Epistula ad Pompeium Geminum
Epistula ad Pompeium Geminum Hellenistic Dionysius of Halicarnassus Greek- Greetings.
I have received a letter brought from you, learned and very gratifying to me, in which you write that, going through my treatises, which Zeno our common friend supplies to you, and being very intimately disposed toward them, you admire most things in them, but are displeased with one part of what is set down in them, the censure of Plato. That you are reverently disposed toward the man, you do rightly; but that you have supposed the contrary about us, you do not rightly.
For if any other man is struck with wonder at the Platonic modes of expression, know well now that I too am one of these. But what I feel toward all those who bring their own conceptions to the common benefit, setting right our lives and our speeches, I shall tell you, and I shall persuade you, by Zeus, trusting that I shall say nothing new or paradoxical, nor anything that does not seem the same to all alike.
I, then, think that, whenever one chooses to write the praise of a matter, or of a body of whatever kind, one ought to bring forward its excellences and not its failings, if any are present; but whenever one wishes to determine what is the strongest in any given way of life, and what the best of the works under the same kind, one ought to bring the most exact examination and to omit none of the things belonging to them, whether evil or good; for thus most of all is truth found, than which no thing is more precious.
Having set this down, I say the following. If I have any speech against Plato containing an onslaught upon the man, like Zoilus the orator, I confess that I am impious; and if, wishing to write an encomium of him, I weave in certain blames among the praises, I say that I do wrong and transgress the laws established by us concerning praises; for not only do I not think one ought to write slanders in them, but not even defences.
But if, having chosen to consider the characters of style and to examine the philosophers and orators who hold first place in them, I selected out of all three who seem to be the most brilliant—Isocrates, Plato, and Demosthenes—and from these very men again preferred Demosthenes, I thought I was wronging neither Plato nor Isocrates.
"By Zeus," you say, "but you ought not to have convicted the faults of Plato when you wished to praise Demosthenes." Then how would my discourse have taken the most exact test, if I had not set the best speeches of Isocrates and Plato against the strongest of Demosthenes, and shown, with all truth, in what part the speeches of these men are inferior to those of that one—not saying that all things had been done amiss by those men (for that would be madness), but that not all had been equally well achieved?
And if I had not done this, but had praised Demosthenes by going through all his excellences, I should have persuaded my readers entirely that the orator is good; but that he is also the strongest of all who held first place in oratory, I should not have persuaded them without setting beside him the best. For many things that appear in themselves fine and wonderful, set against others that are stronger, have appeared less than their reputation. So indeed gold too, set beside other gold, is found to be better or worse, and so every other handiwork, and all whose end is in their working.
But if anyone shall suppose the examination by comparison ungracious in political speeches, and shall think it right to consider each by itself, nothing will prevent his doing this very same thing in the other cases also—and neither examining a poem against another poem, nor a historical composition against another composition, nor a constitution against a constitution, nor a law against a law, nor a general against a general, nor a king against a king, nor a life against a life, nor a doctrine against a doctrine; but this no one with sense would concede.
And if I must furnish you the proofs from testimonies also, from which it will become more clear to you that the strongest manner of proof is that which is made by comparison, leaving aside the others I shall use Plato himself as my witness.
For when the man wished to display his own power, which he had in political speeches, he was not content with his other writings, but, in the Phaedrus, against . . . of the strongest of the orators of that time, he himself composed another erotic speech upon the same subject; and not even at this point did he cease and stop, leaving to his readers the decision which is the stronger speech, but he laid hold of the faults of Lysias, bearing witness to the man's excellences of diction, but taking up the matters of his treatment.
When, therefore, Plato, having chosen the most vulgar and burdensome of works—to praise himself for his power in speeches—thought he was doing nothing worthy of accusation if he thought fit to examine his own speeches against the best of the orators of that time, showing Lysias in the things in which he had erred and himself in the things in which he had succeeded—what wonderful thing was I doing, comparing the speeches of Plato with those of Demosthenes and reckoning up if anything in them seemed to me not well?
For I forbear to bring forward his other writings, in which he makes comedy of those before him—Parmenides, Hippias, Protagoras, Prodicus, Gorgias, Polus, Theodorus, Thrasymachus, and many others—writing about them all not from the best motive, but, if you will, even from rivalry.
For there was, there was in Plato's nature, which had many excellences, the love of rivalry. He showed this most of all through his jealousy toward Homer, whom he casts out of the constitution he is constructing, having crowned him and anointed him with myrrh, as though it were necessary for him to be cast out with these honours—Homer, through whom all the rest of education came into life, and, last of all, philosophy.
But let us grant that Plato says everything from the best motive, for the very sake of truth. What strange thing, then, were we ourselves doing, using his own laws and wishing to examine against him the speeches of those who flourished afterward?
Then I shall appear neither alone nor the first to have attempted to say anything about Plato. Nor could anyone blame me on this very point—that I undertook to examine the most distinguished of the philosophers, and one older than myself by more than twelve generations . . . as though for this reason I should win some reputation.
For many will be found to have done this before me—some who lived in his time, others who flourished much later. For some both slandered his doctrines and blamed his speeches: first his most genuine pupil Aristotle, then the school of Cephisodorus and Theopompus and Zoilus and Hippodamas and Demetrius and many others—not making comedy of him through envy or love of strife, but examining the truth.
Using, then, so many and so great men as examples, and beyond all the greatest, Plato, I thought I was doing nothing foreign to philosophic rhetoric in examining good men against good. About the deliberate purpose, then, which I had in the comparison of the characters, I have sufficiently defended myself to you, dearest Geminus.
It remains for me to speak also about the very things I have said concerning the man in my treatise On the Attic Orators. I shall set them down in the very words, as I have written there.
The Platonic style wishes to be itself too a mixture of both the characters, the lofty and the plain, as has been said by me before; but it is not by nature equally fortunate toward both the characters.
Whenever, then, it practises the plain, simple, and unwrought phrasing, it is extraordinarily pleasant and humane. For it becomes sufficiently pure and translucent, like the most transparent of streams, and exact and fine beyond any other of those who have wrought the same style.
It pursues the commonness of words and practises clarity, despising all adventitious construction; and the patina of antiquity runs over it gently and unnoticed, and it gives forth a flower cheerful and blooming and full of bloom, and, as from the most fragrant meadows, a certain sweet breeze is borne from it; and it seems to show neither its melodiousness chattering nor its elegance theatrical.
But whenever it takes an immoderate impulse toward superfluous language and fine speaking, which it is often wont to do, it becomes much worse than itself; for it appears both more unpleasant and worse in its Greek and grosser; it blackens the clarity and makes it like darkness, and drags the sense out, stretching it long; and, when it ought to compress it in few words, it pours itself out into tasteless circumlocutions, displaying a wealth of words; and, despising the proper words that lie in common use, it seeks out those that are made up and strange and of antique fashion.
And it is most storm-tossed about figurative phrasing; for it is abundant in epithets, ill-timed in metonymies, and harsh and not preserving the analogy in its metaphors; and it wraps itself in allegories long and many, having neither measure nor occasion; and it casts upon poetic figures the extremest unpleasantness, and most of all it luxuriates ill-timedly and boyishly in the Gorgian figures; and there is much of the celebrant in such passages in him, as Demetrius of Phalerum too has said somewhere, and many others; for the tale is not mine.
But let no one think I say these things condemning all the constructed and varied diction which Plato uses (may I not become so dull as to take this opinion about so great a man), since I know of many great and wonderful things about many subjects, brought forth by him from the height of his power; but wishing to point out that he is wont to err in such faults in his constructions, and becomes worse than himself whenever he pursues the great and superfluous in his phrasing, but far better whenever he brings in the plain, exact style—which seems unwrought but has been constructed with a blameless and simple construction; for either he errs in nothing or in something altogether brief and not worthy of accusation.
But I thought so great a man ought to have guarded against all censure. For the same things all those who lived in his time censure—whose names I need not say—and he himself censures himself (for this is the most brilliant thing); for he perceived his own vulgarity and set upon it the name of dithyramb—which I should now be ashamed to say, though it is true. And he seems to have suffered this, as I think, because, though reared in the Socratic discourses, which are most plain and most exact, he did not remain in them but fell in love with the construction of Gorgias and Thucydides; so that it was nothing outside the likely that he should suffer, having drawn off some of the faults too along with the good things that the characters of those men possess.
I shall set down examples of the plain and of the lofty diction from one book of those much talked-of,
in which Socrates conducts the erotic discourses with one of his acquaintances, Phaedrus, from whom the book has taken its title . . .
For in these passages I in no way blame the man's treatment of his matter, but, of the part concerning diction, that which falls out into the figurative and dithyrambic phrasing—in which he does not master the measure—this I censure; and not as one censures a chance man, but as a great man who has come near the divine nature, because he brought the bulk of poetic construction into philosophic discourses, emulating the school of Gorgias, so as to make some things resembling even dithyrambs, and not even to hide this fault but to confess it.
And you yourself, best Geminus, appear to hold an opinion like mine about the man, by this very letter, in which you write thus, word for word: "For in the other figures it is easy to fall into something midway between praise and blame; but in the construction what is not achieved is altogether a failure. Wherefore it seems to me right to examine these men not from the more perilous nor the lesser passages, but from the most numerous and successful."
And a little later you add this again: "And I, though I am able to defend him concerning all, or at least most, do not dare to speak against you; but this one thing I maintain strongly—that it is not possible to succeed greatly in any manner without daring such things and venturing in those very things in which to stumble is also necessary."
We are in no disagreement with each other; for you agree that it is necessary that one who undertakes great things should sometimes stumble, and I say that Plato, aiming at the lofty, magnificent, and venturesome phrasing, does not succeed in all its parts, but that the things in which he errs are a small fraction of the things in which he succeeds. And in this one thing I say Plato falls short of Demosthenes—that in the one the loftiness of the diction sometimes falls out into the empty and unpleasant, but in the other never, or very rarely indeed. And about Plato so much.
About Herodotus and Xenophon you wished to learn what opinion I hold concerning them, and you wished me to write about them. I have done this in the notes I made for Demetrius about imitation. Of these the first embraces the very inquiry about imitation, the second is about which men one ought to imitate—poets and philosophers, historians and orators—and the third, about how one ought to imitate, is so far unfinished. In the second, then, concerning Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Philistus, and Theopompus (for I judged these men most suitable for imitation) I write the following.
But if I must speak about them too, concerning Herodotus and Thucydides I think this. The first and almost most necessary work of all for all who write histories is to choose a fine subject, and one gratifying to the readers. This Herodotus seems to me to have done better than Thucydides.
For that man brought forth a common history of Hellenic and barbarian deeds, that neither the things done by men should become extinct, nor the works . . . and the very things he himself has said. For the same prooemium is both the beginning and the end of the history.
But Thucydides writes of one war, and that neither fine nor fortunate—one which most of all ought not to have happened, or, failing that, ought to have been handed over to silence and forgetfulness and unknown to those who came after. And that he has taken a wretched subject he himself makes plain in the prooemium.
For he says that on account of it many Greek cities were depopulated—some by barbarians, some by their own people—and exiles and slaughters of men more than ever before, and earthquakes and droughts and plagues and many other calamities; so that those who read the prooemium are alienated from the subject, when they are about to hear of Hellenic affairs.
And by as much as the writing that displays the wonderful deeds of Greeks and barbarians is stronger than that which reports the piteous and terrible sufferings of the Greeks, by so much is Herodotus more sensible than Thucydides in the choice of his subject. For it is not even possible to say this—that he came to this writing by necessity, knowing that those deeds were finer, but not wishing to write the same things as others; for, quite the contrary, in his prooemium, disparaging the ancient deeds, he says that the deeds accomplished in his own time were the finest and most wonderful,
and it is plain that he chose these things willingly. Herodotus, however, did not do this; but though the historians before him, Hellanicus and Charon, had already published the same subject, he was not turned aside, but trusted himself to bring forth something stronger—which he has in fact done.
The second work of the historical treatise is to know whence one ought to begin and how far one ought to go forward. In this too Herodotus appears much more sensible than Thucydides. For he begins from the cause whence the barbarians first began to do the Greeks ill, and, having gone forward to the chastisement and vengeance of the barbarians, he ends.
But Thucydides made his beginning from the point at which the Hellenic world began to fare ill—which, being a Greek and an Athenian, he ought not to have done (and that too, being not of the rejected, but of those whom the Athenians ranked among the first, deeming them worthy of generalships and other honours); and so enviously, indeed, that he attaches even to his own city the manifest causes of the war, though he might have attached the causes to many other starting-points; and he might have begun his narrative not from the Corcyraean affairs, but from the strongest deeds of his fatherland, which it accomplished immediately after the Persian War (of which he later made mention, in no fitting place, somehow meanly and in passing); and, having gone through these with much goodwill, as a city-loving man, he might then have added that the Lacedaemonians, advancing through envy and fear of these things, and setting up other pretexts, came to the war; and then have told the Corcyraean affairs and the decree against the Megarians, and whatever else of the kind he wished to tell.
But the things at the end are full of greater error; for, though he says that he was present at the whole war and promises to make everything plain, he ends with the sea-battle that took place at Cynossema between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians, which happened in the twenty-second year. But it would have been better, having gone through everything, to make the end of his history the most wonderful event and the most gratifying to his hearers—the return of the exiles from Phyle, from which the city, beginning, recovered its freedom.
The third thing for an historical man to consider is which matters he ought to take into his writing and which to leave out. In this too Thucydides seems to me to fall short. For Herodotus, knowing that every narrative of great length, if it takes certain pauses, disposes pleasantly the souls of the hearers, but, if it remains upon the same matters, even if it is most successful, vexes the hearing with surfeit, wished to make his writing varied, becoming an emulator of Homer; for if we take up his book, we admire it down to the last syllable, and always seek for more.
But Thucydides, intent upon one war, goes through it without taking breath, composing battles upon battles, preparations upon preparations, and speeches upon speeches; so that the mind of the hearers is wearied . . . "surfeit," says Pindar, "belongs to honey too and to the delightful flowers of love." But that man too perceived what I am saying—how pleasant a thing change and variety is in the writing of history—and he did this in two or three places: in the account of the empire of the Odrysians, for what causes it became great, and in that of the cities in Sicily.
After this it is the work of an historian to distinguish and arrange each of the things displayed in the place where it ought to be. How, then, does each of them distinguish and arrange the things he tells? Thucydides following the order of times, but Herodotus the natural compass of the matters. And Thucydides becomes obscure and hard to follow; for, since many things happen in the same summer or the same winter in different places, as is likely, he leaves the first actions half-finished and lays hold of others; and so we wander, as is natural, and follow with difficulty the things displayed, while our mind is confounded.
But Herodotus, beginning from the kingdom of the Lydians and coming down to Croesus, passes at once to Cyrus, who destroyed the rule of Croesus, and begins Egyptian narratives and Scythian and Libyan—displaying some as consequent, taking up others as required, and bringing in others to make the narrative more graceful; and, having gone through the deeds of Greeks and barbarians done in two hundred and twenty years together in the three continents, and having written in . . . the history of the flight of Xerxes, he did not tear apart his narrative. But it has come about that the one, having taken a single subject, made the one body into many parts, while the other, having chosen many subjects in no way alike, made a single harmonious body.
I shall mention one form of the treatment of matter, which we seek no less than any of those mentioned in all histories—the disposition of the historian himself, which he uses toward the matters about which he writes. The disposition of Herodotus is in all things reasonable, rejoicing with the good and grieving with the wretched. But that of Thucydides is somewhat self-willed and bitter, and bears a grudge against his fatherland for his exile. For the faults he goes through very exactly, but of the things that went according to wish he makes no mention at all, or as though compelled. And in respect of the treatment of matter Thucydides is for these reasons inferior to Herodotus; but in respect of diction, in some things inferior, in some stronger, in some equal. I shall speak about these things too, as I have conceived them.
The first of the excellences—without which there is no profit even in the others concerning speeches—would be the diction that is pure in its words and preserves the Hellenic character. This both make exact; for Herodotus is the best standard of the Ionic dialect, and Thucydides of the Attic.
. . . The so-called brevity holds the third place; in this Thucydides seems to excel Herodotus. And yet one might say that brevity, examined together with clarity, appears pleasant; but, if it falls short of this, bitter. But let it be none the less for this. Vividness has been ranged after these as first of the adventitious excellences; in this both succeed sufficiently.
After this excellence stands the imitation of characters and emotions; the historians have divided this excellence: Thucydides is stronger at displaying the emotions, Herodotus cleverer at setting forth the characters. After these come the excellences of construction that bring out the great and the wonderful; in these the historians are equal.
There follow these the excellences that embrace strength and tone and the like-mannered powers of phrasing; in these Thucydides is stronger than Herodotus. But pleasure, persuasion, delight, and the like-natured excellences Herodotus brings in far stronger than Thucydides. And of phrasing, Herodotus has emulated the natural, Thucydides the formidable.
There is wanting, of all the excellences in speeches, the most authoritative—propriety; this Herodotus makes exact more than Thucydides. For Thucydides is uniform in everything, and in the public speeches more than in the narratives. To me, however, and to my dearest Caecilius, it seems that Demosthenes most of all imitated and emulated his reflections.
But, to speak in sum, both are fine compositions (for I should not be ashamed to call them compositions), and they differ from each other most in this—that the beauty of Herodotus is cheerful, but that of Thucydides fearful. It is enough to have said these things about these historians, though there are many other things that might be said, about which there will be another occasion.
Xenophon and Philistus, who flourished after these men, had neither like natures nor like purposes. For Xenophon became an emulator of Herodotus in both the characters, the treatment of matter and the diction. For, first, he chose the subjects of his histories fine and magnificent and befitting a philosophic man: the Education of Cyrus, an image of a good and happy king; and the Anabasis of the younger Cyrus, with whom he himself went up, containing the greatest encomium of the Greeks who served together on that expedition; and, third, the Hellenic history, which Thucydides had left unfinished, in which the Thirty are overthrown and the walls of the Athenians, which the Lacedaemonians had pulled down, are raised up again.
He is worthy to be praised not only for the sake of his subjects but also for his arrangement; for he has used the most fitting beginnings of them and assigned to each the most suitable endings, and has well divided and arranged and varied his writing. And he displays a character god-fearing, just, steadfast, and seemly, and, in sum, adorned with all the excellences. And such is his treatment of matter.
But his diction is in some respects like that of Herodotus, in some more deficient. For it is sufficiently pure in its words and clear and vivid, like his; and he chooses words familiar and naturally fitted to the matters, and composes them very pleasantly and gracefully, no less than Herodotus. But loftiness and beauty and magnificence, and the historical "moulding" peculiarly so called, Herodotus has;
for not only was Xenophon unable to take this from him, but, even if he sometimes wishes to rouse his phrasing, having breathed a little, like a land breeze, he is quickly extinguished . . . . For he becomes longer than is needful in many places, and does not, as Herodotus does, lay hold of his characters fortunately in respect of propriety, but in many places is careless, if one considers rightly.
Philistus would seem to resemble Thucydides more and to be adorned after that character. For he has not taken a subject of much benefit and common, but one, and that local; and he has divided it into two writings, entitling the former About Sicily and the latter About Dionysius. But it is one; and you would know this from the end of the Sicilian work.
He has assigned to the things displayed not the strongest arrangement but one hard to follow, worse than that of Thucydides. And he does not wish to take in any matter from outside, just as neither does Thucydides, but he is uniform. And he displays a character flattering and tyrant-loving, low and petty.
Of the diction which Thucydides uses, he has fled the out-of-the-way and over-elaborate, but has taken the impress of the round, dense, and reflective. Yet of that man's fine writing and dignity and wealth of reflections he falls much short.
And not only in these things, but also in the figures; for the diction of Thucydides is full of figures (and I think there is no need to say more about what is manifest), but the phrasing of Philistus is all dreadfully uniform and unfigured; and one would find many periods figured by him in like manner one after another, as at the beginning of the second of the books About Sicily:
"The Syracusans, having taken to them the Megarians and the Ennaeans, and the Camarinaeans, having gathered the Sicels and the other allies except the Geloans, and the Geloans having said they would not war against the Syracusans; and the Syracusans, learning that the Camarinaeans had crossed the Hyrminus—"
These things seem to me altogether unpleasant. And he is mean in every form and cheap, whether he narrates sieges or foundations, whether he goes through praises or blames. Nor even does he make his speeches equal to the greatness of the men, but, making them timorous and leaving the strongest speakers as public orators, he makes all alike in their powers and purposes. He brings in a certain natural good utterance in his expression, and an understanding that succeeds in hitting the mean. And he is more suited than Thucydides to real contests.
Theopompus of Chios, who became the most distinguished of all the pupils of Isocrates, and composed many panegyric and many deliberative speeches, and the letters entitled Chian, and other counsels worthy of mention, and who treated history,
is worthy of praise, first for the subject of his histories (for both are fine, the one embracing the rest of the Peloponnesian War, the other the deeds of Philip), then for his arrangement (for both are easy to follow and clear), but most of all for his care and love of toil in the writing; for he is plainly seen—even if he had written nothing—to have made the greatest preparation for these works and to have paid the greatest expenses for the gathering of them,
and besides these, to have become an eyewitness of many things, and to have come into converse with many men who then held first place—generals, demagogues, and philosophers—for the sake of his writing. For he did not, like some, make the recording of history a by-work of his life, but the most necessary of all works. And one would know his toil by considering the manifold quality of his writing;
for he has told of the foundations of nations and gone over the foundings of cities, and shown the lives of kings and the peculiarities of their characters, and whatever wonderful or paradoxical thing each land and sea bears, he has embraced in his treatise. And let no one suppose these things to be mere entertainment; for it is not so, but he embraces, so to speak, every benefit.
And, to leave aside all the rest, who will not agree that for those who practise philosophic rhetoric it is necessary to learn thoroughly many customs both of barbarians and of Greeks, and to hear many laws and forms of constitutions,
and the lives of men and their actions and ends and fortunes? To these, then, he has given all abundance, not torn away from the matters but present along with them. All these things, indeed, are worthy of emulation in the historian, and still besides these all the philosophy that he pursues throughout the whole writing concerning justice and piety and the other excellences, going through many fine discourses.
The last of his works, and the most characteristic—which has been wrought out by no other of the historians so exactly and powerfully, neither of the elder nor of the younger—what is it? It is, in each action, not only to see and tell the things manifest to the many, but to examine also the unseen causes of the actions and of those who did them, and the emotions of the soul, which are not easy for the many to know, and to uncover all the mysteries of seeming virtue and of unknown vice.
And it seems to me somehow that the examination fabled to take place in Hades, when the souls have been freed from the body, before the judges there, is not so exact as that which is made through the writing of Theopompus. Wherefore he seemed also to be malicious, adding to the necessary reproaches certain unnecessary matters against renowned persons—doing something like the physicians, who cut and burn the corrupted parts of the body, carrying their cauteries and incisions to the depth, aiming at nothing of the healthy and natural parts. Such, then, is the character of Theopompus' treatment of matter.
But his diction most resembles that of Isocrates; for it is pure and common and clear, lofty and magnificent and having much of the processional, composed according to the middle harmony, flowing pleasantly and softly. It differs from the Isocratean in bitterness and tone in some places, whenever he gives himself over to the emotions,
and most of all whenever he reproaches cities or generals with wicked counsels and unjust actions (for he is abundant in these), and he differs not even a little from the cleverness of Demosthenes, as one would see from many other passages and from the Chian letters, which he wrote, giving himself over to his inborn spirit. But if he had despised, in these passages, the very things about which he was most earnest—the interweaving of vowel letters, the circular good rhythm of the periods, and the uniformity of the figures—he would have been much better than himself in his phrasing.
There are some things, too, in which he errs in the treatment of matter, and most of all in his insertions; for some of them are neither necessary nor occurring at the right time, but show much of the childish; among which are the things about Silenus who appeared in Macedonia, and about the serpent that fought a sea-battle against the trireme, and not a few others like these.
These historians, taken up, will suffice to furnish those who practise political speech with suitable starting-points of examples for every form.