Orationes 45

1. I hold that anyone who is to say what is needed, or to cast a vote rightly, ought not to look to this — ought not to begrudge it — if some earlier man of established reputation happened to speak otherwise about the same things; rather, he should seek, here as everywhere, the side on which the truth most probably lies, and wish that side to prevail. For it would be absurd that in the assemblies the first speaker should not be believed, nor in the courts of law — and indeed everyone knows well that if cases were decided in that fashion, none of the defendants would ever be acquitted, since they of course always speak after the prosecutor — and yet, in the contests of speech and in the judgment of them, that those who came first in time should prevail, rather than those who can demonstrate the matter in dispute; that tragic poets and lyre-players and the rest who practise music should not draw the same lot for their merit as for their order of appearance — otherwise it would have been enough simply to draw lots — but that whoever competes most beautifully should be crowned and proclaimed first, even if he happened to come on last; while those who claim to be contestants or judges of the more refined contests should so

2. greatly exalt time as to suppose that the later are entirely inferior, and that they could not possibly discover anything better than what has already been said. Yet I observe that even in the athletic contests it is not the man who first entered his name who goes away victorious, but the man who, in the trial itself, best displays the very thing for which he entered. And this holds true throughout, so that even in the prizes themselves — I will add, even in those of speed itself — the token is awarded not to those who came forward at the start, but to those who passed first at the end. And how is it not a great absurdity that those who practise or honour the things that depend on the body's fortune should both now and formerly have so greatly honoured the beauty and justice of speech, while those who devote themselves to speech, and who would not even consent to live apart from this pursuit, should be so idle — or rather so unjust — as to rely on one single authority about everything, if a man happens to have come earlier, and should choose to admire names instead of the truth, as though our task were to assume what we ought, rather than to discover what is better; and that they should set the very laws themselves in motion, if it is advantageous, but should not admit, on the same terms as the first, the arguments about the things that by nature abide forever — that they should revere those who have taken possession before them as if they were boundary-stones or pillars, and that, though here they ought to repeal the earlier laws by their opposites, they should not do so, but should think others worthy of the same place as those laws; and that it should be permitted to add to the common oaths a clause cancelling and inserting whatever, on later consideration, seems good to them, while the arguments which they would always and forever examine on the same authority

3. they should add only to the time that has gone by — as though one were to say that only those born first ought to enjoy health — and should not even see this, that such a verdict and such a reckoning is not even profitable to the very first men whom they honour. For if we must yield to time and measure worth by it, then the reverence which all now feel toward those men no longer has any place. For on that reckoning Iasus would win the prize in speech, and Criasus and Crotopus and Phoroneus, and any Argive out of legend, and Deucalion, or whoever else came from one place or another, and Lycaon from Arcadia and Cecrops from Athens, instead of those now celebrated; and among the nations, the Phrygians, on the strength, I suppose, of the testimony of bekos. And I have passed over Callaethyia, who is said to have been the best of women and of men alike. If we judge in this way, then Codrus will have no share in the honour, but he too will be a child compared with those I have named, and no ancient at all; and going on by little steps in this manner, we shall be inquiring whether anyone existed before the moon was. But for Homer and Hesiod and those who have triumphed down to our own day — Plato, if you like, and Demosthenes, and those a little before them — there will be no hope, even after the longest span of time, that a like reputation should arise, since the period before them keeps advancing equal with them forever. But if this is plain to all, that these men too, surpassing their predecessors in nature and in power, eclipsed them, then it is not reasonable to bar absolutely all who come later, nor to disbelieve it if someone who has shared in the present age is able to contribute a judgment about the matters before us; rather, it is, as it seems, from the very men whom we honour that

4. we ought to learn, since we know how much it matters whether we merely admit a thing or attend to it. Now it is perhaps just to reverence all the ancients, but not to shudder at them — at least not if we are to seem to honour those named for their speeches rather than the speeches themselves; and that, if one must hold this view toward anyone, one may hold it toward Plato also, I need no other witness, but he himself suffices — not only by the things he everywhere proclaims, urging that nothing be put before the truth, but also by a small example. For if he, in censuring Homer about many things, though Homer came so long before him, is not deprived of a hearing, but has something to say to those who are indignant at whatever he says, then, by Plato himself, as it seems, it is possible — even for those who praise that man and free him from every charge — to dare to listen, if someone else seems to say something contrary to him, not making this an accusation, but only if he is left behind in the arguments about the matters themselves. The things, then, that he has said about rhetoric, more contentiously than was fitting, having set up a meeting of Gorgias and Socrates at Athens — come, let us examine them and show how they stand. For it would be a strange thing if he, having undertaken to accuse rhetoric openly, did not in a certain way deprive her of the arguments on her own behalf — but allotted them to two or three to speak in answer, as one does in the form of dialogues — and yet we, who are able and have chosen to defend her wholly, should not dare to do so, as though we ought to say against Plato as many things as he himself wished to say against himself. It seems absurd to me that Plato should not have been ashamed to find fault with rhetoric, of which perhaps he himself had some share, while we should be ashamed to speak on rhetoric's behalf, for fear that someone should be displeased on his account. And apart from this, if we must say nothing in answer, but rhetoric must be convicted by default as in a court of law, and that

5. too when it is an art of speech, this would be one kind of injunction; but if there is someone who ought to speak, it would befit us above all, so that in this very first matter we may at once display the justice of the cause we champion — that it is not the act of one who preserves reason on rhetoric's part to refuse her a share in her own gifts, the very faculty by which men plead on behalf of others; but one of two things must follow: either she must seem to be such as Plato has wished, or she must be made to seem such. For this is not one and the same everywhere, that silence confirms the charges; rather, at once she will both fail of justice and have her dignity refuted upon herself. For she will seem unable to preserve justice. And I, chiefly and first out of reverence for the speeches themselves, and from the belief that one ought to come to their aid as to one's parents, each according to his power in them, and then also for the sake of the rest of mankind — that they may not be wrongly led astray about the greatest matters, nor fail to recognize that the more brilliant and great a man is, the more readily they trust him; and that they may not, thinking they reproach her whom it is not lawful to hear ill of in any way, willingly deprive themselves of the fairest things — for these reasons, equally unwilling to speak, I have undertaken this discourse, both for the sake of justice and of usefulness. Such, then, is the dignity of the present contest. And for this venture I call upon Hermes the god of speech, and Apollo the leader of the Muses, and all the Muses, to be my guides — most of all by reason of the very nature of the present invocation, since the gift of these gods is the very thing for which, and through which, we contend; and next because two reasons coincide. For neither against the meanest of the Greeks, nor on behalf of

6. the meanest of things, is this discourse. And there are some who, even among his recorded sayings, most admire those which he has used here and on these very topics. So that everywhere we truly need divine aid. Therefore, just as those who bring indictments for illegal proposals do, we shall make our beginning from the very things he has said. They are these. "It seems to me, then, Gorgias, that it is a pursuit which is not an art, but belongs to a soul that is given to guessing and is bold and naturally clever at dealing with men. The chief name I give it is flattery. Of this pursuit there are, it seems to me, many other parts, and one is cookery, which seems to be an art, but, as my account holds, is not an art, but a knack and a routine. And of this I call rhetoric a part, and also cosmetics and sophistry — these four parts dealing with four objects. So if Polus wishes to inquire, let him inquire, for he has not yet learned what part of flattery I say rhetoric is, but it has escaped him that I have not yet answered. And he asks again whether I do not think it a fine thing; but I will not answer him whether I think rhetoric a shameful or a fine thing before I first answer what it is. For that is not just, Polus. But if you wish to inquire, ask what part of flattery I say rhetoric is. — I do ask, then; answer me, what part. — Would you understand if I answered? Rhetoric, by my account, is an image of a part of statecraft. — What then? Do you say it is fine or shameful? — Shameful, for my part; for I call evil things shameful, since I must answer you as one who already knows what I mean. — By Zeus, Socrates, I myself do not even understand what you mean."

7. — Naturally, Gorgias; for I am saying nothing yet that is clear. But this Polus here is young and keen. — Well, let him be; tell me, rather, how you say rhetoric is an image of a part of statecraft. — Then I will try to declare what rhetoric seems to me to be; and if it is not in fact this, Polus here will refute me. You call something a body, I suppose, and a soul? — Of course. — And do you not think there is a certain good condition of each of these? — I do. — What then? An apparent good condition, but not a real one? Such a thing as this I mean: many seem to have their bodies in good condition, whom one could not easily perceive to be otherwise, except a physician or one of the trainers. — You speak truly. — Such a thing as this, I say, exists both in body and in soul, which makes the body and the soul seem to be in good condition, while they are no better off in fact. — That is so. — Come now, let me show you more clearly, if I can, what I mean. There being two objects, I speak of two arts. The one concerned with the soul I call statecraft; for the one concerned with the body I cannot give you a single name in the same way, but, the care of the body being one thing, I speak of two parts of it, the one gymnastic, the other medicine. And of statecraft, the counterpart to gymnastic is legislation, and the counterpart to medicine is justice. These do indeed share something with one another, since each pair is concerned with the same object — medicine with gymnastic, and justice with legislation; yet they differ from one another in some respect. There being these four, and each tending always to what is best — some the body, some the soul — flattery, perceiving this (I do not say knowing, but guessing), has divided herself into four, and slipping under each of the parts, pretends to be the very thing she has slipped under; and she takes no thought for what is best, but with what is most pleasant hunts down folly and deceives it, so as to seem worth most.

8. Now under medicine cookery has slipped, and pretends to know the best foods for the body, so that if a cook and a physician had to contend before children, or before men as foolish as children, as to which understands good and bad foods, the physician or the cook, the physician would die of starvation. Flattery, then, I call this, and I say such a thing is shameful, Polus — for it is to you that I say this — because it aims at what is pleasant apart from what is best. And I say it is not an art but a knack, because it has no account to give of the things it applies, of what nature they are, so that it cannot tell the cause of each; and I do not call anything an art that is an irrational thing. If you dispute these points, I am willing to submit an account. Under medicine, then, as I say, cookery lies as a flattery; and under gymnastic, in the same manner, cosmetics — a thing knavish and deceitful and base and illiberal, deceiving with shapes and colours and smoothness and dress, so as to make a man draw to himself an alien beauty and neglect the beauty that is his own, the beauty that comes through gymnastic. So, that I may not be long-winded, I am willing to tell you, as the geometers do — for perhaps by now you would follow me — that as cosmetics is to gymnastic, so is sophistry to legislation; and as cookery is to medicine, so is rhetoric to justice."

Here there is no demonstration whatever, nor any refutation advanced of necessity; the thing is simply laid down as if granted — the very point about which there was much sweating before — no differently than if he were asking his hearers to concede these things as a favour. And yet, if it is ridiculous to assume what is in question as though agreed, how is it reasonable, from the very start, to assume those things which it would be ridiculous so much as to inquire into? For how is it not ridiculous to inquire whether rhetoric and cookery are of the same nature? Yet he has taken the matter as though agreed.

9. And one might see it in this way: if, taking out the name of rhetoric and putting in the name of philosophy in its place, one were then to use all the same terms about philosophy. And let no one condemn the argument as boorish or as cold. For, in the first place, when men champion one of two sciences or faculties, even if they utter every kind of blasphemy against the others, we shall not say that there is anything boorish underlying it; but shall we not even grant them the right to defend themselves with the same weapons? And next, it will be said not for the sake of vulgar abuse, but for the sake of demonstration — which we say is nowhere to be found in his argument. Now it comes out thus: "It seems to me, then, Gorgias, that it is a pursuit which is not an art, but belongs to a soul that is given to guessing and is bold and naturally clever at dealing with men. The chief name I give it is flattery. Of this pursuit there are, it seems to me, many other parts, and one is cookery, which seems to be an art, but, as my account holds, is not an art, but a knack and a routine. And of this I call rhetoric a part, and cosmetics, and sophistry — these four parts dealing with four objects." And through all that has been said, then, if someone, leaving everything else in place, were to transfer rhetoric into philosophy, it follows, I suppose, that the words themselves are in no way hindered. But neither is the one the act of a sound mind, I think, nor the other the act of one who demonstrates. For none of the reproaches of cookery will touch philosophy, so long as it is something else in nature; nor does anyone, by the things with which he reviles cookery, refute rhetoric, so long as he does not show the necessity by which these are alike — unless he thought this very thing sufficient, to drive a man into the necessity of saying how cookery differs from rhetoric. Yet this I hesitate to say, but I cannot fail to learn that it is the mark of an insolent man.

10. Nevertheless I myself will assume this strange position. For in truth it is more outrageous and more strange, if the man who tries to teach that rhetoric is not shameful should be more ashamed than the man who first dared to censure it as a shameful thing. First, then, even if we were entirely to grant that it is not an art — the point he keeps turning to throughout the argument as a windfall — why shall we agree that it is therefore the more shameful? For if everything that comes to be without art were of necessity evil, or worth nothing, there would be something to the point; but as it is, there is no one who would not agree that the greatest and fairest things granted to men from the gods are at once outside of art and superior to art. And this has so prevailed among all men, both the clever and the many, that whatever any of the so-called Seven Sages — who are among the few easily numbered of all men — said or counselled, or any of the others whom we admire for their wisdom as foremost, no one attributes to a god, but the name of the man is assigned to each saying; whereas whatever the prophetesses at Pytho declare, when they are out of themselves, this both Plato and all men say "the Pythian spoke." And yet what art do they understand at that moment, who are not even able to keep guard over it or to remember it? And though medicine, which knows all human reasonings, and which is superior to cookery, is a small thing, I think, compared to the responses from Delphi — all those that have appeared to men, both privately and publicly, for diseases and sufferings of every kind — and though justice, which is ranked beside it, is a small thing, concerned with the judgment of affairs and with counsel: what will all the trainers together say, that their whole science is not outdone by two or three oracular sayings, if at least they understand this one small thing, to be temperate? And what of your august legislation, that discovers great things for men? It will yield, I think — or rather long since has yielded — to the women

11. who speak from the tripod. For men go to Delphi and inquire about their constitutions; and then they enact their laws in accordance with the voice that comes from the Pythia — beginning with Lycurgus, whom, though he came after many, we may call first for the sake of the argument. They say, then, that he established nothing for the Lacedaemonians without the voice that came from the god; yet, although Lycurgus, the best of the Greeks, established them, it was not on that account that the god won the reputation of having established the laws. Rather, Lycurgus, being the best of the Greeks, bore witness that the words of the Pythia — who knows nothing of her own — prevail; and she answered as it seemed good to the god; and he, in the part that came from the Pythia, won the reputation that attached to the laws. And yet these women have no special knowledge beyond other men, nor, if they do know anything, do they speak from what they have learned and foreknow, but, as they are moved on each occasion by the higher power, they send everywhere over the earth — to Ionia, to Pontus, to Cyrene, to the ends of the earth; and they do not foreknow, even if someone is coming to them or will inquire, before the evening and the sitting on the tripod, so to speak. But, just now ignorant even of their neighbours' affairs, on a sudden they know the affairs of all men, and address the people in the god's presence, and govern the common concerns of the earth, and are set up as leaders, for all the sciences and arts, of what must be done or said. And not even Plato passes them by; rather, he too thinks fit to question the Pythia whenever he establishes a polity and legislates, and says that one must then act, if the Pythia too concurs in the decision, but before that he is not confident. So be it: this, then, is the testimony to our argument from Delphi and from Apollo the Pythian. And what will you say of the priestesses at Dodona, who know just so much as it seems good to the god, and only so long as it seems good to him? And yet they had no such knowledge beforehand, before they entered into communion with the god, nor do they afterwards know anything of what they said,

12. but everyone knows it rather than they. So that those who were ignorant and who inquired of them have learned, while those who spoke do not even know what one ought to do, nor even this very thing, that they have spoken. Therefore, in setting down this testimony as coming from Zeus, you would not be in error. And these same things I say also about those at Claros and at the shrine of Ammon, and about all, men and women alike, who are concerned with oracles. And yet, shall we demand of all these men and all these women the reasoned account by which they give such counsel? And how shall we seem to be temperate? Or shall we say that these things are worth nothing and are flattery, simply because we cannot demand the account from those who spoke? Far more, surely, should we then fall short of temperance. Therefore from nearly all the gods, so to speak, a testimony and a vote has been brought in, that such an argument is worth nothing, which either seeks for the art, or disparages what is not accompanied everywhere by art. And as for all those who, having once submitted themselves to a god, and having no share of art even in small measure, have foretold many wonderful things not only to their own contemporaries but also to those who came after — such as, if you please, Bacis, the Sibyl, and others besides — even if they are not many, this too is in favour of our argument; for the greatest things have escaped the many. Who is so artful at speaking ill as to revile even these? And when I look to the poets, the common nurses and teachers of the Greeks, who expressly confess concerning themselves that they know nothing whatever — not even the number of the ships — but always and about everything trouble the Muses, begging them to tell them, since they themselves have the form and rank of prophets, while the Muses are true diviners about all things: it seems to me more fitting sometimes to adorn what is not accompanied by art, than to do one of two things — either to say that the poets compose adequately by knowledge, which they themselves do not admit, or to consider the gift of the Muses worth nothing. Then again, by Zeus,

13. is it not a strange thing that to speak in verse without art is no terrible thing, but often even divine, while to speak in this plain way the best things is terrible unless it is done with art? I, for my part, do not see the necessity. For how is it not absurd, if the poet, composing without art, will rightly imitate the orator and say the best things, while the orator himself will not say the best things unless with art? And surely the poets have called Hermes munificent, no less than any of the gods — indeed, I think, beyond the rest. Therefore, if divination proceeds through Apollo, and poetry through the Muses, and without these the things of art are cold, what prevents us from setting rhetoric too among the gifts of Hermes — a thing which truly ought to be called divine and superior to art? Up to this point, then, one might say that Plato is refuted by these very arguments; but I wish to show him refuted also by his own arguments. Now in a way this has already happened. For in the passages where we showed him taking refuge in the Pythia, in many places in the Laws, he did not escape this refutation. But nevertheless I wish to show him uttering the same things throughout the whole succession of the matters I have spoken of. For it will appear that the very things we now say, he himself has said before — if not in these very words, nor to the full measure of necessary demonstration, yet at least in the whole tenor of his argument. And I will remind him of the fair Phaedrus. For what he himself there does, setting the words of Lysias between his own, this I too will now do: I will set forth that man's own words, as if they were a law. "Where, then, is the boy?" he says. "Where for me is the boy, and the speech I made to the boy?" "Here he is, very near." "Come then, what does he say?" "If it were a simple thing that madness is an evil, the saying would be well; but as it is, the greatest of goods come to us through madness, given indeed by a divine gift.

14. For the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona, when mad, have wrought many fine things for Greece, both privately and publicly, but when in their sober senses few or none. And if we should speak of the Sibyl and the others who, using inspired divination, have foretold many things to many and set them right for the future, we should be lengthy in telling what is plain to all. But this is worth calling to witness, that the ancients who set the names did not think madness shameful or a reproach. For they would not have woven this very name into the fairest art, that by which the future is judged, and called it the 'manic' art, but, thinking it a fine thing whenever it comes by a divine dispensation, they so named it. But men now, in their want of taste, throwing in the t, have called it the 'mantic' art. And the inquiry of the sensible into the future, made through birds and the other signs, since it is furnished from intelligence by human conjecture, they named oionoïstic, which the young now, dignifying it with the o, call oionistic. By so much, then, as the manic is more perfect and more honourable than the oionistic — the name than the name, the work than the work — by so much do the ancients bear the fairer witness that the madness which is from a god is finer than the soberness that comes from men. But indeed, from diseases and the greatest sufferings — which arose somewhere among certain families from ancient wraths — this madness, arising and prophesying to those who needed it, found a release, by taking refuge in prayers to the gods and in their service. Whence, having obtained purifications and rites, it set free, both for the present and for the time to come, the man who possessed it, finding for him who was rightly mad and possessed a release from the present evils.

15. And a third kind of possession and madness, from the Muses, taking a tender and untrodden soul, rousing it and inspiring it to Bacchic frenzy in songs and the rest of poetry, adorns countless deeds of the ancients and instructs those who come after. But whoever comes to the gates of poetry without the madness of the Muses, persuaded that he will be a competent poet by art, is himself imperfect, and his poetry — the poetry of the sober — is eclipsed by that of the mad. So many fair works of madness coming from the gods, and still more, have I to tell of."

If, then, O Zeus and ye gods, there is a certain madness better than soberness, coming to men from the gods, how is it just to censure everything that comes to be without art, or how to consider rhetoric simply shameful and not to grant that there is some faculty superior to art? And if he has named the fairest of the arts "manic," and has said that poetry is simply not even an art, but an inspiration from the Muses — "but whoever comes to the gates of poetry without the madness of the Muses, persuaded that he will be a competent poet by art, is himself imperfect, and his poetry, the poetry of the sober, is eclipsed by that of the mad" — how is it not shown from both that art does not prevail, but that there are cases where the thing that is not enslaved to art is more brilliant and more dear to the gods? For thus does Plato now plainly determine that one must not seek for art in the greatest things. So that, if you please, the saying of Euripides and his own, by Zeus, applies: "This you hear from yourself, not from me," O you who have conceived so great a thought; or, if you please again, the saying of Aeschylus, "Not by others, but by his own wings" — those which you keep harping on in those arguments — "is he caught." And surely, if you set divination as coming from Apollo or even from Zeus, and the rites as coming from some other of the gods, and poetry from the

16. Muses, then neither will Hermes — brother of the one, son of the other — be at a loss for arguments about his own gift, but, attributing the arguments both to himself and to his father, he will speak what is true and just. And I think that those who have addressed these gods as "the gods of speech," ancients and moderns alike, differing not over a single letter, bear witness far more clearly than concerning madness, that we shall refer to a sufficient authority if we have any share of speech, even if we take refuge in no art. So be it. What came next, then? "So let us not fear this very thing, and let no argument disturb us by frightening us, that one must choose the temperate man as a friend before the one who is moved." Look at this also. "So let us not fear this very thing, and let no argument disturb us by frightening us," that it is not the man who succeeds by nature and by a divine portion who must win, but whoever is artful in a small way. But let him carry off the prize of victory who, besides that, has shown this, "that love is not sent from the gods for the benefit of the lover and the beloved." And this also, then, let him carry off the prize of victory who has shown, besides that, that speeches do not come from the gods to men for their entire and greatest benefit. "But we, on the contrary, must demonstrate," he says, "that such madness is given by the gods for the greatest good fortune." And do you not think Telephus thought these same things? But even if that man holds nothing in higher honour, yet we must demonstrate that for the greatest good fortune the power of speech came from the gods to men at the beginning, and now too is given, and will be given, in the rank of a fair thing, first and for all time to come. And surely, if Plato is trustworthy, this is

17. the very man who does not award the first prizes to art; and if no one even grants this, how is rhetoric shameful through his arguments? For my part, I hold him, on the whole, trustworthy as no other of the Greeks; but I would gladly ask those on his side which it is more worthy to trust him in, these things or those. And surely, if he is in the highest degree august, he is seen bearing witness for us, so that he is august on our behalf. For when we say the same things both to ourselves and to him, while he says them neither to himself nor to us, he is bearing witness rather than contradicting, by this very fact of not speaking the truth. Come now, let me bring forward another testimony from the same training-ground, instead of an image, said Plato. For Plato, I suppose, will not be vexed if Aeschines puts to the vote what Plato proposed: "I, if I thought I could help by any art, would convict myself of great folly; but as it is, I thought this had been given me by a divine portion in the case of Alcibiades. And none of this is worth wondering at." You hear a companion, who considers the same man wisest as you do — I will add, who also attributes the speeches to the same man as you do. "One must not wonder, O Plato," he says, "if a man who has not acquired an art is able to benefit men. For many of the sick become healthy, some by human art, some by a divine portion. Now those who become so by human art are healed by physicians; but those who become so by a divine portion are led by desire to what will profit them; and then they desired to vomit

18. when it was going to be of profit to them, and then to hunt, when it was going to be of profit to them to labour." Heracles, how expressly and conspicuously does Aeschines, the fellow-disciple of Plato, bear witness to Plato of these things, which we set forth a little before from him — things much more human and, by the gods, finer than those for which, for the sake of paradox, he has framed his argument! Therefore the man is seen both bearing witness to us as though by a herald, and as it were setting his seal upon this man's testimony; for he confirms Plato's words on our behalf. And surely, if many of the sick become healthy apart from physicians and art — and this when the art of physicians consists in nothing else than in making men healthy — then it is in no way improbable, nor need we call it outside human art, or rather a divine portion, that in speeches too men attain the best while using no art, even if it were most of all the work of the art to attain the best in speeches themselves. About this part, at least, I shall no longer contend with Plato by argument, that many were saved through a divine portion; nor, I suppose, will Aeschines the son of Lysanias be indignant with me, nor anyone else, if I say that I myself am able to bear witness to the words rather than to need his testimony on these points. But truly, like the god-inspired prophets who are initiated under the titles of the things themselves, I have the lesson from the gods themselves, by whom, in cases that no physician either knows how to name,

19. much less to cure, nor has seen happen in human nature, I live, escaping by various consolations and counsels from the god, beyond all that the present circumstances make probable. And many others besides me are sharers and witnesses of these things — not only Greeks but barbarians — both the companies of those who ever dwell in the shrine of Asclepius, and all who have had communion with the god in Egypt. And yet none of us, I suppose, has any share of art in these matters; rather, the very beginning of taking refuge in the gods is, as it were, the despising of art. And nevertheless — to speak with the gods' leave — neither do the gods dishonour such a reckoning of ours, nor have many regretted choosing the fortune that comes from the god before the art. But we even make use of dreams, not foreknowing, I think, in the evening what we are about to see, and we know what we must do to be saved, being ignorant up to that part of the hour in which the good came from the gods; and again — for like one chanting a refrain in a song I will say the same — understanding nothing whatever of art, we are able to speak, not only about what is profitable to ourselves, but often about what concerns others, if it seem good to the god; so that nothing prevents even the physicians from shuddering whenever they hear of the many such works. Is it, then, the dreams that make human affairs depend upon the gods, or is it that the gods care for men and save men through dreams? I, for my part, think the latter. What, then, O greatest of Greek tongues, said Cratinus, what is there to prevent a man from knowing the best things even while awake, without art, and being able to counsel others — if indeed dreams enable him to counsel others too? Or is it possible to be saved without art, and to save another by means one does not know, but not possible to give counsel without art at all — neither from one's own fortune, nor from the divine, nor, as Demosthenes says, from that of

20. one's hearers? And these things, moved by the argument itself and by what is, as it were, consecrated to the gods, I have perhaps drawn out at greater length; and let me have pardon both from Plato himself and from everyone, having suffered the very thing that was in the arguments. For it was not possible to restrain it, since a divine portion and salvation fell across my path. Therefore, although I was using testimony, I was compelled myself to bear witness to the argument. But I return again to the rest of the testimony. "I, on account of the love I happened to feel for Alcibiades, suffered nothing different from the Bacchants. For the Bacchants too, whenever they become inspired, draw honey and milk from the springs whence the others cannot even draw water; and so I too, knowing no lesson which by teaching I might benefit a man, nevertheless thought that, by being with him through my love, I made him better." Here the dialogue ends, not in riddles, nor in hidden meanings, nor saying the same things as we in some indirect way, but as if made on purpose for our use. If, then, dreams release the companies of Asclepius from the art of the physicians, and the Bacchants of Dionysus and the gifts of the Nymphs work changes when they become inspired, what is there shameful, or what outside nature, in receiving the inspired in speeches too, and in thinking it possible to refer to them as protectors, those who are in some way superior? And surely it cannot even be said that the witness is worth nothing, or far from the matter, or that we take refuge in a mere name. But if one must speak of some as genuine sons, so also of some as genuine companions, we have received Aeschines as a genuine companion of Socrates. And the false opinion of some bears witness too, who have supposed these writings to be Socrates' own; even if one ought not to trust them altogether — as I, for one, would be the first to deny — yet the error has not befallen through utter unreason, but these things were judged so very

21. proper and fitting to the character of Socrates, that this opinion too found room. And it seems to me that Socrates himself, even if no written speech of his is preserved, bears witness no less than either the august Plato or the refined Aeschines, but even more finely, and truly into the midst. For it is agreed that he said he knew nothing, and all who associated with him say this. And it is agreed again, on the other hand, that the Pythia declared Socrates the wisest. How, then, do these things stand? For it is not right to believe of the god, that he was wholly mistaken in declaring the wisest of men a man who erred in everything. He said, as it seems, that he did not practise an art, speaking truly. At any rate, though he associated with Anaxagoras, he is seen not to have honoured that man's pursuits. This one thing, then, Socrates bears witness to, that it is not shameful not to have acquired an art, since, speaking about himself, he was not ashamed. And there is a second, following from it. For there is no one who does not say of Socrates that he claimed that his divine sign gave him signs. Therefore it is impossible that the man whom the divine sign accompanied should have known nothing of what was needful. But that he knew nothing, he himself said; and saying so, he did not lie, since the god too called him wisest. What, then, remains as the meaning of his saying that he did not know? I think it is, that he did not know by art. And surely, if in neither case would he still be wisest — neither lying about himself (since lying is one of the shameful things), nor speaking truly (if not using an art were one of the simply shameful things) — then Socrates bears witness to the argument through both, both through what he denied and through what he admitted; and through Socrates the

22. god has borne witness about both, declaring him to be wisest; so that the testimony of Socrates, being twofold, is confirmed by another authoritative testimony, that from himself. And one might learn from the matter itself how the things from the oracle accord with the speech and life of Socrates. For how is it not reasonable that the man who lived under a god and had neglected human affairs should readily be declared by a god as judge the wisest of men? Such, then, is the testimony we have from Plato — passing through himself and through both his companions, and ending in the god at Delphi, who confirms by vote to Plato the things I said a little before that Aeschines said. And if we must also furnish testimonies from the poets, it is indeed a task to furnish either the testimonies of all, or those of the chosen, throughout; nevertheless, to pick out and state what one can of the most famous, it would be sloth to leave aside. Now in general all the poets bear witness by their deeds — by the very testimony of fact — if indeed they are poets by the account that art does not prevail. But it is not this I need now, for it is among the things already said, but the testimony in their actual words. This, then, the oldest of them and the most familiar to all, praising Pandarus the Zeleian for his archery, says, "to whom Apollo himself gave the bow." And the king of the Phaeacians, having made him exceedingly humane and dear to the gods, he has honoured with this phrase: "Alcinous then ruled, knowing counsels from the gods." Do not ask me, he says, what art he had acquired, or who was his teacher; for "from the gods he knew counsels." And again praising Demodocus the harper, as supreme in music, he makes him thus: "whom the Muse loved exceedingly, and gave him both good and evil; of his eyes she deprived him, but gave him sweet song"; and again, "the Muse roused the singer to sing the glories of men."

23. And Alcinous himself, introducing and presenting him, straightway at the beginning says, "for to him the god gave song beyond others, to delight in whatever way his spirit prompts him to sing." These things Alcinous himself says, who surely would have taken pride, if he had spent anything even on teachers for him — and that too, being a splendid and great-souled man and a lover of glory. But nonetheless, he says, "I myself tell you and declare it: this man I did not have taught." And not only does Alcinous, the king of the Phaeacians, speak thus, but the wisest of the Greeks too is not unlike him about the same things, but, admiring still more the display of Demodocus and, as it were, deliberately seeking what greatest thing he might say, "Demodocus," he says, "beyond all mortals I praise you; either the Muse, child of Zeus, taught you, or Apollo" — as though the thing were too great to grasp by art. "For very rightly do you sing the fate of the Achaeans." Nor is this thrown in by the way, nor at random, nor as a mere appendage to the foregoing, but showing forth and pointing to one thing: that this orderly and brilliant power comes not from art but from the inspiration of the gods. For art is something neat, but far inferior. And again, as if setting his seal on the testimony, having proposed to him to sing the device of the horse, he promises this much: "If now you tell me this," he says, "in due order, straightway I will declare to all men that the favouring god granted you divine song" — as if having nothing greater than this to promise him. So firmly, then, had the poet persuaded himself about these things that, as if fearing lest someone should think he said this of Demodocus alone, he made Odysseus begin from the common case of singers, and speak thus: "For among all men upon the earth, singers have their share of honour and reverence, because the Muse has taught them songs, and loves the race of singers."

24. As if Homer feared, on his own behalf, lest someone should say he had learned something from another, and not from the Muses themselves. How, then, do the Muses teach? Is it as the schoolmasters do, opening a schoolroom? It is not. But, I think, they bring things to mind and stir the invention, as is shown in these very verses; for he says, over all, "thus he spoke; and the man, set in motion by the god, began, and revealed his song" — showing the same thing throughout, that art is foolishness compared with the god who moves. Phemius, again, in the slaughter of the suitors, he has made to plead for himself and say, "I am self-taught; the god planted in my heart songs of every kind, and I am fit to sing before you as before a god; therefore desire not to cut my throat." This, on the one hand, showing closely thus that "self-taught" and "the pupil of the gods" are the same; and on the other, that Phemius said nothing greater for his own salvation than that he is no man's pupil. Naturally; for it was reasonable that one who was to be saved by those who thought themselves wronged should take refuge in the honour from the gods. For which reasons he saves him with these words. Again — for I will take it up afresh — he has made Telemachus, going abroad in inquiry after his father, in the first books, as one who, when he reached Pylos and had to meet Nestor, was anxious and at a loss what to say to him, because he was conscious of having no art whatever about speeches, nor even that which, as Plato says, is experience, up to that point. At any rate he has shut up this very thing in a verse, from beginning to end: "Nor yet have I made trial of cunning speeches." And the god encourages him and says: Let none of the sophists deceive you, nor be of poor heart over yourself. "For even if you are left behind in art and in experience, some things you will yourself perceive in your own mind, and some a divinity will suggest; for I do not think that you were born and reared against the will of the gods" — here too in a way joining and setting side by side

25. both that he should understand of himself and that the god should prompt him, and again attributing his nature and rearing to the divine portion. And these things are said to him not by Mentor, nor by Halitherses, but by the wisest of the gods, to whom the things of prudence and what concerns the arts are referred. And Telemachus, then for the first time playing the orator, becomes resourceful and finds speeches sufficient for the need — for I forbear to speak of what he declaimed among the suitors — by Athena's help, and hits the mark so well that Nestor, hearing him (for this is the sweetest thing), both praises him and says, "Truly your words are fitting, nor would you say that a younger man could speak so fittingly" — and yet Nestor is made by him supreme in rhetoric and in finding and judging speeches, both in the Iliad and in the Odyssey; but nonetheless he praises him, and brilliantly. And when he came from Pylos to the other orator and king, Menelaus, Telemachus says that he delights to hear Menelaus as a god; and Menelaus in turn bears the same opinion of him as Nestor, and says, being himself already an old man, "You are of good blood, dear child, such things do you speak" — saying nothing else than this: that you are made for speeches, and on this account you say the best things, and are well esteemed among others such; so that even if you have no art about speeches, for me, he says, it is enough. Thus throughout the whole drama, as if on purpose and through all the worthy persons, Homer bears witness that it is not art that is sovereign in speeches, but the power of nature and what seems good to the god. The very father of Telemachus, then, whom he made to have come to the very height of preparation for speeches, being roused somewhat against the Phaeacian and bringing him to his senses, how does he speak and use frankness? "One man is feebler in form, but a god crowns his shape with words"

26. — at once showing the dignity of rhetoric and its power, how great and of what kind it is, and at once attributing these very things to the god as coming from there, as though answering Plato, not Euryalus. And it seems to me that Hesiod too holds the same opinion as Homer, and differs only in the words, in these verses: "That man is best of all who himself perceives all things; and good too is he who hearkens to one that speaks well; but whoever neither himself perceives, nor, hearing another, lays it to heart — he again is a useless man." First he set the man who himself discovers the best things; last, in ignorance, the one who neither understands nor is persuaded; and between the two, as in the terms of a proportion, the one who is persuaded by him who understands — worse than the man of perception by as much as he is better than the man who neither discovers nor is persuaded. Therefore the man who himself perceives all things is the man who speaks well; or, if you please otherwise, the man who speaks well is the man who himself perceives all things. And this is clear: for, having added "whoever himself perceives all things," he has in the second clause, in speaking of the man who speaks well, transferred the same description, putting "the one who speaks well" for "the one who perceives," as being this very man, the best orator. These things being so placed, the man, I think, who has perceived is easy for anyone to identify, that he is the man who prevails by nature, whom he defined as best, whom he also addressed as the man who speaks well; while the man who is persuaded falls into the class of the learner. For, having heard the one who says the best things, he so makes use of them, having taken them from him. To discover, then, you say, O Plato, is better than to learn, and art is second to nature — reasonably, Hesiod both

27. thinking thus and speaking thus, and not forgetful of the laurel, on receiving which he became a poet from a shepherd. Since indeed the arts themselves and the pursuits men discovered originally by surpassing in nature and prevailing. For it was not the arts that made the natures, but the strongest natures that discovered the best of the arts; so that both in order and in power the first prizes belong to nature. And if we attribute the discovery of the arts not simply to men, but say that the gods led them to it and showed it forth, how is it not plain that art must be the addition of one who greatly prevails? And surely, if this is plain to all, and all would agree that the gods did not receive their sciences from men, but men from the gods, and that the gods hold the rank of teachers and we of learners, then by so much, as it seems, is discovering better than learning, as a god is better than a man. For they have discovered all things, while we, I think, having received them, use them. Rightly, then, and justly, the neighbour of Helicon — and as was natural for one who had received these things from the inspiration of the gods to say — set the man of this sort, "who himself perceives all things," first and supreme, as a god and near to the gods, and the one who hears and learns, second. For where and how could one set the learner supreme? It is not possible, even if one wished, but it is forbidden by nature, and justly, because we say that nature prevails everywhere. For if learning were the best and the first, then learning itself would not be first. For one would have to learn from another. So that the teacher would not be first, if learning were the better and the first thing. From whom, O you who also adorned the embroidered robe, would you hear, by whom would you be persuaded, if the learner were better than the man who first discovered, and not of necessity second, if he is to learn anything at all? For everyone who learns has surely agreed that he is inferior, by the very fact of needing to learn; since if he had not first persuaded himself that he needed to, how would he learn, or how would he be persuaded by another who spoke?

28. Is it not, then, absurd to call the man who has agreed that he is inferior the better, and this for the very reason for which he is praised — that he has agreed he is inferior? Or, in the case of gifts, is the receiver nowhere better than the giver by the very act of receiving, but giving is held to belong to the better; while in lessons the man who applies his mind is better than the one who himself perceived and provided? And surely, in the things for which the receiver is best, how is the man who has these from the beginning not first — and this both on account of time and on account of the cause? Then I will furnish the testimony of one more poet, from Boeotia and Helicon, whom Plato himself uses for the most valuable things, they say. And this man, O gods, having quite uncovered both his own nature and that of his Muse, truly cries out in a Stentorian voice to men, as if proclaiming silence: "Wise is he who knows much by nature; but those who have learned, boisterous in their full-tongued chatter, like crows scream vain things against the divine bird of Zeus." He says that the voices of those who have learned, having taken from others, are the voices of crows set against the eagle — the orator and the wise man who prevails by nature and is from a god. And elsewhere again, more briefly but no less plainly, he protests: "What comes by nature is altogether best; but many have rushed to win glory by virtues that are taught of men" — saying both things very consistently. For since the best is found among the few, and the inferior among the many, he has set against the best the worse by means of the word "many," as being a thing belonging altogether to a few, while the other reaches the many. And still before this: "By nature good and wise according to their destiny have men become" — saying this too like the other phrase and the same thing. For where he said "virtues that are taught," he added "of men"; and where he honours nature, "according to their destiny," declaring these to be the truly good and wise.

29. Reasonably; for if in speeches themselves no one is so mad as to consider those who steal the things said and pre-empted by another, and recite them as their own, better than those who are resourceful and fertile of themselves toward speeches — but he is best in whom one can find the greatest store of what is needful — how is it not ridiculous and full of all unreason to set the man who from the beginning heard and learned from others what he must say, before the man who is by nature superior? Nor does this stand outside the whole testimony: "In deeds chance prevails, not strength" — if you take strength as belonging to human fortune, and fortune as belonging to the divine portion. And yet, if poets, composing not by art, as Plato says, but obtaining inspiration as possessed by the god, instruct those who come after — not only their own contemporaries — and in instructing bear witness and determine that art is worth nothing compared with the power of nature and the things from the gods; and Plato bears witness, both in deeds and in words, through the poets — I will add, that the gods do so through both, both Plato and the poets — that rhetoric is a fine and divine thing, even if it does not come to men by art, but is a work of a nature that is bold and looks to victory. If, then, someone should maintain that no poet has said any such thing, and that Plato bears no witness for us, either through himself or through the poets — which he is plainly seen to do — yet one looking to the very reason of the matter would, without difficulty, see false accusation, not refutation, and that there is no proof or credibility in his calumny. For who does not know that in bodies too neither beauty nor stature nor grace is the work or making of art, nor comes from hands or from any rule, so to speak? But to anoint and tend these is held to belong to art, while to compose them from the beginning no art could be so clever. Therefore it befits art to hold the rank of a servant and a handmaid,

30. and nature to be ranged in the figure of a mistress — unless we should also rank the baggage-carriers before the hoplites. But that is not worthy. For how is it not absurd to think it right to honour parents and to rise before our elders, but to suppose nature, which is so much prior, to be of less account than art — as if one were to judge shoes better than the feet, and clothing more precious than the body? And, it seems, we consider money less honourable than those who provide and acquire it, but art will be reckoned superior to the nature that discovered it and whose work it is. It would surely be unreasonable, by the very same example, in the case of possessions and estates to consider the man who himself provided and gathered them a better moneymaker than another who inherited them, but in speeches and affairs not to honour the man superior by nature, but whoever is seen to have taken his share from another — and not even to see this, that not only did natures from the beginning compose the arts, but also, within the arts themselves, those who prevailed by nature were the ones who excelled. For, as far as the art goes, all who learned the same things ought to have been alike, and, I think, the later ones always worse than the earlier, until the art came to be destroyed; for it would not have been possible to take everything precisely while receiving from another, but something must always have slipped away. But by force of nature, I think, and abundance, the victors have won their renown; and no one admires Daedalus, nor those before, in comparison with Phidias; rather, on the contrary, from small and mean beginnings the arts at the start came to greater and more perfect things. To the arts themselves, then, as it seems, it is plainly not profitable that art should be honoured before nature. For could they have advanced at all? Could they have reached their present form or won their dignity? No; but, I think, it was not the arts that raised men great, but those who were first in power that made the arts honoured, not abiding in the state in which they received them. And if this is plain to all,

31. even if not before, yet now at least having been said — the greatest in the arts have become greatest not by their share in the art, but by surpassing the art. For this reason, of fellow-students some are worse, but others also better — Phidias, Zeuxis, Hippocrates, Demosthenes, whomever one wishes to admire. For they did not abide within fixed bounds, nor keep their own work in a small compass, nor agree to be ruled by the art, but, looking into the nature of speeches (some) and of affairs (others), they made children of those before them — and that of necessity, and according to nature itself. Since indeed of speeches and affairs, of all things, of gods and men, nature is the leader, not art; and things are as their nature is, not as the art is. But the art too belongs to nature; nature is not the work of the art. By Zeus, I for my part would say that art is both a discovery and a possession of nature. And whoever will not admit this will judge the first discoverers of the very arts to be worth nothing; and in honouring art he will dishonour the fathers of the arts. Why? Because it was not smithing that discovered smithing, nor medicine medicine, nor, simply to say, did any art discover an art; but all the arts, as I said, nature discovered. For if the arts were to discover the arts, it would not have been possible to make a beginning. For, no arts yet existing, it would not have been possible to discover an art; for how could one discover by means of what does not exist? And if, again, what comes to be by nature is inferior to art, then all the first discoverers of the arts were the most inferior of all; for all discovered the arts by nature in the beginning. Therefore both in the case of the original discoverers and in the case of those who surpass, nature prevails. And surely, if one were to examine what it is by which a general differs from a soldier, and a ruler in general from a private man, he would find this coming to light: that it belongs to the ruler to command, and to the ruled, having heard, to act. Therefore he commands,

32. who has discovered, while he who has heard learns. For if a man has not discovered what must be done, how could he command another what must be done? For if he himself, having heard from another, were to command what must be done, he will be obeying before he commands. But this, so long as he is ruler, is among the impossibilities. For commanding belonged to the ruler, not obeying — no more than it belongs to the teacher to obey his pupils. By this argument too, then, nature is shown to hold the place of the ruler, and the art that comes from learning the place of the servant who obeys his superior. And surely this also was in the earlier arguments, that the gods discovered and showed forth each thing, and we men, receiving from the gods, make use, employing one set of men as interpreters of one thing, another of another. What argument, then, would better preserve what comes to be, or which is more just to trust, than the one by which we set down that the gods discovered each thing and still even now give signs; and again, that it is the proper mark of rule to discover and to command, but to hear and to learn the mark of the inferior? For neither, when the gods have discovered all things, is it shameful to assign discovery to the ruler, if indeed the gods rule all things; nor, since commanding belongs to rule, is it shameful to refer discovery to the gods, if indeed it is the mark of the discoverer to give the sign, and the superior always discovers. So be it. And in what does a master differ from a servant, by the gods? Would not everyone say that it is for the master to command, and for the slave to obey? Therefore the one knows of himself what must be done, while the other, having heard, learns. And what does the Lacedaemonian poet say, the praiser and counsellor of maidens? "Many things let the man say, but the woman find joy in what she hears." Many things, he says, let the man say, but let the woman rejoice in whatever she hears. Is it not, then, plain that the man, having himself discovered and foreknown, will say many things, while she, for whom it is fitting to be ruled,

33. will be content with what is said? For she will surely not, waiting to hear from the woman, then himself tell the woman what must be done; nor, as Hesiod bade, "that he may teach her noble ways," will he follow her words. But if he is to teach, he will command; and if he commands, he will bring the woman nearest to his own nature, as the better the worse. By how much, then, a god is better than a man, a ruler than a private man, a master than a servant, a man than a woman, and more perfect — by so much is nature better and more competent than art; or else everything would be turned utterly upside down. Then one might see the same thing from the contrary arguments. For if all who follow the arts were agreed to be excellent, or if every art altogether were a good thing, perhaps one might have thought these arguments a refutation. But as it is, who does not know that art is to many a reproach? For instance, the tanners and cobblers and fullers and saddlers — who would count them fortunate for their art? And surely "the tale is not mine," said Plato, playing on Euripides' line, but yours, O Plato, and, by Zeus, of your own workshop, that these arts are mechanical and those who follow them servile. Is it not, then, absurd, and a manifest false accusation, to think that those who know the arts I named, and a thousand others, share in nothing good besides the art, but, if a man pursues something not by art, to censure him for that very thing as deprived of one of the secure goods — and that you yourselves should at once make no account of art, but even reproach the many with it, and at once exalt this very thing as purely good, censuring whatever does not come to be by art? And surely, choose one of two things, rhetoric might justly say: either honour the handicraftsmen too as good and noble men, or do not censure the orators,

34. if they have no art about the things of which they speak. Can rhetoric, then, furnish anyone to speak on her behalf, or is it tit for tat? She could not, I think, the Homeric Idomeneus would say. The things, then, which, even if we should not grant her to be an art, one could say on her behalf — taking away many of those that come to mind — are so many and of such a kind. But perhaps someone will think that, these things being thus demonstrated, we are pressing for the inferior part henceforth, if we try to teach that it is also an art. But I neither retract any of the things said, nor do I concede to Plato that rhetoric has no share of art; rather, as far as she has of art — for I will use Plato's own words — this I will pursue. And what I did in the foregoing, this I will do here too: following the very things Plato has said, I will show that she has a share of art. And yet what else could one wish? For he says, indeed, in disparaging her, that she guesses and brings forward her speeches in whatever way she may guess. And yet how is it not contradictory to say that she guesses, but to say, for this very reason, that she uses no reason? For all who guess, in applying themselves to the matter, surely guess by reason. For it is not possible to guess without using reason; rather, it is the reason of the matter that makes one guess. For instance, those who aim at things seen from afar and hit them, referring, I think, to the nature of the thing, thus aim, using this reason, and as it were aiming at this as a target. For those who miss do not even aim at all, but do the very opposite of aiming. For to aim is just this — to hit the mark of the matter. Therefore one does not err by the fact of aiming, but, in missing, one did not aim. Reasonably; for no one errs while using reason, but he at once stumbled and did not preserve the reason. For reason had this power, not to miss; and this is so true that the most prudent of men,

35. and those who partake of reason most, aim best. So that, if aiming belongs to rhetoric, then rhetoric most of all preserves reason. This, then, is shown thus to clash with the very things he has said. But I wonder that he neither recognized nor guessed that, even apart from composing the contraries and using as a sign of its not being an art what is rather a sign of its being an art, by this one thing alone he will give a handle, if he grants that aiming belongs to rhetoric. For, by the gods, if someone asked him, putting it thus in his own manner: "Do you know, O Plato, an art of archery, so to call it, or do you so name it? For you have gone through the whole science of statecraft and discovered its parts precisely." "I do," he would say, "both know it and so name it." "What, then, is this, and what does it profess?" "To hit the mark in the shooting of arrows." "Good. Therefore, whenever it aims, then it hits." "Of course." "Is it, then, not an art because it aims, or is there even an art of this, of aiming?" "I think there is an art of this." "So be it. And what of the pilot's art? For it seems to me to do the very same thing as archery." Yes, by the reason it uses. For it aims — not, I think, so as to hit with an arrow, but so as to save from the sea. For all that the pilot must learn in his training he knows and has heard. But he saves the ship, to put it all in a word, not by these things, but by those whereby he disposes the present circumstance well. And this is impossible for him without aiming. For consider, first, if you please, those who ferry to Aegina, that they see Aegina; toward what they see, then, they aim. Then those bound for Pontus; or, if you please, those bound for Egypt and Sicily, which was never strange to you; these you will find guessing altogether. For first

36. there is need of the very point — where the mark is at which to aim — and what at that moment came from the eyes, this must be inferred by reasoning; and then, when it appears again, to aim afresh toward what is seen. For consider Odysseus, having heard from Calypso that he must sail keeping the Bear on his left hand. Surely he must henceforth himself reason out the particulars, and the channels through which the ship goes; for you might cross many seas, and come to land in many places and harbours, keeping the Bear on the left — and so too on the right — so as to reach Pharos; nor can one pass a strait by a book, but one must of necessity aim at the particulars. For come, what have they learned, who now bring the rudders inward, and again outward, on the same day? Is it not by aiming at what is seen, or at what is going to be seen? And for what reason do they often inquire of those they meet, where in the sea they are, or off what land? "Not the precise pilots," you will say. And what man is precise or sufficient? Then no one is a craftsman by this argument. And if this is so, what is terrible in there being no sufficient craftsman who is an orator either? And surely, if piloting is an art, even if it is not preserved in the man called a pilot, what prevents rhetoric too from being an art, even if it is not preserved among those who claim to be orators? And if, indeed, you are speaking of those pilots from whom one inquires something and seeks of another — for surely not about Poseidon, nor about the Nereids, nor about the Dioscuri — yet you grant them to be pilots, as man to men, and to have the pilot's art: to all these it belongs to aim, who, even before setting sail, straightway sit down aiming about the winds; for they did not hear from Zeus on Ida or Gargarus, but, I think, from beginning to end they aim, whether they will reach the harbours before the winds, virtually all of them, so to speak.

37. So that the image of your "part," "a dream of a shadow," according to Pindar, turns to your own refutation. By Zeus, and the counterpart of justice — medicine, and, if you please, gymnastic too, the second good for the body — do they not aim at the nature of bodies? By Zeus, yes, whether you say so or not. Or does the trainer foreknow straightway, from the start, how each of us is in body — does he not learn from trial? And what, when he trains for that for which he makes trial — does he, like Apollo at Delphi, thus know the future precisely, and assert that he will render this man, from these means, in every way and altogether unharmed, either absolutely or for some length of time? Therefore either you call the trainer mad if he does not aim, or, if sober, he himself will agree that he aims at the best, but has no such thing to foretell or promise. So be it. And the physician, who is strong in the trust of experience and now uses these drugs and regimens, but is ignorant how each of us is in nature or constitution — does he not, aiming, apply all that he does about the patient, referring to what is probable? I think so. Or could any of them say flatly that this man, using these things, will be outside all danger and will suffer nothing unpleasant whatever? No; otherwise they would not fall so far short of the god who holds Epidaurus, you would say — and very much to my mind. But from the many and common cases, I think, they conjecture the particular ones too. And if indeed they have followed certain individual cases, they aim at trial itself, selecting what will profit each. And these things, O Plato, are demonstrated by your

38. adamantine necessities. For that the same things are not profitable to all bodies, neither in sickness nor in health — but as the things profitable in sickness and in health are not the same, so, and still more, they are not the same for all in sicknesses, nor in their health — you will learn of the physicians themselves. But to distinguish the natures of all is impossible. For as in their shapes all men differ from one another, so too in the whole nature of the body one differs from another throughout the whole race. But surely the art bids one treat whoever happens along and is in need, even if he has just come from the ends of the earth. What, then, remains but to aim? For if he will neither know all, and will treat the one who comes, and will know at least this much — that not all need the same things — what I say is left. Or do you, having shown the contrary, go round not only standing in Olympia as a beaten image, but also having won a procession at the Great Panathenaea. Consider now also about painting, which, if you call an art, I shall no longer ask; for you do call it so in these very Gorgian arguments. Is there, then, any other chief point of this than to aim at the things ever present, and those whose imitation one must make? And surely, if not this, what else? This, at any rate, is the art that even gave the matter its very name; for the images of the painters made men say "to liken" and to use the word of other things too. But if indeed the word existed before the art, it is still more finely attested that the art consists in nothing but likening, if its very work prevails in being an image. Yet it does not, I think, liken without reason, for it would not even liken at all if it had nothing whereby to do so, but it likens according to the reason of nature. And if it pleases you to dispute this too, keep the rest for our sake, but grant that the very mingling of colours is the work of an art that aims — and not of art only, but of nature too, that is sufficient. Show these things only, and laugh at

39. rhetoric. And surely the finest and most perfect part of the art, that by which painting or sculpture differs in excellence, is, I suppose, the mixing of colour. For it brings the likeness near to the truth. Therefore the very thing by which it is greatest, this you take away, unless you leave it the likening. And what need is there to examine the other arts that proceed through aiming? For divination itself runs the risk of being only this, to liken; and yet someone, examining and dividing thus, might say that by this and this alone a diviner differs from a layman — that likening belongs to all, but knowing belongs to the diviner. But I say that the diviner knows just this very thing, to liken, and nothing whatever besides. And of this I will furnish Plato as a witness; and if he does not appear to bear witness, let no one trust me. And the sweetest part of the testimony is that it is not in some other dramas or arguments, but in the very ones we used just now for the proof of other things, that it lies expressly: "Since the inquiry of the sensible into the future, made through birds and the other signs — since it is furnished by mind and intelligence, by human conjecture — they named oionoïstic, which the young now, dignifying it with the o, call oionistic." Therefore, when you say that the oionistic belongs to men who liken, divination does not escape, in this respect, from likening, if oionistic is a part of divination. And surely that it is also through "the other signs" you yourself add. And when you add this, you grant that all divination is likening — and very rightly, by my judgment at least. For the gods do not, I think, know the future in the same way as those men who claim to. For the gods understand what they are going to do, and matters lie before them as before their eyes. For this reason "Zeus among the gods is the most unerring prophet"; but men judge matters as though in darkness — this bears witness. For the second place is his, and the end he himself holds. But men judge matters as though in darkness, by a sound or by something of what appears, but have nothing constant to

40. foretell. And here is the proof: for if you do not declare your question, he has nothing to tell you about the signs he saw. But, instead of being able to speak about the future, he does not even know this very thing, on what account you have come, unless he should inquire. For matters do not lie present before him, showing themselves; rather, applying the proofs to the signs, he likens with reference to reason. And it is shown to aim at the future, the act of divining, not only in this respect — which one of the poets has already attested — but even if he answers the question, he likens the surrounding circumstances to the matter. "Victory in war" — and from what cause it came he does not know, nor anything at all about the battle, but he likens. Again, "either a plot of citizens or of certain others" — and the manner he cannot tell, but he conjectures as one does dreams. And the wisdom of the Egyptians, who that has met with it does not know? That whatever they either threaten about the future or promise, the manner and the places and the measure they cannot determine, but say either wealth, or poverty, or grief, or joy, or death, or actions, or such things, but the particulars themselves they have not grasped, but liken some to the magnitude of what appears, some to the customs of each people, some to similarities — and there are things very far separated from one another. But everywhere they call upon ingenuity, since to it alone, and to it alone, belongs likening, but not speaking simply. Nothing, then, but likening does it appear, in truth, throughout. Why, then, do you wonder if rhetoric aims? For it appears disposed like divination, except in so far as divination is finished when it has guessed, while rhetoric not only aims at affairs, but also acts, through

41. its servants, whatever it finds best. So that it holds both the function of divination and that of generalship — which Plato will not say has nothing to do with statecraft. How, then, is rhetoric "an image of a part of statecraft," unless thus? But surely, thus, it is no image. So be it. And what do the generals themselves do, O wondrous man? Nothing else, I think, than aim — at least the best and most prudent of them — both at the mind of the enemy and at the nature of their own soldiers, and, I think, at places and occasions too. Are they, then, worth nothing to make use of? I do not think so. But surely, if through so many arts as I have named — for I leave aside the greater number — aiming appears to lead the way in their works, and to be the thing through which all proceed, how is it right to censure rhetoric for this? Or how is it right to bring this, which is virtually the one thing common to the arts, as a refutation, that rhetoric has no share of art? For it is nothing else than to destroy her by the very tokens by which one ought to recognize and accept her, when one undertakes to say these things. Therefore it is not because she aims that she has no share of art; rather, even if for no one of all the rest, by this one thing she has a share — by aiming — if Plato has spoken the truth in saying that she does aim. And what shall one say of the rest, when that much-honoured thing itself, whether one must call it science or wisdom, do you not, by the gods, yourself confess that you liken about the greatest matters, when somewhere you say that it is not possible to assert, but you leave the precise truth to the god — doing well, and truly philosophizing? "But shall I," tell me this, "be persuaded that Zeus is no better than the sophist of Soli?" Good man, consider whether all human things may be matter only for likening, while knowledge, according to Homer, is on the floor of Zeus alone. That it is, then, altogether a sophism, this

42. assertion that the orators counsel the people what seems good to them, and aim at this alone — even if a child would not refute it, yet anyone of sense would. For to me the very opposite of all this appears: that neither in the nature of rhetoric is there anything more than not at once letting come to pass what seems good to the multitudes, nor do the orators look to anything more than the best, nor do the peoples themselves escape this — that the orators are better than they at reckoning about affairs, and indeed about the whole condition and fortune of life. And this is plain from the very honours they assign them. For if this were true, which Plato charges, and the orators did not lead the peoples, but were of the peoples, then, first, what reverence and honour would they have from the peoples? Where would they obtain the seats of honour, or the things above the many? For no one admires servants as better than himself, nor does he add his own judgment to the man who first formed an opinion about affairs. Then, what herald or embassy would ever come to need a man who was an orator, if it had been shown that counselling the people what seems good to the multitudes belongs to the orators? For what city, in sending an embassy, would choose to court a man worth nothing, or what envoy, on arrival, would ever have approached him for the sake of persuading the people, if he knew that the sum of the orator's life was to counsel whatever the people wished, and to wait for that man's voice as children, I think, wait for their teachers'? The case would have been the reverse of what it is with choruses, if the many were not going to wait for the orator, but the orator held back until the people gave their sign. And who, defending a private or public suit, would have sought one of the orators by whom he might win, if the orator was going to say what seemed good to the judges, and nothing else whatever? Thus those most in danger, and contending about the greatest matters, would most of all have neglected the orators. For there are those who are surely most in danger, for whom the dispositions of the hearers are difficult, and those who are prejudged by slanders. And if

43. the orators had made it their business to say what seemed good to the hearers, and exalted these things — Heracles! — a man might have carried his ruin from home, if anyone brought an orator to such a matter, just as if a man should bring in the executioner along with himself. Is it so, then, and do those who most expect to die, and on whom lies the greatest fear that they will not obtain a fair hearing, neglect the orators in any special degree? It is not so. Plato will not say things so paradoxical. Rather, they come to their doors, beg, grovel, thinking rhetoric a remedy for all things — death, exile, the fears themselves, the anger of judges, the contentiousness of the people, all. Why? Because they know that the orators do not practise saying what seems good to those sitting in judgment — for they could not even be said to practise this, if they were going to do that — but they know that the orators from afar attend to the matters and practise speaking as the order of the matters demands, aiming at the nature of these, not at the nature of the hearers; or if also at the nature of the hearers, yet not so as to serve their desires, nor to say all that they wish to hear, but to be able to persuade them by saying what is better to say — just as we see physicians too aiming at the nature of bodies, yet not so as simply to gratify desires, but so as not to apply the best thing at random, but in such a way as the patient will best accept it. To this extent I too say that the orator aims at the hearers, and if you say this, I agree; but not, I think, as a slave to the multitudes, nor for the sake of gratification does he observe their natures, but, as Demosthenes says, "that he may say the best things to the purpose." "I, for my part," he says, "am not at a loss what to say about the present matters, but in what manner I ought to speak to you about them." Then he uses frankness, and very

44. brilliantly, as I think. "For I am persuaded, from what I have seen and heard while present, that most matters have escaped you through your not wishing to do what is needful, not through your not understanding." If this is aiming, O Plato — to converse while watching the natures — we do not escape the charges, all the orators will say. But if you say that they yield to the multitudes and do what they are bidden, but do not bid, you have taken the handmaid for the mistress, and you seem to be censuring the public slaves, not the orators. But neither do the public slaves think highly of themselves because they serve the wishes of the city, and for the orators the very cause of their pride is this: that they do not say what seems good to the peoples, but what they themselves think best. And if they were servants of the desire of the crowds and declaimed what seemed good to those sitting in judgment, it would not even be possible for them to use frankness, much less to think above the rest. But, I think, they are conscious to themselves that they do not serve pleasures, but bring desires to soberness; that they do not look to the many, but the many look to them; that they are not ruled by the private men, but rule the many; and they have received their title from them, as a token instead of any other, a witness of their authority — I mean the title of "demagogues," not because they are led by the peoples, O you who turn everything upside down, but because they lead the peoples; just as we call them "pedagogues," I think, not because they have submitted to the children, but because they lead them. For whatever you say fits the orator to be called — ruler, champion, teacher: all these are names of the orator. For what teachers are to children, that the orators are to the peoples: they show what must be done, and instruct them by their counsels and decrees. And nature has so ordered these things. The chorus-leader does not serve the desires of the chorus-singers, but if he gratifies them in anything, he watches, along with his gratification, that nothing be sung amiss.

45. But the chorus-singers do not prompt him with the cues, nor does he, as they bid, apply the melody and the rhythm; nor does he learn from them what he must teach them — no more than the pilot learns from the sailors what must be done. Rather, the sailors hear what he commands, and the pilot says, not whatever seems good to the sailors, but whatever he, being himself in command of the sailors on the ship, judges. Everywhere all things look to the leaders, and their wishes lead the way. And the wishes of the many follow, some willingly, some unwillingly. The chorus-leader leads the chorus, the pilot the sailors, the general the soldiers, the orator the people. All rulers, then, are by nature superior to those under them; but if a man, having authority, also gratifies — persuading, not compelling — and, besides preserving his own rank, aims also at the desire of those under him, this is the man who is truly the statesman, and whom Homer said was "gentle as a father." And I think he made the same man the best orator too, to whom he attributed this. Do not, then, say this as a reproach against the orators, that they gratify, but only if they gratify apart from the best; if they aim at the best together with the gratification, then in this respect render to rhetoric her fitting praise, that you may be seen requiting her with like for like. But if you say that they simply gratify and serve desires, what is the proof? For I, from the very facts, furnish the other view. For if the orators were not going to be so admired, either by the peoples or by the private men or the citizens or the strangers, nor themselves at all to enjoy the dignities they now enjoy — in a word, if they were neither going to be esteemed, nor to make money, nor to have power, nor to speak — how is it possible to accept such a charge against them, through which these results would have followed? Then again, he has charged them with what is wholly

46. impossible. For perhaps it is not easy to gratify even the Centaurs, if one were addressing them — I do not mean all in common, but not even, I think, one by one, if their nature was double; but to know and serve the wishes of a people to the end — what device is there? And where is it possible? For there is no one people, nor of one desire — nor, I think, will there ever be; but, like streams, one is borne from one quarter and another from another, divided among all things — by ages, by pursuits, by natures, by fortune, by desires — one knowing one thing, another another, if indeed one ought to call "knowing" the knowing nothing whatever about the truth. And, by Zeus, some are present now, others next, like the leaves, which seem to be the same and of the same trees, but are never what they were before. By what desires, then, is the orator going to be a slave, or whose opinions is he to speak, or whom is he to aim at, who are so strangely disposed that they cannot themselves know what they wish? But they are so far from thinking the same things as one another that none of them, so to speak, thinks the same things to the end about the same matters even with himself, but all, using the orator as a guide of the hand, are always in need. At whom, then, tell me, will he look? For I will ask the same question again. And how will he serve their desires? For when he must serve many, and these are not of the same mind, and it is impossible to gratify all from the same things, how will the orator serve their desires? For at the same time he will gratify the one set and grieve the other. So that he will speak no more toward pleasure than toward displeasure. How, then, do you call these men servants? For it is not possible. And that Plato himself has agreed that the orators do not say what seems good to the many, one may, I suppose, point this out, that even a child attending would detect it — I say "detect," that I may not say "refute." For he grants this much, that rhetoric is the

47. craftsman of persuasion; and whether of belief or of teaching I do not now dispute — but at least he attributes persuading to her. When, then, persuading belongs to rhetoric, the orators do not say what seems good to the many. For if they say what already seems good, they do not persuade; for no one who has formed his own opinion is persuaded by another about this. But by this is distinguished the deliberating for oneself from being persuaded. But if indeed this too must be said, those who do what seems good to themselves are persuaded by themselves, not by the orators. And no one persuades who has not prevailed by speaking his own judgment. So that the very opposite of Plato's argument follows, if the orators say what seems good to the many. For what those who wish say, this they are persuaded to say. Therefore, if rhetoric is the craftsman of persuasion, and persuading belongs to the orators, the orators do not flatter; for they do not serve the many, but persuade them. But if the orators say what seems good to the many, rhetoric is not the craftsman of persuasion; for it presents men persuaded by the many, not persuading. In view of this, choose on which side the falsehood lies. For Plato refutes Plato for us — and, what is finest, not from afar, but from the same place and in the same arguments interwoven. That rhetoric, then, is neither irrational, nor such, so to speak, as merely to aim; nor, if it has a share of art, is this to be made a windfall; nor is it among the many arts I just went through, but, having the greatest share of reason — or rather wholly consisting in reasonings — and being the greatest and first of human things and the most perfect, and the very limit, if one may say so, of what one could pray for

48. — this is the thing to show. And one might know it if one considered her nature, and for what and how great things she was first discovered, and what she does and accomplishes throughout. I think, then, that all who are able would agree that men are not born in the same fashion, but in two divisions: one such as to use force and to grasp for more — which one would call the division of the stronger (I mean not the better in virtue, but the more powerful) — and the other such as to be worsted and to yield against its judgment, for want of power to prevent — which we recognize as belonging to the weaker. This, then, was what made men discover some such thing on their own behalf — or rather the gods discover it on behalf of men — which would restrain the strength, and would become for all, as it were, a pledge of the equal and the just, profitable alike to the many and to those by nature inclined to force. For not even those men were going to escape the recompense of unjust and evil deeds; rather, the weakest being first destroyed, and others by others little by little, and the rest being thus continually taken away, it remained for them, in the end, to come upon themselves — as they say the Sown Men did, if indeed the myth too hints at this. For to me, if one may digress, it seems wonderfully to wish to make this clear. He has made the beginning of their birth from a dragon's teeth, and says that the men themselves came up armed, and that Ares, instead of Hermes, had charge of that harvest. As I said, then, not even to those who surpass in powers was the seeming good fortune of the start going to profit in the end, but by the very thing in which they were stronger — or rather thought themselves to be — by this it remained for them to perish, so that the affairs of all men would utterly waste away. There was need, then, that some common remedy be found for the race, the same and profitable to all — to the strong, to the weaker, to the fair-minded — so as either to prevent some before their crimes,

49. or to punish at the very moment, and to provide for others a security of life, and for those who honoured justice willingly the fitting gratitude. There was discovered, then, out of these things, rhetoric, and she came forth as the guardian of justice and the bond of life for men, that affairs might be judged neither by hands, nor by arms, nor by being beforehand, nor by number and magnitude, nor by any other of the inequalities, but that reason might decide the just in tranquillity. This, then, is the origin and nature of rhetoric, and this her purpose — to save all men and to thrust back violence by persuasion. And, discovered for such and so great things, she alone has made our life worth living, bringing both private households and the common affairs of cities, so far as in her lies, into concord, establishing teaching and learning as forever a fine thing for all, and being the first to teach men everywhere to flee and hate unreason and tumults.

Let us consider, then, the laws too — what it is that made them — and if anyone finds another origin of laws, not the same as that of rhetoric, let him say this is nonsense, and win. But surely all would say this: that we needed laws for no other single thing than to suffer nothing grievous from one another, and that the base and bold should not prevail over the good, but the good should be superior to the base, together with justice. These are, so to speak, the two chief points of the laws: punishment of the unjust and honour of the fair. For if each obtained his deserts, there is no way in which justice could better be preserved, nor in which the common life of men could more securely be maintained. These things, then, appear to be present in the nature of rhetoric. For those for whom it sufficed to grasp for more in silence were not, I suppose, going to need speech — neither so as to win by speaking themselves (for they were strong elsewhere), nor so as to hear others; for this very thing was their wish, to hear no one. But those for whom there was no

50. other way to obtain equal terms had need of the speech that persuades; and this, again, was at once on behalf of justice. For the man who entrusts to himself and his resources what seems good to himself claims to prevail, of whatever sort it may be; but the man who looks to that by which he must also persuade those outside, and thinks fit to practise this, does not flee the test of what sort the things he wishes are. Rhetoric, then, appears to share the same nature with legislation, if indeed one must view the matter precisely in both cases — or rather legislation is a part of rhetoric, and in all respects, in a way, second to it. First, because for the laws themselves there was need of the speech that persuades. For if it is plain that the laws were to be enacted so that all might have their proper due, and that those superior in might were not going to counsel this, how was there not of necessity need already of the speech that would persuade? For it was not possible to compel those who were by nature inclined to this very thing, nor was this the origin of laws; for it was for the very sake of not using force that the laws had to be enacted. So it was not possible to enact them by force, but this would have been the first thing contrary to the laws. There was need, then, to persuade above all the very men who opposed, and at once by this very thing to make them better; or if not, at least the many, and those on whose behalf one was legislating. For the one set, using their own nature, were going to wrong the others toward the many; the other set, using both that of rhetoric and their own, were going to benefit even those, toward them — if indeed they were to be sober. But if, then, those did not accept it, it remained to persuade the many, and those on whose behalf one was legislating, of this very thing — that one was legislating on their own behalf. There was need, then, of speeches and persuasion. For this one reason, then, rhetoric is thus of necessity prior to laws and their leader. And secondly, what, by the gods, must one say the laws themselves are, but speeches — differing so much from the rest as they are written? If I remember anything, Aeschines agrees that Socrates too

51. bears witness. And apart from the testimony, both of Aeschines and of Socrates, one might see it by looking at the matter itself. For they tell us, in a way, both what we must do and what we must abstain from, both in peace and in war, both singly and in common, and they govern the cities continually. Therefore the things that are in the public speeches of the orators, these the laws say, except that the laws do not leave off speaking, but play the orator through all time, since, I think, they are written. When, then, the speeches about these things belong to rhetoric, the laws are a part of rhetoric. For the being written, that comes to be, is a part belonging to speeches, if indeed some are spoken from the mouth, while others are written. And surely the decrees the orators themselves compose. Therefore, when the decrees are of the same nature as the laws and of the same polities, both belong to the orators, so that the laws at least are a part of rhetoric.

Come now, let us consider also about the judicial art, for what we needed it and what it wishes for us. Or is this also the easiest of all to see, that it succours the laws? For those who transgress the things they command, these it searches out and punishes; and not even this simply, but here too it follows the laws. For as they bid, so it chastises. So be it. What, then, does the judicial art need toward these things? Whence will it find the just, except from rhetoric? For the one refutes what is done, while the other gives its vote upon the refutations. Here too, then, rhetoric appears to wish the same things as the judicial art, but to prevail by so much as it alone securely holds them both together. For the judicial art, wishing to come, as in battle, to the aid of legislation, suffered the same thing as legislation itself. For that art needed rhetoric first, so that the laws might have an entrance to it; and the judicial art, having taken the figure of an ally to the laws, itself first needed the aid that comes from rhetoric. For it had to be able to give aid; but this was not possible without rhetoric. By so much, then, is rhetoric more august

52. and more honourable than the judicial art, as I almost say the judge is than the executioner. For the orator refutes the crimes and hands them over to the judge, and the judge, having heard and learned, hands them over in turn to the officers, and the judge is midway between the servant and the orator. And again, when the suit has reached its end, the judicial art has nothing whatever left over, but, as legislation, having enacted the laws, is finished, so the judge is finished after the verdict. But rhetoric, taking in hand those who, either through ignorance or through ill will, are vexed at the verdicts and carry matters off into tumults or factions, restrains and admonishes them, persuading them to be content with the laws and the vote of the judges — not honouring the law of Pindar, O you who say things contrary to the nature of rhetoric, nor chanting these things: "Law, the king of all, both of mortals and immortals, leads on, justifying the most violent, with sovereign hand. I judge by the deeds of Heracles, since unbought —" For you say you do not remember the whole; and perhaps you ought not to remember even these things, at least not for rhetoric. But up to this point rhetoric too says, "Law, the king of all, both of mortals and immortals"; but what follows is no longer the same — how should it be? Day and night will never agree on the same things — but quite the contrary: it leads on, honouring justice and admonishing the bold in their insolence. For if it should think fit that the most violent be the law that justifies, and that the sovereign hand of Heracles prevail — Heracles, who along with his hand cared for justice — it will perish by its own arguments. For what place is left,

53. or use, for rhetoric or for speeches, if the hand defines the just and the man able to instruct about the matter shall have no advantage? And where is persuasion, if force prevails? And this, too, when she who has persuasion for her work has given force the advantage? And it seems to me that Pindar too, if one must say something about the song, did not say these things by way of proposal or counsel, in earnest, to men, but as if in indignation. "I judge by the deeds of Heracles" — by these very words; because elsewhere too, recalling these matters in a certain dithyramb, he says, "But you, Geryon, among us I do praise; yet what is not dearer to Zeus, I keep wholly silent." For it is not fitting, he says, when one's goods are being snatched away, to sit by the hearth and be a coward. And yet to fight against law — and that the king of men and of gods alike — was not a thing for Pindar to praise, nor to counsel kicking against the goads. He himself, at any rate, has called such a thing a "slippery path" and bids us beware of it. But what, he says, are these things to me now? For whether these things seemed good to Pindar or not, yet such a thing will not be shown to seem good to rhetoric. For one must not snatch each thing as one can and call this law, but each must obtain his just due, and one must honour the law that distributes these things, and call only such a thing law, and the contrary lawlessness. This is the doctrine of rhetoric, and with this law she dwells, and about this she persuades, watching that no one transgress, bringing the transgressors to soberness. And here is the greatest proof: for where there is law and justice, there too are rhetoric and speeches; but where the superior hand takes away the just, there you would see nothing administered by rhetoric. But the laws, the trial, and speeches are, as it were, of one portion and nature. There being these three powers, as I said in digressing, rhetoric alone occupies all the places. For being prior to

54. legislation, in respect of the need of it, and prior again to the judicial art, since that too was needed, having taken the legislative art first as the middle, and then again the judicial art likewise, enclosing each on both sides, she becomes first and middle and last — at once setting herself in the middle of both, and at once setting both in the middle of herself — so that they might most of all abide together, using rhetoric as a bond. Is rhetoric, then, "an image of a part of statecraft," or are the parts of statecraft, as you say, held together by rhetoric? For to me, in truth, he appears in these matters not to be censuring rhetoric, nor to be showing an image of a part of statecraft, but, as it were, having taken some image of rhetoric, to be busy about this, and not even to touch rhetoric herself — like the Trojans of Stesichorus, who held the image of Helen as though it were Helen herself. But he would differ so much, that the image is not even like rhetoric. But surely they say there are four parts of virtue: prudence, temperance, justice, courage. Rhetoric, then, was discovered in prudence and on behalf of justice; and temperance and courage of those who possess her save the cities — temperance, since they choose the orderly life before disorder, and courage, because they do not yield to opponents. For if they yield, they will not guard rhetoric, so that, as long as they guard her, they do not yield. Therefore it is not the case that, there being four parts of flattery, rhetoric is to justice what cookery is to medicine; rather, there being four parts of virtue, all have been wrought through her, and what gymnastic and medicine are in the body — I mean both together — that rhetoric appears to be in the soul and in the affairs of cities. For the things uncertain whether they will even come to be

55. she foresees, whenever she addresses the people; and the things how they may not come to be she foresees, whenever she legislates; and some things she preserves so far as she can; and the things done she sets right, whenever she hands over the wrongdoers to the judges. What, then, if Archelaus, having killed his own master and uncle, seized the rule, or, having cast that man's seven-year-old son into the well, said to Cleopatra that he had fallen in chasing a goose, or raved in some madness at the mill — what are these things to rhetoric, O you who have moved every argument and all but the very stones in truth? What do these irrelevant episodes mean for you? "For I, for my part, did not persuade these things," rhetoric would say. "Nor, if anyone obeyed me, would he have accomplished these things, or anything else whatever, by slaughtering and strangling; but, having persuaded and openly demonstrated, would have laid claim to what belonged to himself. At least in lesser matters," she says, "I use this method, and I give the inheritances not to those who have snatched them, but to those who have demonstrated their right. And Archelaus himself," she says, "I would so far from ever having thought worthy of these things, that I would straightway have brought him to where he would have paid a fair penalty — and that perhaps even before he strangled the boy, while the first murders were still in his hands — if rhetoric had had any place in Macedonia. But as it is, in my absence, he did the wrong, and they had the misfortune, both those who were destroyed and those who received such a ruler. So that, if from no other quarter, at least from the evils of Archelaus learn how fine a thing rhetoric is, and how necessary, for a city and a nation that is going to be saved, and not to be wretchedly

56. enslaved to the accursed." These things, I think, rhetoric would persuade more, saying things proper to herself and just and belonging to her. But if Plato thinks to refute her by these things, it is time, I think, to bring against her also the deeds of Gyges the Lydian — these are even stranger — that, having killed his master, he held the rule; and she was privy and an accomplice, being the wife of the one and the mistress of the other. Why, then, do we not also tell those tales — that Cyrus, having crossed the Araxes, joined battle with the Massagetae, and Darius, having bridged the Bosporus, crossed against the Scythians, and Xerxes, having bridged the Hellespont, against Greece, and Ninus was taken by the Medes, and Sardanapalus was burned alive, having himself mounted the pyre? And what are these things to the purpose? Or when would one cease accusing rhetoric, if all the calamities that ever befell either private men or cities he should reckon to rhetoric? And yet, about Archelaus, one might also say this: that this man was the one who called Socrates to himself, none of the orators; but I let this pass. But, I think, it is ridiculous. For as long as a man does not show rhetoric to be the cause of these things, nor these things to befall through her nature, he does not grant that rhetoric erred; and this is to refute what is in question. And besides, it is silly, if he should think it permitted to himself to attach to rhetoric all licence and the things that are not her works, but does not see the opposite argument,

57. nor will suppose that the man who speaks on her behalf and exalts her will be able to bring to rhetoric all the good things that were ever done among men. We, then, demonstrate for what rhetoric was discovered, so that, if this is a fine thing, we may consider rhetoric good also; but if it is shameful and to be fled, we may use the same names and reckonings about rhetoric too. She appears, then, from the beginning to have been composed and considered on behalf of justice — just as from these things, as I said, this name, "the laws," got its force. For there was need, for those worsted by the hands, of speech and of law as helper. Therefore, whatever crimes a man may pick out and bring into the midst, besides accomplishing nothing to the purpose, he will bring them as a contribution to the arguments for rhetoric, not against her. For these and such things were the very reasons she was discovered — to hate and prevent them. "By Zeus, but some who champion rhetoric play the false accuser." And by this very thing rhetoric is more august. How? Because some of those who champion medicine too have, I think, killed certain men with a drug, and perhaps another in some other way; but not on this account is medicine an evil thing, which is so far from killing men that it is, so to speak, a remedy against death, so far as in itself lies. Therefore whoever most hates and is displeased with those who kill, this man most welcomes and honours those who save. Therefore in the case of rhetoric too, if she is by nature such as to make men insolent and flatterers, then of necessity she is shameful and base and illiberal and unbefitting a good and noble man; but if she was shown forth for the sake of saving men by speech and saving the just, for the sake of this she was instituted — what medicine is in the body, this rhetoric is in the soul, as our argument proceeded onward

58. in order — for I now leave gymnastic aside. So that whoever most is displeased with the false accusers or flatterers, it most befits him to honour her who was instituted on behalf of the best and is a remedy against these very things. For just as the man who kills while professing medicine is not at once both a physician and a killer, but, so long as he is a physician, will in no way join in these deeds, but, even if another strikes the blow, will himself heal — but at once he both kills and has destroyed the art along with it — so here too men are not at once orators and false accusers and flatterers, but, so long as they are orators, neither of these, nor anything else shameful at all among them, nor anything near it, but they refute the wrongdoers and teach the ignorant about affairs; and at once they will be outside both these things and rhetoric. They will not, then, bring reproach upon rhetoric whenever they err. For they will err from her by just so much as they err from the just; since the pilot's art too is, I suppose, the art of saving those who sail, and yet one of those who sit at the stern might lead out into the open sea and sink it and do some other such thing. But neither must one censure the pilot's art for this, nor do men say that the pilot, by going on board, is the most opposed of all things to the safety of those who sail, nor does anyone, I think, put the scuttlers into one class with the pilots. For the pilot must, I think, know both the things that will harm the ship and the things that will preserve it, just as I think the physician too must know both the things dangerous to the body and the things that save it; but the art wishes to use the good in either case — reasonably, and according to its very name. And so far

59. is anyone who does mischief in these matters from preserving the name of the art, that even if he err unwillingly, Plato says, we do not use precise speech when we say that the physician erred, or the pilot. For so long as the art prevails, there is no error, for it is not possible to err according to it; for to err is not the art. Utterly, then, if a man should do on purpose the contrary of what the art wishes, this man we shall say does wrong by his share of the art, or does reproach to the art — rather, that he does double reproach to the art, but the art does not do it. And what need is there of other examples than the one of which we made mention a little before and showed Plato in agreement? The laws are surely enacted for the sake of the safety of the cities and the establishing of justice for all, and legislation, both according to him and according to us and according to all men, is to be reckoned among the good and fine things and along with justice — this very thing, the "justly," not escaping it; and Plato sets it down so even before. If, then, someone should ask us, putting it thus: "But how many have already brought forward laws that were in no way sound and had every dreadful feature? And how many have been convicted in indictments for illegal proposals? Or how many laws, being in force, have been repealed as not better to use? What, then? Will you say that legislation is not in every way a fine thing, on account of such laws, or that all the laws ever written or to be written are fine and just, since legislation must in every way be a fine thing?" Shall we say that he asks unanswerable things, and shall we cover ourselves up? Or whose is it to find a moderate answer, one that will say that legislation and the laws that truly are laws are a fine and just thing? For it was for this that they first came to men; but such things are not laws so much as, in Demosthenes' word, lawlessness, both the things the laws forbid and on whose behalf

60. they were discovered, that they should not come to be? And I, for my part, would add this, that "O you who ask in this way, you do not frighten me by this, that some who wrote laws have already been convicted of illegal proposals." Rather, this too bears witness for me. For those convicted of illegal proposals are no longer laws, to speak precisely; for they would not be laws and at the same time contrary to the laws. So that it befits these writings themselves to be called lawless, not lawful. Let these things be my answer, on behalf of rhetoric too, against Plato. And the answer we would then have made in common, let this now be made by me for the present case. They would not be at once both flatterers and orators, nor at once false accusers and orators, if rhetoric truly came in for the sake of justice and the safety of men, as the laws did. But so long as medicine saves the sick, and the pilot's art saves those who sail, and the laws those who use them, the speeches of rhetoric save those whom they ought, and guard the just; since even this thing called by us philosophy, if anyone wished to censure it, he could bring forward many things in his speeches — as, for instance, if he should accuse Diagoras and Anaxagoras and, picking out certain others, men who were strange either later or earlier; of whom some, I suppose, corrupted certain men, and some blasphemed about the gods, and some said certain other speeches which it would have been better not to say at all, and some brought in more self-will than prudence. But would it not be better to say thus: that, if certain men using philosophy as a screen have become base and no better than the many — or, by Zeus, even cleverer at doing mischief — philosophy is not on this account to be dishonoured, so long as philosophy is not the doing of such things, but one must use these very proofs against those men, that they have erred from philosophy.

61. Nor, I think, if certain men flatter or play the false accuser, does this make rhetoric worse; rather, these things must be thought to belong to men who have erred from rhetoric, just as those others from philosophy, who, under the screen of the fairest thing, procure for themselves the licence to do mischief. And it would be absurd if we shall judge the works of the cobblers and the carpenters not from the things in which they fail, but from the things in which they succeed as best may be, but rhetoric we shall judge not only not from those who accomplished her most beautifully, but even from those who do the very contraries of what rhetoric wishes. "Yes; but it is better to be wronged than to do wrong." Let this be so. Is it, then, just as it is better, so also altogether to be chosen? No. At any rate he says he wishes neither — plainly because he considers being wronged too an evil, rightly, I think, both knowing and saying it. Therefore, if Plato himself should answer us, it would be of the greatest worth to the argument. And this too is available. How? As Socrates has been made by him to answer. For the matter stands disposed thus. Polus asks Socrates, "Would you, then, wish rather to be wronged than to do wrong?" And he replies, "I, for my part, would wish neither; but if it were necessary either to be wronged or to do wrong, I would choose rather to be wronged." Therefore, when he says he wishes neither, it is plain that, considering being wronged too an evil, he says he does not wish it, but that being wronged is better than doing wrong — yet not better than that neither doing wrong nor being wronged — rightly, I think, both knowing and saying it. If, then, rhetoric prevented being wronged but compelled to do wrong, not even so, perhaps, would it be altogether evil, being evil in preventing being wronged, but worse, perhaps, than the better, if indeed being wronged is

62. better than doing wrong. But if it neither compels the one and prevents the other, then in respect of the one it is so far neither good nor evil — for let us grant this for the present — but in respect of the other it is properly good, and better or worse by just so much as it has partaken of the better and not of the worse, if indeed it is better neither to do wrong nor to be wronged than to do one of those two things. And surely the man who has resolved not to do wrong does not at the same time both himself abstain from mischief and escape being wronged. For this very thing was doing wrong — to treat ill the man one ought not. So that, so long as there is doing of mischief among men, he will be wronged. But the man who has the guard against being wronged at the same time also somehow prevents wrongdoing. For just as one man is at once wronged and another has done the wrong, so the man who has the power of not being wronged has the same power of not allowing wrongdoing. So that, if he sets not being wronged down as belonging to rhetoric, but not doing wrong as belonging to philosophy, philosophy is worse than rhetoric by just so much as doing wrong is worse than being wronged. But when, again, he sets before this the neither doing wrong nor being wronged, by this rhetoric in turn becomes better than philosophy, since indeed together with being wronged it does away with doing wrong also. Since the laws too, in preventing being wronged, at the same time, I suppose, prevent wrongdoing. For it is not possible, the wronged not existing, that the wrongdoers should exist, there being no one against whom this comes. So that rhetoric, in preventing being wronged, prevents wrongdoing too by the very same thing by which it prevents being wronged. But if, indeed, we are showing rhetoric to have been discovered wholly for the aid of justice, and to hold purely the same rank as the laws, then not only, as it seems, will the orator not flee being wronged while confirming the doing of wrong, but he will prevent nothing so much as the doing of wrong. For he will take thought not only for what concerns himself, but that no other man either may suffer ill, if indeed for the things for the sake of which the laws exist, for these too rhetoric has been shown to have been discovered.

63. But surely the man who compels others to do justice has, far and away first, prepared himself for it. For it is not possible to come to the aid of justice, while oneself being first the one to overthrow the just. Therefore the orator will not only not do wrong himself, but he will not permit another either; nor, again, will he only not be wronged himself, but no other either, so far as in him lies. And if he will neither do wrong nor permit another, then in every way rhetoric is a fine and noble thing — both by that account by which doing wrong is shameful, and by that by which being wronged is better than doing wrong, and by that by which it is altogether best neither to do wrong nor to be wronged; and the man who is truly an orator has been shown to be, simply to say, so much better than a good man, by as much as the one furnishes only what concerns himself, while the other prepares others too to become such. For the good and noble man is not in every way an orator, but the orator is a good and noble man, who indeed leads others too to these things. But if, indeed, Plato insists on this, that rhetoric provides no great use, nor one worthy of earnest or of speech, because being wronged is not so great an evil as doing wrong, what prevents him from striking out all the laws too by these same arguments? For they wish nothing else than this: most of all that no one suffer ill from anyone, but if not, that justice come to those who have suffered from those who did it or were responsible. So that not only does rhetoric depart from the cities, banished by Plato, but, as though a club had been condemned, she will be driven out along with the laws that have the same wishes; and then we will send rhetoric away and revile her, when it is well for us to send the laws away along with her. When, then, would this come to be? What is the occasion

64. for it? Let one of Plato's companions answer, since we cannot bring himself forward. And surely not even here will he stand for us wholly outside testimony, but he appears bearing witness even more in these passages than in those he has just gone through. "For I will not discourse about the other laws and constitutions, nor about those which so-and-so enacted; but" — if anyone should ask him: "O divine man, you who discover all wonderful things, if being wronged is no matter, and the power that prevents this is worth no account, nor all that it is and does any good thing, but so dishonourable and illiberal as to be a part of flattery and of shadow, for what reason, in founding this city in the book, do you set up for it a constitution from which it shall suffer nothing whatever, and bid the warlike class be settled apart from the rest, assigning it the first honour, that the city may suffer nothing, nor be wronged by any kind of enemies? For if it sufficed not to do wrong, what do you fear, if you have prepared the city at least for this? And if, indeed, it is worse for the wrongdoers when they do not pay the penalty, and one must, according to you, become accuser even of oneself whenever one does wrong, and of one's children and one's own father, but leave one's enemies alone — why do you not pray together with the enemies that they come upon you and take the city, and, by Zeus, cut down all of military age, and that too at the altars, and lead away into slavery children and women beyond, if you please, Gadeira, and, having plundered the temples, raze them all, and not even leave the tombs unharmed by their greed, that, having done the greatest wrongs, they may be among the greatest evils in not paying the penalty? But you are so far from joining in these things that you prevent them, you take offence, you have devised a life in arms, that nothing of the kind may happen; and if any traitor arise among you, this man you bid not crown nor proclaim, but you think the same about these things as the rest of men. And yet, according to these arguments, whom rather than the

65. traitors ought one to honour, because they prepare their own people and the country and the temples and all that is, to be under the enemy, that those men, having done the greatest wrongs, may be entangled in the greatest evils? Tell me, by Zeus of portents, what must we think about these things?" So be it, O noble man; and why, again, did you enact for us so many laws besides — laws that fix honours for those who have lived well, and tell what those who do any wrong must suffer? And you play the orator about each of them in earnest, and honour the preambles, and set forth a double pattern, like the modellers — you who despise speeches. For if, my friend, taking justice and not permitting wrongdoing were not one of the earnest things, for what reason do you busy yourself with these and consider how no one may be wronged? Therefore either all these things, so many in number, must be in error, this one of them being right, or else those things stand refuted by these. And surely, in the things we say, there is the consent of others too, and Plato besides; but the things he has said here are refuted not only by the arguments of the matters, but also by Plato's own arguments and wishes. Those things, then, being agreed to be right, both the opinion of the rest bears witness and the vote is correct; but if we should grant these things to prevail, the consenting of any of the rest is absent. And it is stronger to have the consent of all, and of Plato, than the consent of none, and not even of Plato, as he elsewhere says. Therefore we shall not flee the testimony from him on account of that from the rest, but to that of the rest we shall add the testimony from him.

66. I hold, then, that in these things too I furnish the testimony of fact. For to contend with speeches against speeches, and to declare one's opponent to be bearing witness to other earnest speeches, is to furnish the testimony of fact. But nevertheless I wish to go still further, so that, since he honours the putting of a single matter to the vote, even by him against whom the speeches are made, I may show him to be on my side both in word and in deed. Come, then, let there be added in these matters too a question, as if someone asked him, when he was sailing to Sicily the second or third time, whether as a fellow-voyager or even as the pilot himself: "But you, O Plato, for what reason do you sail to Sicily?" Or, if not then, yet if someone, when he had returned home, asked him the causes of his journey and wandering, and what indeed he suffered that a third time he busied himself about Charybdis — around which Odysseus passed not more than twice — what would he have answered him? For if we grant that the best is true — as Plato must grant — there is left him about the matters in dispute no other answer than this. Why? Because, I think, he would say — or rather he did say — that he sailed for the sake of Dion, a companion and guest-friend, wishing to settle his affairs with Dionysius and not to overlook them. Then, O you who sail well and go abroad justly, you, for the sake of a Syracusan guest-friend, a common enemy of your own fatherland — for there was no seat of honour for Athenians at Syracuse, but things which one cannot even speak of without tears, these the companions and fellow-citizens of Dion had suffered at their hands a little while before — yet, since once you received him as a friend, considering him so, you sailed for his sake in your old age over so great a sea, and that too to a man at whose hands you would again have to be in danger, and whose offered alliance you knew your own fatherland had not received; and you did not flee the seeming to consort with a tyrant, as having for consolation the figure of your pursuit, which was that Dion should remain at home and keep control of his property. But when a man, dwelling in his own land and among his own

67. fellow-citizens and parents and brothers, has the guard so that they shall not be wronged, and saves both them and himself — and, by Zeus, if he is able to prevent this very thing, a man who is going to become a tyrant and like Dionysius, and to take away by speech his deeds and to confirm for all the security that comes from the laws — shall we then say that this is no earnest matter, and that one ought not to praise such a thing, whether one must call it an art or not an art, because, by Zeus, this one thing was a great evil, doing wrong, while being wronged was no matter at all? Does one, then, even more greatly defend oneself against one's enemy by allowing him to do wrong, and by considering by what means no other either shall take justice from him? And surely, up to these arguments one might say that these things are riddles; but these having been brought forward — and by Plato — and both refuted and resolved, not in the customary and same manner as other riddles, becoming clear from unclear, but truly clear as to where the rottenness of them lay. Come, then, let us consider these things too. For I think we have, as it were, the deposition of an absent witness. It is from the long Letter. "With this purpose and daring I set out from home — not the purpose some supposed, but ashamed before myself, most of all, lest I should ever seem to myself to be simply and wholly a mere word, and never willingly to lay hold of any deed; and lest I should risk betraying, first, the guest-friendship and companionship of Dion, who was truly in no small dangers. If, then, he should suffer anything, or, cast out by Dionysius and his other enemies, should come to us in exile and ask, saying, 'O Plato, I have come to you an exile, not wanting hoplites nor lacking horsemen to ward off

68. my enemies, but wanting speeches and persuasion, by which I knew you above all able, turning young men toward good and just things, to establish them each time in friendship and companionship with one another. For want of these, on your part, I have now left Syracuse and am here. And the lesser reproach it brings to you; but philosophy, which you always praise and say is dishonoured by the rest of men — how is it not now betrayed, so far as in you lies, along with me? And if we happened to be dwelling in Megara, you would surely have come to my aid in the things to which I summoned you, or you would have thought yourself the basest of all men; but as it is, do you think that, by pleading the length of the journey and the greatness of the voyage and the toil, you will ever escape a reputation for baseness? Far from it.' When these things had been said, what fitting answer should I have had against them? There is none." These things no other has written about him, nor conjecturing his judgment, but he who best knew, himself about himself, says he came for the sake of these things, ashamed at the words which Dion might have spoken to him. And I, for my part, believe it; for I should be mad if I did not. Therefore in these passages there is: "I have come to you, O Plato, not wanting hoplites nor bereft of horsemen, but of speeches and persuasion; and these I thought, more than anything, to be with you." Finely indeed, O Plato, both saying this yourself and thinking that Dion would say it to you. Therefore, if to be cast out or to suffer anything was for Dion conspicuously a dreadful thing, but to act so that he should not be cast out a fine and just thing, and, being so disposed, he needed speeches and persuasion, while you sailed because you had these — you have agreed to everything: both that one must be earnest that someone, so far as is possible, may not be wronged; and that the power of speeches to persuade is not a paltry thing; and that those who persuade about these things are worthy not only of praise among men, but also blameless before the gods,

69. if indeed those who fall short are not even holy. And further, you have done a still greater thing in every way, if indeed not only a people, nor judges, but even tyrants one must not flee from persuading otherwise about these things, and at so great a distance abroad. The whole Letter, then — for the sake of what did he write it, or of persuasion? And surely the matter itself shows it, and Plato himself in many places of the Letter. For both the going through the things for the sake of which he came, and the further agreement that he goes through them in order that he may establish the true opinion about himself, are the work of one who persuades. Therefore he both wrote it that he might persuade, and, in writing, says that he went away for the sake of persuading, lest Dion should suffer anything bereft of speeches. How, then, do the orators do shameful things? Or by which of these is rhetoric a paltry thing? Is it by that by which it is naturally fit to aid the wronged, even if some ill repute and danger attend it? But that one must despise persuading by speech? But you yourself, as one who would persuade by speech, say you ran a risk in deed. "And if we happened to be dwelling in Megara," Dion says to you, "you would surely have come to my aid in the things to which I summoned you, or you would have thought yourself the basest of all men; but as it is, do you think that, by pleading the length of the journey and the greatness of the voyage and the toil, you will ever escape a reputation for baseness? Far from it." What, then, if someone, turning it about thus, should say to you yourself: "And do you think one must sail to Sicily and suffer anything whatever for the sake of persuading someone that one of one's intimates ought to remain at home; but if a man, not even so far as from Athens to Megara, but not even needing to go anywhere at all, but staying at home, handles the power of saving his own people thereby, do you not think this man has escaped all reputation for baseness? Long ago, even by your own showing, if indeed any of the things said before are of any use." How, then, shall the man who does not aid by speech at once bear a reputation for baseness, and at once the man who does aid not escape a reputation for baseness? You do not, then, say this when you call rhetoric, to which these things belong, flattery.

70. "What fitting answer should I have had against these things?" he says. And to the things we now ask, what answer, by the gods? But I wish to make a small distinction, lest anyone suppose at all that I am accusing Plato by these arguments, or speaking ill with an occasion at hand. For I myself neither make it a charge, I suppose, if Plato thought he ought to go anywhere and in any way for any cause whatever, nor do I think the man who brings forward any such thing to be of sound mind, nor do I busy myself at all with anything outside what comes to the argument — let no prize be worth so much — but the things he himself did and for the sake of which he did them, which he himself has clearly stated, these I say accord with the arguments on behalf of rhetoric; and I am so far from reproaching him by these things that, if one must say this too, even in these very things I think to exalt him, if, these things being contrary to those, I do not slander his deeds and acts, but, from his life and works which are on our side and which we deem worthy of being, I show that those words of his stand otherwise than one might believe. When, then, he saw Dion preparing and acting so that he might take justice for what he had suffered, does he appear writing to him to let it go and count it as nothing, and that, if he hates Dionysius and supposes him ill-disposed, he must overlook it and consent that, doing the greatest wrongs, he be among the extreme evils — or, far the contrary, urging him on and thinking fit that he be assiduous, that he might have as many as possible to act with him against that man; and setting down Dionysius as in every way an enemy, counselling him to consider how he will defend himself, and himself joining in the work so far as in him lay, only declining to sail and campaign with him — because, since Dionysius, having him, had then felt shame and not killed him, it was not

71. fitting to go against that man? And yet, if one ought to let one's enemies, and those one hates beyond measure, go on doing wrong, and rhetoric, which makes one take justice from them and does not let them proceed as far as they can, is paltry and useless, then he ought surely most of all to have prevented Dion — being his companion and pupil — and to have reminded him of what he once heard, if he did hear it; or, if not, then at least to teach him on the spot, by the facts, that he must bear in silence and consider how not only he himself shall be deprived of his fatherland and his property by Dionysius, but also many others shall suffer these and other such things to the end, and Dionysius shall not cease wronging all men; and to pray with him that Dionysius become tyrant not only of Sicily, but also of Carthage and Libya, if possible, and, by Zeus, of all Europe, and, if there were any device, of Asia too; and that he himself not only consider nothing about the overthrow of the tyrant, but that no one else either attack him, either to kill him or to cast him out, but, on the contrary, take thought for the guarding of Dionysius' person, that the wretch might be immortal, and, wronging all men in all things, be in all evils at all times. These things, most of all, he ought to have taught Dion beforehand and admonished him, if he trusted these arguments; or, if not, at least to appear not joining in his deliberation about vengeance — which, far from doing, he has become for us a witness in deed about the things we doubted, that he does not talk nonsense. I wish, then, to show him bearing witness, in a way, with his whole household. For Socrates, drawn up in line at Potidaea, and again at Delium, retreating when the rout occurred, plainly to all even from very far off, that whoever should lay hold of this man would defend himself most vigorously — how is this man not clearly bearing witness that one must not allow those who

72. attempt to do wrong? No one, surely, will gainsay it. For it is not the things he said later — when he thought it already timely to die, and that it was hard to do away with the many slanders gathered from long ago and by many — that are the strong proofs of his judgment, but the things he plainly did when he was not in a position to prevent. Wherefore indeed he too, and his companion, retired safely, he says: "for they hardly even touch such men in war, but pursue rather those who flee headlong." For this much more has accrued to him from these things, that again, with the Socrates of Plato, Plato himself bears witness to the argument: "such men they do not much touch, but pursue rather those who flee headlong." Clearly, then, in the cities too, those who watch for such things do not much touch the men so disposed as to defend themselves, but pursue those who yield. So that, if it is reasonable to praise the brave in wars, then the men of this sort here too. So that, if for no other reason, on account of the false accusers rhetoric is a fine thing. And surely, if men do not dare to wrong such persons, both good results follow, and consistent with the arguments just made — that he himself is not wronged, and that he does not allow another to be wronged. And he who went up even to the plain of Babylon with Cyrus, when he was marching against his brother who had first done wrong — Xenophon — how is not he too, of his own household, a witness for us to Plato in the present arguments? For one cannot say this: that in arms, and on behalf of others' interests, it is reasonable to defend oneself against those who attempt to do

73. wrong, but if a man should do this same thing by speech, to disparage it, even if he proceed on behalf of what he himself has suffered; nor, still less, can one say this: that to defend oneself with arms belongs to the fitting things for those who have lived in speeches, but that to defend oneself by the very speeches must be set down as unreason. No one would say these things. And surely, by as much as prudence is finer than courage, by so much is rhetoric finer than valour in war. For, if one must put it in sum, rhetoric is nothing else than prudence that has taken to itself the power of speeches, so that one may not only oneself do the best things, but also be able to persuade others. I hold, then, that these things too have proofs of the truth sufficient — if not, indeed, more than sufficient.

But I go now to the very colophon, as one might say, of Plato's words. For I wish him to appear bearing witness not only from the things by which he is refuted, but as if, standing beside us, he himself bore witness with his own voice: "For those who live happily it is necessary first to do no wrong to others and to be wronged by none. Of these two, the one is not very hard, but to acquire the power of not being wronged is wholly hard; and it is not possible to have this perfectly otherwise than by becoming perfectly good." Hurrah, hurrah for the testimony! These are the things I needed. Plato says these things — the partner in the epigram, and through whom the race of Ariston is truly divine. Perfectly, then, O divine man, rhetoric is a fine thing, and not for everyone either to take or to possess. For you appear to grant this too, that it is ranged on the side of not being wronged. Therefore, when it did not compel doing wrong, but did not permit being wronged — and, as followed from the argument, permits neither of these, neither doing wrong nor being wronged —

74. then, if the definition of philosophy too is the same, rhetoric appears to be a kind of philosophy. But if it suffices for philosophy not to do wrong, rhetoric is more perfect; for it adds the harder thing to acquire, and the greater — that he himself shall not be wronged by others. How, then, is the same thing at once perfectly good and the greatest of goods, and at once the extreme of evils and flattery? And how do the orators have the least power, if indeed that of which it is wholly hard to acquire the power is theirs in abundance? I, for my part, cannot reconcile it. Happy, then, not wretched, by Plato's argument, are the orators, if indeed the perfectly good man is happy, and this is not possible to acquire without becoming perfectly good. Then he wishes to refute rhetoric, but he accuses the tyrants and the dynasts, mixing things that do not mix, as if Heracles — may the example be gracious — having been ordered to slay the lion in Nemea, then, grappling with an ass and throttling it, thought he was strangling the lion and doing the very thing he set out to do. But the example falls so far short, that this man does not put one thing in the place of another in using such argument, but even falls into the contraries. For who does not know that rhetoric and tyranny are as far apart from one another as persuading is from compelling? And surely no one would be ashamed to say that these things have a contrary nature. So that, if to use force and to grasp for more is dreadful, then to persuade and to champion justice is fine and fitting. Therefore rhetoric is not so much an evil as tyranny is; rather, if tyranny is an evil, rhetoric is a good thing from the same considerations; for the one everywhere seeks to use force, while the other has honoured persuading. So that he does the like, in thinking to refute that, as if someone

75. blaming the darkness in the night should think he was accusing the other strange features of the day. And at one moment he says rhetoric is flattery, and again he sets the dynasts and the orators in the same class — not only saying that neither belongs to this power, but, besides its not belonging, that it is entirely alien to it; nay, even putting together two charges that are the very contraries. For how do the orators at once flatter, and at once stand among the dynasts? For the flatterers, surely the greatest and most perfect of them, are wholly the servants of the tyrants themselves; and there are some, I think, of ordinary men too; so that what a slave is toward a master, that a flatterer is toward a tyrant. But the tyrants, on the other hand, are so far from flattering that they thrust all aside by force, and one cannot obtain even moderate things from them, much less the service that is beyond what is fitting; so that the tyrant has all but exceeded even the measure of the master. For nothing is more abject than a flatterer, nor more given to choosing to be a slave; but nothing could you call more savage than a tyrant, nor more given to wishing to play the master. So that, if rhetoric is flattery, the charges against the tyrants do not concern her; but if she is with tyranny, she has exceeded flattery by great bounds. Therefore the one set or the other is altogether already false. For me, then, even if I had nothing good to say about her, this is enough — if I show that even thus he does not speak the truth; but for him, even if he has rightly brought the other charge, the argument about the other is not left. But surely, that he does not rightly bring both at once, he is refuted by his own arguments clashing together; and that he does neither rightly, we have just now shown — privately showing that it is not flattery, and again that it does not share with tyranny. How, then, is he not thrice defeated — both by the argument of the two together,

76. and by that of each separately? And the same thing is preserved for us in all. For about both together he is thrust aside by his own arguments, and again, in respect of each, he bears witness himself in turn — both by the fact that persuading appeared with him to be one of the useful things, and by the fact that, accusing those who use force and are insolent, he is seen doing so throughout the whole argument. For rhetoric is as far separated from tyranny as — if one must say this too — Plato from Dionysius. It is possible, then, to learn both from the matter itself and from what has befallen, how great is the difference of each of these, and according to how great a necessity it is. For it will appear that neither, where rhetoric is preserved, does a tyrant arise so long as it is preserved by speech, nor, again, does rhetoric survive where tyranny prevails; but the orator does everything so that no tyrant may arise, foreseeing at once his own and the common good, that no one, having taken from him the persuading-by-speech, may himself lead affairs by violence at the start; and the tyrants, considering and fearing nothing of all things more than lest someone arise able to speak and persuade, who, gathering the multitudes and becoming a counsellor and informer of what is fitting, may at once render their rule and their licence void. For this very reason they have necessarily their enmity toward one another; for the safety and power of the one set is, at the start, the not-being of the other. So that how much would the orators give, if one might so say, that someone should appear for them, as in battle — Plato, I say, or anyone whatever as helper and ally — to bring the evils of the tyrants into the midst and show them, and not even by night to cease speaking ill of them. For he who shows these things will all but spend and display the very speeches of rhetoric, and in a certain way the aid will come to the orators from their own household. And those again who desire to be tyrants — how much would they give that the tribe of orators in the cities should be disbelieved, and supposed flatterers and no better than cooks —

77. those who attempt to persuade by speech — that the proverb may not in vain say to "reap the deserts." Then, the things that profit those who attempt to do wrong — how can these be conceded to those who honour justice? "How, then, do the orators say things contrary to one another?" — This is no longer among the things said by Plato; nevertheless, for the sake of cleansing the argument on every side, let not even this be left by us unexamined, and that too being virtually the strongest of all, as among the falsehoods which that man has stated. — Because, I think, we encounter even ourselves in our arguments, this very thing which I too have now done; but the original argument is none the more destroyed by it, since those said to philosophize too do not, I suppose, all use the same arguments, but even the most contrary to one another. But nothing prevents philosophy from being a fine thing in respect of those who attain the truth; it is not, I suppose, double or contrary to itself. How, then, would one say? Shall we say that both philosophize who say contrary things? Or that philosophizing is a fine thing in the way I said? And you might see pilots too fighting at sea against one another; but nonetheless it belongs to the pilot's art to save the ship. So, then, even when the orators say things contrary to one another, as one might put it, the original chief point of rhetoric is not hindered, but one must consider what results from the argument, remembering for what it was discovered. This, then, is the argument on behalf of rhetoric.

78. But since he laid hold also of Miltiades and Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles, saying that they did not champion the city toward the best — there is perhaps nothing pressing now to dispute about these men. For these men, if Plato has accused them justly, would justly be considered base; but rhetoric, even if we should set these men down as the most worthless of all, is no more refuted thereby. We granting this, then, the argument on behalf of rhetoric is not lost. But if, indeed, even about these men he should be refuted as not having used the argument altogether fair-mindedly, he will be shown to be contentious on every side. This, then, is to the purpose, to speak about these men too. Come, then, by Zeus, if somehow, rising up or taking perception — as Dion is supposed by Plato to be speaking to the Syracusans — they should say these things to him: "We, O Plato, did the city of the Athenians no other good thing; for we were not knowers of your virtue and wisdom, and the gods do not give all things to all; but the things that came to us — goodwill, eagerness, faith, courage, such things — we furnished, so as to leave no surpassing to another, in such crises, O Plato, in which it was, in the prevailing, at once glory and safety and the things from our prayers, but, being worsted, not even to exist at all. And when we had taken these reckonings, and the gods graciously joining in the work, free was your fatherland and ours, and safe and unscathed from the insolence and lawlessness of the barbarians, and free too all Greece; and there came to be licence both for you to philosophize and for your companions, and to sail freely wherever you wished, and to have memory of us — and then, it was fair-minded, as for the better. For if then we, giving up, had handed ourselves over to the barbarians without a fight, what account of us would there have been among men? But neither did we ourselves suffer any such thing, nor did we endure that the others should, nor

79. did we flatter either side — neither the King, by reason of either of these, fear or hope of gain, nor again the people of the Athenians. For it was not possible, if we wished to flatter, to save them, nor did the occasion then offer the saying of anything toward pleasure for them to hear; but we were so far from being flatterers of the multitude that, even if we had wished to flatter, it was not possible. But neither did we choose it, nor was it possible, nor did we save Greece thus, by gratifying and beguiling — like those harpers you mention — but by rousing, teaching, ourselves becoming an example to the rest of how one must endure in the very terrors and the heights of the dangers, displaying, if you grant the word, our own virtue. Why, then, do you reproach us with flattery and servility — you who, having agreed that those who do not pay back the cost of their rearing privately would be base, yourself pay us no fair return for the common salvation and rearing of the Greeks, in which both you and the rest, on account of us, have been reared in freedom?" If the men should say these things, by unrolling what labyrinths of wisdom, or by saying what of all things, would one be able to gainsay them? For all men have a prior right to speak against these things rather than Plato. Why? Because in these very things which he has written to the companions of Dion, and in which Dion, dead, is supposed by him to speak as though breathing, there are these words: "But, having received such laws, since danger holds Sicily, and you neither prevail sufficiently nor again are sufficiently overpowered, it would perhaps be just and profitable for us all to cut the matter in the middle, both for you who flee

80. the harshness of the rule, and for those again who love to attain rule." Whose ancestors saved the greatest thing — the Greeks from the barbarians — so that it is now possible to make speeches about a constitution; but had they then perished, neither speech nor hope would have been left anywhere at all. "But of us," they would say, "not our ancestors, but we ourselves, by our own deeds and counsels and speeches, saved the Greeks from the barbarians — not the part of them dwelling in Sicily, but all of them together, and those reckoned the one half of the whole inhabited world, from the time when, raising themselves against the barbarians, they thrust them back, so that it is now possible for you to make speeches about a constitution, and even about us ourselves; but had they then perished, neither speech nor hope would have been left anywhere at all." "Now, then," Dion says, "let there be for the one freedom under a kingly rule, and for the other a responsible kingly rule, the laws being masters both of the other citizens and of the kings themselves, if they do anything lawless. And over all these, with guileless and sound mind, with the gods set up a king: first my own son, for the sake of a double gratitude, that from me and that from my father — for he freed the city from the barbarians in that time, and I from tyrants now twice, of which you yourselves have become witnesses. Second, make king the one who possesses the same name as my father, son of Dionysius, for the sake both of the present aid and of his holy character; who, having been born of a tyrant father, willingly frees the city, gaining for himself and his race an everlasting honour instead of an ephemeral and unjust tyranny. And third, one must invite to become king of Syracuse, willing of the willing city, the one now commander of the enemy's camp, Dionysius son of Dionysius, if he is willing of his own accord to pass into a king's estate — fearing the chances, and pitying

81. his fatherland and the neglect of the temples and the tombs, lest through contentiousness he utterly lose all things, becoming a thing of joy to the barbarians." If, then, it is reasonable that even such gifts should be received by the descendants of those who freed the city — so that they themselves become dynasts and kings instead of those former ones — surely it is just that those who themselves freed the whole race of the Greeks should, besides being deemed worthy of nothing more, not even be allowed to seem to be free as a body. And if, indeed, it is just to make the very commander of the enemy's camp a king, if he is willing to pity his fatherland and the neglect of the temples and the tombs, and that he may not through contentiousness utterly lose all things, becoming a thing of joy to the barbarians — where shall we place those who ranged themselves not with the enemy, but against the enemies from all the earth, who, besides their own fatherland, set straight the fatherlands of many others too, and preserved temples and tombs, and none of whom became a thing of joy to the barbarians, nor did Greece on their account? Are these things paltry, or worthy of paltry gratitude, for the men? Then, those whom — if one must obey Plato's words — one must think fit to honour, and that with much greater honours than the customary, shall we, persuaded by Plato's words, call flatterers and servants and worth nothing? We should not, surely, do justice.

But the strangest thing of all is that he uses these men in his refutation that rhetoric is flattery, as being orators, but again he himself releases them from flattery. For he says they did not use it in the passages where he speaks about what they suffered. In these too, then, one of the two must be false. For if rhetoric is flattery, these men must in every way be flatterers, being orators, as he says; but if

82. these men in no way belong to flattery, where is rhetoric flattery on their account, or what need was there of these examples? And I thought this too was not just — that, examining their purposes, one should take into account the calamities they met with. For it is not, if they did not turn out according to their wish, that they have become base, but if they did not counsel the best things for affairs. For the one is to accuse fortune, the other to refute the judgment. Come, did you, O Plato, champion toward the best either the Athenians, or any other people of those among the Greeks or the barbarians? Of those, one would gladly say. You could not say it; for you did not champion any at all. And what of your teacher and companion Socrates? Not he either. And what of Speusippus or Chaerephon? You would not say it. Is it, then, possible to declare a people good and blameless and just once for all, or is this not even possible to assert of a man? And surely, if it is possible, why in the world did you not yourself demonstrate it, nor appear, in the very deeds, a better citizen than we? But if it is impossible, why do you reproach us if we even stumbled in something, they would say again, and why do you demand an accounting of impossible things? For we were so much more profitable to the people than you, in that you neither said nor did anything worse or better, but simply shrank back; while we, so far as in us lay, did not give up, but, as a full contribution of money, we furnished to the fatherland that which comes from reckonings and speeches, and neither shrank from the multitude of those who would say the contrary, nor feared the strength of the rich, with whom he who acts on behalf of the common good must necessarily clash, nor judges, nor dangers, nor those at home, nor those abroad against the enemy, nor at all the things of

83. fortune and the uncertainties of the future. Which things to flee is, surely, easier for anyone than to undertake. But if all should reckon this in their necessities, the affairs of the cities are gone. These things, I think, they would say, speaking moderately, as I think. So be it. What if they did not declare the Athenians the best once for all, but better in some way? What if they would have erred more greatly both about these and about others, had they not been restrained by those men's words? Then you say the physician would die of starvation, if he should contend against the cook before children or such men as cannot recognize the truth; but if Miltiades and Cimon and Pericles, leading affairs toward the best, even stumbled in some things, at this do you wonder?

I, for my part, consider how one must bear it that, while they say one must not make Alcibiades and Critias, who associated with Socrates — men who have incurred so many and so great charges both from the many and from the fair-minded, so that of Critias it is not even easy to conceive a more abominable man, who among the Thirty, the basest of the Greeks, was first — that these men, they say, must not be made a proof that Socrates corrupted the young, nor that their errors are anything whatever against Socrates, who did not himself deny that he conversed with the young; but if the people of the Athenians, in the many and great things which it managed both on its own behalf and on behalf of the Greeks, deliberated some things rightly and fittingly, but in some things also erred toward its champions — these things they think fit to reckon against the champions themselves. And Terpander was not able to make all the Lesbians musical, nor Arion, nor anyone else who made music in Lesbos; but if Themistocles and Pericles did not once for all educate the Athenians in political virtue, this, as it seems, refutes those men as being worth nothing — as if

84. one should accuse the gods too by the same arguments, that their providence ought to have been such as to do away with injustice and ill will altogether from among men, and that no men anywhere should err in anything. But as it is, how must one think them either to exercise providence, when men do not cease offending against those they rule, or to be unjustly neglected by some? At any rate the horses recognize, by looking at them, those who have never laid a hand on them, but hate and flee those who stand over them; nay, this too the proverb has assigned even to asses, that the one who scratches gets scratched in return. Men, then, led by gods, do not believe in gods, or say and do something base about the gods concerning themselves. And the charioteer, taking horses that kick, gentles and tames them, and at last drives on them safely and with much ease wherever he wishes; but the gods have not even now done away with injustice among men after so long, and that too governing from all eternity, and besides seeing some of them sin against the gods themselves. But surely, since no one in his senses would say these things in earnest — except as we now do, for the refutation of an argument — how is Plato not utterly playing the false accuser? For if the things which not even the gods have ever done, nor was it possible to demand even of Athena the city-guardian herself, these he demands of Themistocles and Pericles, I ask him how he is not a false accuser. But, I think, the nature of the people they could not transform nor make to vanish; and this is its nature — never to become wholly good nor faultless; but whatever, in dangers, they had to foresee, in which it was at once to be benefactors of the many and of the fair-minded, or, acting with authority, to lead it ever away from the most grievous things and to turn the errors of its nature to the least — these things cannot but appear to be present in these men; and these things, besides the argument from us and the demonstrations, Plato himself sets his seal upon, and is for us here too

85. a witness, by the same cleverness as in the passages above, ever according to the need, and for the rest, if he be shown himself praising them. How, then, could one more conspicuously or brilliantly have praised the men than as this man did, who made the funeral oration for them? In which he says he both acts as their patron and proposes them, to set in songs and the rest of poetry, having adorned them worthily of the doers — I mean their deeds. For this is the most graceful thing, that, having passed by and overlooked all else, he has come to the very things proper to these men and to their statesmanship, as most of all from these going to show forth the virtue of the dead — setting greatest of all the deeds that at Marathon, second that at Salamis, and adding as a crown that they showed the barbarians that all wealth and power yields to virtue.

Therefore, when he praises those who counselled and did these things, he praises Themistocles and Miltiades. For these were the leaders of them. And yet how is it not absurd, of those whose deeds he adorns, to disparage the statesmanship, and the things which he sets down as proofs of the virtue of those persuaded, not to consider these to belong first to the virtue of those who persuaded? For those who, chosen by the council, go through these funeral orations before the multitude, have perhaps an escape, that of necessity they adorned, and one would not make a matter of their speeches; but whoever has, on purpose and by himself, composed about them, plainly would not have, unless he considered both the men and the deeds worthy of speech. For he does not say he has said these things to flatter the Athenians, nor, even if he should say so, will we believe him. For if, again,

86. he had undertaken it for the sake of showing the grace and power of speech, how is it possible for him to censure rhetoric, in which this very thing consisted? About these men, then, he has so borne witness — that they did not lead the citizens toward the worst, nor continued filling up their desires, but became to them leaders of such deeds as not even Plato would be ashamed to adorn, and to add virtue to the things accomplished; not as if they had become, in their nature, like Mithaecus the cook and Thearion the baker, but as it is hard even for others to speak of them fittingly. But toward the once-for-all argument, how again, and where, does this man bear witness? In this very Gorgias, in the words of Socrates and Callicles. For having come to the very thing that resolves the argument, and the judgment having become clear, he splits about it, and the one asks thus, the other answers, intermingled: "Do you think the orators always speak toward the best, aiming at this, how the citizens shall be as good as possible through their speeches; or do these too, set on gratifying the citizens and, for the sake of their own private interest, making light of the common, consort with the peoples as with children, trying only to gratify them, but caring nothing whether they will be better or worse on this account?" "This is no longer a simple thing you ask. For there are some who, caring for the citizens, say what they say, and there are some too such as you describe." Enough. For if this too is double — the one of these would be flattery and shameful public speaking, the other a fine thing. Therefore from us too it is enough. For if it is double, and the orators do not always say the best things, but there are times when they say the best, or, by Zeus, some speak in the one way, some in the other, the argument defining rhetoric to be flattery is in brief resolved. And still more clearly, at the end of the dialogue, he has revealed and declared the whole; for it is not

87. by us that these things have been interpolated: "For indeed, O Callicles, from the same source come the men who become exceedingly base; yet nothing prevents good men too from arising among these, and very worthy of admiration are those who do arise. For it is hard, O Callicles, and worthy of much praise, having come into great licence to do wrong, to live justly through one's life; and few such men arise, since both here and elsewhere they have arisen, and I think they will be too — good and noble men in this virtue of handling justly whatever one is entrusted with. And one indeed has become very renowned even among the rest of the Greeks, Aristides son of Lysimachus; but the many, O best of men, become base among the dynasts." Here he has gone so much further, that he has not only agreed that it is possible for them to arise, but has even named one himself, and "there have been others too," he says, "both here and elsewhere." I, then, take away this "others too," and "if anyone elsewhere"; but him whom he says became very renowned, and not only among the citizens but also among the rest of the Greeks, this man I set down alone. For these things lie embedded in the middle of the myth not, it seems to me, unconsidered, nor paltrily, nor as if let slip, but so as to be hidden as much as possible, and that, if anyone found and used them, he himself might not seem to have passed them by, but they might be there. So he found a certain middle rank, and at the same time, toward the end of the whole argument, set down things which, had he set them at the beginning, he was not going to be able, I think, to use for what followed. But not for this reason will we let it pass us by, so long as the argument is about the same man and the same things — I will add, that they appear present in these very passages too. Therefore, if in every way another, among all men, neither at Athens nor

88. anywhere else, was a renowned orator, nor outside the charge of flattering, but there has been one at Athens, why must the matter be all the more reproached as of necessity paltry? For it was not whether it is easy or not to become truly an orator that was set before us to consider — since this even we, if you please, bear witness to; and even if we should acquire the voice of Stentor, we would cry out that it is not easy; and even if the Nile, O blessed one, should get a voice at its seven mouths, as the Scamander has, according to Homer — but whether it is possible or not, and is of such a nature as can come to pass, this was the thing from the argument. For come, by Zeus, if before Aristides was born he made these arguments against rhetoric, eager in every way to show it something paltry and worthy of flight, saying that it was impossible that a man should ever become good or just who had laid hold of such speeches, would he not have lied? The very appearing of Aristides as such a man shows it — if Plato has not spoken falsely about him. Therefore it is dreadful, if before Aristides was born one had to expect that someone would come to be, and not to consider it absolutely impossible, but, since this man stands as a manifest example, neither to bring the charge as if this man had come to be, nor as if it were possible at all. And surely this too is not equal: that, no good man at all having arisen, one should make this a proof against rhetoric, as inescapable; but that, when it is agreed by the very man who speaks ill of her that some worthy of mention both have arisen and will arise — for this is the extraordinary thing, even to foretell about the future that they will be — then to think there is nothing more to it. Another thing, then, which is from this last testimony: that he has himself agreed that such men are worthy of far greater praise. "For it is hard," he says, "O Callicles" — therefore also, O Plato — "having come into great licence to do wrong, to live justly." If, then, to play the orator is

89. to be able to do wrong, according to you, and it is possible also to live justly while playing the orator, and the greater proof of justice is for the man able to do wrong to keep quiet than for the man unable, how do such men not stand far from the flatterers, who surpass even the necessarily just by so much? It seems, then, that the saying of Homer applies, and "he let slip a word that were better unsaid." For, having been able not only not to speak ill of Aristides, but having of necessity set him down as outstanding, he has again undone the very charge he brought against Miltiades and Themistocles. For this would already be to accuse men, not to censure rhetoric, as the cause of their speaking or acting ill. As, then, he himself has accused those men of things not necessary, what prevents us in turn from setting against him things not necessary on their behalf? And yet, by reason of this man, they are half necessary. For he will appear not only and not as we now show, having come round into the contrary arguments against himself, but also from the very things for which he blames those men, unable to praise this one; or, if he rightly praises this one, by that very thing unable to accuse those either. How? Because, I think, he makes a token of those men's having championed the Athenians ill, the fact that they themselves suffered ill at the hands of the Athenians, as though those who had become better by them would not have erred against those by whom they were not even educated to err against others. These things he having so

90. set down, and having brought in charioteers and such things, has here not only said nothing paltry of Aristides, but has plainly made him exceptional above the rest. And yet, if to suffer ill at the hands of the Athenians is a token of not having championed the Athenians finely, then neither did Aristides champion them finely; for he too did not, I suppose, get off unscathed, but was cast out — I will add, that this man did not even come to grief in a court of law, as Miltiades and Pericles did, nor at the hands of those he had offended on behalf of the many, but was ostracized by the very people. Therefore, if this is no token of baseness — if some orator met with misfortune at the hands of those whom he championed — then neither Miltiades nor Themistocles, nor anyone else, both stumbled and would justly be considered base; but if those men are refuted by these things, what prevents one from setting down neither Aristides as renowned nor outside the charge against those men? So that not only by the arguments against rhetoric, but also by those privately against the men, Aristides — honoured by him contrary to those whom he reviles — appears to come to the aid of them, like an episode advancing beyond expectation. Then he brings in the pilot, and "for what reason," he says, "does he not think great thoughts, nor equal to the orator, saving men too from death — both them and their property?" But I see that this also is available to ask in return: "For what reason, then, do you yourself not yield to the pilot? For if, for the sake of philosophy being dishonourably led by the many, you say you sailed to Sicily as helper to Dion, no less did the pilot who carried you save that man, and that too across the greatest of seas; but he can say so much more than you, by as much as he saved the very man who was going to save Dion." But I let these things pass. But how is it not truly absurd, if the pilot himself does not think fit to be of equal pride with the orator, nor

91. disputes it, but you use this example, as though by this you would somehow make the orators humbler, if all yield to them. And surely that it is not through folly that the pilot withdraws before the orator — nor could anyone, admonishing him, say to him, as one yielding unworthily in a contest: "Sir, see what you do; the orator will go off with the crown; it is no great feat of rhetoric to show this." For he both knows it and needs no one to teach him, partaking of so much sense, that he himself is ruler of the sailors, but servant and minister of those who sail. And of the occasions he has so much as belongs to him, to give the signal to those resolved to sail, and, by Zeus, to rouse those moored on a shore when the wind comes on; but as to when it is better to sail and when to stay at home, and whither and on whose behalf to sail, he is no more able to see it than another, nor sovereign to counsel. But the case of the orator is not such; rather, as the pilots rule the sailors, so again the orators rule the pilots, whenever there is need of the best of ships. And by so much are the orators more sovereign than the pilots, as those are than the sailors — by as much as the one set are masters of the sailors when they sail, but the others of the pilots themselves whether they sail or not; or rather the orators are masters of both, of the pilots and of those who sail. For they teach and persuade from the beginning when and whither one must sail; and again, when there is need of this, they prevent it. So that it is not equal to serve for hire and to send off victorious; nor does the pilot think he must consider the having saved the ship, nor those in it, but must besides examine the figure of the matter — just as the executioner does not think fit to be of greater pride than the judge, nor equal,

92. because, forsooth, he himself kills; or, if not for that reason, yet that he too does it — but he knows that he himself, being a servant, does this of necessity, while the other judges what is just with authority, on purpose. And further, the pilot has his strength from one half. For saving alone is his; but no one has yet killed anyone by the account of the art, but if some are destroyed when a shipwreck befalls, he begs off and does not exalt himself. But the orator knows not only how to save, but also to kill and cast out whom it is better; so that perfect from both is the power of the orator. And the pilot does not even save according to desert those whom he saves, but, as the example itself says, he thinks it not improbable that some are such for whom it is better to die than to live; while the orator fills out the part of saving too together with justice. Therefore the example does not turn out alike, when, there being two, the one is sovereign of both together with justice, while the other has even the one only from a half. For these reasons the pilot, having exacted two obols if from Aegina, but if from Egypt, you say, or from Pontus, two drachmas if very much, having disembarked, walks beside the sea and his ship in modest fashion. For he reckons, you say, that it is uncertain whom of them he has benefited and whom he has harmed, and for these reasons it is not the custom for the pilot to exalt himself, though saving us. Do you see what you say? "It is not the custom," you say. But for the orator it is the custom; therefore it is also just. But the pilot knows those things, and besides those, whether he reckons these too I could not say; but it is possible

93. both for a pilot and for anyone to perceive that the pilot who has at most saved a crowd together has not saved above a thousand; but the freight of the orator, which he saves, is not measured by an Egyptian ship, nor measured at all by a fleet, but harbours themselves and cities — not of ten thousand men only, instead of ten-thousand-bearing ships, but even hard to measure — fall under the fortune and patronage of rhetoric. And the pilot, having put into port, has nothing to do with his art, but for the orator there is no place exempt. "The engineer will overwhelm us with his speeches," he says. With what speeches, O head of Gorgias? For so long as he is simply an engineer, he is so far from being able to adorn his art with speech, that he cannot even furnish the products of his art unless the orators prevail; but if he is going to overwhelm with speeches, what is the power that presides over these? Therefore, when rhetoric is useful even to the engineer, if indeed he is going to be able to say anything about his art, how is rhetoric not in every way useful? Less strange, perhaps, than these things, but consistent nonetheless, he does in leading the trainers as more honoured than physicians. For if you do not mean by this gymnastic, but simply that which moves the body in any way at all, all men share in gymnastic; for all are moved somehow. And yet I should wonder if all are to be conceded better than physicians and more skilled in the use of the body. But if he speaks of that over which the trainers preside, how is it possible to bring this into the same class with medicine? For it is open to all to see this, that without trainers many kinds of

94. men are led and saved, but that there should be medicine and not for all is the whole, so to speak, of difference. But, that argument may not take up argument for us — it being satisfactory if we suffice even for the urgent matters — I leave aside for the present the difference about this. "And the science of swimming," he says, "saves from death; so that why do we not exalt this too?" Because, O best of men — for neither will we draw back through shame from speaking of what is plain — the man who best knows how to swim is sufficient if he saves himself. But no one has ever yet saved another while swimming to him — except that the dolphin is said to have saved Arion of Methymna. But the orator has practised being able to save not himself only, nor one other, but friends and city and allies. And whoever is the best diver does not swim more than three or four plethra further — unless you should mention Scylla; nor, when he has come out of the sea or lake or river, is swimming of any use to him; but for the orator it is possible to traverse lakes and seas and rivers by his art; and whether staying at home or sailing, sitting or walking, he is the same. Do we, then, requite like with like? And I have not yet said the most sovereign thing, but now I will answer besides, that, O wondrous man, even swine and the meanest dogs of all know how to swim, and much more competently than a man, and they say the deer swim over a very great stretch of sea, holding to one another, the same one always becoming, in succession, first and last. But the nature and power of speech the god who fashioned all things has not implanted in hares and apes, nor in deer, nor, I think, in lions, nor in any of the other animals — neither in those in the sea, nor in those on the land, nor in those that fly above — but in two races only has this been set: in the prior and most perfect, the best of all, and in the second, the best of all the rest, by reason of this one thing which

95. rhetoric, taking up, leads and adorns, increasing both him who has it and those who use it, increasing what is fitting to increase according to the nature of man. And yet, if Plato showed as much on behalf of rhetoric's being flattery as we now show on behalf of the whole contrary, I do not know how he the better confirmed his argument. But if he thinks to shame her worth by the paltriness of his examples, the things upon these I, for my part, may no longer utter; but one might, preserving Homer's verse — requiting like for like, "word for word" — suppose this: "What of it? Do not the nurses too say these things to the little children, and the schoolmasters and the pedagogues? — That you must not stuff yourself; that you must walk in the streets in orderly fashion, and rise before your elders, and love your parents, and not make an uproar, nor play at dice, nor, if you please, cross your feet — but nonetheless the nurses do not on this account think great thoughts, nor claim to be before the philosophers." So that, whomever you should set down as most valuable is worth perhaps two or three minae. And the pedagogues, even talking half-barbarously, admonish these things, the most of them, and sometimes serve as porters to their own masters instead of pedagogues, whenever they have given up the trade; and, by Zeus, they are not vexed if they shall have less than the orators, nor do they say this: "Why in the world is it that they themselves, shouting every day and sometimes cuffing and admonishing not just enough to clear their conscience, have not drawn up their brows, nor push into the seat of honour, nor have they even now received the reputation of knowing the greatest of human affairs; but the philosophers exalt themselves and put on airs and lay claim to the first places and carry themselves as great men, and that too saying these things among themselves, and neither yield to the orators nor think they ought to be of equal mind with the pedagogues?" But neither do these things have a sound argument, and those

96. resemble these. I would have written the art too, were it not boyish. But nevertheless, in the arguments above, I tried to show that rhetoric pervades all the parts of virtue — being discovered in prudence, and discovered on behalf of justice, and guarded by temperance and courage. And this one may see according to these arguments of hers too. For to play the orator is, I suppose, to discover what is needful and to arrange it and to render what is fitting with order and power. And the discovery appears to be in accordance with prudence, if indeed it is impossible for one who falls short of prudence to discover anything whatever of the useful; and temperance is in accordance with the handling and the harmony of the leading and the probable; and in place of justice, again, set "the fitting." And this is to preserve what kind and how much suits each matter. But surely nothing partakes of courage straightway so much as speech wishes to. For nothing so banishes and disdains the lowly and ignoble as speech does. So be it. These things being so, by laying hold of which of the things I have named is it possible to censure rhetoric? Or who would proceed better and more purely from the probabilities, as a man, than he who is able to make speeches of what kind and how many and toward what kind and to whom one must; or how, apart from such a power, is it possible to converse rightly with either many or few? Or how to consort with a brother — younger or older, I mean — or how with parents, or how with companions, or how with those who know, or how with the ignorant, or with enemies, or with allies, or with the luxurious, or with the needy, or, if one should subdivide a thousand other cases? For the man who has examined the fitting in speeches everywhere, and knows the occasion, and is able to carry these through as he knows them — this is the only man able to use all the things I have named; this is the man who, admonishing, accomplishes; this the man who, accusing, is believed; this the man everywhere superior to the man who falls short in these things. And surely, the man who knows what one must say knows what one must keep silent, and when

97. it is better to speak and when to let be — just as whoever knows when it is the right time to sail does not fail to know when also to lie at anchor; and whoever understands the right time for speech and for silence will err in neither of these. But the man who neither speaks nor keeps silent never does so from the probabilities, at least according to the art. It belongs, then, no more to the philosopher than to the orator to know when one must keep silent. And surely, whoever knows what it is fitting to say knows what it is fitting to do. For there is no one who, knowing how to say what it is fitting to do, is ignorant of what it is fitting to do; nor anyone who, ignorant of what it is fitting to do, is able to say it. And surely the man who knows for another what must be done knows also, I suppose, what must be done for himself — just as whoever does not fail to stop another's thirst does not fail in his own. The same man, then, appears, by the argument, both able to say what one must and to do it, and the same man errs about both according to the probable.

For these reasons, then, the ancients too joined the powers and did not distinguish them. Homer said that Phoenix was sent by Peleus to Achilles "to be a speaker of words and a doer of deeds," as though the same man knows both what one must say and what it is better to do. And even before this, earlier, he himself joined them, saying, "knowing not yet of equal war, nor of assemblies, where men become conspicuous" — making clear the practical part from one kind, that of war, and the part of speech from that of the assemblies; but, mentioning both, he added the "where men become conspicuous" to the assemblies, not to war, as the orator being the better when he speaks about what must be done than when he himself does the deed. Reasonably. For by as much as it is better to rule than to serve, by so much is it better to say what is needful than to do it. For the one, I think, becomes a counsellor to many, while the other becomes another single man's substitute. As, then, the master-builders must necessarily be superior to the carpenters, being nonetheless concerned with the very things that belong to the experience of the carpenters,

98. so the poet set those who excel in the assemblies and in speeches above those who serve in these, and called them "conspicuous," very rightly so calling them. For he who acts among many does not become manifest; for many are the sharers; but he who speaks into the midst draws all to himself, and all look to him; "and he speaks securely, with gentle reverence, and is conspicuous among the assembled." For the argument comes round, all but of itself, to other, nearly similar things; in which Homer clearly bears witness that the orator does not speak as a flatterer, nor submissively, nor admiring this man or that, nor pursuing a momentary pleasure, becoming now one thing, now another, as the cooks do, for the sake of another's pleasure, nor figuring himself as a slave of those who at any time have power, but "he speaks securely," he says. And "securely" is "without stumbling." But it is impossible to speak without stumbling for one who does not speak soundly. And he says the cause of this is "with gentle reverence" — not taking into his soul and imprinting the most shameless character, that of the flatterer, but "reverencing." For of such a man the speeches too must necessarily be orderly, and, having order and arrangement, prevail. Hesiod, again, says that even kings become partakers of speeches by a divine portion and gift, saying that Calliope "attends also upon reverend kings. Whomever the daughters of great Zeus honour and behold being born of Zeus-nurtured kings, on his tongue they pour sweet dew, and from his mouth flow gentle words; and the peoples all look to him as he decides cases with straight judgments; and speaking unerringly, he quickly and skilfully puts a stop even to a great quarrel" — saying nearly not only the same kind of things, but the very same things outright as Homer, or rather much more sovereignly and brilliantly pleading for rhetoric, since he sets not only the same man to do what is needful as the man who says what is needful,

99. but also says that the best of kings become such by partaking of rhetoric. And he adds: "For therefore are kings prudent, because, when the peoples are wronged in the assembly, they accomplish redress with ease, persuading with soft words" — bearing witness in these to two things: that rhetoric sits beside the kingly art, and that the title of "prudent" and the speaking finely belong to the same man. For he who in the earlier verses made Calliope follow upon the most reverend of the kings and make them able to speak, and here added "for therefore are kings prudent," so as to settle the differences of the people, shows that in the rank in which he before set the speeches, in this same he sets temperance; and again, that the orators are not from folly but prudent — setting prudence and temperance as the beginning of rhetoric, and these in turn joining to one another, both the kingly art and the judicial — Hesiod speaking rightly and justly requiting the Muses, from whom he had received the very power to speak about these things. Therefore the prudent say what is needful about these things, and the kings who know how to speak are prudent, not only that they themselves may do what is needful, but that they may prepare others too. It is, then, the work of rhetoric both to think rightly, and not only oneself doing what one ought, but to furnish others too, by persuading, what they must do, and in general to be kingly. Nor does the proverb depart from these things, which says that as the character is, such is the speech too; and again the other likewise. So with the arguments from us — or rather with those which the argument itself sets down — and with the testimony from the facts and that from the most honoured poets and the credit of the proverbs, the truth is on our side.

And if one must tell a tale too, I fear, indeed, lest some comic man, in mockery, say that we are convicted of trespass even against the old wives. But I will tell no mere tale, ending in itself, but here too the credit from the facts will be present

100. — that I may truly requite the speech of Amphion too, and remember to mention Zethus, if, not as in Euripides one man shall make both speeches, but according to those very men let us divide it. For, men having lately come to be, there was much tumult and confusion over the earth among the other animals too. For neither did they themselves have what to do for themselves — for there was nothing to bring them together, but the greater led the lesser — nor were they able to hold out against the other animals; for in all things they fell short of all, now of these, now of those: in speed of all the winged — the very thing Homer said the Pygmies suffer at the hands of the cranes, all the men of that time suffered at the hands of all the strong birds — and in strength they were far behind the lions and the boars and many others; so that they perished in silence. And surely in the structure of the body they fell short not only of the sheep but even of the snails, no one of them being self-sufficient. The race being thus destroyed and slipping away little by little, Prometheus — ever somehow being a friend of man — goes up as an ambassador on behalf of men, not sent by men, for it was not yet known to send ambassadors, but himself of his own accord. And Zeus, both admiring Prometheus speaking justly and at the same time having of himself taken a reckoning of the matter, bids Hermes, one of his own children, go to men with rhetoric. Now Prometheus had before woven together for each, for all, the senses and the other members of the body; but he did not bid Hermes divide it as a distribution of the festival-money, that all in turn might share in rhetoric, as in eyes and hands and feet, but, having selected the best and noblest and

101. strongest in their natures, to put the gift into the hands of these, that they might have, at once, the power to save both themselves and the rest. And rhetoric having thus come to men from the gods, men were able to flee the harsh life among the beasts, and they ceased being all enemies to one another in a circle, and found the beginning of fellowship. And coming down from the mountains, some to one part of the inhabited world, some to another, they drew together — at first in the open air, but after this, speech having now prevailed, they both built a city and divided, not as before at random, but into arrangements of fellowships; and they set up as leaders of the cities laws and rulers, and held a constitution as custom, and brought up thank-offerings to the gods, making the first-fruits those from speeches, in which the gods, the argument holds, even now most rejoice, because from this it first became theirs to know the gods. Thus man was raised great from the weak and rotten thing of the beginning, and, before despised as no matter, is from that time sovereign over the things on the earth, to use as he wishes — having made speech his bulwark instead of any other defence. And let our tale have this ending, having taken, I think, no dishonourable head. And that these things are not a mere tale, nor a dream, but a waking truth, and the very account of the matters themselves, is plain from the matters themselves. Therefore not only did the power of rhetoric, from the beginning, distinguish and establish these things, but rhetoric even now holds together and adorns the cities long since inhabited, seeking ever what is suitable to the present orders. For just as I said just now, legislation, having enacted the laws, is straightway finished, and the judicial art, after the vote, busies itself no further; but she, like some sleepless guard, does not break off her watch, but both was with those arts from the beginning, leading and teaching beforehand, and again by herself goes over each matter, proposing,

102. acting as patron, ever composing the present. And not even if all wrongs and errors should depart from among men is she any the more useless — as there would, I suppose, be no need of laws or judges, this having come to pass; but so long as there is the using, both among themselves toward one another and toward the rest, the works are preserved for rhetoric. And not only do we, surpassing the other animals by the nature of speech, stand so far before them, but among the other animals, nor among those of the same kind, does one differ so much in any of his own peculiar things as man differs from man by reason of speech. Not even among men, then, do the other powers so far excel or hold out. For the man who prevails in wealth prevails perhaps over one and two, but, three or four together mingling their substances, he would not be richer; and if over four, yet not over twice as many; and if even over many times as many, yet not over all in the city; and if even over all in his own, yet surely not over those of the neighbouring town; and if over those too, yet not over both together; and much more, I think, not over those in all Greece together; and over those in all the continent it is altogether impossible. But the man who prevails by speech is alike before each man and before all gathered together, and as much as he prevails, it abides continuous for him, and he does not lose it. For it is not possible to club together, as with money, nor to fill up the deficit by a common subscription. And the man who excels in strength, even if he should be superior to one, by two would be held down, both Archilochus and the proverb say. And if, then, he should surpass both, it is easy to find how many would become manifestly superior. "United is the virtue of men," said Homer, naming that according to strength. But surely speeches better

103. could not all together furnish than the one excelling in each case, nor is this judged by united virtue, but one and many are of equal power, each preserving the portion that falls to him of the loss, as in beauty. For until the superior comes forward from him, the fellowship and the multitude are worth nothing, not even if you lead the army of Darius. By which greatest thing is shown how great is the kinship of speech with the beautiful, and that this is in the soul which beauty is in the body. And yet, even about this part one might say that beauty time easily refutes — indeed the very name of "bloom" is allotted to it along with it; but speeches advance together with time, and nothing so shows the best of them as time, just as Sophocles said the just man appears only with time. The addition I take away — that not only with time, at least speeches, but also they are naturally fit to take hold at once, and of these alone has it befallen that their bloom is immortal. And the man who possesses money, whomever he thinks he ought to do good to, he does it by taking away from what he has, so that he renders his remainder less by what he has given out; and if, indeed, he should continue persistently in such ambition, quickly, I suppose, he will further need someone to relieve him of this; but the possession and power of speeches is not spent by the use, but, if one may say so, is most of all naturally fit to increase by this. And the cause is that money we take from below, from the mines and the quarries and from sullen labours, but speeches come to us from those who lose nothing by the things wherewith they do us good. Reasonably, then, do these alone partake of the divine nature. And surely, if one should do away with diseases from among men by speech, one might say there is no need of medicine, just as there is no need of a pilot for one not sailing;

104. but for rhetoric, not only if all the errors of private men, but even if all wars should depart from among men, affairs are not without resource, nor has her power fallen as when a root is withdrawn. For still more do the festivals and the graces of peace need the order that comes from her; and, by Zeus, both the honours of gods and of heroes, and all the eulogies justly owed to good men. For she comes upon all these and adorns them, and appears fitting to all alike. And if, indeed, she should share with any of the other arts and powers — Heracles! — it is impossible to say how she shows forth what is hers. For instance, if a physician should add rhetoric, he will thus most of all know the grace of medicine itself. For if the power to persuade should be added to the other things present to him by his art, what prevents him from treating beforehand most cases by rhetoric, before laying hold of the instruments of medicine, using the wisest of remedies, as someone said? And, again, having come together with generalship, it is naturally fit to save the things of generalship far more. These things indeed Homer everywhere clearly shows, saying, "so speaking he roused the strength and spirit of each," and "so he spoke, and they rushed yet more upon the Argives," and "and to them straightway war became sweeter than to return in the hollow ships to their dear native land." Such things he always attributes to speeches. And most clearly of all he confirms it, all but by a herald, having made Agamemnon, when the Aiantes furnished their ranks bristling "with shields and helmets and spears," pray to receive the spirit of them all: "may such a spirit be in the breasts of all"; but of Nestor, who counselled the army best, to receive ten such, not worse, as counsellors: "for such, he said, may ten counsellors be mine among the Achaeans; then quickly would the city of King Priam bow, taken and sacked beneath our hands" —

105. setting rhetoric so much more sovereign than generalship, as ten men are fewer in number than a hundred thousand. Reasonably. For he had not taken the proof from afar, but: if then, when the Achaeans were set in motion to rise up and were already drawing out the props of the ships and shouting over the sea, these two orators had not restrained them, what more was there of the tacticians, what of shields and spears and a multitude of ships and money and gear? But truly, what the baggage-carriers are to the hoplites, this all the equipment then appeared to be toward the rhetoric that presided over all these. And the pilot again, having added a part of this power, knowing both to frighten when it is the time and again to prepare them to take courage, by how much does he excel toward the very affairs of the pilot's art? Therefore rhetoric is both privately everywhere wonderful, and to whatever she is added she furnishes so great a turn of the scale. And I, for my part, say that even beauty and rhetoric, coming together, will be judged by the rhetoric, and that no one will gladly look upon such a man more than gladly hear him speaking. And this too Homer seems to bear witness: "not then did we so admire the form of Odysseus, when we beheld it," as he said — the closeness of the thoughts and the words and the grandeur of the voice, likening his rhetoric to a sign from heaven. And he bears witness in the passages we mentioned just now: "one man is feebler in form, but a god crowns his shape with words" — not idly nor simply saying "crowns," but showing that it not only fills up the deficiencies, but besides makes him prevail, since indeed the crown is a token of victory. The man, then, who is ugly but able to speak finely he sets before the most beautiful but unable to speak; and the man at once beautiful and an orator he reasonably and consistently says

106. is more admired by reason of his speeches. And Pindar made so great a hyperbole that, at the wedding of Zeus, he says that the gods themselves, when Zeus asked if they needed anything, requested that he make for himself certain gods who should adorn these great deeds and all that array of his with speeches and music. And these things not only poets, but all men too agree: that other things hold either entertainment or use, for the most part, but this one thing most of all fills both, and along with its benefits has a wonderful grace; so that, even when men come into wars with one another, they receive and send off the ambassadors that come from those who did the deeds with their own hands, having regard for the tribe of orators, exempting the nature of speech, reverencing that from the beginning it came in for the salvation and common need of the race. And the disposition in arms is useless in peace, but the power in speeches is not dishonourable in wars, but is both useful to citizens and reverend to enemies, and often, in the very crisis of arms, prevails over arms. And the poets seem to me, for this reason, to call Hermes — the leader and patron of this wisdom — by the name common to the gods alone. For in common they name them all "givers of good things," but privately this one only thus; and "the guileless" too, and "the helper," because the gift from him is nothing evil, but provides good things in order, all of them, to men — in wars, in peace, on land, on sea, in hardships, in gladnesses, everywhere. And it seems to me that even the race of daemons, if one must believe Plato, in carrying the things from men to the gods and the things from the gods to men, uses this. So that one might rightly, in this respect too, call rhetoric the bond of the whole.

107. And this too is the greatest thing to say on behalf of this power: that nothing is at once so common to the many and has so far escaped the condition and nature of the many; and being always, so to speak, among men, it is most hard to find in its perfection. For just as the lions and all that are more honoured of animals are by nature rarer than the rest, so too among men nothing is so rare as a man worthy to be called an orator; but with hard satisfaction one, and a second, like the Indian bird, springs up in the Egyptian cycles of the sun. And the many, having hit upon certain parts of the art, need Homer to address them, as that man said "he was an under-charioteer," and again "an under-servant of Poseidon" — the one is some beginning, the other the very end of a verse. So far are the truly orators by nature from being like Mithaecus and Thearion. And whatever other kinds of speeches there are — that we may not pass this by either — I have felt toward the speeches of rhetoric the same as cakes toward the real foods and meats. So that, of those concerned with each, these are most esteemed who contribute the most of rhetoric, and of these themselves most he who comes nearest to rhetoric. Homer and the things of Homer are these; Sophocles and the things of Sophocles these. And what does Plato himself say to us? For we are not ignorant of him, but ready to set him in the fairest place of the chorus. What, then, is rhetoric herself by herself, and the orator? For I would not shrink from saying that the man best in speeches is the man who is best. If, then, such a man too should arise, of a kind to have rhetoric but not easily to enter into the popular assemblies, nor to dispute about the constitution, seeing affairs

108. otherwise disposed, and that too being not among the last in reputation and honours and the timely ambitions, but to use speeches by himself for himself, having honoured their nature and the beauty in them, and having inscribed a god as leader and patron of his life and of his speeches — not even for this man is it hard to answer Plato; rather, this man would be supplied with the very finest and most just of speeches: that, "O wondrous man, I from the beginning honoured this power and made it of more account than all gains and affairs, not that I might flatter the people, nor that I might aim at the many, nor for the sake of money — nay, whoever looks to this and is of those who take, this man I call a hireling, not an orator, and I say I have left room for many others to dispute about happiness, if one prides oneself on this — but, led by the very speeches and considering it fitting for a man to possess fine speeches as a possession, thus I work according to my own power. Why, then, do you reproach me with flattery, who am so far from flattering that I do not even consider how others shall flatter me? Nor, if I shall not be admired by the many, does it matter to me at all; but as the wine-lover does not consider it a loss if no one shares his drinking, and the lover of boys and the lover of women do not pursue their desire with reference to the testimony of others, but are content if they have those in whom they take joy, so I too, consorting with speeches and using these instead of others, take delight — a delight and a pleasure perhaps more befitting a free man; so that, even if none of my neighbours is privy to it, I do not count it a loss. But you, indeed, even the man who has

109. the science of medicine you call a physician, even if he does not make his art public; and a statesman the man who has this science, even if he is doing his own affairs ... to be such. For these reasons it is not possible to say that I, rather than you, practise flattery — being so disposed, how can one say it, or how that he is a patron of any of the shameful things — who, if for no other reason, by these very things which he honours and pursues, must of necessity be most freed of all from all shameful things. For it is a thing to be content with, if a man, overlooking and setting far off all else, and having set up before him this one pleasure, but having been a slave to no other, should then be able, with a god as helper, to attain this. For what Thucydides said about naval matters, this man will say about rhetoric and speeches much more fittingly: that it is not possible to practise these things as a by-work, as it may chance, but rather that nothing else must become a by-work to these. Not only, then, must he be pure of flattery in himself and have nothing whatever counterfeit in his soul, but he must also be far from all flatterers and all shameful gatherings and associations. "Why, then," he will say, "do you not, O best of men, make a recantation, if you have any care for the truth?" Therefore both according to the original arguments and according to these second ones, and wherever one might turn, rhetoric is a fine and noble possession and a work of a man, and one that has a just ground of pride both for him who possesses it and for all who use it, and not only among men but also among the gods, having from the beginning obtained the greatest regard and honour, and rightly obtaining it through all time.

It remains for me to show one thing: that Plato himself utters the same things about rhetoric as I do. For he says, in the Statesman, I suppose, these very words: "Accordingly, then, it seems that now too, for us, the other things, and all that is alien and not friendly to the science of statecraft, have been separated off, and there are left

110. the honourable and kindred things. And of these are, I suppose, generalship and the judicial art and all the rhetoric that, sharing with the kingly art, persuading what is just, helps to steer the actions in the cities." Which things Hesiod, a little before, appeared to us to say, these Plato outright, and all but breaking the metre, agrees to in these passages, declaring rhetoric the partner of the kingly art on behalf of justice. And in the Apology of Socrates he again says these very things: "For this is the virtue of a judge, but of an orator to speak the truth." Tell me, by the gods, whether Plato or anyone else wishes to speak for him: is there anything more alien to the flatterer than to speak the truth? What, then? To the man who speaks the truth, is anything more hateful than the flatterer? And surely this very thing is flattery — not to speak the truth. Therefore the recantation is now manifest. For what here he says is flattery, there he plainly defines thus not to be flattery, but to champion the speaking of the truth. The same things, then, as Plato we now say about rhetoric, seeming to say the contrary. If, then, I bring the argument still closer than these things, it would surely be a luxury of demonstration, and no one would any longer take up either the conception or the hope of stronger refutations. For not only does Plato himself, but in these very arguments, in this paradoxical treatise, expressly agree that it belongs to rhetoric to do the fairest things, and that she does not hold the same place as any of the shameful things, adding at the end this brief and easily-remembered thing: "and one must use rhetoric thus, toward the just always." So be it, O noble man: is there anywhere where it is possible to use flattery toward the just always? There is not, ever. And surely, using rhetoric on behalf of a fine thing, we would be doing some fine thing by her. Therefore rhetoric is a fine thing, coming to be along with justice. And surely flattery is plainly a shameful thing

111. always. Therefore this is that very Plato, the son of Ariston, who says that rhetoric is not flattery, nor holds the same nature. And I pass over "the fairest stream of all streams," and "the speeches that come from the temperate mouth," and all the other such things, elsewhere, by which he has spoken of rhetoric, adorning her.

But if anyone should suppose, about Plato, that he has not spoken ill of this rhetoric on whose behalf we now make our speeches, but, there being two, censures the one — first, the things said by us are none the more shown to be paltry, but this very thing too bears witness that all these things have been finely and fittingly accomplished. For just as he justly censures the base one, what prevents us, praising the contrary one, from acting rightly? And next, this excuse does not do away with our refutations, but even thus he would appear to have said things contrary to himself, if, thinking rhetoric double, he then made his accusation as of one single and simple thing. For it is plain that, if this is true, it befitted him to censure the one and praise the other, dividing them, as he appears to have done in the arguments about love, and to have thought the good one worthy of much greater eulogies than the calumnies he thought the other worthy of. But I wonder what in the world he would have done, knowing this to be the only rhetoric about which he goes through these things, when, there being two, as he might say, and differing so greatly, he appears to have made so great an effort to speak ill of her once for all. For why is rhetoric more base than good, if it is double? Therefore we have not come to equal handholds, but the matter of the equal turns against him. Then, what prevents me too, holding to these very same arguments, from saying that

112. dialectic also is double and not simply one, but the one such as to deceive and beguile and waste time and lead the tongue to nothing sound at all — cold and ignoble and knavish and deceitful and illiberal — and the other such as to furnish graceful and clever men? And indeed someone might say — whether rightly or not — that dialectic runs the risk of being a part of rhetoric, like the questions of the whole argument. But let these things be apart. The same argument, then, holds about all philosophy too, and about the parts of virtue, if one should wish, dividing, first to name two wisdoms — the one by which we understand the best things, the other by which men do mischief; then a double temperance, the one worthy of earnest and political, the other of the sluggish and supine; and again a justice, the one upright and the other lowly; and a double courage, the one with mind and sense, the other being recklessness and madness. But, I think, all these are the names of those who confound; and there is divided wisdom and mischief, temperance and dullness, justice and silliness, courage and rashness; but neither is fine nor fitting — neither to belittle the vices by the name of virtue, nor to disparage the virtues, setting beside each the things of vice. So, then, it is reasonable to examine rhetoric too according to those who rightly handle it and truly attain it, but not according to those who have made it a screen of their own greed or baseness — according to the very account of the matter, even if no one has attained it — and to divide false accusation and flattery from rhetoric, just as juggling and

113. quackery from all philosophy. Therefore it is flattery, not rhetoric, that Plato has accused in these passages, and false accusation, not rhetoric. Neither, then, whether he has spoken ill of the truly real rhetoric, nor whether of the seeming one, is this to the argument, that he rightly spoke well of rhetoric, if indeed to speak ill of the seeming rhetoric is something else. For he ought to have said that such a thing is not rhetoric, not that rhetoric is shameful — just as he himself somewhere says that, "if they are children of gods, they are not lovers of money; but if lovers of money, not children of gods. But both ought not to be said." Therefore here too the argument plainly does not allow both; since this very thing too we now do on behalf of Plato himself. For if he most of all so thought — as I, for one, do not gainsay, but he has reserved the pure and truly real rhetoric — it is worth while that the many not be cheated nor be ignorant of this very thing, nor, attending as to a clean vote, deliberate more quickly than is profitable about matters so great. About this very part, again, he himself bears witness thus: "Do you not know that in every pursuit the many are paltry and worth nothing, but the earnest are few and worth everything? Does not gymnastic seem to you a fine thing, and money-making and rhetoric and generalship?" "To me, certainly, in every way." "What, then? In each of these do you not see the many laughable in respect of each task?" "By Zeus, you speak very truly." "What, then? On this account will you yourself flee all pursuits and not entrust your son to them?" Therefore one must not, O Plato, judge rhetoric from those who handle it ill, but from those who champion it best — or it would be ridiculous, or rather monstrous, if, by those examples by which you do not think fit to consider philosophy paltry,

114. these shall not suffice for rhetoric, and that too when she is among the very examples which you yourself agree not to judge base. So be it. Who are those who rightly attain her — this too we will show from Plato's words: "The being able, O Phaedrus, so as to become a perfect contestant, is reasonable, and perhaps even necessary, to have as in other things; if it is in you by nature to be rhetorical, you will be a renowned orator, having taken to it knowledge and practice; but in whatever of these you fall short, in that you will be imperfect. But so much of it as is art" — but I leave the rest that follows.

If, then, the man who is going to be rhetorical must acquire nature and art and practice together, it is plain that the man who has fallen short of the art and of the best nature is imperfect in that respect. How, then, must one set this against rhetoric? If indeed the man who has not furnished all things is imperfect by reason of the deficiency, and the pursuits are judged from those who succeed, not from those who fail. But that which needs not only art, but also nature and practice — how is it possible to say of this that it is no art, or how is it just to call the man who falls short of any part whatever imperfect in that respect, but to say that the man who attains this through all things is practising flattery? On every side and through all things our votes fall out. And first Plato himself votes, and in the middle, they say, and last; and I run the risk of seeming to contradict Plato, while above all pleading along with him. And if one must play a little too, I seem to myself, after the manner of the comic poets, to be dragging him in, as one running away, to the orators, finding fault with him for preening himself. And if certain others too, shouting against rhetoric, censure her — or rather muttering, "shooting from the noise," according to Alcaeus, of whom it is not easy to bring even the names into the argument —

115. I mean not the names by which they are called, unless someone adds this too, but those by which, using them, they do these sophistries — let this much be my answer to them: that they straightway pay the penalty to rhetoric. But toward Plato, the father and teacher of the orators, it was necessary, as it were, having first received a pledge of love, to fill the cup in return. And let him receive it nobly, because he too drank first; since one ought not even to flee the man who has thrown the first blow. And from the rest there would justly be pardon for us, if we count the gods of speech of more worth than the fair Plato. And Asclepius too, the best in all things, frees us from blame, himself also giving a vote not without honour — some things in verse, some thus in prose.