyprus. Then he brought 
 various supplies to the Athenian army at Samos in 412 B.C., in 
 the hope of working out his return by conferring solid benefits 
 upon his countrymen, but upon venturing to Athens he was 
 seized by the Government of the Four Hundred, and only 
 escaped death by their fall. So he returned to Cyprus, where 
 he is said to have been again imprisoned by Euagoras, and 
 having managed the despatch of a corn fleet for Athens, 
 returned about 409 B.C., when he delivered the extant speech 
 1 vi. 60. 
 
128 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. v. 
 
 concerning his return. But failing in his object, he again 
 went into exile, and is said by his accuser to have visited almost 
 all Hellenic lands ; he himself confesses that he made friend- 
 ships with various kings and strangers, and probably acquired 
 by trade a considerable fortune. After the capture of Athens by 
 Lysander, he returned with the other exiles about 402 B.C., and 
 found his paternal property gone, and his house, after his father's 
 death, occupied by the demagogue Cleophon, though now 
 probably empty. He then began his career as a rich citizen, 
 performing public duties, of which a tripod commemorating a 
 victory with a cyclic chorus was long extant. But after three 
 years he was attacked by the demagogue Kephisius for his old 
 complicity with the profanation of the Mysteries. The pseudo- 
 Lysian speech against him seems to have been delivered by 
 one of Kephisius' fellow accusers, Miletus or Epichares. Being 
 supported by the respected democrats Anytus and Kephalus 
 Andocides gained the cause. 
 
 Once more he appears on the political scene. ' The speech 
 concerning the peace, if genuine, asserts that during the Corin- 
 thian war, he was sent with full powers to treat for peace with 
 Sparta. He brought back terms, and an embassy of Spartans, 
 and pressed on the people the arrangement he had negotiated, 
 but in vain. The Life says he was again banished in conse- 
 quence of his failure (about 391 B.C.) ; but the whole story of 
 these negotiations, on which Xenophon and Diodorus are 
 silent, is very doubtful. Blass believes it because Philochorus 
 is cited in the argument of the speech as asserting the fruitless 
 visit of a Spartan embassy at this time. Of Andocides' death or 
 of his posterity we hear nothing. Thus this lengthy summary of 
 the facts of the orator's life shows him to have been an aristocrat 
 who moved in political circles, and spoke either on public or 
 on personal matters, but did not compose speeches for others 
 or teach the art of rhetoric as a professional. 
 
 § 382. The extant speeches and fragments of Andocides 
 can be classified chronologically with tolerable certainty, and fall 
 into the following order : (1) the fragment irpbg rovg kraipovg, be- 
 fore 415 B.C., and with it, perhaps identical, is the (rvufiovXevrucog, 
 from which we have two fragments ; (2) the speech on his 
 
CH. V. ANDOCIDES ON THE MYSTERIES. 129 
 
 Return, sometimes called Trepl rijg adelac, 409 B.C. ; (3) on 
 the Mysteries, also called itepl rrje evSeiZsbjg, 399 B.C. ; (4) con- 
 cerning the peace with the Lacedemonians, 390 B.C. The attack 
 on Alcibiades, though handed down as Andocidean, and 
 ■ spoken in the person of Phseax, is now generally believed to 
 be the composition of a later sophist, as shown both by his 
 ignorance of history and his polished style. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to analyse these speeches individually, as they are not 
 very important specimens of Greek oratory, and their loose and 
 disconnected structure makes a brief abstract impossible. 
 
 If we take up the speech on the Mysteries, which is far the 
 longest and the most characteristic, we can frame from it a per- 
 fectly adequate idea of his style, which in the other orations is 
 less marked and striking, though of the same complexion. He 
 opens with a proem, which reappears in the nineteenth oration 
 of Lysias, and which both orators seem to have adopted from 
 some collection of commonplaces by an earlier sophist. But 
 when we compare both versions, we find that Andocides 
 inserts matter of his own, and reverts again to his model, 
 whereas Lysias seems to have used it with hardly any modifi- 
 cation. In Blass' text (Teubner, 187 1) the quotations from the 
 proem are printed in special type, so that the reader can easily 
 see the use made of it by our orator. He then proceeds, after 
 expressing a doubt what line he will follow, to a long narra- 
 tive of his share in the affair of the Hermae, and the various 
 informations tendered concerning it. He shows that his in- 
 forming only touched the Hermokopidae, and had nothing 
 to say to the profanation of the Mysteries, with which he 
 was now charged. The whole narrative is very lively and 
 picturesque, and full of a natural charm rarely to be found 
 amid the artifices of Greek orators. The scene in the prison 
 (§ 48) is very pathetic, and worthy of special note. 1 He is at 
 
 1 en-eiS^ 5e eSe8e,ue0a 7raj/Tes kv t<£ aura) Kal vv£ T€ %v Kal rb decrfjLwr'fi- 
 piov (Tuj'e/ce/cA.eta'TO, 1\kov de rcj> /xev iiA\rT\p t<3 8e aSeA^ T(j3 Se yvvr) Kal 
 TraiSes, "f\v Se Bo)] Kal oIktos kXcuovtoov Kal odvpo/xeucou to. irapovra KaKa, 
 \67e1 irpos fxs Xap/xi§r)s, tcv jxev ave\\/i6s, rjXiKiwrris Se Kal (rvveKrpa<pels rrj 
 oIk'io. rf, T)ji$repa e/c iraidos, oti 'AvdoKidr), rav fxkv wapovrcov KaKwv dpas rb 
 fxeyedos, iyii} 8' iv jxkv irape\66vri XP^ VC P °u8ej/ i8e6fir]v Aeyzw evde ere ? vire7y t 
 
 VOL. II. K 
 
130 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. v. 
 
 great pains to contradict the charge that he confessed any per- 
 sonal guilt, or brought any charges whatever against his father 
 and relations, whom he claims, on the contrary, to have saved 
 from an unjust sentence. The legal portions of the speech, in 
 which he discusses the various kinds of an/ita, and the subse- 
 quent restoration not merely of arijxoi, but of exiles, are not so 
 clear, and evidently not so much to the taste of the speaker. 
 But when he reverts again to personal matters, and attacks the 
 motives and private character of his accusers, especially Callias, 
 son of Hipponicus, he becomes very lively and striking. A 
 very full and accurate analysis of this and the other orations is 
 given by Blass. 1 
 
 § 383. The criticisms upon his style are, however, all based 
 on the formal and technical ideas of the rhetoricians, and seem 
 to me to do little justice to the orator. They call him simple, 
 unadorned, irregular, and wanting in method and vigour. They 
 notice that his periods run frequently into abnormal construc- 
 tions, and end in anacolutha. They mark his frequent digres- 
 sions, and the want of due proportion in the parts of his 
 speeches. They complain that, although he generally uses the 
 language of common life, and is even vulgar and comic in his 
 pictures, he nevertheless often employs poetical idioms, which 
 violate the strict notions of Attic prose. But if we remem- 
 ber that his speeches must have been published, not as 
 models of style, but as pamphlets vindicating the character and 
 policy of the author, who was no rhetor or sophist, but merely a 
 cultivated aristocrat, most of these charges fall to the ground. 
 In fact Andocides stands nearest of all the Attic orators to our 
 modern conception of a public speaker. We do not admire too 
 
 vvv Se avayKci(ofxai 81a t)\v irapovcrav <rvjx(popdu. ols yap e%/>cD KaX ots <tvv- 
 7j(r9a avev t)[awv tu>v avyyevcov, ovtol iirl reus alriais Si' as tj/jsIs airoA\v/j.eQa 
 01 fxhu avTwv Tzdvaaiv 01 5e olyovrai (pevyovTes, (T(p<2v avroov Karayv6vTes 
 aSiKelv . . . . ei ijKOvcras tl tovtov rov irpayfxaros, enre, nal irpoiTov jj.hv 
 (Teavrbv ixcocrov, elra Se rov -naripa, bv eluos icrri tre [xdhLcrra <pi\eiv, k. t. A.. 
 \4yovros Se & avdpes rov Xap/j.ih'ov ravra, avTifioXovvrozv 5e twv &A\wv Kal 
 Ik^t€voutos evbs kKaarov, iv€6v/j.r)6r]v irpbs iuavrow S> iravTcav iyw deivordrif 
 cvfMpopa. Treptireacov, Tr6repa irspdZo) rods i/xavrov vvyyevtis airoKhvixivovs 
 a$LKws, k. r. A.. 
 
 1 AB. i. 300, sq. 
 
CH. V. NON-PROFESSIONAL GREEK ELOQUENCE. 131 
 
 strict or logical a frame, we like the language of common life, 
 adorned occasionally with flowers of poetic ornament ; we en- 
 joy digressions and personal attacks as giving life and point to 
 political debate. It is moreover confessed that by his dramatic 
 habit of introducing the very words of other speakers, he has at- 
 tained a very striking amount of ethos, in the sense of character- 
 painting, which lends a great additional charm to his narrative. 
 But we can understand how this orator was always despised 
 by the formal and technical writers, to whom we owe all our 
 information on this side of Greek literature. Yet it is hardly 
 creditable to modern critics that they should blindly follow this 
 judgment, and ignore the very interesting and modern fea- 
 tures in this remarkable man, who alone represents to us the 
 amateur and non-professional eloquence of the higher classes at 
 Athens. 1 
 
 § 384. The external history of the text is bound up with that 
 of Antiphon, both authors being handed down to us together, 
 except that the good Oxford MS. (N) omits Andocides. Other- 
 wise what has been said above of the MSS. and the Aldine prin- 
 ceps on Antiphon may be consulted. A. G. Bekker has pub- 
 lished a translation and commentary on the orator (Quedlinb. 
 1832). Without producing special editions, Sluiter, Meier, 
 Vater, Kirchhoff, Hirschig and others have elucidated many 
 points in the text. 2 Baiter and Sauppe's, and Blass' are the 
 best texts. 
 
 § 385. Widely different in character from Andocides was his 
 contemporary and relation, Critias, born also of a noble family, 
 which had been known and celebrated as far back as Solon's 
 
 1 Perhaps I should add that in the Phcedrus of Plato, an amateur 
 speech on Eros is composed by way of contrast with the formal epideixis 
 which he professes to quote from Lysias. There is, moreover, a long 
 attack on formal rhetoric, and an exposition of the conditions which 
 moderns would think proper for an orator, though the standard of Plato 
 is too high. Possibly the speeches of Phocion, if we had them, were 
 similar protests against artificial rhetoric from the practical side. But the 
 dissent of Socrates and his school, and of such men as Phocion, were in- 
 effectual in stopping the tide of public opinion in favour of professional 
 and technical eloquence. 
 
 2 Cf. Blass' s Preface to his Ed. (Teubner), p. vi. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. v. 
 
 time. Indeed, both Solon and Anacreon celebrated the beauty 
 of the ancestors of Critias. 1 We hear through Xenophon and 
 Plato that Critias applied himself much to mental culture, and 
 attended the teaching of Socrates, but would not be dissuaded 
 by him from pursuing immoral objects, and hence quarrelled 
 with the philosopher. 1 Nevertheless it is very remarkable that 
 a man who made literature only a stepping-stone to political 
 influence should have attained so high a point in various kinds 
 of writing. 
 
 He may have been born about 450 B.C., but showed little 
 prominence up to the time of the Four Hundred, of whom 
 his father Callasschrus was a prominent member. Of course 
 he was always an oligarch, but he probably spent his earlier 
 life in study, and did not see a proper scope for his energies. 
 It is remarkable that he took no strong side with the Four 
 Hundred, so that he not only remained at Athens, but pro- 
 posed decrees about the recall of Alcibiades, and the enquiry 
 into Phrynichus' death, which show a desire to agree with the 
 democracy. Yet he roused the suspicions of Cleophon, who 
 had him banished. It was during his exile, in the dissolute 
 society of Thessalian nobles, that he developed that strong 
 hatred of the democracy, and that general lawlessness and vio- 
 lence, which make his name a byword among later Athenians. 
 His career as one of the Thirty, and his death in battle against 
 Thrasybulus, are matters of notoriety. He was evidently a 
 man of strong clear head and logical consistency, but probably 
 a sceptic in morals, and an advocate of the worst theories of 
 the sophists whom Plato brings up as opponents to Socrates. 
 
 Though highly cultivated in music and literature, though a 
 good artist in various kinds of poetry and prose, he was a ruth- 
 less and cruel man, upon whose nature the refinement of aris- 
 tocratic birth and good society had no effect. His political 
 misdeeds have, however, probably obscured his literary merits ; 
 for he sums up in himself all the forms and kinds of Attic 
 literature, and in all of them he attained a certain eminence. 
 We have spoken above (§137) of his poetry, of his elegiacs and 
 hexameters, which were political and aristocratic in tone, and of 
 
 1 Xen. Memor. i. 2, §§ 12, sq. 
 
CH. v. CRITIAS. 133 
 
 his tragedies (§ 232), which seem to have quite outdone Euripi- 
 des in preaching scepticism and a contempt for received dogmas. 
 Nevertheless, the frequent attribution of his plays to Euripides 
 shows how high was their poetical merit. In prose he wrote 
 descriptions of the polities of Sparta, Thessaly, and other 
 states ; lives of celebrated men, such as Homer and Archilochus ; 
 and philosophical discussions, of which Galen quotes one 
 on the nature of love. Hermogenes quotes as to oratory his 
 7rpooi{xia ^jdr]yopi^ci. His prose works are said to have been 
 the best, but, being long neglected on account of the deep 
 hatred which his life inspired, were first revived and praised by 
 Herodes Atticus, and then criticised next to the Ten by Hermo- 
 genes, by Philostratus and others. It excites some surprise 
 that he did not supplant Andocides in the Canon of the Ten 
 orators. Unfortunately we only possess a few trifling fragments 
 of his prose, and need not therefore discuss the judgments of 
 the critics, They praise his taste and purity, and remark that 
 he rather belonged to the new Attic writers, having none of 
 the harshness of Thucydides, who nevertheless survived him. 
 He was subtle and persuasive, but not, say they, fiery or vehe- 
 ment. 1 His political violence was, we may fear, rather the result 
 of deliberate selfishness and cruelty than of wild passion, for even 
 in his poetry this latter quality seems absent, or under strict 
 control. But from his manysidedness, and from his strictly aris- 
 tocratic tone, he would have been a very good representative 
 of Periclean culture, and of the older bloom of letters at 
 Athens, which passed away or changed with the Restoration. 
 
 1 Cf. Philostratus' interesting critique of his style, Vit. Soph. p. 213. 
 
134 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vi. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ATTIC LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION — 
 LYSIAS AND I&ffiUS. 
 
 § 386. From this time onwards the aristocrats, as a party, 
 seem to have been absorbed or destroyed, and though Plato 
 shows plainly enough his tendencies, he lives apart from the 
 people, and seldom attempts to influence the politics of his 
 day. Charges of hostility to the demos are indeed still common 
 in the quarrels of the day ; there is hardly a speech on public 
 matters in the collection of Lysias in which it is not urged by 
 the speaker against his adversary, and likewise pressed as a 
 counter-charge. Even Thrasybulus does not escape it. But 
 parties had been so broken up and confused by the disorders 
 of fifteen years ; the adherents of the Four Hundred were so 
 often enemies of those of the Thirty ; so many aristocrats had 
 been exiled as too moderate ; so many time-servers had changed 
 sides, that we cannot show any definite aristocratic party after 
 this date. But it was a time of sad memories and of poignant 
 regrets ; in spite of the amnesty voted, and honestly enough 
 observed by the demos, every private accusation, every charge 
 of peculation or violence, gave occasion for hints of former 
 treason, and for suggestions that the over-indulgence of the state 
 might now be rectified by condign punishment on another score. 
 
 § 387. It is of course not easy to draw lines of distinction in 
 an epoch where a great number of literary men of various kinds 
 were working collaterally, and where no year or decad could 
 be wanting in intellectual work. But yet it seems, by some 
 curious coincidence, that the lives of most of the great older 
 lights of Attic literature closed during the dark troubles 
 towards the end of the Peloponnesian war. Beginning with 
 
CH. VI. THE DEMOCRATIC RESTORATION. 135 
 
 Antiphon, we can enumerate Sophocles, Euripides, and Agathon 
 in poetry ; Critias, Socrates, and Thucydides— all of whom 
 died within a few years of the archonship of Eucleides. It 
 does not appear indeed that among so many authors more 
 than two — Aristophanes and Andocides — of those whom we 
 know, wrote before this crisis, and also after it. Andocides, as 
 I have explained, is not of much importance. The later work 
 of Aristophanes is perhaps the strongest evidence we have of 
 the altered tone of literature after the year 399 B.C. Attic 
 life was no longer the stormy existence of a tyrant demo- 
 cracy, ruling a great dominion, and occupied with imperial 
 interests — a society keen and intellectual, but rude withal, and 
 in some respects coarse and cruel. The Athens of Isocrates 
 and Plato is a tamer and more cultured city, in which for a 
 generation political interests sink into a secondary place, and 
 in which intellectual and moral culture come into the fore- 
 ground. This is really the time in which the change took place 
 from the Periclean to the Demosthenic citizen. 1 The Athenians 
 of the Restoration, excluded from empire by the predominance 
 of Sparta, sought material wealth and social refinement ; they 
 paid mercenaries to perform the military duties which had no 
 vital importance in their eyes. And for awhile all enterprise, 
 even in art, paused. The glories of Pheidias found no rival till 
 the schools of Scopas and Praxiteles, a generation later, re- 
 kindled the torch. Attic poetry decayed, and never recovered. 
 The New Comedy gained its greatness at the expense of all 
 the higher flights of fancy, and cannot rank higher than the 
 genteel comedy of Sheridan. 
 
 It cannot, however, be held that the years immediately 
 following Eucleides were merely days of rest and weari- 
 ness, for, as if to mark the epoch of the Restoration, several 
 eminent men, who attained maturity some years before, now 
 enter the field of literature, and perfect the development of 
 Attic prose. Of these four stand pre-eminent above the 
 rest — Lysias, Isocrates, Plato, and Xenophon. These men, 
 historians, pamphleteers, philosophers, court advocates, occupy 
 the field till circumstances again brought Athens into the 
 
 1 Grote's Hist., vol. xi. p. 390, and my Social Life in Greece, p. 269, 
 
136 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. cii.vi. 
 
 position of asserting Hellenic interests against foreign do- 
 mination ; then political oratory revives with Demosthenes 
 and his compeers. The lighter literature of the epoch — the 
 many anecdotists whom later compilers quote, the Middle 
 Comedy, which gave a picture of the society of the day, are 
 unfortunately lost, and though fragments of comedies survive 
 in hundreds, we can form no adequate notion of the merits of 
 even Antiphanes and Alexis. The dramatic side of Plato and 
 of Xenophon only gives us a glimpse into aristocratic life, a few 
 realistic pictures in Lysias' speeches show an ugly counterpart 
 in the poorer ranks. But if the social aspects of Athens are in 
 this period but partially preserved, her intellectual development 
 stands before us in a very clear and instructive way, for we 
 have ample specimens of the style — the way of thinking — of all 
 the great prose writers of the age. 
 
 § 388. We will commence with Lysias, the oldest of 
 them, whose technical education must have been completed 
 in the earlier epoch, but whose literary activity, though late 
 in development, starts with peculiar freshness and vigour 
 at the very opening of the Restoration. With him, moreover, 
 we enter upon a new phase of oratory, and that which is 
 the most characteristic of old Greek thought and culture. I 
 have sketched in the last page the general condition of Attic 
 society after the return of Thrasybulus, how external peace 
 and an enforced amnesty left many private feuds, and em- 
 bittered many new disputes. I may add that the Athenians, 
 who had no longer a great empire to control, turned to a 
 closer scrutiny of domestic affairs and of home finance. The 
 state was now poor, and the citizens unable to bear heavy 
 taxation ; it is not unlikely that many men of doubtful cha- 
 racter, who had made money abroad, came to Athens, and 
 were allowed to obtain or regain civic rights (like Andocides), 
 because they would undertake liturgies and other expensive 
 state burdens. On the other hand, there were constant com- 
 plaints of peculation and waste among public servants — one 
 man is charged with embezzling the revenues in the adminis- 
 tration of foreign affairs, another is capitally accused for 
 squandering the public chest in adding to the public sacrifices 
 
CH. vi. THE NEW COURT-ORATORY. 137 
 
 by false statutes, and thrusting upon the state religious burdens 
 too great for it to bear. Thus this period of external quiet 
 at Athens was prominently an age of litigation. It was not 
 unlike the crisis at Syracuse which was said to have produced 
 the earliest masters of rhetoric, Corax and Tisias. 
 
 But at Athens Antiphon had already domesticated the art 
 We can therefore expect only a new development with the 
 rise of more favourable conditions. This new development is 
 distinctly and prominently set before us in the oratory of 
 Lysias. Let it be remembered that the Athenian theory of 
 public life and of citizen duties required every man to appear 
 personally and transact his own business ; as the assembly 
 must not be made up of elected representatives, but of the free 
 citizens in person, so in the law courts it was abhorrent to 
 Athenian notions of the personal dignity and importance of 
 citizenship that any man should hand over his affairs to a pro- 
 fessional advocate, and sit by as a mute. Far less would any 
 Athenian judge have ventured to insult or perplex the litigant 
 who endeavoured to plead his own cause, and escape from the 
 heavy expense of employing a professional pleader. All this 
 trade union feeling which marks the judges and the bar of 
 modern days was unknown at Athens. There was rather an 
 opposite feeling in the Attic courts. The jury suspected and 
 feared the devices of an art which professed openly to confuse 
 the right and the wrong, and to give the victory to the worse 
 over the better cause. As it was nevertheless inevitable that 
 feeble or inexperienced litigants should seek the assistance of 
 those who made the law their study, we find that the profession 
 of paid advocate, or professional speech- writer, assumed this 
 curious phase at Athens, that the orator must conceal himself, 
 that he must assume not only the person but character of 
 his litigant, and, while pleading his cause, avoid all display of 
 power or of art which the jury might suspect as too perfect for 
 an average citizen. 
 
 Thus the logographer of the Restoration was strictly a 
 dramatic author, differing from the poet in this, that while his 
 plot was given him by the case in hand, the arguments, the 
 diction, nay even the particular emotions to be expressed were 
 
138 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. VI. 
 
 devised by the advocate, and put into the mouth of an 
 actor, who, however poor in forensic gifts, had at least a deep 
 interest in the performance, and a personal knowledge of the 
 circumstances of the case. It had been said by older rhetors 
 that what was probable (skog) was more valuable in argument 
 than what was true, as such ; this principle was carried to a 
 far finer point by the so-called rjdoiroiia (conveying of cha- 
 racter) and the -rrpiTvov — two hardly distinguishable qualities 1 — 
 of the school of Lysias. Thus when critics, old and new, note how 
 like to comedy are many of the details in Lysias' speeches, they 
 have caught only particular cases of these ' comic graces ' which 
 are really of the very essence of this artistic logography. It is a 
 matter of common remark how dramatic genius seems to have 
 faded out at Athens after the days of the three great tragedians 
 and the old comic poets. Perhaps it would be truer to say 
 that this talent became diffused through a wider area, and 
 through branches of literature apparently foreign to it. Dra- 
 matic speech- writing and dramatic dialogue (as with Plato) 
 occupied the attention of great artists who might in an earlier 
 generation have held a foremost place among writers for the 
 stage. There was a reality about the courts, and a freedom 
 about the schools, which suited various complexions of mind. 
 But the talent, though disguised, is there still ; we are still in 
 the presence of Attic thought and Attic culture of the highest 
 type. With this preface we turn to the details. 
 
 § 389. Lysias, an Athenian by birth, was the son of the Syra- 
 cusan Kephalus, a man of respectability and fortune, who was 
 persuaded by the influence of Pericles to settle in Athens as a 
 metic, where he carried on a thriving manufacture, chiefly as an 
 armourer. He is introduced as a very old man, living in 
 refined and elegant society, at the opening of Plato's Republic. 
 It appears from the house property owned at Athens and the 
 Peiraeus by both Kephalus and by his sons, that they must 
 
 1 Dionysius speaks of the irpevov (appropriateness) in three respects ; as 
 regards the character of the speaker, as regards the character of the audi- 
 ence, and as regards the character of the speech itself, which should change 
 according as narrative, argument, or appeal become necessary. The first 
 of these is ^6os. 
 
CH. vi. LIFE OF LYSIAS. 139 
 
 have all been of the privileged class of aliens called isotekis, who 
 were assessed the same state-burdens as citizens, though they 
 enjoyed no full political rights. The date of Lysias' birth seems 
 to be wrongly stated in the Lives of him' as 458 B.C., in which 
 case he would have been nearly sixty years old before he made 
 his first essay as an orator. For other critical reasons the date 
 of his birth has been brought down by recent scholars to about 
 435 B.C., but this is merely a matter of inference, and depends 
 on our denying the accuracy of Plato's picture of the family in 
 his dialogues. We are told that as a boy of fifteen he, and at 
 least one of his brothers, went to Thurii, and the assumption 
 that they went among the original settlers was the main cause 
 of the orator's birth being fixed at the now rejected earlier 
 date. But there is no reason to sustain this view. It seems 
 that at Thurii he came in contact with Tisias or his pupils, 
 and studied under them the art of rhetoric, in which he became 
 known as a theorist, probably at an early age. 
 
 We hear from Aristotle that he kept a school of rhetoric, 
 but that finding himself outdone as a theorist by Theodoras, 
 he took to practical oratory, in which he was without any 
 dangerous rival. This story, repeated for us by Cicero, is I 
 think suspicious, because, as Lysias seems to have adopted 
 speech-writing for a profession owing to his loss of fortune, we 
 need not conceive his adopting rhetoric from any other mo- 
 tive, and we find him coming out as a great practical orator 
 immediately after the catastrophe which deprived him of his 
 fortune. Moreover, Plato in his Phcedrus, which is supposed to 
 be a discourse between Socrates and Phsedrus, when Lysias is 
 a young and rising man, speaks of him already as a celebrated 
 orator. 1 However this may be, it seems certain that he so- 
 journed at Thurii from the age of fifteen till the Sicilian disaster 
 brought troubles on the democratic party through most cities 
 of Magna Graecia, and he was among the 300 citizens banished 
 
 1 Grote {Plato, i. p. 200, note) makes this allusion in the Phcedrus an 
 argument for his view that it was not written till after 399 B.C. He thinks 
 that Lysias, according to his own statement of his want of experience in 
 the opening of the speech against Eratosthenes, was not famous before 
 that date. 
 
140 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vi. 
 
 by a revolution which sent him back to Athens in the archon- 
 ship of Callias (412, b.c). Here he and his brother Polemar- 
 chus carried on their business, and apparently without incurring 
 the general impoverishment which affected Athens at the close 
 of the Peloponnesian War. For when the Thirty were in 
 power, and were looking out for convenient persons to plunder, 
 these brothers, with other resident aliens, were chosen as 
 affording the best booty. In the striking narrative of his 
 speech against Eratosthenes, an adherent of the Thirty, Lysias 
 has told us the story of this cruel and violent proceeding, 
 in which his elder brother, Polemarchus, was put to death with- 
 out cause or trial, the property of both seized by the Thirty, 
 and Lysias only saved by presence of mind and accident from 
 their hands. When in exile at Megara he seems to have worked 
 actively in aid of the democratic party. Plutarch's Life, ap- 
 parently quoting from his lost speech about the benefits he had con- 
 ferred (on Athens), states that he presented Thrasybulus' soldiers 
 with all the rest of his property, 2,000 drachmae and 200 shields, 
 which must have been invested in business far from Athens. 
 He, moreover, collected mercenaries, and persuaded the Elean 
 Thrasydemus, his own great friend, and a strong democrat in 
 politics, to give two talents in aid of the undertaking. It was 
 in consequence proposed by Thrasybulus, as soon as they suc- 
 ceeded, that civic rights should be accorded to Lysias ; but the 
 proposal, though carried, was indicted by Archinus, a companion, 
 perhaps a rival of Thrasybulus, as illegal, because proposed 
 before the council who should have prepared it were pro- 
 perly elected, and in consequence Lysias remained for the rest 
 of his life an isoteles. Several somewhat hostile allusions to 
 Thrasybulus in the extant speeches have puzzled the critics, 
 who think that the orator ought to have been a staunch adherent 
 of his democratic friend — as if it were not part of Lysias' art to 
 -assume the person of his client, and perhaps by such very allu- 
 sions to lull the suspicions of the jury that he and not a simple 
 citizen was pleading the cause. But we do not know how far 
 this disguise was possible, or whether it was not as transparent 
 as that of the assumed authorships which we noticed in the Old 
 Comedy of the previous generation. For we hear that Lysias 
 
CH, VI. LYSIAS IN THE PH^DRUS. 141 
 
 having lost his fortune, and having revealed to both himself and 
 others his practical power in prosecuting the murderers of his 
 brother, became so popular a professional speech-writer, that 
 at least 200 of his speeches (not to mention spurious attri- 
 butions) were preserved. Among the many rivals who may- 
 have written some of the speeches assigned to him, none ap- 
 proached him in celebrity. We hear nothing further concern- 
 ing his private life, save that he stood in intimate relations to a 
 certain Metaneira, though married to his niece, the daughter 
 of his youngest brother, Brachyllus, according to a common 
 fashion at Athens. He does not seem to have lived to an 
 advanced age, his latest extant speeches not reaching, I think, 
 below 480 b.c. The epigram or poem of Philiscus upon him 
 cited in Plutarch's Life is so corrupt as not to be worth quot- 
 ing ; l but there is a fine bust of him in the Naples Museum, 
 which seems to be genuine, and shows a strong, clear, somewhat 
 hard face. 
 
 § 390. The speeches of Lysias are upon so great a variety 
 of subjects, that it is extremely difficult to classify them. The 
 great majority are very short pleadings in private disputes, some 
 on trifling subjects, but even here constantly touching on public 
 affairs, and discussing the general character both of the litigants, 
 and of the public men of the day. But before entering on this 
 side of the orator's work, we may dispose briefly of his rhetorical 
 and political speeches — I mean political as opposed to mere 
 court arguments. Of his earlier works, his technical treatise, 
 which is alluded to, and his erotic and panegyrical efforts, which 
 were extant both in the form of speeches and of letters, we know 
 almost nothing. But a curious sketch or specimen of his rhe- 
 torical essays on erotic subjects is preserved in the Phczdrus of 
 Plato, where Socrates insists on Phsedrus reading out to him a 
 composition of the kind which he has just heard Lysias, the 
 famous orator, deliver. There is considerable controversy as 
 to the genuineness of this document, most English and French 
 critics, such as Mr. Jowett and M. Perrot, 2 holding it to be a 
 
 1 Cf. Bergk, Lyr. Fragg. p. 640. 
 
 2 Mr. Grote, in his admirable chapter on the Phadrus (Grote's Plato, 
 ii. cap. xxiv.), seems never to have suspected the genuineness of this docu- 
 
142 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. vi. 
 
 mere satirical imitation of the orator by Plato, many Germans, 
 and among them Blass, asserting it to be a real transcript. 
 Blass, indeed, goes so far as to say that even such a stylist as 
 Plato could not have produced so characteristic an imitation of 
 the graces and turns of Lysias, whose speech is here, as he well 
 observes, formally far superior to Socrates' answer. But surely 
 the imitation of Agathon's style in the Symposium shows how 
 clever a counterfeiter Plato could be. I confess myself not con- 
 vinced by these arguments, nor by others such as this, that the 
 direct assertion of its being read from a written copy precludes 
 its being the invention of Plato. The historical impossibilities in 
 the Dialogues show plainly how far Plato considered his dramatic 
 license to extend, and it seems more likely that he closely paro- 
 died some kindred speech of the orator, than that he intro- 
 duced real quotation of such length into his compositions — a 
 practice which would have inestimably increased their value 
 for the history of literature. From Lysias' panegyricus we have, 
 on the contrary (in Dionysius), a genuine fragment, that of a 
 speech delivered at the ninety-eighth Olympiad, when the 
 elder Dionysius of Syracuse sent a pompous embassy to contend 
 at the games. The subject is the increasing danger to Greece 
 from the great king on the one side, and the Sicilian tyrant 
 on the other, with strong exhortations to harmony among Hel- 
 lenes, and a firm resistance to the encroachments of both. 
 The mob at Olympia, as we are told, in consequence of this 
 address, hooted the poems of Dionysius, plundered his gilded 
 and embroidered tents, and insulted his deputation, but this 
 was the only effect produced. The critic Dionysius says it was 
 inferior in weight and dignity to similar compositions of Iso- 
 crates and Demosthenes. The fragment, however, as far as it 
 goes, seems quite equal to the more diffuse rhetoric of the 
 former, and must have been fully as exciting to the hearers, 
 though Dionysius says it is not so. 
 
 § 391. The Epitaphios l appears to be spurious, and I will 
 
 ment. But he was a man strangely easy of faith concerning the alleged 
 authorship of Greek documents, and in the same chapter (p. 256) implies 
 his belief in the authenticity of the Epitaphios of Lysias. 
 1 Or. 2. 
 
CH. VI. THE SPEECH A GAINST ERA TOSTHENES. 143 
 
 therefore postpone trie consideration of it to another place, 
 where we can bring it into comparison with other displays of the 
 kind. Of the imaginary speech for Nikias before the Syra- 
 cusans, we have only a sentence or two, and though it was 
 accepted by Theophrastus, it is likewise of doubtful authenti- 
 city. But a genuine and interesting fragment of a Irjfx^yopri, 1 
 or deliberative speech, has been preserved by Dionysius, 
 in which the speaker urges a complete restoration of the 
 democracy after the expulsion of the Thirty, against the pro- 
 posal of Phormisius to limit civic rights to landholders. In 
 this, as in many other speeches, Lysias spoke his own strong 
 sentiment against every form of government except that of the 
 whole people. This sentiment is practically illustrated by the 
 longest and best known of his court speeches, that against 
 Eratosthenes, delivered in his own person, and generally stated 
 (after his own exordium) to be the first essay that he made in 
 court. It falls after the fragment just mentioned, which must 
 have been delivered in 403 b.c. The only other document in 
 the collection of earlier date is the speech for Poly stratus, 
 which may be as early as 406, but which all good critics refuse 
 to consider genuine. 
 
 I may remark that spurious speeches like this, if really 
 delivered at the time they profess, and not the work of later 
 sophists, are a most valuable index of the general condition 
 of Attic oratory apart from the great masters who towered above 
 the average crowd. 
 
 § 392. The speech against Eratosthenes is in every respect a 
 very fine oration, full of point and of vigour, but only exhibiting 
 a certain number of Lysias' perfections. The narrative of his 
 brother's murder and his own escape is admirable, and the press- 
 ing of his proof by questioning of the accused irresistible. But 
 far more interesting to us is the sketch of the political acts of 
 Theramenes, who at the moment was somewhat rehabilitated in 
 character by his enmity to Critias and his tragical death. The 
 whole speech seems intended to have a larger scope than the 
 condemnation of Eratosthenes, who is too contemptible an 
 adversary to have his motives dissected, or his character painted 
 1 Or. 34. 
 
544 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vi. 
 
 at full length. Neither does Lysias seek to convey his own 
 character to the jury, a device chiefly useful to a defendant, but 
 not to a plaintiff who merely sought to fasten his charge upon 
 the adversary. 
 
 The speech against Agoratus is very similar in character, 
 except that both plaintiff and defendant are lower in the social 
 scale, so that while there is less of general political argument, 
 there are more copious details, especially of the wretched 
 conduct of Agoratus, who after becoming a tool to the Thirty 
 and doing to death a large number of honest citizens, escaped 
 to Phylae, and attempted to join the democrats. 1 Though 
 saved from instant death by Anytus, who nobly reminded 
 his soldiers that this was not the time or place to take ven- 
 geance on their enemies, he was shunned as an accursed 
 outcast, and when attempting to join the solemn procession 
 on the return of the exiles from Peiraeus, was disarmed and 
 driven off with scorn by ^Esimus, the chief of the ceremony. 
 Thus if this oration is remarkable for Lysias' dramatic power 
 or character-drawing, it is in the drawing of the adversary. 
 This feature recurs in several of the lesser orations spoken by 
 plaintiffs, of which I may refer the reader to that against Alci- 
 biades (the younger), a dissolute young debauchee, who is de- 
 picted as having inherited only his father's vices ; 2 that against 
 Philon, 3 in which a mean and selfish creature, who pro- 
 fited by his neighbour's misery, is brought before us in strong 
 colours ; that against Diogeiton, 4 who was a false guar- 
 dian, and an oppressor of helpless orphans, according to 
 his accuser ; and that against Nikomachus. 5 
 
 § 393. Far more striking, however, and more artistic than 
 these portraits of adversaries, are the portraits conveyed by 
 Lysias of the characters of defendants in their own speeches. 
 Here character was of great importance, for in answer to the 
 allegations of the prosecutor, the defendant, without boasting 
 
 1 §§ 77, sq. 
 
 2 The authorship of this oration, which is evidently a genuine speech, is 
 doubted by Blass and others, chiefly because they think the character-paint- 
 ing not delicate enough for Lysias (Bias?, i. 406). 
 
 3 Or. 31. 4 Or. 32. 5 Or. 30. 
 
CH. vi. ARISTOCRATIC CHARACTERS. 145 
 
 or insolence, was bound to let the jury know his past history, 
 his services to the state, and his general blamelessness of life. 
 This is more strictly the ethopoeia for which the orator was so 
 celebrated. His defendants are all personages distinct enough 
 for a drama or a modern novel. The most remarkable ex- 
 amples are those found in the speech for Mantitheos, 1 that of 
 the accused, a political character, in or. 25, that of the speaker 
 in or. 21 (very similar, with delicate distinctions, to that of 
 Mantitheos), and that of the defendant charged with cutting 
 away a sacred olive on his estate. 
 
 Let us pause for a moment at this group ; it consists of 
 people of consideration, who come forward to speak with 
 confidence and dignity in their own behalf. The speech of 
 Mantitheos, whose name is preserved in the superscription, 
 is the most remarkable. He is a young aristocrat, whose 
 ancient family and good traditions have prompted him not to 
 only to seek danger in the van of battle, and retire from action 
 more slowly than the mighty Thrasybulus, but to ascend the 
 bema without waiting for the sanction of mature age, and to 
 advise the people on public affairs. He chooses, moreover, to 
 adopt a style of dress and of life suited to his aristocratic 
 station, though no one has ever seen him joining in the revel- 
 ries and the misconduct of other young men of the same class. 
 He thanks his present adversary, who has questioned his fitness 
 for the council, for having given him a fitting opportunity in 
 the scrutiny (<Wiju<Wa) of exhibiting his life. Though some- 
 what self-assertive for our notions of good taste, the speech 
 is admirably suited to a young Greek aristocrat. The other 
 discourses of the same class, being delivered by older men, are 
 calmer and less confident, but each of them conveys a strong 
 and clear impression of the speaker's respectability, dignity, 
 and superiority to any vulgar crime. 
 
 § 394. Passing to a lower condition of society, we may cite 
 the oration on the property of Aristophanes, in which the speaker's 
 father, who was already dead, was charged with having made 
 away with the money of Aristophanes, confiscated after his 
 execution by public decree. Here the speaker, touching lightly 
 
 1 Or. 16. 
 
 VOL. II. L 
 
146 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. VI. 
 
 on the dreadful fate of Aristophanes (who was executed without 
 trial, and even his body refused to his relatives), endeavours to 
 show that his own father and he himself were quiet, unpre- 
 suming people, his father having maintained a good character to 
 the age of seventy,, when he died, and he himself having been 
 too young to share in such a crime. Still more characteristic is 
 the first oration, on the killing of Eratosthenes, whom the speaker 
 found in his wife's chamber, having discovered her infidelity by 
 a slave, and having summoned various friends to be witnesses 
 of the outrage. The picture of the innocent and unsuspicious 
 husband — a man of the poorer class ; of all the suggestive cir- 
 cumstances which he overlooked from thorough confidence in 
 his wife; of his sudden awakening to a knowledge of her guilt — 
 all this is drawn in homely detail, and with masterly power. 
 
 Similar in some respects, though contrasted in not asserting 
 complete innocence and justification, are the speeches in reply 
 to Simon, and in answer to the charge of malicious wounding} 
 The speakers, who had quarrelled with rivals in somewhat 
 disreputable love affairs, while admitting their folly, and the 
 reality of the brawl, assert their own efforts to keep things 
 quiet, and the fury and unreasonableness of their opponents. 
 All three orations are very interesting in opening to us 
 views into the inner life of the lower classes at Athens. To 
 take them as specimens of public morality, as is done by 
 most Germans and the English critics who follow them, is 
 to make the Newgate Calendar an index of average morals. 
 As this has been done for Ireland in the last century by a 
 distinguished historian, we must protest against its being done 
 for Athens. 
 
 § 395. Last in this class of speeches I will mention the very 
 interesting speech on behalf of the Invalid Pauper, whose 
 allowance of an obol per diem, according to the Athenian 
 poor-law, was challenged, and who shows that his case is a fair 
 one for public charity. The old grammarians, who could not 
 understand how the great Lysias should plead in such a case, 
 where the issue was trifling and any remuneration impossible, 
 rejected it as spurious. Most moderns are of the opposite 
 
 1 Or. 3 and 4. 
 
CH. VI. INSTANCES OF. HUMOUR. 147 
 
 opinion, justly. But they seem hardly to have appreciated the 
 circumstances of the case, which are easily to be deduced from 
 the speech. The alleged pauper was evidently what we call 
 * a character,' with a small shop close to the agora, the com- 
 mon resort of many people far above him in means and sta- 
 tion, who were doubtless attracted by his wit or his drollery. 
 These people, moreover, seem to have lent him horses to 
 ride, and this fact, together with the distinguished company 
 which thronged his shop, led the accuser to believe that he 
 was not alvvaroc, without means of helping himself. It is 
 indeed more than probable that his influential friends got him 
 put on the relief list in preference to more deserving appli- 
 cants. This created envy against him, and he found himself 
 in danger of losing his pension. We can imagine him appeal- 
 ing with comic pathos to Lysias, who probably frequented his 
 shop with other strollers in the agora, and we can imagine how 
 the company would join in entreating the great advocate to 
 help so useful and popular a character. Thus half in charity, 
 half in fun, Lysias writes him a defence, which could only have 
 had effect when spoken by a well-known and original character, 
 and which gains or loses almost all its point by the delivery. 
 
 There is all manner of fun in the speech, comic pathos, 
 parody of serious arguments, unexpected turns ; but it must 
 be acted to produce any effect. Most of the arguments are 
 not serious, and the impression produced is that the speaker 
 was by no means so badly off as he pretends ; yet the defence 
 would be very telling, when a trifling sum was at issue, and 
 would be sure to carry the Council by its cleverness and its 
 racy humour. This tendency to the humorous is very apparent 
 in two other speeches, that against Theomnestus, 1 who endea- 
 voured to evade a charge by adhering to the letter of the law 
 in contempt of its spirit, and the fragment against the Socratic 
 ^Eschines, which draws a picture of the defendant worthy of 
 Aristophanes. Allied, as usual, to this talent, is the power of 
 pathos, which, though kept in restraint by the taste of the day, 
 and sparingly admitted in early Greek oratory, is very promi- 
 nent in the prison-scene drawn in the speech against Agoratus, 2 
 
 1 Or. 10. 2 § 39, sq. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. VL 
 
 which strongly resembles that already noted in Andocides 
 (above, p. 129). Still finer and unique in our remains of 
 Lysias is the narrative in the speech against Diogeiton, which 
 indeed Dionysius cites as a model, where the appeal of the 
 mother of the orphans to her father, who was their guardian, is 
 not inferior to the finest speeches in Euripides. I will quote 
 it here, as being little known to ordinary students. 1 
 
 § 396. I have endeavoured to bring together these gene- 
 ral features because the particular analysis of so many short 
 speeches, on so many various subjects, would detain the reader 
 far too long, and occupy a disproportionate space in this history. 
 The argument, the authenticity, and the literary features of 
 each speech have been fully discussed in Blass' Attische Bered- 
 samkeit and in Mr. Jebb's Attic Orators, to either of which 
 the special student of Lysias may turn for fuller information. 
 I am likewise bound to pass by in silence the many political 
 and social lights on the history of Athens afforded by the 
 allusions of his speakers — many of them not creditable to the 
 public morality of the Restored democracy, and showing how 
 vague suspicions, political changes, and even the poverty of 
 the public purse, were made the handles of private accusations. 
 
 1 § 15 : ' eiren-a <rv 4T6\fxr](ras, , '4<pr\, £ enre?i/, %x wv Tocauro %p^aTa, ws 
 di<Tx i ^ ias 8paX/«.as 6 tovtwv iraTrip Kar4\nr€ Kal rpidicovTa o~TaTr)pas, S Trap' 
 ifiol KOTaAeKpfleVra iiceivov re\evTr)o~avTOS eyw <roi e'Sai/ca ; Kal e/cj3aAetV 
 rovrovs rj^iooKas dvyarpibovs 6vras e/c rf/s oiicias ttjs aurcou iv Tpificoviois, 
 avvTrofi-fiTovs, ov fxsra o.ko\ov6ov, ov fxera o'TpcofxaTcav, ov ix^ra Ifiaricov, ov 
 (xsra twv iTTiirXav a 5 irar^p avrois Kar4\nrev, owSe fxera twu irapaKaTadrjKcov 
 as e/ceti/os irapa vol KaredsTO. Kal vvv tovs fxev e/c rrjs fxrjTpvias rrjs 4fx,rjs 
 •TraiSeuets iv ttoAAchs xpV^o'iv evdaifj,ovas 6vras' Ka"> rat/ret fj.hu KaXws woieTs' 
 tovs 8' ifiovs dStwets, ovs arifxcas 4k rr)s olttias e/c/3aAesz/ hvr\ trKovaiwv itto}x ovs 
 airoS6t|at irpoOv/mrj. Kal iirl tolovtols epyois ovre tovs Oeovs (pofifj, ovt' 4/u.e 
 rr\v ar\v 0vyar4pa tt\v ffweibvlav alo~x v 'vy, oi/Ve tov adekcj ov /Me/nvrjaai, aAAa 
 iravTas 7j/j.as m-pl iAuTTOvas Troifj, xp r )l x ° , ' Ta>v - ' t6tg fxev ovv, §> avSpes St/ca- 
 ffTtxi, ttoWSjv Kal Seivwv i/tco ttjs yvvaiKbs prjOevrwv ovtco 8i^Te6ri/j,ev iravTes 
 oi irap6vres virb rwv tovtoj irewpay/nevwv Kal t&v K6ywu t&v eKeiprjs, opavres 
 fxhv tovs iralSas, ola r)crav TreTrovQ6Tes, avafxifj.vrio~K6[Aej/oi 8e tov airo0av6vTOS, 
 &s avdl-iov Trjs ovo'ias tov eiriTpoirov KaTeXiirev, 4vQv[u,ovuevoi 5e ws x a ^ 1T0V 
 4£evpe?v '6tci> xph 7re P^ t«v kavTov TriaTevcrai Tivd, liiare, a> &vSpes ftiKaffrai, 
 fj.r]Seva t&v irapdvrwv Svvacrdai (pd4y^aa'0ai } aWa Kal SaKpiovras /iTjSe* t^ttov 
 twv ireirovddTWV ain6vTas oXx^Q-Oai aiwirfj. 
 
ch. vi. SPEECHES ON ALCIBIADES. 149 
 
 Associated with these disagreeable features is the want of confi- 
 dence in testimony shown through all his orations. After a pre- 
 amble, and the prothesis, or first short statement of the case, 
 the orator proceeds (where it is possible) to a narrative of the 
 facts, in which he seeks in the clearest order and the simplest 
 language to convey his client's view of the case. Then follows 
 the citing of witnesses, who swear to the truth of the narrative. 
 But, instead of being content with this, the speaker generally 
 goes on to general a priori arguments, based on the character 
 or the interests of the litigants. Indeed, general character 
 seems to have weighed far too much in the Athenian law- 
 courts, as it will ever do where a trained judge is not present 
 to guide and control the feelings of the jury. 
 
 The attack on Alcibiades (or. 14, 15) is generally regarded 
 as spurious, but by an early if not contemporaiy author, and 
 bears curiously close relations to the speech of Isocrates de 
 Bigis, to which it seems to be a reply. But the speech attri- 
 buted to Lysias is not from so masterly a hand as the defence 
 by Isocrates. Another speech in the Lysian collection, that 
 against Poliochus, has likewise distinct references to the same 
 defence, which, though in form a court speech, is really an 
 encomium on Alcibiades, and may have been a good deal 
 modified after its delivery for the purpose of publication. 
 
 § 397. The general merits of Lysias have been implied in the 
 above review of his extant speeches. It is perhaps important 
 to add that the pettiness of many of the causes pleaded, and 
 the consequent shortness and dryness of the argument, espe- 
 cially when delivered in support of the main speech (Sevrepo- 
 Xoyta), have much injured his reputation among modern students 
 of Greek. Did we possess a few more of his great efforts, like 
 those against Eratosthenes, Agoratus, and Diogeiton, we should 
 better appreciate the praises of the ancient critics. 
 
 But with this pettiness of particular causes seems connected 
 the criticism of Plato, that Lysias, in contrast to Isocrates, or 
 to Pericles, among his forerunners, did not seek to deduce his 
 special arguments from general philosophical principles. This 
 was no doubt true ; we also find, as Plato says, his arguments 
 strung together without logical nexus, and even repeated need- 
 
ISO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. VI. 
 
 lessly. On the other hand, this close adherence to the indi- 
 vidual case gave him that wonderful variety which the ancients 
 admired, observing that among 200 genuine speeches no fixed 
 use of any commonplaces, even in the proem, could be found. 
 But his occasional repetitions of arguments are probably inten- 
 tional, and meant to bring important points before the court in 
 an artless way, and as a simple man might do who could not 
 give weight or importance to a single statement by lofty diction 
 or sounding periods. For, above all things, Lysias aimed at 
 unaffected simplicity, the tenue dicendi genus, the atyeXrjc \6yog 
 of the critics, in which he was always considered the un- 
 approached master. This character he attained by the use 
 of plain words, having been the first to perceive that elegant 
 and even dignified prose did not require poetical diction to 
 exalt it — and here he broke loose completely from the traditions 
 of Gorgias. Secondly, he attained it by clear statement, there 
 being seldom the least obscurity when we know the whole of 
 the case, and where the text is not corrupt. Thirdly, by 
 brevity — a feature which strikes us very much in most of his 
 speeches, and which can only be fully understood by regarding 
 many of the shortest as mere auxiliary statements to the main 
 argument. 
 
 § 398. Of course a great writer like Lysias does not bind 
 himself slavishly by such rules. There are passages of deep 
 emotion where unusual words and phrases occur, and where 
 they are more natural than common diction. There are cases 
 where, for the sake of pathos, he repeats an idea, and holds it 
 before the audience with great effect ; again, for the sake 
 of point, he introduces those parallelisms and balancings 
 of clauses, which were then so common in Attic eloquence 
 that to avoid them was perhaps more affected than to use 
 them. These ornaments are what give Lysias' speeches the 
 archaic complexion which has been compared to the stiff curls 
 and conventional smile of the older Attic sculpture, even in its 
 high development under the hands of Calamis. 1 But all these 
 
 1 Dionysius uses the parallel illustration of the old simple paintings with 
 few colours and little perspective, as compared to the more ambitious 
 modern works. But to us, unfortunately, his illustration is of no avail. 
 
ch. VI. THE GRACE OF LYSIAS. 151 
 
 things are distinctly exceptions to his rule of extreme simpli- 
 city, which would often degenerate into dryness or meagreness 
 but for the exquisite grace (x«i°'0 which is the most brilliant 
 feature of his genius. This quality, which cannot be analysed, 
 has been extolled by all critics, and is equalled, especially in 
 his narratives, by Herodotus alone of Greek prose writers. 
 Indeed, as Antiphon stands close to Thucydides, and is strong 
 on the argumentative or dialectical side, so Lysias approaches 
 Herodotus, being far superior in the historical or narrative part 
 of his oratory. His style seems at first sight, as Dionysius 
 observes, so simple and natural that anyone might hope to 
 imitate it, whereas it is really the most exquisite and un- 
 attainable gift to copy nature artistically and yet with perfect 
 accuracy. For this purpose he often deserts the rounded 
 period, and uses, like Herodotus, an easy and lucid \*£iq 
 slpofxivr], which makes his story wonderfully plausible and per- 
 suasive. Thus he steals upon his hearers, as the ancients 
 observed, instead of coercing them by power and grandeur. 
 He also abandons his periods for an opposite purpose, when in 
 passages of great excitement he adopts short unconnected 
 clauses, as in the famous conclusion of his speech against 
 Eratosthenes, and in the mother's description of her orphans 
 before Diogeiton. All these peculiarities make it easy for us 
 to understand how his critics thought him inferior in those 
 panegyrical or deliberative harangues, where a periodic style 
 was peculiarly effective. Thus a plain and forcible speaker in 
 our own day might find great difficulty in composing a con- 
 gratulatory address, which is expected to run in long and 
 rounded sentences. Of course rhetors and grammarians have 
 always preferred Isocrates, but if it were only as an antidote to 
 that over-artificial and watery eloquence, the remains of Lysias 
 are of inestimable value. 
 
 § 399. Turning to the external history of his works, I have 
 nothing to add to what has already been said about Plato's cri- 
 ticism, except that he may have been biassed by Lysias' demo- 
 cratic views, which led him constantly to attack and expose 
 with great severity men with whom the philosopher had great 
 sympathy, Aristotle very seldom mentions Lysias in compa- 
 
152 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. VI. 
 
 rison with Isocrates, and Theophrastus, though regarding him as 
 the type of the ' genus tenue,' seems to have thought Thrasyma- 
 chus more important in the history of rhetoric. Deinarchus, 
 Charisius, and Hegesias are spoken of as imitating his style in 
 contrast to that of Demosthenes. There were treatises com- 
 posed upon him, as upon the other orators, by the Alexan- 
 drian critics, but these are unfortunately lost, nor do we possess 
 any scholia upon this author. But in Roman days, when there 
 was a reaction against the florid Asianism, Lysias found many 
 admirers and students who aimed at old Attic simplicity and 
 purity : of these C. Lie. Calvus is the most important. Cicero, 
 who was attacked by this school, holds the balance very 
 fairly between Lysias and his supposed opponents. He grants 
 Lysias all the merits due to him, but prefers Demosthenes as a 
 model on account of his power. 
 
 In the Augustan period, when Atticism triumphed, there 
 were very full appreciations and discussions of Lysias by 
 Dionysius and Caecilius, both of whom wrote special works on 
 him, besides the extant tract of Dionysius, and many judg- 
 ments of both these and of Hermogenes in relation to other 
 orators. Various later commentators, such as Zosimus of 
 Gaza, Zeno, Paulus Germinus, are cited in the Lexica. In 
 fact, throughout all Greek criticism, his place seems fixed as 
 next in importance to Demosthenes and Isocrates. Of the 
 233 speeches declared genuine by Dionysius and Caecilius, of 
 all these comments and explanations, we have only the critiques 
 already cited, a good many special points in Suidas and Harpo- 
 cration, the titles of about 170 speeches, and a single collection 
 of 34 speeches, some of them imperfectly preserved, with about 
 100 lesser fragments. 
 
 § 400. Bibliographical. The speeches (with the exception 
 of the spurious Efiitaphios, which was copied separately also) 
 are handed down to us through one codex, 1 the Palatinus X, 
 preserved at Heidelberg, which is the parent of all other 
 copies, particularly of the Florentine, once esteemed of higher 
 authority. Not only was X copied from an archetype already 
 
 1 Written in the twelfth century, and brought from Nicaea to Europe. 
 Cf. a special article upon it by Scholl in Hermes, vol. xi. pp. 202, sq. 
 
CH. VI. MSS. AND EDITIONS. 153 
 
 mutilated, but it has itself lost several pages, and is, moreover, 
 the work of a careless and inaccurate scribe, so that our text 
 has afforded critics ample scope for emendation and correction. 
 Eight of the extant speeches (whole or partial) are attested 
 by Dionysius, the ablest and most careful of the authorities 
 on this question. Five he rejects ; others are doubtful. The 
 selection seems made from two collections of Lysias' speeches, 
 or else there are two selections from his whole works brought 
 together. This is inferred from speeches on murder appearing 
 in the first and twelfth places, the latter of them (against 
 Eratosthenes) being evidently the first in order both of time 
 and merit. But all closer classifications are complicated and 
 unsatisfactory, owing to the great variety of the cases treated, 
 as the reader will see from Blass' discussion of the point. 1 
 
 The first edition (Aldus, 15 13, with other orators) is taken 
 not from the Palatinus, but from the Atbos MS., which Lascaris 
 brought over, and which is now lost, but it was evidently an 
 inferior copy of the same archetype. In our own day, besides 
 the Zurich editors, and the Teubner edition of Scheibe— both 
 excellent — this author has received inestimable aid from the 
 critical labours of Cobet, both in his Nova Lediones, and in a 
 special school edition (Amsterdam, 1863), which is of course 
 the best text. There are many good essays, and many selections 
 with notes by the Germans, of whom I may mention Hoelscher, 
 Francken, Frohberger, Rauchenstein. There are German 
 translations by Falk (Breslau, 1842) and F. Baur (2nd ed„ 
 Stuttgart, 1869). Excellent general estimates will be found (be- 
 sides that of Blass and Mr. J ebb) in Perrot's and Girard's — the 
 latter specially on Lysias — writings on Greek literature. 2 
 
 § 401. It is usual to pass from the consideration of Lysias 
 and his court speeches to that of Isocrates and his epideictic 
 displays, and then to return to Isseus as the special forerunner 
 and master of Demosthenes. But as the evidence of this 
 latter relation is not very clear, and in any case only applies to 
 a special class of Demosthenes' speeches — those against his 
 
 1 i. 348, 368. ^ 
 
 2 G. Perrot, Eloquence politique , &c, aAlhenes, vol. i., and J. Girard, 
 
 de TAtticisvie dans Lysias \ passim. 
 
154 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vi/ 
 
 guardians — it seems preferable to take up the works of Isseus 
 in close connection with Lysias, to whom he affords many 
 points of resemblance and of contrast. This will enable us to 
 form a better estimate of the legal eloquence of Athens before 
 we turn to her philosophers and pamphleteers, who were also, 
 according to the fashion of the day, orators and special students 
 of rhetoric. 
 
 § 402. The darkness which shrouds the life of Isseus is 
 hardly an accident ; it is rather the mark — I had almost said 
 the distinguishing mark — of the developed profession to which 
 he belonged. While Antiphon's apparent privacy of life only 
 concealed an active and constant interference in public affairs, 
 as was clearly shown when he came to lay aside the mask ; 
 while Lysias' speeches contain several discourses of public in- 
 terest and on public affairs in which he was personally con- 
 cerned, the works of Isseus, not only as we have them, but 
 as they were known to the ancients, were \6yoi ISiiotikoi, not 
 merely for private individuals, 1 but on private suits, and in 
 these they approach more nearly to what we should call 
 Chancery practice than any other Attic eloquence preserved. 
 Accordingly as our Chancery lawyers do not even attain the 
 notoriety of those engaged in criminal or nisi-prius actions, far 
 less that of political speakers, so Isseus remains personally 
 unknown, and even his speeches, remarkable though they be, 
 have seldom been studied except by special enquirers into the 
 principles of Attic jurisprudence. Hence the dates of his birth 
 and death are not known. - His origin is said doubtfully to 
 have been of Chalcis, and his father's name Diagoras. He 
 may have been an Eubcean cleruch, driven back to Athens by 
 the loss of the island to Athens, or a metoikos^ a resident alien, 
 
 1 The Greek argument of the fourth oration (concerning Nicostratus, 
 &c.) says that Isseus was related to Hagnon, nephew of the testator, and 
 spoke this speech in aid of them personally. As there is no hint of these 
 facts in the course of the speech itself, they must have been derived from 
 some old authority, and are not improbable, though Blass thinks (ii. p. 506) 
 that this is alleged wohl lediglich ans thbrichter Vermuthung. But, un- 
 fortunately, the people in question are obscure, and the speech gives us 
 no light concerning Isseus' life or connections. Cf. for a careful review 
 of the facts, Blass, AB. ii. p. 4. "54' 
 
CH. VI. SPEECHES OF IS&US. 155 
 
 who settled and practised at Athens without the social posi- 
 tion of Kephalus and his son Lysias. The dates of the 
 extant speeches, so far as they can be determined, range from 
 389 to 352 B.C. This, and his alleged instruction of Demos- 
 thenes, show his activity to have extended through the first 
 half of the fourth century B.C. Of his education equally little is 
 ascertained. He is called a follower of Lysias, a pupil of 
 Isocrates. But his speeches only show the general influence 
 which these great contemporaries must have exercised upon a 
 man of his ability. The absence of closer likenesses even 
 suggests that their education of him was not more direct. 
 
 § 403. The subjects of the eleven speeches, and of the con- 
 siderable fragments quoted as specimens by Dionysius, have no 
 special literary interest, nor is there any one of them which is 
 worth analysing in this place. 1 The most elaborate and Demos- 
 thenic in tone is the eleventh, that on the bequests of Hagnias, 
 Concerning this lawsuit, which lasted many years and under- 
 went many trials, we have among the speeches of Demosthenes 
 that against Macartatus — a performance not only below the 
 usual level of the great orator, but inferior to the speech of 
 Isgeus, which is far more logical and better constructed. The 
 eighth, on the succession to Kiron's property, is similarly inter- 
 esting in having been considerably used by Demosthenes in 
 his speeches against his guardians, but the free and independent 
 way in which he modifies the commonplaces or quotations from 
 it, shows that he was even then no mere ordinary pupil, but an 
 original and powerful rhetor. All the speeches of Isaeus are 
 about questions of succession, about the validity of wills, or of 
 the evidence on which they are established and impugned, and 
 upon the rights of relationship. They show us very clearly, 
 like the speeches of Lysias, the grave defects of the Athe- 
 nian jury system. These juries were not a small group of 
 men, sworn to enquire into questions of fact, guided on points 
 of law by a professional judge, and intended to protect private 
 individuals from an abuse of power on the part of the govern- 
 ment. They were rather the sovereign people broken up 
 
 1 From a collection of sixty-four speeches, of which fifteen were re- 
 jected by old critics, we only have a scanty remnant of about one-sixth. 
 
156 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vi. 
 
 into divisions of 500, and bringing into court all the powers 
 of the sovereign, without responsibility or control of any sort. 
 Accordingly, while the great numbers of the jury made Attic 
 court speeches to be practically harangues to a large assembly 
 ■ — a point seldom adequately insisted upon — its absolute and 
 despotic power turned advocates to aim at persuasion rather 
 than sound argument, to appeal to passion and not to reason, 
 to flatter and not to convince by fair means. 
 
 All the court eloquence of Athens is vitiated by this funda- 
 mental unsoundness of the tribunal which it addressed, and 
 nowhere is the result more apparent than in the speeches 
 of Isseus, which were on subjects settled by strict law, by 
 established custom and precedent^ by traditions as old as any 
 in Aryan civilisation. As regards the right and limits of testa- 
 mentary bequest, the strict line of succession among collateral 
 branches, the consequences of intestacy, the disturbing elements 
 of mental incapacity and undue influence — in all these matters 
 the system of Attic jurisprudence was very complete and care- 
 fully constructed. But, however desirous an advocate of Isseus' 
 legal turn of mind might be to confine himself to the strict 
 law of the case, the jury were averse to such dry discussions. 
 Moreover, they seem to have laid far less stress on positive evi- 
 dence than we do, probably on account of the mendacity of 
 the nation ; we also find the preparation of documents, and 
 preservation of them in proper archives, strangely neglected. 
 Hence in no case is the advocate content with proving a point 
 by positive evidence, or producing a document establishing it ; 
 he always goes on to the ehog, the probabilities of the case ; and 
 indeed most of Isaeus' speeches are arguments against the evi- 
 dence on the ground of these probabilities. The produced 
 will is argued to be a forgery, because the testator was on bad 
 terms with the legatee ; the alleged adoption of a son is denied 
 on similar grounds. Is it likely a man in his senses would do 
 such a thing ? is the perpetual plea of the litigants. It is easy 
 to see how such a state of things stimulated court eloquence, 
 and how the ingenuity of a trained rhetor was required to put 
 a fair face even upon a case which should have stood upon its 
 own merits The dicasts thought nothing of breaking a will, 
 
CH. VI. CONTRASTS OF LYSIAS AND ISJZUS. 157 
 
 or even of deciding in the teeth of sworn evidence. Indeed, 
 from the number of cases of conviction for perjury known to 
 us, we may infer that the swearing in Attic courts was not more 
 conscientious than it is in the Irish county courts of the pre- 
 sent day. 
 
 § 404. Hence we see the point of the remark upon Isseus in 
 the Greek Life, that he was thoroughly unfair to his opponent 
 and out-generahed his jury. 1 But this very reputation injured 
 his efficiency, for while Lysias seemed artless when charging 
 the guilty, Isaeus was suspected even when clearing the inno- 
 cent. Indeed a comparison with Lysias is the best means of 
 showing the peculiar characteristics of Isseus. In the first 
 place, his speeches are as a rule much longer and more elabo- 
 rate, and this especially by reason of the many summaries and 
 recapitulations which Lysias would have considered tedious, 
 and which are in any case violations of ethos, if the speaker be 
 an inexperienced debater. But in Isseus the mask seems fall- 
 ing away ; the position of the logographer was too notorious 
 and well established to be denied, and he either disdains, 
 or he fails, to assume the personality of his client. Hence he 
 abandons the simple structure upon which all Lysias' speeches 
 are based, and affects variety and power of treatment. He 
 breaks up his narrative into parts, and introduces argumentation 
 between them, he omits the exordium or the peroration, or 
 rather weaves in these preambles and appeals into the body of 
 his speech. He even begins or ends with the reading of laws 
 — in fact, a study of variety is one of his chief objects. This is 
 as obvious in the diction as in the arrangement of his speeches. 
 In some of them, and in some parts of them, his periods are 
 almost as grand as those of Isocrates or Demosthenes ; in 
 others he affects, perhaps with less success, simplicity of narra- 
 tive ; in others he presses the adversary with close questioning, 
 and with a rapid urging of short points. But while his elo- 
 quence is more sustained and logical, and while he forces home 
 his arguments by dint of clever restatement and recapitulation, 
 he does not attain to the grace of Lysias nor to the sustained 
 power of Demosthenes. Nay, even in spite of the studied 
 
 ' ical irpbs iihv rby avridiKOV SiaTrovripeveTcu, tovs 5e Si/catrrcw /caTaCTpaTT^et. 
 
158 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. VI. 
 
 attempts at variety, there is a certain sameness of character 
 about his speeches which makes them tedious in comparison 
 with those of Lysias. This may be in some measure due to the 
 uniformity of subjects in Isaeus. Yet even apart from this, the 
 want of ethos and the assumption of rhetorical power naturally 
 produce an unpleasant effect. 
 
 § 405. The influence of Isocrates' rhetoric is to be seen in 
 the avoidance of the hiatus in some speeches, as well as 
 in the general finish and smoothness of many of his periods, 
 but we cannot trace any gradual adoption of these features, or 
 their predominance in the later speeches, so that it is more 
 likely he used this, like other devices, merely to produce vari- 
 ety and novelty. He certainly never adopted the avoidance 
 of hiatus as a fixed principle. His figures of thought, such 
 as indignant questions and the like, are more frequent than 
 those of Lysias, whose natural gifts he endeavoured to rival 
 by better training- Thus the old parallel clauses of the Gor- 
 gian rhetoric, which give Lysias his antique flavour, are 
 hardly ever to be found in Isaeus ; but his composition is 
 not the less careful and artificial, though he seeks to avoid 
 these obvious ornaments. And thus with all his archaic man- 
 nerism Lysias is far the more easy and natural. It is not neces- 
 sary to pursue this comparison, which, after the model of 
 Dionysius, has been worked out by Blass and Perrot. 
 
 § 406. Bibliographical. We may add a word on the history 
 of the text. Beyond the fact of his being Demosthenes' educa- 
 tor, there is little mention of this orator till Dionysius and 
 Hermogenes, who speak very favourably of him. The notes of 
 Didymus are only once cited (by Harpocraticn, ya^nXia). The 
 Greek arguments are very complete, but no scholia, so far as I 
 know, have come down to us. As to MSS., we are dependent 
 upon the same which have been already noticed under Anti- 
 phon. The princep of Aldus (15 13) and the edition of Ste- 
 phens (1575) were followed by that of Reiske (1773), which were 
 based on no new collation, but all rest on the lost codex 
 of Lascaris. The translation and legal notes of Wm. Jones 
 (Oxford, 1779) are highly commended by Schomann. 
 
 The eleventh speech (on Menecles' bequests) was first 
 
CH. VI. OTHER DEVELOPMENTS OF PROSE. 159 
 
 edited from the Laurentian MS. by Tyrwhitt (London, 1785). 
 The large fragment of the speech on Cleonymus' bequests was 
 added by Mai from an Ambrosian codex in 181 5. Of later 
 editors the texts of Bekker and Scheibe and the complete edition 
 and commentary of Schomann (1831), who has also given us a 
 German translation (2nd ed. 1869), are best worthy of mention. 
 § 407. We have now followed out Attic court oratory to its 
 completeness under the hands of Isaeus ; for any superiority 
 which some of Demosthenes' speeches of this kind may pos- 
 sess, seems rather due to the exceptional genius of that orator 
 than to the discovery of any new principles, or new method of 
 rhetoric. And as Demosthenes' c private orations ' can hardly be 
 discussed apait from his life, we may pause here, and turn to 
 collateral fields of literary activity. But, instead of taking up Iso- 
 crates, who was at this time the leader of the epideictic rhetoric, 
 or oratory of display, and whose merits were altogether stylistic, I 
 prefer to proceed to that branch of Attic prose which forms the 
 strongest contrast to the practical advocacy in the law courts — 
 I mean the dialogues of Plato and other companions of Socra- 
 tes. These men despised such a trade, and kept aloof from 
 actual politics ; they will therefore afford us a welcome respite 
 from the practical oratory which has occupied us so long. But 
 as thoroughgoing thinkers, and philosophers in the strict sense, 
 their work deserves an earlier and more important place than 
 the idle and empty compromise attempted by Isocrates, of 
 combining a shallow philosophy with equally shallow theoretical 
 politics. Thus this eminent rhetorician, but feeble statesman, 
 will be brought into closer comparison with his proper contrast 
 — Demosthenes. 
 
160 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PLATO. 
 
 § 408. Plato, whose proper name was Aristocles, was 
 born either 429 or 427 B.C., 1 at JEgina, where his father held 
 property. His father, Ariston, son of Aristocles, and his mother, 
 Peristione (sister of Charmides), were both of ancient and noble 
 descent, and though later writers represent him as a poor man, 
 this seems only from the desire of making him a closer copy of 
 Socrates, and of the ascetic type fashionable in Greek philoso- 
 phy. Several indications may be quoted to show that he was 
 a man of wealth and consideration. He studied gymnastics in 
 his youth, when he was surnamed Plato in the gymnasium 
 from his broad shoulders, and he is reported to have won a 
 prize at the Isthmian games. As his age of military service 
 coincided with the grievous days of the closing Peloponnesian 
 war, he must have been employed in the army ; but upon this 
 point, as well as upon his education in music, gymnastic, 
 poetry, and philosophy, we are left to conjecture, and to vague 
 legends, which were no doubt widely circulated about him, but 
 which have no solid foundation. Diogenes says he studied 
 the writing of poetry, and essayed dithyrambs, songs, and 
 tragedies, but that, upon meeting Socrates, he burnt his poems. 
 The epigrams attributed to him in the Authologia^ though 
 trifling, are very elegant, and some of them may be genuine. 
 Lastly, Aristotle 2 says that Cratylus had instructed him in 
 the doctrine of Heracleitus before he came under the in- 
 fluence of Socrates. 
 
 1 Cf. the conflicting authorities cited in Zeller's Plato, p. 2, note (Eng. 
 trans. ). 
 
 2 Metaph. i. 6. 
 
CH. vil. PLATO'S EARLIER LIFE. 161 
 
 The whole impression conveyed by these stories is con- 
 firmed by his works, and shows him to have been a young 
 Athenian gentleman in contact with all the current science 
 of the day, and influenced by all the social and artistic 
 culture of that matchless city in its matchless period. But 
 his conversion by Socrates marks the great turning point of 
 his life. Plato must have met him at an early age, for Socrates' 
 conversations were very fashionable among his aristocratic 
 friends— probably the age of twenty, which is reported to us, is 
 too late. At all events, he became a constant and favourite 
 pupil, and was with the great master at his trial and condem- 
 nation. According to Plato's own statement in the Apology, he 
 endeavoured to persuade Socrates to assess the fine which 
 the dicasts might impose at thirty minse, which he and other 
 friends were ready to pay. This large sum (for those days) 
 implies that they had means. After Socrates' death he left for 
 Megara, and stayed for a time with Eucleides, another pupil 
 of the same school, who- became afterwards the head of a 
 distinct sect. From Megara Plato made voyages to Egypt, 
 Cyrene, Magna Graecia, and Sicily ; but it is more than pro- 
 bable that he returned at intervals to Athens. The dates of 
 these journeys, even of those to Sicily, which are best known, 
 are involved in obscurity. He is said to have studied mathe- 
 matics with Theodorus of Cyrene, and to have made closer 
 acquaintance with the Pythagoreans in Magna Graecia. But, in 
 addition to these theoretical matters, he gained his first practi- 
 cal experience of the effects of irresponsible monarchy from 
 the elder Dionysius. Though introduced by Dion, the tyrant 
 was so offended with his views, which were then probably a 
 reflex of those of Socrates, that he delivered him up to the 
 Spartan ambassador Pollis, who had him sold in the market of 
 ^Egina. He was, moreover, well-nigh put to death by the 
 iEginetans, who at this time (about 390 B.C.) would permit no 
 Athenian to touch their shore. Being ransomed by one Anni- 
 keris, he returned to Athens, and set up a school at the well- 
 known Academy, in the western suburbs of Athens. 
 
 § 409. We unfortunately know nothing of the details of his 
 oral teaching, which he avers in his written dialogues to be far the 
 
 vol. it. M 
 
162 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. VII. 
 
 most important. We hear that his discourses were very dry, and 
 that in lecturing on the good he by no means adopted the homely 
 style and illustrations of Socrates, but brought in mathematics, 
 astronomy, and finally so abstract an idea of the Good that no 
 one but his special pupils would listen to him. This we have on 
 the report of Aristoxenus, who professes Aristotle's authority, and 
 it agrees with some sneers to be found in the Middle Comedy. 
 At all events, Plato took no part whatever in the politics of 
 Athens, which were thoroughly distasteful to him, and opposed 
 to all his principles. His notions of the proper State and its 
 government are clear enough in the three works he has left us 
 on the subject, the Politicus, the Republic, and the Laws. But 
 when his old friend Dionysius died, he was persuaded by Dion, 
 and also by the younger Dionysius, then under Dion's influence, 
 to revisit Syracuse (367 B.C.) in the hope that, by converting the 
 new tyrant to his views, he might at last have an opportunity of 
 realising his theories of state reform. The experiment turned 
 out exactly as might have been anticipated. After a few days 
 of novelty and of politeness Dionysius grew weary of Plato, and 
 jealous of Dion, so that he banished the latter, and Plato soon 
 departed. But he actually was induced to return to Syracuse 
 about 361 B.C., perhaps chiefly in order to reconcile his friend 
 Dion with the tyrant. After escaping again from the tyrant's 
 displeasure, he returned to Athens, where he spent the re- 
 mainder of his old age respected by a large society of admirers. 
 He died peacefully at a marriage feast, according to the legend, 
 in 347 b.c, having exceeded the age of fourscore years. 
 
 § 410. Plato is one of the very few Greek authors of whose 
 works nothing has been lost. On the contrary, the catalogue 
 we possess is rather redundant than defective, and one of the 
 main duties of modern criticism as regards him has been the 
 sifting of his writings, and the rejection of what is unworthy or 
 unauthentic. Before approaching the dialogues, we may say a 
 word concerning the lesser and. more obscure writings, which 
 were once ascribed to him. There are the epigrams already 
 mentioned, which most critics reject, but one or two of which 
 seem to me probably genuine : there are certain Distinctions 
 (haipiaeig) to which Aristotle refers more than once ; but as 
 
ch. vii. SPURIOUS WORKS. 163 
 
 they are never mentioned in any catalogue of his works, they 
 seem to have been some collection of maxims from his oral 
 lectures preserved in the school of the Academy. There are, 
 moreover, a collection of Epistles, which are still printed in the 
 editions of the text, and which Grote, in his great work on 
 Plato, 1 accepts as genuine, and bases upon them many state- 
 ments about the life of the philosopher. One of them (the 
 seventh) is so interesting and circumstantial about his relations 
 with Dion and Dionysius, that all critics have longed to have 
 it regarded as genuine, and even those who reject the Platonic 
 authorship think it an almost contemporaneous composition by 
 a writer thoroughly informed on Plato's life. But I agree with 
 Mr. Jowett and with all the German critics, that none of these 
 epistles are genuine, and am disposed to look on the informa- 
 tion derived from the seventh epistle as very suspicious. It may 
 be all true, but no point unsupported by other evidence should 
 be accepted without the greatest caution. We hear, moreover, 
 of about ten dialogues which were of old considered spurious, 
 and most of which are mentioned as such by Diogenes Laertius. 2 
 There remain thirty-five dialogues, 3 of which four (the second 
 Alcibiades, Anterastce, Hipparchus, and Epinomis) have been 
 
 1 Plato and the other Companions of Socrates, i. p. 220, sq. 
 
 2 iii. 62. 
 
 
 8 Here is the list : — Dialogues of 
 
 - 
 
 (a) Search, 
 
 (£) Exposition. 
 
 Thecetetus 
 
 Timaus 
 
 Parmenides 
 
 Laws 
 
 Alcibiades I. 
 
 * Epinomis 
 
 * Alcibiades II. 
 
 Critias 
 
 * Theages 
 
 Republic 
 
 Laches 
 
 Sophistes 
 
 Lysis 
 
 Politicus 
 
 Charmides 
 
 Phcedon 
 
 Menon 
 
 Philebus 
 
 Ion 
 
 Protagoras 
 
 Euthyphron 
 
 Phcedrus 
 
 Euthydemus 
 
 Symposium 
 
 Gorgias 
 
 Cratylus 
 
 * Hippias I. 
 
 Criton 
 
 Hippias II. 
 
 
 
 M 2 [T.O.] 
 
164 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 doubted by the Greek critics, 1 and many more by the school of 
 Ast and Socher, which grew out of the Wolfian controversy in 
 the second decade of this century. 
 
 § 411. The connection of these isolated compositions, 
 and their relation, - both logically and chronologically, have 
 ever been, and will remain, a subject of controversy, unless 
 the view of Grote is adopted, that Plato deliberately intended 
 them as perfectly distinct works, and consciously laid aside in 
 each all reference to the rest as regards theory. This Grote 
 distinctly asserts to be the case, at least as regards the two 
 classes of dialogues, into which the Platonic compositions 
 must be divided. We will first discuss the logical order. 
 Plato himself is of course the main authority to be consulted. 
 The same characters who have met in the Thecztetus meet 
 again expressly in the Sophistes, though they do not take up 
 the unfinished thread of the discourse. The Politicus pro- 
 claims itself a third colloquy of the same party (with a new 
 respondent). The Republic, Timceus, and Critias are similarly 
 connected, and a fourth dialogue, the Hermocrates, though ap- 
 parently announced, was never composed. But I am not sure 
 that Plato did not merely assume the same personages for 
 the sake of dramatic convenience, without meaning to assert 
 intimate relation. I do not know that the author himself gives 
 us any further clue. The earliest attempt at a logical classifica- 
 tion of which we know is that quoted by Diogenes, 2 as laid 
 down by Aristophanes of Byzantium. He arranged five tri- 
 logies : — 1. Republic, Timczus, 'Critias ; 2. Laws, Minos, Epi- 
 nomis; 3. Thecetetus, Euthyphron, Apology ; 4. Sophist, Politicus, 
 Cratylus ; 5. Criton, Phcedon, and Letters. The rest of the 
 dialogues he placed singly and without any fixed order, 
 (a) Search, (j8) Exposition. 
 
 * Cleitophon The Apology 
 
 * Hipparchus Menexenns. 
 
 * Erastce 
 
 * Minos. 
 
 These last two are not properly dialogues, but the one a dicastic, the 
 other an epideictic exercise. 
 
 1 Cf. Zeller's Plato and the Older Academy (Eng. tr ), p. 49, note. 
 
 2 iii. 61. 
 
CH. vii. VARIOUS CLASSIFICATIONS. 165 
 
 Several important remarks here suggest themselves. Aristo- 
 phanes does not utilise the hints just menticned in the dia- 
 logues themselves. He does not follow any scientific order on 
 any conceivable theory of Platonism. He seems also to have 
 recognised as genuine, not only works now rejected, but even 
 those doubted of old, such as the Epinomis. Diogenes next 
 mentions the arrangement of Thrasylus, two centuries later, into 
 nine tetralogies — a dramatic connection often forced and 
 absurd, and of no real value. It was probably suggested, as 
 Grote observes, by the really close bond which unites the 
 Euthyphro7i, Apology, Criton, and Phcedon. It is Thrasylus' full 
 catalogue of thirty-five dialogues (including Apology and Menexe- 
 nus) which Grote thinks based upon the safe traditions of the 
 Academy and the critical work of the x 0t) P'^ 0>Te ^) or critical 
 sifters, of Alexandria, and therefore perfectly trustworthy. But 
 Thrasylus implies another cross division which is of far more 
 value — that into Dialogues of Search (^rrjTiKvi) and of Exposi- 
 tion {h(f)Y\ymiaTLkol). 1 It appears also from the statement of Dio- 
 genes that essays of classification in old times were almost as 
 numerous and various as among the modern Germans, for nine 
 dialogues which he mentions were each put first in the list by 
 divers critics. I am very far from agreeing with Zellefs inference, 
 that these attempts imply a trustworthy tradition or belief in 
 some fixed and definite order. But to those who are sceptical 
 as to any other logical nexus between the dialogues, or of the 
 possibility of tracing a gradual philosophical progress throughout 
 them, this distinction at least is salient and quite unmistake- 
 able, that in some of them a discussion is raised, which results 
 in no conclusion, while in others principles are laid down, and a 
 whole system of law or of philosophy dogmatically expounded. 
 
 § 412. Next after the labours of the Alexandrian and Augus- 
 tan grammarians, who seem not to have attempted any deep 
 sounding of the mind of Plato, but were content with distinc- 
 tions of form, we come to the neo-Platonists, who went into 
 
 1 Cf. the list on page 163, note 3. His subdivisions under these heads 
 I need not repeat. The same principle underlies the classification of 
 Albinus (in his Isagoge to Plato), though he differs in his subdivisions, as 
 may be seen in Zeller's note (p. 97). 
 
1 66 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vii. 
 
 the opposite extreme, and sought to find mystical revelations 
 and divine allegories at every turn in the dialogues. This 
 method of criticism, along with the attempts to show Plato's 
 agreement with the religion of Moses, and his consequent 
 inspiration as an ' Attic Moses,' is now so universally discredited 
 that it may suffice to refer the reader (with Grote) to the pre- 
 faces with which Ficinus, the great Renaissance Platonist, 
 introduces the Dialogues in his Latin version (Florence 1494). 
 Serranus, in Stephens' edition of 1578, goes back to the old 
 external way of classifying, and makes out six groups accord- 
 ing to the general subjects treated (Ethics, Physics, Politics, 
 &c). From this time on till the end of the last century 
 speculation on the internal relation of the dialogues seems to 
 have been suspended. With Schleiermacher a new era com- 
 mences, and since his day Germany has been flooded with 
 theories based on the internal consciousness of the theorist, 
 ascribing a necessary and natural order to the writings of 
 Plato, together with rejections of all those which will not suit 
 the theory, and bold assertions that all opponents and objectors 
 are ignorant of the true spirit of real Platonism. The comba- 
 tants may be divided into three camps, that of Schleiermacher — 
 now rather waning in influence, though he was the originator of 
 the whole discussion, and still supported by Ritter, Brandis, and 
 Ribbing, which holds that Plato consciously composed his dia- 
 logues in a fixed and logical order, which anyone can ascertain 
 who attains to a thorough knowledge of the Platonic system. 
 Next comes that of K. F. Hermann, with a large following, who 
 denies any conscious arrangement in the mind of Plato, but holds 
 that the dialogues show the necessary growth and development of 
 his mind. Various attempts are now being made to reconcile 
 these theories, and to assert this necessary growth, accompa- 
 nied with a conscious expression of it in certain pieces. Lastly, 
 there is the English school, of which Grote is the leader, and 
 Mr. Jowett the present representative, and to which we may 
 almost add the German Ast, had he not been so illogical as to 
 reject numerous dialogues, though holding the view which most 
 easily admits differences of style and treatment. This school is 
 perfectly sceptical as to the possibility of proving any large 
 
CH. VII. NEGATIVE RESULTS. 167 
 
 plan or sequence in the dialogues, and not only holds each to be 
 complete in itself and isolated, but even careless of contradicting 
 the rest, and often openly inconsistent with them. It follows 
 logically that all dialogues not discredited by external evidence 
 must be accepted, such a thing as internal improbability being 
 seldom admissible. 
 
 The great and continuous divergence of opinion among 
 the German Platonists, who have now for 100 years exhausted 
 all possible combinations without establishing any sure re- 
 sults, almost compels us to adopt the third theory in the 
 main. A few general guide-posts are perhaps not denied by 
 anybody. These are, for example, that the purely Socra- 
 tic and questioning dialogues were written when Plato was 
 fresh from the converse of Socrates ; that after his travels in 
 Italy and Sicily he approached Pythagorean metaphysics, and 
 thus brings out principles perfectly foreign to Socrates under 
 his authority. Furthermore, dialogues like the Euthydemus 
 show a polemical antagonism to Antisthenes and Isocrates, or 
 some such persons, who were rivals as heads of schools ; these 
 are to be referred to the more active period of his life, while 
 such didactic and dogmatic dialogues as the Laws, which was 
 certainly written in Plato's old age, seem to indicate the latest 
 form of his teaching, and the temper of his decaying years. 
 With the exception of these, and perhaps a few more such 
 generalities, nothing certain ever has been ascertained as to 
 the logical order of the Platonic writings. 
 
 § 413. For convenience' sake, and in order to afford some 
 frame wherein we may arrange the diverse pieces, the plan of 
 Zeller, 1 put forth without much dogmatism, may be followed 
 as reasonable, and fairly probable ; but the great work of Grote 
 has for ever destroyed the hope of any surer results. Fol- 
 lowing this division, we may regard the first, a purely Socratic 
 group, as consisting of the Lesser Bippias, Lysis, Charmides, 
 Laches, Protagoras, Euthyphron, Apology, and Criton. In these 
 there is no Pythagoreanism, no attempt at a philosophy of 
 nature ; they are purely ethical, and concerned with virtue 
 in the Socratic sense, as one and reducible to knowledge. 
 1 Plato, pp. 115, sq. 
 
168 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. VII. 
 
 Next come the Gorgias, Menon, Thecetetus, and Euthydemus, in 
 which the doctrine of Ideas, moral theories of the state after 
 death, the theory of Reminiscence, and sundry Pythagorean 
 elements begin to appear. The Phcedrus, about whose date 
 the widest diversity of opinion exists, may have been an intro- 
 duction to this group. Next come the dialogues, which, while 
 presupposing both Pythagoreanism and the theory of Ideas, in- 
 troduce us to Eleatic and Megarian philosophy, abstruse and dry 
 in character : these are the Cratylus, Sophist, Politicus, Parme- 
 nides, and Philebus, and to these Zeller appends the two most 
 celebrated of all, the Symposium and Phcedon, which latter is 
 often placed shortly after the death of Socrates, though its 
 doctrines show a large advance on Plato's earlier works. To- 
 wards the end of his life come the Republic, Timceus, Critias, 
 and Laws. Zeller, in this list, omits the Ion and Menexe- 
 nus, as well as the Epistles and first Alcibiades. I think the 
 former two are not spurious, or at least proved spurious, and 
 feel the danger of determining such matters without very 
 strong evidence. I venture to assert that no modern Ger- 
 man critic would have admitted either the Lesser Hippias 01 
 Laws, and that their spuriousness would now be an accepted 
 fact, had not Aristotle chanced to allude to them in passages 
 of still remaining works. While such mentions of Aristotle are 
 of course conclusive (if precise) as to the authenticity of a 
 dialogue, nothing can be inferred from his silence. Thus the 
 Protagoras, one of the most universally accepted, has no early 
 guarantee whatevei. The extarif allusions of this kind, both 
 direct and indirect, are collected with great care by Bonitz in 
 his valuable Index Aristotelicus, and are discussed by Zeller, 1 
 who will not, however, admit the Menexenus, in spite of a direct 
 reference in Aristotle's Rhetoric, on account of ' internal improba- 
 bilities.' So indelible is the habit of preferring a priori specu- 
 lations to external evidence ! 
 
 § 414. I must add a word on the chronological order of 
 the dialogues, which need not be the same as the logical 
 order, for Plato may have composed a prior composition, 
 dramatically, as an afterthought or introduction to an already 
 
 1 pp. 54-77. 
 
ch. vii. THE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. 169 
 
 existing dialogue. Again, such a dialogue as the Pfixzdo, 
 which in dramatic propriety should follow immediately on the 
 Apology, is supposed with good reason to be a very distant 
 afterthought to an early group. 
 
 There is no direct evidence that any dialogue whatever 
 was published during the lifetime of Socrates, except the 
 anecdote in Diogenes, 1 that Socrates, on hearing the Lysh 
 read, exclaimed, ' Herakles, what a number of lies this youth 
 has told about me ! ' This Grote rejects, and argues with great 
 force that Plato published nothing till after the death of So- 
 crates, and when he had at least reached his twenty-eighth year. 
 We have no evidence to decide the question, though Grote's 
 argument is rendered probable by the fact that several of the 
 apparently earliest dialogues are written about the accusation 
 and death of Socrates, and must therefore fall after this date. 
 So also the group called the second in Zeller's list, above given, 
 alludes to events which happened 395-4 B.C., and is latei 
 than that date. We have hardly any other chronological data, 
 unless we argue that striking inconsistencies imply a lapse of 
 some years for their growth. Thus the theory of the Protagoras, 
 that virtue is the intelligent pursuit of happiness, and the 
 balancing of lesser pains against greater rewards — this theory 
 is contradicted in the Gorgias, where the identity of the good 
 and the pleasant is distinctly controverted as an immoral doc- 
 trine. Again, Pericles and Isocrates, who are greatly praised 
 by name in the Phcedrus, are rudely handled and severely 
 censured in the Gorgias and Eidhydemus, if indeed Isocrates 
 is the philosopher-politician alluded to in the latter. If the 
 Ecclesiazuscz of Aristophanes were directed against Plato's Re- 
 public, we should obtain a minor limit (391 B.C.), which is 
 contrary to all probability, as that dialogue has unmistakeable 
 evidences of maturity in views and dogmatism in tone. The 
 absence of all direct mention of Plato in the play permits us to 
 reject it as positive testimony. The author of the seventh 
 Platonic Letter speaks as if the Republic were an early work, 
 but probably upon this very evidence, whereas the play itself 2 
 shows many reasons for believing that Plato is not in view. 
 
 1 iii. § 35. 2 Cf. Zeller, p. 139, note. 
 
170 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch.vii. 
 
 § 415. It seems hardly necessary in this general sketch to 
 give a particular abstract of each of the dialogues, for purely 
 metaphysical discussions are foreign to our plan, and the actual 
 texts are easily accessible, not to speak of the admirable and 
 classical versions of Schleiermacher, the Stuttgart translators 
 C40 vols., 1869), and Mr. Jowett. I shall therefore confine my- 
 self to general indications of their contents, while in a few typical 
 cases a fuller treatment will include the broad features which 
 recur in divers discussions. And first let us consider the 
 form adopted by Plato and other followers of Socrates — the 
 philosophical dialogue. 1 
 
 § 416. It is in no sense true that Plato was the originator of 
 this literary form, though most of his commentators attempt to 
 add this to his other merits. But it is certain that he was the 
 greatest artist of this kind which Greece, or perhaps the world, 
 ever saw, and that as he drew into one all the partial truths of 
 earlier philosophy, so he united in his works all the various 
 kinds and attempts of his forerunners in the use of dramatic 
 prose. His early biographers asserted that he studied carefully 
 the mimes of Sophron, which were apparently prose and city 
 idylls, portraying character and manners among the lower 
 classes at Syracuse. 2 In the Poetic, indeed, all similarity be- 
 tween these mimes and Plato's dialogues is flatly denied ; but 
 the assertions of the Poetic are so inaccurate and conflicting, 
 that I attach little weight to them, and think this denial, if 
 true, refers to the subject-matter only. At all events, it is 
 certain that in this school of Sophron and Xenarchus character- 
 drawing was attained by prose dialogue, perhaps the truest 
 forerunner of the Roman satura or medley. I turn next to 
 another model, which must have been before Plato's eyes, 
 .and in which dialogue must have played an important part 
 — the Memoirs of Ion of Chios, and Stesimbrotus of Thasos. 
 
 1 The definition given by Albinus {Isagoge, c. i.) is very complete, and 
 each member of it reasoned out : "Ectti roivvv ovk aWo n, $ x6yos e| epojT^- 
 crews iced airoKpi(T€(i>s (TvyK^i^vos irepi twos rwv irohiTin&v Kal <piKo(TO(pwv 
 Trpay/xdrcav, fxercl rrjs irptTrovcrris TjOoirod'as twv irapaAa/nfiavo/^svaf irpoo~d>wwv, 
 K.6X T7\s Kara, ttjv \Qiv TrapaaK€V7}$. 
 
 2 Cf. Vol. I. § 240. 
 
ch. vii. THE GROWTH OF PROSE DIALOGUE. 171 
 
 These works are not known, or not quoted, by writers of this 
 period, and are, as I have above said, 1 liable to suspicion on 
 this account ; but if they existed in Plato's day, as is alleged, 
 he must necessarily have known them, and the extracts in 
 Athenseus show us how essential dialogue and character-draw- 
 ing must have been to them. The use of rapid question and 
 reply is fully understood by Herodotus, who perpetually en- 
 livens his history with dialogue ; and even by Thucydides, who 
 in two or three striking passages 2 exchanges the tameness of 
 his narrative for this more striking form. I am here speaking 
 of the shorter and simpler dialogues in both historians ; for the 
 more elaborate discussions, such as that of Xerxes and Arta- 
 banus in the one, and the Melian dialogue in the other, are 
 rather upon a tragic model than upon that of any earlier prose 
 dialogue, nor indeed do they aim at any special character- 
 drawing, as Albinus points out. Of course the great influence 
 and popularity of tragedy and comedy must have stimulated all 
 contemporary literature in the same direction. Most young 
 authors of the day — Plato among the number — aspired to be 
 dramatic leaders of thought, like the great poets, who had 
 remodelled all Greek poetry. We even saw how the legal 
 oratory of the day assumed the dramatic tone, and how the 
 orator composed his speech according to the very character of 
 the client who spoke it. This dramatising of court speeches is 
 perhaps the closest parallel we can find to the philosophical 
 dialogue, as a piece of rfdowoua or character-painting. Along 
 with all these indirect antecedents, we are distinctly told that 
 the form of dialogue had been already employed for philo- 
 sophical teaching by Alexamenos of Teos— to us a bare name — 
 and the Eleatic Zeno. We see plainly in the antinomies of 
 the latter how dialogue, with prompt question and answer, was 
 the most natural and almost necessary form for his writings 
 to assume. But this was pure dialectic, dry metaphysical 
 subtlety and counter-subtlety, and was doubtless devoid of 
 all grace and poetry. Perhaps in the PMlebus, the Sophistes, 
 and the Parmenides, Plato copied this dry and unattractive, 
 but scientifically invaluable, method of enquiry. 
 
 1 p. 42. 2 Cf. above, p. 115. 
 
172 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 But there is no evidence that Plato, in assuming this 
 form, led the fashion, or turned the minds of men to its ad- 
 vantages. Some of the spurious documents may be as old as 
 the genuine, and it rather seems that the fashion grew up with 
 the age and society of Socrates, and that Plato outran and ob- 
 scured many rivals and competitors by his genius. We can 
 perceive at least four distinct and important objects attained 
 by adopting it. First, it was the best and most natural way of 
 giving a full and lively history of the life, character, and con- 
 versations of his master Socrates, thus producing from another 
 mind, and from a different standpoint, a grander, if not so faith- 
 ful a memoir of the inimitable master. Secondly, it exhibited 
 most clearly the most Socratic and valuable point in Plato's phi 
 losophy — the principle of searching after truth, and of resting in 
 this search as a great intellectual end, whether any conclusion 
 was attainable or not : the raising and discussing of all the 
 objections to, and difficulties in, any theory, could in no other 
 way be brought so vividly before the student. Thirdly, it 
 enabled Plato to put forth opinions tentatively, without as- 
 suming any responsibility, and of ventilating a new theory 
 before adopting it as a dogma. In the infancy of philosophy 
 this is no unimportant object, and both in this and the last- 
 named points we may justly compare Plato's dialogues with the 
 disputations of the mediaeval schools — a great engine of real 
 culture, and of real education, lost in the hurry and crowding 
 of our modern instruction. Lastly, we must not forget that 
 Plato satisfied a keen dramatic and literary instinct by drawing 
 these personal sketches. He gave rein to a satirical and critical 
 spirit also ; and if, in that strangely modern statement of 
 Socrates at the close of the Symposium, we are told that the 
 genius for tragedy and for comedy (of old dissociated) is really 
 one and the same, in no Greek author is it so clearly exempli- 
 fied as in the author of the tragic Phadon and of the farcical 
 Euthydemus. Gorgias called him an iambist, and most critics 
 a dlthyrambist in prose. 
 
 § 417. While admitting all these advantages in Plato's dia- 
 logues — a literary form which has survived to the present day, 
 and of which he was practically, if not strictly, the originator— it 
 
CH. vil. ATTIC NOTION OF LEISURE. 173 
 
 ought not to be overlooked that they have certain faults inher- 
 ent in themselves, and perhaps some arising from the peculiar- 
 ities of their author. A conversation which exhibits character 
 on both sides must always command attention, but there are 
 many long passages in which the respondent is a mere answer- 
 ing machine, and in which his perpetually repeated, ' Yes, cer- 
 tainly,' ' It seems so,' ' By all means,' excite great 'ennui in the 
 modern reader. Hence comes the undoubted fact, that this great 
 author is far more talked about, and lauded to the skies, than 
 honestly read, and that even diligent scholars find it a task to 
 read a dialogue of Plato honestly through. Very often the 
 questions and answers are minute and trivial, containing no 
 further interest than the persistent assertion of the importance 
 of the search after truth as such. Often, again, the points made 
 by Socrates are really sophistical and unsound, and we feel 
 annoyed that Plato will not let the respondent give him the 
 true and embarrassing reply. 
 
 There is, moreover — there cannot but be in modern minds 
 ■ — a strong feeling that Socrates and his school wasted time in 
 disputation, and induced habits of idleness, cloaked under the 
 garb of philosophic research. It is here that the conditions of 
 old Attic and of modern life are widely in contrast. The 
 Athenian gentleman, with slaves to do his work, with no home 
 occupation, and living about the city as in a huge club, had 
 apparently no notion that he could waste his time, when it 
 was not required in the public service. The modern gentle- 
 man thinks very differently. His work lies in reading and 
 writing, in the transaction of professional or public business, 
 his amusement in games and field sports ; so that he seldom 
 regards conversation as a serious pastime, or a means of ac- 
 quiring new truth or deeper culture. This is no doubt much 
 to be regretted, and we should be reminded that a great deal 
 of our best knowledge is learned by conversation. But the 
 Athenians of Socrates' school surely went into the opposite 
 extreme. Even all the literary skill and the nameless charm 
 of Plato's style cannot conceal from us the fact that his dia- 
 logues are tedious in the minuteness and elaboration of their 
 conversations. This will be admitted by any candid reader of 
 
174 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vii. 
 
 Plato who does not belong to the scholastic trade union which 
 thinks that all great Greek authors are to be lauded as per- 
 fect, and that even the mildest detraction is to be set down as 
 want of taste, or want of real appreciation or of sympathy for 
 the classics. Verjly the merits of such an author as Plato do 
 not need to be supported by a suppression of his weaker points. 
 
 § 418. We might hazard even a further word of criticism as 
 to the form of dialogue he has adopted in some of his greatest 
 works, such as the Parmenides and the Symposium, in which 
 the main conversation is reported in indirect narration by one 
 of the speakers. This prolonged obliqueness of construction, 
 with its crowded infinitives, always appears awkward, not to 
 speak of the dramatic absurdity of making any man repeat 
 from memory a set of speeches or an intricate dialogue. This 
 absurdity is only artistically tolerable where the speaker re- 
 ports a conversation in which he himself took a leading part, 
 as is the case with Socrates in the Lysis, Charmides, and Pro- 
 tagoras. Zeller " quotes Wcisse and Schone as making this 
 distinction of direct and indirect dialogues a fundamental one, 
 and ranging them accordingly — another example of perverse 
 ingenuity in forcing the facts to fit into a preconceived theory. 
 There is no reason whatever for classing together the Charmides 
 and Parmenides, because Plato chanced to make both of them 
 (dramatically) repeated and net direct conversations. The 
 point is as old as the Alexandrian days, for Diogenes Laertiu^ 
 mentions it, 2 remarking that it is a dramatic rather than a 
 philosophic principle. 
 
 The anachronisms in the dialogues, on the contrary, 
 are not disturbing to our enjoyment, though we can imagine 
 sober and critical Athenians sharing in the impatience of 
 Grote, who thinks the historical blunders in the Menexenus 
 prove that Plato had never read Thucydides ! This judg- 
 ment is rendered positively comical by the fact that Socrates, 
 in making his speech on the glories of Athens, actually alludes 
 to events as late as the peace of Antalkidas (387 B.C.), 
 whereas he himself died in 399 B.C. The author of such 
 an anachronism would hardly have recoiled from historical 
 
 1 pp. 107-8, note. - ii. § 50. 
 
CH. vii. PURELY NEGATIVE DIALOGUES. 175 
 
 inaccuracies in older times ; and yet the dialogue is quoted as 
 genuine in Aristotle's Rhetoric. 
 
 § 419. I will proceed to analyse a very few of the dialogues, 
 each as representative of a class, though it is necessary to add, 
 and to insist, that there are not any two of them strictly upon 
 the same model, nor is there any one of them in which there are 
 not many fruitful and original remarks. Laying aside the Apology 
 and Criton, which are intended as special pictures of the specu- 
 lative and of the practical sides of Socrates 5 life, we will first 
 approach that group which the commentators call purely Socra- 
 tic. In most of these, after a dramatic introduction, where the 
 passionate relations of young men at Athens are the leading 
 feature, someone makes a remark implying some moral idea, 
 which is not clearly defined, but used by the public with vague 
 and varying associations. Such are the notions of Valour (Laches), 
 Friendship (Lysis), Chastity (Charm ides), Religiousness (Euthy- 
 phron). Socrates, in the dialogues mentioned, immediately 
 fastens upon this vagueness, and proceeds to sift the connota- 
 tion of the term in the minds of those around him. He refutes 
 the first crude answer easily, by cross-examining the respondent, 
 and showing him inconsistent with himself ; then other answers 
 are suggested, and in their turn refuted. But Socrates himself 
 generally offers no solution of his own, and where (in another 
 class of dialogues) he does attempt to do so, he often proceeds 
 to refute himself, and show that so far only a negative result 
 can be attained, and that it will require a deeper philosophy to 
 establish consistent and scientific definitions of even the most 
 ordinary terms. It is quite plain that this negative dialec- 
 tic, this sceptical cross-examining, was Socrates' great feature, 
 and that (like Bishop Butler) he was far weaker as a construc- 
 tive philosopher ; for we may be quite certain that the great 
 system or series of theories put into his mouth in Plato's later 
 dialogues contain not his, but his pupil's notions. 
 
 The fragment entitled Cleitophon, which most critics assert 
 to be spurious, on account of its cogent criticism on the barren- 
 ness of positive results in Socrates' teaching, deals altogether 
 with this point. After a negative discussion on justice, in 
 which various definitions are rejected, Cleitophon turns upon 
 
176 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 Socrates, and presses for a positive answer. ' It is not once or 
 twice/ he says, ' that I have endured these perplexities, and 
 have importuned you to clear them up. At last I am wearied 
 out, and come to the conviction, that you are doubtless a con- 
 summate proficient in the art of stimulating men. to seek virtue ; 
 but as to the ulterior question, how they are to find it, you 
 either do not know, or you will not tell. I am resolved to go 
 to Thrasymachus, or anybody else who will help me, unless you 
 will consent to give me something more than mere stimulating 
 discourses. To one who has not yet received the necessary 
 stimulus, I repeat that your conversation is of inestimable 
 value ; but to one who has already been stimulated, it is 
 rather a hindrance than a help to his fully realising the acqui- 
 sition of virtue, and with it of happiness.' Such is the summary 
 of these negative and sceptical dialogues, to which Socrates 
 here makes no reply, but which the ancients considered a sort 
 of introduction to the Republic, in which the notion of Justice 
 is formally and positively considered. 1 
 
 In selecting a specimen, one is at first strongly inclined to 
 cite the Lysis or Charmides, in both of which the dramatic 
 introduction — which is laid in a palaestra, among a crowd of 
 fair youths with their passionate elder friends — is peculiarly 
 striking and peculiarly Attic. The excitement at the entrance 
 of Charmides, the reigning beauty, and the intoxication felt at 
 his presence even by Socrates, are among the strangest features 
 in old Greek life, as compared with that of modern Europe. 
 But the questions raised and 'discussed — What is friendship or 
 affection ? What is chastity or self-control ? — are by no means 
 so important as that in the Euthyphron, where a permanent 
 moral difficulty is started. 
 
 § 420. Socrates is going to put in his formal plea of defence 
 against the charge of impiety laid against him by Meletus, 
 when he meets Euthyphron, a man of religious life, and an 
 authority in theological matters — perhaps a Greek pharisee — 
 who is coming to the same archon's office to indict his own 
 father for homicide. This strange situation arose from the 
 following circumstances. A free dependant of the father had 
 1 Grote, ii. p. 18. 
 
CH. vii. PROBLEM OF THE EUTHYPHRON. 177 
 
 killed a fellow -servant in a drunken quarrel at Naxos, where- 
 upon his master threw him bound into a ditch, and sent to the 
 Exegetes at Athens to know what should be done with him. 
 Meanwhile, the prisoner died in the ditch of cold and hunger. 
 For this barbarity, Euthyphron indicts his father as guilty of 
 homicide, which in the Attic law implied a pollution upon the 
 house, of the same kind as we should consider murder. But 
 though we should feel so deeply this outrage on common 
 humanity that we might feel disposed to sympathise with 
 Euthyphron, the Greek public, who were well accustomed to 
 barbarous treatment of slaves (and this wretched ftj/e is re- 
 garded as hardly better), and who did not set the absurd 
 value we do on human life as such, were of a different opinion. 
 With them family ties were so sacred and binding, that the 
 feeling of all Euthyphron's relatives was one of horror at his 
 proceeding. ' Your father,' said they, ' did not kill the man 
 (who was in any case a wretched hireling) ; if he did, was not 
 the man a murderer ? and, in any case, to indict one's fathei 
 is simply monstrous.' Such, then, was the verdict of public 
 opinion. To this Euthyphron opposes his clearer and better 
 knowledge. Either his father's act was just or unjust ; if the 
 former, let it be so proved ; if not, the murderer is tainted 
 with a curse, and so is his family. It is, therefore, an obliga- 
 tion of the strictest kind, on the ground of piety, to remove 
 this curse ; and so far from being impious to indict him, it 
 would really be impious to omit doing so. 
 
 Here Socrates joins issue. He professes ignorance on the 
 merits of the dispute ; for he is ignorant of the general feature 
 which constitutes piety, and in which all pious acts must par- 
 ticipate. What, he asks, is this general feature or quality? 
 Euthyphron answers by giving the particular case in point : it is 
 holy to bring to justice him who commits impiety, whoever he 
 may be. The examples of the gods — Kronos punishing Uranos ; 
 Zeus, Kronos — show this. ' Do you really believe these stories/ 
 says Socrates ; ' I can hardly bring myself to do so, and 
 this is probably why I am indicted for offending against ortho- 
 doxy. But if you insist, of course I must admit them, for I 
 have no evidence against them. But to return. The answer 
 
 VOL. II. N 
 
178 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. VIL 
 
 given is too special ; there are other pious acts to be done. 
 What is the general type or standard that a man should know 
 and apply to all actions, and determine them as pious or the 
 reverse ? ' The second answer of Euthyphron is : ' That which 
 is pleasing to the gods is holy. But the gods, as you just 
 now said, are often at variance, so that the same act may 
 please one and displease the other. Well, then, what all the 
 gods love — and there are such acts — is holy, and what all hate 
 is unholy and impious.' Here Socrates begins to subtilise, 
 and touches dialectically a great theological question — that of 
 immutable morality. ' Do the gods love an act because it is 
 holy ? or is it holy because they love it ? ' Euthyphron declares 
 himself for the former alternative. ' Well, then, the gods loving 
 it is only an accident, by reason of its essential feature, which 
 has not yet been described.' Here Euthyphron confesses 
 himself puzzled, and Socrates suggests that it may be a 
 subdivision of the Just, viz. our duties to the gods, as or- 
 dinary justice is our duty to men. But after a short excursion 
 into this field, 1 Euthyphron impatiently returns to the old 
 orthodox answer, that piety is to do in prayer and sacrifice 
 what is agreeable to the gods, which Socrates shows to be 
 identical with one of the already rejected answers. Here 
 Euthyphron breaks off on the plea of other business, and thus 
 no positive solution is attained. 2 
 
 § 421. Such are the apparently earlier and simpler Dialogues 
 of Search, to which may be added the greater and lesser Alci- 
 biades and Hippias, if we accept them as genuine — which critics 
 are agreed to do in the case of the lesser Hippias, but are doubt- 
 ful as regards the rest. In all of them Socrates is represented as 
 seeking to purify and deepen a popular notion, by showing vague- 
 
 1 Plato is here on the verge of another great modern juestion : whether 
 piety consists in gratitude to the gods — an act of right traffic between gods 
 and men, as he calls it — or in the love of God as the ideal of perfection. 
 The Xenophontic Socrates held the former ; in Plato's later dialogues the 
 latter is expounded with great loftiness and splendour. But whether this 
 latter doctrine be truly Socratic may well be doubted. 
 
 2 The reader will not forget that a particular phase of this very moral 
 difficulty — the conflict of the most sacred obligations— had occupied all 
 me great tragic poets from ^schylus onward. 
 
ch. vii. THE THE&TETUS. 179 
 
 nesses and inconsistencies in its application, and by comparing 
 various special meanings, with a view to fixing its general charac- 
 ter or essence. In an age when formal logic was in its infancy, 
 and the now well-understood processes of generalisation and 
 specification had not been analysed, it was not only useful, but all- 
 important, to insist upon the conscious use of them ; hence we 
 may well excuse Plato for making these logical processes meta- 
 physical engines, and setting up the results attained by them as 
 laws or principles of the nature of things. Such a mistake was 
 peculiarly likely to overtake the first speculators in formal Logic, 
 who were at the same time ignorant of all languages save their 
 own, and came naturally to think distinctions of language 
 must correspond to differences in things. No confusion was 
 more permanent in Greek philosophy than this double meaning 
 of \6yoc, ratio and oratio, as if the Greek language were a 
 necessary and natural manifestation of the reason, and through 
 it of the nature of things. 
 
 §422. These reflections lead us naturally to a second group 
 of the dialogues, those which are supposed to have been written 
 under the influence of the dry logic of Eucleides of Megara, 
 when Plato went to sojourn there ; nay, by sceptical Germans 
 some of them are even supposed to have been written by 
 thinkers of this school. These are the The&tetus, Sophistes, 
 and Politicus, which are dramatically intended as a trilogy, 
 and the Parmenides, Philebus, and Kratylus. The references, 
 however, of the Sophistes and Politicus to each other and the 
 Theatetus are merely dramatical ; for the difficulties raised and 
 left unsolved are not touched in the sequel, nor is there any 
 logical connection in these extended conversations, in which a 
 new speaker, an Eleatic stranger, is introduced in the Sophistes 
 as taking up the leading part. Of all the dialogues of this 
 group, the Thecetetus is probably the most valuable ; for while 
 it is, like the earlier group, strictly a dialogue of Search, with- 
 out any official result, it discusses all the difficulties, and 
 suggests the solution, of the problem : What is knowledge? 
 What is the relation of a varying subject towards varying 
 objects, which can result in universal and necessary truths? 
 What, again, is opinion? How is false opinion possible? 
 
 N 2 
 
180 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vil. 
 
 What is the process and what the criterion of knowledge? 
 This dialogue, like the rest of this group, shows an important 
 advance in philosophising, in that it is not so much popular or 
 vulgar beliefs, but the theories of antecedent thinkers, which 
 are subjected to the Socratic elenchus. Thus in the present 
 case it is the Protagorean theory that all truth is subjective, 
 that varying man is the measure of all he can know, and hence 
 of the universe, which is canvassed and criticised. And this 
 theory is very properly regarded as the subjective form of the 
 older objective ' flux of all things' maintained by Heracleitus. 
 
 It belongs to the history of Greek philosophy to discuss 
 the metaphysical aspects of such enquiries ; but it is our duty 
 to call attention to the famous literary passage of the piece, in 
 which the rhetor, who speaks before a tyrannical audience to 
 gain a fixed object, and is accordingly a slave, is contrasted 
 with the philosopher, who spends his leisure in the search after 
 truth, unincumbered by any control or coercion from the outer 
 public. This remarkable passage, which shows a dignity and 
 self-assertion somewhat different from that of the historic 
 Socrates, is worth quoting as a specimen. l 
 
 1 Thecetetus, p. 172 c. : Kal iroX.Xa.Kis fiev ye 8tj, Si Zai[x6vie, Kal &XXore Kare- 
 v6r)o~a,aTap Kal vvv, 00s ukStcos ol evra^s (piXocrocpiais iroXvv x?^ vov SiaTpfyavres 
 els ra St/caCT^pta I6vres yeXotoi (paivovrai prjropes. ©EO. Hats S^j ovv Xeyeis ; 
 2fl. KtvSvvevovcriv ol ev ZiKao-rr] plots Kal toTs tolovtois 4k j/eav KvXivSov/xevoi 
 irpbs tovs ev (piXocrotyia Kal rfj roiade diaTpififj Te9pa/j.fj.evovs cos o'lKerai irpbs 
 eXevdepovs reQpdcpQai. ©EO. Ilfj 5ifj ; 2H. T Ht ro7s fxev } tovto b crb elires, 
 ael irdpecm o~xoXr] Kal tovs XSyovs ev elp^vrj iirl o~xoXris iroiovvrai ' &o~irep 
 Tjfiels vvvl rp'nov f?87j x6yov 4k Xoyov ix.eTaXajj.fidvojxev, ovrco KaKeivoi, idv 
 avrovs 6 eireXOwv rod irpoKet/xevov fxaXXov, KaOdirep rjfias, apeffrj, Kal 81a fia- 
 Kpwv 7) /3pa%eW /xeXei ovSev Xeyeiv, av fj.6vov rvxco(Ti rod ovros. ol Se 4v 
 aaxoXia re ael Xeyovai • Kareirelyei yap vh°wp peov, Kal ovk 4yx(t>pe? irepl ov 
 av eTTiQvfii]o'(ao'i tovs Xdyovs iroielo'Qai, aAA' avdyK7}v ex (av & wt'iSikos 4<peo~Tf]Ke 
 Kal vTToypa<p7\v it apav uy tyvw a Ko/xevrju, &v cktos ov ptyreov ' ol 5e Xoyoi del 
 irepl 6/j.odovXov irpbs Seo-ir6T7]v KaOrjfxevov, 4v x ei P^ T V Si/cTjv exovra, Kal ol 
 aycoves ovdeirore tV aXXws aAA.' ael rfyv irepl avrov ' iroXXaKis Be Kal irepl 
 tyvxys d dp6/xos. oStrr' e| airavrcov rovruv evrovot Kal dpi/xels yiyvouraL, 
 eirio'rdixevoL rbv Zeo-rr6rT]V X6yw tc Occirevcrai Kal epycv x a P l<Tao '® a - l i GfxiKpol 
 Ze Kal ovk bpQol ras -tyvxds. Ti}V yap avfyv Kal rb evdv re Kal rb eXevdepov 
 7] 4k vewv SovXeia a<pypriTai, avayKa^ovaa irpdrreiv crKoXid, ueyaXovs KivZvvous 
 Kal (pofiovs en airaXaTs ^/u%als eiufiaXXovirtt, ovs ov Swd/mevot fxera rov 
 
ch. mi. THE SOPHISTES. 181 
 
 The Sophistes is by no means so uniform and consistent. 
 It begins with an exercise in logical division, so as to determine 
 in what exact place of the predicamental lines descending from 
 the genus acquisitive art, the position of the angler should be 
 placed among those who live by catching their food. As Grote 
 remarks, such exercises were of great value and interest in the 
 infancy of logic, though now of little importance. Plato goes 
 on to speak of the sophist as a man who palms off falsehood for 
 truth, but then passes on to the difficulty : how can you speak 
 falsehood — how can you assert non-being, which has ex hypo- 
 thesi no existence ? This question had already occupied him 
 in the Thecztetus, and is here discussed against the materialists, 
 who assert as real objects of sense only, and against the idea- 
 lists, who hold that real being is confined to Forms or Ideas. 
 Plato argues that some mediation must take place when we 
 assert unreality. He then, after a long and tedious discussion, 
 returns to the sophist, whom he paints in dark colours ; though, 
 as Grote justly says, his picture is more suitable to Socrates 
 than to any of the professed sophists we know. 
 
 Of the Politicus I will speak in connection with the state 
 theories in the Republic. It would lead us too far to speak at 
 length of the other three dialogues I have grouped here : the 
 Parmenides, which puts into the mouth of that venerable philo- 
 sopher an exposition to the youthful Socrates of the famous 
 antinomies of the Eleatic school ; the Philebus, which discusses 
 the nature of pleasure ; and the Kratylus, that curious first 
 essay at derivation of words. In this latter Plato shows plainly 
 
 SiKaiov Kal aXyOovs virocpepeiu, evObs itrl rb ipev86s re Kal rb aXX^Xovs 
 avradiKeTu rpeirS/jL^voi iroXXa KajXTTTOvrai Kal avyKXwvTai, SxrO' vyih ovSeu 
 %Xovt€s tt\s Siavoias els avSpas e/c fxeipaKiCDV TeXevTaffi, Seivoi Te Kal aocpol 
 yeyov6Tes, us olovrai. 
 
 Kal ovroi fj.eu 8^ tolovtol, & QeoSaipe ' tovs 8e rov fjfiGTepov x°P°v 
 irSrepov fiovXei SieXdSvres ?) idcravres iraXiv iirl rbv \6yov rpairdifxeOa, 
 'ha fii] Kai, t vvv 8^ iXeyofiev, Xiav iroXv ttj iXevOepiq Kal fxeraX^^i 
 tuv X6y(cv KaTaxp&V-tQa ', ©EO. Mr)da/J.ws, 5 ~%<£>Kpares, aXXa 5ieX66vres. 
 irdvv yap ev tovto e'lprjKas, '6ri oi>x f)/ne7s ol iv r<p roupSe xopevoures twv 
 X6yuv vvrfpirai. aAA' ol x6yoi ol ri/xeTepoi Socnrer olKerai, Kal e'/cacrros 
 avrSiv irepipevei airoreXeadrjuat, '6rav tj/jCu So/crJ ■ ovre yap SiKaarrjs ovre 
 0eaT7?y, u)0"ireo TroirjTaTs, iiriTiuijaaiv re Kal apfav i-ino-rare? Trap' tj/mv. 
 
i82 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vir. 
 
 his belief that words express the nature of things, and his ten- 
 tative analysis of ordinary words is intended to show that 
 the meaning he postulates was in the minds of the first framers. 
 Many modern critics have thought the whole intention was 
 to ridicule some contemporary efforts ; but anyone who has 
 heard ignorant people nowadays attempt derivations, and who 
 knows Plato's attitude, will side with Grote in asserting that 
 the attempt was serious, though only provisional, and that Plato 
 would readily have surrendered his results had anyone shown 
 him a more reasonable method of procedure. 
 
 § 423. As we cannot fix any chronological sequence, we may 
 here turn to a small group of very interesting tracts, which are 
 more clearly satirical in tone than the rest of the dialogues. 
 I will not say that there is anywhere in Plato a want of this 
 quality, but the main purpose of two at least — the Ion and the 
 Euthydemus — is to ridicule two well-known classes of literary 
 men. In the first Socrates cross-examines, in a tone of good- 
 humoured banter, a popular rhapsode who has just come from 
 a contest of epic recitation at Epidaurus, and who gives us 
 many curious details concerning his profession, and the bold 
 claims which the unintelligent reciters of Homer made to uni- 
 versal knowledge, derived from that omniscient bard. For to 
 the Greek public Homer was strictly a Bible, in which beyond 
 controversy all theology and morals were contained. The 
 majority also maintained, though here there were doubters, 
 that all kinds of science and practical wisdom were also to 
 be derived from him. But when Ion confesses that he knows 
 no other poets critically, Socrates explains this peculiarity by 
 expounding two theories which are the direct pagan counter- 
 parts of the doctrines of Verbal Inspiration, and of Apostolical 
 Succession in the Christian Church. He holds that the Muse 
 inspired Homer to a certain madness, distinct from, if not 
 opposed to, reason, which made him sing divine truths which 
 he himself did not comprehend ; that this madness is trans- 
 mitted by a magnetic succession to the rhapsodes, and that thus 
 they teach truths on the ground of inspiration, which are not 
 attained by rational discussion or inference. 
 
 It may be well to add here the remark, that the whole school 
 
CH. vii. THE EUTHYDEMUS. 183 
 
 of Socrates never criticise the great poets of their nation from 
 aesthetic, but from moral grounds ; they never commend a pas- 
 sage as beautiful, but approve or disapprove of it as moral or 
 wise. The same may be said of the criticism in the Frogs of 
 Aristophanes, and generally of criticism before the days of 
 Aristotle, Perhaps this is not the smallest reason why the 
 beauties of Greek poetry are so natural and so unconscious. 
 That the Greeks of this age were susceptible to these beauties 
 as such is certain ; it is equally certain that they were quite 
 foreign to that peculiar vice of modern literature, the conscious 
 production and conscious analysis of aesthetic effects in poetry. 
 I need not here turn aside to discuss the many qualifications 
 and exceptions, some of them only apparent, of this law, which 
 the reader should verify and emend for himself. The Ion closes 
 with the ridiculous assertion of the rhapsode, that he must 
 at least be a good general, because he knows his Homer, in 
 which that art is taught ; Socrates banteringly presses him to 
 admit the converse, that all good generals must be good rhap- 
 sodes. 
 
 The Euthydcmus is similarly a ridiculous picture of the arts 
 and devices of a pair of professional sophists — Euthydemus and 
 Dionysodorus. This again is an indirect dialogue, or reported 
 conversation by Socrates of his discussion with these two men, 
 who profess to teach arms, and judicial rhetoric, and virtue, but 
 have lately, in their toothless old age, mastered the art of Eristic, 
 by which they profess to silence anyone, or in which to instruct 
 anyone who pays the necessary fee. The dialogue wanders 
 into coarse and vulgar buffoonery, showing Plato in the light of 
 a comic artist, though I think he is deficient in wit, even where 
 he abounds in humour. It is, however, remarkable that the 
 sophists carry on the very same sort of elenchus or cross-exami- 
 nation as Socrates, but with a totally different object : they wish 
 to humble the adversary, and display their own force ; Socrates 
 is always intent on stimulating and suggesting, and never seeks 
 to confute for the mere sake of victory. There is a curious 
 epilogue which, as Grote says, seems like an after-thought, 
 which defer. ds the pure philosopher, even such an one as 
 Euthydemus, against a popular half-and-half teacher, who is 
 
1 84 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 neither professional orator, nor real philosopher, but a mongrel 
 worse than either, who gives himself great airs, and knows 
 nothing thoroughly. There seems great probability that this 
 points at Isocrates, of whom Plato expressed high hopes in the 
 Phczd7'iis> but who .had become the head of a rival school, and 
 was now viewed with a critical eye, and not without jealousy, 
 by the head of the Academy. 
 
 § 424. We pass to the Mmexenus, or funeral panegyric, which 
 Socrates professes to have learnt from hints of Aspasia, who 
 had, he says, taught Pericles his great harangue. This points 
 apparently to the speech in Thucydides' second book, in rivalry 
 with which Plato would seem to have composed this dialogue. 
 He represents the art of making funeral harangues as an easy 
 one, and desired, according to Grote, to resist the rhetors 
 on their own ground, by showing he was equal to them in sus- 
 tained eloquence. If this were indeed his object, we cannot 
 hold that he was very successful. The eulogy of the dead is 
 very inferior to the weighty and splendid performance of Thucy- 
 dides, though it is smoother in form, and more easy to under- 
 stand. Yet we hear that it was afterwards very popular at 
 Athens, owing no doubt to the author's general reputation. 
 The review of Athenian affairs comes down to 387 B.C., though 
 put into the mouth of Socrates — an anachronism which 
 causes some to reject the speech. But Aristotle's ^Rhetoric 
 speaks of it, as of other Platonic dialogues, as ' Socrates in the 
 Funeral Speech.' The rhetorical critics from Dionysius to 
 Blass have paid much attention to it, and Dionysius criticises 
 it severely in comparison with the De Corona of Demosthenes. 
 Plato was no really finished rhetorician in the Greek sense. 
 Though he laid the foundations for a far deeper and more phi- 
 losophical theory of rhetoric than any of his contemporaries, 
 he was not in form so strict and irreproachable as they were. 
 He mixes poetical and prose words, he abounds in metaphors, 
 he does not round his periods with accuracy. It is even re- 
 marked as regards this speech that he does not adopt the formal 
 improvements of the Isocratic school. The hiatus is not 
 avoided, as it is in later Platonic writings, and the emulation is 
 evidently not with the new, but with the old rhetors, professedly 
 
CH. vil. THE PERFECT DIALOGUES. 185 
 
 with Archinus and Dion, leading citizens who were probably 
 of the old school, and would not suit themselves to the new re- 
 finements which we shall discuss when we come to Isocrates. 
 The Epitaphios ascribed to Lysias is very like Plato's speech 
 in plan and structure, and might be regarded as its model, were 
 we sure of its priority. As a performance in rhetorical prose, 
 it is not equal to the speech of Agathon in the Symposium, in 
 which the peculiarly florid and balanced style of that fashion- 
 able author seems imitated with wonderful skill. 
 
 § 425. Great as are the merits of the dialogues already men- 
 tioned, they are far beneath the writings of the two classes 
 which have yet to be named. The first I will term the perfect 
 dialogues — meaning those of Plato's mature genius, in which 
 both the negative vein and positive philosophical teaching 
 are combined, without any loss in dramatic form or bril- 
 liancy. We may call the remaining the constructive dialogues, 
 and discuss in relation with them Plato's political and social 
 theories. But it seems justifiable to apply the term perfect to 
 three pairs of dialogues, which I put in this order, because each 
 pair expounds either the same subject or opposite sides of the 
 same subject. They have no other connection. Thus the Pro- 
 tagoras and Gorgias set forth opposite views on the nature of 
 virtue, Socrates arguing in the former that it is identical with 
 private utility, while in the Gorgias he repudiates this view, 
 and holds that virtue is totally distinct from pleasure. Again 
 the Phcedrus and Symposium, though the former touches on 
 other subjects, are mainly dialogues in which the famous Pla- 
 tonic theory of Eros is expounded and defended against objec- 
 tions. Lastly the Menon, which is professedly on the teachable- 
 ness of virtue, maintains this thesis by adopting the theory of 
 the pre-existence of the soul, and may therefore be brought 
 together with Phcedon, which preaches its permanence after 
 death. Of all these the Menon is perhaps the least striking as a 
 literary piece, though it is philosophically very suggestive, and 
 has inspired poets down to our own day with its magnificent 
 conception of the antenatal life, which accounts for so many 
 great riddles — a priori knowledge, noble instincts, sudden dis- 
 coveries — by moving a step backward, and drawing them from 
 
1 86 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 the treasure-house of a former existence. 1 This hypothesis has 
 made the dialogue more famous than its professed subject, the 
 teachableness of virtue, upon which Socrates actually comes to 
 a definite conclusion. Identifying virtue as a kind of knowledge, 
 as Socrates consistently did, he holds that the highest kind of 
 virtue, being such,' must be communicable ; but that the ordi- 
 nary virtues of men being only right opinions, are not so con- 
 veyed, but come by special inspiration of the gods. Hence it 
 is that there are bad sons of good fathers, and that in general 
 virtue is regarded as a moral, and not an intellectual condition. 
 § 426. The Phczdon, or last conversation and death of So- 
 crates, is certainly the most famous of all Plato's writings, and 
 owes this renown not only to the infinite importance of the sub- 
 ject — the immortality of the soul — but to the touching scenery 
 and pathetic situation in which the dialogue is laid. Socrates and 
 his friends in the prison, the calm cheerfulness of the victim, 
 the distress of the friends, the emotion even of the jailor — these 
 pictures are only paralleled in literature by the one sacrifice 
 which was greater and more enduring than that of the noblest 
 and purest pagan teacher. But there is one moment in the 
 Greek prison, which stands in strange contrast to the deep sym- 
 pathy and gentleness which relieve the gloom on Calvary. The 
 wife and children of the philosopher are removed that he may 
 enjoy his last moments undisturbed in the comfort of philosophic 
 converse, and there is no hint that the heart-broken woman 
 had any claim to the most precious moments of her husband's 
 life. Her lamentations were to him in discord with his dying 
 song, but we feel as if the human string had snapt when the 
 Attic martyr dared to silence it. How much nearer were the 
 mother and the Son at the cross of Golgotha ! Yet this scene, 
 one of the greatest in any literature, is not the main inter- 
 est of the dialogue. It is the clear and cheerful promise of 
 future happiness which has fascinated the thoughtful men of 
 all ages, and especially those who had not obtained a hope of 
 immortality through the adoption of the Christian faith. Before 
 all men the dark grave stands gaping, and ever the question 
 
 1 Cf. Grote, Op. Cit. ii. p, 7, and the passage quoted there from the 
 dialogue in a note (p. 81 b). 
 
ch. vii. THE PHjEDON. 187 
 
 repeats itself, What is the hereafter ? This is the world-grief, 
 the world-fear which Plato seeks to remove, and his answer has 
 comforted patriots and martyrs in many ages and divers lands. 
 
 But the reader who imagines that here at least he will find 
 a pure and simple strain, that, like the song of the dying swan, 
 the notes must be clear and the melody simple and pathetic, will 
 be greatly disappointed. The dialogue is full of hard meta- 
 physic concerning the self-motion of the soul, its participation 
 in the eternal ideas of a former existence, its likeness or unlike- 
 ness to a harmony, and, moreover, concerning the nature of effi- 
 cient and final causes. The discussion ends with an elaborate 
 and difficult myth concerning the future state, which tries the 
 intellect, but does not excite the emotions, of the reader. In 
 all these features the Phaeton bears a singular analogy to its 
 great musical parallel in modern times, the famous Requiem 
 in which Mozart declared his hopes and fears through the last 
 hours of his failing life. Here too, at first hearing, the ear misses 
 the simple and sweet melodies which he composed in earlier 
 life, but is surprised with all the intricacies, all the display of 
 wonderful learning, which heap harmony upon harmony, in- 
 version upon inversion, subject upon subject in complicated 
 counterpoint. It requires long familiarity both with Plato and 
 Mozart to feel the great leading ideas, and follow the thread of 
 the divine argument. But even to honest men who are not 
 satisfied with the reasoning, the practical evidence that Socrates 
 showed his own perfect conviction of its truth is perhaps the 
 clearest and the most effective corroboration. 
 
 No doubt Plato has here introduced some metaphysic of 
 his own. Indeed the doctrine of Ideas is so developed and 
 prominent in the Phcedon, that the critics place its composition 
 long after Socrates' death, and late in Plato's mature life. 
 But the main picture must be true, and if Plato had left us no 
 other monument of his genius, it would have sufficed to place 
 him in the highest rank. 
 
 § 427. The most striking contrast to the Phcedoti is the 
 Symposium, which is no doubt really greater and more bril- 
 liant, but is so intensely Greek, that it sounds strange and 
 even offensive to modern ears. It is an account given by 
 
i88 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vil. 
 
 Aristodemus of a banquet at the house of . the tragic poet 
 Agathon after one of his victories, at which, together with 
 other less famous persons, Socrates, the physician Eryxima- 
 chus, Aristophanes, and by and by Alcibiades, discuss the na- 
 ture and praise pf Eros. The introduction is very graphic, 
 and brings before us vividly the manners of refined society 
 at Athens. Instead of drinking hard, which most of them 
 had been doing the night before, or listening to a flute girl, 
 they ' send her to play to the women within, if they like it,' 
 and propose to speak in turn in praise of Love. The speeches 
 are somewhat strained and mythological, especially that of 
 Aristophanes, which is more grotesque and far-fetched than 
 witty, and again shows that Plato had no real wit at command, 
 in spite of his delicate humour. The speech of Agathon is, on 
 the contrary, a very remarkable rhetorical display, and well 
 deserves the applause which it receives from the company. It is 
 in the old style of Gorgias, full of alliterations and conceits, and 
 is evidently carefully copied from the poet's style. The speech 
 of Socrates, whose passion for cross-examination breaks out 
 several times during the dialogue, is an exposition in which he 
 repeats the lessons he professes to have heard from the pro- 
 phetic Diotima, and forms (with the Phcsdrus) the locus classicus 
 for the proper understanding of the Platonic Theory of Love. 
 But presently Alcibiades breaks in with a riotous party, and 
 the banquet degenerates into a scene of drunkenness and 
 almost of ribaldry. For Alcibiades, instead of praising Eros, 
 undertakes to praise Socrates,- and gives such an account of his 
 resistance to erotic temptation, as even in Greek society is only- 
 excused by the drunkenness of the narrator. Nevertheless, the 
 most wonderful of all our pictures of Socrates, in all his ugliness, 
 his fascination, his deep sympathy, his iron courage, his unas- 
 sailable chastity, is this panegyric of the licentious Alcibiades. 
 The end of the banquet shows him in yet another light, as a 
 man of so strong a head, that he can drink most men under the 
 tables, and sit discoursing though his audience is unfit to follow 
 him upon the analogies of the pathetic and the humorous, and 
 how a tragic ought also to be a comic poet. This quality 
 of resisting intoxication was prized by Plato even more than it 
 
CH. vil. THE PH&DRUS. 189 
 
 is nowadays, as giving proof of a strong and clear intellect, 
 not easily disturbed by outward causes. 
 
 § 428. The Phczdrus is a discourse in a far simpler setting — 
 there are only two speakers, Socrates and Phaedrus — but yet there 
 are few Platonic works more full of poetry, as Socrates, by the 
 shady banks of the Ilissus, and within view of the theatre of 
 Dionysus, soars into a mighty dithyramb on the nature and 
 effects of that divine impulse which leads us to long for immor- 
 tality, and to seek after perfection. The position of this piece 
 in the development of the author's system has been much dis- 
 puted, but there seems now to be a sort of general agreement, 
 even among the Germans, that it was an early work. This is 
 most in accordance with the high expectations expressed of 
 I socrates, who afterwards became a rival, and is probably 
 (above, p. 183) censured in the Euthydemus. It accounts also for 
 the favourable judgment here pronounced on Pericles, in con- 
 trast to the severe remarks in the Gorgias. 1 As to what the 
 critics say about the youthful exuberance of the style, and what 
 in the translation of Zeller is called ' the want of intuitive 
 faculty in the myth/ it seems to me discovered to suit the 
 theory of its early composition. On the other hand, the great 
 doctrines which Plato is supposed to have attained gradually, 
 and long after the death of Socrates, are here almost all dis- 
 tinctly preached. The Reminiscence of previous existence, the 
 Platonic Forms or Ideas, the Eros, and other points, show that 
 if this is indeed an early work, the favourite theory of a gradual 
 evolution in Plato must be abandoned. And this is the sen- 
 sible view of Grote. 
 
 The dialogue opens with the recitation of the erotic 
 speech alleged to be Lysias', which has been discussed above 
 (p. 141), and to which Socrates at first replies with a sar- 
 castic parallel speech, formally inferior to the Lysian harangue. 
 But then craving pardon of the god, he breaks out into that 
 wonderful rhapsody on the nature of philosophic love, which 
 has made its everlasting mark upon human thought, and 
 still survives in the mouth of the modern public which has no 
 
 ' But cf. Thompson, Pref. to his Ed., and Usener, Rh. Mus. xxxv. 
 p. 131. 
 
i go HISTORY OF CREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 inkling of its real sense. The identifying of all kinds of Eros 
 as mere degrees of the same eternal instinct — the Love of the 
 Ideal Beauty, which is coincident with the Good and the True — 
 is no doubt a very noble theory. Above all it marks in old Attic 
 days a very different kind of pursuit of knowledge from that of 
 modern life, when competition for material rewards is stifling 
 all the poetry and charm of learning. The passion for truth, 
 which Plato held to be a love ' passing the love of women,' is 
 now a rare thing to meet, and is regarded as an unpractical 
 anachronism. But while we admit the poetical and aesthetic 
 beauty of the doctrine, it must be confessed a very unfortunate 
 specimen of the perpetual efforts of Socrates to find a common 
 thread or connecting link between all the senses in which the 
 same term was used in ordinary speech. It might puzzle an 
 ignorant person of intelligence to know how Plato identified 
 the sexual instinct with the longing to solve a mathematical 
 problem. The desire cf happiness is the desire after the 
 Good, which is identical with the True — this leads us to the love 
 of Mathematics or to any other new truth. Again the desire to 
 possess the good must be a desire to possess it for ever ; 
 hence a desire for immortality, hence, when this is unattain- 
 able, the desire to procreate an alter ego who may repre- 
 sent us. And the selection of beauty for this purpose is of 
 course the desire of possessing the Beautiful in its phenomenal 
 manifestation, for this alone of the eternal Ideas has its illustra- 
 tion in sense. Such is the logic of the theory of Eros. 
 
 The latter part of the dialogue, after the famous myth com- 
 paring the soul to a chariot with ill-matched horses, is a criticism 
 on existing Rhetoric, and suggestions of a newer and wider theory. 
 He complains that the existing professional speakers have neither 
 the logical nor the psychological knowledge necessary for the 
 true art. In the first place the subject must be carefully 
 divided, and the heads subordinated — an advice still valuable, 
 and which, if taken to heart by the many persons who deliver 
 invertebrate harangues, might raise their performances into a 
 higher order. Secondly, the special peculiarities of the minds 
 to be addressed must be studied, and the arguments specially 
 suited to these circumstances. As Grote observes, these con- 
 
CH. vii. THE PH.EDRUS. 191 
 
 ditions are too exacting, and it is not fair to attack the practical 
 men who were training the Attic public in habits of debate, 
 because they could not satisfy the requirements of the philoso- 
 pher. But nevertheless Plato, though himself a rhetorician 
 inferior in form to his ablest contemporaries, laid the basis of a 
 better and more permanent philosophy of Rhetoric — developed 
 by Aristotle to some extent, but requiring and admitting of 
 application at all ages and among all kinds of culture. It has 
 indeed been well shown by Spengel that the hints thrown out 
 by Plato in this dialogue on the defects of the popular rhetoric 
 of the day, on the importance of \pvxayuyla, or psychological 
 study of human character, and on the essentials of proper 
 proofs and method, contain all the really valuable matter of 
 Aristotle's rhetoric, and that they are silently adopted and 
 developed by Plato's great pupil. Aristotle refers indeed to 
 the polemic against rhetoric in the Gorgias for the purpose of 
 refuting and qualifying Plato's views as there expressed. But 
 no doubt Spengel is right, that it was not the fashion of the 
 day to quote authorities, and that Aristotle's silence as to the 
 P/icedrus arises from no vulgar jealousy, but rather from cordial 
 approval of this striking flash of Plato's far-seeing genius. 
 
 Another topic in the Phcedrus is the comparative value of 
 written and oral teaching, on which again we have from Plato 
 a profoundly true, if exaggerated, theory. He despises mere 
 written discourses. He does not believe that a man can be taught 
 to know anything by such means. Until a man has discussed a 
 subject with kindred minds, until he has undergone a careful 
 cross-examining and sifting of his views, he cannot be said to 
 knovv thoroughly, or have made his own, any subject. Here 
 Plato argues with the mediaeval schools, or rather against the 
 modern universities, where the increase of examinations has 
 compelled students to spend their time in reading many books, 
 and remembering what they say. When the test is a colloquium, 
 or discussion with the examiner, some of the resulting evils may 
 be obviated ; but even this safeguard has Deen for the most part 
 abolished by the English universities, and many candidates for 
 honours, who can write down apparent knowledge on paper, 
 would be speechless if set down to stand the viva voce elenchus of 
 
192 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vii. 
 
 the examiner. However, the tirade against the value of written 
 discourses (which is repeated from the PJuzdrus in the seventh 
 epistle) sounds strange from one of the most prolific authors of 
 written treatises in his day, many of them expository and didactic 
 in style. 
 
 § 429. The criticism of Rhetoric in the Phczdrus leads us 
 naturally to the Gorgias, in which the same subject is handled at 
 greater length, and with greater detail. Rhetoric is treated as the 
 art of practical politics, of persuading the multitude, just like 
 Sophistic, which aims at laying down laws both of morals and 
 politics. Socrates, on the contrary, insists that true politics are 
 the art of making men happier by making them better, and are 
 therefore a consequence or deduction from ethics and from a 
 thorough philosophy of human nature. The sophist Gorgias, 
 like Protagoras in the dialogue which bears his name, is repre- 
 sented as an estimable man and a successful teacher, but not 
 rising above the popular level, and only teaching by knack, not 
 from any scientific principle. In the mouth of Polus and of 
 Kallikles, two inferior followers, are put certain repulsive 
 theories of selfish morality, of the right of the stronger, and 
 of the happiness of power, to which Socrates replies by showing 
 that vice is indeed misery, and that the happiest thing for the 
 evil-doer is to suffer condign punishment, as the sick man must 
 endure painful remedies. He all through compares vice to 
 disease of body — an analogy least of all tenable on his theory 
 that vice is ignorance, and that the wicked man is ignorant 
 of his condition, and requires to be restrained and corrected 
 by wise interference from without. Though Plato does not 
 say it, the only disease which really suits his argument is that 
 form of lunacy in which the patient is happy and contented 
 under his hallucinations ; for then indeed the man who does 
 wicked acts, without knowing they are such, is in a worse con- 
 dition than he who does them with a consciousness that they 
 are wrong. 
 
 The Gorgias is the greatest of all pagan protests in 
 favour of absolute morality against the utilitarian theory, 
 that good is pleasure, and evil pain. In this dialogue there is 
 no account whatever taken of present pleasure, and he alone 
 
CH. vii. THE GORGIAS AND PROTAGORAS. 193 
 
 is thought a true philosopher and a good man who can despise 
 such inducements, and follow his conscience in spite of bodily 
 pain and torture. The first declaration of Stoicism, and of the 
 self-denial of our Gospel, is to be found in the splendid and 
 ennobling argument of Socrates, who knows that he will not be 
 followed by the mob, who feels himself isolated and disliked, 
 but who claims the inalienable right of the honest man to think 
 for himself, and follow those eternal laws of justice which alone 
 can render any human soul, or any human society, permanently 
 happy. Grote complains that in arguing against utility, and even 
 in supporting it (Protagoras), Plato only supposes that coarse 
 form which regards the purely private interest of the indivi- 
 dual, without considering the utility of those around him. And 
 no doubt by bringing in this latter consideration, late writers in 
 ethics have contrived, as Grote does, to put a fair face on the 
 doctrine of Interest. But is not this the colouring of an ugly 
 theory with the colours borrowed from a foreign source ? Can the 
 regard for others be called utility or interest with any common 
 decency of expression? The very assertion this is my interest 
 excludes in many cases those of the rest of mankind, and if these 
 interests clash with it, to choose them is to violate the doctrine 
 of utility in its only proper and reasonable sense. Thus the noble 
 protest of the Gorgias stands, with the Pftcedo, among those writ- 
 ings of Plato which have not (like the Symposium and Phcedrus) 
 lost their point by a change of social conditions, and there are 
 few of the dialogues more profoundly instructive and interesting 
 to the ethical student of the present day. 
 
 § 430. A remarkable contrast to it, in ethical theory, is the 
 Protagoras (on the possibility of teaching virtue). This dialogue 
 is in style and scenery not a whit inferior to the Gorgias ; nay, it 
 is even a more elaborate and brilliant composition, and not even 
 the theorists who wish to prove it an early and mistaken piece 
 can find in it the supposed crudities of the Phcedrus. It has 
 all the marks of Plato's ripe scholarship and literary perfection. 
 Yet in it Protagoras is made the honest and persuasive advocate 
 of the best traditional morality, whereas Socrates attacks these 
 views, and holds that virtue is the art of computing our pleasures 
 and pains, and making the most of the balance. To utilitarians 
 
 VOL, II. O 
 
194 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 like Grote, this theory, which is very foreign to Plato's general 
 tone, is peculiarly attractive. Nay they even strain points to 
 bring out this side of the Socratic ethics in other dialogues. 
 No doubt there was a certain vulgar homeliness about Socrates, 
 which sometimes taught the pleasant consequences of virtue as 
 if they were its chief recommendation. It was, moreover, an 
 excellent engine m disputation, as it opposes an intellectual 
 computation of results to an often vague aesthetic feeling. 
 But the real value of the Protagoras, as compared with the 
 Gorgias, is to demonstrate Grote ; s theory of the mutual 
 independence and frequent conflicts of the dialogues, which 
 were written separately, and which each put their own point of 
 view, often in intentional variance from the rest. Plato evi- 
 dently was too genuine a pupil of Socrates not to feel the 
 difficulties in all ethical speculations, and though he was quite 
 ready to dogmatise, and set up a system, he was quite ready to 
 discuss and debate its foundations. In fact, as Grotc has 
 shown beyond all question, the constructive and the sceptical 
 sides of Plato are separate streams of thought, and he did not 
 seek to bring them into one channel. 
 
 On another point these two dialogues are interesting. They 
 prove the general respectability and high character of the lead- 
 ing sophists. Though Plato was the determined enemy of their 
 s> stem, though he ridiculed and censured the pretence of teach- 
 ing excellence, moral or intellectual, for money, he always 
 makes inferior followers of the great sophists — Polus, Thra- 
 symachus, Euthydemus — the butts of his satire, and treats both 
 Gorgias and Protagoras with respect. They are nut debaters, 
 they cannot stand a cross-examination from Socrates, but they 
 teach vulgar morals with elegance and sincerity, and there are 
 few finer passages than the exposition put into Protagoras' 
 mouth of the general diffusion and teaching of virtue by all 
 society in a civilised Greek city. 1 
 
 § 431. We pass to the last class — the purely or mainly con- 
 structive dialogues, in which Plato has set forth his views on the 
 construction of the world (Timceus) and on the reconstruction of 
 society {Republic and Laws), with the fragment called Critias. 
 
 1 Protagoras, pp. 322-3. 
 
CH. vii. THE REPUBLIC. 195 
 
 These latter are so important from a social and political view, as 
 well as from their great length and explicitness, that they deserve 
 special consideration. The Republic is, moreover, the best 
 composed and most perfect composition of Plato, so much so 
 that those German critics, who assume that a man must decay- 
 in old age, will not allow it to be placed late in the catalogue. 
 All agree that the Laws, if genuine, were a late work, and were 
 intended to give a more practicable scheme than the Republic, 
 both of them being, however, harmonious in principle. 
 
 But the style and tone of thinking are very different. There 
 is no kind of Platonic excellence which is not represented in the 
 Republic. There is the gentle, pertinacious, ironical Socrates 
 in the first two books ; there is the didactic, imaginary Socrates 
 to suit Plato's convenience in the later books. There is the finest 
 character-painting — the resigned and mellow old age of Kepha- 
 los, the brutal frankness and impetuosity of Thrasymachus, the 
 delicately shaded differences between Glaucon and Adeimantus, 
 both earnest seekers after truth. There is hard-and-dry meta- 
 physic in the fifth and sixth books ; there is a splendid myth, 
 that of Er the Armenian, at the close of the tenth. Few of 
 the important theories of other dialogues can be cited which 
 are not alluded to or implied in the argument. But when 
 there are oppositions, such as between the Gorgias and Prota- 
 goras, it is the nobler and more ideal side which is adopted. 
 In fact, there are peculiar points of contact with the Gorgias 
 and Phcedon, and perhaps less of the erotic element than we 
 should expect from the author of the Phcedrus and Symposium. 
 
 § 432. The formal subject of the dialogue is the enquiry, what 
 is justice ? It is the subject approached with such boldness, and 
 with so direct a challenge to Socrates in the Kieitophon, that those 
 who accept that fragment as genuine think it was originally in- 
 tended as the opening of the Republic. Others again, from the 
 negative and lively tone of the first two books, imagine that this 
 portion was an early composition, added to and enlarged by Plato 
 in his later and more constructive years. All these are but con- 
 jectures. What is more important to note is that the work has 
 taken both its name and importance, not from the official, but 
 from the indirect or accidental investigation which Socrates intro- 
 
196 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 duces in a huge parenthesis. The problem to be solved is the 
 nature of justice. It is only by the assumption of a civilised 
 polity being a system analogous to the mental constitution of 
 an individual, and of larger and easier survey, that the conver- 
 sation passes into the description of the ideal State, falsely 
 called by us the Republic, as the absence of monarchy is by no 
 means essential to Plato's scheme. We know in fact from the 
 Foliticus that he was inclined to the rule of a single head, and 
 an absolute head too, provided the ideal character, the king- 
 philosopher, could be found to conduct it. In the State or 
 Republic before us, he places the control under a small number 
 of guardians, with similar qualifications to his Politicus, but 
 the number is immaterial, their relations to one another are not 
 considered, and their authority is regarded rather as an abstract 
 unity than as the wisdom resulting from discussion, and the 
 decision of the majority in a consulting board. The real point, 
 which he considers vital in the constitution, is to exclude the 
 public from consulting on state affairs, and to confine the 
 government to one, or to a few, select experts, who are not to 
 be required to impart their reasons to the subject classes, or to 
 submit to criticism. 1 This is the attitude of all those aristocratic 
 theorists who speculated on the best form of polity in Plato's 
 age. They were all profoundly convinced of the evils of a de- 
 mocracy, and still more of the inexpediency of amateur politics. 
 The hand-to-mouth legislation of mobs, or of the casual advisers 
 of mobs, was to them absurd on so vastly important an issue, 
 and they considered that here if anywhere professional skill 
 was absolutely required. The common sense or collective 
 wisdom of a number of intelligent private men — the best form 
 of government, according to modern notions — was by them 
 
 1 Cf. his argument in the Politicus (pp. 292-3) beginning : /awv ovv 
 5o/cet irXriQos 76 eV TroAet ravrt]v ryv e7ricrT^u7jj/ Svvarov dvai KTrjaaadai ; 
 his conclusion is (p. 297 B) : us ovk av ttotg irhrjdos oi/S 5 uvrivwvovv, rrjv 
 roiavrw Aafibv eVta'T^UTjj/, olov r Uv yivoiTO /j.era vov SioiKelv ttSMv, 
 and therefore (p 292) : t\\v fiev opdrjv ap%V ve P^ * va TLJ/ ^ Kal ^o, Kai 
 Travrdiraaiv bhiyovs, 8e7v £Vjt6«', orav opdy yiyurjTai. He goes on to com- 
 pare the art to that of medical men, who treat patients of all ranks and 
 dignities, without allowing them to interfere or meddle with the treatment, 
 often painful and distressing, which medicine and surgery prescribe. 
 
CH. vii. PLATO'S SPARTAN TENDENCIES. 197 
 
 thoroughly despised. If any of the practical politicians, like 
 Pericles, had really done anything great, it was to be accounted 
 for by their partial acquaintance with deeper philosophy, and 
 their even occasional converse with the philosophers who 
 raised their thoughts to the general laws of the world. Yet 
 even Pericles had fallen vastly short of the Platonic require- 
 ments, as we may see in the Gorgias. 
 
 Assuming then that the public was unfit to govern itself, 
 Plato, and with him the Greek theorists, were furthermore 
 quite averse to allowing it even that liberty of life, which was 
 the mark of the Athenian democracy, and which all actual 
 states allowed their citizens in their own homes. The general 
 notion which governed Greek life was that the state could 
 demand any sacrifice from the citizen, that his personal rights 
 were as nothing in regard of any state claim, but that, provided 
 he submitted to this demand, his private life was to be without 
 control. When the citizen entered the strong door of his house, 
 he was absolute master, and it required some extraordinary vio- 
 lence or scandal to persuade the state to interfere. Thus ordi- 
 nary Greek politics, while holding the absolute power and 
 claims of the state, were less particular than we are in maintain- 
 ing private morality. 
 
 There was one peculiar exception— the Spartan society 
 under the paternal despotism of the ephors. Here the young 
 men at least were kept under control all through their life. 
 They lived in common, slept in common, hunted in common, 
 and were all the time under organised supervision. Plato 
 applies this idea to the higher classes of his state, and, strangely 
 enough, makes this higher caste or class the military class. 
 The men of his day were beginning to find out that a citizen 
 militia, torn from home and from peaceful duties, was no 
 match for professional warriors, like the Spartans, whose disci- 
 pline and experience were now being imitated by mercenary 
 troops and paid generals. Hence the theorist set apart a 
 special caste as a military guard for the rest of the state, and 
 he devotes much of his treatise to their education and mainte- 
 nance. Moreover, like that Homer whom he, though himself so 
 saturated with his genius, ejects from his state, he will not conde- 
 
i 9 S HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 scend to describe the life and training of the artisan or husband- 
 man class, but spends all his attention upon the noble warriors 
 in the battle of life. 
 
 § 433. But Plato went far beyond this. lie saw clearly that 
 while the production of other animals was carefully controlled by 
 men, and hence varieties and improvements in breed were 
 easily obtained, the production of man, the highest and most 
 precious of animals, was left to chance, to random fancy, to 
 stray passion, to pecuniary considerations ; so that congenital 
 defects, moral obliquities, and all other defects are propagated, 
 and deform the human race. This question was then, and has 
 ever since been, so surrounded with a cloud of sentiment, and 
 entwined with the sacred ties of family affection, that the very 
 discussion of it is almost intolerable, and only a few advanced 
 thinkers are even yet to be found who will venture to urge 
 this necessary condition for the physical and therefore intellec- 
 tual improvement of mankind. Mr. Jowett, no old-fashioned 
 conservative, can see how the abolition of private property, and 
 a community of goods, may yet become the condition of a more 
 advanced, culture, and how the assertion of private rights and 
 interests may be a hindrance to the public good. But he recoils 
 even from imagining a society without permanent marriages, 
 without apparently a home or family ties, and where the propa- 
 gation of the race was directed and controlled by the state. 
 
 It is usual to speak of Plato's theory as the Community of 
 wives — a gross libel on the philosopher, who guarded the rela- 
 tions of the sexes in the strictest way, as long as they lived 
 together for the state, who made marriage, so to speak, a 
 'sacrament,' and punished every sin against its sanctity as 
 impious, 1 But though he does not give details on this point, it 
 appears that his marriages were to last only for a season, and 
 when the necessity for a new union of citizens arose, the persons 
 
 1 The only point in this part of the Republic which is in any sense im- 
 moral is the license given to the guards who are past the stated age for 
 marriage. They are not restricted, except in this, that they are not to 
 produce any children, or, if they do, to make away with them. This is 
 the point on which modem ethics may well censure the highest Greek 
 morals. 
 
CH. vii. LAXITY OF SPARTAN MARRIAGE. 199 
 
 who had formerly cohabited had no claim to remain together, 
 nor were the parents to know their own children, whom the 
 state took and educated. 
 
 It should be observed, that though Plato had no actual model 
 for these temporary marriages, there was at Sparta a greater 
 regard paid to the breeding of the human race, and with good 
 results, than in any other civilised society of either ancient or 
 modern times. This care had certainly advanced to the point of 
 disregarding all the usual sentiment as to the sanctity of married 
 life, for Plutarch tells us facts (in the life of Lycurgus) which 
 show how easy the adoption of Plato's scheme might have been 
 at Sparta. 1 The really remarkable point about the matter is this : 
 that in the state where temporary husbands were allowed, and 
 where the production of a healthy and beautiful race was made 
 the paramount consideration, no decay in female honour, no 
 collapse of family ties, or of the influence of home, ever took 
 place. Spartan wives and mothers were, on the contrary, the 
 noblest and purest in Greece. Accordingly, Plato could have 
 pointed to Sparta as the only state which approximated to his 
 ideal polity in freeing the relation of the sexes from the shackles 
 of mischievous sentiment, and nevertheless as the only state in 
 which the physical improvement of the race was undoubted, 
 while the chastity and refinement of both sexes were not im- 
 paired. In other respects the Spartans had fallen short (not 
 in degree, but) in principle. They had apparently thought 
 about the equality of the sexes, according to certain legends 
 about Lycurgus, but the weaker sex had proved itself the 
 stronger in resisting the lawgiver, and the education and train- 
 ing of women had accordingly suffered. Plato proposes that 
 in his caste of guards both sexes shall receive the same treat- 
 ment. Again, as to education, the ignorant and vulgar ephors 
 would of course fall far short of Plato's philosophic elders, 
 who seem rather framed on the model of the Pythagorean 
 brotherhood. Hence music, as well as gymnastic, was to be 
 taught on philosophical principles, and with a view to educate 
 
 1 Schomann (Gk. Antiq. i. pp. 214, 267, Eng. tr.) thinks that even 
 polyandry was sanctioned, but only on late evidence. He cites Polybius, 
 Excerpt. Vatican, xii. 6, p. 819 (Ed. Hultsch) ; but cf. below, p. 278. 
 
200 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 the faculties and feelings of the mind rather than the muscles 
 of the body. On Plato's theory of the tripartite division of the 
 soul, the intellect must be developed by philosophy, the affec- 
 tions by music, while the union of both is to keep in check 
 the lower appetites. 
 
 § 434. But no real reform can take place in education with- 
 out a complete reform in religion, and hence Plato goes to his 
 extremest length when he proposes to abolish Homer, the Bible 
 of the Greeks, and all other poetry based on the ordinary theo- 
 logy. He thinks a totally new religion is requisite for pure 
 and sound morals. The deity must be one and the author of 
 all good. He must be passionless, without variableness or 
 shadow of turning, without love or jealousy, without pride or 
 interest. All defects in the world are to be attributed, not to 
 his want of benevolence, but to his want of omnipotence in 
 controlling the original necessities of things. New myths must 
 be invented and circulated in place of the amours and wars of 
 the gods, such myths no doubt as those of which he has him- 
 self given specimens in many of the dialogues, and not least in 
 the end of this dialogue. The control of the whole polity is 
 placed in the hands of a small number of elders, chosen from 
 the caste of guards, who have been so trained in speculative 
 philosophy, and so steeped in the contemplation of the Ideal 
 Good, and True, and Beautiful, that they will be persuaded with 
 difficulty, and only as a matter of duty, to undertake the regu- 
 lation of human affairs. 
 
 But the great work is so full and suggestive that no ade- 
 quate analysis can find a place here. I must omit the determi- 
 nation of justice as the proper relation of the various divisions 
 of the soul, like that of the various orders in the state, as well 
 as the curious history of the various aberrations from right 
 polity in the state, and right morals in the individual, with 
 which the later books are occupied. To one feature, however, 
 I will call attention. It is fashionable among Christian theo- 
 logians to say that the pagan world, and especially the Greeks, 
 had no consciousness of sin, no real feeling for the pollution 
 of moral guilt. If such persons would take the trouble to read 
 the picture of the tyrant (ix. 1), they would find the portrait 
 
CH. vii. THE LAWS. 201 
 
 of a stricken conscience never equalled, so far as I know, from 
 Plato's day till the days of Macbeth and Richard III. in 
 Shakspeare's drama. 
 
 § 435. Plato's Deuteronomy, the Laws, may best find its 
 place as an appendix to the far greater Republic. It professes to 
 be the second best constitution, and one surrendering many 
 points to the strong national prejudices which were openly vio- 
 lated or disregarded in his earlier and more complete system. 
 It may also be regarded as a third alternative, if we consider 
 that the absolute control given to the ' kingly artist ' in the Politi- 
 cus, and to the select few elders in the Republic, is here vested 
 in an established code of laws, which are administered by a sort 
 of timocratic democracy. It abandons expressly the theory of 
 the PoHticus, x that a code of fixed laws is only a make-shift to 
 meet average cases, and the want of special knowledge in the 
 ruler, so that the ideal king will not hesitate to punish the wicked 
 according to his own judgment, and in violation of existing 
 legislation, as he is the highest and best judge of the neces- 
 sary changes in laws, and the varying requirements of a complex 
 human society — rrjv rrjg re-^vrjg poj/jrjv ru)r vofxiov Trapeyofxevov 
 KpeiTTiD. But if the philosopher-king, or the council of perfectly 
 educated elders, who know the Forms or Ideas of Things, and 
 act accordingly, cannot be found, we must only establish the 
 best possible code, and invest it with the dignity and sanctity 
 of a Divine Revelation. This had already been foreshadowed 
 in the Politicus. 2 
 
 Upon the fiction of a new foundation in Crete, a name- 
 less Athenian stranger undertakes to describe its proper con- 
 stitution, and does so in a detail, and with a minuteness 
 exceeding that of Plato's other works. But though Aris- 
 totle cites the nameless Athenian as Socrates, nothing can be 
 more contrasted with the real Socrates than the tone and 
 method of this lawgiver. He is with great propriety called an 
 Athenian, for as the Republic might fairly have been excogitated 
 by a philosophic Spartan, if such could exist in the fourth cen- 
 tury, the Laws are distinctly modelled upon the older Attic 
 
 1 PP- 294-7. 2 PP- 297, sq. 
 
202 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch, VII. 
 
 constitution. 1 As the board of elders represent the ephors, 
 so the Code of Laws represents the venerable work of Solon, 
 protected by an invisible, or nocturnal council, which has 
 no logical place in the scheme. This contrast of ideals — 
 Spartan in the Republic, Athenian in the Laws — runs all 
 through the works, and it has long been recognised by critics 
 that the chief value of the latter is in pointing out to us details 
 of Attic law, which we only know through the adaptation of 
 Plato. It is interesting to find the philosopher in his old age 
 conceding even so much to the democracy which his soul ab- 
 horred, and deigning to make Attic models serve him for even 
 a partially ideal state. But truly the Laws are a work of his 
 old age, and if the testimony of Aristotle assures us of their 
 authenticity in the literal sense, we may agree in a higher and 
 spiritual sense with the Germans who will not accept it. For in 
 the Laws the real Plato is dead, just as the real Edmund Burke 
 is dead in the Letters on the French Revolution. The spirit of 
 Socrates is gone from him, as his figure pales out in the later 
 dialogues, and an evil spirit is troubling him. All his fame, all his 
 piety, all his earnestness, have not been able to stay the spirit of 
 scepticism which his dialectic had worked. The rejection of 
 popular theology was bringing with it the decay of morals. The 
 philosophers were found to be bad citizens, for the questioning 
 of principles had induced laxity of practice. The world is 
 so bad, and evil is so predominant, that he even advances 
 m one isolated passage to the theory of a second world- soul, 
 the author of mischief in creation, and the opponent of the 
 good Demiurge in the Republic. So then the dying theorist 
 composes a great palinode, in which he protests that his prin- 
 ciples are perfectly consistent with even Athenian principles. 
 He shows that, with some practical modifications, these will suit 
 a Platonic state, and that on one capital point he will even aban- 
 don the task of his life. When the laws are once established on 
 philosophical foundations, he will make peace with the orthodox 
 crowd, and forbid all discussion and dialectical practice. Let 
 
 1 The commentators note that many social points are taken from Sparta. 
 This is true ; but the main body of the work is on the details of legislation, 
 which are almost all Attic in principle. 
 
CH. VII. THE EPINOMIS AND CRITIAS. 203 
 
 us but agree upon our religion, and I will defend it with all the 
 vigour of the narrowest religionist. I will make mere heresy 
 in opinions, though accompanied by a blameless life, punish- 
 able with five years' imprisonment ; I will visit the graver (and 
 more usual) cases with the penalty of death. Verily, if this be 
 so, the sentence on Socrates was just, and may be defended 
 from the Laws of his favoured disciple. Accordingly he 
 banishes a strictly philosophical education in the Theory of 
 Ideas even from his magistrates, and substitutes mathematical 
 training, together with the sanctions of religion — in fact, a 
 Pythagorean rather than a Platonic ideal. 
 
 We have in Greek literature many instances of intellectual 
 power unimpaired in advanced age, and not a few of our 
 greatest remaining monuments are the latest work of their 
 authors. The Laws, if genuine, are then a remarkable and 
 exceptional case of senility, curious and valuable in its way, 
 but no fair evidence of the real greatness of its author. There 
 is no doubt great dignity, and even oracular splendour about it ; 
 like the Deuteronomy ascribed to his Hebrew rival, the Laws 
 of the Attic Moses combine solemn homily with precept, 
 burning exhortation with command ; the old man's former 
 grace and subtlety flash out here and there. But there is 
 something pitiable, as well as pathetic, in the rage of this royal 
 thinker, who, like Lear, has brought up ungrateful children, 
 and they have turned against him. 
 
 § 436. The Efiinomzs, an appendix of very doubtful authenti- 
 city, goes in detail into the education of the Nocturnal Council, 
 to whom is entrusted in the Laws the general care of the consti- 
 tution. It consists chiefly in a theological study of Astronomy, 
 to which Plato seems really to have inclined in his later or 
 Pythagorean epoch. So likewise the fragmentary Criiias, and 
 the projected Hermocrates, were to give illustrations of the 
 carrying out of the ideal principles of the Republic in history. 
 For this purpose the Critias, and also the opening chapters of 
 the Timceus, give a curious and imaginary account of the con- 
 dition of Attica thousands of years before, when she entered 
 into conflict with the power of the great continent Atlantis, 
 which lay beyond the Pillars of Heracles — a strange and much 
 
204 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. VII. 
 
 discussed anticipation of the discovery of America, which the 
 Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg l has actually received as a genuine 
 historical tradition. To him the civilisation even of Egypt is 
 originally brought from the older, and once more advanced, 
 western continent. But these splendid dreams, as well as the 
 abstruse physical theories of the Timceus, cannot detain us 
 here. I will only call attention to the freedom with which 
 Plato (and other philosophers of his day) treated the facts of 
 history as a vehicle for moral improvement. The genuine his- 
 toric sense, and thorough conscientiousness as to facts, which 
 we all admire in Thucydides, seem to have made no impres- 
 sion upon Attic society. Plato especially, who preaches the 
 use and morality of fiction for didactic purposes, does not hesi- 
 tate to invent (in the Critias) and distort 2 previous history — 
 his account of the Dorian migration and its results being con- 
 trary to what we can deduce from the evidence. Thus, while 
 the rhetors handled history as a branch of oratory, Plato 
 handled it as an adjunct to ethics, and dressed up the older 
 annals of the Greeks to suit his purposes as a sort of moral 
 fairy tale. 
 
 § 437. The above very inadequate review of Plato's works will 
 afford the reader a better means of judging their author than a 
 mere literary description of his genius. Nevertheless, a few points 
 may be suggested in addition to what appears from the foregoing 
 pages. Few readers of a single dialogue, even of the Republic, 
 would imagine or anticipate the extraordinary fascination exer- 
 cised over European thought by Plato from his own day to the 
 present. It is the fashion to deduce all the later schools of 
 philosophy from the real Socrates ; but perhaps the Platonic 
 Socrates may have replaced him more completely than we 
 imagine. The Stoic ideal of the wise man, standing apart from 
 and above the crowd, more precious in himself and to himself 
 than to others, or to the members of a Greek city — this ideal 
 is clearly drawn in the perfect philosopher of the Gorgias, the 
 Politicus, the Crito. The deeper and sounder aspects of Epi- 
 
 1 Commission Scientifique de Mexique, vol. iii. — the splendid work pro- 
 moted by the Emperor Napoleon III. 
 - Laws, pp. 091, sq. 
 
CH. vii. INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE. 205 
 
 aims' Search for Pleasure appear in the Protagoras. The 
 Peripatetic goods of 'mind, body, and estate,' indeed the 
 whole of their system, comes directly from Platonic teaching. 
 Need I add that the sceptical Academics found their forerunner 
 in the Agnostic Socrates of the earlier dialogues, and that the 
 Alexandrian fusion of Judaism, Egypticism, and Christianism 
 could find no fitter book to form their philosophical Bible than 
 the works of Plato. This exaltation of Plato by the school 
 called the neo-Platonic is perhaps the most curious and the 
 greatest tribute to his genius. No argument can so convince 
 us of the veneration, of the sanctity, of the absolute authority 
 of any book in the minds of men, as the desire of ages which 
 have drifted away from its principles still to claim and to obey 
 its authority, by dint of allegorising, and sublimating, andmysti- 
 cising its doctrines. The scholars of the Renaissance, the 
 Cambridge Platonists, Berkeley, Malebranche, and a host of 
 later intellectualists, have sustained to the present day the 
 spirit, and to some extent the doctrines of Plato. 
 
 But apart from the history of philosophy, apart from those 
 metaphysical theories which only attract the few choice and 
 subtle spirits of an age, what do we not owe to him in literature ? 
 The form of the philosophical dialogue, constantly copied by 
 later Greek philosophers, but by all of them without dramatic 
 genius, has fascinated even in English literature some of our 
 greatest masters of style, such as Bishop Berkeley and Walter 
 Savage Landor, nor have Symposia been wanting even in the 
 ephemeral literature of the present day. Both the sceptical and 
 the constructive sides have been imitated. The vulgarest atheist 
 will still put his arguments in the form of a Socratic elenchus, and 
 the deepest thinker will strive to use it in laying the foundations 
 of his system. Above all, the construction of an ideal state has 
 been a model imitated, as Mr. Jowett says, ' by a goodly band 
 of followers/ Cicero's Republic, Augustine's City of God, More's 
 Utopia, are among the greatest, and perhaps even Hobbes' 
 Leviathan, and Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, owe some of 
 their celebrity to a far-off and distorted reflex of Platonic 
 genius. Great practical books of statesmanship, such as Aris- 
 totle's Politics, and Machiavelli's Principe, would not disown at 
 
206 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vil. 
 
 least the suggestions of contrast. Still more fruitful has Plato 
 been in throwing out scattered guesses at truth, and bold 
 inferences from unrealised principles, which ever attract 
 and stimulate those who will think more thoroughly and 
 fearlessly than the vulgar masses. Thus in the Republic he 
 has anticipated the Mediaeval Church, in which the spiritual 
 control by a few, and a strict subordination of the rest to those 
 specially selected and educated, were realised beyond his most 
 ardent hopes. So too he anticipated a great reform of religion, 
 and from the summit of his Mount looked upon a promised 
 land which his people should inherit. And while he went a 
 long way beyond even the present age in his theories of the 
 improvement of the race by rational and careful selection of 
 parents, and proper attention to the physical antecedents of 
 humanity, he was so far from degrading the female sex in social 
 importance, that he distinctly asserted the equality of the sexes 
 and the rights of women in the strongest nineteenth-century 
 spirit. Again, on the laws of war, he distinctly asserts (though 
 here in agreement with the higher minds of his day) the laws 
 of what we should call Christian warfare, of humanity to 
 Hellenic prisoners, of regarding Hellenic troubles as family 
 quarrels, to be celebrated by no trophies or triumphs. His 
 guesses in physical science are not less curious and interest- 
 ing. 
 
 § 438. But with all this strange modernness, Plato is a 
 Hellene of the Hellenes. His prospect does not include any 
 non- Hellenic races. Though he acknowledges the culture and 
 the learning of the Egyptians, and borrows, or affects to borrow, 
 splendid myths from other barbarians, the fusion of Jew and 
 Greek, of bond and free — the Hellenism of a later age — is far 
 beyond his vision. He shares with Isocrates the old, I had 
 well-nigh said the vulgar, Greek admiration for the most retro- 
 grade and narrow of the Hellenes, the Spartans ; nay, he is so 
 exclusive and aristocratic in spirit, that he will hardly conde- 
 scend to consider the lower classes, and conceives, like every 
 other Greek of that day, even his ideal society to be a select 
 body of equals amid a crowd of unprivileged inferiors and of 
 slaves. This it is which gives to Plato's Communism a cha- 
 
ch. vii. PLATO'S GLOOMY OLD AGE. 207 
 
 racter so radically distinct from all the modern dreams known 
 by the same name, or from the early Christian society described 
 in the Acts of the Apostles. It was essentially an aristocratic 
 Communism, and was based not on the equality of men, but 
 upon their inherent and radical disparity. It was really 
 the Republic of the select few, exercising a strict and even 
 intolerable despotism over the masses. Here again, in spite 
 of the modernness of the Socratic conception of the philo- 
 sopher as a privileged dissentient, of the rights and the 
 dignity of the individual and his conscience — here again Plato 
 falls into the purest fourth-century Hellenedom, when he con- 
 structs an ideal state, or a code of Laws, in which this dissen- 
 tient can be allowed no place. To protect such an individual, 
 with all his nobility, and his inestimable good effects on those 
 around him, the actual Athens of Plato's day, as Mr. Grote says, 
 was a far safer, happier, and better abode. There democratic 
 habits and common sense had modified and softened those 
 theories of state interference, which no individual thinker of 
 that age seems able to shake off. 
 
 All these profound contradictions were doubtless the cause 
 of that increasing gloom and morbidness which seem to have 
 clouded Plato's later years. He did not believe in the perfect- 
 ibility of the human race. Even his ideal Polity, if carried 
 into practice, is declared by him to contain the seeds of a neces- 
 sary decay. The human race was not advancing, but decay- 
 ing. Dialectic and free thought led to scepticism ; acquies- 
 cence in received ideas to ignorance and mental apathy. We 
 may almost infer from the silence of contemporary history con- 
 cerning his later years that, beyond his immediate disciples, he 
 was neglected, and regarded as an idle dreamer. Yet if this 
 was so he but verified his own prophecies on the social position 
 of the true philosopher. 
 
 § 439. In his style he is as modern as in his thinking. He 
 employed that mixture of sober prose argument and of poetical 
 metaphor, which is usual in the ornate prose of modern Europe, 
 but foreign to the character and stricter art of the Greeks. This 
 style, which is freely censured by Greek critics as a hybrid or 
 bastard prose, was admirably suited to a lively conversation, 
 
208 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vii. 
 
 where a sustained and equable tone would have been a mistake. 1 
 But when Plato attempts formal rhetoric, as in the reply to 
 Lysias in the Phczdrus, or in the Menexenus, we find how true 
 was the artistic feeling of the Greek schools, and how this 
 greater genius, with its irregularities, falls below the more chas- 
 tened and strictly formal essays of professional orators. He is 
 said in his youth to have inclined to dramatic poetry, but his 
 aversion to dramatising passion was so ingrained, and his love 
 of analyzing the play of intellect so intense, that we may ima- 
 gine him producing very dry and unpopular tragedies. Yet his 
 appreciation of the great poets, though his criticisms of them 
 are always moral, and never aesthetic, was certainly thorough, 
 and told upon his style. Above all, he shows a stronger 
 Homeric flavour than all those who professed to worship the 
 epics which he censured. His language everywhere bears the in- 
 fluence of Homer, just as some of our greatest and purest writers 
 and speakers use unconsciously Biblical phrases and metaphors. 
 It is also very remarkable that he is not only the first Greek 
 author who confines the name of Homer to the Iliad and 
 Odyssey, but that the text he used v/as apparently that estab- 
 lished afterwards by Aristarchus against the inferior and faulty 
 copies used by Aristotle and later critics. 2 The effects of the 
 rhetoric of his rival Isocrates are also to be remarked in him, 
 though he seems never to have adopted with any strictness that 
 avoidance of hiatus which is a distinctive mark of Isocratic 
 prose. 3 Hence we see in Plato the child of his age and yet its 
 leader, the most Attic of Athenians, and yet a disaffected citi- 
 zen, a profound sceptic, and yet a lofty preacher, an enemy of 
 the poets, and yet a rhapsodist himself, a thinker that despaired 
 of his own people, and yet, aloft on his Pisgah of speculation, 
 looking out with prophetic eye upon a far future of better laws, 
 purer religion, and nobler life. 
 
 1 Albinus (Isagoge, c. 2) well sums up its characteristics : rb 'AttucSv, 
 Tb evxapi, rb cnrepLTTov, -rb avevSth. It is remarkable that Aristotle, in 
 his Politics, calls the dialogues specially by one of the epithets here denied 
 — rb iripiTTOv ; but he is evidently speaking of the matter, not of the tech- 
 nical prose style. 
 
 2 Cf. Sengebusch, Diss. Horn. ii. p. Il8. 
 
 3 Cf. above, p. 184, on the Menexenus. 
 
CH. vil. MSS. AND EDITIONS. 209 
 
 § 440. Bibliographical. As regards the external history of the 
 text, there is no doubt that the dialogues were early conveyed, 
 in very good copies, from the Platonic school at Athens to the 
 Alexandrian library, where they were commented on with care, 
 especially by Aristophanes and Eratosthenes. There were 
 even editions brought out with the critical marks devised for 
 the Homeric texts, 1 a fact which shows the great esteem in 
 which they were held ; and the very term yupl&vTeq was applied 
 in this controversy. Unfortunately we have little remains of 
 Aristophanes' work except the grouping in trilogies of some 
 dialogues, mentioned by Diogenes, and two references (I think) 
 in the extant scholia. The neo-Platonists and the Roman 
 schools of philosophy studied and criticised the text diligently. 
 The rhetor Libanius composed good arguments, and our scholia 
 quote both Didymus and Aristarchus. But some of them 
 are distinctly composed by Christian writers, as, for example, 
 the note on the Sibyls to the Phcedrus. These scholia, which 
 are on the whole good, are scanty on many of the dialogues, 
 though very full on others. Thus the first Alcibiades, the Gor- 
 gias, and above all the Timcsus, have very ample notes, while 
 the Protagoras, Pai'menides, and Ion have hardly any whatever. 
 They have been separately published by Bekker (1824) in a 
 convenient form. 
 
 Passing to the MSS., which are good and numerous, it is 
 agreed that far the highest authority belongs to the splendid 
 Bodleian codex, written in the year 896 a.d., and therefore one 
 of our oldest classical MSS. There is an equally ancient 
 Paris MS. for the Republic, Laws, and Timczus. The rest have 
 been described and classified by Bekker in his edition, which 
 other editors follow. The printed editions, commentaries, and 
 translations are so numerous, that it would be a great task 
 to enumerate even the principal ones. 2 Long after the Latin 
 version of Ficinus (1483) came the Aldine folio of 15 13, de- 
 dicated to Leo X., not even now a rare book. Every great 
 
 1 Cf. Vol. I. p. 37, note. 
 
 2 Nicolai, LG. i. pp. 508-27, gives a catalogue of the myriad works on 
 Plato, to which I refer the special student. Yet he omits to mention Mr. 
 Jowett's translation. 
 
 VOL. II. P 
 
210 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vn. 
 
 press, or editor of Greek texts, since that time has produced 
 a Plato. I particularly avoid the philosophical side of Plaio 
 in this literary history, and therefore pass by his ancient rivals 
 and pupils, who belong strictly to the history of philosophy, but 
 I cannot avoid making an exception to my silence on the great 
 library of Platonic philosophy in favour of Mr. Grote's admir- 
 able and not sufficiently esteemed work. In our time the best 
 texts are Bekker's, Stallbaum's (with full commentary, 1835-61), 
 and the Zurich edition (1839). An interesting and rare book is 
 the seven dialogues printed by the Dublin University Press, as 
 its first book, in 1 738. The special editions of separate dialogues 
 up to date are given in the prefaces to each dialogue in Stall- 
 baum's edition. But some good English commentaries have 
 since appeared, such as W. H. Thompson's Gorgias and Phcedrus 
 (1868), Badham's Philebus (1855), Geddes' Phado (1863), L. 
 Campbell's Thecetetus, Sopliistes, and Politicks, Wayte's Prota- 
 goras, &c. Mitch ell's Index Grceataiis was printed at Oxford 
 1832. In addition to Manuel Chrysoloras' translation of the 
 Republic, about 1397 (printed by Cassarini, Venice, 1624), and 
 Ficinus' early Latin translation, we have an English version 
 of the Apology and Phcedo in 1675 ; Dacier's French in 1699, 
 reproduced in England 1701 ; Sydenham's in 1760 (several 
 dialogues) ; abridgments of the Phcedo and Thecetetus by Leib- 
 nitz ; Davies and Vaughan's Republic — an excellent book • V. 
 Cousin's French version in 1822 ; Schleiermacher's, and the 
 Stuttgart translation by various scholars (1869); and now, 
 finally, Mr. Jowett's five volumes, with excellent introduc- 
 tions which give us the literary side of Plato perfectly. Never- 
 theless, this great book by no means supersedes the admir- 
 able work of Grote on Plato, in which we have the curious 
 phenomenon of a Positivist expounding the great Idealist with 
 sympathy and generally (I think) with fidelity. 
 
CH. VIII. 211 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ISOCRATES. 
 
 § 441. We turn to another leading representative of Attic 
 prose during the earlier half of the fourth century b.c. — a 
 representative who, with Lysias and Isaeus, with Plato and with 
 Xenophon, makes up that wonderful constellation of writers of 
 whom Demosthenes may be considered the greatest star. Our 
 authorities are agreed that Isocrates was born at Athens in 436, 
 the son of Theodoras, a flute manufacturer, and of Heduto. The 
 names of three obscure brothers and a sister are mentioned 
 He may have been a few jears younger than Lysias, eight or 
 nine years older than Plato. His father, being wealthy, was 
 able to give him so good an education that he himself boasts l 
 he was better known and stood higher among his school- 
 fellows than ever afterwards — a very credible statement, see- 
 ing that his great talent for form must have made him a brilliant 
 and promising pupil. Among his masters are mentioned 
 Prodicus, of whom critics have found traces in his orations, 
 and Socrates, whom he once mentions 2 in connection with 
 Alcibiades, without sympathy, so that the stories about his 
 public mourning of the philosopher's death seem false ; indeed 
 no natures could be more contrasted than those of the two men, 
 and the praise of Isocrates in Plato's Phoedrus, which Socrates 
 speaks, is evidently mere Platonic Socratisra. 
 
 It is fashionable to argue that he was necessarily influenced 
 by Socrates, because he shows a high moral tone,, and was su- 
 perior in philosophic culture to Lysias and the earlier orators. 
 But this opinion 3 is based on the vulgar notion that the real 
 sophists were Plato's sophists, and on a false estimate of the 
 
 1 Antid. § 161. 2 Busiris, § 5. 3 Cf. Blnss, AB r ii. p. 12. 
 
212 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vnr. 
 
 philosophy of the speech-writers, whose art consisted chiefly 
 in concealing itself. It is not fair to say that an epideictic 
 orator is more philosophical than a court speech-writer, except 
 the latter has had official means of affording us a comparison. 
 At all events, the cardinal doctrine of Socrates, that virtue is 
 a teachable science,' was not held by Isocrates, though it was 
 eminently in harmony with the profession of education which 
 he adopted. On this point he shares the very noble and 
 popular view expounded by Protagoras in Plato's dialogue. 
 
 When the Peloponnesian war ruined the fortunes of his 
 family, Isocrates was obliged to turn his good education to 
 account, and then probably took lessons from Gorgias, whose 
 oratory was the model he adopted and vastly improved. He 
 is also said to have been a friend of Theramenes, a more likely 
 intimate than Socrates, also of Xenophon, and of Archinus — 
 whom the critics restore in Suidas' notice — a well-known patriot 
 and speaker. 
 
 § 442. But it is evident that his first efforts in speech- writing 
 were not in the style of Gorgias ; they were the few court 
 speeches which we still possess, and which the orator in after 
 years deemed so unworthy of the far higher profession which 
 he had adopted, that he stoutly denies ever having assisted 
 in any litigation. The consistent external evidence, as well 
 as the internal character, is, however, too clearly against him, 
 and commentators are unanimous in refusing credence to the 
 author as regards the genuineness of these speeches. There 
 is, however, another theory possible, concerning which I will 
 speak presently, which holds all 'or part of these speeches to be 
 rhetorical exercises, made on the occasion of real lawsuits, but 
 perhaps in rivalry with the speeches really delivered, and to show 
 what ought to have been said. This would justify Isocrates' 
 assertion. Finding himself, however, not likely to surpass his 
 rivals in this profession — both Lysias and Isaeus must always 
 have been more in repute — he turned to the profession of 
 education, which had become fashionable under the Sophists 
 and Socrates, but which he endeavoured in his manifesto 
 against the Sophists to put on a new basis. In this fragment 
 we can see the programme of all his life. He endeavours to 
 
CH. viii. LIFE OF /SOCRATES. 213 
 
 steer a sort of midway between true philosophy, such as 
 Socrates had taught it, and the pretended science of the 
 Sophists, who held that expertness in speaking and in debate 
 was in reality the only thing to be learned, and in itself the 
 sum of education. He postulates a moral basis which, in 
 opposition both to Socrates and the lower Sophists, he thinks 
 impossible to attain by instruction, but, for the rest, he thinks 
 the ideas required by a cultivated man few and easily compre- 
 hended ; whereas to think them in an orderly way, and express 
 them with elegance, is really the object of education. In fact, 
 le style — c'est Vhomme. In after years, when his position as a 
 rhetorician was secured, he published some moral addresses (to 
 Nicocles), which are on the level of the gnomic poets in think- 
 ing, and preach that vulgar and selfish piety which has not yet 
 disappeared from Christian pulpits. But as for any criticism of 
 received dogmas, any speculation about the nature or the 
 destiny of man, such things are far above him. The only 
 immortality he knows is that of fame ; l the only sanction, that 
 of material rewards. He is sceptical about the popular faith, 
 but expresses his doubts as an ignorant man of fashion, not as 
 a serious thinker feeling after the truth. 
 
 We have, in addition to the speech against the Sophists, a 
 very long resume, and defence of his life and teaching, in an 
 imaginary speech entitled (by Aristotle) irepl o.vtlUoewq, con- 
 cerning the exchange of property, from which, and from the 
 Panathenaicus, we may take the remaining points of interest 
 known to us concerning his life. But when he tells us that, 
 in contrast to the fast youth of Athens, his own life had been 
 pure and blameless, he seems to contradict certain scandalous 
 rumours preserved in Athenaeus from an epistle of Lysias, that 
 he was attached to two famous courtesans successively. He 
 certainly did not marry till in advanced life Plathane, widow 
 of the rhetor Hippias, of whose sons he adopted the youngest, 
 Aphareus. When his fame as a rhetorician brought him many 
 
 1 I am aware there is an exception, or an apparent exception, in his 
 striking remark about the Mysteries {Panegyr. § 28) ; but its repetition in 
 a vague way elsewhere (De Pact, § 34) prevents any serious weight at- 
 taching to it. 
 
214 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch.viii. 
 
 pupils, each of whom stayed with him from three to four years, 
 and paid ten minse — a sort of university course — he acquired a 
 large fortune, and was enrolled among the richest class of 
 citizens. Hence his state duties were heavy, and more than 
 once he was obliged to resist the attack of sycophants, who 
 desired to thrust upon him an undue share of state expenses. 
 Once (acting through Aphareus as his deputy) he was suc- 
 cessful (b.c. 355), but a second time he was obliged to under- 
 take the duty. He protests that though his pupils were many 
 and famous, and his wealth greater than that acquired by 
 Gorgias, the most successful of former sophists, it was exagger- 
 ated by report. He also urges, in reply to the suspicions and 
 the aversion of the Athenian public, the number and celebrity of 
 his pupils, whom he gathered about him neither to waste the : 
 time with subtle speculations of ancient sophists — probabl 
 Pythagoras and Parmenides — studies respectable in themselves 
 but unfitting for practical life ; nor to delude them by boast 
 ful promises that, in spite of any natural wants, he could make 
 them orators and politicians. For he exhibited in his own 
 person the defects of a poor organisation, a weak voice, and 
 extreme bashfulness. Hence he never could take part in 
 public affairs, nor did he ever solicit or fill any state office. 
 
 § 443. But he amply compensated for this, in his own esti- 
 mation, by publishing pamphlets in the forms of harangues, or 
 open letters to eminent persons, on the interests of the Greek 
 nation. His moral essays and those upon culture have already 
 been mentioned. It may be added that he strove to take 
 from the term philosophy the high meaning which it had ac- 
 quired for ever from the writings of physical and metaphysical 
 speculators, and to confine the name to the somewhat shallow 
 compromise between vulgar common sense and real learning 
 which he affected. But the most important of his pamphlets 
 are those on the national politics of Greece. He developes in 
 these — published during a course of forty years, during many 
 changes and chances in the history of the nation — the same 
 leading ideas, to which he holds with narrow and stupid tena- 
 city. He is ever painting the sorrows and miseries of Greece 
 through internal factions^ through internecine wars, and, in his 
 
CH. viii. ISOCRATES' PAN-HELLENISM. 215 
 
 earlier days, through the unjust and tyrannous supremacy of 
 Sparta after the defeat of Athens in 404 b. c. The only remedy 
 for the resulting poverty, discontent, and savagery throughout 
 Hellenic lands is an union either under Sparta and Athens, or 
 under either of them, or under some single head such as Philip ; 
 and this is the alternative which in later years he recognised as 
 the only possible one. But the whole profit he saw in such an 
 union, and the main chance of its benefiting Greece, was by 
 producing at once an invasion of Persia, and plundering its 
 enormous wealth for the benefit of the Greeks. He exhibited a 
 very just estimate of the Persian power, chiefly derived, it would 
 seem, from the experiences of Xenophon in the Anabasis, or 
 from Agesilaus ; campaigns, and he saw that the conquest was 
 not difficult But when he ever indulged the hope, which be- 
 came with him a sort of monomania, that the conquest of Persia 
 would make every poor Greek rich, and every discontented one 
 happy, so that the natural superiority of the race would find 
 due scope for its exercise, he was totally incapable of appre- 
 hending the necessary reaction which so vast a conquest must 
 produce upon the conquerors, and how inevitably the very 
 culture which he taught and reverenced must alter and lower 
 itself to embrace a vaster area. Had these natural consequences 
 been within his vision, he would have recoiled in horror from 
 his pet scheme, for nothing was further from his mind than 
 Hellenism in the later sense. 1 He held indeed that culture 
 more than race was the distinctive feature of real Greeks, but 
 for all that, he would not have hesitated to place the most 
 ignorant Spartan far above the most enlightened Macedonian 
 or Egyptian. Herodotus approached far nearer to the later 
 conception of Hellenism than Isocrates. 
 
 § 444. Preoccupied with these notions, surrounded by dis- 
 tinguished pupils and friends, but treated with indifference, and 
 I imagine with contempt, by the Athenian public, the vain 
 rhetorician lived on to an advanced age, still thinking himself 
 the leading political adyiser of Greece, and still wondering, 
 
 1 The same is the case with Xenophon ; cf. his Agesilaus, c. 7, sub 
 rin. 
 
216 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vin. 
 
 with amusing naivete, that his advice, however beautifully ex- 
 pressed, had so little effect upon the politics of the day. 
 
 He wrote most of his Letters, his Philip and Evagoras, in 
 old age, for though not gifted with physical vigour, his health 
 remained excellent. In his eighty-second year he composed 
 the Apology entitled -wept avTilovewg, and began to prepare his 
 Panathejiaicus, or panegyric on Athens, in his ninety-fourth year, 
 finishing it in his ninety-seventh, though he then suffered from 
 a painful disease, which attacked him three years before. 
 When he was ninety-eight, the battle of Chseronea supervened, 
 and he at last saw some hope of his life-long desire being 
 accomplished ; for Philip now stood undoubtedly at the head 
 of Greece, and could carry out the policy the orator had re- 
 commended to him in an open letter. Isocrates accordingly 
 addressed him another letter (the third), which was the last 
 product of his pen, and which is particularly valuable, as giving 
 a direct contradiction to the fables about his patriotism, his dis- 
 gust at the battle, and his consequent death by suicide. For 
 he was no political martyr, having, in fact, always postponed 
 the liberties of Greece, about which he discoursed so much, 
 to the realisation of his favourite schemes against Persia : he 
 knew that an autocratic ruler was more likely to carry them out, 
 as the result proved. But he must have died about this time. 
 
 § 445. Thus this remarkable writer lived through three of 
 the most eventful generations in Greek history, and though 
 one of the most prominent writers of his time, may be said to 
 have produced no influence whatever except upon the form 
 of prose writing. For he was in no sense a thorough-going 
 man. He was a curious combination of sophist and patriot, 
 of would-be politician and philosopher, of really private and 
 public man at the same time. The candour and honesty of 
 his nature made him in feeling a patriot, while his want of 
 appreciation for deeper politics prevented him from seeing 
 the evils of despotism, or taking any thorough interest in the 
 forms and varieties of constitutions. His bashfulness com- 
 pelled him to remain in private life, while his vanity urged him 
 to appear in public ; his profession suggested to him the study 
 of philosophy, while his intellect was incapable of understand- 
 
CH. viii. HIS INSIGNIFICANCE. 217 
 
 ing its higher problems. Thus his egregious vanity and self- 
 complacency were perpetually wounded by the consciousness 
 that he had, after all, not made his mark upon the age, and that, 
 though eminent and widely respected, he was neither consulted 
 nor obeyed by the men whom he most desired to influence. 
 He aspired to the position of a Swift or a Junius, with the 
 talents of an Addison or a Pope. 
 
 We shall speak of his style when we have reviewed his 
 works. Here we have only considered the ' man himself, a 
 personage in after days greatly overrated, when the study of 
 Greek history fell into scholastic hands, but in his own day 
 rightly estimated as merely a shallow and conceited, but per- 
 sonally respectable rhetorician. Into the great contemporary 
 struggle between Macedonia and Athens, between Philip and 
 Demosthenes, he was never admitted, nor does either side ever 
 refer to his advices. Among the philosophical schools which 
 then sprang into life he finds no place. Thus he lived among 
 the most profound speculative thinkers and the most ardent 
 politicians the world has ever seen, without either giving 
 or receiving aught in these momentous conflicts of deeper 
 ideas and of nobler men. Had his advices been of the 
 smallest importance, they would doubtless have been cited both 
 by the honest and the dishonest opponents of Demosthenes' 
 patriotic policy, both by Phocion and ^Eschines, as being 
 strongly in their favour. 
 
 He was buried in the Kynosarges, and his family monument 
 is described in the Life of ' Plutarch.' The account somewhat 
 resembles what future ages may read concerning the Albert 
 Memorial, except that on the summit was a Siren, the emblem 
 of the sweetness and persuasiveness of his discourse. There 
 were, moreover, a statue of him dedicated by Aphareus at 
 Olympia, and one preserved in the Acropolis at Athens, as a 
 boy on horseback, and yet another made by the sculptor 
 Leochares for Timotheus. From this latter descend the busts 
 which still perpetuate for us the gentle and refined features of 
 the orator. 
 
 § 446. As to his pupils, stated to have been one hundred 
 in number, he himself enumerates several who were honoured 
 
218 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vm. 
 
 by the state with gold crowns ; but this list by no means 
 specifies the most important, Diophantus and Timotheus, 
 distinguished generals ; Androtion, Laodamas and Lakritus, 
 equally distinguished speakers ; and Ephorus and Theopompus, 
 who were the leaders of the later historiography among the 
 Greeks. These latter will occupy us hereafter. But every 
 contemporary, not only friendly, such as Xenophon, but 
 adverse, such as Plato and Aristotle, shows the influence of 
 his style, which he boasts to have been imitated by all 
 his opponents. Moreover, though his pupils distinguished 
 themselves in every department, so that he even foolishly 
 pretends that Timotheus' strategy was the result of his good 
 education, it is no doubt true that careful training impressed 
 upon them all a certain fixed type or style, which made ' a 
 pupil of Isocrates ' mean in those days the same sort of thing 
 that is now meant when we say an ' Eton boy,' or an ' Oxford 
 man.' l 
 
 § 447. The works of Isocrates have been handed down to 
 us in various order in our MSS., and most of those which are 
 fixed in date come from the period of his maturity, or his later 
 age ; indeed most of the longer orations were written so late in 
 life as to show an increase of garrulity, and of an anxiety to be 
 heard, as he neared the limit of his activity. But the earlier 
 speeches, especially the court speeches and rhetorical exer- 
 cises, are not dated, so that we can follow our convenience in 
 arranging them. Two of these exercises remain, or rather an 
 actual exercise (the Helen), and a letter to the sophist Polycrates 
 concerning an exercise (the Busiris), which Isocrates criticises, 
 and suggests topics for a better treatment. Both documents 
 are extremely interesting, as they must have been to some ex- 
 
 1 It is observed by Blass that while Plato's school shows some affinity 
 with western Greeks, the pupils of Isocrates, if not Athenian, come 
 from eastern or Asiatic Greece, and this he rightly ascribes to the decay 
 of Hellenedom through the tyrants and advancing barbarians of Italy and 
 Sicily ; while in the East Hellenic culture was gradually becoming ascen- 
 dant. Indeed, in another generation, Greek eloquence came to be called 
 Asian, where the excess of ornament marred the chastity of the speech of 
 Attic orators. Hence probably the strong interest felt by Isocrates in 
 Asiatic affairs. 
 
CH. VIII. THE HELEN OF /SOCRATES. 219 
 
 tent advertisements of what he could perform, and of the prin- 
 ciples on which he considered an encomium should be com- 
 posed. As, however, he assumes (in the Busiris) the tone of 
 an experienced sophist of high repute, in contrast to the re- 
 cent claims of Polycrates, it is probably reasonable to date 
 these speeches shortly before his great performance — the Pane- 
 gyricas — or about 390 B.C. 
 
 The Helen is composed in rivalry to another Helen, every 
 topic of which he professes to have avoided, while composing 
 a better encomium. This general indication, together with the 
 friendly tone of Isocrates towards his rival, has made many 
 critics, old and new, regard the other extant Helen (p. 80) to be 
 the piece intended. The difficulty of ascribing it to Gorgias 
 arises from the mention of that rhetor l in the present speech as a 
 negative philosopher, in a way which at first sight seems to imply 
 that he is not the author of the rival composition. The writer of 
 the Greek argument suggests (after Machaon) that Anaximenes 
 of Lampsacus was the rival intended. Blass decides in favour 
 of its being Gorgias. However this may be, Isocrates' proem is 
 quite foreign to the subject, though very suitable if the speech 
 was intended as an advertisement, for it opens with censure of 
 eristic and ethical philosophers, such as Antisthenes and Euthy- 
 demus, and also of the Platonic school, who spend their time 
 in vain subtleties. These disputations (it says) are not even ori- 
 ginal, for long since Protagoras, Gorgias, Zeno, and Melissus have 
 done all this, and done it better than their successors. Akin to 
 these vanities was their habit (he says) of advocating paradoxes, 
 or exalting mean topics, in order to show their acuteness. He 
 that wrote the encomium of Helen, on the contrary, at least 
 chose a great subject, in which it is worth while to outdo him. 
 After this proem 2 he approaches the proper argument. It is re- 
 markable for the realistic treatment of mythical history, which 
 gives the speech an unreal complexion, as well as for the digres- 
 sion on Theseus, 3 which, though intended to vindicate Helen by 
 the greatness of her ravisher, is expanded with an evident bid 
 for Athenian popularity. If these seem to us drawbacks, the 
 
 1 § 3- 2 §§ 1-16. 3 §§ 22-37. 
 
22o HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vm. 
 
 praise of beauty is, on the other hand, very noble and poetical, 
 and its power in story and in poetry is set forth with great 
 elegance and profound truth. l The style shows all the special 
 points of finish, to which we shall revert when we have con- 
 cluded our survey of the works. 
 
 § 448. The Bu'siris is not only a sketch of an encomium, 
 but also an Apologia for the hero, necessitated by the admission 
 of Polycrates, that he was a cannibal who sacrificed foreigners 
 when they came to Egypt. The subject therefore, as Isocrates 
 points out, is badly chosen, besides being inartistically treated 
 by the rival sophist. The introduction is a letter to Poly- 
 ciates, couched in apparently friendly terms, professing as an 
 advanced teacher to help an ignorant beginner, by pointing him 
 out his gross faults of composition. The advice is far too sharp 
 to be received in a kindly spirit, and we hear that Polycrates 
 replied by criticising the Helen of Isocrates. He had also 
 published an attack on Socrates, which unfortunately is not 
 here described by Isocrates, except that Alcibiades was de- 
 clared to be the pupil of Socrates, 'a thing no one ever heard 
 before,' and which redounded to Socrates' credit. This then 
 should not have been mentioned in a rhetorical attack. We 
 wonder at Isocrates' criticism, which directly contradicts both 
 Plato and Xenophon, nor has any reasonable explanation for 
 such a statement been offered. In this speech also there is 
 a long digression on Egypt, 2 which dilates on the still wide- 
 spread fame of Pythagoras, who had learned his wisdom there. 
 The conclusion of the essay is almost as offensive as the proem, 
 and asserts broadly the superior wisdom and experience of 
 the writer, though younger in years than his correspondent. 
 The composition is not so elegant as that of the Helen, though 
 there is some fine writing in praise of Egypt. 
 
 The speech against the Sophists is classed by the ancients 
 with the foregoing, detraction being considered the opposite of 
 encomium, and therefore requiring analogous treatment. Iso- 
 crates' refutation or censure of rival rhetoricians, first for their 
 absurd pretensions in education, secondly for the immorality 
 of their technse, in aiding falsehood against truth, is able and 
 
 1 §§54-58. 2 §§11-30. 
 
ch. viii. ISOCRATES' COURT SPEECHES. 221 
 
 clear. His attack on the dialecticians and their subtleties, 
 on the contrary, is the shallow talk of a mere essayist, who 
 cannot see the just value of this philosophic training. 
 
 § 449. Before approaching the proper sphere of the orator 
 — his harangues on political subjects — it is well to say a word 
 concerning the few extant court speeches, which the author 
 disowned in later life, but which are both well attested by 
 competent ancient critics, and have internal evidence too 
 strong to be overcome. Thus, for example, a sentence * in 
 the earliest of them, that against Callimachus, is copied word 
 for word in the Antidoszs; 2 and this Isocrates would never 
 have done had not the original form been his own. The 
 speech was delivered shortly after the amnesty, as the practice 
 of arguing a demurrer (jrapaypcKpfi) before the plaintiff spoke 
 was then quite new, and was specially introduced to meet 
 violations of the amnesty. The legal plea of the speaker (who 
 is the defendant in an action for 10,000 drachmae, said to have 
 been abstracted from the plaintiff during the troubles following 
 upon the rule of the Thirty) was to urge the act of amnesty, 
 as a bar to further proceedings ; but, as was always the case 
 before Athenian juries, such legal points, however valid, must be 
 supported by showing that the defence was a just one on its own 
 merits. Hence most of the speech is spent in proving that the 
 speaker had nothing to say to the loss of the money ; moreover, 
 that his opponent was a villain and a sycophant, while he himself 
 was a patriotic democrat. The details concerning the act of 
 amnesty and its general observance make the speech one of his- 
 toric interest. It is smoothly and gracefully written, but wants 
 the incisiveness of the greater logographers, as well as their 
 superior ethos or character-drawing. A certain diffuseness is also 
 to be observed, which we should naturally expect from Isocrates. 
 
 The short speech composed for a man of the lower classes 
 against Lochites, who had assaulted him, has the same features 
 — too much smoothness and too many generalities, though it is 
 very interesting in its assertion of the modern notion of insult 
 as the main thing to be resented by free men, the damage 
 done being a mere accidental consequence of an essentially 
 
 1 §41. 2 §91. 
 
222 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. viit. 
 
 unlawful act. Blass compares this speech with that of De- 
 mosthenes against Cotton, to show how abstract and broad 
 Tsocrates' pleading is, in comparison with the force and point 
 of Demosthenes. But the opening of the present speech, in 
 which the facts were treated, seems to be lost. 
 
 There seems to be also a mutilation at the end of the 
 next speech on oar list, that against Euthynoits, which has no 
 epilogue. Its authenticity has indeed been denied by Benseler, 
 on the ground of the frequent admission of the hiatus. But in 
 other respects it is sufficiently Isocratic to persuade Blass and 
 Sauppe that it is the speech which we hear the orator to have 
 written on the subject, though the only citation from it is not 
 found in our remaining fragment. It may be held either that it 
 is one of Isocrates' earliest speeches, composed before the prin- 
 ciple of avoiding the hiatus had been consistently adopted, 
 or that he did not give it a final and careful revision. The 
 case was one of peculiar interest to rhetoricians, and we know 
 that Lysias composed a speech on the other side, of which 
 only a sentence remains. But we may be sure that it 
 was often discussed in abstract exercises, and this is, according 
 to Benseler, the real character of the present document. The 
 intellectual interest referred to was that of arguing a case in 
 which no direct evidence could be procured (ajiaprvpoC), and 
 which was therefore to be settled on general grounds of proba- 
 bility, which could be urged on either side. 
 
 The plaintiff Nicias, during the troublous times of the 
 tyranny, being threatened with persecution, had got rid of all 
 his property by depositing it with friends, among whom Euthy- 
 nous had received three talents to keep for him. When he 
 claimed back his money, Euthynous would only admit the receipt 
 of two. As soon as the democracy was restored, Nicias, who 
 had been afraid to do more than protest at the time, sued for the 
 remaining talent. There being no evidence or witnesses, the 
 case turns on the respective characters of the litigants, and 
 their respective opportunities for sycophancy, or for oppression, 
 under the Thirty. From this point of view the speech is an in- 
 teresting exercise. In style it seems to me more concise and 
 brief than is u c ual with Isocrates. 
 
CH. viii. ENCOMIUM ON ALCIB1ADES. 223 
 
 § 450. The speech on the Chariot and Pair (rrepl too 
 Uvyovg) is really, as we have it, a mere encomium on Alci- 
 biades, whose son is defendant in an action brought for the 
 recovery of the value of the horses, which were alleged to 
 have been wrongfully taken from a certain Tisias. Here 
 again the earlier part, and the proofs of the honest acquisi- 
 tion of the horses from the Argives, seem lost, and we have 
 merely the epilogue answering an attack on the life and 
 policy of Alcibiades. The similar condition of several of the 
 speeches just described, in which we have part of the argument 
 elaborated with only a brief reference at the opening to the mis- 
 sing part, leads me to suspect that, after all, Isocrates may have 
 told practically the truth when he denied that he ever busied 
 himself in the law courts by writing speeches. It may have 
 been his practice, when a case of public interest occurred, such as 
 the general validity of the act of amnesty as a bar to proceed- 
 ings, or the importance of punishing even a formal assault, or 
 the panegyric of a public man like Alcibiades, to compose by 
 way of model for his pupils a portion of the harangue which 
 ought to have been delivered. This case of Alcibiades must 
 have been peculiarly attractive to the rhetors, for his life and 
 policy were open to either praise or censure. The attack handed 
 down to us among Lysias' speeches bears close relations to the 
 present harangue, either as its forerunner or its reply. Both 
 orations seem mere displays of what could be said on either 
 side concerning a genius so brilliant, so mischievous, and so 
 various in his fortunes. We have another longer and more 
 genuine encomium of the same kind in the Evagoras, addressed 
 to Evagoras' son Nicocles, tyrant of Cyprus. This family stood 
 in friendly personal relations to the orator, and the deeds of 
 Evagoras in holding Cyprus for years against the Persians 
 were not only more splendid but more recent, and not al- 
 loyed by the treacheries and unstablenesses of Alcibiades' 
 career. 
 
 § 451. The case seems to me different in the two remaining 
 court speeches, the oration against Pasion (~|0a7rf ^r^oc) and the 
 sEgineticus, both composed for friends or pupils, not Athenians, 
 and one not even for delivery at Athens. If then the above sup- 
 
224 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. viii. 
 
 position about the other court speeches l be correct, we may still 
 believe the orator that he never mixed in the quarrels of citizens, 
 though he assisted a foreign pupil from Byzantium against the 
 banker Pasion, who was originally a metic of no better reputation 
 than the Jewish money-lenders who settled in the mediaeval 
 cities of Europe. The conflict is about a priori probabilities, not, 
 as in the Amartyros, for want of evidence, but from conflict of 
 evidence, the plaintiff alleging that he had deposited a large sum 
 in the bank with no witness except the slave clerk, and that Pasion 
 had even forged a subsequent document to show that he was 
 under no responsibility ; Pasion of course denying all this, and 
 showing that the plaintiff had openly alleged his poverty and 
 his debts at Athens. This the plaintiff confesses to have done 
 when summoned by Satyrus, the tyrant of the Bosphorus, to re- 
 turn and surrender his money. The whole case gives us no 
 pleasant picture of the commercial honesty of Athens, and of the 
 chicanery openly alleged against important men of business. 
 This speech is plainer in style, and more closely reasoned, than 
 most of Isocrates' court exercises, but indeed the hiatus is so 
 frequent that Benseler rejects it altogether. We presume from 
 Pasion's after career that he must have either gained or settled 
 this lawsuit, though such an inference, inevitable in our day, is 
 not conclusive in his case, seeing that he was constantly ac- 
 cused of gross fraud, which he managed to tide over through 
 the influence of powerful friends and through his wealth. Our 
 best evidence for the genuineness of the speech is Dionysius' 
 careful criticism of it as such. 
 
 A strong argument for the merely theoretical character of 
 the court speeches is furnished by the last and greatest 
 which Isocrates composed, and this in the defence of himself. 
 It was falsely entitled irepl aVri£oo-ewc by Aristotle, whereas the 
 orator, who was pained at the result of this action, conceives 
 himself attacked as to his whole life and profession, in imi- 
 tation of Socrates, and delivers this long speech as an 
 Apologia pro vita sua on a capital charge. Here, then, we 
 
 1 Havet long ago extended this view to all these court speeches, and 
 so apparently, from another point of view, does Kyprianos. Cf. Blass, 
 AB. ii. p. 118. 
 
CH. vill. THE PLATAICUS AND ARCHIDAMUS. 22$ 
 
 have a distinctly imaginary case treated in this peculiar form. 
 The most interesting of all the other court speeches in the col- 
 lection is the sEgineticus on a disputed succession; but we have 
 already delayed too long upon this lesser side of the orator's 
 activity. 
 
 § 452. I pass to an intermediate pair of speeches, the Pla- 
 taicus and Archidamus, which are in many respects like court 
 speeches, though the subject-matter is political, and there- 
 fore approaches the ' public advices ' to which he devoted the 
 best part of his life and art. The former is supposed to be 
 spoken before the Athenian assembly by a Platasan speaker, 
 when that city had been destroyed a second time by the The- 
 bans, about 373 B.C. He appeals to the Athenians, as the ad- 
 vocates of justice in Greece, and as bound by peculiar ties to 
 Plataea, to interfere, and to restore them to their city. The 
 speech is thus very similar in subject to those inserted by Thu- 
 cydides in his history, and invites special comparison with the 
 speech of the Platseans in his third book. But tnough there is 
 great pathos in the description of the misery of the exiles 
 by Isocrates, 1 and the style is infinitely smoother and more 
 polished, the exercise of the rhetor is almost contemptible 
 in comparison with the burning force and deep earnestness of 
 the historian. 
 
 The Archidamus is a strong appeal made by the young Spartan 
 prince to his city not to submit to the liberation of Messene by 
 the Thebans, and to choose the extremities of war in preference 
 to such a national disgrace. Both Dionysius and Philostratus 
 place this work very high in the collection, on account of its 
 splendid expressions of patriotism, and its postponement of all 
 lower motives to that of honour and devotion. 2 
 
 § 453. I will only notice three more compositions, the later 
 two of which are only expansions, with some modifications in 
 detail, of the first and most perfect of the orator's harangues, 
 
 ■ §§ 46-50. 
 
 2 I see that G. Sauppe (ad Xen. Ages., prsef. p. 126) declares it certain 
 that this letter is not by Isocrates, I suppose on account of its historical 
 blunders and contradictions about the acquisition of Messene. Blass does 
 not even suspect it. 
 
 VOL. II. Q 
 
226 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. viil 
 
 on which his fame properly rests. This is the Panegyricus, a 
 speech which might have been delivered to the assembled 
 Greeks at Olympia or the Panathenaea, but which was actually 
 a pamphlet, and published in a written form, as the orator was 
 totally incompetent to declaim it like Gorgias or Lysias. The 
 subject is Isocrates' lifelong idea, the union of all Greece under 
 the hegemony of Sparta and Athens, for the purpose of the con- 
 quest of Asia. It was published about 380 B.C., 1 when the 
 disastrous results of the peace of Antalcidas were becoming 
 manifest, and when Isocrates' Asiatic pupils were doubtless 
 constancy bringing him details of the misery of the Ionic cities 
 under the decaying Persian despotism. Indeed his persistent 
 anti-Persian policy may have been stimulated by his close rela- 
 tions with eastern Hellas, and doubtless tended to make him 
 very popular among the better classes through the cities of Asia 
 Minor. The Anabasis and Retreat of the 10,000 mercenaries 
 under Clearchus and Xenophon had lately exposed the weakness 
 of the Persian empire, and Isocrates shows an accurate appre- 
 ciation of these facts. But, along with this war policy, he justifies 
 the claim of Athens to the hegemony of the sea by an elaborate 
 panegyric (in our sense) of her history and her claims, which 
 should persuade the Spartans to yield this portion of their 
 dominion. Here he enters into competition with the ewiTa<pioi, 
 or funeral harangues, which always extolled the city and its 
 greatness, so that we are again brought to compare him 
 with Thucydides, whose Epitaphios in Pericles' mouth goes over 
 similar ground, in describing the national merits of Athens as a 
 centre of culture for all Hellenedom. I do not subscribe to the 
 judgment of Blass, 2 that there is nothing equal to this passage 
 in Greek literature ; but I do think that Isocrates has here suc- 
 cessfully emulated Thucydides, whether with originality, or, as 
 his opponents alleged, by plagiarism from others, and that the 
 
 1 There are difficulties as to exact date, owing to a statement of Diodorus 
 about Evagoras' war, which cannot be well reconciled by those of Iso- 
 crates. Cf. the discussion of the point in Blass, AB. ii. p. 230 ; and 
 Mr. Jebb, Attic Orators, ii. p. 151. Blass now (iv. 350) inclines to 384 B.C. 
 
 - ii. p. 241. 
 
ch. viii. THE PANEGYRICUS. 227 
 
 passage is perhaps the best in his works. 1 Of course the 
 harangue was naught as a piece of practical politics, for a vague 
 
 1 §§ 43~5 l '• T«i / Toivvv ras Travqyvpeis Karacrrrio'dvrwv SiKaites iirai- 
 vovjxevcav, on roiovrov edos 7]fi7v irapeSocrav &crre crireicrajxevovs /cat ras 
 ex9p as Tas iveffrriKvias diaXvcrajxevovs o~vveX9e7v els ravrdv, Kal jxerd ravr^ 
 ei>xas Kal dvcrias Koivds Troiriaa/xevovs ava}j.vr\<r9r\vai /xev ttjs crvyyeveias rr}s 
 Trpbs aXXrjXovs virapxov<rr)S, evfxevearepccs 8' els rbv Xoiirbv x?^ VQV OiareOrjvai 
 trpbs rj/aas avrovs, ical rds re TraXaids ^evias avave&o-atrQai Kal Kaivas erepas 
 Troir)cracrdai, Kal fxrjre ro?s Idiccrais /xi)re to7s SiepeyKOvcri rr]v cpvo'iv dpybv 
 eivai T-^jv Siarpifirjv, aXX' ddpoitrdevrtov rwv 'EXXi)vcov eyyevecrdai ro?s /xev 
 eTridei£ao~9ai ras avrwv eve^ias, ro7s 8e Oedcracrdai rovrovs irpbs aXXrjXovs 
 dywviQofxevovs, Kal /x-qoerepovs d8v/xccs Sidyeiv, aAA.' eKarepovs %X eiv > e '$' 01S 
 <piXori/xr}6cocriv, oi fxev orav 'idcoffi robs ddXrjrds avrcov eveKa irovovvras, ol 
 8' '6rav evdv/xr)dc7>o~iv, '6ri irdvres eirl r^v crcperepav deccpiav %Kovcri, — rocrovrccv 
 roiuuy dyadcov did ras o~vv6dovs tj/jllv yiyvo/xevcov ovd' ev rovrois 7} tt6\ls 
 rj/xwv dweXelcpdr]. Kal yap Qed/xara irXe7crra Kal KaXXicrra KeKrrjrat, rd /xev 
 rais Sairdvais virepfSaXXovra, rd 8e Kara ras rex vas *v5oKifxovvra, rd 8' 
 d/xcporepois rovrois Siacpepovra' Kal rb irXrjOos rwv eltracpiKVovfxevcev cos rj/xds 
 roffovrov itrriv, iccrr' et ri ev red irX7]ond^eiv dXXr)Xois dyaOov ecrri, Kal rovff 
 inr' avrTJs TrepieiXrjcpOai. Trpbs 8e rovrois Kal cpiXias evpeiv iritrrordras Kal 
 (Tvuovffiais evrvx^v iravrodairwrdrais /xaXicrra Trap' 7]fx7v ecrriv, en 8' dycvvas 
 lSe7v /XT] fx6vov rdxovs Kal pwixr,s aXXd Kal X6ycov Kal yvwfxfjs Kal rcov &XXwv 
 epywv dirdvrcov, Kal rovrccv ddXa /xeyicrra, Trpbs yap ols avrr] ridricri, Kal 
 robs &XXovs SiSSvai evvavaireiQei' ra yap i><£' y/xwv Kpidevra roo~avrr]v Xa/x- 
 fSdvei So^av ware rrapa irdo~iv dyOpairois dyaira.o'Qai. x w P^ s ^* rovrwv al pes 
 aXXai iravriyvpeis did ttoXXov xpouov o-vXXeyelcrai rax^s SieXvOrjaav, ?? S' 
 rifxerepa tt6Xis diravra rbv alwva ro7s dtyiKvovfxevois iravftyvpis effriv. 
 
 QiXoffocpiav roivvv, % irdvra ravra ffvve^evpe Kal crvyKareffKevacre, Kal 
 irp6s re rds rrpd^eis f)/J.cis ercaiSevcre Kal Trpbs aXX-fjXovs ewpavve, Kal rav 
 (rv/ncpopaiv rds re Si' dfiadiau Kal rds e| di>dyKT)s yiypo/xepas SietXe, Kal rds 
 /xev (pvXa^ao-0ai, rds Se KaX&s eveyKelv ioida^ev, i) ttoXis r^iSiv Karedei^e, Kal 
 Xoyovs eri/j.rjo-ei', wv Trdvres fiev eiri9vp.ovai, rots 8' eiriarafievois (pdovovci, 
 cvveiZvia fiev, on rovro \xovov el- dirdvruv rwv fywv toiav ecpv/mev exovres, 
 Kal SiSri rovrw TrXeoveKrrjcravres Kal ro7s aXXois dirairiv avruiv dirjveyKafjiej/, 
 bpxffa Se irepl fiev rds aXXas irpd^eis ovrw rapax^Seis ovcras rds ru%as &o~re 
 iroXXaKis ev avra7s Kal robs cppovifxovs aTi/xeiV Kal robs duorjrovs KaropQovv, 
 rS>u 8e Xoyoov rcov KaXocs Kal rexviK&s exovrwv ov jn.erbv ro7s fiavXais, aXXd 
 ipvxv s e ^ <ppovovcrT)s epyov avras, Kal rovs re <ro<povs koL robs d/j.a9e7s 
 doKOVvras elvai ravrri irXe7o-rov aXXiJAcev Siacpepovras, en Se rovs eidvs e| 
 dpx^s eXevQepcas redpafxp.evovs e'/c jxev dvdpias Kal irXovrov Kal rcov roiovrcuv 
 dyadcvv ov yiyvwcrKOfxevovs, 4k 8e ra>v Xeyojuevcov jxaXiara Karacpave7s yiyvo- 
 /xevovs, Kal rovro crv/xfioXov rrjs Trai&evcreces rjfxuv eKaarov iricrrSrarov a«- 
 Q~e8eiyfj.evov, Kal robs Xoyw KaXccs xP u> f JL ^ vovs ov phvov ev ra7s ain&it 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vni. 
 
 advice to Sparta and Athens, from the study of a sophist, to unite 
 against Persia was not likely to sway public councils. The 
 whole importance of the speech is in its splendid form, which 
 was in fact not only far superior to any previous piece of prose, 
 but has not been surpassed either in Greek or modern writ- 
 ing. It is accordingly a monumental piece of writing, and, 
 as such, not only deserved the ten years which the author 
 devoted to its composition, but the great attention ever since 
 paid to it by the students of rhetoric. Minute criticism has 
 discovered slight inconsistencies in the political attitude, owing 
 to the long interval between the composition of various parts, 
 and even to enlightened Athenians, not to say to moderns, the 
 citation of mythical friendships as a reason for modern alli- 
 ances, and the distortion of history for panegyrical purposes, 
 are defects which mar the enjoyment of the perfect form in 
 which these trivialities or falsehoods are disposed. There is, 
 moreover, an extreme equability of flow, a smoothness of dic- 
 tion, a rounding of periods, which a modern orator would have 
 varied with bolder figures of diction, with poetical quota- 
 tions, or at least with that forcible terseness which was ad- 
 mitted even in the stricter Attic prose writing. But, with all 
 these reservations, the Panegyricus is still one of the masterpieces 
 of prose, and has perhaps more constantly influenced careful 
 writers in Greece, in Rome, and in the Renaissance, than any 
 other harangue which could be named. 1 
 
 § 454. In advanced old age, when Isocrates had long seen the 
 fruitlessness of his endeavours to reconcile the leading states by 
 persuasion, he found in the rise of Philip a practical hope of 
 realising his ideas. He therefore addressed him the open letter 
 entitled Philips calling upon him to insist upon peace among 
 
 Swafxevovs aXAa Kal irapa. rols aXXois ivrifMovs Suras, tocovtov 8' a-vroXe- 
 Aonrej/ 7) tt6Xis 7]jj.&v Trepl rb (ppoue?v Kal Ae'yeiv robs &XXjVS auQp&irovs, &<r& 
 01 ravTfjs /j.a6r]Tal twv &XX<au SiSdffKaAoi yey6va<ri, Kal rh rav 'EXX^vccv 
 ouofxa 7T67roir]Ke fxrjKeTi tov yevovs aAAa rrjs Siavoias Sytcelv elvai, Kal paAXov 
 "EXXriuas KaXelcrQai robs ttjs iraiSevaews rr\s ^uere'pas 2) robs ttjs koiv9)s 
 <pv(rect>s fJLerexouras. 
 
 1 The oration on the Peace (after the Social War, 356 B.C. ) is a similar 
 practical exhortation to union among the Greeks, suggested by the circum- 
 stances of the time. 
 
CH. viii. THE PANATHENAICUS. 229 
 
 the Greeks, and to lead them against Persia. Thus the wealth 
 of Asia would be carried back to Greece, and ample territory 
 would be found for all the exiled and wandering mercenaries, 
 who were now a pestilence in the Greek world. The orator 
 had even predicted with singular felicity in his Panegyricus, 
 that the difficulty would yet be to keep the Greeks at home, a 
 state of things which really ensued under Alexander's succes- 
 sors, and produced, more than any other cause, the curious and 
 sudden depopulation of the country. Isocrates thinks that the 
 project would have been realised by Agesilaus, had he not 
 spoilt his prospects, and created perpetual seditions and revolu- 
 tions among the Greeks, by bringing back his own friends to 
 power, whenever they had been exiled, or subdued by the 
 opposite party. 1 
 
 The other side of the Panegyricus — the encomium of Athens 
 — was taken up again in the prolix and tedious Panathenaicus, 
 already noticed as being composed between the author's ninety- 
 fourth and ninety-eighth years, and which, therefore, should 
 not be criticised too severely. But in form and style even this 
 essay could not easily be surpassed, though Isocrates often apolo- 
 gises for his own decay, and protests that he is now no longer 
 able to polish and adorn his speeches as he had done in former 
 years. From this it appears that style never became a second 
 nature with Isocrates, as it does with most great English authors, 
 but always remained (as perhaps with the modern French) a con- 
 scious art. His definition of culture, in opposition to the philo- 
 sophers and the lower sophists, is so interesting that I will quote 
 it. It will be noticed that he is rather averse to the popular 
 exposition and criticism of the poets, which we often see in 
 Plato's dialogues, and which was certainly one of the usual 
 modes of education. 2 
 
 » §§ 86-88. 
 
 2 §§ 26-35 : Trjs fiev olv iraideias rrjs virb rwv irpoySpwv KaTaAei- 
 <p6ei<rr)s toctovtov Sea KaracppoveTv, ttxrre Kal t)]V e(/>' tj/jlcou KaraaTdQelaav 
 iircuvttiy Keyco Se ttjv re yeco/xerpiau koX r^v acrrpoXoyiav Kal tovs dia\6yovs 
 rovs ipiffTiKovs Ka\ovfJ.evovs, oTs ol jxev vec&repoi fiaXKov xaipovai tov Seovros, 
 twu 8e irpeo-fivTispujv ovfiels %<ttiv, octtis ar hveKTobs avrojs elvai (p-fiaetej/. 
 'AAA' '6/xws iycb ro?s Sopp.r}fxevoLS eirl ravra irapaKeAevofj.au iroveiv Kal irpoc- 
 «X €lv T0V v °v v o-ira<Ti tovtois, Xeywv, ws el Kal fxr]5ev &XXo Svvarai t« 
 
25o HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. viit. 
 
 § 455. A word in conclusion on the nine letters in the col- 
 lection, which, contrary to the usual rule, are all admitted to be 
 genuine by the critics. Some of these (1, 6, 8) are mere proems 
 to political advices, and evidently published as specimens 
 by the author. The, ninth (to Archidamus) is a very elegant 
 summary of most of Isocrates' political views, and written in his 
 best style. Three (4, 7, 8,) are letters of recommendation, of 
 which the fourth (to Antipater) is one of the most perfect 
 models of what such a letter ought to be. It is remarkable that, 
 though we find some references to his tec/me, and to clever apo- 
 phthegms in his conversation, there is not a single quotation from 
 
 /j-adrnxara ravra iroieTv ayadov, aAA' ovv airorpeiret. ye robs vearepovs iroXX&v 
 &XXoov afxaprrj/jidrcou. rots p.ev olv tt)\ikovtols ovSeiror" 1 av evpeOrjvai vo/xifo 
 diarpifias axpeXificorepas rovrwv ovSe fiaXXov irpeiroixras' ro?s Se irpecr^vrepois 
 Kal ro7s els avSpas dedoKi/mao'/xevois ovKeri <py]jJ.l ras jxeXeras ravras apjj.6rreiv. 
 6p& yap eviovs r&v eirl rots fxad^jfiaffL rovrois ovrws airr]Kpifiw/J.e'vwv were nai 
 robs aXXovs Siddaiceiv, ovr'' evKaipws reus eiriar-fjixais als ex ovo ~ L XP C0 I J -^ V0VS > 
 ev re rais &XXais irpay/j.areiais reus irepl rbv fiiov d<ppovecrrepovs ovras r&v 
 iiadf\r&v, 6kv& yap elireTv r&v olKer&v. rr\v avrfyv Se yv&[XT)v e%w Kal irepl 
 r&v Zr\fj.-r]yopeLV Svvajxevwv nai r&v irepl r^v ypacprjv r)]V r&v XSywv ev$o- 
 Kiuovvrwv, oXws Be irepl airdvrwv r&v irepl ras re"x vas Kal ras eiriarrifias Kal 
 ras dwd/xeis Siacpepovrwv. oi5a yap Kal rovrwv robs iroXXobs ovre ra irepl 
 a<pas avrobs koX&s BiwKr]K6ras otir' iv rah Idiais cvvovcriais aveKrobs ovras, 
 rrjs re So^tjs rijs r&v av/nroXLrevo/xevwv oXiywpovvras, aXXwv re iroXX&v 
 Kal fieydXwv ajj.apri}/J.drwv ye/xovras' Ikar" 1 ovSe rovrovs Tjyov/iai jxerex^i-v 
 rris e^ews, irepl ys iyw rvyydvw dtaXeyd^evos' Tivas olv koXw ireiraiSev- 
 fxevovs, iireih'T) ras re^vas Kal ras iirio'rrtixas Kal ras Svvd/xeis airoBoKLfJ.d^w ; 
 irpwrov fiev robs KaXws xP (a l JL ^ vovs T0 ^ s irpdyfiao~i rots Kara ri]V ijfxepav 
 eKaarrjv irpoo-iriirrovcri, Kal r^v b~6£av eirirvxv t&v Kaip&v exovras Kal dvva- 
 uevi)v ws iirl rb iroXv aroxd^eaOai rov ffv/xepepovros' eireira robs irpeir6vrws 
 Kal diKaioos ofxiXovvras rols ael irXricrid(ovcri., Kal ras fxev r&v &XXwv arjBias 
 Kal fiapvrrjras evKoXws Kal pafiiws (pepovras, o~<pas 8' avrobs &s dvvarbv 
 eXa<ppordrovs Kal /xerpiwrdrovs toTs crwovcri irapexovras' en Se robs r&v 
 /j.ev rjSov&v ael Kparovvras, r&v 5e crvfjupop&v /ht] Xiav jjrrcofievovs, a\A' 
 avSpoob'&s iv avrais SiaKei/Aevovs Kal T7js $vo*ews a^iws, tjs jxerexovres rvyxd- 
 vo/iiev reraprov, oirep [xeyicrrov, robs /J.7] SiacpOeipo/xevovs virb r&v evirpayi&v 
 juyjS' e^taraaevovs avr&v fxr}& virep-qcpdvovs yiyvofxevovs aAA' ififxevovras tij 
 rd^ei rr) r&v ev (ppovovvrwv, Kal fj.-^ fxaXXov x al P 0VTa -^ r °h Sia rvx r ) v virdp£ao-iv 
 ayado?s $) ro?s 8ia ri\v avr&v cpvo'iv Kal §p6vr)criv f| apxvs yiyvofievois. robs 
 5e jx)] [x6vov irpbs ev rovrwv a\Aa Kal irpbs airavra ravra r))v e£iv rr/s ^u%^s 
 evdpp.ocrrov exovras, rovrovs <pr)/J.l Kal (ppovijxovs elvai Kal reXeiovs avSpas 
 Kal irdaas exeiv ras aperds. 
 
CH. viii. ANALYSIS OF ORATORY. 231 
 
 any lost oration — a good guarantee that we possess, as in the 
 case of Plato and Demosthenes, all that he published. There 
 is, moreover, a long catalogue of spurious treatises ascribed to 
 him, quoted in the anonymous Life. The list is printed at the 
 end of Benseler's (Teubner) edition. 
 
 § 456. We now turn to the closer consideration of his rhetori- 
 cal theory and his style. The first question which arises is 
 whether Isocrates ever published a formal techne, or handbook of 
 the theory of oratory, as was done by almost all the composers 
 of court speeches. The conflicting evidence has been summed 
 up with great care by Blass, 1 who shows that, though there are 
 several references to, and quotations from, an alleged techne, 
 there is not sufficient evidence to ascribe it to Isocrates himself, 
 who seems only to have devised special rhetorical artifices 
 called rex va h collected by his pupils into a book which passed 
 under his name. This conclusion is quite consonant with the 
 character of his mind, which was not capable (I think) of 
 devising a complete and logical system. He rather looked 
 upon rhetoric, which was to him synonymous with philosophy, 
 as a mental gymnastic, requiring, first, good natural abilities, 
 secondly, assiduous practice, and obtaining from theoretical 
 instruction only moderate help. He distinguished, broadly 
 speaking, the kinds of oratory into three : dicastic, or court 
 speeches, which he considered an inferior branch ; epideictic, 
 or harangues of display, consisting of encomia or of the reverse, 
 and these either of mythical characters or of historical men 
 — the latter often of use in the epilogues of court speeches ; 
 and thirdly, deliberations, or orations of advice, of which the 
 moral exhortations to individuals (Nicocles) were of less im- 
 portance, and of inferior form, being necessarily disjointed in 
 form, like gnomic poetry. The public advices, or speeches on 
 national affairs, were, on the contrary, the highest and most 
 valuable result of the whole art. 
 
 In all these he considered that the elements, or factors 
 which made up the result, the ' ideas,' as he vaguely called them, 
 were neither many nor obscure ; the whole art consisted in 
 combining them. On this point he has only left us the most 
 
 1 PP- 97-8- H e now (i v> 343) thinks he composed, but did not 
 publish; it. 
 
232 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vm. 
 
 ordinary practical hints ; he evidently trusted to constant prac- 
 tising, and to the imitation of the models he proposed, as 
 the real method of learning, in opposition to the purely scien- 
 tific and theoretical instruction in the school of his rival 
 Aristotle. We can only seek his notions from the occasional 
 statements scattered through his speeches, and quoted from his 
 teaching by old critics. He tells us first that we should choose 
 a noble subject, not a trivial or a paradoxical one (like the 
 cannibal Busiris) for an eulogy. This talent in the right choice 
 of a subject depends upon natural taste, and cannot be taught. 
 Then he tells us that the proem is not to be too long or 
 too short, that it must fit closely into the main subject, that the 
 narrative must be natural, and much more of such obvious, 
 almost trivial advice, recommending that the finest and most 
 striking topic should be kept for the last. Again, he cau- 
 tions against digressions, though his own exercises are not 
 free from this fault. Above all, he seems to have paid great 
 attention to making easy and natural transitions from one topic 
 to another, an art which is perhaps nowhere more remarkably 
 exhibited than in his speeches. He utterly scorned the formal 
 subdivision into heads since so popular in Puritan preaching, 
 and sought to lead the hearer naturally and without conscious 
 effort along well considered and carefully prepared, but carefully 
 concealed lines of argument. A hiatus or gap in passing from 
 one topic to another was to him as inartistic as a hiatus between 
 two adjoining vowels. He recommends greater simplicity in 
 court speeches, where a jury is to be convinced, whereas a 
 harangue should be as splendid as a lyric ode, that is, a Greek 
 lyric ode, such as those of Pindar and Simonides. 
 
 As to the particular ideas, the great point is to have them per- 
 fectly new, an advice only practicable in harangues, and which 
 Isocrates has himself violated by admitting commonplaces into 
 his court speeches, 1 as well as by repeating himself in later years. 
 But, on the whole, he really adheres to the precept, his Helen 
 being a remarkable exhibition of an exercise on a trite subject, in 
 which he boasts that he does not reiterate a single topic used by 
 his predecessors. In the next place, the striking points must 
 1 Antid. § 1 8 ; Trapez. § 54. 
 
CH. viii. RULES FOR COMPOSITION. 233 
 
 not only be suitable in length and dignity, but should be dis- 
 tributed equably throughout the speech. It is remarkable that 
 in encomia, and in personal attacks, he distinctly admits and even 
 recommends exaggeration of the truth. This feature, which he 
 applies not only to mythical, but to recent events, was of 
 momentous importance in injuring the historical sense, if not 
 the moral sense, of the historians who were his pupils. I will 
 here add, as belonging rather to the matter than the manner, 
 that though the whole flow of Isocrates J harangues is extremely 
 ornate, he does not admit, or admits only very sparingly, those 
 special ornaments, such as quotations from poets, epigrams, and 
 witticisms, which are the main stock of modern orators. Such 
 diversions, which are almost as foreign to Demosthenes as 
 to Isocrates, are unworthy of the solemnity and dignity as- 
 sumed by most Greek orators. 
 
 § 457. Passing from the discussion of the proper thoughts in 
 a speech, upon which we can find little that is new or original in 
 Isocrates, but rather a careful and methodical use of the rules 
 long since suggested by the experience of his predecessors, we 
 come to the rules for expression. These are of course either for 
 words {ovo^ara) or for the combination of words (rrvrBetno). On 
 the former of these heads he recommends strongly the use of 
 the ordinary vocabulary, which he calls ttoXltikci ovofxaru. and 
 censures the use of metaphorical or strange words, not absolutely, 
 for the style is to be polished and above common language, but 
 in any excess, for perfect style consists not in novelties and sur- 
 prises, but in the refined use of the speech of other men. This 
 is the more praiseworthy in Isocrates, as the choice of words 
 ( icXoyfi) of Gorgias and his school was very ornate and artificial. 
 Hence Dionysius and other critics cite him as, next to Lysias, 
 the highest model of pure Attic diction, using the simplest 
 and best recognised terms, and even too timid in avoiding 
 the bold tropes and metaphors so striking in Demosthenes. 
 However splendid the subject, and however noble the diction, 
 it is everywhere remarkable how the effect is produced essen- 
 tially by the composition, by a careful and artistic arrangement 
 of common terms, seldom by the use of grand and poetical 
 words. This is indeed the secret of a great artist, which he 
 
234 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. VIII. 
 
 might teach by constant showing and correcting, never by any 
 definite collection of rules. 1 Occasional departures from this 
 simplicity are caused by the necessities of the case. On 
 the other hand, so many words and combinations of words 
 are rejected by the purism of the author, that it is easy to 
 find in a spurious speech like the Demonicus numerous vio- 
 lations of his usage. This Benseler has done, but it ought to 
 make the same critic hesitate in rejecting other speeches 
 merely on the ground of the hiatus, which is a far more fallible 
 test than the accumulation of many phrases and constructions 
 not found in the recognised works of so very consistent and 
 careful a stylist. 
 
 § 458. As to the composition of the words, there are a 
 few rules quoted from the alleged techne. First to avoid 
 hiatus in utterance, which must arise if we end a word, and 
 commence the next, with vowels. And this is only a salient 
 instance of the great importance he attached to melodious 
 utterance, and the avoidance of all harsh and difficult com- 
 binations of sounds. But in most of these, our ignorance of 
 the real pronunciation makes it impossible to guess his reasons ; 
 in the case of hiatus we have a law common in French and 
 other modern languages. This matter w r as first thoroughly 
 sifted by Benseler, whose book upon it 2 is a classical work, 
 though he overrates its importance as a test of genuineness. For 
 the law is not absolute in Isocrates, much less in other writers, 
 though all his contemporaries, and all subsequent prose writers ; 
 more or less conformed to it. The elision or crasis of Greek 
 and of Latin poetry became a law for the Romance lan- 
 
 1 Some of the instances collected by Benseler are as follows : <rvv is 
 never used separately, always fierd, a peculiarity followed by most of the 
 Attic orators : by Lycurgus, Hypereides, and Dinarchus absolutely, by 
 Lysias, Demosthenes, Plato almost so (cf. Blass, AB. ii. 127). Again, 
 airoo-reXkecrOai and Xiyeiv only of persons, avaXiaiceiv only of time and 
 money, e£aA.ei<£eii/, literally, of writing ; vovs only with %%uv and irooaix eiv i 
 and a dozen more such points. This extraordinary purism is somewhat 
 relaxed in his latest compositions. He seems even to repeat the same 
 combinations, Oavfxd^tv ical fykovv, inaiveiv na\ rifxav, &c., as if he felt 
 them peculiarly suitable. 
 
 8 De Hiatu in Orat. Att. et Histor. Gratis (Friburg, 1841). 
 
ch. vin. LAW OF HIATUS. 235 
 
 guages, but no prose has ever been so strict in observing it as 
 developed Greek prose. Blass doubts whether Isocrates was 
 properly the discoverer of the principle, but the indifference 
 of Lysias in some of his best speeches, and of Plato in earlier 
 works, seems to point to him as its first promulgator. Indeed 
 in two speeches, the Trapeziticus and that against Euthynoas, 
 hiatus is not avoided, and hence Benseler rejects them. But 
 these are early speeches, perhaps the only real court speeches, 
 and may have been composed before he adopted the principle, 
 or to conceal his personality. I have already observed that 
 in Isocrates genuineness can be independently tested. 
 
 As to the particular kinds of hiatus admissible, of course 
 those which admit of elision or crasis are not in point, though 
 prose does not use these expedients so largely as poetry. 
 Thus where there is a stop, elision is inadmissible, and a 
 hiatus will occur which is by no means so offensive as that 
 in the middle of a clause. Furthermore, as even these latter 
 cannot be evaded, Isocrates admits a certain number, ri, n, 
 Trept, on and 717)0, with a vowel following ; likewise ev, as do 
 tragic and comic poets, but I doubt whether this v was not 
 pronounced a soft consonant, as it is now by the modern Greeks. 
 ttoXv av is allowed, but no other case with av, and in the looser 
 speeches el and rj with a following vowel. In his stricter writing 
 Isocrates carefully avoids hiatus with the cases of the article. 
 Why these selections were made is now obscure, but should 
 be carefully studied by those who seek to recover the old pro- 
 nunciation. Many other details are given by Benseler. Another 
 prescription was against closing and opening successive words 
 with the same syllable, as kiraivovjjiEv fiiv, which occurs indeed, 
 with one or two more cases, in Isocrates. This law is obvious 
 enough, and, had it been strictly followed, would have saved us 
 endless blundering in the copying of our Greek MSS., and pre- 
 cluded many of Cobet's most brilliant emendations. Other 
 disagreeable combinations were no doubt equally eschewed. 
 
 § 459. When we approach the larger question of rythm, we 
 find ourselves on peculiarly Greek ground. We can easily 
 follow Isocrates when he taught that good prose must be more 
 flowing and musical than conversation, and yet not so formal 
 
236 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vm. 
 
 as poetry — that it must, in fact, be rythmical, but not metrical. 
 But when his pupils and rivals began to discuss the proper 
 rythms to use, and the master recommended iambi and 
 trochees, while Ephorus objected to spondees and tribrachs, 
 and recommended paeons and dactyls, while Aristotle favoured 
 the first paeon at the opening, and the fourth at the close, of a 
 sentence — when we hear these and other such rules, we feel 
 that there is indeed rythm in prose writing, and that we ourselves 
 feel one kind awkward and another pleasant ; but we cannot 
 follow the Greeks into detail. The examples cited by the 
 critics seem to depend completely upon quantity, disregarding 
 accent; and this alone would make their rules unintelligible to 
 a modern Greek, more than to an Englishman. Every good 
 writer among us is led by an obscuie feeling of rythm, which 
 he observes, but none study prose writing with sufficient care to 
 think of formulating their practice. It is refreshing to find that 
 even the Greeks could not agree upon any absolute law, and that 
 the later Asian orators, who constantly closed with trochees, 
 like Isocrates' wtyeXeh' Bvvaadai, were ridiculed for it. Blass' 
 analysis of many passages in Isocrates l proves that he used 
 a great variety of rythms, but so combined them as to avoid 
 poetical metre. It is very remarkable that, with all these arti- 
 ficial laws as to the order of words, our author seldom transposes 
 the logical order, and that his sentences are models of clear- 
 ness and facility. It is indeed one mark of genius, like that 
 of great poets, to say naturally in metre what ordinary men 
 can hardly express in prose ; but this no doubt was one of 
 the causes why he spent such vast time and labour on his 
 writing. The result seems simple enough ; yet how many times 
 may each sentence have been recast before logical clearness 
 and melodious rythm were equally satisfied. On the other hand, 
 Isocrates' over-strictness in avoiding transposition deprived him 
 of that peculiar force and vividness which Thucydides, for 
 example, attains by the prominence into which he roughly 
 drags his leading idea and its contrasts. 
 
 We now come to the combination of rythmical clauses, or 
 periods, which are a very distinctive feature in Isocratic prose, 
 
 1 'pp. i3 8 » sq. 
 
CH. vni. THE PERIODS OF ISOCRATES. 237 
 
 though unfortunately we have no rules left us by the master 
 himself as to his usage in this respect. Our earliest authority 
 is the suspected third book of Aristotle's Rhetoric, from which 
 we learn that a period in prose is like a strophe in verse, a com- 
 plete unity, including various members under it, but as a whole 
 easily grasped and satisfying to the mind. By the aid of a 
 suspended grammatical construction, and of adversative or con- 
 necting particles, a very long sentence can thus be brought into 
 a well-balanced and harmonious system ; but the poetical 
 period is stricter in form ; the prose period only varies the 
 length and weight of its members, in order that the thought 
 may also be rounded off and complete. It is evident from the 
 careful survey of sentences by Blass l that very great variety was 
 admitted, both as to the number of the clauses and their rela- 
 tive lengths, in Isocrates' periods. In fact, instead of the obvious 
 antithesis of equally balanced clauses (such as those so com- 
 mon in Gorgias and in our Gibbon), he used a larger and more 
 complicated harmony, in which we can now only wonder at the 
 effect, and enumerate the elements, without being able to ex- 
 tract from them the law — if law it was, and not a cultivated 
 instinct— which guided him in his practice. 
 
 Certain it is that we often find a thought expanded for the 
 sake of fuller expression, and that this insistance upon formal 
 harmony wearies the reader who desires to hurry onward to a 
 new thought. But if there was one thing wholly strange and 
 odious to Isocrates, it was hurry in thinking or speaking. Let 
 us quote a specimen. In the Panegyricus he wishes to say (as 
 a sequel to his undertaking that he will exceed all former 
 speeches), that while our ancestral glories are common property 
 to all, the highest treatment of them is a peculiar gift, and 
 oratory would indeed flourish if admiration was bestowed not 
 on the first inventors of speech, but on those who have brought 
 it to perfection. How does he express this idea ? 2 He ex- 
 
 1 AB. ii. pp. 147, sq. 
 
 2 §§ 9 _I ° : aL f l * v 7&P i7>e££eis at Trpoyeyevrjfxevai koivoI iracnv tj/uTp 
 KareKeicpOricrav, t2> 5' ev Kcupa> ravrcus Karaxp^craaQai Kal ra. irpocr^Kovra 
 irepl e/ficrT'/js ivdvfxrjOrivai Kal to7s bvSfjaxaiv ev diaOecrOai tS>v ev (ppoyovurav 
 XSiou lariv. 7)yov/j.ai 8' outws &v /xeyiaTrjp iiridoaip Aafifidveiv Kal ras &Was 
 
238 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. vm. 
 
 panels the first clause, and gives weight to its conclusion by 
 adding the superfluous itfiiv KareXetydriaur, because he desires 
 to expand the responding idea, the oratorical treatment of 
 ideas, in three parallel clauses, all coming under the cL Then 
 he brings the emphatic 'tcko»' into a later part of its clause than 
 the corresponding kolvciI, thus gaining variety of order without 
 losing his point. 
 
 All the rhetorical points in such periods as this are easy 
 to apprehend, when we apply ourselves to the careful study of 
 their structure. But I confess I can hardly follow Blass in the 
 details of the analysis by which he shows that, in putting an 
 argument, Isocrates balanced period against period, and wrote 
 with an almost poetical though various symmetry. The 
 reader will see the specimens he quotes, 1 and will be disposed 
 to agree generally with his result ; but the working out of the 
 details is not easy, as the exact limits of each clause may be 
 variously fixed by different critics. Enough has been said to 
 call attention to the subject, and show how Isocrates combined 
 extraordinary fulness and splendour of style with perfect clear- 
 ness and simplicity of structure. 
 
 § 460. With regard to the ornament, or what the ancients 
 called figures, he employs the antithesis, sameness of length, 
 and sameness of opening or concluding sound, which Gorgias 
 had already used to excess. It seems that Isocrates was 
 
 r£x vas Ka ^ T ^\ v ' 7r€ P^ rous Xoyovs (piXoaocpiav, el tis 6av/j.d^oi Kal ri/xcfr] fxri 
 tovs irpcorous tqov epyav dpxo/xevovs ctAAa tovs Hpicd' '4ko.o~tov avrcov e|ep- 
 ya(o/j.4vovs, ^uTjSe tovs -rrepl tovtcou ^rjTodvras Xeyetv, Trepl wv /mrjdels irporepov 
 e'ipr]K€V, aXXa tovs ovtus iirifrTa/nevovs enrelV, ws ovSels av 'dXXos 5vv<xito. 
 Th^ latter sentence is a very elegant specimen of a rythmical and orderly 
 period. The verbs are put first, because the double objects (other arts 
 and eloquence) would otherwise keep the hearer too long in suspense as 
 to the construction. Then in the expression Oav/j.d(oi fcal rifxcf-r) the verb is 
 doubled, merely to increase the weight of a clause which introduces a lengthy 
 pair of oppositions distributed in a double pair of clauses. These clauses 
 are marked both by rimed endings, and by curious and delicate varieties 
 of expression. Thus Xeyeiu, eip-qKev, elirslu are used together to avoid 
 tautology of sound, /j.r)5els and ovSels with their corresponding tenses pro- 
 ducing the same effect. Moreover, Q()tovvtci.s compares with i-mo-Ta/xeyovs, 
 and the conditional /j.r)8els with Zvvolito. 
 1 pp. I48-53- 
 
CH. viii. CRITICISM ON ISOCRATES. 239 
 
 averse to other alliteration or plays upon words for this very 
 reason. But Gorgias had brought his rimes and alliterations 
 close together, whereas in Isocrates they help us to catch the 
 sense of balanced clauses. In maturer speeches he seems to 
 employ them less, and we know that later critics despised all 
 such arts as trivial. Isocrates avoids the aiacpopa, or repetition 
 of an emphatic word, common in Lysias, but agrees with him 
 in the use of self-questioning to add liveliness to the argument. 
 Asyndeton with him is rare, and so indeed are those figures of 
 thought, such as irony and apostrophe, which were so effective 
 in his successors. But we have already noticed the careful and 
 smooth junction of his sentences and subjects, which is not 
 consistent with violent emotions. 
 
 I must refer the special student to more explicit books for 
 closer analyses of Isocrates' rhetorical excellences. Mr. Jebb * 
 has given very full accounts of all his orations ; Blass has 100 
 weighty pages on his style and diction ; the Frenchmen 
 Cartelier and Havet have treated him from these and other 
 points of view. Of course he was the delight of later rhe- 
 toricians, and, had not Demosthenes arisen, would have been 
 the leading name in Greek oratory. 
 
 § 461. Owing to this competition, Isocrates, who had been in 
 his day praised above all living men, falls in for a good deal of 
 adverse criticism. The early critics Philonicus, Hieronymus, 
 and Cleochares are cited by Dionysius as having made all 
 manner of sound reflections on Isocrates' style, compared with 
 the simple grace of Lysias and the force of Demosthenes. His 
 sameness and smoothness, his agreeable flow, and never-failing 
 dignity pall upon the taste, which desires stronger flavour and 
 greater variety. Dionysius himself, in his tract on Isocrates, 
 and again in his remarks on Demosthenes, is accurate and 
 thoroughly sound in his judgments, for Isocrates claims to be 
 judged as a rhetorician, and in this field Dionysius was a really 
 great authority. Cicero also, whose style is exceedingly like 
 that of Isocrates, appears to have especially used him for a 
 model — as indeed did Demosthenes, and through these two 
 orators he has moulded all the prose of modern Europe. But 
 1 Attic Orators, vol. ii. 
 
240 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. viii. 
 
 his great followers supplied from their genius, or from other 
 models, the higher qualities in which he was wanting — concise- 
 ness, boldness, and, above all, pathos, which is hardly ever to be 
 found in the polished periods of the self-satisfied professor of 
 eloquence. Yet, strangely enough, though his moral exhorta- 
 tions were favourites in education, and his other speeches 
 studied for sophistic displays — though Dionysius and Herrno- 
 genes were very full and appreciative concerning him — we have 
 no scholia extant upon him except the few empty wordy notes 
 published by Coraesfrom a Vatican copy (65 L), and again by 
 W. Dindorf, with those on ^Eschines (Oxon. 1852). This is 
 the more remarkable, as we possess one MS. of his works, 
 which is better than most Greek MSS., the famous Urbinas, 
 which is now the basis of our critical editions. The others 
 are not to be named in comparison with this splendid codex. 
 The first printed edition is also of the earliest among Greek 
 classics, being, I think, the first prose author issued (Milan, 
 1493), and in the fine old type, which the influence of the 
 Aldine press unfortunately destroyed. We then have the hand- 
 some Aldine edition of 15 13, with the lesser orators. Since 
 that time this remarkable author has been less edited than 
 might have been expected. The Stephanus (1593) and the 
 Basle (Hieronymus Wolf, 1570) are the chief texts till we come 
 to Coraes (Paris, 1807) with the scholia, Bekker's text (Oxford, 
 1823) and the Zurich editors. There is also a good critical re- 
 vision with the fragments by Benseler and Blass (Teubner, 1880). 
 The Demonicus and Pancgyricus have been lately brought 
 out, with English notes, by J. E. Sandys (Cambridge, 1872), 
 the Panegyricus and Areopagiticus by Rauchenstein, and a few 
 other single orations by other scholars. Reiske's Index Grceci- 
 tatis IsocratecE was reprinted by T. Mitchell (Oxford, 1828). 
 The careful translation and commentary of the Due de Cler- 
 mont-Tonnerre are specially commented on by Egger (Paris, 
 1865). There are several German translations, and one Italian. 
 I am not aware of any in English. 
 
CH. IX. 241 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE LESSER CONTEMPORARIES OF ISOCRATES. 
 
 § 462. The historian of Greek literature must chiefly oc- 
 cupy himself with the greatest and best of each period, as its 
 real fruit both in showing the national genius, and in affecting the 
 literary history of the world. But our full consideration of Plato 
 and of Isocrates — the greatest lights of this generation — must 
 not blind us to the large number of lesser stars around them, 
 who as critics, imitators, and even as independent thinkers, 
 also affected their age, and had perhaps more influence than is 
 now apparent. The very names of these writers are unfamiliar 
 to ordinary students, and do not even appear in some histories 
 of Attic literature ; but this makes it the more desirable to give 
 such account of them as is necessary to a right estimate of 
 the period. 
 
 We must remember that the earlier sophists started from 
 universality of knowledge as their standpoint ; they professed 
 so to teach general culture, that on any given subject a man 
 might be able to speak with elegance and with persuasion. 
 Such was especially the aim of Gorgias, the most striking and 
 suggestive of the older generation, whose negative attitude in 
 philosophy was no doubt intended to arm the man of general 
 culture against the specialist in metaphysic. As has been said 
 above (p. 62), in the chapter on the Sophists, this attempt at 
 teaching universal wisdom, even through the help of scepticism, 
 broke down before the orthodoxy of the public, who resented 
 the tVn-ftx 40 "^" T <*>v vonuv (as Alkidamas well called it), and 
 before the attacks of the specialists, who by confining them- 
 selves to single subjects attained a depth and authority un- 
 attainable by polymaths. Antiphon, Plato, and Isocrates, each 
 in his own line, made an impression on the Greek world, 
 
 VOL. II. R 
 
242 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. ix. 
 
 which the more direct descendants of Gorgias sought in vain to 
 rival. That the latter school still existed, that they carried on 
 bitter controversies with one another, with Plato, and with 
 Isocrates, that they moreover published their views in a volu- 
 minous body of literature, is well known to us from the criti- 
 cisms of Dionysius- of Halicarnassus, from the anecdotes of 
 Diogenes Laertius, and from the lists of titles, and literary 
 scraps, in Suidas and in various grammatical and rhetorical 
 remains. 
 
 But of all this vast body of literature there only survive, 
 perhaps happily for us, four little speeches, and a rhetorical 
 tract. From these, however, we can form some estimate of the 
 lesser writers of the day, just as the spurious orations in the 
 works of Lysias and Demosthenes inform us, perhaps better 
 than the genuine, of the average practical eloquence at Athens. 
 § 463. The first of the four speeches is the Ajax and Odys- 
 seus t ascribed to AntistHenes, the founder of the Cynic, and 
 indirectly the Stoic philosophy — a very remarkable figure in 
 his day, as appears from the extraordinary sketch in Diogenes 
 Laertius. But the main interest in him belongs rather to the 
 history of Greek philosophy, to which I must refer the reader 
 for a full account of his opinions. Being the son of a Thracian 
 mother, and of poor circumstances, he began his studies late in 
 life, and when attracted by Socrates was perhaps the most 
 independent and original of all his pupils. This many-sided 
 man was not only a philosopher, but a rhetor, who had learned 
 from Protagoras and Prodicus ; he speaks disrespectfully of 
 Gorgias. His character may best be gathered from his conver- 
 sation in Xenophon's Symposium and Mernoirs of Socrates, in 
 both of which he takes a leading part. As he turned to prac- 
 tical ethics, and to the best rule of life, we find him ridiculing 
 Plato's Ideas, and setting up sceptical paradoxes, which are in 
 their turn ridiculed by Isocrates in his Helen. Plato, in his 
 Sophistes, and Aristotle in his Metaphysic, speak of him with 
 contempt as an unscientific and therefore unsuggestive teacher, 
 who was not properly educated or cultivated. 1 This seems 
 
 1 They seem to have the same sort of feeling about him which well trained 
 university men have for self-educated writers, who often possess greater 
 
CH-. ix. ANTISTHENES' WRITINGS. 243 
 
 strange in the face of his writings, which embraced tracts on 
 Homer, Theognis, and other poets, on various questions of 
 philosophy, and on rhetoric. The long and various list may be 
 seen in the Life by Diogenes. Xenophon and Theopompus, 
 among his cotemporaries, speak of him with great respect. 
 
 We are here, however, concerned with his rhetorical works, 
 which seem to have contained a number of tracts on style, and 
 also a number of specimens of oratory, in the form of imaginary 
 attacks on or defences of mythical heroes. His dialogues were 
 especially celebrated among later Greeks, and he is even cited 
 as a model of Attic diction. Cicero says l that the fourth and 
 fifth books of his Cyrus struck him ' like all Antisthenes' 
 writings, as rather the work of a subtle than of a learned man.' 
 The rhetors Dionysius and Hermogenes neglect him com- 
 pletely, and to this cause we perhaps owe the almost total loss 
 of his works. 
 
 § 464. The one document now ascribed to him is the argu- 
 ment of Ajax and Odysseus for the arms of Achilles, before a jury, 
 said, in the legend, to be composed of Trojan captives. But 
 this jury is not distinctly addressed as such in either speech, 
 and is treated with contempt by Ajax, as knowing nothing 
 of the case, and not being present at the previous conflicts. 
 Hence the jury must be supposed a different one, made up of 
 people who stayed at home, else we should certainly have had 
 appeals from both speakers to the experience of the Trojan cap- 
 tives during the war. The argument of Ajax is short and blunt, 
 insolent to the jury, and contemptuous to his adversary. With 
 a good deal of ethos, and even with a few rhetorical points 
 (such as the opposition, § 9 of diaytyvwcrKELv with Zialotafciv) 
 there is much slovenliness in the style; thus \6yoc or parts of 
 Xiytiv are used ten times in ten lines. 2 The answer of 
 Odysseus is naturally longer and more elaborate, and vindicates 
 the value of astuteness and wakefulness, of stratagems and 
 wiles, against the brute valour and ignorance of Ajax. There 
 
 originality and force, but are wanting in the form and grace only attainable 
 in an atmosphere of classical culture. Isocrates' school was doubtless the 
 literary Oxford, Plato's the scientific Cambridge of the day. 
 1 Ad. Att. xii. 38. 2 §§ 7-8. 
 
244 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. IX. 
 
 are constant allusions to the stories, and even to the expressions 
 and metaphors, of Homer's Iliad. 
 
 The genuineness of this piece has been most needlessly 
 attacked by many critics. Some think that these rhetorical 
 exercises about imaginary cases only came into fashion late in 
 the schools ; others observe that there is some avoidance of 
 hiatus, and therefore evidence of the prior existence of this 
 law. Others again call the speeches unreal and vapid. All 
 these difficulties have been disposed of by Blass, 1 who is one of 
 the few German critics ready to defend suspected works. 
 But he has hardly put enough stress on the important prece- 
 dent set by Euripides in his tragedies, which show us that 
 elaborate arguments on mythical quarrels were not only in 
 fashion long before the later schools, but were much to the 
 taste of the Attic public. Hence it is quite natural that we 
 should hear of almost all the sophists occupying themselves 
 with rhetorical displays in defence of Helen or Paris, or even 
 Polyphemus, and in attacking Palamedes and other heroes of 
 good report. These were in fact the favourite subjects for 
 those sophists who wished to show their cleverness in teaching 
 the art of debate. So far as 1 know, Socrates was the first 
 modern personage who afforded materials for such exercises. 
 As regards the absence of hiatus, there is no reason to think this 
 work was brought out by Antisthenes until Isocrates was an 
 established teacher, and his principles of composition generally 
 recognised. The avowed hostility of Antisthenes and other 
 sophists to Isocrates could not save them from his influence, 
 and there is every evidence that this particular law of euphony 
 found early and universal favour. It is greatly to be regretted 
 that all the dialogues of Antisthenes are lost, for in them old 
 critics recognised the best specimens of his style. The Ajax 
 and Odysseus is not wanting in ability, but as a rhetorical 
 specimen is poor and weak when compared with the greater 
 productions of the age. 
 
 § 465. A lesser figure, but one more strictly belonging to our 
 history, is that of Alkidamas, the son of Diokles, born in ^Eolis, 
 who seems to have been contemporary with Isocrates, for his 
 1 AB. vol. ii. pp. 310, sq. 
 
CH. IX. ALKIDAMAS. 24 5 
 
 extant speech about the Sophists came out before the Panegy- 
 ricus, and he is, moreover, mentioned as the master of the ora- 
 tor ^Eschines, who was born in 390 B.C. This man was not 
 only the pupil, but in the strictest sense the follower of Gor- 
 gias. For Antisthenes, though a rhetor and a sophist, was also 
 a Socratic philosopher, and this side of his teaching, as an ex- 
 aggeration of Socratism, was far more important than his Sophis- 
 tic. Alkidamas, on the contrary, is the strict rhetor and sophist 
 combined, who professes to teach men . how to speak well on 
 any subject, and his theory is put forth in the able tract still 
 extant — a manifesto directed against the school of Isocrates. 
 Suidas, indeed, calls him a philosopher, and the titles of some 
 physical works by him are mentioned, but these seem of slight 
 import. Even in formal knowledge of rhetoric he seems to 
 have done little, nor is any official techne of his now known 
 from certain indications. But Tzetzes, who says he read 
 several of his books, mentions that the Encomium on Death he 
 could not find (though Cicero refers to it l ). There are, besides 
 a (j)vaiKog Xoyog, the Messeniakos, composed on the opposite side 
 of the case from Isocrates' Archidamos, the Eulogies of the 
 courtesan Thais, his Mouseion, and the speech about the 
 Sophists, which last is not mentioned by the ancients. The 
 Mouseion is interesting as having contained an account of the 
 contest of Homer and Hesiod, and of Hesiod's death. 2 
 
 As a rhetorician Alkidamas seems to have asserted himself 
 to be the rival of Isocrates, and with some success ; for though 
 posterity has decided long ago in favour of Isocrates, Aristotle 
 (in his Rhetoric) combats Alkidamas' claims with considerable 
 care and asperity. He censures him as being frigid, and illus- 
 trates it by many instances of the excessive use of composite 
 terms, the use of poetical words, and the excess of epithets, which 
 were used not as spice but as food in his writing. 3 Dionysius 
 
 1 Tusc. Disp. i. § 116. 
 
 2 I have discussed it above (Vol. I. § 87). 
 
 3 Rhet. iii. 3, § 3 : A'^ T " 'AA./ci8a/uai/T0s ^ u XPCt <palverai' ov yap r)8v- 
 (TixaTi xpyTcu aAA' ws iSea/J.ari to7s iiriderois, ovrw tvvkvo7s Kal ixsifoai Kal 
 iiri8r)\ois' oiov, oi>x ISpwra, aWa tqv vypbv Ibpura- Kal ovk, (Is "lo~Qfxia, 
 d\A.' els tt]V Tuu ''lad/u.ictiV iravi\yvpi.v Kal ov^l vdfiovs, aXAcl t'.m t&j/ 7roAea.v 
 ^acriAeTs vS/jlovs' Kal ov dpSfxcp, a\\a Spopaia ttj t9js tyv\f t s op/j.fi' Kal ov^l 
 
246 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. ix. 
 
 follows in the wake of Aristotle. Nevertheless, his extant ora- 
 tion, as Blass remarks, saves him somewhat from these charges, 
 and shows him to have been a rhetor of ability, who advanced 
 with the times. 
 
 § 466. The speech about those who write set speeches, or 
 about the Sophists, 1 is a distinct defence of the school of Gorgias 
 against that of Isocrates, which was now bidding fair to out- 
 strip it. It is a Lehrprogram, just like Isocrates' Kara aotyiarm', 
 and is alluded to in Isocrates' Panegyricus (§ n), at least pro- 
 bably, for I do not think the references at all so certain as 
 Reinhardt and Blass do. The orator desires to show that the 
 mere composers of carefully written speeches in the closet in 
 which they spent their lives ' had missed the greater part of 
 both rhetoric and philosophy, and should rather be called poets 
 than sophists.' He supports this thesis by a string of sound 
 but not logically connected arguments, in which the whole case 
 is well and fairly stated. The difficulties of reciting a set speech, 
 the ludicrous effect of sticking in it, the hazards of inserting 
 any sudden inspiration, are all put with clearness and force. 
 There is, in fact, from the history of Greek eloquence no docu- 
 ment which represents more thoroughly the modern and 
 common-sense views, as opposed to the artificial finish of 
 ancient rhetoric. Alkidamas by no means despises writing ; 
 he fully appreciates the value and even the necessity of such a 
 practice, but he insists that a proper training in extempore 
 speaking is the only safe and thorough instruction in the art of 
 practical oratory. The style of this excellent tract is in accord- 
 ance with the matter. The author shows that he has benefited 
 by Isocrates' work. He writes in good periods, he avoids un- 
 necessary hiatus and alliterations ; he attends to rythm and 
 balance in his clauses. He is, in fact, a pupil of Gorgias who 
 
 fiovcreTov, aWk rb rrjs cpovews irapaAafi&v fxovffeiov ' teal crKvOpcoirbv tt)v 
 (ppuvTiSa rrjs x^vxvs ' Kal ov -^apLros, akha iravd^fiov x&P LT0S 5r)iu.iovpy6s' 
 
 Kol 0lK.0v6fJ.0S TTJS TtCV aK0v6vT(t)V TjSovljS' KOU OV KhddoiS, OAA.O TO?S T7JS t/A.7JJ 
 
 kKolSols &7re/cpui|/€ ' Kal ov, ib crcofxa irap'fiuTrio'x^v, aAAa rfyv rov arcvfiaros 
 aXd%i}Vi\v' Kal avrifii/xov r\\v rrjs tyvxys iiuOvfiiav (tovto 8' a\xa Kal SlttAovv 
 Kal iiriOerow chare iroirf/xa yiyverai) Kal o'vtcds el-eSpov t)]V ttjs juox^pias 
 VTrepfioXiiv. 
 
 1 irepl twv rovs ypairrovs h6yovs ypa<p6vrcov f) irepl trocpitrruiv. 
 
ch. ix. THE ACCUSATION OF PALAMEDES. 247 
 
 has distinctly gone beyond his master. These are the results 
 brought out by the careful examination of Spengel, who first 
 made good the genuineness of the speech against earlier 
 doubters, and whose arguments Blass has supplemented. 
 
 § 467. But the critics are unanimous in rejecting the second 
 speech, the accusation of Palamedes by Odysseus, as the work of 
 another author. It is, like the defence of Palamedes ascribed 
 to Gorgias, in form a court speech, resting rather upon general 
 grounds (ehora) than upon evidence, for though witnesses are 
 cited to prove that a traitorous missive was shot into the camp 
 on an arrow, neither the missive (though quoted) nor the arrow 
 is produced. The rest of the speech is an artful Xodofjia, or 
 attack on Palamedes' former life, showing that treachery might 
 naturally be expected from him. I do not share in the con- 
 tempt usually expressed for this speech by German critics. The 
 writer has a bad case, and knows it, but he gives us an instructive 
 picture of the sort of arguments permitted, and perhaps even 
 thought effective, before Athenian juries. For though the com- 
 position (especially as to hiatus) shows it not to be the work of 
 Alkidamas, Blass has proved that there is no reason to deny its 
 antiquity, and that it may be the work of some contempora- 
 neous rhetor. He suggests the rhetor Polycrates, to whom 
 Isocrates addressed his letter of advice, 1 and who was well 
 known as the advocate of desperate causes, in order to display 
 his acuteness. Such would be the present speech, as well as 
 the attack on Socrates, the defence of Busiris, of Polyphemus, 
 the encomium of Clytemnestra, and others. He, moreover, 
 composed a \01S0pia of the Lacedaemonians, and encomia 
 of mice, of pots, and of counters. If the encomium of Paris 
 was written by him, the citations from it show it to have been 
 the best of these tours de force. Blass accordingly compares 
 him in his juggling rhetoric with the dialectical acrobats 
 Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, whom we meet in Plato. 
 
 § 468. Of Zoilus, mentioned as both a rhetor and a historian, 
 and moreover as the notorious Scourge of Homer, we know little 
 beyond what Suidas and the Homeric scholia tell us. From 
 this point of view he has already been noticed. 2 The sophist 
 
 1 Cf. above, p. 220. 2 Vol. I. p. 34. 
 
248 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. IX- 
 
 Lycophron is a very hazy, but yet interesting figure. We know 
 from allusions in Aristotle that (in addition to some logical 
 subtleties) he asserted noble birth to be an idle distinction, and 
 what is far more important, that laws were the mere negative 
 guarantee of justice among citizens. This last principle, taken 
 in connection with Lycophron's democratic views, has suggested 
 the probability that he may have followed up the idea of Hip- 
 podamus, and set up a democratic ideal against the aristocratic 
 ideals of Plato and his school. To the latter laws were a system 
 of positive training, intended to watch and direct the whole life 
 of the citizen ; to the former our modern notion may have 
 been revealed, that laws are only the protection of a society 
 governing itself in ordinary life without state control. If this 
 be indeed so, we may deeply regret the loss of the works of so 
 advanced and reasonable a thinker. But our evidence is too 
 scanty to be satisfactory. 1 
 
 § 469. Far more important to us is Anaximenes of Lampsa- 
 cus, son of Aristocles, pupil of Zoilus and the Cynic Diogenes, 
 teacher and companion of Alexander in his campaigns. As he 
 is reported to have written Alexander's life, and as the treatise 
 extant alludes to nothing after 340 B.C., he may have been a 
 mature and active teacher and writer for the period thus com- 
 prised (340-20 B.C.) His grateful fellow-citizens, whom he had 
 saved from Alexander's wrath, set up a bronze statue of him in 
 Olympia, which Pausanias saw. He was the master of the 
 notorious Archias, who hunted down Demosthenes, and he 
 is said to have been specially hostile to Theopompus, whose 
 style he parodied in a libel on Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, 
 called the Trikaranos, and published under Theopompus' 
 name. 2 
 
 1 Cf. Vahlen's article on Lycophron, Rhein. Mus. vol. xxi., and Suse- 
 mihl's interesting notes on the allusions to him in his edition of Aristotle's 
 Politics (ii. pp. 67, 143), where further writers on the subject are indi- 
 cated. 
 
 2 There is a remarkable extract, giving the substance of it, in the 
 rhetor Aristides (i. p. 338), which the reader will find quoted in Muller's 
 FHG. i. p. lxxiv., note, in the Prolegomena on Theopompus. It argues 
 — in my opinion with great justice— that none of the leading states of Greece 
 ever knew how to carry out an imperial policy. The author appears to 
 
CH. ix. ANAXIMENES' WORKS. 249 
 
 These jealousies and rivalries are important as showing the 
 competition among literary men, and the activity with which 
 authorship was carried on as a profession during the fourth 
 century B.C. Both as sophist and rhetor Anaximenes was in 
 his day celebrated. He was a famous extemporiser, composed 
 court speeches for others, and harangues, of which an encomium 
 of Helen is cited. In more serious literature he wrote a tract 
 on Homer, no doubt owing to Zoilus' example, and some phi- 
 losophical book from which ethical fragments are quoted by 
 Stobseus. But his history was the most important. Though 
 called Nellenica, it began with the origin of gods and men, and 
 reached down to the battle of Mantinea (in twelve books). 
 Eight more embraced the Philippica, and the acts of Alexan- 
 der. We also hear of a tract ' on the deaths of kings.' All 
 these works are lost, and we can only imagine him to have been 
 a rival of Theopompus and Ephorus, an Isocratic historian, 
 with the capital fault of treating history as a branch of oratory. 
 Dionysius speaks slightingly of him, as a ' Jack of all trades, 
 but master of none.' l 
 
 § 470. The extant techne was saved by being foisted in among 
 Aristotle's works, with a spurious preface in the form of an 
 epistle to Alexander. As early as the sixteenth century, Petrus 
 Victorius conjectured from the allusions of Quintilian that it 
 was the work of Anaximenes. Spengel has supported its 
 genuineness . in this sense with additional arguments. 2 This 
 
 have shown this in contrast to the policy of Alexander, to whom he was 
 attached. 
 
 1 Isceus, § 19. 
 
 2 It should, however, be noticed that Zeller {Aristotle, p. 78, note, 
 third German edition) hesitates, with Rose and Campe, to accept Spengel's 
 theory, on the ground that the dedication to Alexander is not foreign to the 
 rest, though plainly un-Aristotelian, and (what is far more important) that 
 the work shows in several places the influence of Aristotle in its nomencla- 
 ture and in its method. The careful examination of Mr. Cope [Introd. to 
 Aristotle's Rhetoric, pp. 401, sq.) rather goes to disprove this view, and 
 leads us to suspect that the most important points of agreement were 
 produced by a deliberate alteration of this lesser rhetoric to suit the 
 accredited views of Aristotle in his classical work. Mr. Cope seems to 
 incline rather to the work being previous to Aristotle's than a later produc- 
 
250 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 techne is therefore possibly the only theoretical treatise of the 
 kind extant from the age of the Greek sophists, when the rhe- 
 toric of Aristotle had not yet eclipsed all the rest. It gives us 
 the condition of the theory of eloquence among his predeces- 
 sors, and is consequently of considerable interest. But as 
 literature it is nought, for it consists wholly of dry logical divi- 
 sions, with the barest possible examples, and unfortunately 
 original examples, by way of illustration. The most interesting 
 section (30) is perhaps that on the proem, intended to conciliate 
 the audience, which must be either favourable, unfavourable, or 
 neutral. If unfavourable, it is so either to the speaker, or the 
 cause, or the speech. If to the speaker, either for past or pre- 
 sent causes, because he is too young, or too old, or talks "too 
 often, or not often enough. Hints are given in each of these 
 cases. The book ends with a collection of gnomes, or ethical 
 commonplaces. 1 
 
 While the author is full and sensible on the arrangement 
 of a speech as a whole, he tells us nothing of the mysteries of 
 style, beyond avoiding the hiatus, and studying alliteration ; he 
 nowhere defines rythm, or discusses such ornaments as meta- 
 phors ; in fact, with all his divisions and subdivisions, he re- 
 mains on the surface of the subject. It is here that his work 
 contrasts with the philosophical rhetoric of Aristotle, which was 
 probably written a few years later. There are, indeed, points 
 of contact in the two treatises, but while Anaximenes (if it be 
 he) thinks of nothing of practical precepts, which are directly 
 useful to a speaker, Aristotle thinks of little but the psycho- 
 lion, though he justly hesitates to ascribe it to Anaximenes, and prefers to 
 call it Anonymi rhetorica. The resemblances between the two treatises are 
 distinct, and yet so general and apparently so undesigned as to persuade me 
 that there was certainly no borrowing on either side, but that the rhetors 
 of the day had agreed upon some points which appear in both works. But 
 had the anonymous work been really later, as Zeller supposes, the resem- 
 blances, if there were any, must have been far more frequent and definite. 
 On the other hand, Cope points out (p. 409) some expressions which have 
 a suspiciously later tone. The whole question is full of difficulty, nor do 
 I see the prospect of a definite solution. 
 
 1 For a fuller analysis the reader may consult Blass, Att. Ber, ii. pp. 
 355, sq. 
 
CH. ix. EDITIONS AND MSS. 251 
 
 logical conditions, and, as has been often observed, his Rhetoric 
 never trained a speaker. 
 
 It is, I think, hardly fair of Blass to criticise this tract as a 
 sample of Anaximenes' style, even though Dionysius quotes it 
 when censuring the author. Of course a dry manual like this 
 would not affect the dignity of his Moralia, or the grace of his 
 historical narrative. The style is as simple and straightforward 
 as possible, and as such well suited to its subject. I will only 
 repeat that here, as among all early rhetors, there are no definite 
 laws for grace of diction and euphony of composition beyond 
 the obvious points which they all make. It was very well to 
 speak of eloquence as a matter of training, of chaste and ornate 
 prose as a matter of prescription. Whether in Isocrates, or in 
 Plato, or in Demosthenes, the euphony really came from the 
 delicate aesthetic sense of the individual master, and could 
 never be transferred to inferior pupils by any handbook of 
 rules, or prescriptions of arguments. 
 
 § 471. Bibliographical. The best separate editions of the 
 techne addressed to Alexander, which appears in all the com- 
 plete texts of Aristotle, are Gaisford's (Oxon, 1820) and 
 Spengel's (Zurich, 1844), who appends illustrations from the 
 extant orators, as the author unfortunately constructs his own 
 examples. Spengel has also included it in his collection of 
 rhetorical tracts. As regards the text of the orations just dis- 
 cussed, they are found, as well as the Hele7i of Gorgias, in the 
 MSS. of Antiphon and Andocides, but not all in each MS. 
 The Helen is most frequently found ; the oration of Alkidamas 
 in the best MSS. They are printed in the Zurich edition of the 
 orators, and by Blass with his Antiphon. There are not, I 
 think, any special commentaries on them, except some articles 
 in German classical periodicals, and a few special tracts, such 
 as Vahlen's der Rhetor Alkidamas (Wien, 1864), Winckelmann's 
 Antisthenis fragmenta, Cope's Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric, 
 p. 401, sq., on the techne addressed to Alexander, and others 
 not worth enumerating here, Blass' history of Attic oratory is 
 quite exhaustive on all these matters, and should be in the 
 hands of every serious student of the subject. 
 
252 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. X. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 XENOPHON. 
 
 § 472. Neither the birth nor the death of this remarkable 
 and characteristic figure in Greek literature can now be fixed 
 with any certainty, but for literary purposes we can approximate 
 to them sufficiently. Most of his biographers have been misled 
 by either of two mistakes : first, the accepting of the false 
 legend that Socrates saved his life at the battle of Delium, a 
 story implicitly contradicted by Alcibiades' evidently historical 
 account of this retreat in Plato's Symposium; secondly, the 
 assumption that Xenophon was present, as a youth of fourteen 
 or fifteen, at his own Symposium, an assumption in no manner 
 warranted by his solitary opening remark, that he wishes to 
 record the lighter conversations of eminent and refined men : 
 o'tc, c)£ Trapayf.v6}jLEV()q ravra yiyvu)(TK(i), $r)\w(rai fiovKofiai. The 
 scene being laid at Athens in 420 B.C., would require us to 
 assume 435 at latest for his birth, whereas Cobet has clearly 
 shown l that he speaks of himself in the Anabasis as a very 
 young man, and even specially numbers himself with those 
 under thirty years of age. This, as well as his amateur position, 
 without command in the Grecian army, makes it certain that he 
 was not born before 429 B.C., and not much later, seeing the 
 maturity of his character and conduct in the famous ' Retreat 
 of the Ten Thousand.' We must therefore reject the date of 
 Kriiger and Clinton, who think him to have been born about 
 444 B.C., chiefly I think on the strength of the fable about the 
 battle of Delium. There is, on the contrary, nothing known of 
 Xenophon before 400 B.C. He then introduces himself, not as 
 a tried veteran who had fought through the Peloponnesian war, 
 
 1 Nov. Lectt. pp. 535, sq. 
 
ch. x. LIFE OF X EN OP HON, 253 
 
 but as a young man who was still a disciple or follower of 
 Socrates, and who was looking out for some opening in life. 
 This general impression is, to my mind, so naturally produced 
 by the narrative, that I wonder how experienced critics, like 
 Sauppe, can still maintain the old chronology. What can be 
 more decisive than the conclusion of his first speech ? x el & 
 v/uelg TCLTTETe fj.e //yfterOcu, ovCev 7rjooc!>a<7i£o^uat ti)v ffXnclav, 
 fc\\a teal aK/nci^eiv ffyovfiai epvKeiv cnv kfiavrov tci rara. The 
 man who says this must be either above or below middle age. 
 The former is impossible. We must therefore consider him 
 not over thirty at this time. Cobet has cited much additional 
 evidence. The latest events noticed in his works are the con- 
 clusion of the Social war between Athens and her allies 
 (356—5 B.C.), together with the beginning of the Phocian or 
 Sacred war. This is the proper interpretation of the allusion 2 
 to the Phocians abandoning Delphi, and the Thebans endea- 
 vouring to seize it — an earlier affair, which cannot mean the 
 final ruin of the Phocians (347-6). This has also been well 
 explained by Cobet. 3 We have thus a period of seventy-two 
 or seventy-three years for his life, which is more probable than 
 the ninety years claimed for him by Lucian. 
 
 § 473. During this momentous epoch of Greek history, we 
 have only a few passages in Xenophon's life clearly before us 
 — passages however of great interest, and indeed of national 
 importance. He was the son of Gryllus, an Athenian, of the 
 Eretrian deme, and apparently an aristocrat, to judge from his 
 habits and associates. According to the legend in Diogenes, 
 given in his Life among the philosophers, he early attracted the 
 notice of Socrates, who stopped him in the way, and asked him 
 where men of honour were to be sought ; and on his replying 
 that he did not know, said, 'Follow me and learn.' His dis- 
 cipleship is, at all events, certain, though we cannot perceive 
 any adequate moral results from such splendid teaching. We 
 may suppose that first his youth, and possibly his connections 
 among the oligarchs of 411 B.C., prevented him from taking any 
 prominent place at Athens, where indeed all the later war was 
 
 1 Anabasis, iii. I, 25. 2 Hellen. v. 8. 3 Nov. Lectt. pp. 756, sq. 
 
254 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. X. 
 
 a naval war, for which he shows but little taste. Certain it is 
 that we find him after the Restoration at Athens, with no fixed 
 course of life, or good prospects, and ready to accept the invita- 
 tion of his friend Proxenus to come to Asia, and ingratiate 
 himself with that eminent phil-Hellene, the younger Cyrus. 
 
 It is, however, riot impossible that before his departure he had 
 something to do with bringing out the unfinished work of Thucy- 
 dides, and that he commenced his Hellenica, as its continuation, 
 in which he relates the closing fortunes of the Peloponne- 
 sian war, the Tyranny, and the Restoration by the patriotism of 
 Thrasybulus. This valuable piece of contemporary history bears 
 every trace of earlier composition, and of a different temper, 
 from the later books ; and I even incline to the theory of a 
 separate publication, as we can hardly imagine the author not 
 rehandling and modifying his early statements, if he came after- 
 wards to put forth the whole book for the first time in its 
 completeness. 
 
 § 474. His adventures in x\sia, where he attended the battle 
 of Cunaxa, as a sort of voluntary field officer, then consulted with 
 the Greek generals, and at last became himself a chief com- 
 mander and organiser of the Retreat — all this is among the 
 most familiar chapters in Greek history. We will return pre- 
 sently to the question of his credibility in this narrative. He 
 seems to have been then rather a young man to take the lead, 
 but without doubt his good general education, and his ready 
 eloquence, marked him out among an army of desponding mer- 
 cenaries, none of whom excelled him except in military experi- 
 ence. How he obtained the technical knowledge for manoeu- 
 vring large bodies of troops seems very strange, and is only 
 to be explained by the strong natural taste he everywhere dis- 
 plays for evolutions, perhaps still more by the rudeness of war- 
 fare among the Greeks, who seem to have known little or 
 nothing of strategy till Epaminondas arose. 
 
 Whatever share, however, he had in saving the 10,000 
 mercenaries, there can be no doubt, from his own narrative 
 and his laboured self-justification, that he was a most im- 
 portant agent in their travels and troubles after they had 
 reached the Greek colonies on the Euxine. He evidently 
 
CH. x. XENOPHON'S LATER YEARS. 255 
 
 hoped to become the founder of a new city. When this 
 scheme failed, he made himself the agent of the Spartans at 
 Byzantium to scatter or to disarm the very dangerous army 
 of marauders, which well-nigh sacked the city, and which must 
 have been the dread of all the colonies within its reach. In 
 consequence of these services, and of his strengthening the 
 army of Thimbron (in 399 B.C.) with the remnant of his tried 
 soldiers, he became intimate with the Spartan magnates, and 
 especially with Agesilaus, to whom he particularly attached 
 himself. 
 
 About the same time, but for reasons which are unknown 
 to us, he was sentenced to banishment from Athens. If this sen- 
 tence had certainly come after the battle of Coronea, its explana- 
 tion would be easy ; but it is alleged by old authorities to have 
 been because of his campaign with the mercenaries of Cyrus, 
 which seems inexplicable. At all events, he accompanied 
 Agesilaus on his homeward march, and was present at the 
 momentous battle of Coronea (394 B.C.), of which he gives us a 
 graphic description. He afterwards settled in Skillus, a Lacedae- 
 monian district, some miles south of Olympia, and on the road 
 to Sparta, so that he could see his friends on their way to the 
 festival. In this retreat, which he digresses to describe in the 
 Anabasis, 1 he combined religion, sport, and literary work. He 
 erected a shrine to the Ephesian Artemis from the proceeds of 
 his spoils, which he had deposited safely with a certain Mega- 
 byzus, her priest at Ephesus, for votive purposes, when he set 
 out on his perilous march with Agesilaus. As the district was 
 full of game, the main materials for the periodic feast were 
 procured by the hunting of Xenophon and his sons, aided by 
 any who chose to join. 
 
 § 475. Most of Xenophon's works were produced in this de- 
 lightful retreat, which seemed unlikely to be disturbed by further 
 wanderings and troubles. But we hear that of his two sons, 
 whom he sent to fight with Athens and Sparta at Mantinea, 
 one (Gryllus) was killed fighting bravely in the cavalry, so 
 bravely that his death was commemorated in one of the 
 pictures which Pausanias saw long after in the Acropolis of 
 
 1 iii. 5- 
 
256 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 Athens. We also hear, on Diogenes' authority, that the 
 Eleans invaded his estate, and drove him out, so that he spent 
 his last days at Corinth. According to others, his sentence of 
 banishment was rescinded on the proposal of Eubulus, and he 
 revisited his native city, after a long lapse of chequered years. 
 His death is placed by Diogenes (after Stesicleides) in 360 B.C. ; 
 though if the tract on the Revenues be accepted as genuine, he 
 must have lived till 356 at least, and this is thought the more 
 probable theory. Yet I find it hard to reject so precise a notice 
 as that of Diogenes. 1 We know nothing more of his private 
 affairs, except that his wife Philesia is said to have been brought 
 home from Asia. An earlier wife, Soteira, is also mentioned 
 as accompanying him to Aspasia's house. Among the other 
 Xenophons enumerated by Diogenes, it is curious to find one 
 mentioned as the biographer of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, 
 the very men whom our author has passed over with unjust 
 neglect. His personal beauty was much praised ; I am not 
 aware that there is extant of him any authentic bust. 
 
 In character he was a very typical Athenian, and though 
 not pre-eminent when we think of Pericles or Thucydides, a far 
 truer average specimen of his age than they. The very first 
 point which strikes us is his religiousness, which is perpetually 
 cropping up, but which, when closely examined, turns out to be 
 mere prudence with regard to the gods, and not real piety. In 
 his own account of the transactions at the close of the Retreat, 
 and of the general affairs of his time as a historian, he shows 
 far less honesty and singleness of mind than his sceptical pre- 
 decessor. There are not wanting evidences of both selfish- 
 ness and vanity in the man, in addition to the unfairness of 
 mind which has robbed us of a contemporary portrait of 
 Epaminondas, by one of the very few capable of estimating 
 his military genius. But Xenophon is so intent on laud- 
 ing Agesilaus and the Spartans, that he hides from us the real 
 hero of his day. How far this one-sided manner of writing 
 
 1 ii. 6. 56 : Kareffrpe^/e 5e, KaOd (prjariv ^T7)(TLK\ei5r]s 6 'AOtjvcuos iv rfj 
 twv apx&vroov Kal 'OXvjjltviovik&v avaypacpfj, iVei irpaiTcp rrjs Tvip.Tn7]s Kal 
 £K<xTO(rTT)s 'OA.t>yU.7rta8os, i-rrl &px<*VTOs KaWidTj/xlBov, e</>' ov Kal <Sfi\nciros 6 
 'Auvvtov MctKeSovcov f/p^e. 
 
en. x." THE TRACT ON THE ATHENIAN STATE. 257 
 
 history may have been produced by the influence of Isocrates 
 will be discussed in its proper place. 
 
 § 476. Turning to his Works, it seems that he is one of those 
 few authors, like Plato, whose literary labours have been handed 
 down to us complete. The dark ages have exacted from him 
 no tribute of oblivion. The ancients counted forty books, 
 which corresponds fairly with the sum of the subdivisions of our 
 collection, nor is any work cited by them not to be found in 
 our catalogue, even when their citations cannot be verified in 
 our texts. As to their chronology, it is tolerably certain that 
 one of them, the tract on the Athenian Constitution, is far ante- 
 rior in date to all the rest. But though the once-received early 
 date for Xenophon's birth might make his authorship of the 
 tract possible, most good critics have agreed in declaring it an 
 anonymous production, which has been incorporated in his 
 works on account of its analogy to the genuine tract on the 
 Lacedtzmonian Constitution. The condition of Athenian affairs 
 assumed in the work cannot have existed after 425 B.C., so that we 
 have before us (discounting the fragment of Gorgias) the earliest 
 extant specimen of Attic prose ', the remains of Antiphon being 
 generally supposed to date from the latest period of his career. 
 
 But here even the partial agreement of critics about this 
 very interesting tract is exhausted, if we except their perhaps 
 harmonious chorus of complaint as to the miserably corrupt 
 and lacerated condition of the text. Indeed, if we consult the 
 critical preface of Sauppe, we may find, even on the date of 
 its composition, opinions varying from that already given, 
 down to the Macedonian period, the latter extreme being sup- 
 ported by Bernhardy, on account of the statement * that the 
 Attic dialect was an idiom containing a mixture of all the rest. 
 There has been an equally great and bootless controversy 
 about the authorship. Few scholars maintain Xenophon's 
 claim, though Cobet seems to admit it But (in addition to 
 Thucydides !) both Critias and Alcibiades have been named, 
 
 1 liretTO (pwvr]V iraffav olkovovtcs e|eA.e'|ai>TO tovto ixev e/c rrjs tovto §6 e/c 
 ttjs. Kal ol fx^v "EWrjues I5(a fia.Xh.ov itdi (pu>vrj ko\ biairy /cat crx^f xaTl 
 XpGovrai, 'AOrivaloL Se K€Kpafx4vp e| a-ndvTwv t<2v 'EA\-f)vwv k«J fiapfidptov 
 (ii. 8). This is a wonderful statement. 
 VOL. II. S 
 
258 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 because the work is professedly that of an Athenian aristocrat 
 hostile to the democracy, and nevertheless defending the expe- 
 diency of the policy of the demos. Both these suggestions seem 
 to me absurd; for all the evidence we have concerning Critias 
 shows him to have been a rhetor of far greater skill than the 
 author of our tract, and we may be certain he would not have 
 written in defence of the demos from any point of view. As 
 to Alcibiades, there seems to me one sentence in the work 
 directly aimed at him : ' I indeed excuse democracy in the 
 populace, for it is natural that anyone should benefit him- 
 self ; but whosoever does not belong to the populace, and yet 
 prefers living in a democratic to living in an oligarchical polity, 
 has [evidently] laid himself out for crime, and knows that it 
 is easier for a miscreant to pass muster in a democratic than in 
 an oligarchical state.' This is the reflection of an oligarch upon 
 his fellows who adopt radical or whig politics, and play the 
 part of democratic leaders. 
 
 Passing, then, from this resultless enquiry, we come to 
 another cloud of controversy about the original form and scope 
 of the tract, some explaining its direct question-and-answer 
 style as implying a familiar letter ; others (Cobet and C. Wachs- 
 muth) maintaining that an older dialogue has been cut down 
 into an argument by an inexpert writer ; others again, such as 
 Kirchhoff, analysing the work sentence by sentence, and de- 
 claring it a mere congeries of badly connected fragments. But 
 Kirchhoff has dissolved in his crucible even the de Corona of 
 Demosthenes ; nor do I think that any ordinary speech, for 
 example, of Andocides, would afford him fewer points of 
 attack than this tract. If it be indeed an early essay in Attic 
 prose, when no model existed for an argumentative treatise 
 except, perhaps, a few dialogues of Zeno, we may fairly expect 
 to find a conversational style with question and answer, as well 
 as rapid transitions without strict logical nexus. And indeed, 
 Rettig, in a careful tract, 1 has shown that, with a few trans- 
 positions of paragraphs at the close, the whole tract may be 
 brought into a reasonable shape. 
 
 Turning to the matter of the work, the reader will find it one of 
 
 1 Die Planmassigkeit der 'AOrjvaicuy iro\iTeia (Wien, 1877). 
 
CH. X. EDITIONS OF THE TRACT. 259 
 
 the most interesting and instructive documents of the age, and 
 very remarkable for its Machiavellian tone, that is to say, its calm 
 ignoring of the right and wrong of the case as irrelevant, and 
 its discussion of the question : Given a democracy, are the 
 provisions of the Athenian democracy expedient for its pre- 
 servation? Had Machiavelli written his projected tract on the 
 Republic as a sequel to his Principe, he must have produced 
 a very similar argument, though with historical illustrations, 
 such as Aristotle uses, which are foreign to the author before 
 us. Thus the whole temper of the writer is that of the 
 school of Antiphon or Thucydides, not that of Plato or Xeno- 
 phon. I will quote a specimen of the style. 1 In addition to 
 G. Sauppe's text (Tauchnitz), the special editions of Kirchhoff 
 (Berlin, 1874) and C. Wachsmuth (Gottingen Program, 1874) 
 are to be recommended. For a summary of the various 
 controversies, Wachsmuth's and Sauppe's prefaces, KirchhofFs 
 paper in the Transact, of the Berlin Academy (1874), and 
 Rettig's criticism of this and other essays (Zeitschr. fur ost. 
 Gymn., 1877), will suffice most readers, and will indicate to the 
 unwearied multitudinous special studies which maybe consulted. 
 § 477. There is the greatest difficulty in arranging chrono- 
 logically the remaining works attributed to Xenophon, and the 
 differences of opinion are so great and ably defended, that in a 
 practical survey like the present it seems best to give one's 
 
 1 ii. §§ 14-16 : 'Evhs Se evSee?s elcrtv el yap vt)<tov o'lKovvres OaXarro- 
 updropes ficrav 'AOyvaToi, vir^pxev av ovrats iroieTv p.ev kclkus, el yfSovXovTO, 
 -Ki^xeiv Se /xr}Sev, eats rrjs daXdrrrjs ^ip%ov, fiK]Se rpn^Qrivai ri]v avrwv yyv 
 p.t\Se TrpocrSex^cyOat robs iroXepious' vvv Se ol yewpyovvres ftal ot vXoixnoi 
 'Adrjvaicov virepxovTcu rovs iroXefxiovs frnXXov, 6 Se SrjfMos. are eZ elScbs '6ti 
 ovSev tS)v <t$5>v ifXTTprja-avaiv ovSe Te/xov(rtv, aSe&s (r) ual oi>x vTrepxofievos 
 avrovs. irpbs Se tovtois Kal erepov Seovs airr}XXay/j.ev<H av -f\aav, el vrjaov 
 wkovv, fx-qSewore irpoSodrivai tt\v ttoXiv utt' oXiyow [Uf]Sh irvXas avoixOrivai firfhe 
 TroXe/xiavs eireurveaeiv' tt&s yap vrjcrov oIkovvt&v ravr av iyiyvero ; yuf?5' 
 av crracFiacrai rep Sijfiea fxi]Sev, el vrj(rov $kow vvv fiev yap el aracndvaiev, 
 eXiriSa av ex avTes * v TC ^ S TroXepLiots (Ttaciaaeiav. ws Kara yi)v eira£6/j.evoi' 
 el Se vrjerov ipicovv, teal tout' tcv aSecas elxev avroTs. eireiSi) odv ef apxrjs 
 ovk ervxov olicf}<ravTes vt\<tov, vvv rdSe iroiovar tV fxev ovoiav ra?s vi\aois 
 Traparidevrat, itKnevovres ttj apxfi rfj Kara. OaXarrav, rfyv Se 'Attikiju yrjv 
 irepiopSxri repLVO/iievw, yiyvdoffKQVTes '6tl el avTrjv iXe-fjcrouo'iv, erepwv ayaQwv 
 jAei£6vu>v <rT€p-f)(rovTai. 
 
 S 2 
 
26o HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 own view, and refer the special student to the critical prefaces 
 in Sauppe's edition, which contain a prospectus of the con- 
 troversies up to 1866. But it seems to me surprising that 
 those who hold Xenophon to have been forty years of age 
 when he joined the expedition of Cyrus, should also hold 
 that he wrote nothing until after his return. That a mature 
 and educated man should write nothing during years of 
 enforced idleness, or certainly of political and military in- 
 significance at Athens, and suddenly burst into persistent 
 authorship, after serving as a mercenary for a few years, because 
 he was exiled from his home, and settled in a sporting country 
 — this is what I cannot believe. There is no reason for as- 
 serting that he ever rested from campaigning or wandering 
 till 393 B.C. at least, so that he would thus begin his literary 
 career at over fifty years of age. Cobet, who holds more 
 reasonable views as to his comparative youth when he served 
 with Cyrus, thinks the ardour of the Tract on hunting good 
 evidence that it was a youthful work — a supposition most un- 
 likely, seeing that Attica was so thickly populated that ' not a 
 hare could be found in it/ and that Skillus was the natural 
 scene of such interests. Nor is Cobet perhaps acquainted with 
 sporting society, in which the keenest members are often 
 those who have spent the longest time in such pursuits. To 
 my mind, the continuation of Thucydides, which may have 
 been suggested to him by his being entrusted with the un- 
 finished MS., is his earliest work. We find in it no trace of 
 Laconism, or of that historical unfairness which he developed 
 in later years. In fact, it seems probable that it was written 
 about 400 B.C., just before his departure for Asia; l nor do I think 
 its concluding sentence, which says, ' that after the amnesty 
 the Athenians live in political harmony, and even now abide 
 by their pledges,' is any proof that many years had elapsed. 
 The real danger was during the first couple of years. These, 
 
 1 I observe that the many Ionisms and Dorisms, which Cobet has 
 noticed throughout Xenophon, and regards as evidences of residence away 
 from the pure ciialect of Attica, are almost all cited from later works, 
 and that the earlier Hellcnica (especially books I. and II.) offer very few 
 examples. Sauppe's Lexilogus seems to afford ua the same evidence. 
 
CH. x. CLASSIFICATION OF WORKS. 261 
 
 I take it, had just elapsed, and still the demos was firm and 
 kept its promises. The same phrase is no doubt used in the 
 end of his Life of Socrates, which must have been written ten or 
 twelve years after the events he describes, when he says that 
 1 even still ' people kept regretting his loss. But the cases are 
 not at all parallel. Nor can it be argued that this vague phrase 
 implies any corresponding lapse of time whenever it is used. 
 
 But it is better to abandon these unsatisfactory enquiries, 
 and classify Xenophon's works not as to date, which is imprac- 
 ticable, but as to subject-matter. They will easily fall under 
 four heads : the historical books, the Socratic books, the Essays 
 on Political Philosophy, to which perhaps may be appended 
 the Tract on the Attic revenues, and lastly the technical tracts 
 on horses, on the management of cavalry, and on hunting. 
 The first class falls naturally into the following order : first the 
 early books of the Hellenica, down to the Restoration of the 
 Democracy under Thrasybulus. Then the Anabasis, or Expe- 
 dition of Cyrus, with the Retreat of the Greek auxiliaries, and 
 their fortunes in Asia Minor under the Spartan supremacy. 
 This huge parenthesis in the Hellenica, which is specially in- 
 dicated as such at the opening of the 3rd book, is followed by 
 the remainder (lib. 3-7) of the Greek history, down to the 
 battle of Mantinea and death of Epaminondas. The Agesilaus, 
 a panegyric on the Spartan king, forms a sort of appendix to 
 these works, justifying the exaggerated estimate of the king 
 which we find in the later Hellenica. 
 
 § 478. There can be no doubt that the earlier Hellenica, or 
 Paralipomena (of Thucydides), as they are sometimes called, are 
 far the most reliable of Xenophon's cont ributions ; J ojugtoxy, 
 though all are very valuable, as giving us light where we are 
 deserted by the earlier and greater historians. At this time the 
 author had not developed either that personal vanity, which 
 makes him justify all his own actions in the Anabasis, or that 
 servile adulation of Agesilaus, which has infected his later history. 
 In the Paralipomena he follows the course of the Peloponnesian 
 war from the year 411 B.C. to the Restoration of Thrasybulus 
 (403-2 B.C.). The affair of Arginusae, the rule of the Thirty 
 Tyrants, and the final settlement of the great war, are the pro- 
 
2*2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 minent events which he records. Several remarkable characters 
 — Lysander, Callicratidas, Theramenes — would be almost un- 
 known to us but for this work ; and of Callicratidas in particular 
 he has drawn, perhaps unconsciously, a nobler picture than that 
 of any other Spartan. Grote is not satisfied with his account of 
 the affair of the generals after Arginusse, but whatever difficulties 
 there are in the narrative are rather to be ascribed to the con- 
 flict of evidence than to any want of candour on the part of the 
 historian. The whole narrative, and the inserted speeches, 
 though clear and agreeable to read, want both the power and 
 the pathos of Thucydides. The trial and death of Thera- 
 menes, with whom he evidently sympathises, is the most strik- 
 ing episode in these books. 
 
 § 479. At the opening of our third book of the Hellenica, in 
 which the author resumes his narrative in later years, and with 
 altered tone, he states that the relations of Cyrus with the Lace- 
 daemonians, and subsequently his march against the king, his 
 death, and the retreat of the Greek mercenaries to the sea, have 
 been written by Themistogenes the Syracusan. No such person 
 is elsewhere mentioned, except by Suidas, as an author, and 
 our Anabasis, 1 though composed anonymously, has so many 
 internal marks of Xenophon's style, that all antiquity was 
 unanimous in attributing it to him. The question remains, 
 whether Xenophon wished to have his own work attributed 
 to another, or whether there really was an earlier Anabasis 
 lost, or completely superseded by the work now extant. There 
 is of course on this, as on .every other Xenophontic pro- 
 blem, a perfect library of controversy. Plutarch thinks that 
 the author considered his self-laudation would be more cre- 
 dible if put as the evidence of a disinterested writer. Some 
 have dreamed of modesty on Xenophon's part — a theory which 
 ignores all that we know of his character. Others, again, sup- 
 pose that he expanded a nucleus or smaller narrative of The- 
 mistogenes, but are opposed by minute censors who find 
 traces of gaps and omissions, and think our Anabasis only a 
 
 1 We generally speak of the ' Retreat of the Ten Thousand, ' whereas 
 Xenophon entitled his work ' The Expedition (or going up the country) of 
 Cyrus ' against his brother the King of Persia. 
 
CH. x. COMPOSITION OF THE ANABASIS. 263 
 
 compendium. It is a curious fact, that the writer of the book 
 not only speaks of Xenophon throughout in the third person, 
 but that he often pretends not to have been himself an eye- 
 witness. Thus, 1 in describing a scene at which Xenophon's pre- 
 sence had just been mentioned, the writer proceeds : ' but some 
 say that they (the Greeks charging at Cunaxa) struck with their 
 shields against their spears, to frighten the horses.' Several 
 such examples are cited by Mure. 2 On the other hand, there 
 are passages, like the soliloquy of Xenophon, when he starts 
 up from his dream in the eventful night after the treacherous 
 murder of the generals, which can hardly have been composed 
 by anyone else, even admitting the habit among Greek his- 
 torians of supplying set speeches for prominent speakers in 
 their narrative. 
 
 Nevertheless contemporary writers, like Isocrates, while 
 well acquainted with the history of the Retreat, and often 
 quoting it as a great feat of arms, never mention Xenophon 
 among its leaders. This silence of Isocrates is to me so 
 strange that I conjecture him to have read an original and 
 shorter Anabasis by Themistogenes, in which the part of 
 Xenophon was by no means so prominent ; that Xenophon, in 
 reply to unfavourable criticisms upon his conduct in connection 
 with his relations to Athens and Sparta, took up this obscure 
 and little known work, and re-edited it with larger additions from 
 his own recollections. Hence the combination of second-hand 
 and direct observations, and also those not very consistent 
 excuses and self-justifications in the later part of the narrative 
 which Mure has exposed with much acuteness. According 
 to this theory the opening notice of the third book of the 
 Hellenica, which may just as well be regarded as the conclud- 
 ing sentence of the earlier second book, must have been written 
 before Xenophon rehandled the work ; for from that moment 
 his authorship could not be doubtful, and his affected disguise 
 would be ridiculous. It would also account for any harsh- 
 nesses of transition which are really to be found in the work, 
 still more for the 472 words not elsewhere (aut perraro) used 
 by Xenophon, which the patience of Sauppe and others has 
 discovered in our text 
 
 1 i. 8, 18. 2 v. p. 368. 
 
264 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. X. 
 
 It is surely unnecessary to say one word in description of 
 the subject-matter of the Anabasis, which may be found in 
 any elementary history of Greece, and with great fulness of 
 detail in Grote's monumental work. 
 
 § 480. As to the historical merit of the work, most critics have 
 been unbounded in their admiration of its excellence, and have 
 adopted it as a thoroughly complete and faithful account of a 
 very important episode in Greek history. Even Grote, who is 
 cautious and critical in accepting the statements of the Hel- 
 lenica, here lays aside all reserve, and finds in Xenophon the 
 model of an Athenian gentleman, and a splendid specimen of 
 the results of democratic education. This mixture of scepti- 
 cism and credulity is a curious feature often recurring in 
 Grote's great work. We do not so much wonder at it in 
 mere philologists. But many even among these, and with 
 them Colonel Mure, in one of the best chapters of his work, 
 have suspected that the Anabasis is, after all, as an historical 
 work, not more conscientious than the later Helle?iica, and that 
 the author, without fear of contradiction, seeing that all the 
 main actors were now dead or scattered, could assume an im- 
 portance quite beyond that warranted by the real facts. He is 
 the soul of the Retreat : he is never wrong ; he always thinks 
 of the right thing, and says the right word. It seems extraor- 
 dinary that, were his achievements equal to his description of 
 them, he should not have been recognised as one of the 
 greatest generals of the age : and yet we never find him either 
 employed or consulted in that capacity. 
 
 In truth we have here a striking example of the value of 
 literary excellence. The clear and fascinating narrative of the 
 author's adventures ; his affected modesty and worthiness, his 
 frankness and apparent naiveness and piety — all these seduc- 
 tive qualities have made us forget that he is really pleading his 
 own case, without admitting any reply ; while, even on his own 
 showing, his conduct towards his companions at the close was 
 doubtful and treacherous. At all events, his contemporaries seem 
 to have judged him differently from the mass of modern critics. 
 The book is one familiar to every schoolboy, and there is no 
 figure in Greek history now so prominent in the classical world. 
 
CH. x. THE ANABASIS. 265 
 
 This is a just tribute to his style and to the adventurous life 
 which he led. In his own day, the Retreat of the Ten Thou- 
 sand was chiefly valuable in showing the inherent weakness 
 of the Persian Empire, and in suggesting to every ambitious 
 Greek the possibility of overthrowing it. But to us the con- 
 cluding books, which treat of the fortunes of the army after it 
 reached the sea near Trapezus, have perhaps the most interest- 
 ing and valuable lessons. They are far less read and edited 
 than the earlier books, and schoolboys seldom attain unto 
 them. Nevertheless, it is here we obtain our only clear and 
 detailed account of the doings of a mercenary force, when not 
 engaged in an actual campaign — of the scourge which such a 
 force was to all the surrounding country, and how they were 
 just as likely to plunder a Greek as a barbarian settlement. At 
 the same time we see among them that strong sense of external 
 religion, that dependance on dreams and omens, that fear of 
 the anger of the gods, which strikes us all through Xenophon's 
 writings as a strong contrast to the temper of Thucydides. In 
 all these features we are strongly reminded of the Grand 
 Catalan Company, whose pious words and atrocious deeds 
 form so interesting a chapter in the history of the Byzantine 
 Empire, and of Greece during the Frankish occupation. There 
 are also in this concluding part of the Anabasis many curious 
 details about the manners and customs of savage tribes living 
 along the Euxine, as well as of the court of Seuthes, and of the 
 social condition of his kingdom. 
 
 § 481. The digression about his residence with his children 
 at Skillus l proves that the work was not brought out till many 
 years after his return, somewhere about 380 B.C. It would 
 have been impossible for him to resuscitate the details with 
 such accuracy, had he not either taken notes at the time or 
 trusted to some earlier history of the Retreat. It seems to me 
 improbable that, had he kept a journal with the intention of 
 publishing it, he should have delayed its completion, when 
 all Greece was deeply interested in so remarkable and sig- 
 nificant a campaign. His delay may be accounted for by the 
 earlier work of Themistogenes, which I have above assumed, 
 
 1 v. 3. 
 
266 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 and perhaps by his fear of being contradicted or criticised by 
 the surviving leaders, had he put his own prowess so strongly 
 forward while they were at hand to correct him. 
 
 Nothing strikes us more strongly, at the close of this history, 
 than the enormous power wielded by the Spartan harmosts and 
 admirals throughout Hellenic lands, and the arbitrary and 
 cruel use they made of it. Xenophon's Laconism was not then 
 so developed as to prevent him from drawing these things with 
 a faithful hand; his own subserviency to the Spartans, and his 
 determination to stand well with them, while it throws a stain 
 upon his loyalty to his comrades, shows us how he thought it 
 hopeless to adopt any other policy. He may have apprehended 
 banishment from Athens, though the digression just referred 
 to is worded as if it had only followed his treason at the battle 
 of Coronea. It is indeed hard to conceive any motive strong 
 enough to induce him to this latter step, except his personal 
 attachment to King Agesilaus. We may be sure that an 
 Athenian would feel as much intoxicated by the favour of a 
 Spartan king as some Americans are by the courtesy of Euro- 
 pean grandees. 1 
 
 § 482. This intimacy with one of the main actors seems to 
 have suggested to him the continuation of his Hellenica, which 
 he accordingly carried down to the year 362 B.C., ending with 
 the battle of Mantinea. It is in this work that we meet with 
 the earliest specimen of that debased historiography which is 
 mainly to be traced to the influence of the rhetoricians, and 
 particularly of Isocrates. As that rhetor confessedly used his- 
 torical facts for the sake of recommending a policy ; as he pro- 
 pagated the old sophistical habit of composing panegyrics of or 
 attacks on mythical and historical persons, in which truth was 
 deliberately sacrificed to oratorical effect ; as he began distinctly 
 to lay claim to history as a branch of oratory; the fatal fashion 
 was introduced of writing history with an object, and so the 
 splendid path pointed out and pursued by Herodotus and 
 
 1 There are three special Lexica on the Anabasis, by Straek (8th ed. 
 1874), Vollbrecht (4th ed. 1880), and Suhle ; Rehdantz' 4th and Vollbrecht's 
 6th eds. (both 1877) are the best commentaries ; Arnold Hug's new recen- 
 sion (Teubncr, 1878), based on the Parisian MS. C, eclipses all pievious 
 texts, even Cobet's, and is regarded by many critics as final. 
 
CH. x. UNFAIRNESS OF XENOPHON 267 
 
 Thucydides was abandoned. Thus we have a school of his- 
 torians whose respect and attachment for truth is seriously 
 impaired, while their studied rhetoric is indeed by no means 
 superior to their great models. The later books of the Hellenica 
 are an instance of this depraved tendency, and here we happily 
 have some means of exposing it. The earlier books are 
 upon the Asiatic campaigns of the Lacedaemonians, in which 
 Xenophon could panegyrise them without serious damage, 
 though occasional discussions about acts of tyranny in Elis 
 and Thebes are glossed over without comment, especially when 
 Agesilaus is concerned. But in the later and general history 
 of Greece, which follows the battle of Coronea, when the 
 leaders of Greece were Thebes and Sparta, and when the latter 
 was completely humbled by the genius of Pelopidas and 
 Epaminondas, the deliberate partiality of the author becomes 
 painfully apparent. He was writing up Agesilaus, a second- 
 rate man, against the strong and sound popular opinion that 
 Epaminondas was the great military genius of his age. Hence 
 the military achievements of both Ismenias at Naryx, and 
 Pelopidas at Tegyra— victories of Thebans over Spartans — 
 are quietly omitted; at Leuctra and elsewhere the Theban 
 generals' names are ignored, and it is only at the close of the 
 book, in describing the campaign which ended with Mantinea, 
 that a tardy tribute to Epaminondas is wrung from him, in 
 terms which show that the popular opinion (which we find in 
 Plutarch) was then prevalent, and that he sought to detract from 
 it by no better arguments than petty carping, unjust insinua- 
 tions, and unworthy silence. This is all the more regrettable, 
 as we have in Xenophon one of the few men competent, had 
 he been so disposed, to have informed us concerning the re- 
 markable innovations in both tactics and strategy due to the 
 great Theban, of which we have but a glimpse in the account 
 of the battle of Mantinea — a sort of ancient Rossbach in its 
 disposition. But the fuller criticism of such matters does not 
 belong to the history of literature. 
 
 § 483. Turning to the style of the Hellenica, the ordinary 
 reader finds it easy and pleasant, yet not without a certain dry- 
 ness and narrowness, as the author confines himself strictly to 
 
268 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 military affairs and political revolutions, without social or liter- 
 ary digressions. But more careful critics find it full of harsh 
 transitions, apparent gaps and breaks, and other traces of its 
 either being left unfinished by its author^ or contracted by an 
 incompetent epitomist. They even profess to find in Plutarch 
 traces of his use of a fuller Hellenica, which had disappeared, 
 and made place for the present compendium, before the days of 
 Diogenes Laertius. But all such arguments are surely very un- 
 safe in the absence of the other sources, which Plutarch may 
 have used, and in answer to which Xenophon may have com- 
 posed his Hellenica. This latter attitude seems to me so proba- 
 ble, that I fancy the book was composed in the form now before 
 us, by way of answer to some strong and popular panegyric on 
 the Theban leaders. l Such an origin would account for gaps, for 
 transitions, and for allusions not supported by the work itself — 
 such, for example, as that to the fame of Epaminondas. in the 
 very last chapter, when hardly an act of his has been recorded 
 throughout the history. But the weight of German enquiry 
 into the sources used by Plutarch, and his way of using them, 
 inclines to the theory that he followed some later historian, 
 such as Ephorus or Ister, as his one main guide in each life, 
 so that he only agrees with the older authorities when these 
 authors have copied them. Plutarch may, therefore, not have 
 used Xenophon directly, any more than he used Thucydides 
 directly in composing his Lives. 2 
 
 In other respects the composition reminds one rather of 
 Herodotus than of Thucydides, not of course in dialect, 
 but in the dramatic way in which speakers are introduced, 
 short speeches and dialogues interspersed, and especially in 
 the constant transition from indirect to direct speaking — from 
 a report of what was said into the actual words of the 
 orator. This practice is, indeed, so constant in the Hel- 
 lenica^ as to be apparently a favourite figure with the author. 
 
 ' See especially 7, 5, 12, which is manifestly a reply to such a 
 panegyric. 
 
 2 Cf. Vollbrecht, De Xen. Hell. (Hannover, 1874), pp. 19, 20, who 
 states and refutes the arguments of Kyprianos and Grosser, the main ad- 
 vocates of the epitome theory. 
 
CH. X. THE AGESILAUS. 269 
 
 There is an occasional moral or religious reflection of no 
 great depth, and always in agreement with the writer's bias. 
 In the scenes which he himself witnessed, such as the battle 
 of Coronea, and the announcement to Agesilaus of the destruc- 
 tion of his battalion by Iphicrates near Corinth, there is much 
 graphic power ; and he does not seek to paint his hero a con- 
 ventional Spartan, but a man touched with the changes of for- 
 tune, starting up in wild excitement from his throne or weeping 
 with joy, at sudden announcements of evil or of good. 1 
 
 § 484. The formal panegyric of the Spartan king has come 
 down to us in the tract entitled Agesilaus^ which gives a sketch 
 of his life and acts, in the form of a written encomium, like 
 Isocrates' Evagoras, which that orator afterwards declares to 
 have been the model for many imitators. Most of the facts in 
 this tract are copied from the Hellenica, some unsuitable points 
 being omitted, and a notice added of Agesilaus' expedition to 
 Egypt, and death, which occurred in 360 b.c. Hence the tract, 
 if genuine, must rank amongst Xenophon's latest works. But 
 concerning the genuineness there is, as usual, a mass of con- 
 fident and contradictory criticism, many first-rate critics assert- 
 ing that the book must be by Xenophon, because of its style 
 and its manifest borrowing from the Hellenica, while a large 
 number of learned men reject it for the very same reasons. 
 Under such circumstances, any new decision is not likely to be 
 accepted with much confidence. The rhetorical pomp, which 
 marks this composition beside its genuine fellows, may of course 
 be accounted for by its very object — an epideictic display. 
 The historical suppressions are proper to such a performance, 2 
 even were they not strictly Xenophontic. But what does seem 
 to me like the work of a stranger, and not of the Boswell of Age- 
 silaus, is the want of intimate personal knowledge of that king 
 beyond what the Hellenica afford. There are, indeed, a few 
 things added, but it seems strange that Xenophon, if he were 
 the author, should not have supplemented his Hellenica with 
 
 1 The best recent editions of the Hellenica are those of Breitenbach 
 I1876), Biich^enschiitz (1876), and E. Kurz (Munich, 1874). 
 
 2 On this point, therefore, the censures of Mure (v. pp. 434, 435) are 
 completely beside the point. 
 
270 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 many private recollections, when he is illustrating the character 
 of his hero by special anecdotes. I am suspicious, moreover, 
 on account of the gross exaggeration (in chap, ii.) about the 
 Spartan loss at Leuctra, which, he says, amounted to half the 
 citizens, whereas in the Hellenica we are told that 400 out of the 
 700 present were slain. The style is uneven, and the structure 
 of the piece not according to the strict laws of rhetoric. Thus 
 the proem consists only of two short sentences, and there is a 
 full recapitulation at the end, which is unsuitable, and spoils 
 the effect (as Isocrates felt, when he forbade such repetitions 
 in encomia). The following sentence is perhaps the worst 
 possible specimen of Gorgian alliteration 1 : — vofiifav h rui 
 rotovrta to re arpejjiig, kcu aveK7r\r]Kr6raToy, teal adopv^roraroy, 
 teal dvafiaprriTOTaTov, Kat ^voETrifiovXtvTOTaTOV elvai. Several of 
 these words occur nowhere else in Xenophon, as is the case 
 with many other terms in this tract. But the frequent recur- 
 rence of aTraE Xeydfieva in each tract or work of Xenophon 
 makes it very difficult to establish their genuineness from inter- 
 nal evidence. In contrast to the former, here is an elegantly 
 finished period : 6 de Kaprtpiq. fiev irpwrevuv, evda irovtlv Kaipog, 
 d\Kt] <5f, 07rov av^p'iag dywi', yrtj/jir) $e, oirov fiovkrjg epyov, ovrog 
 tfjioiye doicel hucaiwg dvrip ayadog TravTsXwg av vofiifeadai, 2 Here 
 I leave the Agesilaus, recording my own opinion against its 
 genuineness, but referring the reader to the German critics for 
 arguments on whichever side he pleases to range himself. 
 There is a convenient English text and commentary lately 
 published by Mr. Hailstone. . 
 
 § 485. We now proceed to consider the Socratic group of 
 works, consisting of the Memoirs, or general sketch of Socrates, 
 with the CEconomicus, which describes his views on the practi- 
 cal business of life, and the Symposium, on social relaxations. 
 This account of the great philosopher, by an atfectionate pupil, 
 differs widely from the panegyric we have just discussed. In- 
 stead of rhetorical periods and figures, for which Xenophon 
 had little natural taste, and imperfect training, we have the 
 form of artless narrative and easy dialogue, in which he is a 
 great master, though overshadowed by the quaint Herodotus 
 
 1 c. vi. sub fin. 2 Cf. also c. xi. § 13. 
 
CH. X. SOCRATIC MEMOIRS. 271 
 
 and the matchless Plato. Yet the real artlessness and the . 
 frequent tameness of his conversations only impress us the 
 more strongly with their faithfulness, and it is now agreed that 
 to him we must look for the unvarnished picture of the great 
 master whom Plato transfigured and Aristophanes traduced. 
 This form of composition was indeed not new, or original to 
 Xenophon, having been already employed by Ion of Chios, in 
 his Recollections of his own Life, and of the remarkable men he 
 had met. But Xenophon applied it to the special purpose of 
 illustrating the life and Character of Socrates, and the other per- 
 sons introduced are intended as mere foils to the central figure. 
 
 It is remarkable that the author, though here speaking 
 throughout in the first person, introduces himself as a third 
 actor in one scene. 1 The treatise as a whole is too disjointed 
 and too diffuse to be agreeable reading, but may be taken up 
 here and there with great profit. Near the commencement 2 
 there is a very interesting defence of Socrates against the 
 charge of having educated Alcibiades and Critias. It is 
 shown that these men went to Socrates to gain power from 
 intercourse with him, not to learn virtue, which they from the 
 beginning despised, though they were for a time kept in check 
 by him. I may indicate as specially interesting in the remainder 
 of the work the locus dassicus on the choice of Heracles, 
 borrowed from Prodicus' famous apologue, 3 the sketch of a 
 Panegyricus on Athens, 4 and the very elegant argument for the 
 existence and benevolence of the gods from final causes, 5 with 
 the exhortation to piety in gratitude for these favours. 
 
 The last chapter 6 has so much in common with the Apo- 
 logia Socratis handed down to us under the name of Xenophon, 
 that most critics have refused to believe in the genuineness of 
 both, but believe that one at least, perhaps both, must be spurious 
 and that the longer Apologia is either the source or the ex- 
 panded copy of the eighth chapter. If the Apologia is (as I be- 
 lieve) genuine, it was probably the original conclusion of the 
 Memoirs, with which it agrees strictly in form, being professedly 
 no complete account, but, like the fourth Gospel, a sort of sup- 
 plement to the incompleteness of other defences. Cobet 7 
 
 1 i- 3> II. 2 i- 2, 12, sq. 3 ii. 1, 21, sq. 
 
 4 ii". 5, 10, sq. 5 iv. 3. 6 iv. 8. 7 Nov. Lectt. 667, sq. 
 
272 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH..X; 
 
 thinks it specially intended as a reply to the accusation of the 
 sophist Polycrates — a rhetorical exercise to which Isocrates 
 alludes in his Busiris (above, p. 220). The shorter eighth 
 chapter would then be an excerpt, put together and added to 
 the Memoirs when the Apologia came to be read and copied 
 out separately. As a defence, though neatly and even ele- 
 gantly written in the unmistakable vein of Socratic question- 
 ing, it is very inferior to Plato's Apologia. For it implies a 
 greater assumption of wisdom and piety in Socrates (which 
 specially appears in the far stronger response of the oracle to 
 Chaerephon), and also preaches the eudaemonistic view of the 
 profits of death at the limit of a hale old age. with which Socrates 
 consoles himself. He thinks it a positive gain to die before his 
 faculties and friends forsake him. Old age, we must remember, 
 was not honoured at Athens as it is among us. 
 
 The marks of time in both Memoirs and Apologia are few and 
 uncertain. In the former he says 1 that all ' even still ' continue 
 to feel Socrates' loss (en kuI vvv diareXoixri wavTittv fjiaXiam 
 irodovvTEQ avrhv), which seems to imply the lapse of some years 
 after his execution. The Apology alludes not only to the death 
 of Anytus, but to the confirmed drunkenness and loss of cha- 
 racter of his son, and this again requires a considerable interval. 
 Still I do not believe, in the rapidly changing society of Athens, 
 that these Memoirs would have produced any effect, or the 
 Apologia have been read, many years after Socrates' death. If 
 so, this sketch of Socrates would date from the time when 
 Xenophon first attained literary leisure at Skillus, about 490 B.C. 
 
 The text is purer than most of our MSS. of Xenophon, nor 
 have the critics (except in the last chapter of the Memoirs) 
 found fault with the logical nexus of the various subjects, as 
 they are successively discussed. These tracts have not re- 
 ceived much attention from English scholars, who seem, 
 indeed, of late years, rather determined by school requirements 
 than by the intrinsic value or interest of the Greek classics. 
 The best special information (besides the histories of philo- 
 sophy on Socrates) will be found in Breitenbach's (ed. 5, Berlin 
 1878) and Kiihner's editions, and in the preface to Sauppe's text. 
 
 1 Mem. iv. 8, 11. 
 
CH. x. THE mCONOMIC'US. 273 
 
 § 486. The CEconomicus, which is in form a mere book of the 
 Memoirs, introduced with a connecting particle, is really an in- 
 dependent treatise, and is the only Socratic dialogue of Xeno- 
 phon which can be compared in value to the Platonic dia- 
 logues. For here Xenophon is no longer a mere pupil, but 
 an independent thinker, setting forth views even opposed to 
 those of his master. But, characteristically enough, while Plato 
 does this in speculation, Xenophon does it in practical matters, 
 and in relation to the art of husbandry. The dialogue, 
 which is very varied in its subjects, and, excepting the 
 technical part, exceedingly interesting, begins with Socrates' 
 affected desire to make the fashionable and ambitious Crito- 
 bulus a good economist, since, though his fortune is large, his 
 expenses, and the public demands upon him, are proportionate. 
 They then enter upon a very sophistical discussion as to the 
 proper meaning of the term economy, which is shown by Socra- 
 tes to apply to practical good sense in all the affairs of life, but 
 specially to the management of one's household ; and first of all 
 of its mistress, then also of landed property with its stock, the 
 chief kind being horses. There follows a panegyric on farming, 1 
 showing it to be a suitable recreation even for the Persian king, 
 with the garden anecdote about Cyrus and Lysander, and an 
 allusion to Cyrus' death, which is an anachronism in Socrates' 
 mouth, as he could hardly have heard such details until the 
 return of the Cyreians, just before his trial. There is a fine pas- 
 sage 2 on the tyranny of the passions, which is eminently 
 Socratic, but the panegyric on agriculture, in cap. v., is pro- 
 bably quite foreign to him. 
 
 Accordingly, with great dramatic propriety, the leading part 
 is now transferred by Socrates to Ischomachus, a gentleman of 
 position as a landed proprietor, and owner of a large town 
 house, who instructs Socrates, first 3 on his method of training his 
 wife and servants, then 4 on his own rules of life and of recrea- 
 tion, and next 5 on the training of his steward. There follow 8 
 chapters on the details of practical farming. 
 
 1 GEcon. cc. 4 and 5. 
 
 
 2 C. ] 
 
 [, 16, sq. 
 
 3 cc. 6-IO. 
 
 
 * C. 
 
 11. 
 
 5 cc. 13-14. 
 
 
 6 CC. 
 
 14-19. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 T 
 
 
 
274 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 The end of the treatise is an eloquent argument against 
 Socrates' leading doctrine, that knowledge is virtue, since all 
 men understand husbandry, but many fail from not carrying out 
 what they know, through sloth, or incapacity of governing their 
 dependants. The conclusion is a reflection upon the divine 
 gift of ruling men without constraint, which seems inborn in 
 a few men, and cannot be acquired. It is likely that Xeno- 
 phon is here thinking of Epaminondas, in whom he particularly 
 praises this quality at the close of the Hellenica. Thus the 
 principal speaker not only lectures Socrates on topics which the 
 latter does not understand, but tells him important truths which 
 he does not contradict, though they are foreign to his teaching. 
 We may, therefore, regard this tract as composed after the 
 Memoirs, and that the author began by adhering to the form of 
 dialogue and the character of Socrates, but soon wandered into 
 an independent line of thought. The description given by 
 Ischomachus, a model Attic husband, of his young wife, brought 
 up in total ignorance except of cooking, and adorned with paint 
 and false hair, and high-heeled shoes, though never allowed to 
 leave the house — his account of his gradual education of her, of 
 her ingenuous and noble cooperation, and of the honourable re- 
 lations of husband and wife, is one of the most striking passages 
 in all Greek literature. 1 The style is careful and pure, though 
 critics find some peculiarities unusual in Xenophon. 2 The 
 
 1 Cf. my Social Life in Greece, pp. 275, sq. It is remarkable that the 
 use of factitious dress and ornament, so justly reprehended by Ischomachus 
 here, is defended in the case of the Persian kings in the Cyropadia (viii. 
 1, 40-2) as a means of imposing on (karayoTiTeveiv) their subjects. 
 
 2 Thus the careful variation of the verbs in this sentence (concerning the 
 risks of painting and other artificial aids to female beauty) is remarkable : 
 $1 700 e| evvtjs ahiffKOvrai i^aviCTTafxivai irplv irapaaKevdaaaOcu, f) inrb 
 iSp&TOS 4\eyxovTcu § virb SaKpvoov ^aaavi^ovrai ^ inrb Xovrpov aXit)Qiv£>s 
 Karw-irTev9r](rav. Here is an elegant passage in praise of husbandry : — 
 xix. 17-19: Ouk e<rri tout', e$7?, S> ^.uiKpares' ctAA' iy&> /cat 7raA.at cro: 
 tXeyov otl rj yewpyia ovrw (piXdvOpcvrrSs icrri Kal 7rpae?a r4x vy ) ware Kal 
 op&vras Kal aKovovras eVt<rT7j / u.oj/as evdbs eavrrjs ttoisIv. iroWa 8', 6^77, Kal 
 avrT] diSdffKti ws av KaKKiffrd ris outtj XPV T0 - avriica &(JLTre\os avafiaivovcra 
 uhv i-rrl to SevSpa, '6rau %XV Tl 7r ^ 7 J0 r i° J/ SevSpov, 8i5ao*/cei iffrdvai avTrjv 
 irc-pnreraupvovcra Se to oXvapa, orav en avrrj aivaXol 01 fidrpves Sxri, S:8ao7ce. 
 PKidfeiv to rjXiovfieva ravrr\v ri]v Sipav orav 5e Kaipbs y virb rod ?/Aiou ij8r] 
 
CH. x. XENOPHON'S BANQUET. 275 
 
 reader will find in the CEconotnicus many hints of the author's 
 special knowledge of horses, which led to the tract 011 the Horse, 
 and also of the technical side of his mind, shown in the details 
 concerning farming. The allusion to Aspasia, as an authority 
 on the duties of husbands and wives, has excited much attention, 
 and has helped ingenious authors, such as M. Becq de Fouc- 
 quieres, 1 to rehabilitate her character. English readers will also 
 be much struck with the description of the big Phoenician ship, 
 which was visited and admired for its order and discipline, as an 
 English man-of-war is visited in foreign parts. These are but 
 a few of the many points suggested by this tract. The latest 
 English version has appeared in vol. i. of Mr. Ruskin's Biblio- 
 tJieca Pastoritm. Schenkl's text is the most recent recension. 
 
 § 487. We turn to the Banquet, a dialogue intended to show 
 the conversation of educated gentlemen at Athens in society, 
 and especially of Socrates, as the king of all good talkers. The 
 scene is laid at a feast given by the rich Callias in honour of 
 his favourite, the boy Autolycus, who won a victory in the pan- 
 cratium at Athens in 42 1 b.c. But when critics infer that Xeno- 
 phon was present at a banquet in this year, they quite mistake 
 the freedom with which Attic authors composed their dialogues. 
 He was intimate, he tells us, with the speakers, and that is all. 
 
 After describing the extraordinary effect of the beauty of 
 Autolycus v on the company, and their consequent silence and 
 awkwardness, a professional jester or parasite, perhaps the ear- 
 liest we know personally, intrudes himself, but is hospitably 
 admitted to the feast. After his jokes have been tried, with little 
 effect, the conversation becomes general, and wanders through 
 many subjects, all of them, however, social or ethical. This is 
 diversified by the feats of a company of what we should call 
 circus performers, introduced by a professional Syracusan, who 
 
 y\vKaive(r9cu Tas tfrafyvXis, tyvWoppoovaa 5i8ao7cei eavrrju tyiXovv Kal 7re- 
 iraiveiv T7?i/ dirdpav, dia iro\v<popiav 8e robs /xev itiirovas SeiKuvovcra fiSrpvs, 
 robs Se err wfioripovs <ptpovo~a, 8i8ao~Kei rpvyav eavrrjy, axnreo ra (Tvku. 
 <rvK<i£ov(ri, to bpyoov aei. 
 
 1 Aspasie de Milet. (Paris, 1S72). The special literature on the (Econo- 
 micus, both in editions and dissertations, will be found enumerated (up to 
 1864) in Sauppe's Preface. Schneider's edition (with several other Xeno- 
 phontic tracts, in 1805) is still the most complete. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 is much annoyed at the lead which Socrates takes in the enter- 
 tainment, and only pacified by the latter recommending him 
 to exhibit something lovely and graceful, instead of feats of 
 danger. The banquet accordingly closes with a wanton scene 
 of the loves of Ariadne and Bacchus, acted by a boy and girl of 
 his troupe. 
 
 The conversation, which seldom remains fixed upon one 
 subject, is chiefly intended (unlike the Memoirs) to bring out 
 the peculiarities of each of the company. Antisthenes, Crito- 
 bulus, Callias, and Hermogenes are sketched in this way, each 
 by dilating upon his own strong point. Thus Hermogenes 
 describes his piety, and the practical results of it, 1 in a very 
 homely way, reminding us of Sydney Smith's description of 
 certain people's religion as otherworldliness. Poverty and riches 
 are discussed, and so are beauty and love. This latter is the 
 leading topic, and gives Socrates the opportunity for a remark- 
 able discourse on its two species — the spiritual and the carnal 2 
 — which is not unworthy of Plato's best writing. 
 
 The similarity of subject has of course given rise to much 
 discussion on the relation of this to Plato's Symposium, some 
 holding that Plato meant to rival Xenophon, others that 
 Xenophon intended a critique on Plato, while there is really 
 no clear evidence that either intended to censure or sought 
 to excel the other. In splendour of thought and loftiness of 
 diction Plato is of course far pre-eminent, but we may be sure 
 that in excluding all the professional amusements, which he 
 does with marked contempt, and in making his guests speak 
 long orations on the same subject, he has not drawn so faithful 
 or natural a picture as Xenophon's, where the talk is discon- 
 nected, often trivial, sometimes coarse. To us it would appear 
 that the people talked too much about themselves, and that 
 questions of personal interest, as opposed to those of larger im- 
 portance, are too prominent. On the main subject discussed, 
 that of love, our modern ideas are so far removed from those 
 of Socrates and his companions, that it requires long study of 
 Greek life, and deep sympathy with its grace and beauty, to 
 
 1 iv. 47, sq. 2 cap. viri. 
 
CH. x. THE TRACT ON SPARTA. 277 
 
 enable us to tolerate even what is said by way of banter. To the 
 serious statements of Socrates no objection can be made. But 
 it is not to be wondered at that a respectable English Philistine, 
 like Mure, 1 should condemn Xenophon's Socrates and his com- 
 pany very severely, and see nothing but grossness of the lowest 
 kind in their mutual affection. We must not judge them so 
 harshly, for even the divine Plato stooped lower at the close 
 of his Symposium, and Epaminondas did not rise above the 
 received customs of his country, though both were men of 
 genius, and I believe also of piety. 
 
 The weight of opinion leans towards the priority of Xeno- 
 phon's Symposium, and to its being written early in his literary 
 life, as a supplement to his more elaborate picture of Socrates. 
 As a source of information on Attic morals and manners its 
 value is not easily over-estimated, nor is it by any means so 
 tedious as his longer works. 
 
 § 488. The political philosophy of Xenophon was not, as we 
 may imagine, of a very deep or speculative order. During middle 
 life he was brought in contact with the Spartans, whose consti- 
 tution was the most lasting and the most aristocratic in Greece. 
 Accordingly he undertook in a special tract, not unlike the 
 tract already described on the Athenian state, to show the 
 causes of the dignity and permanence of the Spartan power. 
 There is, indeed, little said about the constitution, so little that 
 the tract should rather be entitled on the discipline of the Lace- 
 demonians than on their polity. The Lycurgean training of 
 the youth, so like in some respects to that of our public 
 schools, the military training of the citizens, their high state 
 of discipline and their subjection to authority, are set forth 
 in a very striking picture. But we can see plainly that the 
 author gives us old traditions confused with actual facts, and 
 
 1 Vol. v. pp. 453, sq. The reader who desires to consult an opposite 
 authority may turn to G. F. Rettig's fang article in the Philologus for 
 1879 (vol. xxxviii. part ii.), where the whole dialogue is analysed with 
 great minuteness, and all manner of hidden delicacies and moral lessons 
 extracted from it. But the learned German is so simple as to imagine 
 that the Syracusan's ircus is his son, and to be completely in the dark as to 
 their relations (p. 296). He has since (1881) published a text and com- 
 mentary, with a translation. 
 
273 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. X. 
 
 the fourteenth chapter, if genuine, distinctly admits that a great 
 decadence had set in, and that the ideal condition described in 
 the tract was a thing of the past. The concluding remark, that 
 the curious obsequies of the kings were meant to show they 
 were regarded as heroes, appears to me made in reference to 
 Herodotus' remark, 1 that the customs of the Spartans on these 
 occasions were the same as those of the Asiatic barbarians. 
 
 There is the usual controversy about the form of the 
 work, and even Cobet is in this case induced to consider it a 
 mere abstract of a fuller treatise, seeing that Plutarch, who 
 uses it freely as an authority in his life of Lycurgus, seems to 
 quote things not now to be found in the text. Others have 
 pointed out its antagonism to the Panathenaicus of Isocrates, 
 who claims for the Attic culture, against a partisan of the 
 Spartans, the superiority which Xenophon claims for his patrons. 
 When the tract was written, the battle of Leuctra had evidently 
 not been fought, and the fourteenth chapter, which is perhaps 
 to be placed at the end, and may have been mutilated, seems 
 intended to meet the altered prestige of the Spartans in Greece. 
 I am disposed to hold it genuine, and nearly in its original 
 form, seeing that all Xenophon's works are found equally dis- 
 jointed in argument, and that the theory of compendiums by 
 later hands surely cannot apply to the whole of his writings. 
 
 The permanent interest of the tract is the sketch of a state 
 morality overriding the ordinary laws of chastity and of purity, 
 and yet, though maintaining rude habits and rude morals, pro- 
 moting the feelings of honour and personal dignity among men 
 and women, who must have been degraded in any ordinary 
 state. There is much in Plato's Republic plainly imitated from 
 this remarkable society, particularly his postponing the purity 
 and permanence of the marriage tie to the higher duty of pro- 
 ducing healthy children for the state. But Plato's arrangements, 
 whereby the sanctity of the tie was strictly maintained through 
 its temporary duration, seem far more civilised than the customs 
 of the Spartans. 2 They may, however, be only instances of an 
 Aryan custom akin to the Hebrew Levirat, and meant to obviate 
 the extinction of families, 3 for the Spartan women, whatever their 
 
 1 vi, 58. 2 i. 7-10. s Cf. C. Jannet, Inst. Soc. h Sfarte, p. 101. 
 
CH. x. THE HIERO. 279 
 
 other faults, seem to us more like modern mothers of families 
 than any other Greek women. 
 
 § 480. But while Xenophon could not but be struck with the 
 marvellous permanence and power of the Spartan constitution, 
 his inmost character must have led him to favour the monarchi- 
 cal form. He was all his life attached to some one superior mind, 
 which he took as his guide, and which he served with ready 
 obedience — first, and best, Socrates, then the brilliant Cyrus, 
 then the inferior, but still able Agesilaus. Hence we find in 
 his remarkable dialogue entitled Hiero, between that tyrant and 
 the poet Simonides, that though the miseries and dangers of 
 tyranny are most eloquently set forth, the author finally turns to 
 the good side of absolute rule, and shows how a despot may live 
 a life of great usefulness to the people whom he sways. A 
 private career is, indeed, vastly happier, but a tyranny may be 
 made not only an endurable, but even an enviable position. 
 The whole form of the tract is peculiar, being a dialogue with- 
 out Socrates, and being, moreover, more ornately written than 
 is usual with Xenophon. Nevertheless, critics have been almost 
 unanimous in accepting it as genuine, and I do not feel my in- 
 stinctive dissent can be supported with convincing arguments. 
 The passage which describes the change from the contentment 
 of private life to the anxieties of sovereignty, is perhaps the most 
 striking in all our remains of Xenophon. l 
 
 1 Cap. vi. §§ 1-8 : BovXo/xat Se' croi, Hcpr], S ^tfiwviSri, KaKcivas tcls ei»- 
 (ppotrvvas SriAwtfai 'Serais e")<J) ^pcfyievos 8V t)v ldid>T7]s, vvv iireidi) ripavvos 
 iyev6(j.rjv, alcrddvofxai (TrepSfJievos avrwv. iyca yap £vvrjv fxev i)XiKU&Tais 
 7]86fA<=vos i)dofxevois ifioi, o~vvrjv Se e/xauTfj?, 6ir6re rjcrvx'tas iiriQvixi]ffaifii, 
 $i?iyov 8' iv <rv(jLiro<riois TroXXaKis fiev fiexpi rov iiriXaQio-Qai irdvTwv et ri 
 XaXeirbv iv avQpwirivcp jSt'p r)v, TroXXaKis Se /J.4xpi T0 " 4<$&is Te Kal 6a\iais nal 
 Xopois tt/v i/'vxV Tvy Karaixiyvvvai, TroXXaKis Se ywe'xpt Koivr)s iirtOvfiias ifirjs 
 re Kal twv vap6vT(av. vvv Se aireffTcp^fiai fiev tuv rjdofJLevwv i/xol did rb 
 SovXovs dvrt cpiXcov %x eLV rovs iraipovs, direo'repri/ji.at S' avrbs rod r)54cos 
 iiceivots ojxiXeiv Sid rb fxr}de/xiav ivopav evvoiav i/xol Trap' ai/rwv fx4dr]v Se 
 Kal virvov o/xoiws iviSpa. (pvXdrTOfiai. rb Se (pofSeiffdai /nev oxXov, <po/36?<r6ui 
 S' iprj/xiav, cpofSelffQai Se d(f>vXa£iav t (pofie'to'Oai Se Kal avrovs robs <pvXar- 
 rovras, Kal yA]^ dvonXovs %X eiV i^eXeiv irepl avrbv fj.i)ff SoTrXiffjxivovs rjSews 
 dedffdai, ttcSs ovk apyaXeov iarl irpdyfjia ; e-n Se |eVois jxev /xaXXov t) iroXirais 
 •KKTreveiv, fiapfidpois Se /xaXXov r) "EXXr)<riv, i-mdvufTv Se rovs p.kv iXevOepovs 
 SovAovi exsw, tovs 5e dovXovs dvayKafccrdai TroieTv iXevOepovs, ov travra <roi 
 
280 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 § 490. In this tract, the disadvantages of despotism de- 
 cidedly preponderate, but we find that our author was not con- 
 tent to leave the question so, and many years after (for the Hiero 
 seems an early work) we find him developing his ideal state under 
 the form of a paternal and hereditary monarchy in his Education 
 of Cyrus ; a very diffuse political novel, in which he sets forth 
 his ideal picture as a biography of the older and greater Cyrus, 
 in opposition to the dreams of Plato and other theoretical politi- 
 cians of the day. This work, which is the longest and most 
 ambitious of all Xenophon's writings, but consequently the most 
 tedious and the least read, seems to be our earliest specimen of 
 a romance in Greek prose literature. The author frequently 
 professes to hatf e written from observation, and from informa- 
 tion obtained in the East, and this has induced many critics to 
 seek in the Cyropcedia for historical materials, wherewith to sup- 
 ply a corrected account of the Eastern histories of Herodotus 
 and Ktesias. Xenophon differs from both as much as they 
 differ from one another on the history of Cyrus ; and as there 
 were at least four versions of his origin and his rise into power, 
 it has often been supposed that Xenophon followed one of 
 these traditions, and did not invent his facts. When he agrees 
 with Ktesias against Herodotus, that the name of Cyrus' second 
 son was Tanaoxares, and not Smerdis, he no doubt had some 
 foundation for his assertion. But it is idle to attempt to sift 
 out the particles of history from the mass of fiction with which 
 the author has consciously surrounded his hero. 
 
 The work being strictly a panegyric of Cyrus in the form of 
 an historical narrative, the writer felt bound to exclude any 
 flaws or faults which he knew, and to exaggerate all his virtues, 
 and seeing that he pursued this rhetorical course in professed 
 history, he was not likely to depart from it in a treatise really 
 
 ravra So/cet tyvxys virb <p6ficitv KaraTTeirXtiyfiivris reK/nripia elvai ; '6 ye toi 
 <p6fios ov fiovov avrbs evkv reus \pvxch \v7rrjp65 iariv, aWa nal iravTav t&v 
 rjfiewv ffvfxirapaKoXovQwv Av/xewv yiyverat, el 8e Kal av iro\e/j.iKwv efxireipos 
 tl, Si ~2i/j.wviSr], Kal ^877 irore iroXe/xia <pd\ayyi irXriaiov avrerd^u, avafxvi]- 
 cQ-qri iroiov flip riva gItov ypov ev eKeivtp t<}5 XP<Wj "foiov 8e Tiva virvov 
 eKOLfMw. oTa fievroi vol t6t i\v ra \virripd, roiavrd icrri to tu>v rvpdvvcov 
 Kal en Seiv6repa' ov yap e£ evavrias udvov, aAAcc Kal irdvroQev iroXefxiovs 
 ipav vofxi^ovcnv 01 Tvpavvoi. 
 
CH. X. THE CYROP^EDIA. 281 
 
 political, and describing an ideal monarch. Thus from this 
 long and elaborate work we can hardly be said to gain anything 
 new on the life of the greatest and the most interesting figure 
 in Asiatic history. Nevertheless, we wonder how a man born 
 and educated in all the blessings of Hellenic law and liberty 
 can stoop to defend almost all the circumstances of Asiatic 
 despotism — eunuch households, painted faces, pompous and 
 effeminate robes, and slavish ceremonies. 1 Such concessions 
 to the splendour of the Persian court, which had evidently 
 so dazzled Xenophon in his youth that he never recovered 
 his political vision, make his ideal picture anything but a monu- 
 ment of Hellenic superiority. As to style, the book is exces- 
 sively diffuse, and many conversations are introduced without 
 much point, merely to illustrate the conversational talent on 
 which Xenophon much prided himself, as a Socratic Athenian 
 of good birth, and accustomed to good society. But the 
 specimens he gives hardly justify his good opinion of himself. 
 
 It is remarkable that in this political romance we have also 
 (as an episode) our earliest sentimental romance, the loves of 
 Abradatas and Panthea, which are told at intervals through the 
 narrative, 2 and which end with the death of Abradatas in battle, 
 and the suicide of Panthea and her eunuchs. As was natural to 
 an Athenian of that epoch, such love could hardly be conceived 
 as existing till after marriage, and the story may have been intro- 
 duced in support of the Socratic theories of the dignity and im- 
 portance of the female sex and of the married state. To us, who 
 have been satiated with such stories, this early attempt seems 
 rather dull and feeble, but it deserves notice as a phase important 
 in literature, and one which was to bear fruit an hundredfold. 
 
 The great king is represented as dying quietly in his bed, 
 and not from his wounds in a battle, as Ktesias says. He ends 
 his life with a very striking address to his children, in which 
 the author inserts his hopes of the immortality of the soul 3 — a 
 very interesting passage, of which Cicero has made large use. 
 
 The last chapter of the book must surely be spurious, as it 
 contradicts the whole purpose of the work. It explains how, 
 as soon as Cyrus was dead, his people degenerated into all 
 
 1 Cf. vii. 5, and viii. 1. 2 Books iv. to vii. 3 viii. 7, 17, sq. 
 
282 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 manner of vice and disorder, and reversed all the good arrange- 
 ments inaugurated by him. This chapter is, indeed, curiously 
 analogous to the chapter on the Lacedaemonian decadence in 
 the tract just discussed, and could not but suggest the hand of 
 an editor, who added his own reflections on the historical results 
 to the theories of , the author. In the present case some such 
 theory is necessary to sustain Xenophon's character for good 
 sense. The text is perhaps purer than that of any other portion 
 of our author ; but though this is so, and though the style is 
 perhaps smoother and more finished than the rest, yet the sub- 
 ject is so needlessly spun out with dialogues and descriptions 
 of semi-imaginary campaigns, that it can never be popular, 
 though Spenser tells us (Pref. to Faery Queene) that it was 
 preferred to Plato's Republic \ Here, if anywhere, we should 
 have longed for the ' epitomator ' of the German critics to come 
 forward, and treat this tedious novel as he is supposed to have 
 treated the rest of Xenophon's remains. The Cyropcedia seems 
 a late work, composed, probably about 361 B.C., 1 in the decline 
 of his powers, and when the garrulity of age was increasing. 
 
 § 491. We pass from the most theoretical and fanciful of 
 Xenophon's works to the most thoroughly practical, the tract 
 entitled iropoL (not wept Trpocoluv, a later name), and intended 
 to exhibit the financial resources of Athens, and the policy 
 which should consequently be followed by that state. We hear 
 from Diogenes Laertius that Xenophon, having been exiled on 
 the proposal of Eubulus, was ultimately recalled by the influ- 
 ence of the same statesman, then at the head of the Athenian 
 finances, and it is consequently conjectured that Xenophon, 
 in extreme old age, wrote this tract by way of advice to 
 Eubulus — a notion justly ridiculed by Cobet. Nevertheless, it 
 was certainly intended to support the same party, and, if not 
 written for Eubulus, was intended to dispose the public to put 
 confidence in a peace policy. 
 
 Commencing with an eulogistic statement of the climate 
 and central situation of Athens, as favourable for a develop- 
 ment of wealth, the author recommends four improvements in 
 
 1 Both Breitenbach and Hertlein have given us good commentaries (now 
 both in third editions, 1874), 
 
CH. X. THE TRACT ON THE REVENUES. 283 
 
 state policy : (1) the encouragement of alien settlers, by allow- 
 ing them to buy or build houses in the city, admitting them 
 to the cavalry (not the hoplite service only), and other such 
 compliments ; (2) the encouragement of merchants by mate- 
 rial conveniences, such as marts and hotels, and by better laws 
 for saving time and promptly settling disputes, but in general 
 without any further outlay than ' decrees, and civilities, and 
 attentions,' such as inviting important traders to public en- 
 tertainments — he also recommends a state merchant service ; 
 (3) the development of the silver mines by state subsidy and 
 state control, providing capital in the way of slave workmen, 
 and by the formation of joint-stock companies ; (4) lastly, by 
 earnestly adopting a peace policy, and endeavouring by em- 
 bassies to establish a sort of international agreement to check 
 the wastefulness of war. He advises a mission to the Delphic 
 oracle and to Dodona to enquire whether such a policy be not 
 the right one, and if so, how it should be carried out in detail. 
 But the main object of all this care to increase the revenues 
 of the state is to secure a regular state support of three obols 
 per day, payable to all citizens alike, poor and rich, without 
 any corresponding obligations. Thus, says he, the prevailing 
 poverty will be relieved, and even the rich, who pay heavy 
 taxes, will receive back a very high interest on their outlay. 
 It is hard to conceive a more dangerous and mischievous the- 
 ory of finance. As Grote observes, the returns for the outlay, 
 especially in the mines and the merchant navy, are all un- 
 certain, while the expenditure is heavy and certain. But even 
 granting the possibility of an adequate return, can any con- 
 dition be conceived more utterly ruinous to all the true great- 
 ness and dignity of Athens than that of making all the citizens 
 pensioners of the state, so long as they could manage to remain 
 at peace with their neighbours ? Could any proposal pander 
 more effectually to the weaknesses and vices of the Athenian 
 character? Grote justly points in contrast to the oration of 
 Demosthenes on the Symmories, delivered about the same time, 
 where the views of a practical and sensible statesman may be 
 found, based on the same facts, and the same condition of 
 public affairs. There is nothing commendable in the policy of 
 
284 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 the tract, except the warm affection and zeal for Athens which 
 the author shows in his declining years. 
 
 § 492. Some critics have wondered why Xenophon makes no 
 mention of agriculture, for which in his other works he shows so 
 strong a predilection, and again, how so experienced and enthu- 
 siastic a soldier should advocate a peace policy. Of course the 
 agriculture of Attica was not, in his mind, capable of producing 
 state revenue, and no man was more likely to advocate a peace 
 policy than the aged veteran, who in his hospitable retreat had 
 so long learned to value the enjoyments of peace, while 
 narrating the excitements and dangers of war. The peculiar 
 value of the tract lies not in its recommendations, most of 
 which are obvious, and the rest not very practical, but in the 
 very interesting details it gives of the mines of Laurium, and 
 their working. Xenophon seems to express quite too sanguine 
 an opinion as to their inexhaustible value, and he says some 
 absurd things as to the unalterable value of silver, even as com- 
 pared with gold. But we know from the speeches of Lycurgus 
 and Hypereides, that great profits were being made twenty years 
 later from the mines, and great activity displayed in opening 
 new shafts. Sycophantic prosecutions, with promises of enor- 
 mous confiscations of wealth among the people, became quite 
 common, and even stopped private enterprise. 1 
 
 The date has been very well determined by Boeckh as Ol. 
 106, r, just after the conclusion of the Social war, and before the 
 beginning of the Sacred war, though the Phocians had, it seems, 
 already seized the Delphic temple, but had retired from it — a 
 preliminary occupation which Cobet was the first to infer, and 
 which has helped to clear away the difficulties of dating the 
 tract. All the critical questions as to its Xenophontic style, its 
 unity, and its purpose, have been discussed in a very careful 
 pamphlet by H. Zurborg (Berlin, 1874), and since in his edition 
 of the text (1876). The form adopted is no longer that of dia- 
 logue, but rather that of a deliberative speech, 2 so much so that 
 
 1 Hypereides, pro Euxen. col. xlv. 
 
 2 Accordingly, a comparison with Isocrates' speech on the Peace, 
 composed under the same circumstances, is very instructive on the differ- 
 ences of the two men : the one broad and vague and sentimental ; the 
 
CH. X. THE TECHNICAL TRACTS. 285 
 
 the tract has been held to be compiled from two such dis- 
 courses. But all such subtleties are disposed of by the analogy 
 of the remaining tracts, which are wholly, what the Finances 
 are chiefly, technical treatises, and which, therefore, need only 
 be slightly handled in a work on literature. 
 
 § 493. These technical tracts are three in number : on the 
 care and training of horses ; on the duties of a cavalry officer ; 
 and on hunting, including the care and training of dogs. They 
 are the earliest specimens we have of such books, excepting the 
 Hippocratic treatises, and as such have been much studied by 
 specialists. I confess the Hipparchicus, or tract on the duties 
 of a cavalry general, confirms my notion that the Greeks 
 knew little of scientific warfare. The directions for creating 
 and keeping in discipline a cavalry force are what any prac- 
 tical man could suggest. The evolutions described are very 
 simple, and much of the tract is devoted to the political diffi- 
 culties of raising and maintaining such a force. But the most 
 curious feature of all is its dominant religiousness, so much 
 so that the opening is like that of a business meeting, where 
 the proceedings commence with prayer. All through the prac- 
 tical directions, the reader is constantly reminded that he must 
 act according to the will of the gods ; and at the conclusion 
 Xenophon leaves his reader with a justification of this view : 
 ' If any should wonder why the expression D. V. (<tvv 6fw) 
 has been so frequent in my treatise, let him know well that 
 a man who has gone through many dangers will be less sur- 
 prised, and that in war, though the adversaries are always 
 making plans, they seldom know how they will turn out/ I 
 may also notice 1 the non-Socratic doctrine that correct know- 
 ledge is of no use in any pursuit or art, if we do not insist on 
 the carrying out of the practical details. 
 
 § 494. The^ treatise on the Horse is a far more valuable 
 work, and really shows an insight into the care and training of 
 horses, which would do credit to a modern book. He refers in 
 his preface to the work of Sinon, which he praises, and of which 
 
 other narrow and precise in his thinking, but both one-sided, and wanting 
 in the qualities of real statesmanship. 
 1 Cap. 9, 2. 
 
286 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 a short fragment has survived. 1 He desires to supply what has 
 been omitted in that work, which its author commemorated by- 
 setting up a bronze horse at the Eleusinion, and engraving his 
 works on the pedestal. 
 
 The technical character of this treatise does not tempt us 
 to delay upon it ; I would only mention the persistent in- 
 culcation of kindness and gentleness in the treatment of the 
 horse, so far in advance of the methods of our vulgar and brutal 
 horse-trainers. But though Xenophon constantly alludes to the 
 dangers of being cheated in the buying of horses, Providence, 
 which he elsewhere so frequently invokes, is here never called 
 upon to interfere. The principal object of keeping horses 
 at Athens was for display in processions, and curious im- 
 portance is laid 2 on the proper prancing and caracolling of 
 horses at such ceremonies. In fact, we see the author de- 
 scribing such riding as is represented in the famous Parthenon 
 frieze, which may have been before his mind when writing, 
 We also learn that this was no ideal horsemanship, but the 
 fashionable practice at Athens. The absence of any remarks 
 on saddles, or on shoeing, will strike the modern reader; neither 
 of these was in use among the ancients. Hence the hard- 
 ening of the feet, and the difficulties of mounting without 
 stirrups, Occupy much space. This tract has been specially 
 translated and commented on (together with the Hipparchicus, 
 by P. L. Courier, a French Artillery officer, 1807) in English by 
 Berenger, in his History of the Art of Horsemanship ; also by 
 Fr. Jacobs (Gotha, 1825). Neither tract has received much 
 attention among recent English scholars. 
 
 § 495. We now come to the last and most characteristic of 
 Xenophon's technical tracts, that on Hunting, which treats very 
 carefully of the points, the breeding, and training of dogs ; 
 then of nets, and, lastly, at great length, of hare hunting, in 
 which the author takes the most enthusiastic delight. 3 Nor is 
 
 1 Published by Darenberg in his Notices et Extraits des MSS. medi- 
 caux, p. 169. 
 
 - Cap. 11. Cf. on the whole tract Grasberger's Erziehung, &c. iii. 
 p. 231, sq. 
 
 3 ovtco 8e Sirixapi icrrty to Orjpiov, ware ovSels '6<ttls ovk av /8coj/ l^vevS- 
 /xevov, zvpHTKOfxtvov, iJ.eTadi6fj.ivov, a.\io~Kuuevov iinXaQon" av et tow tpcprj 
 (v. 32). 
 
CH. X. XENOPHON'S FRAGMENTS. 287 
 
 the religious element wanting, for when the nets are ready, the 
 best trained of the dogs is not loosed without a prayer to 
 Apollo and Artemis Agrotera to give the hunter sport The 
 chase of fawns and stags, or of wild boars, is not detailed with 
 any such care. There is a foolish and mythological preface 
 about Cheiron and his pupils, generally and justly rejected by 
 critics ; there is also a very inappropriate attack upon the 
 sophists at the conclusion, beginning with the last (thirteenth) 
 chapter, which is also rejected. I should be disposed to hold 
 the real conclusion to come earlier, ending with 12, 9. But the 
 question is hardly worth discussing. Cobet thinks it (above, 
 p. 260) probably the earliest of Xenophon's works. If we adopt 
 (as I do) Cobet's own arguments on Xenophon's age, he was 
 brought up at Athens during the Peloponnesian war, when 
 hunting in Attica would be seldom possible, and indeed we 
 know that in the following generation one of the comic poets 
 speaks of it as a land where not a hare remained. I am con- 
 vinced, therefore, that it was not composed till after the author 
 had settled in his ' hunting box ' at Skillus. The very form of 
 the genuine proem, 1 — kyio jxev ovv itepawu) toIq vioiq, &c. — 
 implies a writer of mature years. 
 
 § 496. On the so-called fragments of Xenophon I need not 
 delay the reader. There are short epistles to Socratic friends, 
 first printed by Allatius, and some quoted by Stobaeus, which 
 may be read in the appendix to Sauppe's edition, or in the 
 Epistolographi Grceci, but which are certainly spurious. There 
 are also a considerable number of words and phrases quoted by 
 old authors and grammarians as Xenophon's, which we do not 
 now find in his works. These are the stronghold of the \ Epito- 
 mators,' the chief of whom is the modern Greek Kyprianos. A 
 good many of them are doubtless blunders, where Xenophon is 
 cited instead of Xenophanes, or some similar name. Others 
 are free citations, and can be still identified. A few, especially 
 from the Anabasis, are really unexplained, and may possibly 
 come from the lost Anabasis of Themistogenes. 
 
 § 497. It remains for us to sum up the general conclusions 
 to be derived from our special survey of Xenophon's works. 
 
 1 i. 18. 
 
283 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 We have seen that there is much reasonable suspicion of 
 their having been edited by a later hand. The epilogues of 
 the Memorabilia, of the Polity of the Lacedamonians, of the Cyro- 
 pcedia, of the tract on Hunting, all contain irrelevant matter, in 
 some cases stultifying all that goes before. If these be indeed 
 the author's additions, we must assume them to be the addi- 
 tions of an embittered and querulous old age, and appended 
 to the later copies of his works. Again, the combined pro- 
 lixities and brevities of his style have tempted scholars to 
 the theory that we possess but blundering epitomes, which 
 feebly convey to us the real grace of the ' Attic bee.' But the 
 fact that these objections have been separately brought against 
 so many of his works, show that the epitome theory is vastly 
 improbable, and that the fault lies in the author himself, whose 
 imperfect literary and rhetorical training — Socrates was no 
 master of form — contrasts with the very polished and strictly 
 professional authors of the same period. 
 
 It is, however, hardly true to speak of Xenophon as a mere 
 practical man, and his works as mere recreations. On the 
 contrary, his later life seems to have been wholly devoted to 
 literature, and he attained a rank among Attic writers which 
 very few were ever able to reach. Among the Roman critics 
 especially he earned no small meed of praise. His subjects 
 were congenial to them ; his books were easy ; his language 
 approached the later common dialect, which they all understood 
 perfectly. He was, moreover, always the gentleman amateur, 
 who cared less about a hiatus in his vowels than in his hunting 
 nets, and admitted stragglers in his vocabulary while he would 
 not tolerate them in his troop. This reputation for simple 
 grace and unaffected ease, which made him so popular among 
 Roman critics, he has maintained among the students of Attic 
 style, and among the educators of our youth in Attic Greek, 
 so that great scholars, like Cobet, Dindorf, Sauppe, Schneider, 
 and Schenkl, have spent endless labour upon the purifying of 
 his text. It is the more remarkable, as he confessedly not only 
 admits Ionic, Doric, and poetical words into his ordinary style, 
 but uses so irregular a vocabulary that each work abounds in 
 airal Xeyo/aera, not only as regards himself, but as regards the 
 
ch. X. XENOPHON'S DEFECTS. 289 
 
 good Attic authors of his age. As a writer, therefore, of good 
 clear Attic Greek, and upon very attractive subjects, there can 
 be no question that Xenophon ranks very high. 
 
 § 498. But when we come to judge him from a different stand- 
 point, and consider how he appreciated the divine philosophy 
 of Socrates, the momentous facts of the Theban supremacy, 
 the merits of the various polities with which his adventurous 
 life acquainted him — then it is that we feel in him a great want, 
 and are obliged to degrade him to the second rank among the 
 writers of the Attic age. For among his many advantages of 
 ability and of experience he lacked the one which is worth all 
 the rest — he lacked genius. We see this in his practical life, 
 for though a successful and experienced general, he never at- 
 tained any high reputation as such through Greece. Indeed, 
 he seems all his life dominated by any great man whom he 
 met — Socrates, Cyrus, Agesilaus. Yet even here when he en- 
 deavours to draw the portraits of his idols, he is a mere Bos- 
 well, a mere photographer, who copies petty details, but, being 
 no true artist, is unable to catch the ideal side of the character, 
 and reproduce it for all time. Thus the portrait of Socrates in 
 Plato's dialogues is probably far less faithful in detail than 
 Xenophon's, and yet in its depths how infinitely truer and more 
 satisfying ! So likewise in his History, in his political philo- 
 sophy, he is consciously writing up a personal friend, and 
 writing down his foes ; he is consciously recommending the 
 virtues of a personal friend, or, in the Anabasis, his own, and 
 thus he omits the larger features of the world-problem as it un- 
 rolled before him. Above all, he completely wants that spon- 
 taneity, that absence of self-consciousness, which marks the 
 products of real genius. Hence his portrait of Socrates is vul- 
 garised, and that great man's philosophy represented as a mere 
 refined and calm Hedonism, such as Epicurus afterwards 
 taught. His own religion is of the same kind, a cool calcula- 
 tion of the profits to be derived from honouring the gods, and 
 no real exercise of self-denial, purity, or nobleness of soul. 
 
 The stirring times in which he lived, and his diligence as 
 an author, make him a valuable and important personage in 
 Attic literature, but he has probably imposed upon the learned 
 
 vol. 11. u 
 
290 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. x. 
 
 with a great exaggeration of his military deeds in the Anabasis. 
 In his own day, this famous Retreat, while it made no little stir 
 through Greece, did not bring him any immediate renown. It 
 is owing to his own bright and well told narrative that he is not 
 only cited as an authority by all the historians of Greece, but that 
 he is a household name in the mouth of every schoolboy who 
 begins the study of classical Greek. 
 
 The writings of Xenophon were much read and admired by 
 succeeding generations ; but, imitated by Arrian, 1 quoted by 
 Cicero, criticised by the Latin rhetors, I cannot find that the 
 Alexandrian scholars paid him any critical attention. There 
 are said to be scholia in some of the Oxford texts, but as yet 
 unedited, nor do I know what may be their value. 
 
 § 499. Bibliographical. The number of extant MSS. is 
 very great, and scattered through libraries from Jerusalem to 
 Madrid, but few of them are old, and there seems much 
 difference of opinion as to their real date and respective value. 
 The earliest dated (a.d. 1166) is the No. 511 in the Marcian 
 library at Venice ; there is another of some such date in the 
 Escurial ; one at Wolfenbiittel seems the best. Very few of 
 them, if any, contain all the works, but rather selections and 
 excerpts. The earliest printed Xenophon is the Latin version 
 of 1476 (Francis. Philelfus, Milan), the first Greek edition the 
 Juntine of 15 16. Of recent complete texts the best are 
 Schneider's (3rd edition, Leipzig 1838-40), that in the Didot 
 
 1 The works of Arrian, who called himself, and was called by others, 
 the younger Xenophon, are interesting and valuable from an historical and 
 ethical point of view, but cannot be included within the bounds of Greek 
 classical literature. There are in them so many grave violations of Attic 
 usage, that by common consent they are not studied in an ordinary clas- 
 sical education. The appellation of the younger Xenophon, it may be 
 observed, applies by no means so much to style as to similarities of life 
 and choice of literary subjects. The Socrates of Arnan was Epictetus, 
 whose life and opinions he recorded. Besides this, he wrote history 
 chiefly from a military point of view, such as the anabasis of Alexander, 
 the Indica, and other lost works, a book on tactics, and a supplement to 
 Xenophon's tract on hunting. The Indica were not even composed in 
 Attic Greek, but in the Ionic dialect of Ktesias and Herodotus, the lattei 
 of whom he has everywhere imitated in the structure of sentences, and in 
 many peculiar terms. 
 
ch. x. NEWEST EDITIONS. 291 
 
 series, and those of G. Sauppe (Tauchnitz, 8vo., 1864) and 
 L. Dindorf, with A. Hug's Anabasis (Teubner, 1873). There 
 are many excellent recent editions of the separate works, which 
 have been already mentioned. SchenkPs complete edition 
 (Berlin, 1876), with his studies on the MSS. in the Abhand- 
 lungen of the Vienna Academy for 1875-6, is now far the most 
 complete and valuable. He has also published a very popular 
 Chrestomathy with lexicon (6th edition, Vienna, 1877). The 
 various recent monographs are noticed by Nitsche in Bursian's 
 ^fahresbericht for 1877. 
 
 u 2 
 
HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xi. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 DEMOSTHENES. 
 
 § 500. We come at last to a great Greek author, concerning 
 whom there are fortunately very ample materials presented to 
 us. We have several copies, evidently authentic, of his statue, so 
 that his very appearance is familiar to us. We have in the next 
 place the details of his early struggles in life in his own speeches 
 against his guardians ; of his political acts and career in his 
 great public harangues, especially in the speech for Ctesipho?i 
 on the Crown, which is a splendid apologia pro vita sua. We 
 have, moreover, these public confessions in many cases com- 
 mented and animadverted on by his adversaries, iEschines 
 and Hypereides, so that they are not uncontrolled self-pane- 
 gyrics. 
 
 In the following generation, when literary history came into 
 fashion, his memory was yet fresh enough to afford good mate- 
 rials to historians and biographers. From these are derived 
 the various and independent Lives of the orator, which still 
 amount to ten in number. Fullest and most interesting is the 
 work of Plutarch, then the many details contained in Diony- 
 sius of Halicarnassus, though his official Life is not pre- 
 served. The various sketches in the Lives of the Orators, in 
 Suidas, and in the prefaces to his speeches, are less important. 
 The points which remain in doubt are rather obscured by con- 
 troversy than by oblivion. 
 
 § 50 r. We know that Demosthenes was born of respectable 
 and well-to-do, though not illustrious, parents — Demosthenes (of 
 the deme Paeania) and Cleobule, 1 and that in childhood he was 
 
 1 iEschines {against Ctes. § 171) gives an explicit account of the Scy- 
 thian origin of Cleobule, which may be true, but he can find nothing to say 
 against her character. 
 
CH. XI DEMOSTHENES' YOUTH. 293 
 
 brought up in comfort, and with the advantages of a good 
 station. But the exact year of his birth is uncertain, because 
 he has himself confused it He says he was thirty-two years 
 old when he prosecuted Meidias, and this speech is fixed at 
 such a date (349 B.C.) as would make his birth-year 381 B.C. 1 
 On the other hand, the speech against Onetor specifies that he 
 attained his majority (in his eighteenth year) in the archon- 
 ship of Polyzelus, 366 B.C. This gives us his birth-year as 
 384-3 (the date given in the Lives) ; and this date is now 
 assumed, with slight variations, by all the best authorities. 
 Thus at the very outset we have a specimen of the sort of diffi- 
 culty we constantly meet in treating of this orator. The passage 
 in the speech against Meidias being an isolated statement, must 
 be regarded as a deliberate misstatement, and it deceived most 
 of the ancients — Dionysius, Aulus Gellius, and apparently 
 Plutarch. But there are not wanting indications of the truth 
 elsewhere. 2 
 
 The elder Demosthenes had two establishments, one for 
 the manufacture of swords and knives, another for the wooden 
 frames of couches ; in fact, we should call him both a cutler 
 and an upholsterer. But of course he carried on this business 
 rather as a capitalist, for his property in slaves and chattels at 
 his death is valued by his son, probably with some exaggera- 
 tion, at fourteen talents (about 3,300/.) — in those days a large 
 fortune. By his will he left his children — Demosthenes, a boy 
 of seven years old, and an only daughter — to the care of two 
 nephews and a family friend, on the understanding that one 
 nephew, Aphobus, should marry his widow (an ordinary Attic ar- 
 rangement); the second, Demophon, should marry the daughter, 
 with a good dowry, and to all three he gave the use of certain 
 moneys until his son should come of age. None of these ar- 
 rangements, except the securing of the money for themselves, 
 was carried out by the dishonest guardians. Thus Demo- 
 sthenes found himself, when he came of age, possessed of the 
 responsibilities and expenses of a fortune — which ought by 
 
 1 This, viz. 01. 99, 4, is Dionysius' opinion. 
 
 2 Cf. the intricate discussions of A. Schafer {Demosthenes und seine 
 Zeit, iii. B. p. 55), and of Blass, AB. vol. iii. pp. 7-10. 
 
294 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xi. 
 
 interest, he says, to have increased to thirty talents — but in 
 fact a pauper. 
 
 There is little doubt that in this emergency he had recourse 
 to Isaeus, the most skilful practical pleader of the day in such 
 lawsuits, and with his help and advice ! brought an action 
 against Aphobus, ' the main delinquent, for ten talents, the 
 third part of the embezzled property. There is no proof that 
 Demosthenes learned from any other of his famous contem- 
 poraries, either philosophy from Plato, or rhetoric from Iso- 
 crates ; but it is certain that, by a diligence so exceptional 
 as to be remarkable, he had attained a sounder general culture 
 than almost any young man of his day. Hence his own know 
 ledge was sufficient to compose in the main the early speeches 
 concerning his property, which, though not brilliant, manifest 
 the force and directness which we admire in his most perfect 
 works. He won his case against Aphobus, but was put off 
 by various pretexts and devices, so that he was obliged to 
 prosecute Onetor, Aphobus' brother-in-law, to whom the pro- 
 perty had been professedly transferred. 
 
 I need not give the details of these disputes, which can be 
 read in the speeches. The young orator seems to have re- 
 covered but a small part of the ten talents claimed from Apho- 
 bus, and after many vexatious delays and disputes, while the 
 other two guardians were not prosecuted, so far as we know. 
 However, his legal victory over Aphobus must have brought him 
 into notice, so that he was soon able to improve his impaired 
 fortune by the lucrative profession of composing speeches for 
 litigants in the law courts. 
 
 Our authorities agree in representing him as a very hard- 
 
 1 The relations of Demosthenes' to Isaeus' speeches have been carefully 
 examined in two programs (Hildesheim, 1872-3) by A. Laudahn, who 
 also adduces the forty-first speech {against Spudias) to show how the same 
 ideas were repeated in various forms by Demosthenes. Laudahn thinks 
 that though the borrowing from Isaeus is clear, the modifications intro- 
 duced into the proem of the Or. xxvii., which to some extent mar Isaeus' 
 composition, cannot have been made with that orator's advice and con - 
 sent, and thus Demosthenes' independent use of Isaeus' speeches may be 
 proved. 
 
CH. xi. DEMOSTHENES A SPEECH-WRITER. 295 
 
 working, water-drinking, unsocial person, who spent all the night 
 either in political studies, or in the preparation of speeches, 
 which smelt of the lamp, and were at first so laboured as to be 
 obscure and even dull — a fact which we can partially verify in 
 his earliest public harangues. In after years there were not 
 wanting allegations of debauchery and extravagance against 
 him, but these seem so inconsistent with his nature that they 
 would require the most convincing evidence to sustain them. 
 It is more likely that he devoted every moment of his early 
 life to intellectual work. Later on he married, but his only 
 child, a daughter, died just before the news came of Philip's 
 death {$$6 B.C.), and he left no direct descendants to enjoy the 
 hereditary honours voted, though long after his death, by 
 his grateful fellow-citizens. 
 
 For ten years after his successful suit against his guardians 
 he worked as a speech writer, and from this period we have 
 remaining the speech (if genuine) for the trierarch's crown 
 (359 B.C.), then the speech against Leptines (354 B.C.), and pos- 
 sibly others, but many are lost. He is reported at the close of 
 the speech (of Demon) against Zenothemis to have said that he 
 abandoned private suits, when once he had undertaken the 
 duty of public politics. But there is no doubt that this rule 
 suffered many exceptions, or only applied to personal appear- 
 ances as an advocate or supporter of litigants in court. He 
 had the reputation of being a subtle advocate, ready to take 
 every advantage in the intricacies of the law, or in the state- 
 ment of doubtful facts ; he was even openly accused during his 
 lifetime, and ever since, of selling his services to opposite sides 
 in the case of the disputes between Phormion and Apollodorus. 
 Something of the kind he must really have done — perhaps (as 
 Blass thinks) in order to induce Apollodorus to propose the bill 
 for the application of the theoric fund to war purposes. The 
 proceeding now fashionable among the panegyrists of De- 
 mosthenes is to evade this serious moral charge by asserting the 
 spuriousness of all the speeches for Apollodorus, a desperate 
 resource in the face of the soundest ancient criticism. 
 
 But to return to the earlier speeches. It has teen well re- 
 marked that those personally delivered show a marked contrast 
 
296 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xi. 
 
 to those composed for others. The latter are bold, incisive 
 and passionate ; the former very modest and restrained, if we 
 except the pathetic and anxious appeals at the end of the 
 speeches against Aphobus, where he pleads for the succour of 
 the jury as an orphan on the brink of ruin and disgrace. 
 
 § 502. The public speeches of Demosthenes belong rather 
 to the political than the literary history of the period, and are 
 so fully discussed in every Greek history, that it is unneces- 
 sary to recapitulate here the circumstances familiar to every 
 student of the period, and to which we must again refer in 
 speaking of the several harangues. But without an intimate 
 knowledge of the history, it is impossible to appreciate their 
 greatness and their power. They are essentially occasional, 
 each called forth by the crisis of the time, and applying them- 
 selves to its solution. And yet for all that they are the expo- 
 nents of a great and consistent policy — the policy of maintain- 
 ing the imperial position and dignity of Athens at the cost of 
 personal sacrifices and personal dangers. 1 
 
 His political career begins at the moment when by the 
 Social war Athens had a second time lost her naval greatness, 
 and by the death of Chabrias Timotheus and Iphicrates her 
 best generals. Passing by the speech against Leptines, which, 
 though spoken before a jury, is devoted to an exposition of 
 public policy and the maintenance of public obligations, we 
 have the speeches on the Symmories (354 B.C.), on behalf of the 
 Megalopolitans (353 B.C.), and for the Liberty of the Rhodians 
 (351 B.C.), the first of which proposes an important financial 
 reform, so as to equalise the state burdens and render the 
 state forces efficient. The other two are very important and 
 statesmanlike announcements that the policy of Athens is to 
 be influenced not by special likes and dislikes, or by past quar- 
 rels and ingratitudes, but by present expediency, and above all 
 by the determination to maintain a proper balance of power 
 
 1 By far the best commentary on the political speeches is Grote's 
 History, as that author, being himself an experienced politician, as well as 
 an accurate and philosophic critic, has a power of appreciating political 
 situations which is quite foreign to Schafer, E. Curtius, and the other 
 philologists who study Greek politics. 
 
CH. xi. THE OLYNTHIACS. 297 
 
 among the neighbouring states. He also advocates the cause of 
 democracy against despotism, of Hellenedom against barbarian 
 encroachment. The style is very Thucydidean, being grave, 
 at times even harsh, and restrained. But we see from the first 
 the deep earnestness and the large views of the speaker. 
 
 § 503. Then comes the period of Philip's aggression in the 
 north — an aggression begun by small degrees, and not openly 
 attacked by Demosthenes till his first Philippic in 351 B.C. His 
 panegyrists, indeed, pretend to discover allusions to Philip in the 
 speech on the Symmetries ; but there is no reason why the king 
 of Macedon, if then at war with Athens, should not have been 
 expressly named by so direct a speaker as Demosthenes, who 
 seems here to have been behindhand in turning his attention 
 towards the real dangers of his country. He claims, indeed, 
 and obtains even from Grote, 1 credit for having foreseen 
 political events from their beginnings, and having forewarned 
 his hearers. In the present case the danger must have been 
 already obvious enough; it was Demosthenes' real merit not 
 only to have brought it forcibly and clearly before the people, 
 but to have at the same time, as was his wont, pointed out 
 the practical remedies for it, and the proper policy to be 
 adopted by the Athenians. 
 
 Then followed the three orations for the Olynthians, which 
 make up what has been properly called the first series of Demo- 
 sthenes' Philippics. The real adversary in all these famous 
 speeches is not so much the king of Macedon as the sloth and 
 supineness of the Athenians, and the influence of the peace party, 
 whether honest or bribed by Philip. Against these he is ever in- 
 sisting on financial reforms, personal service, and diminution of 
 mercenary auxiliaries. He advocates the seeking of alliances, 
 and the abandonment of petty disputes. Thus while practically 
 effective, and even minute in the details of their special recom- 
 mendations, these harangues have large and eternal features 
 about them, and are applicable to all luxurious and peace- 
 loving societies, when brought in their advanced age into 
 conflict with a young and energetic power. Still more do they 
 apply to the conflicts of a democracy, which conducts its 
 1 xi. p. 442. 
 
293 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XI. 
 
 affairs by public discussion, against a despot who keeps his 
 own counsel. It was Demosthenes' greatest difficulty that he 
 was opposed not only by able and unscrupulous orators like 
 /Eschines, but by men of integrity and personal weight of cha- 
 racter, Eubulus and Phocion, both of whom steadily advo- 
 cated the peace policy against his more splendid but dangerous 
 exhortations. For he would have the people assume higher 
 responsibilities than personal well-being, and greater risks than 
 those of a mere defensive armament. 
 
 On the fall of Olynthus, he was persuaded of the neces- 
 sity of peace, and for a moment joined his political adver- 
 saries (in his oration on the Peace, 346 B.C.). To this coalition 
 is attributed his somewhat mean settlement as regards a public 
 and personal insult by Meidias, who, apparently through the 
 influence of Eubulus, after some delays and subterfuges, was 
 enabled to stay the pending action by paying Demosthenes 
 thirty minae — a result which has been mentioned to the orator's 
 discredit ever since. 
 
 Yet it was during these years — the years of peace (346-40) 
 which were being employed by Philip for the consolidation of 
 his power and the extension of his influence — that Demosthenes 
 seems to have gained an important place among the public ad- 
 visers of his country. He led, with Hypereides and Hegesippus, 
 a great party against the supporters of Philip. His second 
 Philippic (344 B.C.) raises the alarm, and declares a new war 
 with Macedon to be impending; and in the following year Philo- 
 crates, the main advocate of peace and confidence in Philip, 
 was banished by the prosecution which he promoted. In the 
 same year came on the long delayed prosecution of JEschines 
 (jzp\ 7ropaxp£o-/3£/ac), the debate on which is still extant. But 
 here Eubulus and Phocion were able, though with difficulty, to 
 rescue the accused. In 340 there followed his third and most 
 powerful Philippic, which calls the Athenians from their indo- 
 lence and false security to arms against the increasing and now 
 proximate danger. 
 
 During the next three years (340-38 B.C.) the power of De- 
 mosthenes was at its zenith : his eloquence had really awakened 
 his countrymen ; vigorous measures were taken ; Euboea was 
 
CH. XI. HIS OPPOSITION TO ALEXANDER. 299 
 
 regained to their alliance; Byzantium saved from Philip's at- 
 tack. Even the theoric fund was resigned by the democracy, 
 and applied, as the orator had long since proposed, to the 
 public emergency. But by means of the new Sacred war Philip 
 succeeded in invading Greece, and fortified Elateia, the northern 
 key of Bceotia. Then it was that Demosthenes first persuaded 
 the Athenians to cast aside traditional hate, and bring prompt 
 succour to their old enemy, Thebes. Moreover, he himself 
 went forthwith on an embassy to Thebes, and induced the 
 Thebans, in spite of the opposition of the Macedonian party, 
 to receive the Athenian army with sincere good-will. Without 
 doubt this was the greatest triumph of his life, and it is ever to 
 be lamented that the hurry and urgency of the crisis have de- 
 prived us of the harangues by which he effected these wonder- 
 ful results. 
 
 § 504. The battle of Chaeronea (August, 338 B.C.) crushed 
 his hopes, and his policy. He fought in the battle as a common 
 soldier, and fled with the rest when the day was decided. But 
 the Athenians marked their sense of respect for him, and chro- 
 nicled their refutation of the charge of cowardice, by appointing 
 him (in the following winter) to pronounce the Epitaphios over 
 the fallen. He was also appointed Commissioner of Public 
 Works, to repair the fortifications of the town, by which the 
 patriots maintained the dignity of Athens, though she was com- 
 pelled to abandon her aspirations to the leadership of Greece. 
 Owing to the orator's good conduct in this office, and his muni- 
 ficent donation of eighty minae towards the works, he was voted 
 the public compliment of a crown, to be presented in the theatre, 
 at the proposal of Ctesiphon (337 B.C.). But the proposal, being 
 impeached as illegal by yEschines, was not then carried out. The 
 death of Philip (336) once more revived Demosthenes' hopes ; 
 he appeared in festive array, having cast aside the mourning just 
 assumed at his only child's death, for in him patriotism loosed 
 all domestic ties. While Alexander, content with a formal con- 
 firmation of his position as generalissimo of the Greeks, was for 
 a moment hidden among the barbarians of the north, Demos- 
 thenes, with the aid of treasure sent from Persia which he 
 dispensed without control, gave the Thebans arms and supplies, 
 
300 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. XI. 
 
 and endeavoured to incite a general revolution against him. 
 But the Athenians were still delaying, and had not actually 
 declared themselves, when the Macedonian swooped down 
 upon Thebes, destroyed it, and demanded the heads of 
 the patriot party at Athens, whom he knew to be the real 
 rebels against his authority. By the mediation of Phocion and 
 Demades the lives of Demosthenes and his friends were saved 
 — an act of remarkable generosity in Alexander, but rather, I 
 fancy, from a policy of contempt than of prudence. 
 
 The splendid conquests in the East, the Hellenization of 
 Persia, the foundation of a new and continental Greek empire 
 ■ — all this was lost upon the Greek patriots. They remained at 
 Athens, sorrowing over every fresh Greek victory, offering up 
 secret prayers for their ancient enemy, the Persian ; hoping 
 against hope that Alexander might be lost in the remote East, 
 from which the wonderful reports of his doings brought despair 
 to their narrow though noble hearts. 
 
 Yet while the East was the theatre of brilliant deeds, Athens 
 witnessed a contest of arguments which has almost produced as 
 much attention among poster. ty. This was the prosecution by 
 iEschines of the vote of confidence in Demosthenes, which 
 Ctesiphon had carried, and the reply of Demosthenes — in 
 reality a public trial of the life and acts of the orator before his 
 assembled countrymen, after his policy had failed, and his 
 country had been hopelessly subdued in the struggle. The 
 successful defence of Demosthenes (on the Crown, 330 B.C.) is 
 the greatest of the speeches handed down to us from antiquity. 
 
 § 505. After this great ancl worthy triumph, the voice of the 
 orator is to us all but silent, and the closing years of his life were 
 shaded with misery and disgrace. When the ' unjust steward ' 
 of Alexander, Harpalus, arrived off Sunium with an army of 
 mercenaries and an immense treasure, Demosthenes opposed 
 his admission to Athens ; but Harpalus obtained an entry with- 
 out his troops, and scattered his gold among the politicians, 
 in the hope of raising Athens against Alexander. Demosthenes 
 now separated himself from the patriots, and advocated, with 
 Phocion, submission to Alexander, whose power he under- 
 stood ; and he accordingly proposed the detention of Harpalus 
 
CH. xi. HIS DISGRACE IN LA TER LIFE. 301 
 
 and sequestration of his treasures till Alexander's officers should 
 come to claim them. But Harpalus escaped, and half the 
 money, though formally lodged in the acropolis under the 
 direction of Demosthenes and others, was found to have dis- 
 appeared. Demosthenes was forthwith charged with having 
 been bribed to connive at the flight of Harpalus. After an 
 enquiry by the Areopagus, he and others were sent for trial. 
 State prosecutors, of whom Hypereides was the most notable, 
 were nominated. Demosthenes, who was the first defendant, 
 was sentenced to a fine of fifty talents, and cast into prison, 
 as if payment weie impossible, without allowing him even 
 the legal respite. Two of the speeches against him have sur- 
 vived in the remains of Deinarchus and Hypereides (the latter 
 mutilated). With the help of these documents, and the narra- 
 tive of the facts, most modern historians have reversed the 
 judgment of the Attic jury, in which the ancients acquiesced, 
 and consider him to have fallen a victim to the coalition of the 
 Macedonian with the ultra-patriotic leaders at Athens. 1 He 
 escaped from prison, and was leading a miserable life of exile 
 on the coast of Argolis 2 when the news of Alexander's death 
 startled all Greece. The patriot party at Athens rose in 
 rebellion. Demosthenes reconciled himself with them, and 
 joined their embassy to influence the Peloponnesus to war. 
 He was recalled by public decree to Athens, and his glorious 
 return was compared to that of the far different Alcibiades. 
 But after brief successes, the defeat at Crannon again ruined 
 the patriots, and Antipater, no Alexander in generosity, in- 
 sisted upon the extradition of the orators, who were a perpetual 
 danger to the dominion of Macedon in Greece. Demosthenes 
 was overtaken by his pursuers at the temple of Neptune on 
 
 1 So Grote, A. S chafer, E. Curtius, F. Blass, and others. I find that 
 the Messrs Simcox, in their introduction to the speeches of Demosthenes 
 and yEschines on the Crown (Oxford, 1872), take a more sober and prosaic, 
 but to my mind a truer, estimate of the case. We shall revert to it hereafter 
 in connection with the accusation of Hypereides. 
 
 2 Perhaps writing plaintive letters to soften the anger of the demos ; 
 and if the extant letters, which are on this topic, are genuine, they must 
 be the latest compositions we have from his pen. 
 
302 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. XI. 
 
 Calaureia — an ancient shrine commemorating the earliest con- 
 federacy in the nascent Hellenic people. Seeing escape im- 
 possible, the orator, under pretence of writing his last wishes 
 to his family, retired to the shrine, where he took poison which 
 he had kept in readiness. His strength did not serve him to 
 free the temple from the pollution of his death — a pathetic 
 scene, which Plutarch has immortalised. 
 
 § 506. If the date of his birth is disputed, that of his death 
 was noted with peculiar and affectionate accuracy — 01. 114, 3, 
 the 16th of the month Pyanepsion (322 B.C.). He was then 
 sixty-two years old. Fifty years later, the Athenians, at the 
 proposal of his nephew Demochares, erected to him a bronze 
 statue (the original of our extant portraits) in the Agora, and 
 granted honours to his descendants. The following foolish 
 epigram was inscribed on the pedestal : — 
 
 efrrep foriv yv&firi pwixn\v, A7]fx.6(rdev€s, eT%es 
 ov'kot'' hv 'EWrjvwu $p£sv"Apr}s MaiceSdov. 1 
 
 The statue in the Vatican represents a poor, thin figure, with 
 lean arms, and no muscular development ; the face is care- 
 worn and furrowed ; there is no geniality, no trace of humour 
 or good nature, as in most Greek portraits ; the lower lip is 
 contracted, and retreating — a corroboration of the witnesses who 
 tell us of his naturally defective utterance. He looks a dis- 
 agreeable, painstaking, morose man; nor can we see in his face 
 any clear marks either of the moral greatness which raised him 
 to a foremost place among Greek patriots, or of the intellectual 
 force which made him an orator unsurpassed in the annals of 
 history. 
 
 § 507. The existing collection of the works of Demosthenes 
 seems to be very nearly complete, fcr we hear from the Life 
 
 1 The same point is brought out in the ironical fragment of Timocles, 
 which Athenseus quotes (cf. Meineke, Fragg. Com. hi. 598) : 
 B. Kal irpcora fiev croi iraixrerai &.i)ixocrd4v7]S 
 
 opyi(6/j.€vos. A. 6 irolos ; B. 6 trolos ; 6 Bpidpcws 
 6 rovs KarairiKras rds re \6yx<*s iffQicov, 
 fiicrwv \6yovs &vdpwiros, ouSe TrctnroTe 
 auriderop cliruv ov54i>, &AA' ''Apr] (5\eTa>v. 
 
ch. xi. THE CATALOGUE OF HIS WORKS. 303 
 
 (among those of the ten orators) that the number of recognised 
 orations was sixty-five, and we still possess sixty speeches, ex- 
 clusive of the Letter of Philip, the six letters of Demosthenes, 
 and the collection of prefaces and speeches. We have many 
 different arrangements of these speeches in our MSS., nor is 
 that of the oldest and best apparently preferable to the rest. 
 They agree (I think) in one point only, in placing the eleven 
 Philippics, or speeches against the policy of Philip, first in order. 
 None of the MSS. observe a chronological, but rather a logical 
 order, and upon the following general lines. The widest divi- 
 sion is into 6>]/j6(jiol and icWri/co/, orations on public and private 
 subjects. The former are again divided into five general 
 crvufiovXcvTiKoi, eleven $i\nnriicoi, and eight Bucaviwi, or court 
 speeches on public questions, like that on the Crown. The 
 ifoiorucoi, or orations in the causes of private individuals and on 
 private disputes, are subdivided according to their legal aspects, 
 such as those on the guardianship of his property, then argu- 
 ments on demurrer, on contracts, on assaults, &c. Beyond 
 these two classes come the tTrifeihTixol (spurious) and the 
 Letters and proems. 
 
 The first collection, or 7nVa£, of Callimachus (for the Alex- 
 andrian Library) seems not to have been very critical, and to 
 have contained all that went by the name of Demosthenes ; 
 but the rhetors of the Augustan age, Dionysius and Csecilius, 
 were already full of critical doubts, and the former (the 
 criticisms of the latter are not extant) rejects many speeches on 
 the ground of style, and also of historical inaccuracy. This 
 careful and sensible writer acknowledges only twenty-two 
 public, and about twenty-four private, orations as genuine, 
 thus giving us a total of forty-six. But the path on which he 
 trod has suggested to modern critics similar investigations, and, 
 as is natural to destructive criticism, more and more speeches 
 have been declared spurious, till the list of the greatest of the 
 German critics — A. SchaYer — only reaches twenty-nine in all. 
 
 § 508. Before entering on any special analysis of Demos- 
 thenes' works, it is necessary to say something generally on 
 this question, one analogous to that of Homeric and Platonic 
 criticism, but fortunately with some additional elements at hand 
 
301 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XI. 
 
 to afford us a solution. The moderns observe, reasonably 
 enough, that the first rhetors who opened the way in rejecting 
 previously received works were likely to be timid in their pro- 
 cedure, and to allow much to stand which should logically 
 have been set aside. This is in most cases a sound and fair 
 argument. But when I find that Dionysius was not at all conser- 
 vative in his views, and that, owing to his extravagant estimate 
 of Demosthenes' perfections, he was disposed to reject anything 
 unworthy of him, I do not think that we are justified in ad- 
 vancing beyond his scepticism. I hold this especially in the 
 case of orations which he has quoted as genuine, but which 
 moderns have rejected on the score of inferior style. This is 
 the one point in which the old rhetor's judgment was doubtless 
 far keener and sounder than ours, and it seems to me accord- 
 ingly that when he, who had his attention closely fixed on style, 
 allows a work to pass unchallenged, and even quotes illustra- 
 tions from it, the strongest arguments are required to convince 
 us that moderns have proved it spurious on the score of 
 stylistic defects. 
 
 From another side, we may approach the same conclusion. 
 When we are told that, owing to the too frequent admission of 
 the hiatus, or the imperfect rounding of the periods, or the 
 monotonous use of connecting particles, a certain speech is un- 
 worthy of Demosthenes, and therefore spurious, there are two 
 assumptions involved, neither of which need be true. The first 
 is that the orator was at all times equal to himself, and that all his 
 efforts were equally grand; whereas we may be sure that not only 
 the subject, but any momentary crisis, the state of his health, 
 or of his popularity, was sure to affect strongly the productions of 
 his genius. But even admitting, as we may, that up to a cer- 
 tain point the assumption is warranted, and that a great orator 
 will not allow a poor and feeble composition to be circulated 
 under his name, we have no right to hold that all Demosthenes' 
 speeches received the same amount of revision, or in many 
 cases any revision at all. For we know that only some were 
 published by himself as political pamphlets — these of course 
 were the most carefully and thoroughly polished. Others, and 
 especially the speeches on private suits, being perhaps not even 
 
CH. xi. THE QUESTION OF GENUINENESS. 305 
 
 the rhetor's property, but sold to the litigants, and in any case 
 of small importance to a man who did not live by speech- 
 writing, may have received very little after-revision ; and, 
 except in a few instances, when the author was interested in 
 his subject, or had accidental leisure for composition and cor- 
 rection, such speeches might fall far short, both in power and 
 in polish, of the greater public speeches. There is yet again a 
 third class, not intended for publication, or left aside for the 
 time being, and never taken up again, till other hands did so 
 after the orator's death, and then brought them out in a con- 
 dition very different from that of a perfect and revised work. 
 Such is the case with even so remarkable a speech as that 
 against Madias, which, not being spoken, was cast aside, and 
 never perfected by Demosthenes himself. 
 
 But it may be argued that all these counter-suppositions 
 assume a greater improbability than those above censured ; for 
 they assume that the first draught of a speech by a great orator 
 such as Demosthenes would not contain all the perfections of 
 his style. Why should not so practised a composer at the very 
 first burst produce a speech unmistakeable in the power of its 
 arguments and the splendour of its diction? The answer is, 
 that in the case of Demosthenes we know that such extempo- 
 rising was foreign to him, that all his speeches, when completed, 
 were strictly studies, and that their beauty and variety were not 
 the result of a spontaneous gift, like that of Demades, but of 
 careful and conscious elaboration. The varieties, for example, 
 in his acknowledged speeches in the admission of the hiatus 
 point to the fact that he did not in ordinary writing or speaking 
 avoid it as naturally disagreeable, but rather that he revised 
 his compositions and got rid of it in the finished draught. 
 This is, in fact, the method of composition postulated by both 
 Schafer and Blass in their account of the speech against Timo- 
 crates, where there are evidences of two recensions, one. of 
 which was not polished, and therefore contains offences against 
 the usual rythm and hiatus between vowels. 1 Perhaps the 
 same elaboration was applied to his periods, to the studied 
 
 1 Cf. Schafer, iii. 64, 65 ; Blass, iii. 248. 
 VOL. II. X 
 
306 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xi. 
 
 variety of his connecting particles, nay, even the logical 
 strengthening of his arguments. 
 
 As regards form, therefore, I think moderns have been 
 hasty in rejecting much that is genuine, and we can point to 
 the conflicts of opinion in our support. What Schafer thinks 
 manifestly spurious, Weil and Blass defend with sound argu- 
 ments, and these are only instances of a large and widely spread 
 controversy. 
 
 § 509. When we approach the matter of the speeches as a 
 criterion, it is confessed by all the sceptics that the majority of 
 the disputed speeches are so thoroughly at home in the details 
 of Athenian history, or Athenian law and social habits in De- 
 mosthenic days, that any theory of late forgery is out of the 
 question, and that these works, though spurious, must be the 
 compositions of obscurer contemporaries. A few, such as the 
 Epitaphios and Erotikos, are ascribed to later rhetors, though 
 even here (in the Epitaphios) Blass shows that the secrets of 
 Demosthenic style, soon obscured and lost in the decadence of 
 oratory, are known and observed. But admitting the matter 
 to be of the Demosthenic age, they think that (1) feebleness 
 and vulgarity, (2) dishonesty in the speaker, are sure marks of 
 spuriousness. The former is so completely a matter of taste, 
 and one upon which the critics vary so widely, that I pass it by 
 as of no account. The second is clearly what has urged A. 
 Schafer to seek for grounds of rejection in the case of those 
 speeches in Apollodorus' suits which argue against a client for 
 whom Demosthenes had already composed one of his best court 
 speeches. The ancients had noticed this grave charge against 
 Demosthenes. yEschines brings it against him, and he no- 
 where denies it. Subsequent biographers, like Plutarch, repeat 
 it. It is surely safer, with Blass, to find strong political rea- 
 sons for some laxity in the morals of Demosthenes' advocacy, 
 than to start by assuming his moral perfection and make it the 
 ground for seeking critical objections against well-attested 
 speeches. This tone runs all through A. Schafer's great work, 
 and in my mind mars its critical value and its good sense in 
 more than one argument. But its thoroughness has made it 
 the standard book, which both historians and critics in this 
 country seem now to follow blindly. 
 
CH.XI. SPEECHES AGAINST APHOBUS. 307 
 
 § 510. With these prefatory remarks I pass on to say some- 
 thing in detail of the principal orations of each class, and upon 
 each it will suffice to cite the opinions of the three best modern 
 critics — A. Schafer, Blass, and H. Weil (as far as his edition 
 reaches). In general, we shall follow the chronological order, 
 making, however, exceptions where a good logical grouping 
 can be attained. Thus we begin with the juvenile speeches 
 against his guardians, as certainly the earliest, though belonging 
 to the IcKDTiKol, or private orations, and therefore placed late in 
 the MSS. 
 
 The first and second speeches against Aphobus are very 
 interesting, as the first composed by the orator, and certainly 
 composed with the advice and help of Isseus, upon whose 
 eighth extant oration (on the succession to Kiron's estate) they 
 are modelled, and from which some commonplaces are even 
 transferred to these speeches l especially in the proem and re- 
 capitulation. Some old critics for these reasons thought them 
 wholly composed by Isaeus, and are often refuted with the 
 bad argument, that we find everywhere advances in structure, 
 in fulness, and in pathos beyond the older orator. I call 
 this a bad argument, because I believe these speeches are not 
 now in their original form, but retouched by Demosthenes in 
 maturer years, when he published them as early specimens of 
 his art. Hence, though in many respects they are tame and 
 dry, there are many other parts in which we find the real 
 master. The tame parts are the long and minute proofs of the 
 amount of his property in the first speech ; the finer portions 
 are the pathetic conclusions, especially in the second speech, 
 when, after describing the death-bed scene of his father, he 
 bursts into a passionate appeal to the judges, which must have 
 been quite startling to those accustomed to the older and more 
 staid eloquence. 2 Of the ethos or character-drawing so attrac- 
 tive in Lysias we find no trace. The whole composition is 
 serious and at times even harsh, showing a mind anxious and 
 
 1 Cf. a. §§ 2, 3, 7, 47, with Isseus, Or. 8, §§ 5, 4, 28, and 20, in the 
 second speech; there are also borrowings from other Isaean speeches in these 
 and the Onetor speech (Blass, p. 202). 
 
 2 §§ 20-2. 
 
 x 2 
 
308 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XI. 
 
 engrossed with the subject, to the exclusion of all conscious 
 rhetoric. But, as I have said, we may be sure that many youth- 
 ful defects, perhaps many more Isseisms, have disappeared in 
 our revised version of this early specimen of the great orator's 
 work. 
 
 The third speech (for Phanos), in reply to (7rpoc) Aphobus, is 
 a good example of the controversies to which I have alluded. 
 According to Westermann, the speech is inconclusive and wordy, 
 full of Asian bombast, and therefore spurious. To this A. 
 Schafer adds a number of apparent inconsistencies with the 
 other speeches against Aphobus, and that against Onetor. He 
 thinks it not even like Demosthenes' work. H. Weil, an equally 
 competent judge, thinks all these arguments inconclusive, and 
 suspends his judgment. Dareste defends the speech, and so 
 does Blass decidedly, showing that no forger would have ar- 
 gued so independently or even inconsistently with the other 
 speeches, and declaring that to him there is nothing un-Demos- 
 thenic in either style or argument. In this state of the contro- 
 versy the early tradition of the work as Demosthenic must be 
 allowed to maintain its authority. The speech is in other re- 
 spects not very interesting, and does not call for analysis here. 
 We know that the prosecution of Aphobus was successful, 
 though the law's delays and subterfuges did not permit Demos- 
 thenes to obtain his rights either at once or in full measure. 
 
 § 511. The two speeches against Onetor, Aphobus' brother- 
 in-law, were delivered in the sequel of the same suit (362-1 B.C.). 
 Aphobus, when defeated, or expecting to be defeated, had con- 
 veyed to Onetor his landed property under the guise of repay- 
 ment of the dowry of Onetor's sister, from whom he pretended 
 to be judicially separated. By this means Demosthenes was 
 prevented from seizing this property in satisfaction of the award 
 granted him against Aphobus. The present sneeches are in a 
 trial ftovXrjc, which we should call ' contempt of court/ or 
 something like it, and argue that Onetor is defeating by false 
 pretences the previous sentence of the court. The orator's 
 main difficulty was doubtless the good character of the defendant, 
 who had lived hitherto a blameless life ; hence ethos, or cha- 
 racter-drawing, was so far excluded, even had he been able and 
 
CH. xi. SPEECHES AGAINST ONE TOR. 309 
 
 desirous to use this device. We are not informed of the result 
 of the case. Demosthenes here again * uses a commonplace 
 from Isaeus' eighth speech, 2 which is, however, as is remarked, 
 already to be found in Isocrates, 3 but only in substance : it is 
 the stupid commonplace, that while sworn evidence has been 
 often found untrustworthy, evidence by torture has never been 
 proved false, a notion upon which I have remarked in another 
 work. 4 
 
 Thus these speeches are rightly classed with those against 
 Aphobus, as showing some dependence on Isseus, and marking 
 the first stage of the orator's style. The rythmical laws which 
 critics have discovered in his later works, and which we shall 
 note presently, are not yet observed with any strictness. On 
 the other hand, the influence of Isocratic prose is manifest in 
 a more strict avoidance of the hiatus than we find afterwards. 
 But the distinctly Demosthenic features of strong pathos, shown 
 by exclamations, and of the absence of ethos, are already 
 prominent. So is also that peculiar subdivision of subjects, by 
 which he does not complete one consideration, and abandon 
 it, but interweaves argument and narrative, and returns to his 
 former ideas in recapitulations — all this, which is the most 
 striking feature in his masterpieces, may here be found in germ. 
 To the same epoch are referred the speeches against Spu- 
 dias, Callicles, and the speech About the trierarch's crown, which 
 latter is hardly a private oration, but one on the condition and 
 duties of the Athenian fleet. This work is so methodically 
 divided into uGika, or members, and so carefully composed as to 
 rythm, that it has been referred to the Isocratic school. 
 
 § 512. With the opening of the social war (b.c. 357) the 
 critics mark the second epoch in Demosthenes' development, 
 when he begins to speak not only in court cases of public in- 
 terest, but comes forward as a politician to advise the assembled 
 people. These two kinds of speeches now interchange so 
 constantly, and are so closely allied in subject, that it is 
 better to take them as they occur chronologically than to 
 separate them into their logical classes. 
 
 1 a'. § 37. 2 § 12. * 17, § 54. 
 
 4 Social Life in Greece, p. 240. 
 
3io HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. XL 
 
 First then come the Attack on Androtion {irapavopwv) and on 
 Leptines 1 law, which is substantially a pleading of the same kind 
 — both, therefore, arguments against mischievous legislation. 
 The former is not delivered by the orator himself, but composed 
 (355 B.C. according to Dionysius) for a certain Diodorus, who 
 spoke in support of Euctemon in attacking for illegality the bill 
 of Androtion. This politician had proposed the customary vote 
 of thanks to the outgoing council, though they had not provided 
 in their year of office the additional ships, without which the 
 law forbade them ' to ask for any complimentary gift.' The 
 proposal of Androtion is therefore attacked by these speakers 
 as illegal and contrary to the public interest. The elaborate 
 second Greek preface, as well as that of Libanius, gives full in- 
 formation concerning the case. As the speech is a dtvrepo- 
 Xoyla, or subsidiary to the main accusation, it begins, without 
 strict proem, by stating the causes of enmity which the speaker 
 had against Androtion — a strange preface in our eyes, but at 
 Athens an apology for an accusation, which, if gratuitous, might 
 be called sycophantic, and hence a frequent preliminary justifi- 
 cation in such cases — and goes on to anticipate the arguments 
 by which this clever and experienced debater will probably 
 defend himself. The speaker argues his own case, (1) from the 
 informality of the proposal, (2) from the incompetence of the 
 proposer to bring it before the people. The proposal had 
 not gone through the preliminary stage, and was opposed by 
 the law prohibiting any rewards to a council which had not 
 provided new ships. Androtion is supposed to urge that the 
 preliminary vote, though enjoined by law, was in practice 
 usually omitted, and, again, that though the law prohibited 
 the outgoing officers asking any favour, there was no law 
 against their receiving one proposed ab extra. Against these 
 he urges first the importance of the letter of the law, and 
 then the importance of its spirit, for those who were not to ask 
 must a fortiori (afodpa ye) not receive favours. He further- 
 more insists, with a historical retrospect, on the great importance 
 of the navy to Athens, and shows how its efficiency was always 
 coincident with the power and prosperity of the state. As 
 regards the person of Androtion he argues (without any proper 
 
ch. xi. SPEECHES AGAINST BAD LEGISLATION. 311 
 
 proof) first that his father was still a debtor to the state, which 
 disqualified the son from proposing measures ; again, that he 
 had lived such an immoral life as to be in any case disqualified. 
 To this the speaker adds many details of the violence and 
 injustice of Androtion in exacting certain debts from public 
 defaulters in taxes. These and other subsidiary topics are 
 urged with great force and acuteness, and with intense bitter- 
 ness, against Androtion. The whole speech shows us for the 
 first time the orator in his full strength, though it is not free 
 from a great deal of conscious sophistry, and much violent per- 
 sonal abuse, which is directly justified by the speaker's private 
 hostility to his opponent Thus the letter of the law is urged 
 against the loose precedents brought by Androtion, but the 
 spirit of the law against his argument that the letter has not been 
 violated. There are, moreover, evidently insincere evasions of 
 Androtion's reply that his personal character should have been 
 arraigned directly, and not for the purpose of annulling a 
 vote affecting others. Nevertheless, the speech is a master- 
 piece in its way, and the first of those we have discussed 
 which is likely to interest the general reader, though its intri- 
 cacy and close reasoning make it no easy study. We are 
 not, however, surprised to hear that it failed in procuring a 
 verdict. 1 
 
 § 513. We pass to the more celebrated but not abler speech 
 In reply to (Trpoc) Leptmes, who had proposed that the list of 
 exempted persons should be abolished, and that all should 
 be liable to the same state burdens, except the represent- 
 atives of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the ancient tyrannicides. 
 This was the first speech of the kind delivered (b.c. 354) 
 by Demosthenes in person. The time for direct prosecution 
 (irapardfjioji') having passed, the orator assists a previous speaker 
 (Aphepsion) in attacking the law, not the person of the pro- 
 
 1 There is another much longer and more intricate speech of the same 
 kind written for Diodorus, the Attack on Timocrates for illegality; but it 
 would require a volume to analyse all the several speeches, and I therefore 
 pass it by, though it suggests interesting critical questions as to its second 
 recension, owing to a change in the adversary's attitude (cf. Blass, Demos- 
 thmes, pp. 244, sq.). 
 
312 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XI, 
 
 poser. I will not attempt an analysis of this intricate speech, 
 which deals in far too many repetitions and recapitulations for 
 a reader, though all practised public speakers know that such 
 insistance is necessary when addressing an audience. But 
 from many points of view the work is peculiarly interesting. 
 In the first place, as the ancients remarked, the enumeration of 
 the acts of several of the benefactors threatened by the law 
 gives the orator an occasion of showing his panegyrical style, 
 of which hardly another specimen has survived. 1 He argues 
 that the number of persons affected is small, and therefore the 
 result insignificant in a monetary point of view, compared with 
 the tremendous effect produced by a repudiation of state obli- 
 gations. For here lies the main interest of the speech, as a 
 manifesto of the orator's character and of his policy. He de- 
 fends the sacredness of public promises, on the one hand, 
 against the seductions of a false expediency, 2 which really 
 would defeat itself; on the other, 3 against the pressure of 
 alleged religious scruples, which he shows to be inconsistent 
 with common honesty. 
 
 There is reason to believe that Demosthenes' efforts to 
 keep the people from committing an impolitic injustice failed, 
 and that Leptines' proposal became law. Demosthenes' speech, 
 however, remains a monument of the lofty views and the large 
 policy which he consistently pursued, and it gives us a high 
 idea of the Athenian assembly that such an argument should 
 have been delivered before them by one of their public advisers 
 — at least in aspiration. The best special edition is that of F. 
 A. Wolf. 
 
 § 5 14. Before we proceed to the professedly public harangues, 
 I will notice one more speech, which though in form a charge of 
 illegality, yet approaches nearly to a speech on foreign policy, 
 and is in many respects one of the orator's best efforts — I mean 
 the speech composed (for Euthycles) against the proposal of 
 Aristocrates (end of 352 B.C.), that the mercenary general Cha- 
 ridemus, then in the pay of the Thracian king Kersobleptes, 
 should be declared sacrosanct in person, and that any man 
 slaying him should be held guilty of a crime against the whole 
 
 '§§30-86. 2 §§ 13, sq. 3 §§ 125-7. 
 
CH. XL SPEECH AGAINST ARISTOCRATES. 313 
 
 confederacy, no city of which should be allowed to harbour him. 
 This astonishing and disgraceful proposal was eminently suited to 
 bring out the powers of an orator of large and dignified views. 
 Accordingly Demosthenes opens by deprecating any personal 
 hostility against Aristocrates, whose name hardly occurs in the 
 speech. After a general 'introduction he subdivides his argu- 
 ment into three formal heads — rather an unusual practice with 
 him — first, the formal illegality of the proposal, secondly, its in- 
 expediency as a matter of policy, thirdly, the un worthiness 
 of its object to receive this, or indeed of any honour from the 
 state. But while these heads are severally and fully discussed, 
 there is constant recapitulation and suggestion of them all, and 
 the speech ends by reminding the audience particularly of the 
 first head, which might be obscured during the later details. 
 
 This formal illegality is shown by an accurate analysis and 
 interpretation of the Draconian and still valid laws concerning 
 homicide, and is, indeed, the locus classicus on the six methods 
 of procedure in the various forms of homicide. 1 With great 
 subtlety the orator shows that the proposal to make the slayer of 
 Charidemus directly punishable violates all these solemn enact- 
 ments, which former complimentary edicts had respected by 
 the clause ' let the slayer be punished as if he slew an Athe- 
 nian' 2 He also cites the general decree that no law should be 
 made which did not affect all Athenian citizens equally — a 
 provision which could, however, hardly be meant to exclude 
 special enactments or compliments. He then passes, after 
 some further technical arguments, to the reply of the opponent 
 that the bill is at all events for the public interest, and therefore 
 excusable, even if formally questionable. 3 This is by far the 
 most interesting part of the speech, and is based on the princi- 
 ple which we find the most dominating in Demosthenes' 
 foreign policy — I mean that of maintaining a balance of power 
 among the rivals or enemies of Athens. He shows that by 
 giving so strong a support to Charidemus and his employer 
 Kersobleptes, the rival Thracian kings will be discouraged, 
 and the Thracian Chersonese, an important Athenian possession, 
 will be endangered by his ambition. He shows by the exam- 
 
 1 §§ 22-86. 2 § 89. 3 §§ too, sq. 
 
3H HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. XT. 
 
 pie of the Olynthians and of Philip, 1 that the friendship of these 
 semi-barbarians is untrustworthy, and that no compliments to 
 Kersobleptes will prevent his seizing the Chersonese if he feels 
 strong enough to do so. This untrustworrhiness makes all ex- 
 treme declarations of friendship, such as the present, dangerous ; 
 and likely, under ,altered circumstances, to become ridiculous. 
 Indeed, it lowers Athens to the position of a mercenary body- 
 guard, protecting the life of a despot or an adventurer. Nor 
 will there be wanting many others of equal claims, who will 
 feel offended at such a special selection. This leads him to 
 sketch briefly, as he pretends, the previous history of Chari- 
 demus — a valuable sketch, and indeed the locus classicus for 
 the life of the condottieri 2 of the fourth century B.C., but in 
 the present connexion far too diffuse. 3 He then meets with 
 a lame excuse 4 the retort why he had not mentioned all 
 this long ago, when other honours were being paid to Chari- 
 demus. He concludes with a splendid eulogy, often to be re- 
 peated in his political speeches, of the dignity of the policy and 
 the rewards of the older Athens compared with the decadence 
 and folly of his own day, especially as regards the leading poli- 
 ticians (priropeQ) and their actions. 5 With a recapitulation of 
 his legal argument the speech concludes. We may well wonder 
 how any but the orator himself could possibly have delivered 
 so long and intricate a speech, for we do not know what 
 assistance from notes or otherwise the buyer of a speech was 
 allowed to use in court. All the main lines of Demosthenes' 
 policy are here plainly laid down. All the wonderful arts of 
 his oratory are already at work. 
 
 § 5 15. We are thus naturally led back to his political speeches, 
 the first of which was spoken two years before the present trial, 
 and is termed On the Symmetries. It is really a recommenda- 
 tion of an important naval reform, but in direct relation to an 
 exposition of the foreign policy of Athens at a given crisis. 
 
 2 The student may further compare Demosthenes' defence of Diopei- 
 thes, a similar general, in his speech On the Chersonese (§ 24, sq. ), delivered 
 some years later. 
 
 3 §§ 144-86. * §§ 187-90, 5 § 301. 
 
ch. xi. SPEECH ON THE SYMMORIES. 315 
 
 Hence it properly ranks under the Hellenic harangues of the 
 orator, and Dionysius proposes to entitle it ' on the relations to 
 the king of Persia' (irepl rwv flamXiKtiv). 1 But, after the manner 
 of Demosthenes, the two subjects are intertwined, and produced 
 as parts of the same policy. There seems to have been a 
 strange uneasiness, almost a panic, at Athens about the arma- 
 ments of Darius Ochus against Egypt, which were supposed 
 the prelude of a new invasion of Greece. 
 
 Demosthenes shows that these fears are in all probability 
 groundless, in any case premature, and that a declaration of 
 hostile policy against Persia might produce serious complica- 
 tions. ' Military preparations against either Greek or barbarian 
 being the same, why, when we have acknowledged foes, should 
 we seek new ones, and not rather prepare against the former, 
 and so be able to repulse the latter should they arise ? ' 2 All 
 the commentators, from Dionysius and the scholiasts down to 
 Schafer and Blass, have asserted that the orator is here pointing 
 at Philip, and that he here first (354 B.C.) shows his long-sighted 
 prudence as to the real dangers of Athens. I think the con- 
 text proves this widely accepted view to be quite false, and 
 invented to panegyrise the wisdom and political insight of 
 Demosthenes. As he speaks in the previous sentence of Greek 
 as opposed to barbarian enemies, and then of acknowledged 
 as opposed to problematical enemies, it is quite certain that 
 he did not intend Philip, whom he always carefully separates 
 from proper Greeks, and ranks among barbarians. Moreover, 
 had he really intended or thought of Philip, it would have 
 added point and power to his argument to say 'especially 
 Philip, against whom we cannot contend without an efficient 
 fleet.' It appears, on the contrary, from Philip's Letter? which 
 is now generally accepted even among the Germans as genuine, 
 that the Athenians at this time intended to invite Philip to join 
 them and the rest of the Greeks against Persia. Such evidence 
 
 1 Nevertheless, as Spengel observes {Demegorien des Dem., Abhandh 
 Mtmich Acad, for 1863, p. 62), the lesser and merely introductory part of the 
 speech refers to the Persian king, whereas Demosthenes' main object is 
 the internal reform. He therefore justly rejects Dionysius' proposed title. 
 
 3 §§iQ-H, 3 §6. 
 
316 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xi. 
 
 is absolutely conclusive against Demosthenes intending to indi- 
 cate Philip among the ackfiowledged Greek enemies of Athens. I 
 therefore call attention to this as one of those remarkable speci- 
 mens of a false and forced interpretation, which, when it has once 
 gained a footing in philology, goes on infecting book after book 
 for centuries. Mr. Grote alone, with that genuine historical 
 sense and appreciation of proper evidence which distinguishes 
 him above all the narrators of the affairs of this epoch, ignores 
 the imaginary reference, and notes how obscure Philip's plans 
 remained, and how little even the wisest people thought of 
 them at this time. 1 
 
 I will not here discuss the scheme of naval reform proposed 
 by Demosthenes, which shows a thorough study of the re- 
 sources and wants of Athens, and proves his thorough compe- 
 tence as a financial statesman. It is the guarded and dignified 
 foreign policy, the insistance upon proper preparation and 
 diligent attention to public affairs, which forms the main 
 interest of this weighty speech. The style is sober and grave, 
 as befitted a young speaker then first coming forward as a 
 politician. The critics justly note in these higher qualities, as 
 well as in a certain harshness and obscurity of diction, the 
 strong influence of Thucydides upon the orator. 
 
 § 5 1 6. In connexion with this speech, we may take that on 
 Megalopolis (353 B.C.), and that on Rhodes (351 B.C.), both declar- 
 ations of foreign policy, and both distinctly written in Demos- 
 thenes' pre-Philippic attitude. In the former, he supports the 
 petition of the Arcadians, now united in Megalopolis, whom the 
 Spartans (as soon as Thebes ' was weakened by the Phocians) 
 wished to break up into their old sporadic villages and political 
 unimportance. To support these Arcadians was to reverse the 
 policy pursued at the battle of Mantinea, when Athens had 
 sided with Sparta against the then dangerous power of Thebes. 
 Hence Demosthenes has to refute the charge of inconsistency, 
 which he does by showing that with a change of circumstances 
 Athens must change sides, and that she is really consistent in 
 
 1 xi. 399. Cf. p. 406: ' In this (on Megalopolis), as in the oration De 
 Symmoriis, a year before, there is no allusion to Philip, a point to be 
 noticed,' &c. 
 
CH. xi. THE FOREIGN POLICY OF DEMOSTHENES. 317 
 
 doing so, the balance of power being the object at stake. As 
 the Spartans were formerly supported with this object only, so 
 now they must expect that, when they attempt unjust aggrandise- 
 ment, Athens will oppose them with active force. Similar is the 
 speech for the exiled Rhodian democrats, who came to implore 
 the assistance of the Athenians to reinstate them, though they 
 had been active in the social war against Athens, and had 
 been leading agents in the overthrow of her naval and insular 
 dominion. Hence these exiles, far from being able to claim 
 sympathy, were the objects of hatred and aversion to Athens 
 — a feeling which Demosthenes recognises, and which he ex- 
 presses in his speech in the strongest terms. But he shows 
 that a large policy should not be guided by such personal likes 
 and dislikes ; he thanks the gods that the Rhodians have been 
 taught by bitter lessons the errors of their ways ; he urges that 
 it is the essential duty of Athens everywhere to support demo- 
 cracies against oligarchies, and he therefore recommends that 
 they should be assisted in their present misfortunes. It is ob- 
 jected that this will bring Athens into collision not only with the 
 Carian queen (widow of Mausollus), but with the power of 
 Persia, whose vassal she is. To this Demosthenes replies, that 
 such hostility need not be feared, that when a proper cause is 
 supported, men should not shrink from danger, and moreover 
 that Persia is only strong with Hellenic aid. Thus the very 
 policy which when vague, and for no special purpose, he op- 
 posed in his speech on the Symmories, he here advocates when 
 a special purpose and distinct foreign policy require it. These 
 three speeches give a full and clear picture of the pan-Hellenic 
 policy of Demosthenes, ever desirous to make Athens felt as a 
 leading and an imperial state, ever ready and claiming the right 
 of interfering in external politics, nay even insisting upon it as a 
 duty, but always in relation to definite questions and for definite 
 purposes. These purposes were two : first to maintain the 
 balance of power among the rivals and opponents of Athens ; 
 secondly, to sustain liberty and democracy against tyranny and 
 oligarchy, whether Hellenic or barbarian. 
 
 § 517. But the rising power of Philip is not yet clear to the 
 orator ,* he does not mention him as even of equal importance 
 
3i 3 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xi. 
 
 with Kotys or Kersobleptes, The single allusion in the latest 
 speech of the three l makes me believe it to be really his first 
 notice of Philip, and delivered before the first Philippic, though 
 Dionysius maintains the reverse. The passage is, moreover, in- 
 teresting as having suggested to the critics that in contrasting the 
 king of Persia with confessed enemies in the earliest harangue, 
 he intended the king of Macedon. Here are his words : ' I see 
 some of you often speaking with contempt of Philip as of no 
 consequence, but with fear of the King as a powerful enemy 
 when he takes up a quarrel. But if we do not actively resist 
 the one as too cheap, and yield in everything to the other 
 as formidable, against whom, O Athenians, shall we set our- 
 selves in array ? ' This is not the tone of the first Philippic; 
 it is even contradictory to its proem. I hold it, therefore, 
 to have been delivered just before serious advices reached 
 Athens that the power of Macedon was no longer to be trifled 
 with, and that here lay the real danger. But instead of 
 agreeing with Dion and his panegyrists that his chief merit was 
 to foresee coming events and to raise the first note of warning, I 
 marvel that this series of harangues should show such ignorance 
 and carelessness about Philip, and think the orator may fairly 
 be charged, along with his obscurer countrymen, with great 
 want of providence and curious dimness of political vision. 
 
 The ancients justly separated the Hellenic harangues from 
 the Philippics, under which title they classed all the speeches 
 relating to the struggle between Athens and the rising power 
 of Macedon. Of these the undoubtedly genuine are (in their 
 chronological order) the first Philippic (351 B.C.), and the three 
 Olynthiac orations (349-8 B.C.) ; these may be called the ear- 
 lier or first group before the Peace of 346 B.C. Then follow the 
 orations on the Peace (346 B.C.), the second Philippic (344 B.C.), 
 the oration on the Chersonese and the third Philippic (341 
 B.C.) — in all eight orations. The remaining three, of doubtful 
 authenticity, I will postpone for the present. 
 
 § 518. Nothing can be more striking than the new and 
 altered tone of the first Philippic 2& compared with the nearly syn- 
 chronous Rhodian harangue. There Philip is mentioned as an 
 
 1 Or. xv., § 24. 
 
CH. xi. THE FIRST PHILIPPIC. 319 
 
 object of contemptuous indifference to at least a section of the 
 people, here the orator assumes at the very outset that all are 
 dispirited at his successes, that many debates have already been 
 held about them, and that he does not hesitate to come for- 
 ward, because the advice of older speakers has been exhausted 
 and found useless. Such a sudden change of attitude seems 
 to me inexplicable by the natural course of events, and in a 
 politician of ordinary foresight, especially when we find Demos- 
 thenes with his attention fixed on the foreign relations of 
 Athens, and already knowing the northern ^Egean from personal 
 service as a trierarch. Dionysius, indeed, divides the speech 
 into two parts, of which he brings the latter part 1 down to 
 347-6 B.C. — a division not sanctioned by later critics, who insist 
 upon the unity of the speech, and its delivery at the earlier 
 date. I confess that but for a stray mention of Olynthus, 
 and of the prompt expedition to Thermopylae as recent, 2 I 
 should be disposed to bring the whole speech down to a 
 later date, and to demand a considerable lapse of time or a 
 serious crisis between this and the former public harangues ; 
 and this will yet, I believe, be possible with the aid of a few 
 emendations. 3 
 
 1 From § 30, onward. 2 rb. reAei/Tcua Trpcvrjv, § 1 7. 
 
 3 There is the strongest possible internal evidence against the chrono- 
 logical order of the public speeches delivered 354-50, as laid down by 
 Dionysius, and adopted by A. Schafer and other moderns. If we compare 
 the allusions to Philip found (or not found) in these speeches, we get the 
 following natural sequence : (1) The speech on the Symmories, where he 
 strives to calm the fear of the Persian, and though it lay in his way to 
 mention Philip, he is silent concerning him, and only contrasts certain 
 Greek enemies to the uncertain Persian. (2) The speech on the Rhodians, 
 in which he casually mentions Philip as an enemy whom some at Athens 
 despise, while they dread the Persian. (3) The speech against Aristocrates, 
 where Philip's acts towards Olynthus and Athens are cited as affording 
 a clue to the probable policy of Kersobleptes, in being ambitious as well 
 as faithless, and preferring risks and dangers to peace and security. (4) 
 Then, after a momentous (though possibly short) interval, comes the first 
 Philippic, of which the proem states that many public discussions had 
 already taken place about Philip, and that the public mind is in discourage- 
 ment, nay, even in despair at his great successes, and his almost impreg- 
 nable position. I am hardly able to conceive in an earnest man, following 
 
3 20 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xi. 
 
 The orator seeks to meet the profound discouragement of 
 the people, and their belief in the invincible and impregnable 
 position of Philip, by showing that this was not the temper by 
 which Philip waxed great, or by which Athens recovered her 
 independence from the dominion of Sparta, and that every 
 really vigorous action of Athens has been crowned with success. 
 He recommends the preparation of a large force at home, of a 
 small flying squadron near the scene of the war, but above all 
 he inveighs against the sloth and dilatoriness of the people, who 
 are ever talking and voting and resolving and doing nothing. 
 The whole tenor of the speech is that of Demosthenes' later 
 oratory, full and vehement, speaking with authority and yet 
 with respect for the people, attacking the national faults and 
 the corrupt politicians with bitterness, yet ever maintaining the 
 dignity and the greatness of the real Athens. 
 
 § 519. It is not necessary to analyse severally all the kindred 
 harangues, which are curiously similar in tone and style, and 
 turn perpetually round the same subjects. Indeed, so general 
 are the recommendations in the Olynthiac orations, that their 
 order cannot be determined from internal evidence, and the 
 greatest authorities from Dionysius to our own day have dif- 
 fered upon the question. Had even Thirl wall and Grote been at 
 one we might accept their consensus as historians to outweigh 
 all the mere critics, but even they cannot agree, and Grote, 
 while adopting the order which seems to me most probable, ex- 
 pressly refuses to give a positive opinion. I call special atten- 
 tion to this general character of these speeches, as perhaps the 
 reason why they had less effect upon the audience than might 
 be expected. It arose no doubt from the personal apprehen- 
 sions of the speaker, who could not make a definite proposal 
 without danger of prosecution for illegality {japavofuoi'). In- 
 deed, we know that he put forward Apollodorus to run this 
 risk by voting the Theoric fund to military purposes; and 
 though his proposal was carried in a moment of panic, he was 
 accused when it had passed over, and was fined a talent, about 
 
 an honest and consistent policy, such declarations as these last preceding 
 the casual or contemptuous notices in the other speeches. 
 
cr. xi. DEFENCE OF DIOPEITHES. 321' 
 
 which time the proposal he had made was declared by a new 
 law to be a capital offence. 
 
 What strikes us next to this generality of exhortation, which 
 is, however, always suitable to the particular facts of the case, 
 or illustrated by past history, is the great seriousness of style, 
 which admits of hardly any ornament in the way of metaphor 
 or simile. Nothing can be simpler and more direct than the 
 redhot earnestness of these speeches. There are only two of 
 them which have marked differences from the rest, the shorter 
 and poorer speech on the Peace, and the larger and more 
 varied speech on the affairs of the Chersonese. The latter is 
 professedly in defence of the mercenary general Diopeithes, 
 who had undertaken to act on his own responsibility against 
 Philip, and whom Demosthenes defends against the attacks of 
 Philip's party at Athens. This speech, moreover, contains a 
 very remarkable peroration, declaring the orator's own policy, 
 and his description of the duties and responsibilities of a good 
 citizen, in contrast to the venal and the corrupt. There is no 
 finer passage in all Demosthenes, as has been recognised by 
 Brougham. I therefore quote it as a specimen of his think- 
 ing and his style. 1 The speech on the Peace is poor and tame, 
 
 1 Or. viii. §§ 66-72 : roiydproi tovtccv fiev e/c irrtox&v evioi raxv irXov- 
 ffioi yeydvaffi Kal e| avwvvixoov Kal add^cav eV8o|ot Kal yvcbpi/uioi, vpels 5e rov- 
 vavriov e/c jx\v ivdo^wv &5o|ot, e/c 5' eviropuv ikiropoi' Tr6Xews yap 670)76 
 ttXovtov r)yovfiai crv/x/xaxovs iriariv evpoiav uv irdvTWV sad' fyiels aivopoi. 
 6/c Se rod tovtwv oXiywpws vfias %x eiv Kal iav ravra (p4p€o~9ai 6 fxlv evdai/icou 
 Kal jxeyas Kal (pofiepbs itaaiv "EXXtjo'i Kal jSapjSapots, v/j.e7s 6° epr)/ji,oi Kal 
 Ta.ireivoi, tt) jxkv tu>v wv'iqw acpOouia Xafnrpoi, tt) 5' uv irpoarJKe TrapaffKtvfj 
 KarayeXaaroi. ov rbv avrbv 8e rpoirov irepi ff vjxwv Kal irepl avrwv iviovs 
 rwv \ey6vTwv opca BovXevofievovs' ifxas (J.h> yap yo-vxiav &yeiv <pacrl 8e«/, 
 Kay ris v/xas adiKy, avrol 8 1 ov dvvavrai Trap' vfxiv t)Gvxim ayeiv ovfievbs 
 avTobs clSlkovvtos. 
 
 E?Ta <p7](rlv hs av ri>xv TrapeXGwv ' ov yap edeXeis ypdcpeiv, oi>Se klvSv- 
 vevztv, aXX' aroXp-os 6? Kal fiaXaKSs.' iyk 5e Qpacrvs fikv Kal fideXvpbs Kal 
 avaiSrjs out' elfil fii\re yeuoifxrjv, avSpeidrepov ixivroi iroXXy Ttdvv roov ira/xws 
 TToXiTtvofievav Trap' vfjuv ifiavrbv r)yovfiai. 6Vtis fikv yap, Si &uSpes 'Adyvalot, 
 irapiSaV a ffvvoicrzi rfj ttoXci, Kpivei, Sri/uevei., SiSwai, Karriyopei, ovS^juia TauV 
 avdpeia ttols?, aXX , e^cov ev^xvpov rrjs avrov ffooTTjpias to irpbs X&P LV 
 vyuv Xtyeiv Kal TroXireveadaL dacpaXws Opacrvs iariv. Hcris 5° virep toit 
 jSeXTurrou ttoXXo. toTs vfAsrepois ivavriovrai BovX^uaaL, Kal jx-qSh Xeyet irphs 
 VOL. II. Y 
 
322 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xi. 
 
 for Demosthenes was advocating against his will the policy of 
 his opponents, and recommending a peace with Philip, from 
 apprehension of a general attack by the Amphiktyonic Con- 
 federacy. The orator afterwards denies that he advocated this 
 peace (in the Embassy speech), which Grote notices as a matter 
 of doubtful honesty, but which the German panegyrists explain 
 away by absurd subtleties of interpretation. 
 
 § 520. In the opinion of most critics, the third Philippic 
 is considered not only the finest of Demosthenes' public ha- 
 rangues, but probably the greatest speech ever delivered. I 
 confess that, not to speak of the oration on the Crown, which 
 they perhaps do not call a public harangue, the speech about 
 the Chersonese seems to me more varied, more pathetic, and not 
 less powerful. But critically, the third Philippic is peculiarly 
 interesting in being handed down to us in two recensions — one 
 (ihe shorter one) represented by our oldest and best MS. (the 
 Parisian S) alone, the other by all the rest, in which clauses 
 are constantly added, so as to change the symmetry, and at 
 times even the argument. Nevertheless, both recensions seem 
 purely Demosthenic, and point to separate editions. Blass, the 
 
 Xdpiv, «AAct to 0€\ti<ttov aet, Kal ttjv TOiavrrjv iroXiTtiav it •poaipeirai iv r) 
 TrAei6vo)V r) rvxv Kvpia yiyverai 7) 01 AoyKT/xoi, tovtwv 8' afKporepcov eavrbv 
 vtt€v9vvov vfiiv Trapex e£ j ovr6s ear' av5pe7os, Kal xp^ 1 ^^ 7 6 toXlttis d 
 toiovt6s i<TTiy, oi>x 01 rrjs irap' r)/j.epav x°-P lT0S T " u-eyurra rr)s Tr6\ea>s airo- 
 Aa>Ae/coTes, otis iya roaovrov Sew QqXovv 7) VQjxi^eiv a£iovs irohlras rrjs 
 ir6\(:ws elvai, oiffr 1 et ris epoir6 /te ' eiire /tot, av Se $r) ri rr\v irShiv r)/j.a>v 
 ayaObv ireiroit}Kas ; ' ^X Q0V i & dvhpes 'A^Tjrotot, Kal Tpirjpapxias elrreTv Kal 
 Xopt]yias Kal xP 7 )l x ^ rwv el<r<popas Kal'Avcreis alx/J-aXcarcav Kal roiairas &\Xas 
 <piXav6panrias, ovSev av rovrcav etiroifii, aAA' '6ri rwv roiouiwv 7roXirev/xdru>v 
 ovbev iroXirevofJiai, aXXa Svvdfxevos av '[ffcas, faairep Kal vrepoi, Karfiyopeiv Kal 
 Xapi^ffQai Kal Srj/teuetv Kal r&XX' a iroiovcriv ovrui rroieTv, ouS' e^' evl rov- 
 raiv ir&iror'' i/xavrbv eral-a ovdh Trpor)x^V 1 ' o&6' vrvb Kepbovs ovd J virb <pi\ori- 
 p.ias, aXXa biap-ivco Xeywv e| wv 670b /nev ttoXXwv eAai tcdv et/tl irap' vjxiv, 
 vixels 5', et ireiOoiaQe /tot, /J.ei(ous av eft/re* ourw yap Ygois aveiri(pdovov eiireTv. 
 ovbe 7' e/xol 80/cei diKaiov tout' elvai iroXirov, roiavra iroXireu/xa6' evp'urKtiv 
 e| wv iy& fxev rrparos u/xwv effo/iai evOeus, vfxeTs 8e rwv &XXu>v vararoi' 
 aXXa arvvav^dvecrdaL 8e7 ttjv ttSXiv rots ru>v ayaQ&v rroXiruv 7roAiTev/tao-t, Kal 
 rb fieXricrrov ael, filj to fiaarov airavras Xeyeiv. eV eKeTvo jjikv yap r) 0uo"«j 
 a ; tTT) j8a8tetTai, eVi toCto Se t£ A^7^ 8e? irpodyeaOai SiSdaKOvra rbv ayaObv 
 •noAirnv. 
 
ch. xi. SPURIOUS SPEECHES. 323 
 
 best of modern critics on such a subject, considers the shorter 
 to be the later version prepared by the orator himself — if so, 
 another proof that he attained his perfect form not by previous 
 meditation and slow composition, but by repeated and con- 
 scious correction. 1 
 
 There are several other speeches in the series, only one of 
 which, the fourth Philippic, has any strong claims to authenti- 
 city. But it so abounds in passages borrowed from or used in 
 other Demosthenic orations, that it must be either a cento by 
 a later hand, or an incomplete sketch elsewhere utilised by 
 the orator himself, but afterwards found among his papers, and 
 published. Owing to the excellent composition of an original 
 passage in the oration — the attack on Aristomedes 2 — Blass 
 thinks the latter to be the case ; he even thinks Aristomedes a 
 fictitious character, and that the speech was a mere exercise 
 prepared at home by the orator. This seems hardly so pro- 
 bable as that a pupil put together the speech, using perhaps 
 fuller materials to those now extant. 
 
 The speech mpl awra^stog, which does not profess to be 
 a Philippic, is made up of passages from the earlier public 
 speeches of Demosthenes, along with general exhortations of 
 a thoroughly un-Demosthenic character. So, too, the speech 
 on Philip's Letter is not even a reply to the very weighty and 
 now acknowledged missive placed beside it in the MSS. The 
 speeches on Halonnesus and on the treaty with Alexander will be 
 referred to under other authors in their place. Indeed, all 
 these outlying speeches are interesting from the view they give 
 us of the average oratory at Athens as compared with the 
 exceptional splendour of Demosthenes. 
 
 § 52 t. I pass to the three longest, and perhaps best known, 
 speeches of Demosthenes on his own affairs — those against Mei- 
 dias, on the corrupt Embassy, and on the Crown. These, though 
 separated in date, are worthy of being considered together, 
 as they form, with the speeches against Aphobus, our materials 
 for an estimate of Demosthenes from autobiographical sources. 
 
 1 Cf. also Spengel in Abhandl. of Munich Academy tor 1863, at the end 
 of his first article on Demosthenes' public harangues. 
 2 §§ 70-4. 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. XI. 
 
 Meidias, who was connected with Demosthenes' guardians, and 
 hence an old personal enemy of the orator, had, after many 
 annoyances and insults, gone so far as to assault him publicly in 
 the theatre, when directing in festive dress the performance of 
 the chorus of his tribe. This expensive public duty Demos- 
 thenes had volunteered, when others were unwilling, and his 
 tribe likely to be disgraced beside the rest. He had been 
 fortunate enough to secure by lot the choice of his flute-player, 
 and his chorus would have won (he says) but for the constant 
 and malicious interference of Meidias. But when the latter 
 went so far as to give him publicly a box on the ear, De- 
 mosthenes brought the matter at once (irpoftoXr}) before the 
 ass embled people, who passed an immediate decree condemn- 
 ing Meidias. The extant speech was written for the subsequent 
 action in court, by which the penalty should be assessed after 
 due argument. But as the case was compromised for thirty 
 minse, this speech was never delivered, and bears many traces 
 of not having been even revised for publication. 
 
 It is, perhaps, one of the greatest triumphs of Demosthenes' 
 art, that he has raised so scurvy a quarrel to eternal fame, for 
 an action 'about a box on the ear' (rapt rov kov$v\ov) was no 
 grateful subject, especially when the orator submitted to the in- 
 sult at the time, and reserved all his rage for a rhetorical dis- 
 play. Indeed, he is almost ridiculous when he congratulates 
 himself l ' that he was not carried away at the moment to do 
 something irreparable ; ' with his feeble body and in state dress, 
 any retaliation would doubtless have placed him in a more absurd 
 and contemptible position. The mighty pathos then, which the 
 scholiasts and Germans so admire, when he is describing his 
 own chastisement by Meidias, rather affects us with merriment 
 than with indignation. Even worse are the passages where he 
 boasts that he has rejected repeated attempt^ at a compromise, 
 which he regards as dishonourable in the case of so grave an 
 insult to a public officer. For we know that after all this was 
 written — we will hope not before — the matter was compromised 
 for a considerable fine (about 115/.). This fact is naturally laid 
 hold of by ^Eschines and by Plutarch as an ugly passage in the 
 
 1 § 74. 
 
ch. xi. SPEECH AGAINST ME ID I AS. 325 
 
 orator's career, nor can he be cleared of meanness except by 
 those who are determined to find in him a perfect hero. 
 
 The finer side of the speech is its remarkable insistance on the 
 public side of the offence — how personal violence, as such, can- 
 not be tolerated as being opposed to the very essence of demo- 
 cracy j still more, how violence done to a citizen acting in a public 
 capacity is a far graver offence, and an insult to the state ; how in 
 the present case a religious ceremony, moreover, was disturbed, 
 and hence the crime amounted to public impiety (rW/3«a), at 
 Athens the most heinous of offences. He proves the public 
 feeling in these matters by citing many remarkable precedents. 1 
 
 From another point of view we may consider the oration as 
 a good specimen of what the ancients called a kotcopia, or per- 
 sonal attack, the counterpart of the eulogies which were part of 
 their epideictical oratory. The life and acts of Meidias, his vio- 
 lences, his luxuries, his cowardices — in fact, his violations of 
 every principle of a democracy — are painted with great variety 
 and liveliness. He is shown to be a sort of feeble ape of Alci- 
 biades, but only to have succeeded in copying his private vices. 
 It is remarkable how the orator 2 speaks of his own solitary posi- 
 tion, in connexion with no other public man, whereas Meidias 
 has great political support. I have already noticed his explicit 
 statement of his age as only thirty-two, 3 when he says that 
 Meidias, though now fifty, has not performed equal public ser- 
 vice. The reading is certain, but as the speaker wished to 
 urge his youth, he was probably guilty of an understatement of 
 his age, so that it is not too bold of modern critics to reject, as 
 they do very generally, this explicit statement as inconsistent 
 with the birth-year established on other grounds. 
 
 I will only call attention to one more passage as particu- 
 larly splendid in its pathos, the passage 4 in which he calls 
 up the unfortunate Straton, who had decided in an arbitration 
 against Meidias, and, having been disfranchised by his contriv- 
 ance, could no longer speak or give evidence in court. As the 
 speech was never thoroughly revised, there are many repeti- 
 tions and unevennesses in the argument, and many feeble or 
 diluted passages. Nevertheless, they are relieved by others of 
 
 1 §§ 175-82. 2 § 189-90. 3 § 154. 4 §§ 95-8. 
 
326 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERA TURE. ch. xi. 
 
 such force that, in spite of the shabby subject, and the some- 
 what sorry figure presented by the speaker, it is generally con- 
 sidered one of the finest of his speeches. Dionysius says the 
 speech was composed 349-8, as it was then that the assault 
 took place. Possibly, however, it may not have been written 
 till 347, after which time Demosthenes, by going on the em- 
 bassy, shows that he was reconciled with the politicians whom 
 he there speaks of as opponents. 1 The best special edition is 
 that of Buttmann. 
 
 § 522. The speech on the corrupt Embassy (b.c. 344), against 
 ^Eschines, which is, I believe, the longest of all Demosthenes' 
 speeches, may be placed, for many reasons, midway between 
 the Meidiana and that on the Crown. It is, like the others, to 
 a large extent autobiographical, but devoted to a great public 
 cause, in which the orator vindicates himself, and attacks the 
 policy of ^Eschines for corrupt subservience to Philip. Strange 
 to say, though dealing with a far higher subject, it affects no 
 pathos as compared with the earlier speech. Indeed, the only 
 prominent passage of the kind — that about the treatment of 
 the Olynthian captive woman at the feast 2 — was, as we hear 
 from ^schines in his reply, an oratorical failure, for which 
 the actor was hissed by the audience. In ethos, as is con- 
 fessed, the orator is not remarkable, though he often attempts 
 it in the present work. 
 
 The form of the speech has excited great suspicion on 
 account of its irregularity of structure, its constant change of 
 subject, its sudden returns /upon itself, in fact, its want of 
 symmetry and its diffusiveness. Moreover, in yEschines' reply 
 there are several points controverted which do not appear in our 
 present text, and which imply that Demosthenes' spoken attack 
 must have differed from it. Ancient critics were accordingly of 
 opinion that it was never really delivered, and that we have (as 
 in the Meidiana) a mere preparatory sketch not finally worked 
 up. They even state that in their after disputes no pointed 
 
 1 Blass, op. cit., p. 289. 
 
 2 There is some reason to think from ^Eschines' allusions that the story 
 was told with greater and more revolting detail in the actual delivery of 
 the speech than it is in our extant version. 
 
CH. xi. SPEECH ON THE EMBASSY. 327 
 
 reference is made to the trial; which is true, for though Demos- 
 thenes 1 alludes to ^Eschines being on this occasion let off on the 
 ground of his insignificance, I do not think this passage proves 
 anything more than that Demosthenes laid his accusation, and 
 failed to carry it through, which he might have done by not pro- 
 secuting a case he found hopeless. But Plutarch quotes, without 
 being persuaded, the statement of Idomeneus that ^schines 
 escaped by only thirty votes. On the whole, I am disposed to 
 side with the ancients against the moderns, and to regard the 
 close general correspondence of ^Eschines' extant reply to the 
 undelivered attack as arising from the Athenian habit of discuss- 
 ing in the agora all the probable/;w and cons in every impend- 
 ing lawsuit, so much so, that it was a common formula to say, 
 'but I hear that the defendant is going to lay stress on the fol- 
 lowing argument.' Those who hold that the trial took place 
 think that we have the first sketch, which was altered for delivery 
 in some respects, and Schafer even defends all the transitions 
 and reversions, which bolder critics seek to mend by transposi- 
 tions and omissions. 
 
 After duly weighing these various views, I will state my own 
 opinion, without venturing to dogmatise. In the first place, as 
 regards the great length of the speech, I think it was forced 
 upon Demosthenes. The trial, if it ever came off, was cer- 
 tainly looked forward to as such an oratorical treat, that spe- 
 cial arrangements were made, and additional time assigned 
 to both plaintiff and defendant. If then the multitude of 
 citizens came together full of interest and curiosity, it was 
 absolutely necessary to satisfy them as to time, as well as in 
 other respects. But Demosthenes' method of treating a large 
 subject at full length was not that of an orderly succession of 
 heads. We see from his imperfect Meidiana, from his perfect 
 speeches against Aristocrates and on the Crown, that his aim 
 was to keep the whole subject all the time before his audience, 
 by means of rapid turns, ingenious retrogressions and anticipa- 
 tions, and constant recapitulations. Hence nothing required 
 more care and revision than the sequence of these interlacing 
 arguments, and the proper methods of transition from one to 
 
 3 De Corona, § 142. 
 
328 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XL 
 
 another without sameness and without jerkiness. Thus, I con- 
 ceive him to have first chosen his arguments, then to have 
 turned to the question of diction, and lastly to that of compo- 
 sition, properly so called. I feel convinced that he transposed 
 paragraph after paragraph, omitted some and added others, and 
 only with great labour and perseverance attained that perfec- 
 tion where every point seems to come in naturally, and yet 
 receives no more than its due weight in the whole effect. If 
 then the speeches against Meidias and on the Embassy were 
 laid aside before actual delivery, and by a political man full of 
 business and with no leisure hours, we can conceive them still 
 requiring that exceedingly minute filing and polishing, which 
 may be perceived in the oration on the Crown. We have, in- 
 deed, not only the materials, but the worked-up materials of 
 such a speech. Probably, the actual paragraphs are all as he 
 would have spoken them. The joining particles, perhaps the 
 order in some cases, would have been different, so that fair 
 critics could not have stumbled, as they have done, at the 
 logical irregularity of the arguments. 
 
 As an historical source, this great speech, controlled by the 
 counter-allegations of ^Escbines, is one of the most precious 
 documents of the period, but it requires the good sense and 
 candour of Grote to balance the conflicting assertions, and 
 make out the residuum of truth between them. Hence as a 
 commentary on the matter of the speech, there is nothing com- 
 parable to Grote's discussion. l On the mere text, we must 
 study the critical revisions of Cobet (Misc. Crit.) and Weil 
 (Hara?igues), which have brought out all that can be obtained 
 from the study of the best Parisian MS. for the interpretation. 
 Shilleto's foolish hostility to Grote mars his otherwise valuable 
 commentary. 
 
 § 523. The circumstances introducing the oration on the 
 Crown are somewhat complex, but well recorded and tolerably 
 certain. When, in consequence of the defeat at Chseronea, the 
 Athenians were compelled to look to their fortifications, they ap- 
 pointed Inspectors of Fortifications (retxo7roioi), one from each 
 tribe, to superintend the public expenditure in this respect. 
 
 1 xi. pp. 525, sq. See especially his valuable note on that page. 
 
ch. xi. SPEECH ON THE CRO WN. 329 
 
 Demosthenes, representing his tribe, not only displayed great 
 zeal, but spent a considerable sum of his own money in this ser- 
 vice. For this merit Ctesiphon proposed that he should be pub- 
 licly crowned in the theatre of Dionysus before the assembled 
 people with a golden crown. But the proposal was indicted 
 (ira^ar6fjn»y) by ^Eschines, on the legal grounds that Demos- 
 thenes was as yet accountable for public money, and that there 
 were special enactments forbidding such public demonstrations 
 elsewhere than in the legal assembly in the Pnyx. This objec- 
 tion stopped the proposal in its first stage, though it had re- 
 ceived the approval of the Council {irpojjov\evjj.a), and De- 
 mosthenes' friends did not feel strong enough to force on the 
 actual trial at the time. But in 330 B.C., when the revolt 
 of Agis had just been crushed, and the anti- Macedonian sympa- 
 thisers had no doubt nearly involved Athens in the danger, 
 yEschines felt able to bring his case to a decision. He there- 
 fore indicted Ctesiphon formally for an illegal proposal, on the 
 ground that Demosthenes was a traitorous and cowardly poli- 
 tician, and that his public life had been fraught with disaster 
 and not with credit to the state. 
 
 This is the account given by Grote of the position of affairs 
 in August, 330 B.C., when the trial came on. It appears to 
 me. however, strange, if it was really done at the instigation of 
 the Macedonian party, that iEschines should have insisted on 
 Demosthenes' secret subservience to the Macedonians, and 
 his dishonesty in pretending to oppose them. 
 
 Apart from the formal question, on which ^Eschines seems 
 to have been right (though Demosthenes is able to quote 
 precedents violating the letter of the law in his favour), he 
 reviewed Demosthenes' life and acts in four periods : that before 
 346, that from 346 to 341, then the crisis ending with the battle 
 of Chaeronea (338), and lastly, the subsequent period. The 
 reply of Demosthenes does not follow him strictly in his track. 
 In the first place, the legal question is treated very briefly, and 
 thrust into the middle of the speech, where its importance dis- 
 appears, owing to the larger and weightier arguments before and 
 after it. Secondly, as regards the four periods of his life, the 
 last was not only of little political importance, but very incon- 
 
330 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. XI. 
 
 venient to be discussed in the face of Alexander's successes, 
 and the close observation of his agents at Athens. This then 
 the orator completely ignores. Thirdly, it is more remarkable 
 that he is also silent on the period before 346, in which his 
 first Philippic and Olynihiacs show him to have been an active 
 and able state adviser. I can see no reason why he has not 
 touched upon this period, except that (as I have already sug- 
 gested) he did not show any peculiar prescience in an early 
 discovery of Philip's plans, and, in any case, though already a 
 political man, his speeches at that time had little effect either 
 for good or evil. We may even suspect that our redactions of 
 these early speeches contain a good deal of ex post facto wis- 
 dom, which the orator may have added when revising them 
 later in his life for publication. 
 
 In addition to the proper matter of his defence, Demos- 
 thenes has all along added parallel pictures of ^Eschines' 
 character and policy, by way of contrast to his own, so that the 
 speech is no mere defence of himself, but also a vehement and 
 even scurrilous attack on his opponent. A very slight sketch 
 of the general line of his argument must here suffice, as its 
 extreme variety and complexity can only be understood by a 
 special and careful study. 
 
 § 524. The proem, 1 which opens with a modest prayer that 
 the gods may grant him a requital from the judges of the same 
 goodwill which he entertains for the city and its citizens, re- 
 quests that the jury may not be induced to expect in his reply 
 a close adherence to his adversary's attack, for he is under a 
 grave disadvantage ; his whole reputation, and not a single 
 action, is at stake, and he will be bound to praise himself. 
 For they will see that the trial does not affect Ctesiphon more 
 than it does himself; he therefore repeats his prayer. He 
 then proposes 2 to take up the general attacks of yEschines 
 before approaching the case at trial. Then follows the narrower 
 preface (irpoKaraaMvri), in which he passes from the private 
 attacks to those on his policy and public life, and shows 3 
 that this is no proper way to bring so grave a charge. Had 
 ^Eschines been honest, he should have brought an open and 
 
 1 §§ 1-8. 2 *p6de<ri$, § 9. 3 §§ 12-17. 
 
ch. xi. SPEECH ON THE CROWN. 331 
 
 direct indictment long ago. This complaint of the form of 
 attack chosen by the adversary is a commonplace as old as 
 Antiphon, and recurs (say the old critics) seventy-two times 
 in various forms throughout this speech. Then follows 1 a 
 sketch (supported by documents) of the affairs of 346 B.C., of 
 the peace negociations with Philip, and the ruin of the Pho- 
 cians, in which he justifies his own policy, followed 2 by a 
 parallel exposing of the conduct of ^Eschines during the same 
 period, with sundry digressions into the present consequences 
 of this policy, and the pretended friendship of ^Eschines with 
 the Macedonian kings. 
 
 He now turns for the first time to the actual charge, 3 and 
 directs it to be read out, but fastens again upon the statement 
 that Ctesiphon's praise of his policy was false, and proceeds to 
 refute this charge from a sketch of the history of Greece sub- 
 sequent to the affairs of 346. This, with recapitulations, and 
 with an account of previous crowns awarded to him, occupies a 
 long argument. 4 He then turns back to the legal side of the 
 charge, where his case is weakest, and seeks by charges of con- 
 fusion, and by quoting precedentsi n which the letter of the law 
 was violated, to dispose of this serious difficulty. 5 He passes 
 into a violent personal attack on vEschines' origin and personal 
 history, a regular Xoidopla, such as would hardly have been toler- 
 ated even in the Irish Parliament ; 6 and next to the political 
 acts which he accuses ^Eschines of having done for the enemies 
 of the city. 7 Then he repeats 8 the initial solemn prayer to the 
 gods, since on previous occasions the people were blind and 
 would not see either Philip's ability or the fatal effects of JEs- 
 chines' guilt. 9 There follows the famous narrative of the seiz- 
 ure of Elateia by Philip, of the great crisis, and of his own 
 acts, justified against ^Eschines' attacks. 10 This narrative is 
 concluded by the noble outburst in which he maintains that, 
 even had the result been foreseen, no other policy was honour- 
 able or possible for imperial Athens — and here follows the 
 
 1 §§ 18-31- 8 §§ 31-S2. 3 §§ 53-9- 
 
 * §§ 60-109. * §§ 110-20. 6 §§ 1 2 1-3 1. 
 
 ' §§ 132-140. 8 § 141. 9 §§ 142-4. ,0 §§ HS-87. 
 
332 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. XI. 
 
 famous adjuration. 1 He then continues the narrative up to 
 the battle of Chaeronea, which he naturally does not touch, but 
 shows how that, even as it turned out, his bold policy was of 
 service in obtaining good terms for Athens. 2 
 
 The whole remainder, though very long, is epilogue. First 
 he replies to ^schines' attack that he was an unlucky politi- 
 cian, who brought evil upon those he advised ; he contrasts the 
 fortunes of his life with ^Eschines' low life and adventures — a 
 bitter and abusive outburst. Then 3 he announces that he will 
 recapitulate before concluding ; and in the remainder of the 
 speech he touches upon almost all the topics already treated, 
 throwing in new narrative, and digressions upon the duties of 
 an honest politician and the fatal effects of treachery. He ends 
 with an eu 7 ogy of the great men of old, whom he had fol- 
 lowed in spirit, so far as he was able, and with a prayer (as 
 he had begun) that the gods may destroy the traitors, and save 
 his city from impending dangers. 
 
 § 525. Even this scanty outline will show the curious and 
 variegated pattern in which Demosthenes has woven his great 
 masterpiece. He has despised all the ordinary subdivisions by 
 which inferior speakers preserve order and regularity in their 
 compositions. He passes to and fro, combining apology and 
 invective, argument and narrative, by natural transitions and 
 in marvellous relief. The feeling which results from reading it 
 straight through is (I think) not so much that of conviction, 
 as that of being dazzled by the multitude and variety of the 
 speaker's matter, and by the general effect which he produces. 
 There is no boasting, no vain-glory, and yet never was there 
 such sustained and artful recital of personal merit. So, like- 
 wise, the contrasted picture of iEschines, though coarsely 
 drawn, and not without obscene allusions, is so powerful that 
 he has never recovered it in the eyes of posterity. But in 
 marked relief to this lower side of the speech is the lofty moral 
 tone, the almost Stoic disregard of consequences, the assertion 
 that the highest honour, the most enduring success, is the per- 
 formance of right actions for their own sake. It was, indeed, 
 the only defence possible for a politician whose career had 
 
 '§§188-98. 2 §§ 199-250. 3 §2 7 0. 
 
CH. xi. KIRCHHOFF'S DISSECTION OF IT. 333 
 
 been disastrous, and whose plans had turned out a failure. 
 But, nevertheless, it was the right defence, and as such has 
 stamped upon the speech a dignity rarely attained in political 
 oratory. 
 
 The extreme complexity and variety of its plan is obviously 
 the original idea of the orator, but is doubtless slightly increased 
 by the insertion of special replies to special points made by 
 ^Eschines, these replies generally occupying (as Blass remarks) 
 the place of excrescences or appendices to the main argu- 
 ment. This is in itself sufficient to show that Demosthenes 
 composed his defence on the general lines which he knew a 
 priori, and which the gossip of the town informed him would 
 be taken by ^Eschines, and afterwards added such special para- 
 graphs as seemed required. Whether this was done in the 
 actual delivery is more than doubtful. For Demosthenes cer- 
 tainly did not hold himself bound to publish the speech as it 
 was spoken. In fact, ^Eschines (as the critics have shown) 
 added replies in his speech to points made by Demosthenes, 
 which do not now appear in Demosthenes' harangue. But' 
 how far Greek speakers were able to answer extempore we do 
 not know, and most assuredly in the carefully constructed 
 orations which we possess, not only the avoidance of hiatus, 
 but the alleged regularity of the cola or clauses in each period, 
 must have made all such sudden additions easily marked and 
 ungainly excrescences. Hence I believe them to have been 
 either omitted, or specially worked in, before the oration came 
 to be handed over to the copyists. 
 
 But will it be believed that this masterpiece of Greek prose 
 has found its Wolf, who insists on cutting it in two, and de- 
 claring it the later combination of two inconsistent plans, one 
 sketched at the first threatening of the trial, the other actually 
 delivered six years after? This is the theory of A. Kirchhoff, 1 
 whose essay will no doubt be read with delight by those who 
 reject his critical dissection of the Odyssey. For if anything 
 could throw general doubt and suspicion on a man's critical 
 judgment, indeed on his critical sanity, it is this attempt to 
 
 1 Abhandl. Berlin Acad., 1875. 
 
334 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xi. 
 
 demand from a great and perfect work of art the starved logic 
 of pedantic syllogisms. 1 
 
 The special editions of this oration, generally accompanied 
 by the companion speech of yEschines, are very numerous. 
 Weil [Les plaid, pol. de DemostJiene, vol. i. Paris, 1877) gives 
 us the newest and most careful recension. The edition of the 
 Messrs. Simcox (Oxford, 1872), with ^Eschines' attack, is a 
 very good and satisfactory book. 
 
 We have now concluded our review of the harangues to 
 which Demosthenes owes his great and deserved reputation. 
 The speech on the Crown is (with the exception of a couple of 
 Letters) the last literary product he has left us, and, as Grote 
 has called it, the Epitaphios of Greek Republican liberty. 
 
 § 526. But we have as yet hardly noticed the large collec- 
 tion of court speeches, written in private suits, which are handed 
 down to us among his orations, and which have given rise to 
 volumes of comment and criticism. To review them in detail 
 would be beyond the scope of this work; nor are they, with one 
 or two exceptions, equal to the public speeches, or calculated 
 to give us a better and clearer view of the orator's art and of 
 his style. Indeed, court speeches upon obscure quarrels can 
 hardly in any age be called literature, nor is it from this point 
 of view that they will ever again be popular. They were in 
 their day important studies of how a legal plaint or defence 
 should be framed ; they afford many commonplaces and gene- 
 ral appeals useful in other cases, and may have been a sort of 
 handbook for speech writers. But nowadays they are chiefly 
 valuable as a deep fund of materials for reconstructing the 
 details of the Attic juridical system, which they discuss from 
 all sides. They are, moreover, incidentally, rich sources for 
 studying the private life and manners of Athenians in that 
 age ; for in the narratives of facts, in the evidence adduced, 
 in the personal attacks on character, we have sketches of life 
 and of habits peculiarly fresh and genuine. 2 
 
 1 Cf. Cicero's judgment, Orator, c. 38, § 133: ' Ea profecto oratio — ut 
 major eloquentia non requiratur.' So Wm. Fox in his new com. (Wien, 1881). 
 
 2 The later chapters of my Social Life in Greece were drawn from this 
 unexhausted source; among other like studies, I may call attention to the 
 
CH. xi. THE PRIVATE ORATIONS. 335 
 
 For it is remarkable, that though many of these speeches 
 have been declared spurious as being unworthy of Demos- 
 thenes, hardly any of them have been shown the product of 
 a later age, or the work of sophists imitating in rhetorical 
 exercises the real conflicts at the Attic bar. On the contrary, 
 their minute and accurate detail, both in legal and histori- 
 cal allusions, prove them to be genuine court speeches, com- 
 posed in the age and for the occasion when they profess to 
 have been delivered. Accordingly they have been rejected 
 merely from deficiencies of style, except, indeed, in the case of 
 critics like A. Schafer, whose objections are based on the moral 
 ground, that he does not believe Demosthenes capable of 
 sophistically advocating certain unsound claims. This latter 
 ground especially applies to the speeches for Apollodorus, 
 whom Demosthenes had vehemently attacked in one of the 
 ablest and bitterest of his court speeches, on behalf of Phor- 
 mion. The charge, however, of having corruptly changed sides 
 as an advocate openly brought by ^Eschines, was not formally 
 denied by Demosthenes, and was generally believed in ancient 
 times, so that any rejection of such speeches on moral pre- 
 sumptions must be regarded as uncritical, and opposed to com- 
 mon sense. 
 
 It is considered a remarkable coincidence of evidence, and 
 a perfect proof of spuriousness among the Germans, that Ben- 
 seler, starting from the merely external test of the avoidance of 
 hiatus, and A. Schafer, who quite independently examines the 
 speeches on sesthetical and moral grounds, should come to 
 proximate conclusions in their rejection of particular works. 
 But in the first place they do not always agree, and in the next 
 it seems to me that the same revision which removed the hia- 
 tus would also remove faults in rythm, clumsinesses of transi- 
 tion, and inconclusive arguments. Thus the researches of both 
 scholars would only result in proving that some of Demos- 
 second volume of Messrs. Paley and Sandys' private orations of Demos- 
 thenes ; and, above all, to the striking and picturesque study of bankers and 
 banking, sketched from the history of the Bank of Pasion Phormion &-" 
 Co., in these orations, by M. G. Perrot {Revue des Deux Mondes for 
 Nov. 15, 1873). 
 
336 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xi. 
 
 thenes' speeches were more logical, powerful, and carefully 
 composed than others, and to the latter class belong most 
 of the works they have declared spurious. When Diony- 
 sius and the ancients felt a speech to be spurious, I cede to 
 their far keener appreciation ; ' when the moderns object, I do 
 not feel persuaded, except they can show strong internal 
 grounds, such as the avoidance of all historical detail, and the 
 servile imitation of a known model, which we find (for example) 
 in the two speeches against A?istogeiton. But here Dionysius, 
 of course, was not at fault. 
 
 § 527. The simplest and best of all the ' private orations ' is 
 doubtless that against Conon, in an action for an aggravated 
 assault. In this, as in very few of his works, the orator occupies 
 himself with simple narrative, and a sketch of the dissolute life of 
 Conon and his aristocratic set ; the subject is one quite fit for 
 Lysias, but though all the critics praise Demosthenes' narra- 
 tive as superior in strength and even in ethos, I cannot see in 
 it the genuine and unaffected grace of the older master. 2 Per- 
 haps more celebrated is the speech for Phormion, to whom the 
 celebrated banker Pasion had bequeathed his wife (a common 
 Attic practice) and his banking business, with the guardianship 
 of his children. The eldest son, Apollodorus, an extravagant 
 man, quarrelled with Phormion about the inheritance, but pre- 
 sently compromised his differences. When he again, however, 
 attacked Phormion, the accused brought a demurrer (irapa- 
 ypacf)!]), and so spoke first, showing that the former compromise 
 was a legal bar to any action, but for safety's sake going care- 
 fully into the rights of the case. The present speech is a 
 avvriyopla, or supporting speech by some friend of Phormion. 
 The narrative, the argument, and the replies to Apollodorus 
 are combined in Demosthenes' manner, and, indeed, here if 
 anywhere, he succeeds in the ethos, and draws his client as an 
 honest man of business, opposed to a worthless, vain, and noisy 
 spendthrift. 
 
 1 This appears to be Mr. Jebb's judgment, in his excellent article on 
 Demosthenes in the Encyclop. Britann. , but he nevertheless defers to A. 
 Schafer's opinion on the speech against Macartatus. 
 
 2 Cf. the excellent analysis of this speech by M. Perrot, in the Revue 
 des Deux Mondes for June 15, 1873, pp. 946 sq. 
 
ch. xi. QUESTIONS OF SPURIOUSNESS. 337 
 
 The first speech against Stephanus, which is certainly gen- 
 uine, is happily a sort of reply on the side of Apollodorus, who 
 sued Stephanus for having given false evidence in the trial con- 
 cerning the establishment of Pasion's will. Thus though De- 
 mosthenes did an immoral act in pleading on different sides 
 in the same quarrel, we have learned by this means a great deal 
 about an interesting case. The struggles of Demosthenes' 
 panegyrists to get rid of this evidence against their hero are 
 summed up by Blass, 1 whose conclusion I have adopted. 
 
 § 528. Among the other speeches rejected, because there is 
 too much hiatus either between the vowels or the proofs, because 
 the dates are supposed later than the epoch during which De- 
 mosthenes wrote court speeches, or because the arguments are, 
 in the opinion of the Germans, not sound enough or acute 
 enough for the great orator, there are several which seemed 
 genuine, and good specimens of his eloquence, to Dionysius, 
 and which liberal critics will hesitate to condemn ; for we 
 should now have given up that veneration for destructive criti- 
 cism which is often rashly felt for a new acquaintance. 
 
 Thus the excellent speech against Callippus is rejected by 
 Schafer and Blass because no long interval can be proved to 
 have elapsed since the death of Pasion (370 B.C.) and the case 
 before us, which was therefore tried before Demosthenes wrote 
 any speeches. These chronological inferences are extremely 
 doubtful ; in fact, delays in Attic law were rather the rule than 
 the- exception, and to base upon them the spuriousness of a work 
 sustained by its own merits, and by consistent tradition, seems 
 to me regular Teutonism in reasoning. But no sooner is it 
 determined that Apollodorus' affairs were not argued by Demos- 
 thenes than the critics at once discover all sorts of feeblenesses 
 and follies in a speech which would be shown full of beauty 
 and of force if they thought it genuine. The same remarks will 
 apply, I think, to two other sets of three speeches rejected 
 even by Blass : first, the speeches against Macartatus, O/ym- 
 piodorus and Lacritus, two of which are cited by Dionysius as 
 good specimens of Demosthenes' ethos ; next, those against 
 
 1 pp. 412-13. 
 vol. 11. z 
 
338 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. xi. 
 
 Apaturius, Phormion (quite a different person from the client 
 of the speech in behalf of Phormion), and Dionysodorus. In the 
 case of any of them there is, however, some possibility that a 
 clever pupil or imitator may have written under the advice and 
 with the revision of the master. Such a production would be 
 now quite undistinguishable from a lesser, or careless, or un- 
 revised, work of the orator himself. 
 
 There are not more than nine as to which the arguments of 
 the sceptics seem to me of real weight ; but when we reach a 
 certain boundary line, or balance of probabilities, the decision 
 becomes very difficult, if not impossible. It is perhaps best 
 to refer, in conclusion, to the results reached by Blass, 1 to which 
 I do not subscribe, but which will show the reader the most 
 recent state of the controversy in Germany. 
 
 § 529. There remain two epideictic speeches, the Epitaphios, 
 or funeral speech, and the Erotikos, or tract in praise and 
 exhortation of the fair Epicrates. The latter is so essentially 
 Isocratic in form and composition, that we wonder how it 
 ever came to be attributed to Demosthenes. The Funeral 
 speech is supposed to be that delivered on the slain at 
 Chseronea, and is really, in outward form, of the school of 
 Demosthenes ; but is a poor performance, 2 full of over-dressed 
 conceits, and has never been able to deceive critics as to its 
 spuriousness. The writer shows more acquaintance with Plato's 
 Menexenus than with any of the other extant models. 
 
 § 530. Far more interesting is the collection of proems, or 
 introductions to public harangues, fifty-six in number, which 
 have been raised, by separating some of them into parts, to 
 the number of sixty-two. These commonplaces are in several 
 
 1 p. 526. He acknowledges eleven public harangues, and eight court 
 speeches on public affairs ; then seven private orations of an early, and 
 seven from a later period. This gives a total of tMrty-three genuine 
 speeches. He furthermore classifies the spurious speeches into those by 
 contemporary authors, by the school of Demosthenes, and by the writer 
 who composed for Apollodorus. Weil, a greater linguistic critic, acknow- 
 ledges the speech against Olympiodorus, and others which Blass rejects. 
 
 2 I observe that Spengel {Trans. Munich Acad, for 1863) is not indis- 
 posed to accept it as genuine, though confessedly below the average of 
 Demosthenes' works. 
 
OH, XI. THE PROEMS AND LETTERS. 339 
 
 cases identical with the openings of the earlier speeches of 
 Demosthenes (up to 350 B.C.), but show no traces of any of 
 his later and more famous harangues. Had a rhetor or later 
 collector been here at work, such an avoidance would be in- 
 conceivable ; and therefore the collection is to be referred (in 
 spite of Schafer and Dobree) to about the year 349 B.C., and 
 to the great orator himself. In form — in the observance of 
 rythm and avoidance of hiatus — all these proems agree with 
 those confessedly used by Demosthenes. About one half of 
 them refer to special occasions ; the rest are perfectly general 
 introductions, intended to excite the interest of the audience 
 and to obtain a fair hearing for the speaker. But they are 
 strictly commonplaces, and seek to gain attention not by put- 
 ting things in a new and startling way, or by striking some sud- 
 den and exciting chord of sympathy, but by the careful and 
 well-rounded expression of some sound common-sense consi- 
 deration. As such they are not very well suited for the use of 
 the modern orator, though showing clearly how strict and con- 
 servative was the taste of the so-called ochlocracy of Athens. 
 
 § 531. As regards the Letters of Demosthenes, which close 
 the long catalogue of his works, it has hitherto been the usual 
 fashion to reject them as spurious in composition, but to use 
 them as historical materials, on account of the important and 
 apparently accurate information they contain about the orator's 
 exile. 1 
 
 The genuineness has lately been defended (at least as re- 
 gards most of them) with great ingenuity by Blass. They had 
 
 1 The genuineness of the documents inserted in the speeches has also 
 of late years been generally impugned, and in many cases they hare been 
 proved the ignorant compilations of a later age. Nevertheless, the whole- 
 sale scepticism regarding them which was growing up has been consider- 
 ably checked by the discovery of some of them on marble, especially those 
 cited in the speech against Macartatus. which so many critics think 
 spurious. Hence the conclusion of Weil (in the preface to his edition of 
 the speeches) is the just one — that we can lay down no general law, but 
 must test each alleged document on its own merits. Some are certainly 
 false, some apparently genuine ; the majority are very doubtful. But 
 this is not a literary question. Cf. H. Sauppe in the 25th Philolog. Ver~ 
 sammlung, Leipzig, 1868. 
 
 z 2 
 
34o HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. xr. 
 
 been assumed spurious by Westermann, who was followed, with- 
 out argument, by Schafer, 1 and, what is far more important, by 
 Grote, who was no sceptic in such matters, but who will not 
 even 2 use them as historical sources, which Schafer does. Blass 3 
 accepts the second and third, holds the first and the sixth to be 
 doubtful (though the former may be in substance genuine), and 
 rejects the fourth. No. 5 is of no consequence. He shows that 
 the writer possessed accurate knowledge of obscure details, and 
 that, moreover, both his politics and his composition correspond 
 with those of Demosthenes. He concludes that the onus pro- 
 bandl lies on the sceptics, and makes out a very reasonable 
 case. Without venturing to decide the question, in which, how- 
 ever, I sympathise with Blass, I will only point out how signally 
 German critics have their sesthetical judgments controlled by 
 their critical conclusions, and in consequence how utterly un- 
 safe they are as to questions of style. Westermann, having 
 made up his mind that the letters were spurious, discovers that 
 he is guided by their ' thoroughly un-Demosthenic composition, 
 their senile verbosity, their unworthy complaining of misfortune, 
 their obtrusive boastfulness, their want of argument,' &c. 
 Blass, who decides them to be genuine, finds their self-praise 
 moderate and in good taste, their logic thoroughly convincing, 
 their bitter complaints the natural voice of a sensitive and re- 
 fined nature, their patriotism noble and affecting ! 
 
 § 532. After this long review of special works, we may 
 sum up our estimate by some general remarks. All critics are 
 agreed that, as in the writings of Isocrates, so in those of 
 Demosthenes, the greatest elaboration and conscious finish 
 were apparent ; we know that the orators of that age regarded 
 themselves as artists, who competed with poets, painters, and 
 sculptors in the production of permanent masterpieces, of 
 models for the imitation of lesser men. Hence the form of a 
 Greek oration is a matter of widely different importance from 
 
 1 Schafer has since (Neue Jahrb. for 1877, pp. 161, sq.) given his argu- 
 ments, and strongly supported Westermann's view ; Blass has replied 
 {Ibid. pp. 541, sq.), but I cannot see that the case has become clearer. 
 I still adhere, though without much confidence, to the side of Blass. 
 
 2 xii. 406, note. 3 pp. 3 8 3> s qq- 
 
CH. xi. CHOICE OF WORDS. 341 
 
 that of modern speeches. Even if the ideas were common- 
 place, or at least, not new, a Greek orator could attain the 
 highest praise by the arrangement of his argument, the choice 
 of words, and of the constructions in which he put them. 
 Hence the frequent use of commonplaces, such as the proems 
 of Demosthenes, in which some frequently occurring thought 
 was shaped into a proper expression, in which it might be 
 always produced, without offending the audience by its repe- 
 tition. Moreover, as speeches seem to have been mostly com- 
 mitted to memory, such commonplaces were of no small 
 assistance to the speaker, like the repetitions in. the Homeric 
 poems. As all art, and more especially Greek art, so Greek 
 oratory was subject to rules, which were not lightly trans- 
 gressed ; it was based on precedents, which were altered or 
 extended slowly, and protected with great jealousy. The per- 
 fection of such a speaker as Demosthenes consisted, there- 
 fore, partly in his adherence to the tradition of his predecessors; 
 partly in the wise and cautious innovations whereby he raised 
 his eloquence to a higher level. 
 
 § 533* First, then, as regards his choice of words, while adher- 
 ing generally to the traditions of Lysias and Isocrates, it was re- 
 marked that he increased his vocabulary in strength by the 
 admission of many common words and exclamations, which 
 they would have considered beneath their proper dignity, but 
 which give him both greater variety and greater force. Such are 
 his dvdpujTriov, iaii(3eio(f)a'YOQ, 6 de'iva, airav, vrj Ata, and many 
 other terms, especially of abuse, which prevent him from being 
 cited as a master of Attic purity, but which must have added to 
 the force and homeliness of his language. We have reason to 
 believe that his actual speeches contained more of these expres- 
 sions than we now find in our texts ; for some were expunged 
 during revision by the author ; others rejected by rhetoricians as 
 improper and undignified. These coarser expressions are to 
 be found rather in his court speeches (even in public cases) 
 than in his public harangues, which are remarkable for their 
 dignity and calmness of expression. Indeed, nothing can give 
 us a higher impression of the assembled Attic population than 
 the eloquence which best succeeded with them. But in his 
 
342 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. XI. 
 
 court speeches he is in every respect freer, using vulgarisms 
 and trite proverbs when he thinks them effective. Far rarer 
 are poetical expressions in any of his speeches. His close 
 study of Thucydides shows itself in his choice of certain ab- 
 stract forms, such as the crowding together of infinitives with 
 articles, which is very obtrusive in some speeches, and the use 
 of neuter adjectives substantively, such as to twv df.iov rjjjuv 
 ev/jLEvec. These tournures de phrase make some of his early 
 speeches, for example, that on the Symmetries, as obscure as the 
 speeches of Thucydides. On the other hand, the use of the 
 plural of abstract nouns, like irepiuvtriai, is on the model of 
 Isocrates. His metaphors are not frequent ; they are chosen 
 from familiar objects, and are thus not poetical in our sense, 
 but are very striking, and always tersely put, often in a 
 single word. His similes are accordingly very rare. In the 
 great third Philippic there are six to be found ; in the equally 
 great speech on the Chersonese there are none. Everywhere we 
 wonder at the simplicity and brevity of his diction, no idea 
 ever being repeated which does not give balance to a period ; 
 and most of these exceptions are removed by rejecting, with 
 Cobet, the second and otiose expression. Indeed, we must 
 again repeat that Demosthenes in his first draughts, or original 
 compositions, did not approach the perfection and beauty of 
 form which his speeches ultimately attained, and that it was 
 through conscious and painful revision that he introduced 
 their more subtle beauties. This is frequently alluded to by 
 the ancients, not excepting his contemporaries, who said his 
 compositions smelt of the lamp ; it is also shown clearly by 
 modern critics, like Blass, who point to speeches of which 
 parts have been elaborated and the rest left in the original 
 form. 
 
 § 534. But this after-polishing applies less to his words than 
 to the rules as to hiatus and rythm, which have been analysed 
 with minute care by Benseler and by Blass. As to hiatus, it 
 appears that Demosthenes began by following pretty strictly the 
 practice of Isocrates, and not permitting final and initial vowels 
 to come together, even when separated by a pause, except in 
 such words as ?/ and Kai, This is the case up to about 357, or 
 
ch. xi. LA TVS OF COMPOSITION. 343 
 
 the period which embraces the first speech relating to public 
 affairs (that on the trierarcfts crown). But even during this 
 period, some of his speeches show less care than others, pro- 
 bably in the revision ; and afterwards we find that he refused 
 to be bound by these fetters, and allowed himself greater 
 liberty. At the close of a colon or clause, he no longer avoided 
 the hiatus, any more than the tragic poets did at the end of a 
 verse. How far elision and crasis prevailed in pronunciation, 
 and diminished the apparent cases which we find, cannot now 
 be determined. But after articles, relatives, and such frequent 
 words as kizd, fxirrot, &c, initial vowels are freely admitted. The 
 exact law which he followed seems nowhere stated. Cicero 
 says he avoided the ' concourse of vowels ' magna ex parte. 
 Later rhetors seem to understand only the Isocratic law. 
 
 Passing to rythm, Blass has enounced the law that Demos- 
 thenes avoids the collocation of more than two short syllables, 
 just as is done by the poets in tragic trimeters — a law of which 
 he asserts that no trace is to be found in any of the previous 
 prose writers. He thinks that the immediate followers of 
 Demosthenes observed it, but that presently it was lost. In 
 Plato especially Blass finds frequent crowds of short syllables, 
 thus proving, as he thinks, that Demosthenes' law was a deli- 
 berate removal of his style from that of polished conversation. 
 The reader who desires to go into the minute details of this 
 theory, its apparent exceptions, and the evidence for it, should 
 consult Blass' statement. 1 He says it is used so concurrently 
 with the avoidance of hiatus, that spurious or unrevised pas- 
 sages show a parallel negligence of both, and he applies them 
 throughout to determine the question of genuineness. 
 
 § 535- There follows a long and intricate discussion on the 
 structure of Demosthenes' periods, which were known to be 
 divided into utiXa, or members, and which were, according to 
 critics old and new, arranged symmetrically, so as to produce a 
 harmonious effect like that of the odes of Pindar. But while the 
 best old critics, who speak fully and constantly about Demos- 
 thenes — I mean especially Dionysius and Cicero — often in- 
 deed praise his rythm and his periods for their harmony and their 
 1 AB. iii. pp. 100-4, and also iv, 359-68. 
 
344 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XI. 
 
 structure, yet never give us any special rules, or any definite 
 analysis of his procedure, modern critics have striven to pene- 
 trate into the secrets of his composition, and tell us what laws 
 he adopted to produce his great effects. That these laws pro- 
 duced a certain avoidance of hiatus is certain, proving a rule of 
 oratory expressly discovered and used by Isocrates. That they 
 also resulted in the rythmical rale set up by Blass seems 
 true, after the evidence he has adduced ; but I cannot see it so 
 clearly as to assert that this rule is not the accidental, or 
 at least unconscious result of some more subtle and purely 
 aesthetic canons, which the orator never taught, and probably 
 could not teach, his pupils. This I think is the fair inference 
 to draw from Blass' own admission, that all observance of such 
 rythm disappears as soon as he comes to speeches distinctly 
 posterior to Demosthenes in date. In other words, the revision 
 of the master pointed out offences against a very delicate sub- 
 jective taste to which his pupils deferred, but as there was no 
 canon laid down, or perhaps possible, the secret was lost with 
 the artist who alone could apply it. 
 
 The case seems to me equally strong as regards the question 
 of larger composition, that of the arrangement of KwXa, or 
 clauses, wherewith Demosthenes is said to have produced a 
 sense of harmony by a symmetrical disposition. For this the 
 reader should consult Blass's arrangement of the beginning of 
 the Crown oration, according to his hypothesis. 1 
 
 1 Op. cit. pp. 
 
 560-1, Proem, 
 
 §§] 
 
 [-8: 
 
 
 §§I-2 
 
 §§3~4 
 
 
 §§5-6 
 
 §§7-8 
 
 Kw\a 
 
 Kw\a 
 
 
 Ka>\a 
 
 Kw\a 
 
 3 2 j 23 | 33 
 
 44 1 35 1 53 
 
 (TTIXOI 24 
 
 
 24 I 4 1 4 1 42 
 
 (TTIXOI 24 
 
 2222 | 2222 
 
 (rrixot 16 
 
 arrixoi 1 6 
 
 This looks wonderfully symmetrical; but if the reader wall turn back to the 
 text printed by Blass on p. 529, he will see how arbitrary the determin- 
 ing of each colon is. In fact, the old rhetors, as Blass tells us, could not 
 agree about it. Some are long, some short, and hardly any are clearly 
 determined by either the sense or the construction. To print the passage 
 would occupy too much space. Cf. the article on Stichometry and Colo- 
 metry by Blass in the Rhein. Mus. for 1869 (p. 524), followed up in 
 his account of Demosthenes, pp. 105, sq. The question at issue is this : 
 
CH.xi. COLOMETRY OF THE TEXT. 345 
 
 But when we come to enquire by what laws Blass determines 
 the beginning and end of each member, we find no satisfactory- 
 test in his long and intricate discussion * except the occurrence 
 of a strong hiatus, which was seldom allowed within a kQ\ov. 
 As to the rest his arrangements are capricious and often un- 
 natural, nor do I think that another scholar, acting indepen- 
 dently, and without a desire to produce a symmetrical result, 
 would bring out the same divisions. I do not even think that a 
 recovery of the analysis by the orator of Rhodes, who divided the 
 speech against Philip s Letter into ku>\o. according to the number 
 given in (then) old MSS., and professedly derived from De- 
 mosthenes himself, would help us much. For in the first place 
 this speech, being spurious, would not give us the real practice 
 of Demosthenes, but a mere imitation by what Blass himself 
 determines to be 2 a poor successor, who did not follow the 
 rythmical rule. The analysis of the proem on the Crown 
 by Lachares, which is still extant, dates from the 5th century 
 a.d., and has, I suspect, no authority. Nor do I think with 
 Blass that these indications are at all sufficient to prove that the 
 arixot noted at the end of our oldest MS. mean metrical or 
 rythmical ku>\cl and not mere lines found in an older copy. 
 It is confessed that even the best of the older rhetors had no 
 certain traditions, or fixed rules about the matter, for Cicero 
 and Dionysius always confine themselves to generalities; Her- 
 mogenes and Aristeides even contradict one another. 3 
 
 In the face of these difficulties, I think we may abandon as 
 hopeless the attempt to measure out the symmetries of Demos- 
 thenes with plummet line, and must content ouselves to believe 
 that, like his great predecessors and successors in the art, he 
 worked out his speeches by constant reference either to the 
 taste of his audience — in this case a very critical and competent 
 one — or to that delicate taste which he had produced in 
 his own mind by constant and anxious meditation on older 
 
 whether the number of or'i%oi given at the end of each speech in some old 
 MSS. is the number of mere lines in the speech, as written in even columns, 
 or whether the lines represented originally cola of various length, of which 
 the sum is given. Graux (J. ie Phil, ii.) has now proved that crrlxoi were 
 never sense lines. 
 
 1 pp. 105, sq. 2 p. 347. 3 Blass, p. 105, note. 
 
346 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XI. 
 
 models, on their perfections, and on their deficiencies in regard 
 to the advanced requirements of his age. 
 
 § 536. It is far more interesting and more practical to examine 
 the features wherein we can still securely judge the orator, and 
 explain how he attained his preeminence. Not that there does 
 not still remain considerable difficulty. For when we consider 
 what not only scholars, but statesmen and modern speakers have 
 noticed, that in Demosthenes we have a man who produced the 
 greatest results ever attained in his art, without great natural 
 gifts, or good voice, or a commanding presence, without being a 
 philosopher, without any broad generalisations which could af- 
 fect future ages, without ornament in the modern sense, with- 
 out any pathetic scenes, without any real wit — in fact, without 
 attracting either the thinkers or the sensitive natures whom 
 Plato and Aristophanes can fascinate, we are still disposed to 
 be incredulous, and to require some clear and definite solution 
 of so mysterious a problem. 
 
 The old rhetors are very far indeed from giving us any 
 adequate account of these things. But what they tell us is 
 interesting and instructive as to the facts of the case. The 
 theory of Dionysius is that Demosthenes consciously combined 
 all the perfections of his predecessors, choosing the terseness 
 and pathos of Thucydides, the grace and ethos of Lysias, the 
 harmony and skilful disposition of Isocrates, and working them 
 up into a mixed style, which embraced all these perfections. 
 Of course no great genius was ever a mere eclectic, but what 
 is really to be here inferred is the extraordinary va?'iety of Demos- 
 thenes, in whose work could ' be found passages emulating all 
 these writers in their peculiar strong points. Nor does this 
 variety apply exclusively either to the form or to the matter of his 
 speeches ; it interpenetrates both thoroughly. Thus his choice 
 of words was at one time grand and dignified, at another so 
 homely as to be almost coarse. His periods were at one time 
 splendid constructions of such complexity and intricacy as to 
 astonish the hearer, at another they were mere loosely con- 
 nected clauses, like the easy narratives of Herodotus. Nay 
 even the arguments are never, so to speak, sustained and 
 methodical, but he passes from point to point, anticipates for a 
 
CH. XI. INNOVATIONS IN ACTION. 347 
 
 moment, then recapitulates, recounts facts and then expounds 
 arguments ; in fact, plays all round his subject so as to present 
 every aspect of it in curious and varied succession. 
 
 It is accordingly a constant remark of the old critics that 
 he not only used the figures of thought of older orators more 
 frequently, but added several of his own, which they never 
 dared to use. He used anaphora, anastrophe, sy strophe — they 
 enumerate nearly twenty of them — in the way of repeating 
 words at the opening of his clauses, of imagining questions put 
 by objectors, of questioning himself, and so forth. But what 
 seemed new in him was the frequent use of aposiopesis, and the 
 use of exclamations, especially at the end of an indignant sen- 
 tence. Two of these, which must have had a most stinging 
 effect, are very frequently quoted. 1 
 
 This vivacity of making his oration almost a familiar dia- 
 logue, and of bursting out into exclamation, was an unheard- 
 of liberty according to the old traditions of Greek eloquence. 
 His action in delivery corresponded to it, and shocked the 
 old school. For while even ^Eschines, with his fine voice and 
 prepossessing appearance, stood up (as his statue still repre- 
 sents him) keeping his hand hidden in the folds of his cloak, 
 and spoke with dignified calmness, we hear that Demosthenes 
 contorted his figure, laid his hand across his forehead so as to 
 affect the attitude of sudden reflection, often raised his voice 
 to a scream, and even turned round and round on the bema 
 in his excitement. These things carried away the lower public, 
 but were always reprehended by artistic critics. In fact, De- 
 mosthenes' action was as new and startling on the bema as 
 Mr. Irving's Hamlet has been on our stage, and it was a long 
 time before critics could come to confess that the new and 
 vehement style of the young politician had great and enduring 
 merit. 
 
 § 537. If we examine what modern students have added 
 to the somewhat barren criticism of the classical theorists, we 
 may contrast with the liveliness and variety, which they have 
 
 1 {And. 78) : aAA' 'AvSporiwv ifuv irofj.Treiwv eVtovcevacrTirj?, 'AvSporiwv 2> 
 77) Kai deoi. (Aristocr. 210): vvv fj tr6\is els viriqpeTov ex^f J ' a Ka ^ f&fy-v 7rpoe- 
 AVjAv0e Kai Xapidrjfiov cj xt>h (ppovpsiv ftovAevsTai, Xapi8r)/j.ov otfxoi. 
 
348 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. XI. 
 
 described as ' figures of thought,' a certain remarkable persist- 
 ence in urging the main point, which makes him never forget 
 his object amid all the changes and momentary digressions of 
 his eloquence. He was far too subtle a student of human 
 nature to lecture in definite heads, like a Scotch preacher. If 
 he has a scheme' with subdivisions, he almost always conceals 
 them by such natural and easy transitions that he leads on his 
 hearer insensibly from point to point. But never does he 
 digress from his real subject, and his affected episode is often 
 his most insidious and telling argument. 
 
 All this subtlety and even astuteness of advocacy, which does 
 not shrink at times from distorting facts and wilfully dealing in 
 fallacies, is combined with that peculiar dignity and reticence 
 in emotion which have secured him the sympathy of strange 
 generations of men. For he never strains his pathos ; however 
 seductive or striking a picture may come before him, he never 
 turns aside to paint it in detail, like the orators of the present 
 day. He suggests it with a burning sentence, a brief clause, 
 nay, with a single word, and passes on his way. It is parti- 
 cularly remarked by the moderns how quiet and sedate are his 
 conclusions, as if the Attic audience objected to be released 
 in high excitement, and in a moment of strong emotion. 
 Hence the orator, like the tragic poet, was expected to calm 
 his hearers, and close with an appeal to reason and common 
 sense. l He never uses a simile for its beauty, but always for 
 its effect in illustration, and hence borrows it from the affairs 
 of ordinary life. Whatever license he may have allowed himself 
 in his actual delivery, he reduced all pathetic digressions, 
 when he came to revise his speeches, to a very minimum, and 
 so produces on us an impression of serious earnest, to which 
 I can quote no modern parallel. This is perhaps the strongest 
 feature in his ' thoughts that breathe, and words that burn .' 
 And together with this redhot earnestness, there is, on the 
 whole, a moral splendour about him, which raises him above 
 all his contemporaries. It is of course ridiculous to assert that 
 he was a Stoic in his philosophy, that he was so Quixotic a po- 
 
 1 The extant speech of Lycurgus offers a remarkable exception to this 
 rule. 
 
CH. XI. DEMOSTHENES' EXCEPTIONAL FORTUNE. 349 
 
 litician as to advocate from the bema the doing of right for 
 its own sake, apart from consequences. He plainly enough, 
 in his Hellenic harangues, lays down self-preservation by the 
 weakening of neighbour states as the real basis of Athenian 
 politics. He was quite ready to call in the Persian king, 
 the hereditary enemy of all Hellenedom, to join with the 
 Greeks against the newer and more dangerous, though semi- 
 Hellenic oppressor. But, nevertheless, he had large views of 
 Athenian greatness and responsibilities; he grasped the idea of 
 great sacrifices for great national ends ; lie advocated the cause 
 of liberty and of culture against despotism ; he soared above 
 the petty quarrels of individual states to an imperial policy. 
 These wider thoughts made him the exponent of more than 
 Attic policy, of other than Athenian conflicts. 
 
 His unattractive presence, his unsocial temper, and his early 
 difficulties, while they prevented a ready recognition of his 
 genius, were perhaps strong contributing elements to its growth 
 and peculiar complexion. For genius he developed, though 
 attained by labour, and decked with artifice. Nor will any 
 number of subsidiary causes explain to us his success. 
 
 But while he added more perhaps than any other great man 
 in history to his natural powers by labour and energy, there 
 was one gift he received from fortune, without which he could 
 not have risen to his true position. He lived in a great histori- 
 cal crisis; he grew up to take part in a momentous struggle, 
 which brought out all his eloquence in the vital cause of Hellenic 
 freedom. The force and the subtlety of his unarmed words 
 were pitted against the phalanx and the gold of one of the 
 ablest monarchs in history. To have been overcome after a 
 long and glorious struggle for such a cause, to have stood forth 
 to speak the mighty epitaph on the tomb of departed liberty, 
 was indeed a fortune worthy of no ordinary genius. The trials 
 of his later years forced from him the bitter reflection, that 
 were he again offered, with his acquired experience, the way to 
 the bema or to the tomb, he would not hesitate to choose the 
 latter. But had he been able to look beyond the present life, 
 and see that the one meant lasting dignity and renown, and 
 the other eternal oblivion, he might have justified his first 
 
35o HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xi. 
 
 choice by his own noble words, and cried out that he had not 
 erred — no, not by the heroes that fought at Marathon and Sala- 
 mis, and all the brave men whom a grateful posterity has hon- 
 oured with a public tomb, the monument of their valour and 
 their worth ! 
 
 § 538. The external history of his text is clearer than that of 
 most Greek authors. It is plain, from the condition in which we 
 find speeches like that against Meidias, that many of them were 
 not edited by Demosthenes himself, but by pupils and ad- 
 mirers, possibly by his nephew Demochares, on whose proposal 
 his name was honoured and his descendants distinguished, but 
 not till forty years after his death. The German critics find, 
 even in some of the speeches they reject, the delicate laws of 
 rythm and hiatus observed according to the model of the 
 master, and they infer from this that he was practically the head 
 of a school. But I think all we know of the man tells against 
 such a theory, and suggests (as has already been argued) that 
 most of these lesser works were probably unrevised composi- 
 tions of his own. The collection which we possess, though 
 some nine titles are mentioned which are now lost, 1 is in the 
 main that of the Alexandrian Callimachus, a learned man and a 
 scholar, who was not likely to class a notoriously inferior work 
 in the list. Yet he seems to have been easier of faith than his 
 successors. 
 
 Polybius speaks of Demosthenes with great respect, but 
 probably as a politician. Cicero constantly alludes to him, and 
 places him as an orator above all other models. Indeed 
 Cicero's rhetorical writings are often the best commentary on his 
 great predecessor, though he evidently knew nothing definite 
 concerning the subtler laws of his composition. But Quintilian, 
 and Plutarch, and Origen, 2 though confessing his greatness as 
 a speaker, seem quite convinced by their historical materials 
 that he was not an honest or a worthy man. 3 Nevertheless, 
 
 1 It is noticed that the geographer Agatharchides and Rutilius Lupus 
 have many quotations from Demosthenes not found in our texts, and ap- 
 parently not from any varying recension of extant speeches (Blass, p. 59), 
 
 2 All quoted by Blass, p. 47. 
 
 • With this judgment very few moderns are agreed. I find an estimate 
 
CH. xi. TEXTS AND SCHOLIA. 351 
 
 Stoics like Panaetius justly recommended his speeches as a 
 good moral study on account of their lofty tone. It was 
 through the rhetoricians that he was ultimately rehabilitated. 
 Cascilius and Dionysius both wrote largely upon him, and the 
 first letter to Ammseus of the latter is an elaborate eulogy of 
 the 'wonderful eloquence of Demosthenes.' From this tract, 
 and from Dionysius' incidental allusions in discussing other 
 Greek orators, we discover that the critics of the day had begun 
 to reject many works as spurious, and that the catalogue only 
 included about forty-four of the extant speeches. As to mere 
 copies of the text, we do not hear much from Dionysius. But 
 it appears that the 'Arruaara, or copies written by a certain 
 Atticus, were thought of peculiar value, as Lucian tells us, 
 who speaks of him as a contemporary. 1 Among the Greek 
 rhetors of the Roman schools, comparisons of Demosthenes 
 and Cicero, of Demosthenes and ^Eschines, and other such 
 essays became common ; and from the many monographs 
 or virofivy/uara they composed, were brought together the body 
 of scholia, which have reached us under the name of Ulpian, 
 and in which (together with allusions in Suidas and Photius) we 
 find at least twenty-five authors of such works quoted. The 
 tract on the Sublime is perhaps the only one which gives us the 
 aesthetic criticisms of this age. The author's judgments on 
 Demosthenes are sound and clear. But though Ulpian is 
 said to have been a rhetor of the third century a.d., we 
 find fourth century authors quoted in his scholia, so that his 
 own work may not have extended beyond the public orations, 
 
 of the orator in consonance with it in Mr. Simcox's excellent preface to 
 the edition of the speeches on the Crown, with all of which I would agree, 
 except that he gives some credence to the attacks on Demosthenes charg- 
 ing him with unchastity. These the man's face, and figure, and acts, for- 
 bid us to believe. Among the Germans, I find that L. Spengel, in his 
 articles on Demosthenes' harangues, has taken an independent course, and 
 does not fall down and worship the orator's character as well as his 
 eloquence. But Spengel has found many opponents, and only a stray 
 follower in A. Weidner. The question of Demosthenes' incorruptibility 
 will recur in connection with the accusations of Hypereides. 
 1 Adv. indoct. I. 
 
352 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. en. XI. 
 
 the rest being the collection of Zosimus, or some such person. 
 They are pretty full on the first twenty-four orations, very poor 
 on the rest, but are, unfortunately, almost all on rhetorical 
 points, and tell us little of the history or politics with which the 
 text is concerned. Our best arguments are ascribed to Liba- 
 nius, but there are often found more prolix arguments by other 
 rhetors. 
 
 § 539. Bibliographical. When we emerge from the Middle 
 Ages we find a rich store of MSS., several Italian ones being 
 as old as the eleventh century (the Marcian F perhaps even 
 from the tenth), and one of them written by the same hand 
 as the famous Ravennas of Aristophanes. But they are all 
 completely thrown into the shade by the Parisian 2, of the 
 tenth century, which is now recognised as the proper basis of 
 the text, and probably taken from an Attican copy, whereas 
 the rest are all the vulgar (oj^wcW), considerably interpolated. 
 But from these latter (especially the Marcian F, ssec. x. or 
 xi.) Aldus printed his Demosthenes in 1504. He also printed 
 Ulpian's scholia in 1503. All the later editions up to the pre- 
 sent generation followed this recension, merely adding collations 
 of MSS. of the same class. Now at last the Zurich editors, 
 Dindorf, Bekker, and Cobet, have shown the enormous value 
 of the codex 2, which has been most thoroughly and mi- 
 nutely collated for the edition of H. Weil (two volumes have 
 appeared), but also for the texts prepared by these scho- 
 lars. The work of commenting on Demosthenes is so varied 
 and extensive, that except Weil's volumes, which already em- 
 brace most of the important speeches, and Rehdantz on the 
 speeches regarding Philip, no general edition can be recom- 
 mended for exegesis. The best texts are Bekker's (second 
 edition, Leipzig, 1854-5), G. Dindorf s (with the scholia, nine 
 volumes Oxon, 1846-51), andVoemel's (second edition, Paris, 
 1868) ; special editions of separate speeches are innumerable, 
 and the best have been mentioned separately in the foregoing 
 chapter. The English translations of Demosthenic orations, 
 especially of that on the Crown, are very numerous, the latest 
 being that of Sir R. Collier. Leland's, of the last century, has 
 a deservedly high repute. The myriad newer literature on 
 
CH. xi. RECENT CRITICISM. 353 
 
 Demosthenes (up to 1877) will be found catalogued in the 
 thirty- seventh volume of the Philologus, pp. 676, sq. Little 
 can ever be added, save in the way of criticism, to the ex- 
 haustive histories of A. Schafer and F. Blass, from which I 
 have borrowed materials throughout. 
 
 vol. IL A A 
 
!54 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xn. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE ORATORS CONTEMPORARY WITH DEMOSTHENES. 
 
 § 540. Demosthenes was only the greatest among a con- 
 stellation of great speakers, of whom we have sufficient remains 
 to justify the high praise accorded to them by the Greek his- 
 torians of rhetoric. If in fact they were not all judged by the 
 severe test of comparison with Demosthenes, we should pro- 
 nounce most of them as quite first-rate in their department 
 of literature ; in some respects, indeed, their less studied com- 
 position is more congenial to modern taste than the thoroughly 
 professional eloquence of their great rival. 
 
 We naturally begin with ^Eschines, marked out by his 
 life as the special antagonist to Demosthenes. Little would 
 be known of him but for this circumstance, and that little again 
 has been obscured and perverted by the unsparing and reckless 
 vituperation of Demosthenes. But it is almost ridiculous how 
 the extant Lives of ^Eschines gravely repeat the calumnies of 
 the cie Corona, as if they were historical truth, while the equally 
 plausible countercharges of ^Eschines against Demosthenes 
 are generally set down at their proper value. However, this 
 vulgar habit of personal Xorfopia compelled orators to make 
 counter-statements showing their own antecedents, and to 
 these, when unrefuted by their adversaries, we are bound to 
 assign most weight, as they probably only en by omission, not 
 by deliberate falsification. 
 
 The sketch of Apollonius (prefixed to the texts) is more 
 honest than the rest, in appending to Demosthenes' scurrilities 
 the facts stated by JEschines himself in his own defence. 1 His 
 
 1 irepl Traparrpeo-p. §§ 78, 1 47, 1 68. 
 
ch. xii. LIFE OF &S CHINES. 355 
 
 father, Atrometus, who was in court, at the age of ninety-four, 
 when this case was pleaded (344-3 B.C.), was a respectable but 
 poor citizen of the deme of the Kothokidse, 1 who, before he lost 
 his property owing to the Peloponnesian war, was a private 
 citizen and an athlete, then was exiled in the days of the Thirty, 
 and served as a mercenary soldier in Asia. He belonged, says 
 ./Eschines, to a clan which had the same family worship and 
 altars as the Eteoboutadse, from whose family the priestess of 
 Athene Polias was chosen. Atrometus returned from Corinth 
 with the exiles under Thrasybulus, and being poor began to 
 make his livelihood as a schoolmaster. He had married Glau- 
 cothea, the daughter of Glaucus of the deme Acharnse, apparently 
 of respectable family. The orator tells us his mother shared 
 in the exile to Corinth, which seems strange, as her second son, 
 /Eschines, was not born till 389 B.C., according to his own 
 statement. His elder brother, Philochares, and his younger, 
 Aphobetus, 2 were both well known and respectable men, and 
 were entrusted with the highest commands and offices. 
 
 Our orator is said in early youth to have assisted his father in 
 keeping the school, and also (by Demosthenes) to have helped 
 his mother in some disreputable private religious mysteries, such 
 as were common but in bad odour at Athens. ^Eschines never 
 denies that she was employed in some such living, but merely 
 accentuates the respectability of her family and connections. 
 Being duly enrolled on attaining the age of puberty, he served 
 his term in the TrepUoXot, or frontier guards of Athens, and in the 
 later campaigns at Nemea (368), at Mantinea (362) ; and more 
 especially at Tamynse (349), he fought with such credit as to be 
 publicly distinguished by the general Phocion. x\t what time of 
 
 1 Some demes were local, and called by the name of their towns. But 
 others were not so, and were called after some legendary hero. This deme is 
 always mentioned in the patronymic form, but I can find no trace whatever 
 of the personage from whom it derived its name. Hesychius gives koQ& 
 and Kopdca as rare forms in the sense of &\a$i). Hence Fick (Griech. Per- 
 sonennamm) suggests KoQd>Ki\s in the sense of healer of ill (/codco-diaris), as 
 the epithet of the eponymous hero of the deme. 
 
 2 The Life ascribed to Plutarch quotes these names as Aphobus and 
 Demochares, which shows either negligence or a text varying from ours, 
 The former is the more probable. 
 
 A A 2 
 
356 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xn. 
 
 his life he could have employed himself as a tragic actor we 
 cannot tell. Demosthenes says he played tritagonist with bad 
 companies ' in the provinces,' and that he was hissed off the 
 stage as (Enomaus, but apparently only for the accident of fall- 
 ing when he was pursuing Pelops on the stage, and being as- 
 sisted up by the master of the chorus — a very likely misfortune 
 to happen on the Greek stage, with the awkward and unnatural 
 padding and heightening of the human form. This incident 
 is quoted in the first Life on the authority of Demochares, 
 and even the name of the chorus-master, Sannio, is mentioned. 
 But the actors with whom he played, Theodorus and others, 
 were the most eminent of their day, and they played the 
 ' classic drama/ which was the most respectable and honourable 
 branch of the profession, so that ^Eschines, though taking 
 inferior parts, played in the very best companies. 1 He may 
 have been prematurely aged by all these occupations, for he 
 speaks of himself (i. 49) as grey at the age of forty-five. 2 Being 
 of good appearance, though short in stature, and possessing a 
 fine voice, he was afterwards appointed public clerk under the 
 administrations of Aristophon and Eubulus, and gradually ob- 
 tained sufficient experience and training in public affairs to 
 come forward (aged 33) as a political man. He was entrusted 
 with several important public missions, especially an embassy 
 to Megalopolis to oppose Philip's policy. His celebrated 
 appeal to the Delphians, which brought on the Sacred War, 
 was doubtless his greatest political triumph. He married the 
 daughter of Philodemus, and had a daughter and two sons, 
 whom he produced in court during his defence, as children, 
 when he was himself about forty-eight years old. Having com- 
 pletely failed in his attack on Demosthenes in 330 B.C., and being 
 condemned to pay a thousand drachmae for unsuccessful prose- 
 cution, he went into exile to Rhodes, where he supported him- 
 self, not I fancy by rhetoric, which he never professed, but by 
 teaching letters, or declamation. He is said to have died at 
 Samos, at the age of seventy-five (therefore 314 B.C.), but on no 
 better authority than that of Apollonius. One of the spurious 
 
 1 Cf. the high praise of this Theodorus in Aristotle, Rhet. iii. 2, 4. 
 
ch. xii. CHARACTER OF JESCHINES. 357 
 
 Letters says his mother went with him into exile, aged seventy- 
 three, 1 which is impossible in the face of the statement that she 
 fled with her husband to Corinth in 403 b.c. 2 One of the finest 
 extant portrait statues of the ancients is the full-length figure 
 of ^Eschines, now in the Museum of Naples, in the attitude he 
 assumed when speaking. The calm and dignified face seems 
 to me, however, wanting in expression, as compared, for ex- 
 ample, with the analogous portrait of Sophocles in the Lateran. 
 There is also a noble bust reproduced (from Colonel Leake's 
 collection) in Millingen's uned. Mon., plate ix., which cor- 
 roborates the genuineness of the statue. 
 
 His political acts are reviewed by Demosthenes and by 
 himself in extant speeches. There seems little doubt that 
 ^Eschines, serving under Eubulus at home and Phocion 
 in the field, naturally adopted their peace policy, and was 
 hence from the beginning opposed to Demosthenes. But 
 though he honestly began to advocate this policy, the 
 weight of evidence tends to show that he was afterwards 
 bribed by Philip to promote his ends, and that his later 
 political acts were tainted by this impure motive. Such 
 is at least the verdict of all the calmest modern historians. 
 Eubulus and Phocion must have thought differently, for they 
 supported him through the trial about his second embassy 
 to Philip, and obtained his acquittal ; nor was he ever con- 
 victed and disgraced, like Philocrates, though his case was a 
 closely analogous one. Phocion and Eubulus may have been 
 persuaded that, though ^Eschines took money, he did so while 
 honestly advocating a peace policy, and not as a motive for 
 abandoning his principles. Hence they would protect him 
 against their political opponent, Demosthenes. These impor- 
 tant testimonies in his favour make me still doubt his treachery, 
 but there is no likelihood of any additional evidence ever 
 clearing up this difficult point. 
 
 § 541. As to ^Eschines' rhetorical training, the ancients, 
 who always insisted on the filiation of literary genius, asserted 
 that he had studied under Plato and Isocrates, probably con- 
 founding him with the Socratic ^Eschines. Caecilius called him 
 
 1 12, § 12. 2 wapairpe<r0. § 147. 
 
35S HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. xn. 
 
 a pupil of Leodamas, for no other reason, I suppose, than that 
 yEschines speaks of him * as an orator not inferior to Demos- 
 thenes, nay, even in his opinion a pleasanter speaker. Suidas, 
 whose article on the orator is exceptionally bad, says he was 
 a pupil of Alkidamas. All the internal evidence shows clearly 
 that ^Eschines never studied rhetoric as a profession, but that 
 having great natural gifts, and being brought by his official 
 position of clerk into constant contact with the best speakers, 
 he formed himself as an amateur upon these models, adding 
 to their method the dignified and graceful delivery which he 
 had studied for his parts on the stage. He affected, more- 
 over, not to be a court speaker, versed in the wiles and sub- 
 tleties of nisi prius practice, but a state adviser on large 
 public interests, like the respectable politicians of the day, 
 who thought speech- writing in private causes a questionable 
 profession. Hence he asserts, at the opening of his speech 
 against Timarchus, that though now forty-five years old, he had 
 never yet appeared in court to prosecute anyone ; nor do we 
 find it stated that he wrote speeches for others. The three 
 extant harangues, (i) against Timarchus, B.C. 344, (2) on the 
 Embassy, B.C. 343, (3) against Ctesiphon, B.C. 330, were his only 
 published works ; sl speech about the Delian temple was of 
 old rejected as spurious. vEschines, in fact, trusted more than 
 any of the professional orators to extempore inspiration ; he had 
 a ready flow of words, and probably seldom wrote down what 
 he had to say. We have hints that of the extant speeches two 
 were written after the real trials, and accordingly published as 
 pamphlets of vindication. Hence we can easily conceive him 
 reciting to the Rhodians Demosthenes' speeches, but not as 
 undertaking to teach formally the art of rhetoric. 
 
 § 542. The speech (1) against Timarchus is perhaps the 
 most interesting to modern readers, as it does not deal with 
 complicated and disputed political affairs, and can be under- 
 stood without a minute study of the history of the time. Ti- 
 marchus had joined Demosthenes in charging yEschines with 
 malversation during his embassy to Philip, when ^Eschines 
 bethought himself of disposing of his lesser adversary by a 
 
 1 iii. 138-9. 
 
ch. xii. SPEECH AGAINST T1MARCHUS. 359 
 
 preliminary action. He proved Timarchus to be disqualified 
 from political status, or from accusing any citizen, on account 
 of his disgraceful private life. It is evident from the pains 
 taken by the orator in setting forth both the general expediency 
 of such a law, and its basis in the nature of a democracy, that 
 it had come to be usually regarded as a dead letter. 
 
 After a proem declaring his own modesty of life, and 
 total inexperience in public prosecutions, to which he is only 
 urged now by the sycophancy of Timarchus, 1 he proceeds to 
 show that, of the various kinds of constitutions, democracy is 
 that specially depending on law, and the upholding of its sanc- 
 tions. 2 Accordingly he proposes to examine the laws of Solon 
 and Draco for the moral restraint of children, of young men, 
 and lastly of the public generally, 3 and then to compare with 
 them the life of Timarchus in each period, which he does 4 
 in two parts, first showing his prostitution for pay, 5 and then 
 his squandering of his father's property. Having thus con- 
 cluded his prosecution, he turns by way of epilogue more 
 specially to two points — first, a refutation of the reply which 
 he hears will be made, and, secondly, an exhortation of the 
 citizens to virtue. But these two are not kept asunder clearly, 
 and the latter especially seems introduced mainly to give a 
 good opportunity for recitations from the poets. 6 
 
 This very Timarchus (says our argument) was the author 
 of more than a hundred decrees. We know, too, other more 
 celebrated Athenians, such as Alcibiades, who could hardly 
 have escaped from a similar prosecution. The particular 
 charge is, however, not so much against youthful excesses, a 
 charge which ^Eschines does not repudiate even as regards 
 himself, but rather against the practising of immorality for hire 
 — a distinction all-important in this case, and on which great 
 stress is laid. ^Eschines expounds the plan of his speech 7 
 more like a modern preacher than with the art of Demosthenes, 
 though he afterwards 8 abandons that part of his parallel which 
 affects the boyhood of Timarchus, professedly from generosity, 
 but more probably from want of evidence. Indeed, all through 
 
 1 §§ 1-3- 2 §§4-8. 3 §§ 9-36. 4 §§37-ii5- 
 
 5 §§ 37-94- 6 §§ 141-54. 7 § 8. •-§§ 39 and 160. 
 
360 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. xil. 
 
 his proofs are so purely circumstantial, that he is obliged to 
 reply ] to the natural demand of his adversaries to produce 
 direct testimony of any particular act of immorality on the part 
 of Timarchus ; but such an objection, fatal to a prosecution in 
 our courts, was easily disposed of at Athens by an appeal to the 
 general character of the defendant, on which Athenians, who 
 were great busybodies, laid no small stress. The whole speech 
 is very valuable in showing us the moral life of Athens, but the 
 subject is not easy to discuss in a modern book. On its style 
 I will speak when we have briefly reviewed the other orations. 
 
 § 543. The second oration, irepl 7rapa7r(0£a/3ftac, as I have 
 already noticed, was possibly never delivered, 2 but was doubt- 
 less published by ^Eschines with more care than attended the 
 publication of Demosthenes' attack, seeing that it was a vindi- 
 cation of his life and policy. The speech is, indeed, much more 
 agreeable to read than its rival, being simpler, full of lively nar- 
 rative and not less lively vituperation, and not divided, like 
 that against Timarchus, into heads, but rather a narrative of 
 the circumstances of the two embassies to Philip, varied by 
 sundry excursions in personal matters — accounts of his own 
 family and antecedents, and attacks on Demosthenes. It 
 is quite exceptional for its lively ethos, and its most dra- 
 matic painting of the sourness and grand airs of Demosthenes 
 on the embassy, as well as of the courtliness and sagacity of 
 Philip. 3 
 
 Indeed, the narrative of Demosthenes' break-down before 
 Philip, when he had raised the highest expectations by his 
 boasting, is too graphic to ,be omitted. 4 The sketches of 
 
 1 §§ 71, sq. See the severe censure of Blass (iv. 145) who throughout 
 confuses Greek and modern morality. 
 
 2 Against this theory Thirlwall, Schafer, and others protest strongly, 
 and think the trial must have been held. 
 
 3 Both Blass and Schafer think it the best of the extant speeches. 
 
 4 §§ 34~5 • 'ViqdevTwv 8e tovtoiv Kal erepcw \6ywv ¥$1) Ka6rjn<ev els Ar)fio(r- 
 Oewqv rb ttjs Trpetrfieias /mepos, Kal Tfdvres irpo(rs?xov ws VTrzpfioXds rivas 
 Bvudfxetos a.K.ovff6n*voi k6ya)f Kal yap irpbs aiirbv rbv $i\urirov, us l\v vcrrepov 
 CLKoveiv, Kal irpbs rovs eraipovs avrov 4^r}yy4\6rf t) tuv iirayyeAiuv inrepfioX-fj. 
 ovru Se airavruv fiiaKetfxevuv irpbs t)]v a.Kp6aaiv tpQeyyerai rb Orjploy rovro 
 -rrpooifuov CKOTSivbv Kal TedvriKbs 8ej\fat, Kal fxiKpbv irpoayayuv avu tuv 
 
ch. xii. SPEECH ON THE EMBASSY. 361 
 
 past history and the account of the Amphictyonic Council 
 are very interesting, and the whole narrative of yEschines' 
 extempore burst at Delphi, when looking down upon the 
 sacred plain, is worthy of the highest place in Greek elo- 
 quence. But the vehement and ribald countercharges of cor- 
 ruption and of immorality made in open court by men of the 
 eminence of Demosthenes and ^Eschines produce a most dis- 
 agreeable impression, and show us how different was the tone of 
 political debate at Athens from that of our House of Commons. 
 
 It was evident that bribery was frequent, and so little heeded 
 that every politician charged his opponent with it as a matter 
 of course. Let me add what appears stranger, but is not the 
 less true, that the occasional accepting of bribes seems not 
 to have been inconsistent with genuine patriotism and even 
 general honesty. We feel it almost impossible to conceive 
 this. A man once detected taking money in such a way would 
 among us be absolutely ruined. But this is far from being 
 the case in less solid nations than the English — as, for ex- 
 ample, among the Russians, and perhaps nearer home. There 
 it is so universal a rule to take bribes, that to accept them from 
 supporters is not the least censured, and even more flagrant 
 violations of honesty are condoned by the exigencies of poli- 
 tical expediency. Unless we hold fast this notion, we are sure 
 to go wrong in estimating both ^Eschines and Demosthenes. 
 The peroration of the present speech l gives a true and striking 
 sketch of the history of Athens, especially since the Restoration. 
 He appeals to Eubulus and Phocion to support him, and it was 
 certainly the influence of these respectable men which saved 
 him from the attack of Demosthenes. 
 
 § 544. The same general remarks apply to the third speech, 
 the tndictfnent of Ctesiphon for illegality, as having proposed a 
 
 Trpayfidrwu i£ai<pvris i(xiyr)<re Kal fin)Tropi)9ri, re\evrav Se iKiriirrei e/e rov 
 Xoyov. Idkv 8e avrbv d $i\nriros ws SttKeiro, dappeTv re irapeKeXevero Kal 
 fii] vofii^eiv, wcnrep ev rols dedrpois, Sia rovro oUffOai ri TtetrovQevai, aAA' 
 rjffvxv Ka ^ Kara fiiKpov auafii/j.vr)(TKecrdai Kal Xeyeiv &s trpoeiXero. d 8' ws 
 OTra| irapdx&V tal rwu yeypafifxeucov 8iecr<pd\r), ovS' ava\a$e?v avrbv 48vvr)&ri, 
 aWa Kal iraXiv Xeyeiu 4irixeipr)(ras ravrbv eiradev. ws 5' r)v aiwirr), f^ra- 
 arrival rj/xas d Krjpvl- eKeXevev. 
 » §§ 172-84. 
 
362 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. xn. 
 
 gold crown to be presented to Demosthenes. The circumstances 
 have been detailed in connection with the reply de Corona. It 
 is to be observed that the proem repeats in substance the com- 
 monplace about the three forms of polity used in the speech 
 against Tiniarclias} The orator then proceeds to his three 
 general heads of accusation : first, Demosthenes was still under 
 audit when the honour was proposed, which was very properly 
 forbidden by a distinct law under such circumstances. This 
 proof, together with the refutation of the counter-pleas, occupies 
 from §§ 6 to 31. Then comes his second point, that in any case 
 crowning in the theatre before the plays began, was specially 
 forbidden by law, and was ordered to take place, if at all, in the 
 Pnyx. This argument, which seems very sound, is met by 
 Demosthenes with the quotation of certain exceptions, which 
 he accuses ^Eschines to have suppressed in quoting the law. 
 As we see great authorities, such as Spengel and Halm, 2 at 
 variance about the real justice of the case, it is not likely that 
 the problem will ever be settled. It is quite certain that both 
 orators were capable of both suppression and exaggeration, nay, 
 even of stating deliberate falsehoods. 
 
 But ancient critics were so much impressed by the clear- 
 ness and force of this technical part of ^Eschines' speech, that 
 they say he would have convicted Ctesiphon more easily than 
 Timarchus had he confined himself to it. He enters next 3 
 upon a different task— a general review of Demosthenes' life in 
 four periods (above, p. 329), in each of which he was either a 
 traitor or proved a misfortune to the state. The account of the 
 earlier periods differs considerably in both orators from their 
 former account, in the speeches about the embassy. As Spengel 
 observes, 4 sixteen years having elapsed since the facts, the 
 orators knew that they could distort or accommodate them 
 with less fear of detection. Hence Grote has found it impos- 
 sible to make out the real truth amid their contradictions and 
 inconsistencies. But as a piece of rhetoric, the close of this 
 portion of ^Eschines' speech, not of course so splendid as the 
 
 1 §§ 4, sq. 2 Munich Sitzber. for 1875, p. I. 
 
 3 § 49. 4 Abhandl. Munich Acad, for 1863, p. 99. 
 
CH. xil. EXTEMPORE POWER. 363 
 
 reply, is very impressive. 1 So indeed is the rest of the speech, 
 spent in what were called 7rpnKara\r)^eic, or anticipations of 
 the adversary's replies. It is of course hard to conceive that 
 such pleading could come from a mere vulgar traitor. I can- 
 not but think him rather a real advocate of the peace policy, 
 and systematic opponent of Demosthenes' imperial views, not 
 perhaps above taking presents from Philip, and doing him a ser- 
 vice, when it accorded with the views of Eubulus and Phocion, 
 but not a more serious or systematic delinquent. 
 
 § 545. As regards the general style of the orator, it is first 
 of all to be remarked that he was regarded the father of ex- 
 temporising among the Greeks. To them careful and even 
 written preparation was so essential to eloquence, that to speak 
 on the spur of the moment, though often necessary in political 
 debate, was not accounted an art till ^Esehines showed what 
 could be done in this way. For the boast of Gorgias that he 
 could reply fluently and elegantly to any proposed question was 
 of course understood to depend on a carefully prepared and 
 
 1 Here is a fine passage, §§ 132-134 : Toiydproi ri ra>v ave\irio~rb>v 
 Kal airpocrdoK-fircov e<p y fjfiwv ov yeyovev ; ov yap fiiov ye 7],ue?s avQp&irivov 
 fUe&ia'Kafiev, &AA' els irapab*o£o\oyiav ro?s icrouevois /u.ed'' ijfias e<pv/xev. ov% 
 6 fiev ru>v Hepcruv PcuriXevs, 6 rbv'AOw Siopv^as, 6 rbv 'EWtjo-itovtov £ev%as, 
 6 y9\v Kal vdcap rovs"E\\r]vas alrwv, roXfiwv iv reus iiriaroXaTs ypd<petv, 
 on SetnroT7js iarlv airdvrcov avdpdoirwv cup' T)\iov aviovros fiexpi dvo/xevov, 
 vvv ov irepl rov Kvpios erepeev eivai o*iaywvi(erai, aW* 77877 irepl rrjs rov 
 (rdofiaros crarr^pias ; Kal robs avrovs 6pa>/j.ev rrjs re 86£r]s ravrrjs Kal rrjs iirl 
 rbv Tlepo"t\v 7}ye/j.ovias ri^ioonevovs, o'i Kal rb iv AeXcpoTs lepbv rjXevOepaffav. 
 ®rjf$ai 8e, Qrjffai, ir6Ais CHrrvyeirwv, fxed' rj/xepav fxiav eK fxeo-qs rrjs 'EWadoi 
 avrjpirao'rai, el Kal SiKaiws, irepl ruv '6\wv ovk bpQoos &ov\ev(rd/j.evoi, aWa ri)v 
 ye 9eofS\dfSeiav Kal rr]V a^poo-vvqv ovk avQpwirivws , aAAct dai/xovicos KT7i<ra- 
 (j.evoi. AaKeb*ai/J.6vioi 5' ol raXaiirwpoi, irpoaaxl/d/mevoi fxovov rovrcov ruv irpay- 
 fidruv 4£ apxys irepl rrjv rov lepov KardXrjipiv, ol rwv 'EWtjvcov irore d^iovvres 
 riyefxSves elvai, vvv 6/j.rjpevcrovres Kal rrjs o~vp.<popas 4iridei£iv iroir]o~6fievoi 
 fieWovo'iv &s 'A\e£av8pov avaire/Aireo'dai, rovro ireicouevoi Kal avrol Kal i; 
 irarpis, '6 ri av eKeivca S6!-r), Kal iv rfi rov Kparovvros Kal irporjBiKr]fj.evov 
 \ier pi6r t]rt Kpid^crovrai. 77 8' rjfierepa iroXis, 77 koivt) Karacbvyr) rwv 'E\\i)va>v, 
 tepbs %v oupiKVOvvro irporepov e/c rrjs 'EKAddos al irpecrfielai, Kara. ir6\eis 
 eKaaroi irap r)/xa>v r^v crcorijpiav evpyo-ofievoi, vvv ovKeri irepl rrjs rwv 'EAA.7/- 
 va>v rjyefMOvias aycovi^erai, a.\\' 77817 irepl rov rrjs irarpiSos iSdcpovs. Kal 
 ravff 7)/mv o-v(jL{3efiriKev e'| Srov ArifxooOevrjs irpbs r^v iroXireiav irooaeX-fjAvdev. 
 
364 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. XII, 
 
 well-adapted stock of commonplaces. ^Eschines' three written 
 speeches, therefore, give us a poor idea of the power of the 
 man, for which we must rather recur to the great scene outside 
 Delphi, where his wonderful address electrified or rather mad- 
 dened an assembly ' inexperienced in oratory,' as Demosthenes 
 calls them. The ancient critics judge him, however, exactly as 
 we should expect a great extempore speaker to be judged, even 
 allowing for the influence of Demosthenes' ribald abuse upon 
 them. Dionysius calls him delightful at first reading, and, when 
 more closely examined, powerful too, but rather from natural 
 gifts than from art Cicero, Caecilius, and Quintilian praise his 
 natural force and clearness ; Hermogenes only, of ancient critics, 
 judges him severely. Cicero translated the third speech, and 
 imitated the first l in his pro Rose. Amer. and in Pis. Schafer 
 and Blass are sadly warped by their adoration of Demosthenes. 
 When we look more closely into the technical structure of 
 ^Eschines' speeches, we find him in choice of words tolerably 
 pure, and showing traces of the culture which he often con- 
 sciously displays. But he is less careful in his composition 
 than Demosthenes. He is not always strict about hiatus, 2 and 
 the rythmical law of avoiding a crowd of short syllables seems 
 qui.e strange to him, as may be seen at the very opening of the 
 first speech. He repeats set phrases. His periods are often 
 long and clumsily constructed, 3 but the sense is usually clear. 
 Though he constantly enlivens his argument by the usual 
 figures, apostrophe, self-question, &c, and with very telling 
 irony and sarcasm, his most brilliant side is certainly his nar- 
 rative. I may quote, in illustration, another curious passage. 4 
 The ancients specially praise the splendour of his vocabulary, 
 which often admits poetical metaphors. ^Eschines' ethos seems 
 brighter and more natural than his pathos, though he affects the 
 
 1 §§ 190-91, a splendid passage. 
 
 2 As, f r example, in i. §§ 2-3, ii. 135 (which I select at random). 
 
 s e.g. i. §§ 173-5 J »• §§ 2I1 - 2 5 »»■ §§ 149-5°- 
 
 4 In Timarch., §§ 81, sq. : rrjs yap &ovAt}s rrjs iv *Apc'up vdyip irp6ao8ov 
 ■Koiovfxevris irpbs rbv Srifiov Kara rb ty'f)<pio~fxa rb rovrov, b ovros etp^/cet xepi 
 ra>v olu-fiaeav ru>v eV Tf) Uvkv'i, %v fikv 6 rbv \6yov \4ya>v iic r&v 'Apeoirayir&v 
 Avr6\vKos, KaAws vfy rbv Ala rbv 'OXifjuriov koI rbv 'Air6AAa> Kal crefivws Kal 
 k^la>s iicdvov rod avvetplov f&€fSia>K<as' ivetS^ 5e vov tcpoUvros rod \6you 
 
ch. xii. TEXTS OF ALSCHINES. 365 
 
 latter zealously, and occasionally, I think, offends chastity of 
 style. Here Andocides, though far inferior, resembles him. The 
 twelve Letters attributed to him are both spurious and late 
 compositions. 
 
 § 546. As regards the history of the text, it may be ob- 
 served that while complete editions, and editions of the Timar- 
 c/ius, are rare, many scholars have printed the other two to- 
 gether with the corresponding orations of Demosthenes, espe- 
 cially those for and against Ctesiphon. The older and better 
 scholia were published from Paris MSS. by Bekker and Reiske, 
 and then (with those on Isocrates) by W. Dindorf (Oxford, 
 1842). The age and value of the various MSS. are not yet well 
 ascertained. 1 These orations seem not to be contained either 
 in the best MSS. of the lesser orators, such as the Crippsianus, 
 or in the best MSS. cf Demosthenes, such as the Parisian 2. 
 But nevertheless the oldest of the Parisian copies (Coislin. 249) 
 is described by Montfaucon as a quarto of the tenth century, 
 containing many other rhetorical works; and Bekker seems 
 to lay even more stress on the Parisinus J. There are new re- 
 censions by A. Weidner (1877) and F. Franke (1863). Scheibe, 
 Hamaker, and above all Cobet, in his Novcz Lechones, have 
 contributed to the purifying of the text There are translations 
 by Francis (1757) and Leland, also French by Auger (1777). 
 
 eitrev, 8ti rb elo-fiyy/Lia rb Ti/xdpxou airodoKL/jLci^et r) fiovXr), ' Kal vepl ttjs 
 ip^fxias ravrris Kal rod t6ttov rod iv rfj TIvkvI /mtj Bavfido-qre, <£> 'AOrjvaToi, ti 
 Ttfxapxos i/xireiporepws *x ei T V 5 fiovXrjs rr)s e| 'Apetou irdyov,' ave$opvf}i](raT€ 
 v[A€?s ivravda Kal e<pare rbv AvtSXvkov aX-qOr) X4yeiv dvai yap avrbv 
 eptreipov rovroov. dyvof)(ras 5' v/xu>v rbv 66pvfiov 6 AvtoXvkos, fxaXa ffKvdpw- 
 ■n-da-as ko.1 SiaXnrcbv elirev ' r)/j.£?s roi, & 'AQrivaloi, ol ' ApeoirayTrai otir* 
 KaTTiyopov/xev Ti/xdpxov ovre aTroXoyov/xtda, ov ydp r]/x?v irdrpiov iariv, ^xofiev 
 8e roiavrrjv rivd (rvyyvw/j.r)V Ti/xdpxy ' ovros to-as* ecp-q ' a>i)Qi) ev rrj yo-vx'ia 
 ravrrj fxiKpbv v^wv kKaarcp dvdXw/xa yiyveaOaf ' Kal iraXiv eVl ttj i)<rvx'iq Kal 
 t<5 fj.iKp$ dvaX&jxari fieifav dizi\vra -natf v/xuv /nerd yiXcaros OSpvfios. &s 5' 
 iir€fivr](Tdrj riav oIkott&qov Kal ru>v XaKKcav, ou8' avaXafieiv aiirobs iUvvaadc. 
 %vda 57? Kal irapepx^rai TLvppavdpos iiririfi^a-wv ifiiv, Kal tfpero rbv Sr)fiov, 
 ec ovk al<rxvvoiVTO yeXavres irapo6<rr}s ttjs $ovXr)s rrjs e£ 'Apelov irdyov. 
 vfieTs 8* 4£ePdX€T€ avrbv viroXafiSvres' 'Xo-jxsv, Si UvppavSpe, fort ov 8e? 7eAa^ 
 rovrcov ivavriov aXX' ovrcas lax v P^ v foriv r) dXf)deia, &o~re vdvrav iiciKparei 
 rwv dvOpccirivcdV Xoyio~fxwv. ' 
 
 1 Cf. now Adam, de codd. Msch., Berlin, 1882. 
 
3 66 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XII. 
 
 § 549. Lycurgus, son of Lycophron, was a man of a very 
 different type, and sprang from the family of the Eteobou- 
 tadae, who filled an ancient and venerable priesthood of Posei- 
 don, connected with the famous Erechtheion on the Acropolis. 
 He was born about the beginning of the fourth century, and 
 died in 324 B.C., before the affair of Harpalus. When he 
 felt he was dying, he had himself carried into the Council 
 Chamber, to answer any accusations against his administra- 
 tion. For twelve years — probably 338-26 B.C. — he remained 
 what we might call Chancellor of the Exchequer (6 em rfjQ 
 ciotK7](reu)c) to the Athenian state. During this period he 
 signalised himself by the highest probity, as well as by the 
 highest ability in administering and increasing the revenues. 
 He was, next to Pericles, the greatest adorner of the city of 
 Athens, and to these two, together with Herodes Atticus, and 
 Hadrian, may be ascribed almost all the public monuments of 
 that celebrated city. He completed the theatre of Dionysus, 
 and adorned it with statues of the great tragic masters. More- 
 over, he studied their memory more effectually by establishing 
 state texts of their plays, to which actors were compelled to 
 adhere. His other sumptuary and religious laws do not here 
 concern us. 1 Though decidedly an ti- Macedonian in policy, 
 he cannot have been anxious to reserve all spare funds for war 
 purposes, as he spent so much upon the adorning of the city, 
 and the splendours of religious celebrations. Many addi- 
 tional details concerning him are preserved to us in the 
 valuable and explicit Life (among the Ten orators). Its author 
 (or his source) seems well acquainted with Lycurgus' family 
 history, for he traces twelve generations of his descendants, 
 who held the hereditary priesthood, apparently down to his 
 
 1 Grote is singularly curt about Lycurgus, so that the reader must con- 
 sult either the Plutarchian Life, or Thirlwall's sympathetic account, vol. vii. 
 cap. 56. Blass' chapter (iv. 72, sq.) is now the best. If the 3rd letter of 
 Demosthenes be genuine, his children were imprisoned after his death, we 
 know not why; and Demosthenes (above, pp. 339, sq.) wrote from exile 
 to plead their cause. Some twenty years after his death (in 307 B.C.), 
 public honours and a bronze statue were decreed to his memory. An 
 abridged text of this decree is preserved in the Life, and fragments of the 
 full text on marble have also been found at Athens. The relation of these 
 texts is discussed by C. Curtius, Pkilologtis, xxiv. pp. 83, sq. 
 
ch. xii. LIFE OF LYCURGUS. 367 
 
 own time. This would point to the second century a.d. as 
 the date of the biography, probably to the reign of Hadrian, 
 when the antiquities of Athens, and especially the works of 
 Lycurgus, must have excited special interest. 1 He is said to 
 have been of frugal habits, and of ascetic life, and to have 
 composed with great difficulty and very slowly. His long but 
 well-rounded periods produce this impression on the reader, 
 and betray natural gifts inferior to those of JEschines or 
 Hypereides. 
 
 If we abstract from his artistic tastes, Lycurgus must have 
 been a sort of Attic Cato, exceedingly unsparing, and even 
 fierce in the prosecution of crime. Hypereides, however, 2 
 declares him to be not inferior as a speaker to anyone in the 
 city, and considered besides to be a moderate and fair man 
 — a curious judgment in the face of his violent prosecutions. 
 These are noted by most of his biographers, and of the fourteen 
 speeches enumerated by Suidas (the Life says there were 
 fifteen, perhaps including the Letters, as a single additional 
 title) a considerable number were public accusations, in most 
 of which— the Life says in all — he was successful. Concern- 
 ing four only we are more closely informed. The first is 
 that against Diphilus, whom he accused of having made a for- 
 tune by cutting away the supports of the shafts in the Lau- 
 rian silver mines, which were specially guarded by law. 3 In 
 Hyperides' speech for Euxenippus, which mentions Olympias 
 as the sole ruler of Dodona (and, therefore, not earlier than 
 330 B.C.). several recent sycophantic actions about the mines 
 are mentioned as having been decided justly by the di- 
 casts, and the panic about working them as having been thus 
 allayed. This panic may have been the consequence of Ly- 
 
 1 This Life, and the decree of Stratocles in honour of Lycurgus, ap- 
 pended to it, have been carefully and aptly commented on by Meier, in an 
 appendix to Kiessling's Lycurgus. He shows many corruptions in the text, 
 and some inaccuracies on the part of the author. 
 
 - Pro, Euxen. col. xxvi. 
 
 3 This Diphilus' property produced when distributed a bonus to each 
 citizen of 50 drachmae, and, as it amounted to 160 talent?, gives us under 
 20,000 as the number of recognised citizens at the time. But the date ot 
 the action is not known. 
 
368 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. xii. 
 
 curgus' prosecution, which would be fixed at about 330 b.c. 
 Next there is the attack, followed by a condemnation to death 
 of Lysikles, who with Chares had been the Athenian general at 
 Chaeronea, and had escaped to Athens after the battle. Dio- 
 dorus has preserved us a sentence of this speech, as a specimen 
 of the iriKpia of the orator in accusation. 1 We hear that the 
 Theban general at the battle was also prosecuted ; but we are 
 not aware with what reason. His two speeches against 
 Lycophron (for adultery) were answered in Hypereides' parti- 
 ally preserved defence. 
 
 § 548. The fourth and now only extant speech, that against 
 Leocrates, is connected with the same crisis, and is an attack 
 made eight years after on this person, who in the panic after 
 Chaeronea had escaped into a ship through a little gate in the 
 sea-wall at Munychia, and fled to Rhodes, where he brought so 
 exaggerated an account of the disaster that the merchant ships 
 were afraid to sail for the Peiraeus. Leocrates, when he found 
 out that his panic had been premature, was afraid to return in 
 the face of the stern edict denouncing all deserters from the city 
 during the crisis, but settled at Megara, from which he managed 
 to dispose of his Athenian property. Six years later, imagining, 
 no doubt, that the affair was forgotten, he returned, and seems 
 to have been unmolested for some time, for Lycurgus speaks 
 of eight years having elapsed since the defeat when his accusa- 
 tion was made (330 B.C.). It is likely that ^Eschines is allud- 
 ing to this trial 2 when he mentions that a man who escaped 
 to Rhodes after Chaeronea had just been tried for cowardice, 
 and had only escaped by the votes of the jury being equally 
 divided. The speech is one of great dignity, but also of great 
 bitterness, and treats with extreme severity the mere cowardice 
 of the defendant, for no graver crime is alleged against him. 
 
 1 "Effrparriyeis, 5 AucnKA.es, Kal xt\la)v /xhv iroXi: Sov Tere\evrT)K6Ta>p, 
 hiax^ixv Se aXyj^aXoiTusv ysyovSTwv, rpoiraiov 8e Kara T7?s tr6\e(os earr)- 
 k6tos,ttjs 5' 'EWaSos airdcrris 8ov\evov<T7)s, Kal rovrcou airdvrtav yeyevr]/x4fwv 
 <rov Tjy ovfxevov Kal <rrpaT7]yovuTOS, roX/xas (fjv Kal rb rov yhiov <pws Spav, 
 Kal els tV ayopav e/xySaAAety, t>Tr6/xvr]ju.a yeyovus a\axvvi\s Kal ovelSovs Tp 
 ■n-arpidi ; (Diod. xvi. l8). 
 
 2 In Ctes. § 252. 
 
en. xii. STYLE OF LYCURGUS. 369 
 
 The passionate conclusion is exceptional, and foreign to the 
 traditions of Attic eloquence. Lycurgus follows the usual 
 scheme of first establishing his case, and then refuting the ex- 
 pected replies of the defendant. But he varies it by sundry 
 digressions upon older history, and by many long and in- 
 teresting quotations from the poets, such as Tyrtasus and Euri- 
 pides (Erechtheus), which are not so effective in their place 
 as valuable to modern students. Apart from these quota- 
 tions, the finest and most impressive passage is the narra- 
 tive of the panic at Athens after Chseronea, a moment so splen- 
 didly painted by Demosthenes, and which Hypereides, we are 
 told, also attempted, with less success. 1 Though the speech 
 admits occasional hiatus, and too many poetical words and 
 figures, a careful comparison of the composition with that of 
 Isocrates has proved the direct obligations of Lycurgus. His 
 political career was not, however, commenced till after the 
 death of that master, or at least he was not distinguished at the 
 time that Isocrates boasts of his pupils. That he was in his 
 youth a pupil of Plato is also asserted, but for the very foolish 
 reason that this only would account for his greatness (cf. Blass 
 AB, iv. 75 note). 
 
 § 549. We have only Hermogenes' and fragments of 
 
 1 §§ 39 _ 4 J : Kalroi kot' iicelvovs robs xp6 vovs > & &v8p*s, ris ovk av r^v 
 itS\iv i]\ei]aev, ov fidvov iroXirrjs aWa Kal £evos iv ro7s e/uirpocrdev xp^vois 
 eVtSeSTj^TjKcos ; ris 8' l\v ovras % /xio'SdijfJi.os r6re % fiiaaOrivaios, 'Saris idvvfiOi] 
 av draKrov avrbv viro^eivai I8e?v, Tjv'iKa 7) /xev i\rra Kal rb yeyovbs irdOos r<£ 
 d-fi/xcp irpoo~7)yy4\\ero, 6p9^ Se -fjv 7] tt6\is iirl ro?s <rv(x$e£ly\K6cnv, at 8' 
 iXiriSes rrjs ffwrrjpias rip Z{][icp iv rots virep irevrfjKOvra erv yeyovSffi KaQei- 
 (Trr}K€(rav, opav 8' l\v iirl fiev rwv Ovp£>v yvvcunas eXevQepas irepupSfiovs Kare- 
 TTTTixvias Kal irvvQavop.evas el C&<Ti, ras /xev virep av8p6s, ras 8' virep irarp6s, 
 ras 8' virep aZeXtpuv, ava^ias avrwv Kal rijs irSXecos dpw/xevas, rwv 8' avSpwv 
 robs rails o'dbfj.ao'iv aireipr)K6ras Kal rats TfXiKiais irpecr&vrepovs Kal virb rav 
 vojjlwv rov arpareveo-Qai acpei/xevovs I8e7v tfv Ka6' oXi]V rr]v irdXiv r6r iirl 
 yqpeos 6<$<p irepi<p6eipopievovs, SiirXa ra, ludria i/xireiropirijfji.evovs ; iroXXwv 8s 
 Kal tieivwv Kara rty irSXiv yivojxevcav, Kal irdvrwv rwv iroXircov ra jxeyicra 
 7}rvxVK6rwv, /xdAurr &v ris 4}\yr]<re Kal idaKpvcrev iirl ra?s rrjs irdXeus 
 av/x(popa7s, rjvix' opav -f\v rbv Stjihov \f/T}<pKrdfievov robs fiev SovXovs iXevdepovs, 
 robs 8e £evovs 'Adrivaiovs, robs 8' artfxovs iiriri/xovs' bs irpSrepov iirl rff 
 avrdx^av eTvai Kal iXevOepos icefxvvvero. 
 
 VOL. II. B B 
 
37o HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. XII. 
 
 Dionysius' treatment of this orator, nor have any scholia sur- 
 vived. Our MSS. of his extant speech are the same as those 
 of the other lesser orators, or nearly so, and what has been 
 said on the MSS. of Antiphon will apply here. The same 
 holds good of collected editions of this and the other orators, 
 except that F. Blass has not yet re-edited him in the Teubnei 
 series, the presenttext being that of C. Scheibe (1859). The 
 single speech was given (with a Latin version) by Melanchthon 
 (1545), and by many others, including Coraes (1826), Blume 
 (1828), Maetzner (1836), Jenicke, with translation (1856), and 
 Rehdantz. A. Nicolai has published a good school edition 
 (Berlin, 1875), and there are a few special essays, such as G. 
 Kiessling's Fragmenta Lycurgea (Halle, 1847), Jenicke/s Symb. 
 crit. in Lycurg. Leocratem (Leipzig, 1848), Hager's Qucestiones 
 Lycurgea (Leipzig, 1870), Halm, in Munich Abhandl. in. p. 123, 
 &c. There are many German translations. The Fragments 
 collected by Kiessling do not give us much in addition to the 
 extant speech. They are generally quotations of curious words 
 used at Athens, especially in sacred rites, and in enumerating 
 the expenses of the state. A few interesting sentences are 
 cited in Latin paraphrase as illustrating rhetorical figures in 
 the work of Rutilius Lupus. 1 
 
 § 550. Perhaps the most brilliant of all Demosthenes' con- 
 temporaries was Hypereides, son of Glaukippus, of the deme 
 Kollytus, who was all his life a politician and a consistent 
 leader in the anti-Macedonian party. He is generally assumed 
 in former histories to have been a contemporary of Lycurgus, 
 and thus older than Demosthenes, chiefly because in the Life 
 he is said to have come forward and contributed a trireme for 
 himself and one for his son, ' when Philip was preparing to sail 
 against Euboea.' If this refer to the events of 358 B.C., it will 
 throw back the date of his birth at least as far as that of 
 Demosthenes. But everything else we know of the orator 
 points to his being a much younger contemporary of Demos- 
 thenes, especially the passage in his accusation in which he 
 leproaches Demosthenes, at his advanced age, of requiring 
 
 1 Cf. Kiessling, pp. 118, sq. 
 
CH. xii. AGE OF HYPEREIDES. 371 
 
 censure and correction from younger politicians. 1 If the state- 
 ment of the Life be at all trustworthy, I suppose we must 
 apply it to the crisis of the campaign of Tamynag (349 B.C.), 
 when we may conceive that Hypereides came forward as a 
 young man, and somewhat boastfully offered a trireme for 
 himself and for his infant son (rod ttcucjoc). When Demos- 
 thenes in the Meidiana enumerates the generous offers of sup- 
 plying triremes by various citizens, it is strange that this 
 occasion of paying a compliment to a young and brilliant 
 adherent should be lost. Hence I believe that more probably 
 Hypereides' first political act, when a very young man, was the 
 prosecution of Philocrates, and that he may not have been 
 born till about 366 B.C. He would thus be but little Over forty 
 when accusing the veteran Demosthenes, as the passage above 
 cited clearly implies. His prosecutions of Aristophon and of 
 Diopeithes need not have been before 345 B.C., though he men- 
 tions them before Philocrates' case, apparently because he here 
 only was successful, and he wishes to dwell on it ; 2 Diopeithes 
 especially was not prominent till after that date. The prosecu- 
 tion of Autocles, if occurring just after that person's known aipa- 
 rriyia, would bring us up to 360-59, but there is no definite 
 evidence that this was the occasion, and I cannot accept it in 
 the face of the general probabilities for the later age of Hyper- 
 eides. 3 It was through his prosecution that Philocrates was 
 condemned (343 B.C.). During the Byzantine campaign (340 
 B.C.) he also performed an expensive Choregia at home, though 
 himself absent as trierarch. He was moreover employed on 
 an embassy to Rhodes, but at what date is unknown. He ap- 
 pears to have proposed the public crowning of Demosthenes 
 after the Athenian successes in the Hellespont, and to have 
 
 1 Col. xviii. : ovk alaxvv^i vvvl t-^Xikovtos &i> inrb fietpaictcov Kpiv6p.€vos 
 vepl SapoSoxias ; nairoi edei Tovvavriov ixp' v/xuv irai8eii€o~dai robs vewrepovs 
 T&v prjTdpow K.r.X. vvv 8h Towavrtov ol v4oi tovs virep k^rjKOvra cttj (rwcppovl- 
 (ovaiv. This passage is not noted by Blass, who supports the current view 
 (AB, iv. p. 3). 
 
 2 In Euxen. col. xxxviii-ix. 
 
 3 In a fragment (58, Ed. Blass) he speaks of Socrates being con- 
 demned by our ancestors (ol irpSyovoi fjfiebv). Would he say this in 359 B.C., 
 when all the elderly people remembered Socrates' trial ? 
 
372 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. xii. 
 
 aided him in his celebrated embassy to Thebes before the 
 battle of Chseronea. When the news came in, he was very 
 active in his proposals to enfranchise slaves, restore the dis- 
 franchised, and put the city in a state of defence by sending 
 down everything unnecessary to the Peiraeus. For these pro- 
 posals he was prosecuted under the ypa<£>) Trapavofnav, but trium- 
 phantly acquitted. His extradition was demanded by Alex- 
 ander after the conquest of Thebes, but then successfully 
 resisted. He is said, nevertheless, to have proposed honours 
 for the supposed poisoner of the king. As is well known, he 
 was the public accuser of his old colleague, Demosthenes, in 
 the affair of Harpalus, from the ultra-patriotic side. Naturally, 
 then, he was again united with him in the war against Antipater, 
 and was chosen to deliver the funeral harangue over Leosthenes 
 and his brave soldiers (322 B.C.). When Antipater won the day 
 at Krannon, Hypereides' extradition was again demanded, with 
 that of Demosthenes. He fled to vEgina, from whence, per- 
 haps from the very temple of Poseidon, he was dragged by 
 Archias, and was put to death, after having his tongue cut out, 
 by Antipater, either at Cleonae or at Corinth. 1 There was a 
 monument to him at Athens, whither, it was said, his body, at 
 first cast out in dishonour, was secretly conveyed by his friends, 
 but no statue was ever erected. His son Glaukippus was 
 afterwards known as a rhetor and speech- writer. 
 
 In character Hypereides is said to have been much under 
 the influence of women, and fond of luxuries, especially of 
 fish, 2 but otherwise both respectable and very talented. He 
 is called, like Lycurgus, a pupil of Isocrates, but the style of 
 his extant speeches enables us decidedly to contradict it. In- 
 
 1 9th of Pyanepsion, 01. 114, 3 = 5th Oct., 322 B.C., according to the 
 most recent computation. 
 
 2 Cf. the fragment of Timocles' comedy, called A-fjXios (Athen. viii. p. 
 341 ; or Meineke, Frag. Com. iii. 591), in which, after charging Demos- 
 thenes and others with taking money from Harpalus : 
 
 A. 6 r iv \6yoiffi Seivbs 'Yirepeidris !%« ; 
 
 B. tovs IxQvoircaXas ovros rj/xlv ir\ovTie?, 
 oipo(pdyos chare tovs Kdpovs eivai ^vpovs. 
 
 sc. such a fish-eater that cormorants (compared with him) are Syrians 
 (who never ate fish). Cf. also the same poet's Icarians (Meineke, iii. 
 P- 592). 
 
ch. xii. HYPEREIDES AND DEMOSTHENES. 373 
 
 deed, Dionysius remarks that his simplicity and grace remind 
 us rather of Lysias. As to Plato having taught him, nothing 
 is more improbable. Later writers seem to think, because all 
 ambitious and rising young men, of whatever politics, attended 
 the suggestive conversations of Socrates in the previous cen- 
 tury, that Plato's school occupied a similar position. Such 
 an inference is obviously false, and against all our evidence, 
 both internal and external. It is remarkable that, though a 
 rich man, Hypereides was a speech-writer, as we may see from 
 his Defence of Lycophi'on, which is composed in this man's per- 
 son. But, instead of assuming, as is generally done, that his 
 speech-writing was his earliest work, I imagine him to have 
 come forward quite suddenly as a brilliant and rich young 
 man, and to have taken a leading part in politics from the 
 year 343 onward, when his arraignment of Philocrates brought 
 him into notice. His extravagant habits and dissolute life 
 having probably impaired his fortune, he turned his great 
 talents to making money by speech-writing. Thus all his 
 private speeches would date after Chasronea. But the other 
 extant works chance to be personal harangues, two of them, 
 doubtless, the most well known he ever delivered, though 
 probably not the happiest — I mean the indictment of Demos- 
 thenes and the funeral oration over Leosthenes. This last 
 must, however, be severed distinctly from the rest as an epideictic 
 performance, while the rest are court speeches. 
 
 § 551. The accusation of Demosthenes naturally holds the 
 chief place, though it is not the earliest. When first discovered, 
 it was thought that new light would be thrown on the rela- 
 tion of Demosthenes to Harpalus, but, so far as we can judge, 
 in 1 spite of the mutilations and losses at both ends of the 
 speech, no new evidence was adduced, but the report of the 
 Areopagus taken as sufficient guarantee for the facts. Grote 
 has examined the case, with this evidence, partly at least, 
 before him, and considers that Hypereides' speech tends 
 strongly to prove that the real charge against Demosthenes 
 was not personal corruptness but political unpopularity. The 
 opening speech in the prosecution was made by Stratocles, 
 upon whom the speaker of Deinarchus 5 extant speech seems to 
 
374 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. xir. 
 
 have followed, and Hypereides did not therefore occupy the 
 leading place, as we should have expected from all our notices. 
 Hence he refuses to re-open the question of evidence, which 
 he considers decided by the Report sent down from the 
 Areopagus. I repeat that Hypereides distinctly classes him- 
 self with the younger generation, and upbraids Demosthenes, 
 that when past sixty he should require correction from far 
 younger men. He also notes * how universally and publicly 
 the political men of the day made indirect profits by their 
 political power. This, he says, is conceded. The only offence 
 resented was the taking of bribes against the interests of the 
 state. Taking bribes was per se no crime whatever, and the 
 orator speaks of Demosthenes having amassed great wealth in 
 this way. Such was the political morality of the day. 2 
 
 The defence of Lycophron for immoral conduct, and for 
 publicly tampering with the loyalty of a bride to her husband, 
 when in command at Lemnos, argues a case which we cannot 
 fully understand. The chief accuser was not Lycurgus, but 
 Ariston, whom Lycurgus supported. Schafer dates the speech 
 about 01. 107, 4. In my opinion it cannot be so early. This 
 oration is clear and vigorous, and full of very clever, though 
 evidently stock arguments, against the attacks of the prose- 
 cutor. 3 It is chiefly based upon et/cora, such as the defendant's 
 good character and the absurdity of his addressing in such a 
 way a bride at a marriage procession. The style is easy 
 and clear, and reminds one (as Hypereides constantly does) of 
 Lysias. 
 
 § 552. The defence of Euxenippus is more interesting, being 
 spoken by the orator himself in support of this person, who 
 was attacked by Polyeuctus for fraud. The accused had been 
 
 1 Col. xxi. : iroWa fyteTs, d> &v$pes SiKacrral SiSore enures tols aTparr)- 
 yo?s Kal to?s p-^ropciv wcpeXelffdat — ov ra>v vSficav avruis SedaKorcov rovro 
 irojetV, aXAa tJjs u/xerepas irpa6Tt]T0S Kal QiXavOpwrrias — ev fxovov irapacpvkaT - 
 rovres, '6-iroos 81 vfias Kal /j.^ KaO' v/xwv iarai rb Kafx^av6fi€vov. This is a 
 most important passage. 
 
 2 The text of both this and the next oration is so mutilated that we 
 cannot tell whether a vital part of the argument is not lost, and Cobet has 
 even abandoned the task of editing them as idle. 
 
 3 Cf. col. ix., which meets such an argument as that of zEschines in 
 Ctes.y 292-3. 
 
chxii. THE EPITAPHIOS. 375 
 
 directed by the Assembly to sleep in the temple of Amphiaraus, 
 in order that by his dreams he might discover whether certain 
 distributed territory near Oropus was the god's property or not. 
 In this later case it was to remain the property of two tribes, 
 who claimed compensation if they were deprived of it. The 
 accuser, who here again was supported by Lycurgus, charged 
 Euxenippus with making a false report of his dream. The form 
 of action chosen was an tio-ayyeAia, to which Hypereides 
 objects in limine, as applicable only to politicians or prominent 
 public men, whereas Euxenippus was an elderly and unobtru- 
 sive private person. The proper test, he urges, of the dream 
 was to enquire at Delphi. The orator gives us a few details of 
 his public accusations up to the date of the speech, when 
 Olympias was sovereign of Dodona (circ. 330 B.C.), and only 
 mentions three. This points to the late rise of Hypereides 
 as an orator. He gives some interesting details l of the great 
 profits made in the mines, and of the disgraceful attempts of 
 sycophants to plunder the wealth made by individuals and 
 distribute it among the people, as Lycurgus had once done. In 
 this speech also there is great simplicity and directness of argu- 
 ment, with very little ornament and no pathos, but much lively 
 ethos and cool sarcasm in analysing the motives of the accuser. 
 § 553- The Funeral oration, actually delivered in 322 B.C., 
 over Leosthenes and the soldiers who fell in the earlier part of 
 the Lamian war, is a very different kind of work, and was 
 highly admired by the ancients. Hypereides here abandons his 
 short, plain, direct style, and undertakes an epideictic display 
 upon the model long established for such purposes. A Greek 
 orator would no more have ventured to innovate on such 
 an occasion than our preachers would in the general form of 
 their sermons — I mean in attaching them to a text, with open- 
 ing and concluding prayers, and in many other traditional 
 ways of arguing and exhorting which will occur to any reader. 
 This epitaphios, then, is on the model fixed by Gorgias, and 
 followed by Thucydides and Plato, though not without 
 deviations, such as the contempt of mythical histories and 
 long past wars. We have in the remains of Lysias and 
 Demosthenes rhetorical exercises of the same description. 
 1 Col. xliii. sq. 
 
376 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. xn. 
 
 Hypereides so affects the old style here that he even balances 
 his periods, and alliterates with antithesis quite in the manner 
 of Gorgias or Agathon (in Plato's Symposium). The picture 
 of Leosthenes' reception by the famous dead when he ap- 
 pears in Hades strikes us as curious and un-Periclean, but is 
 very interesting as a specimen of the style. 1 Stobseus has 
 preserved us a fine fragment from the epilogue missing in the 
 papyrus. 
 
 § 554. We have more than two hundred fragments (collected 
 by Kiessling, and also commented on in Blass' text) and sixty- 
 five titles of his speeches remaining, but little of literary value. 
 His free use of colloquial words was censured by the purists. 
 A good deal of the argument of the <\r}\iatc6g is preserved, which 
 evidently treated of the mythical history of the island, and the 
 adventures of Leto before the birth of Apollo, at considerable 
 length. It seems to me that it was probably on this model that 
 Callimachus constructed his hymn to the Delian Apollo (above, 
 Vol. I. p. 137). The speech was delivered about 340 B.C., when 
 the orator was appointed instead of iEschines, but we wonder 
 that the argument does not show more traces of political rea- 
 soning. His defence of Phryne, and the anecdotes of his tear- 
 
 1 Col. xiii. IO-xiv. 28 : iv adov 5e XoyiaaaOai &£iov rives ol rbv 7)ye/u.6va 
 Ee^iwcro/xcvoi. rbv rovrwv. Sp' ovk av olo/xeda cpoirav Aecacrdevr] Se^iovfxivovs 
 koI 6av/j.d£ovras rwv r)/j.i9ia>v KaXovftevav robs irrl Tpoiav err par ever auras, 6>v 
 ovros a.8eX<pas irpd^eis ivcrrrjcrd/xevos rocrovrov dvfjveyKev, &o~re ol /nev fxera. 
 Trdrrr]s rrjs 'EXXdBos juiav it6Xiv elXov, 6 §e fiera, rrjs eavrov rrarpiSos fiovrjs 
 ■Kacrav rr\v rrjs Bvpairr]s Kal rrjs 'Affias dpxovcrav Svvafj.LV irarreivwcrev. Ka- 
 Ketvoi fiev eveKa fuas yvvaucbs vfipio-deiffrjs r^fxvvav, 6 5e itacr&v ru>v 'EXXy- 
 vidoov ras imcpepo/xevas vfipeis iKwXvaev fxera rcov avvOarrrofxevav vvv avrcp 
 avZpoov, rcov fier' iiceivovs fiev yeyevr)jj.eviov, a|ta 5e rrjs iKeivccv aperrjs Sto- 
 ireTrpay/xevwv. Xeyca Sr] robs rrepl MiXrid5r)v Kal Se/xicrroKXea Kal robs 
 &XXovs, o$ rr\v 'EXXaSa iXevOepwaavres evrifiov fj.ev rrjv rrarpiBa Karecrrr}- 
 crav, evho^ov Se rbv au'-wv Qiov iiroirjcrav, §>v ovros rocrovrov vrrepecrx^v avSpeia 
 Kal <ppovr)cr€i, '6o~ov ol /xev iireXdovcrav rr\v rcov fiapBdpwv 8vvafJ.iv r)/J.vvavro 
 — o 8e /LtrjS' iireXde?v £iroir\crev. KO-Keivoi fxev iv ttj oWeia robs exOpobs 
 irreTBov aycovi^o/xevovs, ovros 8e iv ttj r&v ix^poov rrepieyevero rwv avri- 
 irdXuiv. olfxai Se Kal robs rrjv rrpbs aXXr)Xovs cptXiav rep 8r)fxcp j3efSai6rara 
 ivSe^afievovs, Xeya be 'Apfx68iov Kal 'Apiaroyeirova, ovZevas ovras avrots 
 olfceiovs ovSe marorepovs v/jav elvai vofi'i^eiv as AeaicrOevr) Kal robs iKeivy 
 {rvvaywvicrafxevovs, ou5' erepois av uiaXXov r) rovrois irXrja'ido'eiav iv A'ldov. 
 
ch. xii. MSS. OF HYPEREIDES. 377 
 
 ing open her dress to show her beauty to the judges, are well 
 known. The speech was genuine, but the embellishments 
 apocryphal, and probably falsely inferred from some appeal or 
 suggestion. It was so admired at Rome as to be translated by 
 Messala Corvinus. 
 
 The style of Hypereides is that of a newer school than 
 Demosthenes' — of the school of Menander and the new co- 
 medy, to whom long periods and elaborate structure seemed 
 tedious, and who affected short and terse statement, clear and 
 epigrammatic points, smart raillery, and an easy and careless 
 tone even in serious debate. Hence the critics, such as 
 Quintilian, think him more suited to slight subjects ; and we 
 feel how artificial to him are the periods of his state sennon 
 on the dead — a mere rhetorical tour de force. But of his im- 
 mediate successors some thought him better than Demosthenes 
 — no doubt he was pleasanter reading — a second Lysias, but 
 with all the accumulated art and experience of the completed 
 Attic eloquence. With all this aristocratic gaiety and lightness 
 of style, the man was no trifler. His life and acts prove him 
 an energetic, earnest, patriotic citizen, and he escaped the dark 
 shadows which hang about the later years of Demosthenes. 
 The judgments of Dionysius, Longinus, Hermogenes, and 
 others can now be read in Blass' fourth volume. The writer 
 on the Sublime is particularly full and appreciative in bringing 
 out the contrast between the sour, sombre, mighty Demosthenes 
 and the brilliant, easy, but seldom impressive Hypereides — in 
 fact, the Sheridan of Greek eloquence. 
 
 § 555. Bibliographical. The history of his MSS. is peculiarly 
 interesting. A splendid codex, covered with scholia, existed 
 in the library of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, after the 
 invention of printing, but was unfortunately destroyed or lost 
 in the capture of Buda-Pesth by the Turks. Since then the 
 orator was but a name in the scholia or lexica, such as Harpo- 
 cration's, 1 till the discovery of the four orations piecemeal in 
 papyri bought by Mr. Harris Warden and Mr. Stobart at 
 Thebes, in Egypt, about the year 1850. The papyrus con- 
 taining the epitaphios is later and inferior to that which con- 
 
 1 It is very curious to read Kiessling's careful monograph (appended 
 to his Lycurgns, Halle, 1847), before the recovery of our text. 
 
373 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. xii. 
 
 tains the rest, and all were much mutilated by the Arabs, who 
 cut them in pieces to sell them by separate bargains.' The 
 documents have been facsimiled in Babington's editions, and to 
 this scholar we owe more than to anyone else in the restoration 
 of the text. The discovery of course excited great interest, and 
 we now have many good texts by Cobet, Blass (Teubner), &c, 
 as well as Babington's. The papyri seem to date somewhere 
 between the second century b.c. and the second century a.d., and 
 are therefore the oldest Greek MSS. we possess. Unfortunately 
 the writing is careless, and the phonetic spelling of an Egyptian 
 with a provincial and debased pronunciation has introduced 
 many absurd forms. Thus Cobet has found a fine field for his 
 splendid powers of emendation, especially in the Epitaphios. 
 
 § 556. Deinarchus, the last of the ten orators, not in point 
 of age, but rather in the date of his activity, was a Corinthian, 
 the son of Sostratus, who settled at Athens, and was intimate with 
 Theophrastus and Demetrius Phalereus. Dionysius computes 
 him to have been born in 361 B.C., for the vague reason that he 
 must have been seventy when he calls himself ' an old man ' in 
 292 b.c. He does not seem to have produced political speeches 
 earlier than the date of the affair of Harpalus, but in this trial, 
 and for a series of years later, he composed orations, chiefly 
 political, for citizens, being himself merely a resident alien, 
 and therefore excluded from public debates. Dionysius thinks 
 he may have begun speech- writing in the law courts as early as 
 336 b.c, when he was twenty-six years old. After the death 
 and exile of the greater orators, he occupied the first place for 
 about fifteen years, when he was implicated in the disturb- 
 ances between Antigonus, Demetrius, and Cassander, and re- 
 tired to Chalcis (307 B.C.), where he remained till the year 
 292 B.C., in which his friends obtained his return. He then, in 
 old age, pleaded a personal action for the first time against his 
 Athenian host Proxenus — perhaps merely his Trpofcvog, or patron 
 among the citizens — for refusing, with treacherous intent, to help 
 him in recovering his property. From this speech even the 
 ancients had learned all they knew of his personal history. 
 Suidas says he was killed at the instigation of Polysperchon. 
 
ch. xii. ' DIONYSIUS ON DEINARCHUS. 379 
 
 There is fortunately a special tract extant by Dionysius, which 
 examines the speeches attributed to him by the test of chro- 
 nology, and rejects many, enumerating sixty as genuine, most of 
 them by their opening words. This is the case with the three 
 extant orations, that against Demosthenes, against Aristogeiton, 
 and against Philokles, all written for accusers in the prosecu- 
 tions about the affair of Harpalus. 1 
 
 § 557. The long and elaborate attack on Demosthenes gives 
 us pretty fully the case made against the orator. It agrees 
 perfectly with the fragments of Hypereides' indictment in 
 avoiding all statement of details. But this is here fully justi- 
 fied by appealing to the challenge of the accused to refer the 
 matter to the Areopagus, by whose decision as to the facts 
 
 1 This tract of Dionysius is an excellent specimen of his literary criti- 
 cism, and makes me very slow to question his judgments in such matters, 
 He begins by saying how little accurate information could be had about 
 this orator, whom he had passed over when treating of the pioneers and 
 perfecters of eloquence. Neither Callimachus nor the Pergamene gram- 
 marians knew anything clearly about him, or his genuine work. He 
 quotes Demetrius Magnes in illustration of this inaccuracy. He then 
 sketches the orator's life, chiefly from his own words in the speech 
 against Proxenus, compared with the Histories of Philochorus on the con- 
 temporary events, and quotes the title of this personal speech, with ex- 
 tracts from Philochorus. From these materials he determines his age 
 approximately, and thus establishes a canon for rejecting all speeches bear- 
 ing internal evidence cf being composed before the orator was twenty-five 
 (viz. 336 B.C.), or during his exile (307-292 B.C.). There follow (caps, 
 5-6) excellent remarks on his style, which is shown to have been eclectic 
 and imitative, without uniformity. But the imitations, which were evidently 
 very good, must (he says) be tested by close comparison with his models, 
 just as copies were compared with the originals of Pheidias, Apelles, or 
 Polycleitus. They would then be found laboured and artificial in compari- 
 son with the older masters. Similar were the attempts to imitate Plato, 
 Thucydides, Hypereides (by the Rhodian school), and Demosthenes. He 
 proceeds to give (c. 9) an invaluable list of all the archons from the orator's 
 birth to his last speech, and then classifies the extant speeches into genuine 
 public, spurious public, genuine private, and spurious private. The spurious 
 are separated into three classes : those too early for the orator, those evi- 
 dently composed during his exile, and lastly those too watery and frigid 
 in style. Then he vindicates for Demosthenes, and abjudicates from Dei- 
 narchus, the speech in reply to Bceotos virep rov ovS/xaros. Dionysius' 
 tract is unfortunately mutilated towards the close. 
 
380 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. ch. xrr. 
 
 he was willing to abide. The Areopagus had spent months 
 in the investigation, and ultimately sent down not only the 
 names of the culprits, but the exact amounts they had received. 
 According to the ordinary procedure of that court, the details 
 of the evidence were not given. I suppose a re- statement 
 of them was forbidden in the final trial before a dicastery of 
 five hundred, which had really only to assess the punishment. 
 This assessment was made according to the amount of public 
 injury supposed to be done by the accused, and according to 
 his general character. Hence both Hypereides and Deinarchus 
 enter upon this only, especially as Demosthenes had declared 
 that he would acquiesce in the finding of the Areopagus. 
 Deinarchus insists, like Hypereides, on the enormous wealth 
 (150 talents) gained from politics by Demosthenes; and all 
 this was kept out of the reach of direct taxation. For the 
 curious patchwork of passages from older orators in this oration, 
 see Blass' account (iv. 295). 
 
 The imperfect oration against Aristogeiton is about an aban- 
 doned and worthless citizen, who had only obtained twenty 
 minse of the plunder, but the evidence against him is the same 
 as that against Demosthenes ; and if there were any proof that 
 Demosthenes was associated with such a person in politics, it 
 would be a grave corroboration of the charges now disbelieved 
 on the ground of his general respectability. 
 
 § 558. The third speech is against jP/ii/o&/es, a. ma.n of posi- 
 tion and importance, who was in charge of the Peirseus, and, 
 though he had undertaken not to admit Harpalus, had done so, 
 but only in a single ship. This attack is accordingly different in 
 tone from that on Aristogeiton, and does not seek to prove the 
 case from the general bad character of the accused, but rather to 
 throw suspicion on all his former respectability, owing to the pre- 
 sent transaction. None of the three speeches are very interest- 
 ing, though not wanting in power or finish. As Dionysius 
 says in his careful critique, he was neither the discoverer of 
 a new style, like Lysias or Isocrates, nor the perfecter of one 
 already known, like Demosthenes and Hypereides. 1 In fact, 
 
 1 The received reading that he had no feature either common to the rest 
 (koiv6v), or peculiar to himself ('iSiov), appears to me nonsense, and should 
 be rejected for naiv6u — there was nothing in him either new or peculiar (cf. 
 
cm. xii. DEMADES, HEGESIPPUS. 381 
 
 his style was really made up in the way vulgarly supposed to be 
 Demosthenes' — the eclectic method of bringing together the 
 features of all the previous orators. He specially imitated 
 Demosthenes, so that he was called the rustic as well as the 
 gingerbread (tepid lvoq) Demosthenes. Blass understands it to 
 mean distilled from barley (like beer) as contrasted with wine. 
 The Latins translated it hordearius \ nevertheless, when they 
 compared him with still later Greek orators, found him full of 
 merits which these lacked. He was, in fact, brought up among 
 the great traditions of the Attic courts and free assembly, and 
 the reflection of this greatness threw its glory over the orator 
 who outlived its decadence. The extant speeches are not 
 faulty, but not striking ; they are wanting in fire, in originality, 
 in vivacity, in power, though the writer knows all the figures of 
 thought and diction used by the great masters, and even over- 
 does the application of them. The MSS. are the same as 
 those of Antiphon, the best editions Maetzner's and Blass'. 2 
 
 § 559. A few words must be said in conclusion on the 
 contemporary orators of repute, whose works have only reached 
 us through uncertain or fragmentary tradition. Thus the 
 defence attributed to Demades, which formed one of a col- 
 lection of fourteen orations under his name, is certainly spu- 
 rious, as this very remarkable speaker, whose striking ex- 
 temporaneous aphorisms were long remembered and quoted, 
 did not compose written speeches. The same was the case 
 with Phokion, whose sententious addresses to the people were 
 thought so effective by Demosthenes. Both Demades and 
 Phokion were more thoroughly than yEschines representa- 
 tives of the extempore school, which can only exist when sup- 
 ported by extraordinary natural gifts or great weight of cha- 
 racter. But of Hegesippus, a contemporary and supporter of 
 
 Dionys. in Deinarch. c. 5). I do not think it permissible to translate, ' for 
 he has no general complexion, or uniformity of 'style,' 'though Dionysius says 
 this in the immediate sequel — that he is often like Lysias, again like Hy- 
 pereides, and again like Demosthenes, and he then refers to special speeches 
 to illustrate this. But to uniformity of style Dionysius applies the term 
 d/uLoeiSys or ojxoios. 
 
 2 There is a collation of Vienna MSS. by H. Diels, in Rhein. Mus. 
 xxix. 107, sq. 
 
382 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xn. 
 
 Demosthenes, we seem to have an oration — that on Halon- 
 nesus, which Dionysius notices as Lysian in style, and unlike 
 the other works of Demosthenes. It was shown by Vomel, 
 following the hints of Libanius, to be the work of Hegesippus, 
 a partisan of Demosthenes, who had been sent to Macedonia 
 to demand back, with other territory, the island of Halonnesus. 
 On his return (342 B.C.) he gave, in reply to a proposal sent 
 by Philip, an account of his negociations, and of the plans 
 of Philip, which he had carefully studied. The speech fol- 
 lows Philip's Letter point by point in a manner quite foreign 
 to Demosthenes, but with great completeness as a reply. 
 The style of the speech is clear and careful, archaic in its 
 simplicity, but rude and without polish, even disregarding 
 hiatus ; yet strong enough to persuade Dionysius of its 
 genuineness. 
 
 There are no doubt, among the collection in our MSS. of 
 Lysias and Demosthenes, a good many court speeches by 
 obscurer contemporaries, which give us a valuable insight 
 into the average standard of Attic eloquence as compared with 
 that of the acknowledged masters. 
 
 The extant fragment of Polyeuctus (of Sphettus) even 
 points to the loss of brilliant speeches by men who failed to 
 obtain lasting renown. 
 
 This cannot, however, be said of the author of a speech 
 recommending war with Alexander, which has survived under 
 Demosthenes' name. Even the Greek scholia on the speech 
 are very outspoken as to its defects. It is far too clumsy to be 
 the work of Hypereides, or even of Hegesippus, and its only 
 value is the evidence it affords of the feeling throughout Greece 
 in 335-3 B.C., 1 which critics determine to be its date. 
 
 Stratocles and Charisius are mere names, represented by a 
 few citations in Latin version. Demochares, Demosthenes' 
 sister's son, a respectable public man, was both a historian and 
 an orator, and we regret the loss of his histo?y of his own times, 
 and of his famous speech against the philosophers, whose 
 residence at Athens a certain Sophocles wished to limit and 
 control. He argued that none of them, not even Socrates, 
 1 Blass advocates 335 ; Droysen [Gesch. Hell. i. 242) 333. 
 
ch. xii. DEMETRIUS PHALEREUS. 383 
 
 had made respectable citizens. But hardly a sentence of him 
 remains. 1 
 
 § 560. Demetrius of Phaleron hardly belongs to the 
 classical period, being both in life and doctrine the repre- 
 sentative of the passage of letters from Athens to Alex- 
 andria. He advocated the use of short detached sentences 
 against the periods of Isocrates. The favourable judgments 
 on his writings arose chiefly, I fancy, from the personal 
 popularity of the man. 2 He was a leading figure in the 
 history of decaying Athens, brought up in contact with De- 
 mosthenes, Hypereides and Aristotle ; the pupil of Theo- 
 phrastus, and friend of Menander. He was practically ruler 
 of Athens for ten years (317-307 B.C.), and he gave an 
 account of his stewardship in a special memoir. But he 
 seems to have written memoirs about everything. After being 
 honoured with 360 statues by the grateful Athenians, they con- 
 demned him to death when a stronger Demetrius (Poliorketes) 
 invaded Athens. But he found a pleasant refuge with the first 
 Ptolemy, whom he helped and advised in the founding of the 
 university system (if I may so call it) of Alexandria. The 
 second Ptolemy banished him to Upper Egypt, where he died 
 of the bite of a serpent (283 B.C.). The immense and various 
 catalogue of his works shows that polymath tendency which the 
 Alexandrian grammarians seem to have adopted from the Peri- 
 patetic school. Having suffered in his life the change from 
 honour, to contempt with commonalties and with kings, he has 
 met the same destiny — that usual with second-rate respectability 
 — at the hands of changing centuries. Admired and praised 
 in his day for fruitfulness, for subtlety, and for elegance, he 
 was presently and permanently forgotten. 
 
 1 For other obscurer names the reader may consult Blass' exhaustive 
 work, iv. 247, sq. 
 
 2 The curious and somewhat inconsistent judgments of Cicero Quintilian, 
 and Diog. Laert. on him, quoted by Blass, iv. 313. 
 
384 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, CH. xni. 
 
 , CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ARISTOTLE. 
 
 § 561. The last great name, with which the classical litera- 
 ture of Greece may be said to close, is that of Aristotle, and 
 he — great in so many directions— is least of all a literary 
 man. To us he is such only as a critic, but even to the 
 ancients, who possessed his poems and dialogues, and who praise 
 the elegance of their form, Aristotle's literary performances were 
 as nothing in comparison to his scientific works. And with 
 him, too 5 we find, perhaps first among the Greeks, perhaps 
 second to Heracleitus only, the feeling that literature and science 
 are distinct, and that the seeker after accurate knowledge need 
 not adorn his researches with the graces of eloquence or of 
 poetry. Nay he even regarded literature, as such, from a purely 
 scientific point of view, and the works which take their place in 
 this history are his investigation of the nature and conditions of 
 epic and tragic poetry, and of the psychological groundwork of 
 eloquence. Even his Politics^ though he does not enter upon 
 a criticism of historiography, seem (together with his lost 
 7ro\tr£tcu) a distinct protest against the Isocratic principle of 
 confusing the narrative of events with rhetorical display, and a 
 reassertion of the style of the bald chronicle with a philoso- 
 phical rearrangement of facts under logical classes. Thus the 
 numerous and monumental scientific treatises of Aristotle have 
 not the same claim which the dialogues of Plato have to be 
 treated in this book, and we will refer the student who desires 
 to know the deeper side of the man to the library of works 
 on his philosophy, of which Zeller's volume, 1 being the newest 
 
 1 Philosophic der Griechen, II Th. 2te Abth., 3rd edition, Leipzig, 1879. 
 This volume is being translated, as the others have been, but as yet is not 
 accessible in English. 
 
CH. xiii. LIFE OF ARISTOTLE. 385 
 
 as well as the ablest, may be regarded as giving an excellent 
 summary. 
 
 The various lives still extant of Aristotle are very disap- 
 pointing, when we consider the number of details they record. 
 The fullest is that of Diogenes Laertius, who gives us also 
 the text of his will, and the catalogue of his works; then 
 there is the epistle to Ammaeus of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 
 which is mainly devoted to proving that the rhetoric of De- 
 mosthenes was developed anterior to Aristotle's teaching, and 
 therefore independent of it. There are also several versions 
 of a life attributed to Philoponus, first printed in the Aristotle of 
 Aldus. These materials are well worked up for English readers 
 by Sir A. Grant and by Grote, in their respective works on 
 Aristotle. 
 
 The life of the philosopher coincides very curiously with 
 that of his great contemporary, Demosthenes : they were born 
 in the same year, and died in the same year. But in all else the 
 circumstances of their career were widely different. Aristotle 
 was born in 384 B.C. at Stageira in the Chalkidike — a region 
 then thickly settled with flourishing Hellenic towns. His 
 father, Nikomachus, was personal physician and friend of the 
 Macedonian king Amyntas. His mother, Phsestis, may have 
 been of Eubcean origin, for we hear of the family owning a house 
 at Chalkis, to which the philosopher retired towards the close of 
 his life. It is probable that Nikomachus lived with his royal 
 friend, and that Aristotle was brought up about the Macedonian 
 court ; but we know nothing of his education beyond the fact 
 that his parents died early, and that a family friend, Proxenus 
 of Atarneus, took charge of him; a kindness which Aristotle 
 repaid by adopting Nikanor, Proxenus' son, and afterwards also 
 giving him his daughter in marriage. We hear that Aristotle 
 had brothers and sisters, but they are as obscure as the brothers 
 and sisters of Kant or Des Cartes. 
 
 In his eighteenth year, being apparently a young man of 
 good fortune, and, as some said, even of luxurious and dissolute 
 habits, he came to Athens, and joined the school of Plato (367-6 
 B.C.). Of this early period at Athens we hear nothing but 
 occasional bits of scandal circulated by Epicurus, Timseus, and 
 
 vol. 11. c c 
 
386 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xm. 
 
 other of his opponents in the school of Isocrates. l These stories 
 have found little credence in the face of the enormous extent 
 and seriousness of his scientific labours. It is not even likely 
 that he ever increased his means by practising as a physician. 
 There can be no doubt that his independent mind gradually 
 led him to question his master's theories, and thus to estrange 
 him from the Platonic school ; but the anecdotes of his self- 
 assertion and rudeness to the aged Plato are contradicted by 
 the unfeigned respect with which he speaks of him in the first 
 book of the Nicom. Ethics? and in the extant fragment of 
 his elegy on Eudemus. He is said also to have edited and 
 imitated several Platonic dialogues. Indeed, for twenty years, 
 up to Plato's death, he seems never to have abandoned the 
 Platonic school, though he openly questioned the doctrine of 
 Ideas. Of course the influence of Plato, during these twenty 
 years, on the best part of his life can hardly be overrated, and 
 yet in two essential features he made little impress on his pupil 
 — first in the matter of style ; secondly, in the deductive cha- 
 racter of his reasoning. Perhaps the influence of Plato on the 
 former appears less than it really was, because we have lost 
 all the early works written by Aristotle during his Platonic 
 years 3 — the dialogues which were praised for their style, 
 and certain lectures on rhetoric, chiefly directed against Iso- 
 crates, whose shallowness seems to have been very distasteful 
 to Aristotle. Indeed, both Cicero and Quintilian quote his 
 adaptation of a line al<ryj)bv (raoTtdv, 'IcroKpaTrjv 3' kqv Xiyetv. 
 Nevertheless, in his later and more philosophical rhetoric he 
 quotes no one oftener, as afifprding good examples, than Iso- 
 crates. 
 
 § 562. On the death of Plato, he went (in his thirty-seventh 
 year) with Xenocrates to Hermeias, tyrant of Atarneus and 
 
 1 Cf. Midler's FUG. i. pp. 209-1 1 ( Timed Fragg. 70-6). 
 
 - iv. § 1. 
 
 3 I cannot agree with Susemihl (note 533 to his translation of the 
 Politics, vol. ii. p. 140) that these dialogues were not composed till after 
 335 B.C., when Aristotle returned to Athens. In the face of the enormous 
 catalogue of his works, such a theory seems to me untenable, not to speak 
 of the marked contrast of style between the early and the later compositions. 
 
ch. xiii. LIFE OF ARISTOTLE. 3? 7 
 
 Assos, who was himself a pupil of Plato. When, after three years, 
 this Hermeias was treacherously put to death by the Persians, 
 Aristotle settled at Mitylene, and took Pythias, a sister or niece 
 of Hermias, to wife. To this Hermias he dedicated a statue 
 at Delphi, and also addressed him in a still extant lyric poem. 
 In 343-2 B.C. he undertook, at Philip's request, the education 
 of Alexander the Great, now a boy thirteen years old. But 
 unfortunately we know nothing of this interesting relation, ex- 
 cept that two tracts of the philosopher, irepl flcHTiXelag and xnrep 
 d-miiK(ov (or avoiKiwv), were addressed to Alexander ; but I do 
 not fancy that Alexander's large ideas were based upon them. 
 Indeed, we know certainly that Aristotle's Hellenedom, which 
 is so manifest in the Politics, was distinctly opposed to the Hel- 
 lenism of the great king. During this period Aristotle and his 
 pupil resided at Mieza, south-west of Pella. He is said to have 
 obtained from Philip (or Alexander) the restoration of his native 
 town, destroyed along with Olynthus in 347 B.C. ; but his good 
 offices were thwarted by the jealousies and counterplots of the 
 exiles themselves. 1 Numerous authorities assert that he went 
 with Alexander to Asia, and there collected the materials of 
 his 255 polities. But this is certainly false. 
 
 In 335 B.C. he again settled at Athens, and formally opened 
 a school of his own, called Peripatetic, from his habit of walk- 
 ing up and down while teaching in the gymnasium of the Ly- 
 ceum. In the succeeding twelve years, he produced the majority 
 of those works, and trained the followers, that have brought 
 him undying fame. We hear of private lectures in the morning, 
 of public receptions in the afternoon, also of common meals, 
 and a sort of discipline in his school. 
 
 The follies of Callisthenes, whom Aristotle had recom- 
 mended to Alexander, and who was suspected of being disloyal 
 to him, owing to his outspoken censure, may have estranged 
 the great king from his old tutor, but no overt act can be cited 
 to prove it ; nay rather the materials for his natural history may 
 in part have been supplied by the interest of Alexander in his 
 researches. 2 Nevertheless, a few years after the king's death, 
 
 1 Cf. frag. 610, from Dio Chrysostom. 
 
 2 Thus the moot question about the cause of the Nile's rising in sum- 
 
388 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xm. 
 
 people began to talk scandal about Aristotle having been privy 
 to his assassination by poison. This idle and libellous rumour 
 is sufficiently contradicted by the public feeling which broke 
 out at Athens, at the opening of the Lamian war, against Aris- 
 totle as a steady partisan of the Macedonian party. He was 
 attacked under the allegation of impiety by Demophilus (pro- 
 bably the son of the historian Ephorus) for having honoured 
 Hermeias as a hero ; people had also charged him with offering 
 devotions to one of his wives, Herpyllis (after the manner of 
 Auguste Comte); and he retired before the storm to his country 
 house in Chalcis, where he presently died (322 B.C., summer) 
 of a chronic disease, which was no doubt aggravated by his 
 intense application to study. His will, preserved like those of 
 his successors in the school of Ariston, is still extant, at least 
 in substance, in Diogenes' Life, and shows us his loving and 
 thoughtful care for the welfare of his daughter, his immediate 
 friends, and even the slaves attached to his house. 
 
 We know little of his personality. He was evidently thought 
 ugly in his day — thin-legged and with small features. Many 
 smart things are repeated from his conversation by Diogenes, 
 and he was evidently no very agreeable person, or deficient 
 in the power of making enemies. 1 There are several portraits 
 extant of him, especially the splendid sitting statue in the 
 Palazzo Spada at Rome ; they represent a refined and careworn, 
 but somewhat hard face, in which thought and perhaps bodily 
 suffering have drawn deep furrows. His policy was Mace- 
 donian and anti-Demosthenic, and for this reason he was 
 assailed by many sham patriots. Of course he saw, with 
 Phocion, the impracticability of any other policy in the decay- 
 
 mer was said to have been settled by the observations of the great sum- 
 mer rams near its source, which Alexander obtained for Aristotle (fragg. 
 
 325-6). 
 
 1 Cf. Themistius, Orat. 23, p. 235 (quoted as h\xg. 57 of Timseus by 
 C. Midler) : Kr]<pi(ro8ct)povs Se iced Evfiov\idas Kai Tifxaiovs, AiKaidpxovs kcu 
 arparov oXov toiv 6Tri6efj.4vcov 'ApiaroreAei rq> ^Tayeipirr) tt6t %.v KaraXe^aifJ.1 
 evTrerws, £)V KaX Xoyoi i^iKvovvrcu els rSvde rhv xpovov, Siarripovvres t))v 
 avexQet-av koX (piXovzutiav. Many of these were posthumous enemies. We 
 know that the school of Isocrates and other sophists afforded him plenty 
 of contemporary opponents besides. 
 
CH. xiii. THE FRAGMENTS. 389 
 
 ing state of Greece, and he was not bound by the spirit of 
 patriotism, like Demosthenes, to fight to the last for a dying 
 cause, being only a metic, or resident alien at Athens. 
 
 § 563. The catalogue of Aristotle's works, which were said 
 to amount to more than 400, and which embraced every kind 
 of science and every sort of literary criticism, need not occupy 
 us here. The list given by Diogenes in his Life was probably 
 prepared by Andronicus, or perhaps Hermippus, from the 
 works found under his name in the Alexandrian library, and 
 does not contain some of those now extant. There is also 
 a list drawn up by Arabic writers of the thirteenth century. 
 The critical questions about these long and complicated lists 
 are discussed by many German writers, who are referred to in 
 Zeller's account. A careful catalogue is to be found in the 
 opening of the fifth volume of the Berlin Aristotle, prepared 
 by Val. Rose, and to this splendid volume I also refer in con- 
 sidering the fragments of lost works. 
 
 These fragments have, in the case of Aristotle, so peculiar 
 an interest for us, that I propose here to consider them before 
 I enter upon an account of the extant works which belong to 
 the plan of the present book. For it is to the fragments of 
 Aristotle that we must look for all our knowledge of his youthful 
 work, and still more of the work which placed him among the 
 ancients in the rank of a literary man. When we read the scien- 
 tific treatises he has left us, we wonder at the complete neglect 
 of form, the utter abnegation of style in the pupil of Plato, and 
 ask ourselves how it was that so great a critic of poetry and elo- 
 quence should not have given some evidence of his theories in 
 his own writing. But the fact is that we only inherit from him 
 those treatises which he wrote as head of a school, and possibly 
 as mere jottings to be filled up by oral explanations. The 
 enormous number and variety of his writings — most of them 
 composed within a few years — seem to preclude anything like 
 careful composition, and in more than one of them modern 
 critics have suspected that we possess the mere hasty notebook 
 of a pupil, taken down from the master's conversation during 
 his morning walks in the Lyceum. 1 
 
 Zeller shows (pp. 135-8) with much acuteness that this 
 
 view goes too 
 
396 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xiii. 
 
 § 564. Another account of the bad condition of our texts 
 is given in the famous story for which Strabo is our authority. 
 He says x that after the death of Aristotle and Theophrastus, 
 their books were inherited by Neleus of Skepsis, nephew of 
 the latter. Owing to the danger of their being seized by royal 
 book collectors, they were hidden by his heirs in a cellar, 
 where they lay for nearly two centuries, till discovered at the 
 beginning of the first century B.C. by Apellikon of Teos, and by 
 him brought to Athens. Then they were carried by Sylla as 
 booty to Rome, and first edited by Tyrannio and Andronicus 
 (circ. 60-50 B.C.). Hence, Strabo tells us, the early pupils of 
 the Peripatetic school knew little of the real doctrine of Aris- 
 totle, and mostly talked barren subtleties (dicreig XrjKvdi^eiv). 
 This theory is adopted by Heitz, Grote, Grant, and others, but 
 has been of late combated with success by Stahr and Zeller. 
 There is plainly great exaggeration in it, for we find Aristotle's 
 works distinctly quoted 2 in the interval, and a catalogue of 
 them as preserved in the Alexandrian library; and as he pub- 
 lished most of them during his life, it is not credible that 
 among his pupils and critics, especially the Stoics, no other copy 
 but that in the cellar at Skepsis should exist. There is, how- 
 ever, truth in the story as to these particular copies, and it is 
 more than probable that there may have been some unfinished 
 MS., like the Politics, which really lay concealed till this date, 
 and which is therefore unknown to ancient critics before the 
 time of Cicero. But the damp of the cellar could only produce 
 lacunae in the text, it could not mildew the texture of the style. 
 
 The ancients had a very different picture of Aristotle from 
 his works, Their best critics speak of him as a master of style. 
 Cicero tells us that he comes pouring forth a golden flood of 
 eloquence to prove the Divine Providence which has ordered 
 
 far, and that in these treatises, written in a rough and slovenly, but 
 peculiar and very scientific style, we have the very words of the master, 
 in most cases written down by himself, though often two collateral forms of 
 an argument have crept in either from a new treatment, or an inaccurate 
 copy at the moment. It is at least very likely that his pupils helped him 
 largely both in transcription and in collections of facts. 
 
 1 xiii. 1, 54. 
 
 " Cf. the evidence collected in Zeller, pp. 145, sq. 
 
CH. xiii. ARISTOTLE'S DIALOGUES. 391 
 
 the world, and translates a splendid passage to prove it. 1 
 Dionysius (Halic.) and Quintilian speak in similar words of 
 praise. Simplicius and Photius declare that his letters (col- 
 lected by Artemon in eight books) were unsurpassed as models 
 of that kind of composition, and though Demetrius quotes a 
 sentence from these letters as far too pompous in style, he cites 
 another 2 to show how thoroughly the author confined himself 
 to proper subjects, in which he says : ' This I do not write to 
 you, for it is not epistolary ' {kmarokiKov). Unfortunately the an- 
 cients have seldom supported their praise of the philosopher's 
 eloquence by adequate citations, and we must therefore search 
 the scanty fragments carefully to find any clear proofs of their 
 assertions. In the case of Cicero and later critics, we suspect, 
 moreover, that Aristotle's great and established reputation as 
 a thinker may have led them to exaggerate the perfection of 
 his style. 
 
 It is, however, to be remarked that Aristotle's Roman critics 
 cite none of our extant scientific treatises except the Topic 
 and Rhetoric. Either, therefore, they did not know the scien- 
 tific Aristotle, or, what is more likely, they were repelled by 
 his acroatic (esoteric) books, and confined themselves to those 
 H-wnpiKa, which were written for the public, and were within 
 their comprehension. Thus the Aristotle praised by the Roman 
 philosophers and rhetors is not our Aristotle, he is the author 
 of dialogues and exhortations to philosophy and virtue. But 
 among the Greeks the loss of his dialogues and elaborated 
 essays rather comes from the contempt in which these early 
 semi-Platonic writings were held by his school. In his later 
 and scientific works, they tell us, he put down his real opinions, 
 in the dialogues only what was false or held by others. Hence 
 it is to Stobaeus, to Plutarch, and to Cicero that we owe the 
 preservation of a few passages from these dialogues, in which 
 we find not only a Platonic vein of thought, but even a far-off 
 ray of Platonic sunlight in diction. 3 In fact, the influence of 
 
 1 De Nat. Deorum, ii. 37. 2 Fragg. 615, 620. 
 
 3 We hear that he did not attempt dramatic prologues, like Plato, and 
 that he sustained the principal part himself, unlike his master, but in the 
 manner adopted by Cicero, whose dialogues are probably not unlike those 
 of Aristotle in form. 
 
392 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xm. 
 
 Plato had been as great on Aristotle as the influence of So- 
 crates on Plato ; but we can trace the gradual weaning of Plato 
 from the Apologia to the Laws ; with Aristotle the early stages 
 have left but faint vestiges. 
 
 § 565. There were certainly three dialogues modelled closely 
 upon Plato. 1 From the first Sextus Empiricus and Cicero 
 quote arguments for the existence of the gods and their govern- 
 ment of a popular and rhetorical kind, 2 also for the eternity 
 of the universe, from its beauty arid order. 3 From the third, a 
 close imitation of the Phcsdon, we have so many interesting and 
 suggestive notes about the nature of the soul, its unlikeness to a 
 harmony, its future happiness, together with strange narratives 
 of a spiritualistic character, that we can feel how thoroughly it 
 was a literary work. 4 From the 7rporpe7rrtic6Q, or Exhortation to 
 Philosophy, we have also an interesting anticipation of Des 
 Cartes' refutation of the doubter, for Aristotle tells us that men 
 must either accept or reject philosophy. But if the latter, it 
 must be done by argument, and hence by philosophy. Whether, 
 therefore, men choose it or not, they must philosophise. From 
 the treatises on Nobility and on Wealth we have also some 
 good extracts by Stobaeus. 5 
 
 Among his critical works of this period I may mention an 
 account of the older poets and rhetoricians — a favourite amuse- 
 ment in those days when original literary genius had become ex- 
 hausted. Cicero tells us that his summary and exposition of the 
 older rhetors (in his awaywyr] nrx''^) was so clear and good that 
 people gave up reading these authorities themselves. And, 
 no doubt, if the rhetoric now ascribed to Anaximenes were 
 genuine, it must date from this period, and long before the far 
 
 1 That Trepl <pi\o<ro(pias, that irepl rayaOov, and the 'EvStj/xos. 
 
 2 Frags. 12-15. 3 Frags. 17-18. 
 4 Frags. 32-43. 
 
 8 Frags. 82-5, sq. Bernays {Dialoge des Arist. p. 69) thinks that the 
 opening chapters of the fourth book (new order) of the Politics are in sub- 
 stance an extract from an ethical dialogue, on account of the greater ease 
 and flow of the style as compared with the rest of the book. The hypo- 
 thesis, though rejected by Vahlen and others, is probable enough, but the 
 resulting specimen of Aristotle's easier style is not a favourable one, there 
 being little peculiar in it, except some overdrawn expressions. 
 
CH. xiii. ARISTOTLE S POEMS. 393 
 
 different psychological study which we find in the real rhetoric 
 of Aristotle. His views about the poets we cannot estimate 
 except from the excerpts in the scholia on Homer, which con- 
 stantly refer to his problems and solutions. I confess that both 
 the difficulties and the answers seem to me so prosaic and 
 often silly, that they do not raise the author in my mind above 
 the critic of the Poetic, a work of little aesthetic taste. He raised 
 such questions as these : How could Helen, in her view from 
 the walls, express uncertainty about her brothers, the Dioscuri, 
 seeing that the war had lasted ten years, and many prisoners 
 had been made and ransomed ? Of course the obvious solution 
 to us is that this scene was taken from a poem describing the 
 first landing or marshalling of the Greeks at the opening of the 
 war. 1 Aristotle says : ' Perhaps Paris prevented her from meeting 
 the captives.' 2 Many similar pieces of criticism will be found 
 in the adjoining fragments, mingled with occasional common 
 sense. The most interesting is doubtless the curious anticipa- 
 tion of the Comparative Mythologers, in which he tells us that 
 the 360 oxen of the sun were the days of the year. Thus Aris- 
 totle's cnropyfxara on Homer seem not very much better than 
 his edition, 3 if indeed it be true that he prepared an edition for 
 Alexander, which that monarch carried in a precious casket. 
 
 § 566. This criticism of the poets suggests to us the philo- 
 sopher's own poetry, of which three very noteworthy fragments 
 have survived. They are a skolion to Hermias, an epigram for 
 a statue of the same, and part of an elegy on Eudemus. I will 
 cite them below. 4 The epigram on the statue is like those of 
 
 1 Cf. Vol. I. p. 73. 2 Frag. 142. 3 Cf. Vol. I. p. 31. 
 
 * (1) On Plato (fr. 623) : 
 
 iXOwv §' is Kheivbv KeKpoirirjs Sdirtdov 
 
 evcefieas ffeuvrjs <pi\ir)s IdpvcraTO fiw/nbv 
 
 avdpSs, t>v ovS* alveiv roiffi KaKoiai 64/jlis' 
 
 ts fi6vos $) irp&TOs QvrjTwv KareSei^ev ivapyws 
 
 oliceicp re (Hep ical fie86fioiffi \6ycav, 
 
 ws ayados re ical evSaip-oov a/xa yivercu awfip' 
 
 ov vvv 8' e<rTt AajSetv ovdevl touto -wore. 
 
 (2) On Hermeias (fr. 624) : 
 
 r6vde itOT obx oaicos irapafias fiaitdpow 64fi.iv 07*^8.- 
 €KT€ivgp Ilepffwv TO^o<p6pw /SoctAe^s, 
 
394 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xiir. 
 
 the best period, very simple and condensed. We do not pos- 
 sess enough of the elegy to understand its plan, but we can judge 
 from the fragments of the dialogue on Eudemus, and the story 
 there told of the curious vision of his subsequent fortunes and 
 death, that the poem was not wanting in imagination. One 
 famous phrase on Plato has made the fragment celebrated. 
 The hymn, which? Athenseus says is not a paean, as was alleged 
 in the accusation of impiety brought against him, but rather a 
 skolion, is a very elegant little poem, and deserves far higher 
 praise than is accorded to it by most of the Germans. It is, I 
 suppose, silently assumed that the author of the dry Ethics, and 
 Politics, and Categories cannot have been a true poet ; but I 
 venture to say, had the poem been handed down under the 
 name of Pindar, some of those who now look upon it coldly 
 would have been loud in their admiration. Apart from the 
 felicity of its expression, there is a moral fervour about it which 
 breathed through the dialogues, and which must have made 
 Aristotle, in his earlier years, more a preacher of righteousness 
 than a votary of abstract science. Of his remaining elegies and 
 his fV?/ we know nothing. 
 
 ov (pavepws k6yxv ^oviois ev ayuffi KpaT^ffas^ 
 ak?C avdpbs irioTet xpvcdfievos Sokiov. 
 
 (3) The Hymn to Virtue : 
 
 'Aperd, ttqXvjjloxQs yeuei fiporeiep 
 
 64)pap.a KaKkKXrov fiicp, 
 
 Gas ifepi, irapQeve, fiopcpas 
 
 Kal Qavelv Qqkwrbs ev 'Ekkddi ir6rfiot 
 
 Kal irSvovs rkrivai fiakepovs aKafiavras' 
 
 toIov iirl cppeva fidkkeis 
 Kapirov r addvarov xp vff °v T6 upe'iGGca 
 Kal yovewv fiakaKavyf]T0i6 6' virvov 
 Gev o" evex' ova Aibs 'HpaKkeys Arjdas re Kovpoi 
 X'JAA.' averkaGav epyois 
 crav kypevovres Svvafiiv. 
 
 eras 8' eveitev (pikiov fj.op<pas leal 'Arapveos evrpo<pos 
 'Aekiov x'hpww avyds. 
 roiyap koidi/ios epyois, aQdvardv re fxiv avffiffovai 
 
 Mo v Gat 
 Mva/xoGuvas Qvyarpes, Aibs ^eviov ffefias av'fcovcrai 
 
 (piklas re yepas fie&aiov. 
 
CH. xiii. THE CRITICAL TREATISES. 395 
 
 § 567. From the time that Aristotle went to Macedon, and 
 during the leisure of his retirement with Alexander, we may 
 suppose him to have gradually abandoned popular writing, and 
 to have turned to that purely scientific form l which he adopted 
 as a scholarch at Athens. From this latter date come all those 
 dry and abstruse works which belong to the history, not of 
 Greek literature, but of Greek philosophy. Aristotle's view 
 embraced all departments of human knowledge. Like Solo- 
 mon, he discoursed on plants, from the cedar that is in Leba- 
 non to the hyssop which groweth on the wall ; upon animals ; 
 on the heavenly bodies and their eternal author ; on the mind 
 of man and its faculties — in fact, on all things human and 
 divine. 
 
 In this wide survey he also embraced the philosophy of 
 history and the philosophy of art, and here comes in contact 
 with literature in discussing the nature of rhetoric and poetry. 
 Thus we may confine ourselves to a fuller consideration of the 
 Rhetoric and the Poetic, though we may say something generally 
 about the Ethics and Politics ; not that these are literary works, 
 but because most readers know Aristotle through them, and 
 would therefore note their absence in this book. Indeed, they 
 seem to have been the transition stage between the early 
 dialogues and the later pure philosophy, and to have come in 
 this order : first, the Ethics, and next, in close connection, the 
 Politics ; then the Poetic, and last of the exoteric treatises, the 
 Rhetoi'ic, which may have been composed about 330 B.C. The 
 latter works are in style and method intermediate between his 
 two classes of writings, so that many have asserted them to 
 belong to the latter. Indeed, the boundary line can hardly 
 have been very clearly marked. All these treatises have been 
 
 1 This distinction is not imported by critics, but recognised by Aristotle 
 himself, who constantly refers to the fuller treatment on well-known 
 Statements eV roh eKSiSo/ieVots, or 4v ro?s i^carepiKoTs A6yois. This seems 
 plainly to refer to the popular treatises which were written and circulated 
 among the public, while his deeper works, though by no means secret or 
 withheld, were only known to his pupils. The German critics have 
 written a library of controversy on this matter, without advancing our 
 knowledge or understanding of it. The reader will find a summary in 
 Zeller, op. cit. pp. 112, sq., with the voluminous notes. 
 
396 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xnr. 
 
 so amply discussed and illustrated, that a student of Aristotle 
 is not likely to delay over a general sketch, but will turn to the 
 full and minute commentaries to aid him in the understanding 
 of them. For none of them are attractive from their style, and 
 all of them are difficult, both from ellipse and compression of 
 thought, as well as from dislocations or gaps in our texts. 
 
 § 568. It is remarkable that Aristotle, in this mature Rhe- 
 toric, regards the science not as a branch of the fine arts, or 
 analogous to poetry, but as a sister science to Dialectic, and 
 closely allied to Politics. As Dialectic, or logical disputation, 
 seeks to establish the truth by argument, so Rhetoric seeks to 
 persuade, or to establish the probable by such arguments as will 
 convince an audience. Hence the whole science is a popular 
 or exoteric science, but nevertheless depends, or ought to 
 depend, mainly on proofs, not on indirect means of influencing 
 men's minds. In fact, he lays down the irrefragable position, 
 that rhetoric is a natural gift of civilised men, all of whom in 
 some way defend their own opinions, or attack those of others, 
 by argument. It is the systematic treatment of this natural 
 faculty of persuasion which forms the subject of the art of 
 rhetoric. Thus Aristotle opposes on the one hand Plato, who 
 is perpetually arguing that, because rhetoric cannot prove itself 
 good to teach any one thing, it is good for nothing • on the 
 other, he opposes the Sophists, who pretended that it was the 
 mysterious key to all sorts of knowledge. There is something 
 very severe and noble in the restriction of the true province of 
 rhetoric to that of reasoning with an audience. But there can 
 be no doubt that this has been the true secret of all really great 
 speaking. Demosthenes, and the Greeks generally, seldom 
 depart from argument. But even with Cicero, Chrysostom, 
 Bossuet, Burke, and with all our greatest legal and political 
 orators, it is primarily because they were brilliant and per- 
 suasive reasoners that they were great orators. Hence the 
 strict justice of Aristotle's simple definition: 'the power of 
 discovering in each case the possible means of persuading.' l 
 
 1 effrca 5' 7i faropiK.)) Svva/xis irepl eKacrrov rod Oeaprjffat rb ivSex^ficvov 
 mQavov. Cf. the comments of other rhetors upon it quoted in Cope's 
 Introd. p. 149. 
 
CH. xiii. THE RHETORIC. 397 
 
 The main body of the first book is devoted to the analysis 
 of rhetorical materials in relation to the three kinds (eidri) of 
 oratory, which Aristotle was perhaps the first formally to distin- 
 guish — the deliberative, the judicial, and the epideictic. 1 He 
 says nothing of the exhortations of generals to their soldiers, 
 which figure so largely in earlier historians. No doubt the 
 fashion went out with the rise of mercenary and professional 
 armies, but in any case such speeches must fall into the first 
 class. This division he regards as by far the most important, 
 though he says it was neglected by the rhetoricians for the 
 sake of the court speeches, as in them sophistical arts were 
 of more value. The fact is that political speaking was always 
 thoroughly honoured among the Greeks, but for this very reason 
 was considered a higher art than could be taught by mere 
 sophistical professors. Aristotle's further distinction, that of 
 these three branches the first is about the future, and its main 
 topic the expedient ; the second about the past, and its main 
 topic the just ; and the third (praise and blame) chiefly about 
 the present, and its main topic the honourable (Ka\6r) — this 
 seems to me a piece of idle or false subtlety. 
 
 The first nine chapters are on the requisites for proofs 
 in deliberative speeches — political education, and a general 
 knowledge of ethical principles. Then he turns to judicial or 
 dicastic speeches ; and on these, again, he enumerates the 
 genera] subjects — justice and injustice, written law and un- 
 written precedent, and the like, from which the orator should 
 draw his logical proofs. He adds in an appendix the proofs 
 from fact, such as testimony, oaths, documents, torture, by 
 which the speaker may fortify the proofs constructed by argu- 
 ment. So far, then, Rhetoric is little more than applied Logic, 
 in which certain special forms of proof, such as the enthy- 
 meme and the example, are substituted for the full syllogism 
 and induction which the philosopher or dialectician uses. But 
 each eISoc, or special branch, affords special propositions 
 {jpoTaaeio) from which the orator must argue. Except, there- 
 fore, in indicating to him the proper materials, which are de- 
 
 1 The passage which asserts the same division in the Rhet. ad Alex, 
 seems to be spurious, as other passages cite only two. 
 
398 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xni. 
 
 termined by moral and physical philosophy, there is nothing 
 whatever which would give a speaker any practical help in con- 
 structing a speech. 
 
 § 569. The second book approaches the psychological con- 
 ditions which the speaker should either affect in himself, or sti- 
 mulate in his hearers, so as to produce persuasion. Here there 
 is much that is suggestive and interesting, though the whole sub- 
 ject is treated in a very confused way. The reader must not 
 imagine that Aristotle has deserted his first principle, of laying 
 the whole stress of oratory on proofs. For all the psychological 
 aids which he here discusses — ethos in the speaker, pathos ex- 
 cited in the audience — are all direct helps to persuasion, and, as 
 such, direct means of carrying the orator's point. To excite the 
 hearer, without any further object, by a mere splendour of dis- 
 play, would have been thought by Aristotle meretricious even 
 in an epedeictical speech. Thus Ethos is at first represented as 
 the character which the speaker should assume, and manifest 
 by his speaking : it is composed of three elements, viz. typo- 
 vr)<riQ y sound common sense; aper-f], moral weight of character ; 
 and tvvoia, a strong interest in his audience. Aristotle might 
 have gone so far as to say that these, if established by the 
 previous life of the speaker, and not merely assumed for the 
 occasion, will outbalance the strongest logical arguments against 
 him. But presently (as Cope and others have pointed out) 
 we find ethos in a new meaning, that of studying the general 
 character of the audience, and addressing them differently if 
 they be old men, or middle-aged, or young. The general fea- 
 tures of these ages are then described: 1 As almost all audi- 
 ences are mixed, such advices seem of little use. 
 
 They are, however, preceded by a treatment of pathos in 
 rhetoric, which is wider in application than our meaning of it, 
 and signifies the exciting of suitable affections — anger, pity, 
 sorrow — in the minds of the hearers ; and there are minute 
 descriptions of the causes of these affections in mankind. 
 Ethos, in the first sense, when it is actually produced by the 
 speech, is merely arousing the rradog of confidence and good- 
 will towards the speaker in the audience, and thus falls under 
 1 caps. 13 15. 
 
CH. xin. THE RHETORIC. 399 
 
 the class from which Aristotle has distinguished it. But I need 
 not specify these logical defects. The book closes * with general 
 directions, or rowoi, for using examples, for using apophthegms 
 (yvwjxai, which are merely single propositions implying an 
 argument), and enthymemes, or arguments in that short form 
 suited for rhetoric. He even gives a chapter on simulated 
 enthymemes, or sophisms of this kind, which troubles such 
 critics as Cope, who think they must defend the morality of 
 all that Aristotle has said. In these chapters 2 many examples 
 are given from retorts of Iphicrates, from tragedies, especially 
 those of Theodectes, as well as from his speeches, but, strangely 
 enough (though Demades against Demosthenes is quoted), none 
 are quoted from Demosthenes, his greatest contemporary. 
 
 § 570. The third book, which at last comes to what we 
 should call the proper treatment of oratory or rhetoric, is di- 
 vided into two parts : the first twelve chapters being on expres- 
 sion (Xe'&g), the remainder on the arrangement (ra£tc) to be 
 observed in speaking. The latter division seems 'to me sin- 
 gularly bald and incomplete, and can hardly have come in its 
 present form from Aristotle's own hand. The remarks on the 
 pi'oem, or prologue, are the fullest, but the examples are as 
 frequently taken from poetry as from oratory. On the narrative 
 he omits all mention of the TrpoKaTacncivri, or first sketch of the 
 story, a point frequent in our extant speeches, and of great 
 effect in tuning the minds of the audience. He criticises Iso- 
 crates' direction that the narrative should be compressed (ro- 
 X^ a ), and cites several examples of good and bad narratives 
 from tragedies now lost. Perhaps his best remark is that the 
 narrative should be ethical, and not intellectual. It should 
 not strike the audience as clever, but honest, as is eminently 
 the case with Lysias. On the ' figures of thought ' he says 
 nothing, except about the sudden questioning (ipojrrjaig) and 
 
 1 As Spengel observes, this subject was announced to come before the 
 psychological part, and is certainly out of its natural order. Hence some 
 dislocation of the text is to be inferred, even though there are at present 
 references from the discussion on the tSttoi to the chapters on irddos and 
 ?j6os, which show that the work early assumed its present form. 
 
 2 caps. 22-4. 
 
400 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xin. 
 
 witty repartees, which are indeed hardly figures of thought. 
 As to the epilogue 1 he puts the reminding of the hearer on the 
 same level as the exciting him — a peculiarly Greek view, 
 already noticed when considering Demosthenes' speeches, which 
 generally end with a very calm summary, and a quiet de- 
 mand for justice. 
 
 The chapters on expression are more suggestive, though 
 nothing is more disappointing than that on correctness of 
 diction (on xi°>) 'EWi/i'/fctv), in which the reader expects valu- 
 able hints on style, and is merely told to mind his particles, 2 
 his concords, and the clearness of his sentences. Similarly on 
 the difficult and subtle question of rythm, he only says a few 
 words about iambic and trochaic rythms, and then recom- 
 mends (after Thrasymachus) the first paeon for opening, and 
 the last for closing, a sentence. On the deeper laws of the 
 harmony of periods he is silent, or hopelessly general. 
 
 But on the qualities of style apart from grammatical 
 accuracy, there are several good chapters against over-orna- 
 ment and pomp, against stale phrases (^u^pac Xe&oje), such as 
 those often used by Gorgias and Alkidamas, on metaphors 
 and similes, and other kindred topics. His remarks on the 
 differences of poetical and prose style, and also on the differ- 
 ence of style suited to oral delivery and to written matter, are 
 very sensible and sound, but not, I think, very suggestive. 3 
 To the real beauties of noble poetry he seems comparatively 
 a stranger. After discussing separate words and clauses in 
 eight chapters, he goes on to their connection, either natural 
 or artificial — the well-known Xi Uq elpofxevrj of Herodotus as op- 
 posed to theXeEig KarearTpafifxiv^ of Thucydides, and still more 
 of Isocrates. He adds a chapter on saying ' good things,' and 
 
 1 c. 19. 
 
 2 It is to be wished that Aristotle had followed his own advice. For his 
 use of oScrre, ovv, 5e, and of prepositions, has caused special difficulty to 
 commentators, and called forth special enquiries, such as Bonitz' ( Wien. 
 Sitzber. 1 863) and Eucken's books. 
 
 2 Voltaire profited by them, as may be seen from his frequent criticisms 
 of the poetical prose of his rivals, and his praise of the principle laid down 
 by Aristotle. On this Havet {Etude, pp. 95, sq.) has some excellent re- 
 marks. 
 
CH. xiii. MERITS OF THE RHETORIC. 4°i 
 
 on vividness of style. But in neither of these is he happy or 
 original. 
 
 § 571. The impression produced by the Rhetoric is not 
 very favourable to Aristotle's genius. 1 We feel, indeed, that the 
 whole book is on a large and sound basis, but is mainly an ex- 
 pansion of the hints thrown out with such brilliancy by Plato 
 in his Phcedrus; and that, in following them up, Aristotle has 
 stated a good many isolated truths of value, and shown great 
 acuteness, but has added little to the rkyvai of his predecessors 
 except the psychological basis, which must have been prac- 
 tically felt by all previous orators. The real secrets of his great 
 contemporary Demosthenes, which he, if anyone, could have 
 discovered, or at least discussed, are either deliberately ignored, 
 or neglected all through his book ; and this capital blot in a 
 Greek rhetoric of that age is not to be overlooked or excused. 
 We may add that the style of this work, which expressly treats 
 of style, contains frequent examples of vices which it repre- 
 hends. It is constantly too compressed; it is obscure; it is 
 confused ; and though some of these blots are undoubtedly to 
 be ascribed to the condition of the text, many are due to the 
 author. 
 
 The Latin rhetoricians, Cicero and Quintilian, as well as 
 Dionysius, derive many valuable hints from it, and often follow 
 it closely, but they seem to me to improve upon it very much 
 in the clearness and elegance of their expression. Cicero 2 
 
 1 If the reader desires to see the opposite case ably argued, I can recom- 
 mend to him E. Havet's excellent Etude sur la Rhetorique cPAristote (Paris, 
 1846), from which I have borrowed many points all through my sketch, 
 though I think the author has often transfused his own ideas into Aris- 
 totle. I must, however, note the curious blunder (p. 71) of attributing to 
 R. Estienne the passage on torture, which that intelligent translator found in 
 the best MS. (A c ), but which he printed in italics, as of doubtful authen- 
 ticity. This is not the only error in Havet's suggestive and charming essay. 
 2 His judgment on the book is worth quoting {de Or. ii. 38) ; Sed, 
 ut eo revocetur, unde hue declinavit oratio, ex tribus istis clarissjmis philo- 
 sophis, quos Romam venisse dixisti, videsne Diogenem fuisse, qui diceret, 
 artem se trad ere bene disserendi et vera ac falsa diiudicandi, quam verbo 
 Grseco 8iaX€KTiK-f}i> appellaret ? In hac arte, si modo est haec ars, nullum 
 est prasceptum, quo modo verum inveniatur, sed tantum est, quo modo 
 VOL. II. D D 
 
4Q2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. XI1L 
 
 especially, as Cope's notes will amply show, has put almost all 
 Aristotle's points with great force, and in admirable and terse 
 language. The Epistle of Dionysius to Ammaeus, in which he 
 refutes elaborately by dates the notion that Demosthenes bor- 
 rowed his rhetorical principles from Aristotle, is valuable in 
 quoting six passages verbatim (as he says) from the Rhetoric. 
 Though there are some differences from our text, they are not 
 such as to warrant the belief that the work was originally fuller 
 and more explicit. It is more probable that later rhetors 
 added commentaries or expansions, of which a few fragments 
 appear in Spengel's Collection. But, unfortunately, all these 
 
 iudicetur. Nam [et] omne, quod eloquimur sic, ut id aut esse dicamus 
 aut non esse, et si sirapliciter dictum sit, suscipiunt Dialectic!, ut iudi- 
 cent, verumne sit an falsum ; et si coniuncte sit elatum et adiuncta sint 
 alia, iudicent, rectene adiuncta sint et verane summa sit unius cuiusque 
 rationis et ad extremum ipsi se compungunt suis acuminibus et multa 
 qugerendo reperiunt non modo ea, quae iam non possint ipsi dissolvere, 
 sed etiam, quibus ante exorsa et potius detexta prope retexantur. Hie 
 nos igitur Stoicus iste nihil adiuvat, quoniam, quemadmodum inveniam 
 quid dicam, non docet ; atque idem etiam impedit, quod et multa reperit, 
 quse negat ullo modo posse dissolvi, et genus sermonis affert non liquidum, 
 non fusum ac profluens, sed exile, aridum, concisum ac minutum. Quod si 
 qui probabit, ita probabit, ut oratori tamen aptum non esse fateatur. Haec 
 enim nostra oratio multitudinis est auribus accommodanda ad oblectandos 
 animos, ad impellendos, ad ea probanda, quae non aurificis statera, sed qua- 
 dam populari trutina examinantur. Quare istam artem totam dimittamus, 
 quae in excogitandis argumentis muta nimium est, in iudicandis nimium 
 loquax. Critolaum istum, quern simul cum Diogene venisse commemoras, 
 puto plus huic studio nostro prodesse potuisse. Erat enim ab isto Aristo- 
 tele, a cuius inventis tibi ego videor non longe aberrare. Atque inter 
 hunc Aristotelem, cuius et ilium legi librum, in quo exposuit dicendi artes 
 omnium superiorum, et illos, in quibus ipse sua qusedam de eadem arte 
 dixit, et hos germanos huius artis magistros hoc mihi visum est interesse, 
 quod ille eadem acie mentis, qua rerum omnium vim naturamque viderat, 
 haec quoque aspexit, quae ad dicendi artem, quam ille despiciebat, pertine- 
 bant : illi autem, qui hoc solum colendum ducebant, habitarunt in hac una 
 ratione tractanda, non eadem prudentia, qua ille, sed usu, in hoc uno 
 genere, studioque maiore. Carneadi vero vis incredibilis ilia dicendi et 
 varietas perquam esset optanda nobis ; qui nullam umquam in illis suis 
 disputationibus rem defendit, quem non probarit ; nullam oppugnavit, 
 quam non everterit. Sed hoc maius est quiddam, quam ab iis, qui haec 
 tradunt et docent, postulandum sit. 
 
CH. xiii. MSS. AND EDITIONS, 403 
 
 works are lost, and the remaining scholia are declared quite 
 worthless by those who have studied them. 
 
 § 572. Bibliographical. Our best MS. is one of the eleventh 
 century, now in Paris (A c ), which was known to Petrus Victo- 
 rius, and collated in his valuable edition, but more carefully by 
 Gaisford (1820), and still better by Bekker for his edition. The 
 next best authority is the old Latin translation, undoubtedly by 
 William de Moerbeke, in 1281, which followed word for word a 
 text similar to the A c text, but with marginal interpolations or 
 commentaries which the translator generally adopts. All the 
 later and more interpolated MSS. seem derived from the same 
 archetype as these older and better copies, and all of them 
 bear traces of the amalgamation of two recensions, in which 
 two renderings of the same idea are given one after the other. 
 Separate editions of the Rhetoric are scarce. First printed by 
 Aldus, not in his Aristotle, but in the Rhetores Grceci (1508), 
 it since holds a place in all the editions of the collected 
 works. However, Gaisford's special edition (Oxford, 1833) is 
 the tenth since the editio princeps. The essays of Brandis 
 (Philologus, vol. iv.), Vahlen, and of Spengel, who has given 
 special attention to it, in his collection of rhetorical tracts, in 
 his series of papers on Aristotle in the Munich Academy's 
 Abhandhmgen, and lastly in a separate edition (Leipzig, 1867), 
 also the hints of Thurot in his Essays on Aristotle, may be 
 read with advantage. Bekker's text is reprinted in a separate 
 form, and we have an elaborate Introduction (1867) and a 
 Commentary in three volumes by E. M. Cope of Cambridge 
 (edited by J. E. Sandys, 1874). 
 
 § 573- The Rhetoric points back in more than one place to 
 the Poetic, which seems to have been composed before it, pro- 
 bably next before it, and to which, as a kindred subject, we may 
 naturally turn. To us oratory is a sister art to poetry, and we 
 may admire the rhetoric of Shakespere and Byron, as we 
 admire the poetry of Jeremy Taylor or Ruskin. We should 
 have accordingly expected to find them treated by Aristotle as 
 sister arts, teaching the most perfect expression in words, under 
 divers conditions of human thought and of human passion. 
 But we find, to our surprise, that he brings them into contact 
 d d 2 
 
404 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xiii, 
 
 only in the detail of expression, or Xifre, whereas their sources 
 are to him perfectly distinct. Rhetoric, as we have seen, he 
 regards as merely the art of persuasion, and hence an offshoot 
 of the science of reasoning, applied to a popular audience. It 
 is the science of probable arguments, methodically expressed. 
 Poetry he bases on the instinct of imitation, especially of the 
 imitation of human action, and classes it with the arts of 
 dancing and of music, which have the same object, and which 
 were commonly used in combination with it ; also with the art 
 of painting, which uses colours, as poetry uses rythm and metre, 
 or as music uses melody. 
 
 This view is evidently the result of the predominance of 
 the drama in Attic life. All other forms of poetry are re- 
 garded in relation to it. In Homer it is far more the dra- 
 matic side than the merely descriptive or picturesque, which 
 occupies Aristotle. . The old descriptive Margites is regarded 
 as a kind of comedy, and, what is still more singular, lyric 
 poetry is hardly mentioned at all, except on its dramatic side, 
 and in those later developments when the music and the 
 dancing were plainly mimetic, and represented a sort of lyrical 
 drama. This may possibly be the result of a great gap in the 
 text, but I rather agree with those who hold that while a dis- 
 cussion on comedy has been lost, there was no place for a 
 separate treatment of lyric poetry in our sense, and this for 
 the special reason I have assigned. The complete ignoring of 
 the whole iEolic school, of Sappho, Alcseus, Anacreon — nay, of 
 Pindar and most of the great masters of Greek melic, is a blot 
 in the Poetic, like the ignoring of Demosthenes in the Rhetoric. 
 But, as has been well observed, dramatic poetry and legal 
 rhetoric, being surrounded by fixed conditions, lend them- 
 selves to scientific analysis far more than the other branches of 
 oratory and poetry. Hence the tendency to write special 
 riyvai for these departments of each of the arts. 
 
 § 574. Aristotle's analyses in the first three chapters of the 
 various kinds of imitation in dramatic and epic, and in tragic 
 and comic poetry, are not very suggestive or fruitful, though un- 
 doubtedly correct ; but in the fourth he gives an ingenious psy- 
 chological analysis of the instinct of imitation in man, and its 
 
CH. xin. ARISTOTLE ON COMEDY. 405 
 
 results. It is owing to this that accurate imitations even of re- 
 pulsive objects give pleasure by our recognition of their faithful- 
 ness. Thus the Margites, which he ascribes to Homer, and the 
 Attic comedy are branches of poetry, though they profess to 
 paint men ' worse than they usually are.' But the fuller expo- 
 sition of the nature of comedy is lost ; we still have in the 
 fourth and fifth chapters valuable isolated facts about the history 
 of both tragedy and comedy, which have been utilised in their 
 proper place above. 1 It is, however, plain from several allusions 
 (especially 9, § 3) that the brilliant exuberance of Aristophanes 
 did not fit into Aristotle's system, and that he even excluded it 
 from his very definition of comic drama, which was essentially 
 general, and employed in sketches of character applicable to 
 classes of men. He also objected to the producing of laughter 
 by obscenity, and notes that the new comedy replaced this by 
 indirect hints (birovoia). In fact, the parabases of Aristo- 
 phanes are to Aristotle the work of an iafxfioiroiocj not of a dra- 
 matic poet. Thus we have lost by the corruption of our text a 
 theory of Greek comedy excluding Aristophanes ! 2 In the 
 opening of chap. vi. Aristotle explicitly promises to discuss 
 epic poetry and comedy after he has explained the nature and 
 perfections of tragedy. This latter he does very thoroughly 
 from his point of view. We have but scanty notes on epic 
 poetry near the end, in direct comparison with tragedy, and a 
 curious chapter of criticism, or of commonplaces for replying 
 to criticisms on tragedy. 3 There is also an analysis of diction 4 
 which is to a great extent on the first elements of grammar, and 
 is totally out of place in this work, 5 as well as some remarks on 
 ornamental diction, which are analogous to, but not so good as, 
 the parallel chapter of the Rhetoric. 
 
 Apart from all the confusion of the text, apart from the 
 pedantic subdivisions of the school, apart from the flagrantly 
 
 1 Vol. I. chaps, xiv., xix. 
 
 2 Cf. on these points Meineke, Fragg. Com. i. 272. 
 
 8 c. 25. 4 cc. 19-22. 
 
 s Fgger qualifies this censure by pointing to the infancy of grammar at 
 this time, and the consequent novelty and importance of what is now trivial 
 and elementary {Hist, de la Critique, pp. 227, 45 6) 
 
406 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xiit. 
 
 inconsistent judgments which are contained in the Poetic, 1 and 
 which make it thoroughly unsafe as an authority, without 
 the constant test of plain common sense, there are two per- 
 manent merits in the work which will ever interest educated 
 men. The first is the scientific attempt to explain the nature 
 and vindicate the uses of tragedy ; the other consists in the 
 preservation throughout the work of many stray fragments of 
 Aristotle's acute insight and his various and profound learning. 
 For however corrupted and interpolated our text may be, there 
 can be no doubt that the main outlines are those of the master's 
 mind. This scattered wisdom, whether on the history of Greek 
 poetry, or on the nature of man, has been gathered and ap- 
 plauded by admiring critics from the days of Corneille's enemies 2 
 to those of Lessing, who declared the mutilated and tentative 
 essay in criticism to be as infallible as the elements of Euclid; 
 and thus it is now commonplace in histories of Greek litera- 
 ture, or of art criticism. 
 
 § 575. The theory of tragedy, on the other hand, has within 
 the last twenty years been discussed in Germany, as if it had 
 never been known before, and with this result, that what was 
 once tolerably clear has become so confused as to be almost 
 unintelligible. In proof of this I will appeal to the discussion 
 
 1 Some of these are explained away by the ingenious reservations and 
 qualifications of critics, as the reader may see by consulting Susemihl's 
 notes to his edition. Other points may be the result of our misconception. 
 Thus Welcker first saw the meaning of the sentence quoted from Sophocles 
 in comparing himself with Euripides. What he really said was not that 
 he himself had painted characters as they ought to be, but as they ought to 
 be painted by a tragic poet, whereas Euripides had painted them from real 
 or ordinary life. Again, when Aristotle is made to say that the chorus 
 should be an actor and constituent part of the play, iced (Tvvaryowi&edai /jl^ 
 fta-imp [imp'] Evpnridrj &A?C &<rirsp [irapa] 2o^o/cAe?, and to add that the rest 
 of the tragic poets made their choral odes quite irrelevant, he does not 
 mean, as he is often translated, that the chorus was not an actor in Euripides, 
 but that it was not an actor of the right kind, being often an accomplice. 
 I should suggest /U778' &airzp EvpiiriSri— and yet not like Euripides, as pro- 
 bably what Aristotle wrote. But there are other judgments which cannot 
 be defended with any common sense, or independence, in criticism. 
 
 2 Cf. the Preface to his Don Sanche, or M. Paul Albert's la littiraiwn 
 francaise an xvii me Steele, pp. 84, sq. 
 
CH. xiii. DEFINITION OF TRAGEDY. 407 
 
 of the tragical purification in the introduction to Susemihl's 
 second edition (1874). It is not too much to say that a more 
 obscure and confused piece of writing could hardly be found 
 even in German literature. This, the most recent result of 
 speculation on the question, is only to be compared to the 
 wonderful hodge-podge made of the same matter in the old 
 Latin version retranslated from the Arabic, and cited by Egger 
 as a curiosity. 1 
 
 Here is the famous definition, in its complete form : eanv 
 ovv rpaywdla jj.ijj.r}(TLQ irpd^ewg cnrovoaiaQ kcli TeXeiag aiytdog 
 k-^ovariQj fjdvafxdru) Ao'yw X^P 1 ^ ^o- arT0V t& v ei^iov kv roiq /uoplocg, 
 Zpwvrojv Kal oh Bi' dirayyekiaq, £l eXeov ical <po(3ov Trepaivovaa ttjv 
 riov ToiovTwv naQriiJLaTiov Kadapo-tr. 2 The first clause is meant 
 to contrast it with comedy, the third with epic poetry, and 
 these require no further explanation. ' Adorned speech ' he 
 himself explains as having rythm and music in it. By the next 
 words — the readings are all through uncertain — he tells us he 
 means that different kinds of adorned speech are to be used in 
 different parts, as iambic metre, and lyric measures with music. 
 But it is about the last clause that the storm of controversy is 
 still raging, I will only note a few of the most interesting 
 points. 
 
 In the first place it seems likely that this theory of Aris- 
 totle's is intended as a vindication of tragedy against the 
 attacks of Plato, who (in his Phcedrus, 268 c, Philebus, 48 a, 
 and Republic, x. 604) touches on the subject, and censures 
 tragedy as a mimic representation of passion, and therefore 
 as morally injurious to well regulated minds. For the luxury 
 of pity is in his view relaxing and effeminating. The same 
 objection, for the same reasons, he applies to epic poetry in 
 its dramatic aspect. To this criticism Aristotle replies, not 
 by directly asserting a moral use in tragedy, as has been 
 argued by Lessing and others, not by considering the trials of 
 the actors and their purification as intended for a moral train- 
 ing of the spectators, but by asserting (as Goethe insisted; an 
 
 1 Hist, de la critique, p. 427, in his commentary on the passage in his 
 edition appended to that work. 
 3 o.b,% Z, 
 
408 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. XIII. 
 
 cesthetical purpose. He considers that human pleasures and 
 human griefs, apart from their moral side, though not in con- 
 flict with it, require to be raised and purified ; and just as we 
 train the taste of the eye by ideal pictures, and by the study 
 of exceptionally beautiful scenery, so the compassion and the 
 fear of the ordinary citizen may be purified by showing him 
 higher and nobler objects for its exercise. That this sestheti- 
 cal training will have good moral results is certain, but these 
 are not included in Aristotle's theory. Hence he speaks of 
 the purification t&v toiovtiov nadr) par gjv, that is to say, not the 
 same affections precisely, nor yet different, but of the lower 
 forms of terror and pity, and perhaps other such affections, 
 by the higher. 1 
 
 But the wearisome question, what may have been the exact 
 amount of meaning in the term purifying present to Aristotle's 
 mind, whether he intended it as a medical term, implying that 
 tragedy was a purging medicine, and thus homoeopathic in 
 principle, or whether he used it in a religious sense, as sug- 
 gesting the analogy of those treatments of madness and over- 
 excitement by calm and rythmical music then practised in 
 Greece, or whether he meant it in both, or in neither — all this 
 I will leave to the Germans, and to those who have time and 
 patience to wade through their eighty works on the subject. 
 It is the merit of E. Miiller and of Bern ays first to have brought 
 to bear on the theory a parallel passage from the Politics? in 
 which the sesthetical use of nadapatq is clear, and in which we 
 find it compared to the musical cures attempted by playing 
 very exciting flute music as a palliative for morbid excitement 
 of the mind. It is also certain from the researches of Bonitz 
 that TraOog and Tradr]}xa are not distinct in sense. 3 
 
 1 The comic poet Timocles, in a remarkable fragment of his Diony- 
 siazusce (Meineke, iii. p. 592), seems rather to adopt the moral uses of 
 tragedy as the chief good produced. The passage contains an excellent 
 statement of the ordinary theory, to which Aristotle's more subtle view is 
 not opposed, but from which it should be carefully distinguished. 
 
 2 viii. p. 1341. 
 
 3 Index Aristotel. sub voce. The genitive plural of the former is rare 
 in Aristotle, nor is apparently the singular of the latter used at all by him, 
 so that the variation is merely one of usage. 
 
CH. xiii. ARISTOTLE ON TRAGEDY. 409 
 
 The whole question must be regarded in relation to 
 Aristotle's theory of intellectual and refined leisure (tiiaywyr/) 
 as the chief end of man. This is the happiness of the gods, 
 whose contemplations are no labour, but the enjoyment of per- 
 fect knowledge and perfect leisure. This is the happiness, too, 
 of the cultivated man, whose leisure hours should not be em- 
 ployed in the contemplation of vulgar cares, or wasted in vulgar 
 sympathies, but engaged in that of ideal human actions — not 
 always ideally good, but ideal in their greatness, their dignity, 
 and their far-reaching importance, as illustrations of the laws 
 which govern the world. 
 
 § 576. After thus denning tragedy, Aristotle proceeds to 
 analyse the various features or elements which make it up, and 
 determines six, the plot, the character drawing, the liavoia ; l 
 then the diction, the musical composition, and, lastly, the mise 
 en scene, or theatrical production. Of these various elements he 
 justly considers the plot as by far the most important, observing 
 that recent tragedians had succeeded, by attending to this 
 element, without any character drawing. He gives a full and 
 exceedingly valuable analysis of plots, both simple and com- 
 plex, of their various devices, such as catastrophe and recogni- 
 tion, and of their proper limits as compared with epic plots. 
 He even gives 2 practical advices to a tragic poet as to the 
 construction of a plot. Of these I need hardly say that the 
 first and most important is to imagine his characters clearly 
 and vividly, so that they may live before him ; thus alone, 
 says the acute critic, can inconsistencies and blunders be 
 avoided. The character-drawing is discussed in chapter xv., 
 and is not so suggestive. The fuller treatment of the liavoia 
 seems to be lost, for his reference 3 to the rhetoric is far too 
 general to be satisfactory. The section on expression is in its 
 earlier part an elementary chapter in grammar. The 21st, 
 
 1 By which he seems to mean the thoughts or intellectual aspects of the 
 piece. Thus the later school, and even at times Euripides, were not 
 careful to draw fiQ-q, but were very particular about brilliancy of dialogue 
 and rhetorical point, which I take to be the didi/oia of the piece, according 
 to the concise statement in chap. xix. §§ 1-4. 
 
 2 cc. 17-8. 3 19, 1. 
 
410 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xin. 
 
 on elevated diction, is indeed properly within the scope of the 
 work, but whether from corruptions of the text, or spurious- 
 ness, or possibly, though one is almost afraid to whisper it, 
 from the coldness and pedantry of the great author, does 
 not touch the real beauties, or unlock the real secrets, of 
 poetical language. This is throughout the crying fault of both 
 Rhetoric and Poetic, and is not atoned for by any number of 
 acute and reasonable observations. One almost suspects that 
 the author was beginning to disbelieve in genius, and attribute 
 artistic success to mere soundness and accuracy of method. 
 How far truer and more appreciative is the tract of Longinus 
 on the Sublime I 
 
 The remainder of the work, with the exception of the 
 curious, and perhaps spurious, 25 th chapter, on the refutation of 
 dramatic criticisms by authors, is devoted to epic poetry, and 
 chiefly to its dramatic side. This part of the work is vitiated 
 by an excessive reverence for the Homer of the Iliad and 
 Odyssey, and a tendency to consider him as a perfect model in 
 every respect, so much so that the problem, in case of any ap- 
 parent defect (as with our Bible), was merely to vindicate and 
 explain the reasons why the inspired master had chosen to put 
 it thus. This over-reverence for Homer, together with a com- 
 plete neglect of the tragedy of iEschylus, and of the great 
 lyric poets, are indeed grave defects. 1 We saw, moreover, 
 reason to suspect, from the general tenor of the book, and 
 from the few fragments on comedy still extant, that Aristo- 
 phanes, and the splendid outburst of political comedy in the 
 Periclean age, were set aside by him in favour of the character 
 comedy of Crates and the newer school. If indeed his 
 definition of comedy corresponded with that of tragedy, and if 
 poetry, especially dramatic, was in his view more philosophical 
 than history in drawing general pictures of human nature, such 
 must have been his proceeding. 
 
 His ideal poet seems to have been Sophocles, and his ideal 
 play the CEdipus Rex ; and yet he strangely omits all discussion 
 of the agency of Fate in the Greek tragedies, of which this play 
 
 1 Other defects and omissions, in addition to these, have been noticed 
 in Egger's sensible review of the book (Hist, de la Critique, pp. 200, sq.). 
 
CH. XIII. MODERN ASPECTS OF THE WORK. 411 
 
 affords so obtrusive an example. In fact, the point of interest 
 to us in Greek tragedy, especially as we have it in ^Eschylus — 
 the conflict of human liberty and conscience with the curse of a 
 hereditary fate — is a feature in tragedy apparently unknown to 
 Aristotle. He often cites Euripides with praise, but also with 
 blame, that is to say if we can trust the text. Of this author's 
 plays the Tauric Iphigenia is that most frequently commended; 
 but when he reproaches the Aulid Iphigenia for inconsistency, 
 we are bound, with all good judges since Schiller, either to 
 accuse him of critical incompetence, or to reject the sentence as 
 foisted in by a later hand. Thus he tells us in one place that 
 Empedocles is only a poet as to metre, and yet in another cites 
 him specially for poetical diction. But every chapter of this 
 tract offers so many points for expansion or for criticism, that I 
 must not venture to enter upon this field. 
 
 § 577. The student who desires to apply the theory of Aris- 
 totle to modern poetic art will find it necessary to make allow- 
 ance for several important changes in the drama, which I will 
 here indicate in a few words. Greek tragedy, being essentially 
 religious, became in the hands of its greatest masters so serious 
 a thing, that the relief of humorous or low scenes was hardly 
 permitted. Aristotle indeed gives us to understand in his sketch 
 of its history that this was not so originally, that it arose from a 
 satyric representation, of which the grotesque side was preserved 
 in the satyric afterpiece, when banished from serious tragedy. 
 This severance was exaggerated by the French school of the 
 seventeenth century, who are far more particular than the less 
 artificial Greek masters in avoiding the lower side of human 
 nature. And such, too, was the opinion of Milton, but happily 
 for us Shakespere gave the law for a wider conception, and since 
 his day, even in theory, the comic or humorous element is 
 admitted and even admired as a merit of contrast in our 
 tragedies. With this exception, the elementary rules and di- 
 rections of Aristotle are such as should guide every dramatist 
 of every time. 
 
 Nay more, in our own reading age, when the drama has 
 given way to the novel, or prose tragedy and comedy of 
 ordinary life, without scenery or illusion, it were well if authors 
 
412 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XIH. 
 
 would study the laws which the Greek critic has laid down on 
 the construction of a dramatic story. Now, as then, the plot is 
 vastly the most important element, and no amount of charac- 
 ter painting or clever writing will atone for its deficiency. The 
 consistency of the actors, now as then, can only be preserved 
 by a vivid imagination which transports the writer into the 
 situation of his characters. There are as yet few more de- 
 vices than those described by him as avayvupiaio, and Trepi7ri- 
 rzia — an unexpected recognition and a catastrophe, together 
 with pathetic misfortunes. All these and other of his laws 
 may perhaps be better verified in George Eliot's great novels 
 than in modern tragedies. But of course, as I before said, our 
 novel replaces not only tragedy, but the newer comedy of the 
 Greeks ; and thus, in addition to the humour allowed in mo- 
 dern tragedy, we have sketches of ordinary life, home scenes, 
 and other such matter, suited rather to Menander than to 
 Sophocles. There are many cases too, as Aristotle tells us, 
 when the mere accuracy of drawing, even of unworthy objects, 
 pleases us by its very faithfulness. 
 
 The history of the varying influence of the Poetic on litera- 
 ture is itself a wide and interesting subject, which would easily 
 fill a volume larger than the present. I will refer the reader to 
 Susemihl's Introduction to his edition, which gives the necessary 
 references, excepting the important French adoption of the 
 work in the seventeenth century, with its momentous conse- 
 quences ; for this the reader must consult the histories of the 
 French classic drama, or M. Patin's Tragiques grecs. I will 
 here append a mere sketch. - 
 
 § 578. Bibliographical. There are few early allusions to 
 this work, for some supposed ones are doubtless to the separate 
 treatise on poets, which seems to have been in three books. But 
 there are also clear indications that the extant work is referred 
 to, and in the plural number, though we have no divisions 
 marked. Some critics are disposed to think that here too 
 there were three books, our corrupt and disordered text con- 
 taining the substance of the first two, while the stray fragments 
 of the author rrepi Kw/uuhiag and elsewhere point to the third 
 book as occupied with comedy. But if our catalogues of Aris- 
 
ch. xin. ARAB VERSIONS AND EDITIONS. 413 
 
 totle's works really come from the Lives of Hermippus, pupil 
 of Callimachus, the work was then complete and in two books, 
 and there seems good reason to believe that the authors of the 
 best scholia on the tragedies (probably Aristophanes Byz.) 
 knew and applied the canons of the Poetic. 
 
 In later days we hear little of the work, and after the sixth 
 century it seems forgotten. The Arabs indeed preserved some 
 tradition of it, and made some attempts to understand it, 
 the only knowledge of the book before it was printed being 
 derived from Latin translations of Arabic or Hebrew versions. 
 It seems that there was a translation from the Greek into 
 Syriac, and from this with much care by Abou-Maschar Mat- 
 thias, a Nestorian Christian, into Arabic, about 935 a.d. This 
 MS. is still preserved in Paris, and shows that the text was then 
 as imperfect as we now have it. Two centuries later Averroes 
 wrote an abridgment of the work, which we possess in the 
 Latin version of Hermann the German at the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century, printed at Venice in 1481. This Her- 
 mann tells us he had a complete Arab version before him, 
 but preferred the abridgment of Averroes — a somewhat gro- 
 tesque work, seeing that this celebrated man had not the least 
 idea what a tragedy meant, and accordingly confounded it with 
 the Arabic panegyrics in honour of princes. He also replaces 
 Aristotle's illustrations from Greek literature by examples from 
 Arabic poetry. There was a translation of Averroes' work into 
 rabbinical Hebrew, and from this into Latin in the fourteenth 
 century. 
 
 The Latin version of L. Valla (Venice, 1498) was made 
 directly from a Greek MS., but the text itself was not included 
 in the great Aldine Aristotle. It first appeared among the 
 Rhetor es Grceci with the Rhetoric, in 1568 ; then come Pacci 
 (1535), P. Victorius (Junta, 1560), and a host of others. The 
 MS. followed in these prints was one of the many fifteenth cen- 
 tury copies, and this was the case with all later editions till the 
 present century, when editors since Bekker (Burgess is a quali- 
 fied exception) have reverted to the only older MS., an eleventh 
 century copy in Paris, known as A c . Passing by other early 
 Latin versions, there are Italian translations by Castelvetro and 
 
414 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xiii. 
 
 Piccolomini in 1570-2, the latter of which is highly praised. 
 In the next century Corneille's enemies brought it out in a 
 French version (by the Abbe Hedelin) and framed upon it 
 their theory of the three unities, which they foisted on Aristotle, 
 and which they drove to such a pitch as ultimately to discredit 
 the Greeks by the light of their false Aristotle. 1 This ' conflict 
 of the ancients and moderns ' is an important chapter in French 
 dramatic literature, and reached down to the days of Voltaire. 
 
 It is, however, now agreed even by the Germans that Twin- 
 ing's English translation (1789), and Tyrwhitt's text and com- 
 mentary, a magnificent specimen of the Clarendon Press (Oxon. 
 1794), are the real foundation of a, scientific knowledge of the 
 work. Excellent German editions now abound : Bekker's text 
 (reprinted 1873) ; Sitter's and Vahlen's (1867) ; the translations 
 of Stahr, Ueberweg (1870), Susemihl ; the dissertations of 
 Bernays, Vahlen, Bonitz, Susemihl, and a host of others. There 
 are also excellent recent French versions : Egger's {Hist, de la 
 Critique, &c, 1849), and several others since that date. I am 
 not aware that there is any work of importance on the subject 
 in English, in our own day, except some notes of Mr. Bywater 
 in the Journal of Philology, No. v. ; for this reason I have given 
 these details with disproportionate fullness. The reader will 
 find a summary of works, not nearly complete, but very large, 
 in Susemihl's Preface, pp. xix-xxiii, and references to fuller 
 catalogues in various German reviews. 
 
 § 579. We turn to a far greater work, somewhat earlier in 
 date, but not so clearly belonging to a history of literature. 
 The Politics are confessed on all hands to be the ripest and 
 fullest outcome of Greek political experience. They were based 
 on the researches in Aristotle's Constitutions, or Catalogue of 
 some 250 polities, of which many precious fragments tell us 
 enough to desire that it were preserved even at the expense of 
 the extant book on the theory of politics. For as such the 
 present work is essentially conceived in Aristotle's peculiar 
 method, being based on actual experience, and the criticism of 
 
 1 Of course Aristotle insists everywhere on unity of action ; he once 
 casually mentions unity of time (v. § 4) in contrast to the freedom of 
 epic poetiy ; on unity of place he is absolutely silent. 
 
CH. xni. THE POLITICS. 415 
 
 previous theorists. To the historian, to the student of Greek 
 politics and Greek society, this book, though imperfect and 
 corrupt, is nevertheless inestimable. It can hardly be called a 
 literary performance. All the defects of careless composition, 
 or perhaps dictation, of double explanations, of hopeless con- 
 ciseness, which we find elsewhere in his works, are here also 
 the exercising ground of endless criticism. I will indicate the 
 chief points of interest to the general reader. 
 
 The first book, after an introduction showing how the state 
 is the natural and necessary outcome of man's social nature, 
 and a more complex union than that within the household, 
 goes on to discuss slavery, and the acquisition of wealth, as 
 parts of the household, and therefore as entering into the 
 state. The other bonds of union are those of husband and 
 wife, of father and son (daughters are ignored) and of brothers, 
 of which the second only is treated in the subsequent book on 
 education. These various bonds find their respective analogies 
 in despotic, aristocratical, monarchical, and timocratic govern- 
 ments, as appears from comparing other passages * with what is 
 here said. Aristotle conceives the relation of sex differently 
 from Plato, for he thinks that women differ intellectually not in 
 degree but in kind from men, and he does not contemplate 
 their ever attaining more than the place of free but inferior and 
 subject personages in the household. The locus classicus is 
 not here but at the opening of the ninth book of the Natural 
 History, a graphic passage, containing a curious mixture of true 
 and false generalisation. I quote it as a favourable specimen 
 of his style. 2 
 
 1 Especially Nic. Ethics, viii. 10, 11. 
 
 2 Book ix. ch. i. p. 608. After describing the distinction of male and 
 female as the cause of differences of temper in all animals, he goes on to 
 illustrate it by the case of hounds, and adds that in the case of the bear 
 and panther only is the female more courageous than the male, tovtwv 
 5' 1x vr i l J ^ v T ® v T]Q& V icrlv iv iraffiv us elire'iv, /xaXXov 5e (pavepcvrepa iv ro?s 
 exov(Ti fiaXXov -q6os Kal fiaXiara iv avdpcoira}' tovto yap e^et tt\v (pvcriv 
 a.TroT€TeKe(Tixevr]v, wore Kal ravras ras e|eis elvcu <pave poor e pas iv avrols. 
 SioTrep yvvr) avdpbs i\€7]fJ.ove(TTepov Kal aptdaKpv fiaWov^ %ti Se (pdovepcarepov 
 Te ical fxe/j.\^i/j.oip6T€pov, Kal (piKoKoihopov fxaKXov Kal TvXr}KTiK(i>repov. e<rn 5e 
 Kal Svadvfxov fiaXXov rb OrjXv rod appsvos Kal dvaeXTn, Kal avaiSearepov ical 
 
416 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xm. 
 
 His reflections on slavery are much more interesting, as 
 showing that there were already Abolitionists in the world, who 
 declared that slavery was against nature — a doctrine which 
 Aristotle earnestly combats, though making several important 
 concessions very damaging to his cause. He rightly denies 
 the absurd doctrine (so fashionable in the last century) of the 
 equality of men, and asserts the radical inferiority of certain 
 races. But it is surprising that he does not recognise among 
 some barbarians, as he calls them, the same right to rule as that 
 of the Greeks. The Aryan barons who fought against the 
 Greeks from the days of Cyrus to those of the last Darius were 
 a nobility of splendid traditions, and educated, as Herodotus 
 tells us, ' to ride on horseback, to use their bows, and to speak 
 the truth.' The Carthaginians had framed so excellent a con- 
 stitution that Aristotle presently selects it among the best of 
 those known, for careful description and comment. Yet he 
 admits only individual exceptions, and is blinded by the national 
 vanity of the Hellenes. His case would have been much 
 stronger had he known such races as the Negroes ; but if we 
 admit his premises, that the refined leisure of a small minority 
 of the inhabitants of a Greek city is the highest possible state, 
 he is perfectly justified in his argument. 
 
 The remainder of the book is about trade, about the nature 
 of wealth, and how the acquisition of money has come to re- 
 place that of the goods which are represented by it. Here 
 again Aristotle shows the old Greek gentleman's prejudice 
 against retail trade, and brands the taking of interest on money 
 as an unnatural crime. This blunder lasted far into the Middle 
 Ages, while the right of plundering wrecks was recognised, 
 just as Aristotle maintains that war or piracy for the acquisi- 
 tion of slaves among people who ought to be slaves (though 
 they do not recognise it) is perfectly just. 
 
 § 580. The second book is a review of famous polities, both 
 
 ipevdecTTepov, evairar^Torepov Se Kal fxvr]fxoviKdoTepov, e-n 8e aypvirvSrepov Kal 
 oKuripdrepov, Kal oXcas aKivr\r6repov rb drjAv rod 'appevos, Kal rpocprjs iXarrovSs 
 eCTiv. fiorjQrjTiKcoTepoi' 5e, Sxr-rrep e'Ae'%077, Kal avdpei6Tepov rb &ppzv tov 
 Q'(]\t6s effTiv, iirel Kal iu rots fxaAaKiois, '6rav t<£ rpiSdovri TrXrjyfj 7) ff^iria, b 
 (xkv appT\v fio^de? tt) drj\6ia } rj 5e Qr]\eia (pevyei rod apptvos TtKr]jivros. 
 
CH. xiii. THE POLITICS. 417 
 
 actually existing and devised by theorists, and does not, I 
 think, increase our respect for the great critic. The theoretical 
 sketches are put on a level with actually existing and successful 
 polities, which is absurd, and, moreover, the faults and failures 
 of these latter, which occurred in the lapse of centuries, are 
 charged to want of foresight in their authors, as if any legislator 
 could foresee such far distant consequences. The ideal states 
 of Plato (or of Socrates, as Aristotle calls it throughout), of 
 Hippodamos, and of Phaleas are criticised, the first at great 
 length, but with much sophistry, and little attempt to under- 
 stand or appreciate the immortal Republic. It is, indeed, main- 
 tained by Susemihl, 1 that while the refutation of the extreme 
 socialism in family relations in the Republic is very complete 
 and successful, the critique of the Laws, which sets forth a 
 state not unlike in kind to Aristotle's own ideal, is petty and 
 sophistical. He complains that critics have not attended 
 sufficiently to this contrast. But I cannot concede that an 
 account of Plato's Republic, which asserts his marriage laws to 
 be a community (icoivwvia) of women, destroying self-command 
 and chastity, is anything short of a gross libel, and unworthy to 
 be called a refutation. 
 
 Then follow very valuable sketches of the Lacedaemonian, 
 Cretan, and Carthaginian constitutions. The last chapter seems 
 a spurious addition, reviewing Solon and other legislators by 
 way of supplement. There may have been a real review of 
 Solon given by Aristotle, but surely not the brief and bald 
 statement now in the text. Possibly the gap was early felt in 
 this place, and the lost account of Solon replaced by the pre- 
 sent chapter. 
 
 The third book enters upon the dogmatic or positive part 
 of the scheme, and seeks to analyse what a state or polity 
 means, before discussing its perfect conditions. A state is de- 
 termined by its citizens, those who vote and judge in it. Aris- 
 totle proceeds to determine more closely the idea of a citizen, 
 and whether his dperi) is the same as that of the man. Are the 
 good man and the good citizen identical ? This he shows to 
 
 1 Introd. p. 27. 
 VOL. II, E E 
 
4 i8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xm. 
 
 be not always the case, but so much so in the best or ideal con- 
 stitution that his good citizen must be a Greek gentleman of 
 leisure, and secure from all menial trade or employment. He 
 then determines l the various species of constitution according 
 to the sovereign power in each — monarchy, aristocracy, and 
 democracy — with their various subdivisions and debased forms. 
 With the ninth chapter he enters upon the discussion of indi- 
 vidual forms, and, in the remainder of this book, of the forms of 
 monarchy and its justification in nature. It is probably with 
 his eye upon the astounding personality of Alexander 2 that he 
 declares there are exceptional cases, where the merit of one man 
 in the state is so indisputably pre-eminent that all are willing, 
 and bound, to obey him. But ordinarily there is more wisdom 
 in a selected plurality, or constitutional aristocracy, which is 
 accordingly the best or ideal form. 
 
 § 581. This he discusses at great length, and with special 
 detail, in the following two books, which stand at the close in 
 our MSS., but which have long since been recognised as out of 
 place there, and are now printed as fourth and fifth in all good 
 
 1 cc. 4-5. 
 
 2 The reference has been vehemently denied by Susemihl (Introd. pp. 
 42-3) and others, on the ground that Aristotle never considers such an 
 empire as the Macedonian, but exclusively the small Hellenic polity, with 
 its narrow limits and purely Hellenic citizens. This criticism forgets that 
 Aristotle might be so struck by Alexander as a commanding nature, 
 as to infer the justice of making such an one a king even in a Hellenic 
 and ideal state, though he actually lived in a foreign system. I cannot 
 doubt that this amount of reference is intended, but I do not go so far as 
 Oncken in finding philo-Macedonian allusions throughout the work. But 
 if this point be doubtful, what shall we say to the strange statement he 
 makes (p. 1296, 38) in connection with the moderate democracy managed 
 by the middle classes, that ' of those who had formerly attained power, 
 one man only was persuaded to restore this form of government (efs yap 
 avrjp (TweireiffBr) fiovos rcHv irporepov i<p' rjye/noviq. yevopLZvwv ravTrfv airofiovvai 
 tt]V rd^tv), while all the rest had made oligarchies or democracies for 
 their own interest ? ' Who was this remarkable person ? The text seems 
 unassailable. Pericles, Epaminondas, Solon, and Pittacus have been sug- 
 gested. I will add Mardonius, suspecting that Mr^cov has dropped out 
 (after yevo/xevcav), and that Aristotle may possibly refer to the statement of 
 Herodotus (vi. 4.3) that he established popular rule in the Asiatic cities, a 
 thing incredible in his own day. But Pittacus is the most probable. 
 
ch. xiii. THE POLITICS. 419 
 
 editions. The first three chapters are no doubt an Aristotelian, 
 but hardly relevant, inquiry into the most desirable existence 
 for a state, which is determined on the questionable analogy of 
 the individual. Whether the philosopher, who stood aloof from 
 public affairs, or the politician, who controlled them, be the 
 more perfect man, leading the more perfect life, was a dispute 
 common since Plato's day. Aristotle elsewhere declares ex- 
 pressly for the OewpriTiKoc (3log, the life of intellectual activity, 
 which approaches nearest to that of the gods. He here con- 
 tents himself with showing that, as happiness — which consists 
 of three parts, the goods of mind, body, and estate — depends 
 chiefly on the first, most men who praise the politician's life 
 from ambition and grasping motives miss the mark altogether. 
 The true and righteous politician's life is not one of unjust 
 aggrandisement, and, on the other hand, not devoid of specu- 
 lation. So also the philosophic life is not without the noblest 
 kind of action. The two kinds are therefore not mutually 
 exclusive, and a state need not exist for foreign conquest, or 
 for imperial purposes, but may devote itself with equal dignity 
 and perfection to the well-being of its own citizens. 
 
 It would carry us too far to pursue even this very brief 
 analysis. The external and internal conditions of Aristotle's state 
 are unfortunately not completely preserved. Nevertheless, 
 the fragmentary fifth book, on the education of the citizens, 
 is so interesting, that I hope to consider it elsewhere fully 
 in connection with the subject of Greek education. The 
 philosopher then turns to the actual forms of polity, and 
 discusses their relation to his ideal state, the conditions of their 
 welfare, and lastly the causes of their decay, with the various 
 means of avoiding it. This analysis of the pathology of 
 polities, which occupies the last book (v. in the old order), is 
 that of most practical value, and has accordingly been most 
 studied by statesmen and political writers. Had Machiavelli 
 completed his Republic, designed on the plan of his Principe, 
 we should have had a close modern analogy to these books. 
 
 § 582. Most editors, not content with changing the place 
 of the last books in the MSS., as I have mentioned, also trans- 
 pose the immediately foregoing ones, so that the MS., order is 
 
420 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xiu. 
 
 thus reformed — i. ii. iii. vii. viii. iv. vi. v. The placing of vi?;. 
 and viii. immediately after iii. was first suggested by Nicolas 
 d'Oresme (1370), then by several of the earliest commentators, 
 such as P. Victorius, Segni, and Scaino da Salo, in the six- 
 teenth century ; by Conring in the seventeenth ; but was 
 not again urged till the problem was taken up in the last 
 generation by St. Hilaire and Spengel. 1 It is Hildenbrand's 
 suggestion that the closer description of the ideal state was 
 postponed by Aristotle till after he had composed his historical 
 survey, was accordingly left unfinished, and found at the end of 
 the MS. when his books were rediscovered at Skepsis. Hence 
 the place and condition of these books in our MSS. would be 
 explained. The transposition of v. and vi. was not proposed 
 till this century by St. Hilaire, who is supported by Spengel. 
 But this last change is not so imperatively demanded as the 
 former. It is, however, now so generally adopted that the 
 old numbering of the books should be abandoned, as pro- 
 ducing useless perplexity. 
 
 § 583. A sober review of the whole work impresses us with 
 sincere admiration on the one hand, and on the other with 
 disappointment. To take the latter first. I will not insist upon 
 the various confusions introduced by Aristotle's over-fondness 
 for logical divisions, especially the vague position assigned to 
 the moderate democracy (iroXiTeia) and aristocracy in relation to 
 one another, and to his ideal state. Neither will I repeat 
 myself on the defects of his style, or on the many difficulties 
 introduced by corruptions or dislocations of the text. What we 
 rather wonder at is the narrow Hellenedom of Aristotle, who has 
 learned nothing from contemporary history, nothing from his 
 own studies in foreign politics, nothing from his varied foreign 
 residences, nothing from the Macedonian court, and hence 
 nothing of course from the vague but splendid talk of Isocrates 
 and his school about the spreading of Hellenic culture beyond 
 the limits of the race. With Aristotle Greeks alone are worthy 
 to be free and dominant, and all foreigners are more or less 
 adapted for slavery. The researches made for his 260 7ro\iTtlai 
 
 ' Cf. the interesting account of Oncken, Staatslehre cks A. i. pp„ 
 
ch. xiii. PLATO AND ARISTOTLE. 421 
 
 must have brought him. within sight of the rising power of 
 Rome, and yet we can have little doubt that the Romans 
 were, or would have been, included by him under the head of 
 slavish barbarians. The Carthaginians occupy him very fully 
 with their constitution, and yet he will not allow that even here 
 there was another dominant race adapted for empire. 
 
 With this assumption of slavery as natural and necessary 
 to most of the world, comes a contempt for labour, a glorifi- 
 cation of leisure, and a dislike for money making, which was 
 the main defect of all Greek political thinkers. And yet there 
 were in Aristotle's day not only logical thinkers who asserted 
 the unnatural and immoral character of slavery in its essence, 
 but democratic theorists, like Hippodamus and the sophist 
 Lycophron, who had approached the modern conception of a 
 state as a mere power of protecting its citizens by law from 
 mutual oppression and injury, while it left them to follow their 
 individual pursuits, without persecuting them with a lifelong 
 education, or an inquisitive intermeddling in their private affairs. 
 But here Plato's influence was too strong. His pupil differs 
 indeed in many details. He will not approach the splendid 
 conception that all the earthly life even of the highest rulers in 
 the ideal state is but a preparation for a purer and higher 
 existence beyond; he regards the state here as the end in 
 itself. But still he is forced to admit that the life of abstract 
 contemplation, apart from all practical affairs, is the best and 
 nearest to the gods. He objects to Plato's extreme super- 
 vision of marriage, as set forth in the Republic ; yet his own 
 notions differ little from those in the Laws, and he admits by 
 far the most offensive point in Plato — the sanction of producing 
 abortion — in his own state. And thus in many other cases. 
 He really opposes Plato on a very few details, and those rather 
 matters of degree than of principle. 
 
 On the other hand, the influence of the Athenian democracy 
 on this aristocratic theorist is far clearer than on Plato, owing, 
 I suppose, to a more unbiassed historical studv. He fully 
 appreciates, in all actual constitutions, the paramount value of 
 a st ong middle class ; and he upholds with great force the 
 sup- jority of a fixed code of established law over the chang- 
 
422 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. xin 
 
 ing decrees and decisions of courts and assemblies. The 
 strongest, and doubtless the most immortal part of his book, 
 is his review not only of the varying forms of existing polities, 
 but of the causes of their conservation and decay — an account 
 corroborated throughout with historical examples unfortunately 
 too minute to be now verified. But there can be no doubt 
 that here he has built upon so sound a philosophic basis, and 
 upon the evidence of so large and varied a political experi- 
 ence, that his lessons on the rise and fall of governments will 
 never grow old, and will be perpetually receiving fresh cor- 
 roboration, so long as human nature remains the same. 
 
 § 584. The Politics of Aristotle seem to have excited no at- 
 tention in antiquity. The silence of our authorities gives new 
 countenance to the story of the philosopher's works being hid- 
 den in a cellar in Skepsis, and only found and published by 
 Apellikon of Teos in the days of Sylla. Of course this story can 
 be disproved as regards his purely philosophical books, but it is 
 not improbable that this unfinished, and therefore unpublished , 
 fragment of a colossal work may have been hidden by an ap- 
 propriate fate from the generation who had lost the power of pro- 
 fiting by it. It is distinctly cited by Cicero, 1 but all the other 
 ancients who occupy themselves with Plato's Republic are silent 
 concerning Aristotle's criticism, and his alternative state. Thus 
 this work did not pass through the Nestorian Christians to the 
 Arabs. 
 
 Bibliographical. Our earliest authority for the text is the 
 barbarous but exceedingly literal translation of William de 
 Moerbeke (a Dominican monk of Brabant), made about 1270 
 a.d. from an older MS. than any we possess. On this Thomas 
 Aquinas and Albertus Magnus wrote commentaries, but with 
 the political darkness of their age. We have no Greek MSS. 
 older than the fourteenth century, and most of them are only of 
 the fifteenth. They are all corrupt, nor can any one of them be 
 regarded as of pre-eminent value. Perhaps the Milan codex (in 
 the Ambrosian Library) is the best. It was done into French 
 with far more critical insight by Nicolas d'Oresme, about 
 1373 (printed in Paris 1489). After another Latin version by 
 
 1 De Fin. v. 4., n, and elsewhere* 
 
ch. xiii. EDITIONS OF THE POLITICS. 423 
 
 Lionardo Aretino (1398), it appeared in print in the great 
 Aldine Aristotle of 1495-8. In the following century, the days 
 of republics and tyrannies, and revolutions, and factions in 
 Italy, a large number of editions and translations— Oncken 
 says twenty-five — appeared. We see in Machiavelli's Principe 
 a close study, and often an imitation of the last two books ; 
 and no doubt the Italians of that age were the nearest approach 
 the world has yet seen in politics as well as in art to the 
 old Greeks. In the present century the principal older edition 
 is Schneider's ; the more recent and best was Bekker's (in the 
 great Berlin edition), till the appearance of Susemihl's elabo- 
 rate text and apparatus, which has sorted and discussed fully 
 all the MSS. and other helps. Susemihl has since published 
 a text with German translation and very valuable notes (Leip- 
 zig, 1879), quite the most serviceable edition at present, though 
 the translation is very inferior to that of three books by Ber- 
 nays, and the constant transpositions of short passages (though 
 carefully noted) are disturbing to references. In England 
 we have Eaton's and Congreve's editions, both very inferior 
 to those just named ; and there are partial commentaries by 
 Heitland, Broughton, and Postgate. There is, indeed, an 
 edition long promised by Mr. Newman of Oxford But it is 
 much to be regretted that we have as yet no standard English 
 edition produced by some scholar who has an English sense of 
 politics, like Grote. Unfortunately, his posthumous Aristotle 
 does not touch the Politics. ' Susemihl's notes (in his German 
 edition) refer the reader to a great mass of special studies 
 in the German periodicals, of which I may recommend those 
 of Vahlen and Bernays. The best general discussion of the 
 Politics is Oncken's Staatslehre des Aristoteles (Leipzig, 1870), 
 a very eloquent and attractive book, and well worth trans- 
 lating, though here and there too enthusiastic, and sometimes 
 hasty ; Thurot's and Havet's Etudes are also suggestive. But 
 the modern literature on the subject is almost endless, and may 
 be appreciated from Susemihl's German preface, 1 or from his 
 account in Bursi&n' sfa/ires&eric/it for 18 74 and 1877. Mr. Jowett 
 is preparing a translation. 
 
 1 pp, xviii-xxii. 
 
424 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xm. 
 
 § 585. We come, lastly, to the Nicomachean Ethic, which 
 was earlier in composition than the Politics, but is here treated 
 in reverse order, because it is more strictly a philosophical trea- 
 tise, with which we are not here concerned. I will pass by 
 all critical questions, and all ethical discussion, and will merely 
 call attention to the literary aspects of some portions of the 
 work, which are', indeed, excrescences to the argument, and 
 beyond its proper scope. I refer to the sketching of particular 
 characters in the fourth book (which are illustrations of his doc- 
 trine of ethical excellence being a mean), and to his discussion 
 of friendship in the eighth and ninth books. The most peculiar 
 of his characters is that of the fxeya\6\pvxoQ, which, with all its 
 grandeur and dignity, is not an agreeable picture of Aristotle's 
 ideal in practical life. The Germans are full of theories as to 
 who is intended to be thus drawn. Zeller says he may have 
 been thinking of Alexander. Oncken believes the philosopher 
 was describing himself! As the portrait is exceedingly unlike 
 what we know either of Alexander or of Aristotle, we may pass 
 by these conjectures with a mere notice. We do not know 
 enough of Pericles personally to assert that he was intended, 
 nor perhaps did Aristotle think of him ; but he seems less un- 
 likely than the other two. 
 
 The latter dissertation is not without the usual defects of 
 style in our Aristotelian writings — repetitions, parentheses, and 
 omissions of points in the argument, but nevertheless it may 
 lay some claim to style, and has been greatly eulogised by 
 most of the philosophic critics. To us the most interesting 
 question about these books is to determine whether Greek 
 friendship was, indeed, no more than is here described, or 
 whether the fault is Aristotle's, who, through his love of defi- 
 nition and explanation, has overlooked the real nature of the 
 thing. He distinguishes three kinds : that from the love of 
 goodness, that for the sake of mutual pleasure, and that for 
 the sake of profit. On all these he makes many acute and 
 many true remarks. But when he tells us that the good man 
 loves himself and his own worth, and therefore the same quali- 
 ties in another ; when he denies the possibility of true friend- 
 ship, except in the case of such mature and self-conscious 
 
CH. xiii. THE ETHICS. 425 
 
 persons who are equal or nearly equal in position, he seems to 
 me to have altogether missed the mark, and to have been misled 
 by a spirit of narrow formalism. This is not the place for ethi- 
 cal discussion, but I suppose there are no observers of human 
 nature who will not admit that friendship, though suggested 
 and stimulated by mutual goodness, and frequent intercourse, 
 does not essentially depend upon either. For within the same 
 house and the same society there are often people of excel- 
 lence, who respect one another, and yet who are not friends. 
 Again, there are very inferior natures, nay actually bad natures, 
 which are capable of forming loyal attachments that stand firm 
 and unsullied even in the midst of crime, of injustice and of 
 contempt for the rights of society. The fact is that what we 
 call friendship in the strictest sense, apart from any conscious 
 mutual advantage, depends upon a subtle and inexplicable 
 sympathy, which draws people together in spite of all manner 
 of obstacles, and often forms bonds among the unequal, while 
 it refuses to join those whom every other promoting cause 
 would almost force into the relation. While Aristotle is per- 
 fectly silent on this intangible cause, which is far the most 
 important, he gives us all manner of useful hints on those 
 lesser and spurious forms of friendship, among which I am 
 almost tempted to rank mutual esteem for the sake of good- 
 ness. But there runs all through his remarks an unpleasant 
 prominence of selfish considerations, the reflex of the nation 
 and the age in which- he lived. 
 
 The discussion of editions and commentaries on the Ethics 
 must be sought in the histories of philosophy. 
 
 § 586. Before leaving Aristotle, it may be well to consider 
 generally the oft-iepeated charges of dryness and of disorder in 
 that philosopher's writing. As to the apparent disorder, it may 
 arise from confusion of thought, as well as from imperfect trans- 
 mission of our texts ; in the former case it is a grave defect. 
 But we should remind ourselves carefully, in justice to Aris- 
 totle, that no discoverer is likely to put his first draught into 
 rny thing like logical shape, and that if we desire to watch 
 the profoundly interesting phenomenon of the thinking out of 
 new truths, or of a new system, we must be content to take it 
 
426 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xiii. 
 
 with those digressions, those repetitions, those perpetual ex- 
 cursions beyond the strict matter in hand, which characterise 
 the speculations of every fruitful thinker. 1 Moreover, with 
 such a thinker as Aristotle, we may even rejoice that he did 
 not condescend to waste his few years of mature work in 
 polishing his style, instead of quarrying out great mines of 
 untouched knowledge. These considerations are an ample 
 apology for all those negligences which arise from carelessness 
 of form, or the over-crowding of thoughts in the teeming mind 
 of the great thinker. The case is somewhat different when 
 we approach those barren subtleties, those minute subdivisions 
 and distinctions, which waste our time and exhaust our pa- 
 tience, while they do not advance our knowledge. We must 
 confess that here Aristotle was the child of his race and 
 age, and did not escape that defect of over-subtlety, which is 
 the leading fault in the Hellenic mind. Not only their phi- 
 losophers, but their poets and orators give way to this weak- 
 ness ; no sooner do they come in sight of an) logical distinc- 
 tion, than they forthwith abandon themselves to the luxury of 
 divisions and subdivisions, of definitions and qualifications. 
 Which of us has not been wearied with them throughout the 
 divine dialogues of Plato ? Which of us has not been in turn 
 offended and amused with them in Aristotle? ' Ce sont des 
 articles de dictionnaire que le philosophe s'amuse a rediger 
 chemin faisant.' One almost imagines that the Greeks of his 
 day still found the newly discovered mechanism of reasoning 
 so delightful, that they could not help exhibiting it, as a child 
 keeps working a new mechanical toy. We see the same turn 
 in Thucydides ; we see it in Euripides, who affects his audience 
 as much by conflicts of argument as by pictures of passion or 
 of woe. But in the great classical writers this dominant pas- 
 sion for logical subtlety alternates with those higher literary 
 qualities, which command the sympathy of all civilised men, 
 and thus we condone the Parmenides and the Sophistes for 
 
 1 I cannot recal any great discoverer who has put his thinking into a 
 scrupulously neat and perfect form except Champollion, whose inductive 
 reasoning in the Precis du sysftme hieroglyphique has this extraordinary 
 merit. 
 
CH. xni. END OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE. 427 
 
 the pathos of the Phcedon, for the imagination and humour of 
 the Symposwm, though here too there are not wanting tedious 
 analyses. In Aristotle, as we have him, there is not this re- 
 lief; we have nothing but depth of thought, and suggestive- 
 ness of expression, to atone for the arid scholasticism of his 
 discourse. 
 
 § 587. Thus the classical literature of Greece may be said 
 to close with Aristotle. He himself, as a literary man, stands 
 between the living and the dead ; and if in early life he at- 
 tended to style, in mature age we find him neglecting it for 
 the sake of the matter of knowledge. With him and his gener- 
 ation — the brilliant generation which produced the greatest 
 eloquence in Demosthenes and Hypere'ides, the most perfect 
 social comedy in Menander and Philemon — the power of ori- 
 ginal production seems suddenly to collapse, and the age of 
 criticism to commence. Grammar, rhetoric, eclectic philo- 
 sophy are the branches of literature which flourish, and which, 
 together with second-rate poetry and oratory, fill up the silver 
 or Alexandrine epoch in Greek literature. We have as yet to 
 say something of the historians contemporary with Aristotle, 
 who, though they were inferior to the great masters whom 
 they imitated, transmitted the taste for historical enquiry to 
 those later men, who have left us wliat is best and most enduring 
 in the decadence of the nation. Poetry, as we have seen in 
 the former volume, had its flashes of revival in Ap> >llonius and 
 Theocritus, but we may thank the kind Fate which has saved 
 us the' study of more productions like the Hymns of Calli- 
 machus and the Alexandra of Lycophron. 
 
 In the Renaissance among the Romans, and afterwards in 
 mediaeval Italy, the contrast of classical and post -classical was 
 not strongly felt. Men imitated and admired Philetas and 
 Callimachus along with Alcseus and Sappho, and loved Poly- 
 bius and Plutarch as much as Herodotus and Xenophon. No 
 doubt we have gone into an opposite extreme, and neglect too 
 completely the real worth of the later literature, such as it 
 remains to us in Theocritus and Plutarch. But still, in this 
 hurried and weary age, when it is impossible to study the whole 
 of Greek literature in its vast extent, the proper principle of 
 
428 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xill. 
 
 selection is certainly to confine ourselves to the age and to the 
 men who, in the judgment of all sound critics, have been pre- 
 eminent as well in form as in matter. Plutarch is a pure and 
 elevating writer, full of precious information, and breathing a 
 lofty moral tone. But we lose little by reading Plutarch in 
 English or in French, for as a stylist he is no Herodotus or 
 Thucydides ; he is read for his matter, and his matter only. 
 This too is strictly the case with Aristotle as we know him, and 
 he therefore, as a stylist, is beyond the limit of classical Greek 
 literature. As a critic, however, especially as a critic of clas- 
 sical literature, he has occupied us, I trust, in no undue detail. 
 
CH. XIV. 
 
 429 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE LOST HISTORIANS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY, B.C. 
 
 § 588. We must not conclude this account of classical 
 Greek prose without saying something of those numerous his- 
 torians, especially of the school of Isocrates, who were much 
 praised and quoted, and formed the principal materials from 
 which Plutarch, Diodorus, and other writers of the Roman 
 period drew their facts. The enquiry into what were the sources 
 of Plutarch's biographies, or of the later histories, forms a 
 favourite exercising ground for the Germans, and tracts de fon- 
 tibus Plutarchi, or Diodori, or of the rest, inundate the learned 
 periodicals. Unfortunately, though we have many criticisms 
 upon these authors, especially by Polybius, and by Dionysius of 
 Halicarnassus, who reviews the most important of them, I do not 
 know that we have a single specimen of their style sufficient to 
 afford us an independent judgment. They are cited for facts ; 
 they are criticised by one another, at times savagely ; they are 
 praised and blamed, but never quoted verbatim at any length. 
 Hence the splendid collection of Carl Miiller l in the early 
 volumes gives us hundreds of their fragments, and yet conveys 
 no definite idea of their style. Nevertheless, we may be quite 
 certain that none of these writers were in anyone's judgment 
 (except their own) equal to the three great masters, Herodotus, 
 Thucydides, and Xenophon, who have fortunately survived. 
 All sound ancient critics note this inferiority, not only in judg- 
 ment and critical knowledge of political and military affairs, but, 
 what would have pained the authors far more, in style. For they 
 were trained rhetoricians, who cultivated manner with conscious 
 care, and sought to outdo the great models placed before them. 
 
 1 Fragg. Hist. Grcec. 5 vols., Didot, 1853-70. 
 
43o HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xiv. 
 
 One imitated Herodotus, another Thucydides, another Xeno- 
 phon, but, like almost all copies, they were wanting in the vivid- 
 ness, the grace, and the power of the originals. There was 
 apparently a self-conscious and controversial tone about them ; 
 they were exercised not only in the jealousies of rival schools, 
 but in the party politics of the day ; they wrote history as 
 rhetoricians, and as partisans, if not of men, at least of poli- 
 tical theories. Hence later days neglected them, and amid the 
 wreck of the dark ages no one exerted himself to save them. 
 One alone, from a later age, survives. Polybius was doubtless 
 the soberest and most valuable of these Epigoni. His work is 
 of the highest value to the historian, as a long series of ap- 
 proving critics has amply shown ; 1 but as a stylist he never 
 has been, and never will be, read. He is a valuable moment in 
 the historical development of the Greeks ; he forms no part of 
 their classical literature. 
 
 From this preamble it will appear that these writers may 
 here be disposed of very briefly, but a list of their names and 
 works should not be wanting even in this handbook. It is, 
 however, not easy to separate those of a later period from 
 those who flourished before the death of Alexander ; for we 
 have a continuous stream of names reaching down to the 
 Roman times, as the student of Muller's Fragmenta will see at 
 a glance. I am only here concerned with the earliest of them, 
 and of these some reach higher than the opening of the fourth 
 century B.C. 
 
 § 589. I have already mentioned Ion and Stesimbrotus 2 as 
 authors of historical memoirs from which Plutarch borrowed. 
 Another early historian, who treated of no events subsequent 
 to 420 b.c, was Antiochus of Syracuse, son of Xenophanes. 
 He wrote on the early history of Italy, in which he, first among 
 Greek writers, mentioned Rome. He also composed the his- 
 tory of Sicily from the earliest times to the first year of Darius 
 
 1 For the English reader the best sources to estimate the value of Poly- 
 bius are Thirl wall's Hist, of Greece (last volume) and Freeman's very remark- 
 able Hist, of Federal Government, vol. i. Unfortunately, neither Grote nor 
 E. Curtius have carried down their Histories to the period of which Poly- 
 bius treats. 2 Above, p. 42. 
 
CH. xiv. PHILISTUS. 431 
 
 Nothus, 01. 89, 1. Being the oldest authority on Sicily and 
 Italy, it is certain that he was much used by Aristotle, Diony- 
 sius and Diodorus, as well as by the many succeeding writers 
 on the same subject. But what is to us most interesting is 
 that the account of Sicily at the opening of Thucydides' sixth 
 book is probably borrowed from him, perhaps even verbally, 
 to judge from some peculiar forms not elsewhere found in 
 Thucydides. Thus the whole of this early chronology would 
 depend upon a single writer from an uncritical age. It is not 
 improbable that, as all the early dates are reckoned from 
 the founding of Syracuse, and that this is determined by 
 Archias, the founder, being the eleventh in direct line from 
 Heracles, our Sicilian chronology, which is implicitly received 
 because it is sanctioned by Thucydides, is a mere theoretical 
 scheme. Antiochus, in an extant fragment, 1 speaks of the 
 Achasans who were founding Croton being helped by Archias 
 when on his way to found Syracuse — a much more likely 
 account than that which makes Syracuse an older settlement. 
 In fact, the natural course of things points to the settlement of 
 Corcyra first, then the south 2 coast of Italy, then Sicily. But I 
 cannot here enter upon this obscure question. 
 
 § 590. The history of Sicily was again taken up by a re- 
 markable man, who lived somewhat later than Antiochus, and 
 was himself a prominent actor in the events of the day, Phi- 
 listus of Syracuse, son of Archimenidas. Our main informa- 
 tion concerning him comes from Plutarch's life of Dion, and 
 from Diodorus, when relating the fortunes of Dionysius and his 
 son as tyrants of Syracuse. For in Suidas' article the historian 
 is evidently confounded with a rhetor Philiscus of Miletus, who 
 was the pupil of Isocrates and master of Timseus, as well as 
 with Philinus of Agrigentum, who wrote on the first Punic war. 
 Philistus was born about 01. 86-7, and therefore witnessed the 
 great siege of Syracuse by the Athenians. He supported 
 Dionysius with his private means and encouraged him with his 
 advice, and was doubtless one of the staunchest adherents and 
 best friends of the tyrant. Nevertheless they quarrelled, and 
 
 1 Frag. 11, from Strabo. 
 
 v As the east coast up to Brundusium is very barren and poor in soil. 
 
432 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH. XIV, 
 
 Philistus was exiled (386-5 B.C.) to the Adriatic, where he 
 composed most of his histories. After many bitter complaints 
 of his exile, and owing to much nattering persuasion, he was 
 recalled by the younger Dionysius, when he set himself in op- 
 position, apparently with success, to Dion and Plato, who were 
 attempting the philosophical conversion of the tyrant. When 
 Dion invaded Sicily, Philistus was appointed by Dionysius to 
 command his fleet, but being defeated by the Syracusans near 
 Leontini after a brave defence, he either killed himself or was 
 put to death by his enemies, when an old man, in 01. 106, 1 
 (356 B.C.). 
 
 He wrote the history of Sicily from the earliest date down 
 to the capture of Agrigentum (407 b.c), in seven books ; then, 
 in connection with it, the immediately succeeding reign of 
 Dionysius the elder, in four books, down to his death (01. 
 103, 2). He also wrote two books on the reign of the younger 
 Dionysius, down to 01. 104, 2, and this work was completed 
 by Athanas of Syracuse. l Two points are frequently insisted 
 upon by his critics : first, his strong adulation of the tyrants, 
 which made him very unpopular; secondly, his imitation of 
 Thucydides. Cicero 2 calls him ' Siculus ille capitalis, vafer, 
 acutus, brevis, psene pusillus Thucydides. 7 Quintilian thinks 
 him weaker but clearer. Dionysius, in a fuller criticism, gives 
 him praise and blame combined, and exhibits him, on the whole, 
 as a very second-rate copy of the great master. From Cicero's 
 Bratus (cap. 17) we may infer that he despised rhetorical finish 
 in his writing, and was hence degraded in the estimation of an 
 over-cultivated age as being deficient in these minor qualities of 
 a historian. But this would, no doubt, have made his works 
 not less valuable to us. The later historian Timseus, called 
 'E-mTifiaiog from his censorious temper, attacked Philistus, as 
 well as other early historians of Sicily, in his great work, but 
 was himself attacked in turn by Strabo and Polybius. It seems 
 that subsequent historians, who used general histories as their 
 main authority, turned to Philistus as a specialist when they 
 
 1 The title ^,iKeXiKa is sometimes given to the whole series, though the 
 author so named only the first part, the second being irepi Aiovvaiov. 
 + T.J>. ad Q.fratr. ii. 13. 
 
ch. xiv. EPHORUS. 433 
 
 came to treat of Sicilian affairs. This is believed to be the 
 case with Diodorus in particular. Hence comes most of our 
 knowledge of Philistus' works. 
 
 § 591. Far more regrettable is the loss of the histories of 
 Ephorus and Theopompus, the two greatest pupils of Isocrates, 
 whom he trained carefully in what he considered historical 
 style, and whose tempers were so diverse that he said the 
 former required a whip and the other a curb. Hence Ephorus 
 (of Kyme, son of Demophilus, born 01. 98-100) with his 
 calmer temperament turned to earlier history, and composed 
 a celebrated work, reaching from the Return of the Hera- 
 cleidae, 1 which he seems first to have made his starting-point, 
 to the siege of Perinthus by Philip (340 B.C.). It was after- 
 wards brought down by Dyillus to the death of Philip. This 
 history was in thirty books (the last completed by his son 
 Demophilus), each with a separate introduction and forming a 
 separate whole. It is praised by Polybius as the first and only 
 attempt at an universal history. The other works, on Inventions 
 and on Geography, seem rather to be excerpts from the digres- 
 sions in this history. 2 The general contents of most of the 
 books have been inferred from the fragments by Miiller. 3 
 
 He was considered an honest and painstaking writer, as 
 indeed we may infer from his own statement, 4 but we do not 
 know what sources he used, or how he used them, for we find 
 through Diodorus and Strabo, who constantly follow him as an 
 authority, that he differed frequently from Herodotus, Thucy- 
 dides, and Xenophon in relating the periods treated by them. 
 In the case of the last, indeed, it is fortunate that he was so 
 independent, for it is to him (through Diodorus) that we owe 
 the possibility of correcting Xenophon's scandalously unfair 
 account of Epaminondas and the Theban supremacy. His 
 fourth and fifth books, called Evpu-rrr] and 'Aula koi At/3u'j?, on 
 
 1 This was fixed at 1104 B.C. by Eratosthenes. 
 
 2 This is, however, more than doubtful, though suggested by Miiller, 
 in the case of an essay -rrepl \4£ews, on expression, mentioned by Theon 
 and by Cicero, in which he recommended dactylic and pseonic, in prefer- 
 ence to spondaic and trochaic rythms, in prose composition. 
 
 s Miiller, i. pp. lx-i. * Frag. 2. 
 
 VOL. II. F F 
 
434 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CH xw. 
 
 the geography of the then known world, were largely used by 
 Strabo and by the scholiasts. Ephorus' account of the causes 
 of the Peloponnesian war is restated at length by Diodorus, 1 
 and is not calculated to increase our respect for him. On the 
 other hand, his geographical researches afforded valuable 
 material to Strabo, as appears all through the Geography. He 
 quoted old poets ' and inscriptions, but not very critically. 
 Polybius says he is quite ignorant of the operations of war f 
 except those on sea, and that his details of land battles, when 
 they are at all complicated, as at Mantinea, are absurd ; but 
 this vice is not peculiar to him. In his account of the Athenian 
 hegemony, we can infer from Diodorus' second-hand history 
 that he was partial to the Athenians, and differed from Thucy- 
 dides' account of many transactions in giving a more favour- 
 able interpretation of Athenian conduct. Nevertheless, he 
 seems to have been as sparing as Thucydides in mentioning the 
 inner, or the constitutional, history of Athens. As to style he 
 is alternately praised and blamed (the former by Polybius, 
 the latter by Dionysius), and he no doubt had the faults and 
 perfections of Isocratic teaching. He was elegant and flowing, 
 but not spontaneous, and decidedly wanting in power. 2 
 
 § 592. It is remarkable that while Suidas calls Ephorus 
 iffropiKoc, he calls his brother historian, Theopompus, a pnrojp, 
 and very justly. For not only did this man compose epideictical 
 displays, as for example at the funeral of Mausollus, but all his 
 
 1 xii. 38-41, frag, 119. 
 
 2 The value of Ephorus as a source of history, and the extent to which 
 he was used by later writers, such 'as Plutarch, Diodorus, Trogus, and 
 Nepos, form the subject of constant monographs in German philological 
 journals — monographs which show more erudition and acuteness in their 
 conjectures than solid results. I cite a few, in which the remainder will 
 be found discussed : Volquardsen, Untenuch. iiber die Quellen des Diodor, 
 xi-xvi (Kiel, 1868) ; Collmann, de Diodori Sic. fontibus (Marburg, 1869) ; 
 Albracht, de Them. Plut. fontibus (Gottingen, 1873) ; Sauppe, die Quellen 
 Pint, fiir das Leben Perikles (Abhandl. Gdtt. Akad. vol. xiii. 1867) ; Wolff- 
 garten, de Ephori hist, &c. a Trogo expressis (Bonn, 1868); Holzapfel, 
 Untersuch. iiber Griech. Gesch., &c. (Leipzig, 1879). The wSicilian part of 
 Ephorus' history is specially discussed by Holm, Geschichte Sicilians, ii. 
 340, sqq ; cf. also A. Bauer's very depreciative Themisiokles (Merseburg, 
 lS8l). 
 
CH. xiv. THEOPOMPUS. 43c 
 
 writing was intensely rhetorical, and breathed the vehement and 
 angry spirit of the author. He was the son of Damasistratus, 
 and brother of the rhetor Caucalus, born about the 100th Olym- 
 piad at Chios. 1 He was exiled when an infant with his father 
 from Chios for Laconism, perhaps, as Miiller suggests, by the 
 Theban party when Epaminondas attempted the hegemony of 
 the sea. He became the pupil of Isocrates, and returned to 
 his home in his forty-fifth year, owing to the interference of 
 Alexander in favour of exiles during the early part of his expe- 
 dition. Being a man of private means he never composed court 
 speeches, but wandered through all the Greek cities making 
 epideictic displays of his rhetoric, of which the most successful 
 seems to have been his panegyric on Mausollus, prince of 
 Caria, at the famous literary contest instituted in his honour 
 by his widow Artemisia (01. 107, 1). 
 
 After his return, his free tongue and quarrelsome manner 
 appear to have made him fresh enemies, for after the death of 
 Alexander he was again exiled, and sought a refuge in Egypt, 
 where, however, Ptolemy I. was as unwilling as the Greek 
 cities to receive him, so that he escaped from this country 
 also, through the warning of his friends. This is the last fact 
 recorded of his life. As to his work, we find cited by Suidas 
 an Epitome of Herodotus in two books, then a continuation 
 of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian war (like Xeno- 
 phon's Ifellejiica), and subsequent events in twelve books 
 reaching done to the battle of Knidus. But his greatest work 
 was a history of Philip, embracing in digressions all the con- 
 temporary history down to the king's death, in fifty-eight 
 books. This very voluminous work was abridged into seventeen 
 books, retaining nothing but the Macedonian history, by the 
 orders, perhaps even by the hand, of Philip III., the opponent 
 of the Romans. In this form at least the work was extant in 
 the days of Photius. The reader will find an epitome of what 
 
 1 This is the date preferred by Miiller (i. Ixv-vii). Others prefer the 
 date given by Suidas, the 93rd Olympiad, and think he was trained by Iso- 
 crates in his first school at Chios. But this does not agree with the state- 
 ment that he was only forty-five years old after Alexander came to the 
 throne. 
 
 F F 2 
 
436 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. xiv. 
 
 is known of the several books in Miiller's Fragg., i. pp. lxx-lxxii. 
 His many panegyrical and deliberative speeches, as well as his 
 letters, doubtless in the style of his master Isocrates, are 
 rarely cited. Athenseus refers four times to his letters to 
 Alexander for attacks on the Chians, and on Harpalus con- 
 cerning his immoral life. 1 There are also mentioned a Dia- 
 tribe against Plato, and a tract on Piety. 
 
 § 593- We have many and explicit judgments on his merits 
 as a historian and as a stylist, which are sufficiently supported 
 by his fragments to give us a clearer idea of him than of any of 
 his rivals. We have an abstract of his vain and self asserting 
 personal preface to the Philippica. 2 He here boasted of his 
 independence from writing for pay, of the number of his works, 
 and their celebrity through the world, as well as of his travels, 
 quite after the manner of one of the older sophists. He pro- 
 ceeded to assert the superiority of the literary men of his own 
 day over their predecessors, owing to the advances and im- 
 provements made in the study of letters. This offensive self- 
 praise was no doubt common in the school of Isocrates, and 
 marks a turning point in the history of Greek literature. It is 
 plain from the exceedingly voluminous character of Theopom- 
 pus' compositions, from the extraordinary variety of the sub- 
 jects quoted in our fragments, and from other indications, that 
 he aimed at excelling Herodotus rather than Thucydides. But 
 not only were his digressions excessive and tedious, but the 
 stories of marvels and miracles, and of barbarian manners and 
 customs, which sound appropriate in Herodotus, were out of 
 place and even offensive in this more conscious and sceptical 
 age, and were justly ridiculed by his critics. We may also be 
 certain that he treated his subject in an intensely rhetorical 
 spirit, seeking everywhere for effect rather than strict truth. 
 He was, moreover, a strong political partisan, and allowed 
 himself constantly to attack violently Greek democracies and 
 their failings. Indeed, in every case he sought out hidden 
 motives, and stated them with force, but often with libellous 
 rancour. His taste for repeating private scandal, and for 
 drawing pictures of luxury and of immorality among both 
 1 Frags. 276-8. 2 Frag. 26. 
 
CH. xiv. TIMMUS. 437 
 
 Greeks and barbarians, 1 shows a very different order of mind 
 from that of Herodotus. He is in fact a self-conscious, rhe- 
 torical, Isocratic ape of the great historian. Nor do his in- 
 vectives against the increasing luxury of the age sound like the 
 outcome of sincere indignation, but rather of a sour and fault- 
 finding temper. 
 
 But withal, he must have been a man of considerable force, 
 and far the greatest of Isocrates' pupils. The very persecutions 
 he endured show that his furious invectives, and his angry ad- 
 vices on public affairs, had far more effect than the despised 
 pamphlets of his master. He is quoted particularly often by 
 Athenaeus on various manners and customs, which he had 
 minutely described, and these are unfortunately not the most 
 edifying or instructive portions of his works. In spite of his 
 strong self-assertion, and his unwearied diligence, no subse- 
 quent critic admitted him to the pinnacle he claimed above 
 his great predecessors in historiography. 2 
 
 § 594. I do not think that any of the numerous suc- 
 ceeding historians, 3 or the group of antiquarian writers who 
 
 1 Cf. in Muller frags. 33, 54, 65, 95, 129, 149, 178, 222, 243, 249, 
 260. 
 
 2 The utilisation of Theopompus by later historians — Nepos, Plutarch, 
 Diodorus, &c. — forms a parallel enquiry to those above cited as re- 
 gards Ephorus. The episode irepl Srjfiayuywv seems to have been often 
 thus transcribed. In addition to the tracts above given, which touch on 
 Theopompus as well as Ephorus, we have Bunger, Theopompea ( Wnrzburg, 
 1874) ; Natorp, quos auctores — secuti sint Diodorus, &'c. (Wiirzburg, 
 1876).; Riihl, die Quel ten Plut. in Leben des Kimon (Marburg, 1867); and 
 Schmidt's Perikleisches Zeitalter. These critics set up and overthrow all 
 manner of hypotheses on the indirect use of sources by late authors. But 
 as they are chiefly based on the unproved assumption that later transcribers 
 adhered with uniformity to the authority they had once selected, none of 
 them is likely to add much to our knowledge of lost authors. 
 
 3 Thus Timceus of Tauromenium, who was born in classical days 
 (about 350 B.C.), did not begin his literary work till late in life, after his 
 exile by Agathocles, and his settlement at Athens. The whole style of 
 his Sicilian history, his perpetual censure of his forerunners, his want of 
 that chastity and reticence which marked good Greek prose, unite in de- 
 grading him in our estimation to a writer of the silver age. Our chief 
 knowledge of him is from Polybius, who ' hoists him on his own petard ' 
 by frequent censuring of his angry criticisms. 
 
43S HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE, ch. XIV. 
 
 composed Atthides on the legendary and historical lore of 
 Athens, can be included in classical Greek literature. In no 
 case have we sufficient knowledge of them to judge of their style, 
 and there is no reason to think that any one of them reached 
 such excellence as to entitle him to any attention beyond that 
 claimed by the matter of his book. The age of originating 
 in literature was passing away. People who studied form had 
 unapproachable mcdels in the older masters. People who 
 desired new knowledge sought it in a great and wide- spreading 
 literature which was scientific in its aim, and sought merely to 
 impart knowledge in the plainest way. These critical and 
 scientific tendencies found a suitable atmosphere for their 
 growth beyond the limits of Greece, and in the new kingdom 
 which first mediated between purely Hellenic and non-Hellenic 
 culture. To enter upon the history of this period, and in this 
 foreign soil, must be reserved for a different work. 
 
 THE END, 
 
INDEX TO VOLUME II. 
 
 ABI 
 
 ABICHT, 36, 38 
 Abou-Maschar Matthias, 413 
 Abu-Simbel inscription, 2 
 Acusilaus, io, 12 
 ^Eolic school of poetry, 404 
 ^Eschines (philosopher), 357 
 iEschines (orator), 245, 292, 298, 299, 
 300, 306, 324, 326-334 passim, 347, 
 351, 354 sq., 368, 374 
 — citations from, 360, 363, 364 
 iEschylus, obscurity of, 9, 17, 21 (com- 
 pared with Plato), 178 (ignored by 
 Aristotle), 410 
 /Esop, 3 
 Agamemnon of ^Eschylus, cited, 265, 
 
 266 
 Agatharchides (geographer), 350 
 Agathias, 119 
 
 Agathon, 85, 135, 142, 185, 376 
 Agesilaus of Xenophon, 269 
 Agoratus, against, oration of Lysias, 
 
 144 
 Albert, M. Paul, 406 
 Albertus Magnus, 422 
 Albinus, 165, 170, 171, 208 
 Albracht, 434 
 
 Alcibiades, 6j t 69, 83, 188, 220, 223 
 Alcibiades, attack on, speech attri- 
 buted to Lysias, 149 
 Aldus, 39, 123 
 
 Alexamenos of Teos (philosopher), 171 
 Alexander the Great, 290, 299 sq., 
 
 387, 418, 424 
 Alexandrian school, 427, 438 
 Alexandrine epoch, 427, 438 
 Alkidamas, 78, 81, 95, 241, 244 sq. ( 
 
 358, 400 
 Allatius, 287 
 
 Ambrosian MSS. (of Odyssey) (Aris- 
 totle), 422 
 Anabasis of Xenophon, 262 sq. 
 
 ARI 
 
 Anacreon, 132 
 
 Ana?nnesis, doctrine of, in Plato, 185 
 
 Anaxagoras, 46, 48, 55 
 
 Anaximenes (rhetor) of Lampsacus, 
 219, 248 sq. 
 
 Anaximenes of Miletus, 12 
 
 Andocides, 40, 91, 120, 124, 125 sq., 
 135. 148 
 
 Androtion, 218 ; speech against, of 
 Demosthenes, 310 
 
 'Ai/Tt56<recoSj irepi, speech of Iso- 
 crates, 213, 216, 224 sq. 
 
 Antillus, 123 
 
 Antiochus of Syracuse, 26, 41, 430 sq. 
 
 Antiphon (the orator), 19, 66, 74, 76, 
 81 sq., 99, in, 125, 135, 151, 241 
 
 Antiphon (sophist), 61 sq. 
 
 Antisthenes (cynic), 69, 167, 219, 
 242 sq. 
 
 Apellikon of Teos, 422 
 
 Aphobus, speeches against, of Demo- 
 sthenes, 307 sq. 
 
 Apollonius (Rhodius), 427 
 
 Apollonius (Sophista), 46, 354 
 
 Apology of Socrates, of Plato, i6r. 
 175 ; of Xenophon, 271 
 
 Apostolical succession, pagan counter- 
 part of, 182 
 
 Aquinas, Thos., 422 
 
 Archias, founder of Syracuse, 430 
 
 Archidamos of Isocrates, 225 
 
 Archilochusj 133 
 
 Archinus, 185 
 
 'Aperrj, use of the word, 120 
 
 Aretino, Lionardo, 423 
 
 Aristarchus, 208 
 
 Aristeas' 'Api/u.a<X7reia, 26 
 
 Aristeides (the rhetor), 248, 345 
 Aristippus (philosopher), 69 
 Aristocrates, against the proposal of, 
 speech of Demosthenes, 312 sq. 
 
44Q 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ARI 
 
 Aristophanes (of Byzantium), 164, 
 
 209 
 Aristophanes (comicus), 9, 57, 74, 
 
 79, 135, 169, 183, 346 
 Aristophanes, on the property vf, 
 
 speech of Lysias, 145 sq. 
 Aristotle, 16, 20, 37, 49 (on climate), 
 
 51; 68, 79, 94, 139, 160, 175, 183, 
 
 184, 191, 20I, 202<, 205, 2o8, 224, 
 
 232, 237, 242, 245 (on Alkidamas), 
 
 249, 250, 356, 384 sq. 
 — poetical fragments cited, 393 sq. 
 Aristoxenus, 68 
 Arnold, Dr., 123 
 Arrian, 290 
 Asclepius (critic), 123 
 Asian eloquence, 218 
 Aspasia, 184, 275 
 Ast (ed. Plato), 166 
 Athanas of Syracuse, 432 
 Athenaeus, 118, 394, 436 
 Athenian constitution, tract on, 257 
 
 sq. ; citation from, 259 
 A tt hides, composers of, 438 
 'AttikuiW, copies of Demosthenes, 351 
 Augustine's City of God, 205 
 Averroes, 413 
 
 BABINGTON (ed. Hypereides), 
 378 
 Badham, C, 210 
 Baiter and Sauppe (Zurich edd.), 95, 
 
 131 
 Bauer, A., 17 
 Baur, F., 153 
 Bekker, 95, 116, 123, 209, 240, 352, 
 
 365 
 Benseler, 222, 224, 231, 234, 235, 240, 
 
 335- 342 
 
 Berenger, 286 
 
 Bergk, Theodor {Hist. Greek Lit), ' 
 360 
 
 Berkeley, 205 
 
 Bernays, J., 9, 392, 408, 414, 423 
 
 Bernhardy [Hist. Greek Lit.), 257 
 
 Betant, 124 
 
 Bible of the Greeks, Homer, 182, 200 
 
 Bigg, Mr. (ed. Thucyd.), 124 
 
 Blakesley, Mr., 29, 30, 39 
 
 Blass, Dr. F., 46, 62, 80, 81, 84, 89, 
 91, 93, 95, 109, no, 128, 129, 130, 
 131, 142, 148, 153, 155, 184, 218, 
 219, 222, 224, 225, 226, 231, 237, 
 238, 239, 246, 247, 251, 293, 295, 
 a© 1 . 3°5. 3 o6 » 3°7» 3° 8 » 3"i 3 X 5. 
 
 CIC 
 
 323, 326, 333, 337, 338, 339, 340, 
 
 342* 343» 344. 345. 35°* 353. 37°, 
 
 37L 376 ; 37 8 . 3 Sl 
 Bloomfield, 124 
 Bodleian MS. of Plato, 209 
 Boeckh, 2, 284 
 Bonitz, 168, 400, 408, 414 
 Bosstiet, 396 
 Brandis, 166 
 Brasseur de Bourbourg, Abbe* (on 
 
 archaeology of America), 204 
 Bredow, 37 
 Breitenbach, 272 
 Bribery in Athenian politics, 361 
 Brieglebe, 95 
 Broughton, 423 
 Brugsch (on Herodotus' Egyptology),, 
 
 39 
 Brundusium, 431 
 Biinger (on Theopompus), 437 
 Burke, Edmund, 202, 396 
 Bury, Mr., Pref., 119 
 Busiris of Isocrates, 220 
 Butler, Bishop, 175 
 By water, Mr., 10,414 
 
 CADMUS of Miletus, 10 
 Csecilius, of Calacte, 95, 303, 
 
 35 1. 357 
 
 Callimachus, 303, 350, 379, 427 
 
 Callinus, 17 
 
 Callippus, against, oration of Demo- 
 sthenes, 337 
 
 Campbell, Mr. L., 210 
 
 Campe, 249 
 
 Cartelier (on Isocrates), 239 
 
 Casa, 124 
 
 Castelvetro, 413 
 
 Cellario, 124 
 
 Champollion, 426 
 
 Chancery practice in Athens, 154 
 
 Charidemus, the mercenary, 312 sq. 
 
 Chariot and Pair, on the, speech of 
 Isocrates, 223 
 
 Charon, of Lampsakus, 10, 26, 27 
 
 Chersonese, on the affairs of, speech of 
 Demosthenes (cited), 321 
 
 Chcerilus, 23 
 
 Chorizontes, on Plato, 209 
 
 Chrysippus, 53 
 
 Chrysoloras, Manuel, 210 
 
 Chrysostom, Dion, 387 
 
 Cicero, 73, 96, 97, 122, 139, 205, 239, 
 243, 281, 290, 334, 343, 345, 350, 
 
 35L 3 6 4> 3 86 - 390, 39 1 ' 39 2 . 39 6 » 
 401, 422, 432 
 
INDEX. 
 
 441 
 
 CLA 
 
 Classen, 84, 99, 106, no, 116, 117, I 
 
 119, 120, 121, 123 
 Cleitophon of Plato, 175 
 Cleochares, 239 
 Cleon, 106, 114 
 
 Clermont-Tonnerre, Due de, 240 
 Clinton's Fasti, 80, 252 
 Cobet, 52, 95, 153, 235, 252, 253, 
 
 257, 258, 260, 271, 278, 282, 284, 
 
 287, 288, 328, 342, 352, 365, 374, 
 
 378 
 Collier, Sir R. (trans, de Corona), 352 
 Collmann, 434 
 Colometry and Stichometry, treated by 
 
 Blass, 344 
 Comedy, Aristotle on, 405 
 Commercial dishonesty in Athens, 224 
 Communism in Plato, 198 sq., 207 
 Comte, Auguste, 388 
 Concordances (Indices), Platonic, 210 ; 
 
 Isocratic, 240 ; Aristotelic, 408 
 Condottieri, Greek, locus classicus on, 
 
 3 J 4 
 
 Congreve's Aristotle, 423 
 
 Con on, against, speech of Demo- 
 sthenes, 336 
 
 Contest of Homer and Hesiod, 245 
 
 Cope, Mr., 249, 251, 396, 398, 399, 
 402, 403 
 
 Coraes, 240 
 
 Cornarius, 52 
 
 Corneille, 406, 414 
 
 Court oratory in Athens, 136 sq. 
 
 Cousin, 170, 210 
 
 Couvier, P. L. (on Xenophon), 286 
 
 Cratippus, 113, 122 
 
 Crawley, 124 
 
 Creasy, Sir E., 105 
 
 Critias, 31, in, 124, 125 ; 131 sq. 
 (prose), 258 
 
 Critiai of Plato, 203 
 
 Croesus, 24 
 
 Crown, on the, speech of Demosthenes, 
 328 sq. 
 
 Ctesiphon, against, speech of ^Eschi- 
 nes, 361 sq. 
 
 Culture, Isocrates' description of, 229 
 
 Curtius, Ernst, 106, 296, 301, 430 
 
 Cwiklinski, 117 
 
 Cyropcedeia, of Xenophon, 280 
 
 Cyrus, 24, 280 
 
 Cyrus the Younger, 264, 273 
 
 DACIER, Madame, 210 
 Dahlmann, 21 
 Dale, 124 
 
 EGY 
 
 Daremberg, 52, 286 
 
 Dareste, 308 
 
 De Foe, 30 
 
 Deinarchus, 234, 301, 373, 378 sq. 
 
 Demades, 305, 381 
 
 Demetrius, Phalareus, 382 sq. 
 
 Demetrius Magnes, 379 
 
 Demetrius (of Scepsis), 9, 93 
 
 Demochares, 350 
 
 Democratic restoration in Athens, 
 
 134. 135 
 
 Democritus, 46, 48, 55 
 
 Demosthenes, 79, 95, 142, 155, 158, 
 159, 184, 211, 217, 222, 231, 233, 
 234, 239, 258, 283, 292 sq., 354- 
 364, passim ; 366, 369-382, pas- 
 sim ; 385, 399 
 
 — citation from, 321 
 
 Des Cartes, 392 
 
 Deuterologia {SevrepoXoyla), 149, 3IO 
 
 Diagoras (of Melos), 55 
 
 Dialogue, prose, 170 sq. 
 
 Didymus (critic), 209 
 
 Dindorf, L., 288, 291 
 
 Dindorf (G.), 37, 352 
 
 Dindorf, W., 240, 365 
 
 Diodorus Siculus, 12, 128, 226, 368, 
 429, 433, 434 
 
 Diogeiton, against, speech of Lysias, 
 144, 148 (cited) 
 
 Diogenes (Laertius), 7, 70, 160, 163, 
 165, 242, 256, 282, 385 
 
 Diokles, of Karystus, 51 
 
 Dion, 161, 162 
 
 Dionysius (of Halicarnassus) , 16, 31, 
 
 35, 37, 41, 80, 93, IO9, 115, 122, 
 
 138, 142, 184, 225, 240, 242, 251, 
 292, 303. 3°4. 3*5. 3i9» 337* 
 343. 346, 3 6 4. 373. 379. 381. 3 8 5> 
 429 
 Dionysius (elder), of Syracuse, 142, 
 
 43i 
 Dionysius, of Miletus, 10 
 Dionysius (younger), of Syracuse, 
 
 162, 432 
 Diophantus, 218 
 Dobree, 339 
 
 T7ATON, 423 
 
 |~^ Economy described in Xeno- 
 phon, 273 
 
 Education, theory of, in Plato, igg l 
 in Isocrates, 229 
 
 Egger, 403 sq., 414 
 
 Egypt, MSS. found in, 377 
 
442 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ELI 
 
 Eliot, George, 412 
 
 Embassy, on the corrupt, speech of 
 Demosthenes, 326 sq. 
 
 Embassy, on the corrupt, speech of 
 ^Eschines, 360 sq. 
 
 Empedocles, 48, 73, 77 
 
 Epaminondas, 267 
 
 Ephorus, 218, 236, 269, 433 sq. 
 
 Epicharmus, 8, 17, 73 
 
 Epictetus, 290 < 
 
 Epicurus, 204, 289 
 
 Epigraphik, 2 
 
 Epimenides, 17 
 
 Epin'omis of Plato, 203 
 
 Epistles of Plato, 163 ; of Isocrates, 
 230 ; of Demosthenes, 339 sq. ; of 
 /Eschines, 365 
 
 Epistolographi Grceci, 287 
 
 Epitaphios of Thiicydides, 113 ; of 
 Lysias, 142 ; of Plato, 184 sq. ; 
 ascribed to Demosthenes, 306, 338 ; 
 of Hypereides, 375 sq. 
 
 Epitotnators of Xenophon, 287, 288 
 
 Eratosthenes, 209, 433 
 
 Eratosthenes, against, oration of Ly- 
 sias, 143 sq. 
 
 Ermerins (ed. Hippocrates), 52 
 
 Erotikos, Pseudo-Demosthenic, 338 
 
 Estienne, R. (Stephanus), 401 
 
 Ethopoiia (^eoiroiia), 138, 171 
 
 Ethos (in rhetoric) , 398 
 
 Eubulus (statesman), 282, 298, 357 
 
 Eucken, 400 
 
 Eucleides, 161, 179 
 
 Euenos of Paros, 97 
 
 Eumelus of Corinth, 10 
 
 Euripides, 19, 34, 54, 55, 63, 64, 69, 
 1 33< 244, 3 6 9- 406, 4 26 
 
 Euthydemus of Plato, 167, 183 sq. 
 
 Euihynous, against, speech of Isocra- 
 tes, 222 
 
 Euthyphron of Plato, 176, 177 sq. 
 
 Evagoras of Cyprus, 223 
 
 FALK (trans. Lysias), 153 
 Ficinus, 166, 209 
 Fick, 355 
 Figures of language and figures of 
 
 thought, 94 
 Firmani (on Thucyd.), 100 
 Foe's, 52 
 
 Foucquieres, M. Becq. de, 275 
 Francken, 153 
 Franke, 95, 365 
 Frohberger, 153 
 
 HER 
 
 GAISFORD, 38, 39, 251, 403 
 Galen, 51, 133 
 
 Geddes, Professor, 210 
 
 Gibbon, 237 
 
 Gilbert, Otto, 100, 101 
 
 Girard, J., 153 
 
 Glaukippus, son of Hypereides, 372 
 
 Gobineau, Comte de, 31, 32 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 19 
 
 Gbller, 123 
 
 Gorgias, 46, 47, 57, 58, 59, 61, 64, 
 73- 74- 77 sq., 9 2 > 93. 94. I5°> I 72, 
 212, 219, 237, 238, 241, 242, 247, 
 363, 376, 400 
 
 Gorgias, of Plato, 169, 192 sq. 
 
 Grant, Sir A., 385, 390 
 
 Gronovius, 39 
 
 Grosser, 268 
 
 Grote, ss, 57-8 (on the Sophists), 82, 
 106, 112, 114, 116, 120, 135, 139, 
 141, 163-169 (on Plato), 174, 181, 
 182, 183, 184, 189, 190, 193, 194, 
 207, 210, 264, 296, 297 (on De- 
 mosthenes), 301, 316, 320, 328, 329, 
 334. 34o. 3 62 > 3 66 > 373» 3 8 5. 39°. 
 430 
 
 HAACK, 123 
 Haase, 123 
 Hadrian (adorned Athens), 366 
 Halm, 362, 370 
 
 Halonnesus, speech on, 381, 382 
 Hamaker, 365 
 Harmony (dp/xovia), 93 
 Harpalus, the affair of, 300 sq. 
 Harpocration, Carus, 95, 158 
 Havet, 217, 224, 239, 400, 401, 423 
 Hecatasus, 10 sq., 26, 33, 35 
 Hegesippus, 381 
 Heinrich, 370 
 Heitland, 423 
 Heitz, 390 
 
 Helen of Isocrates, 219 sq. 
 Hellanicus, 16, 27, 40 sq., 105, 114, 
 
 125 
 
 Hellemca of Xenophon, 261 sq. 
 
 Hellenism of Plato, 206, 207 ; of Iso- 
 crates, 215 ; of Aristotle, 387 
 
 Heracleitus, 8 sq., 46, 50, 160, 180 
 
 Herbst, L. (on Thucyd.), 100 
 
 Hermes, Mutilation of, 126, 127 
 
 Hermann, K. F., 166 
 
 Hermias, 386 
 
 Hermogenes, 12, 13, 35, 61, 95, 133, 
 345 
 
INDEX. 
 
 443 
 
 HER 
 
 Herodes, on the murder of, oration of 
 Antiphon, 90 
 
 Herodrs Atticus, 133, 366 
 
 Herodicus (of Selymbria), 47 
 
 Herodotus, 3, 12, 14, 16 sq., 44, 45, 
 54, 64, 71, 73 (if with Antiphon), 92, 
 93, 100 (and Thucydides), 103, 105, 
 115, 119, 151, 171, 215, 268, 280, 
 290, 346, 400, 418, 433, 436, 437 
 
 Herophilos (on Hippocrates), 51 
 
 Hesiod, 12, 72, 245 
 
 Hesychius, 355 
 
 Hiero of Xenophon, cited, 279 
 
 Hieronymus (critic), 239 
 
 Hipparchicus of Xenophon, 285 
 
 Hippias of Elis, 75 
 
 Hippocrates, 35, 44, 46, 47 sq. 
 
 Hippodamus, 248, 417 
 
 Hippys of Rhegium, 26, 41 
 
 Hirschig, 131 
 
 Hobbes, T., 124, 205 
 
 Hcelscher, 153 
 
 Hoheneck, Baron, 124 
 
 Holm, 434 
 
 Holzapfel, 434 
 
 Homer, 36, 122, 208, 245, 393, 404, 
 410 
 
 Homicide, locus classicus on, in De- 
 mosthenes, 313 
 
 Horses, and horsemanship, at Athens, 
 286 
 
 Hultsch, 199 
 
 Hyperbohis, 116 
 
 Hypereides, 79, 254, 284, 292, 298, 
 
 380 
 
 ,i, 3 66 - 3 6 7- 3 6 9. 370 sq., 379. 
 
 IAMBIST, 172, 405 
 Idleness of Socratists, 173 
 
 Idomeneus of Crete, 327 
 
 Indices ; vid. Concordances 
 
 Invalid Pauper, on behalf of speech 
 of Lysias, 146 sq. 
 
 Ion (of Chios), 26, 42 sq., 170, 271, 
 43o 
 
 Irving, Mr. Henry, 347 
 
 Isaeus, 154 sq., 211, 212, 294, 307, 309 
 
 Isocrates, 59, 63, 74, 78, 80,. 93, 135, 
 142, 149, 151-3 (cf. to Lysias), 155, 
 157-9 (and Isaeus), 167, 169, 184, 
 189, 206, 208, 211 sq., 241, 242, 
 244, 245-7 ( an d Alkidamas), 263, 
 266, 270, 278, 284, 309, 340, 341, 
 342, 344, 346, 357, 380, 386, 420 
 
 ■ — citation from the Panegyricus of, 
 227 ; Panathenaicus, 229 
 
 Ister (historian), 268 
 
 LON 
 
 JACOBS, F., 287 
 Jebb, Professor, 91, 95, 148, 153, 
 226, 239, 336 
 Jenicke, 370 
 John of Malala, 20 
 Jones, Wm., 158 
 Jowett, Professor, 141, 163, 166, 170,. 
 
 198, 205, 209, 210 
 Jury System, Athenian, 155, 156 
 
 KA0AP2I2, aesthetic use of, 408 
 Kersobleptes, 316, 319 
 Kiessling, 367, 370, 376 
 Kimon, 42, 43, 100, 101 
 Kirchhoff, 2, 19, 21, 22, 121, 131^ 
 
 258, 259, 333 
 Korax, 73, 74, 137 
 Kothokidse, 355 
 Kratylus, of Plato, 181, 182 
 Kriiger, 252 
 
 Ktesias, 37, 43 sq., 51, 280, 290 
 Kiihner, 272 
 Kyprianos, 224, 268, 287 
 
 LACHARES, 345 
 Lakritos, 218 
 
 Landor, Walter S., 205 
 
 Laodamas, 218 
 
 Lascaris, Janus, 95 
 
 Laudahn, A., 294 
 
 Laurium, mines at, 284 
 
 Laws of Plato, 167, 201 sq. 
 
 Leake, Colonel, 357 
 
 Leibnitz, 210 
 
 Leicester, Earl of, 101 
 
 Leisure in Athens, 173 
 
 Leland, 352 
 
 Leo X., 209 
 
 Leochares' statue of Isocrates, 217 
 
 Leocrates, against, speech of Lycur- 
 gus, 368 
 
 Leodamas (orator), 358 
 
 Leptines, in reply to, speech of De- 
 mosthenes, 311 sq. 
 
 Lessing, 406 
 
 Leucippus (atomist), 55 
 
 Lexica, Herodotean, 39 ; Thucy- 
 didean, 124 ; Xenophontic, 291 ; 
 cf. also Concordances. 
 
 Libanius, 310 
 
 Licymnius, 78, 81 
 
 Littre\ 48, 50, 51, 52 
 
 Logic in Plato, 179 
 
 Logographers, 137 sq. 
 
 Longinus, 14, 377, 410 
 
444 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 LOV 
 
 Love, Platonic theory of, 188, 190 
 Lucian, 351 
 Lycophron (poet), 427 
 Lycophron (sophist), 248, 421 
 Lycurgus (orator), 234, 284, 348, 
 
 364 sq., 374, 375 
 Lycurgus (Spartan legislator), 3 
 Lysias, 74, 79, 93, 94, 115, 129, 131, 
 
 135, 136 sq., 155, 157, 158, 185, 
 
 189, 211, 222, 223, 234, 239, 307, 
 346, 380, 381, 399 
 
 — citation from, 148 
 
 Lysikles, general at Chseronea, 368 
 
 Lysis of Plato, 169 
 
 JUfA CA R TA TUS, against, speech 
 
 •'-"■*■ of Demosthenes, 337, 339 
 
 Machiavelli, 74, 205, 259, 419, 423 
 
 Mactzner, 95, 370, 381 
 
 Malebranche, 205 
 
 Mandeville, 205 
 
 Mantitheos, for, speech of Lysias, 145 
 
 Marco Polo, 30 
 
 Margites, 404, 405 
 
 Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary 
 
 (his library), 377 
 Megalopolitans, for the, speech of De- 
 mosthenes, 296, 316 
 Meidias, against, speech of Demo- 
 
 thenes, 323 sq. 
 Meier, 55, 131, 367 
 Meineke, 405 
 Melanchthon, 370 
 Melic poetry, 404 
 Melissus, 46, 219 
 Memoirs ('AiroixvqiJ.ovevfj.aTa) of Xeno- 
 
 phon, 270 sq. 
 Menander, 79, 377, 382, 412 
 Menexenos of Plato, 174, 184 sq. 
 Menon of Plato, 185 sq. 
 Mercenaries, Greek, 265 
 Michaelis, Prof., 101 
 Miletus, destruction of, 15 
 Millingen, 357 
 Milton, 411 
 Mitchell's Index Grcscitatis, Platonic, 
 
 210 ; Isocratean, 240 
 Moerbeke, Wm. de, 403, 422 
 Montfaucon, 365 
 Monument to Isocrates in the Kyno- 
 
 sarges, 217 
 Moral guilt, consciousness of, among 
 
 Greeks, 200 
 More, Sir Thos., 205 
 Moses, compared with Plato, 166 
 
 PAR 
 
 Mozart's Requiem analogous to 
 
 Plato's Phcedon, 187 
 Mullach (FPG.), 80, 81 
 Miiller, E., 408 
 Miiller, Cax\{FHG.), 12, 13. 26, 40, 
 
 42, 248, 386, 388, 429, 430, 433, 
 
 435, 436, 437 
 Miiller, K. O., 18, 19, 109 
 Muller-Strubing, 119 
 Mure, Colonel, 11, 13, 15, 17, 21, 22, 
 
 41, 103, 106, 108, 109, no, 112, 
 
 113, 263, 264, 269, 277 
 Mysteries, on the, oration of Ando- 
 
 cides, 129 sq. 
 Mythology, comparative, anticipated 
 
 by Aristotle, 393 
 
 NATORP, 437 
 Negative dialectic, 175 sq, 
 Neo-Platonists, 166, 205 
 Newman, F. W., 423 
 Newton, Mr., 25, 37 
 Nicolai, 38, 209, 370 
 Nicolas d'Oresme, 420, 422 
 Nicomachean Ethic of Aristotle, 424 sq. 
 Niebuhr, 23 
 Nitsche, 291 
 
 rCCONOMICUS of Xenophon, 
 273 sq. 
 
 Olynthians, for the, speech of De- 
 mosthenes, 297, 320 
 
 Oncken, 59, 106, 418, 420, 423, 424 
 
 Onetor, against, speeches of Demo- 
 sthenes, 308 sq. 
 
 Oratory, Isocrates' rules for, 232 sq. 
 
 Oratory, rise of Greek, 72 sq. ; re- 
 marks on Greek oratory, 340 ; of 
 Demosthenes, 341 sq. 
 
 Origen, 350 
 
 Orpheus (Thracian bard), 5 
 
 Orphic rites, 5 
 
 PALEY, Mr. F. A., 36, 335 
 Pamphila, 16, 40 
 Panathenaicus, of Isocrates, 229 
 Panegyricus of Isocrates, 226 sq. 
 Panhellenism of Demosthenes, 317 
 Panthea and Abradates, Romance of 
 
 (in Cyrop&dia), 281 
 Panyasis, 17, 23, 36 
 Papyri, with fragments of Hypereides, 
 
 377 
 Parasite (of Xenophon), 275 
 
INDEX. 
 
 445 
 
 PAR 
 
 Parisian MS. of Demosthenes, 352 
 
 Parmenides, 53, 214 
 
 Parmenides of Plato, 181 
 
 Parthenon frieze, 286 
 
 Pasion, 224 
 
 Pausanias, 74, 77, 101, 248, 254 
 
 Peace, on the, speech of Demosthenes, 
 
 321 sq. 
 Peisistratus, 23 
 Pericles, 42, 43, 75, 76, 113, 118, 169, 
 
 189, 366, 424 
 Perrot, M. G., 82, 85, 141, 153, 335, 
 
 336 
 Petersen, 100 
 Phcedon of Plato, 186 sq. 
 Phcedrus of Plato, 189 sq. 
 Phaleas, 417 
 Pheidias, 379 
 Pherecydes of Leros, 10 
 Pherecydes of Syros, 7 
 Philebus of Plato, 181 
 Philemon (poet), 427 
 Philemon (grammarian), 38 
 Philetas, 427 
 Philip of Macedon, 228, 297 sq. 
 
 Philip' s Letter, 315 
 Philippics of Demosthenes, 297, 298, 
 
 318 sq., 322 sq. 
 Philiscus, 141 
 Philistus, 431 sq. 
 Philochorus, 379 
 Philonicos (criticus), 239 
 Philoponus, 385 
 
 Philosophy, early Greek, 6 sq., 53 sq. 
 Philostratus, 225 
 Phocion, 131, 298, 357, 381 
 Phormio (Admiral), 106 
 Phormio, on behalf of, speech of De- 
 mosthenes, 335 
 Photius, 44, 95, 351, 391 
 Piety, Plato's Euthyphron on, 177 
 Pindar, 4, 79, 232, 343 
 Plataicus of Isocrates, 225 
 Plato (philosopher), 29, 49, 58, 6o, 
 63, 65, 67-9 (on Socrates), 74, 77-9 
 (on Gorgias), 8i, 83, 96, 97, 131, 
 132, 135, 136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 
 149, 159, 160 sq., 211, 218, 220, 
 229, 234, 235, 242, 270, 276, 277, 
 278, 281, 289, 343, 346, 357, 373, 
 385, 386, 391-4 (relation to Aris- 
 totle), 406, 417, 421, 422, 426 
 Plutarch, 3, 38 (on Herodotus), 42, 
 43-4 (and Ktesias), 79, 95, 100, 118, 
 122, 140, 268, 278, 302, 306, 324, 
 327. 35°. 355. 427, 428, 429 
 Poetic of Aristotle 170, 403 sq. 
 
 SCH 
 
 Politics of Aristotle, 414 sq. 
 
 Politicus of Plato, 196, 201 
 
 Polus (sophist), 81 
 
 Polybius, 199, 350, 427, 430, 433 
 
 Polycrates (the sophist), 218, 220 
 
 247, 272 
 Poppo, 123 
 
 Iiopot of Xenophon, 282 sq. 
 Porphyry, 38 
 
 Postgate (on Aristotle), 423 
 Prodicus, 58, 61, 75 
 Proems of Demosthenes, 339 
 
 HpoKarak-qxI/eK;, 363 
 
 Protagoras, 58, 60, 61, 75, 77 
 Protagoras of Plato, 169, 193, 194 
 
 ■^ajaart^os, 2 
 
 Pythagoras, 6, 7, 214, 220 
 
 QUINTILIAN, 122, 249, 350, 
 3 6 4. 377, 3 86 . 39 1 . 401, 43 2 
 
 RAUCHENSTEIN, 153, 240 
 Rawlinson, Prof., 20, 39 
 
 Rawlinson, Sir Henry, 39 
 
 Rehdantz, 352 
 
 Reinhardt, 246 
 
 Reiske, 158, 240, 365 
 
 Religion, Greek, 4 sq. 
 
 Republic of Plato, 169, 195 sq. 
 
 Rettig, 258, 259, 277 
 
 Rhetoric, Plato's criticisms on, 190 sq. 
 
 Rhetoric, treatise on, by Aristotle, 
 396 sq. 
 
 Rhodians, for the, speech of Demo- 
 sthenes, 296, 316 
 
 Ribbing, 166 
 
 Rose Val. , 249, 389 
 
 Riihl, 437 
 
 Ruskin's (Mr.) Bibliotheca Pastoruin, 
 275 
 
 Rutilius Lupus, 350, 370 
 
 SALLUST, 122 
 Sandys, J. E., 240, 335, 403 
 Sauppe, G., 225, 257, 259 
 Sauppe, H., 95, 222, 260, 272, 275, 
 
 287, 288, 291, 339, 434 
 Scaino da Salo, 420 
 Schafer, A., 293, 296, 301, 303, 305, 
 306, 307, 315, 319, 335, 337, 339, 
 
 34°. 353. 3 6 C 374 
 Scheibe, 153, 159, 365, 369 
 Schenkl, 291 
 Schiller, 411 
 
446 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 SCH 
 
 Schleiermacher, 166 
 Schliemann, Dr., 523 
 Schmidt, 437 
 
 Schneider, J., 275, 288, 290, 423 
 Scholl, 152 
 
 Schomann, 158, 159, 199 
 Schone, 123, 124, 174 
 Schweighauser, 39 
 Scylax, 10, 12, 24, 26 
 Segni, 420 
 Sengebusch, 208 
 Separatists on Plato, 209 
 Serranus, 166 
 Sextus Empiricus, 392 
 Seysell, Claude de, 124 
 Shakespeare, 201, 403, 411 
 Shilleto, 328 
 
 Simcox, Mr., 124, 351 ; Messrs. Sim- 
 cox, 334 
 Simon, in reity to, speech of Lysias, 
 
 146 
 Simon (treatise on the horse), 285 
 Simonides of Amorgos, 17 
 Simonides of Ceos, 232 
 Simplicius, 46, 391 
 Slavery, reflections on, by Aristotle, 
 
 416 
 Sluiter, 131 
 Smith, Sydney, 276 
 Socrates, 57, 58, 65 sq., 100, 132, 
 
 160, 161, 172, 173, 211, 272, 274, 289 
 Solon, 3, 132, 417 
 Sophistes, of Plato, 181 
 Sophists, 56 sq. 
 Sophists, against the, speech of Iso- 
 
 crates, 212 sq., 220 
 Sophocles, 8, 18, 19, 54, 64, 112, 357, 
 
 410 
 Sophron, 73, 170 
 Soranus of Kos, 47 
 Spartan State, 197, 199, 277 sq. 
 Spengel, 95, 191, 247, 249, 251, 315, 
 
 3 2 3. 33 8 - 351. 362. 399» 402, 403/ 
 
 420 
 Sprengel, 52 
 St. Hilaire, 420 
 Stahl, 123 
 Stahr, 390, 414 
 Stallbaum, 210 
 Statues of Demosthenes, 302; of Ms* 
 
 chines, 357 ; of Aristotle, 388 
 Stein, H., 18, 19, 39 
 Stephanus (of Byzantium), 13 
 Stephanus, against, speech of De 
 
 mosthenes, 337 
 Stesichorus, 17 
 StesimbrotusofThasos, 26, 42 sq., 170 : 
 
 TIM 
 
 Stobaeus, 62, 249, 287 
 
 Stobart, Mr., 377 
 
 Strabo, 13, 17, 390 
 
 Strozzi, 124 
 
 Struve, 37 
 
 Suidas, ii, 17, 52, 247, 351, 367, 431 
 
 2w7-a.£eio?, Trepl, of Demosthenes, 323 
 
 Susemihl, 248, 386, 412, 414, 418, 423 
 
 Sydenham, 210 
 
 Symmories, on the, of Demosthenes, 
 
 296, 314 sq. 
 Symposium of Plato, 172, 174, 187 
 
 sq. j of Xenophon, 275 sq. 
 
 TATIAN, 8 
 Te X vai of oratory, 231 
 Technical treatises, ancient, 285 
 Tetralogies of Antiphon, 86 sq. 
 Thales, 6 
 Thecetetus of Plato, 179, 180 ; cited, 
 
 180 
 Theagenes (of Rhegium), 7 
 Themistius, 388 
 Themistocles, 73, 75, 76 
 Themistogenes (author of Anabasis), 
 
 263, 266, 287 
 Theodectes, 399 
 Theodorus of Byzantium (sophist), 
 
 97, 139 
 
 Theodorus of Cyrene (mathematician),. 
 161 
 
 Theodorus the actor, 356 
 
 Theomnestus, against, speech of Ly- 
 sias, 147 
 
 Theon, 433 
 
 Theophrastus,, 143, 378, 382 
 
 Theopompus, 122, 218, 243, 433, 4341 
 sq. 
 
 Theramenes, 143 
 
 Thirlwall, 360, 366, 430 
 
 Thompson, W. H., 210 
 
 Thrasylus (rhetor), 165 
 
 Thrasymachos of Chalkedon, 96, 97 
 
 Thucydides, 8, 22, 29, 30, 32, 36, 37, 
 48, 50, 64, 73, 76, 79, 83, 84, 85, 86,. 
 90, 91,93, 94, 98 sq.,125, 127, 133, 
 151, 171, 174, 184, 205, 226, 236, 
 254, 259, 260, 261, 316, 320, 342, 
 346, 375, 400, 426, 431, 433, 435 
 
 — citations from, 111-113 
 
 Thurot, 403, 423 
 
 Timosus (historian), 432, 437 
 
 Timceus of Plato, 203 
 
 Timarchus, speech against, of ^Es- 
 chines, 358 
 
 Timocles (comicus), cited, 303, 372 
 
INDEX. 
 
 447 
 
 TIM 
 
 Timocrates, attack on, of Demo- 
 sthenes, 311 
 
 Timotheus, 217, 218 
 
 Tisias (rhetor), 74, jj, 84, 137 
 
 Trier arch 's crown, about the, speech 
 of Demosthenes, 309 
 
 Trikaranos of Anaximenes, 248 
 
 Trogus, 434 
 
 Twining (ed. Arist. Rhet.), 414 
 
 Tyrannio, 390 
 
 Tyrtseus, 17, 369 
 
 Tyrwhitt, 414 
 
 Tzetzes, 52, 245 
 
 UEBERWEG, 414 
 Ullrich, 99, 100 
 Ulpian, 351 
 Urbinate, MS. of Isocrates, 240 
 
 251, 392, 403, 
 
 VAHLEN, 248, 
 4i4. 4 2 3 
 Valla, 39 
 Vater, 131 
 
 Victorius, Petrus, 249, 403, 413, 420 
 Voemel, 352, 382 
 Vollbrecht, 268 
 Volquardsen, 434 
 Voltaire, 400 
 
 WACHSMUTH, C, 258, 259 
 Warden, Mr. Harris, 377 
 Weidner, A. 
 
 35L 365 
 
 ZUR 
 Weil, H., 17, 306, 307, 308, 328, 338, 
 
 339- 350 
 Weisse, 174 
 Welcker, 406 
 Wesseling, 39 
 Westermann, 308, 340 
 Wilamowitz-M Ollendorff, 100 
 Wilkinson, Sir G., 39 
 Winckelmann, 251 
 Wolf, F. A., 312, 333 
 Wolffgarten, 434 
 
 Women, Plato and Aristotle on, 415 
 Writing, early specimens of, 2 
 Writing compared with Oral Teaching 
 
 by Plato, 191 sq. 
 
 XANTHUS (Historian), 10, 26 
 Xenarchus, 170 
 Xenophanes, 7, 53, 111 
 Xenophon, 61, 68, 99, 102, 115, 116, 
 119, 122, 128, 132, 135, 136, 215 
 220, 226, 242, 252 sq., 433 
 
 ZACCHER (trans. Herodotus), 39 
 Zeller, 9, 55, 59, 160, 163, 165, 
 168, 174, 249, 250, 384, 389, 390, 
 424 
 Zeno (the Eleatic), 46, 56, 65, 171 
 Zoilus (' Scourge of Homer '), 247, 
 
 249 
 Zosimus, 332 
 Zurborg, H., 284 
 
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