On Demosthenes

1. . . . As for his forensic speeches, I have not come across them; of his deliberative speeches I have met with a few, and some technical treatises, but most of his works are display pieces. The character of his style is of the following kind. He praises those Athenians who distinguished themselves in war: "For what quality that ought to belong to men was lacking in these men? And what quality that ought to be absent was present? May I be able to say what I wish, and may I wish to say what I ought, escaping the divine indignation and avoiding human envy. For these men possessed a virtue inspired by the gods, while their mortality was human; many a time they preferred the present spirit of fairness to a self-willed insistence on the letter of justice, and many a time rightness of speech to precision of law, holding this to be the most divine and most universal of laws—to say and to keep silent and to act as duty requires at the time when duty requires it. They trained themselves above all in the two things most needed, judgement and strength, deliberating with the one and bringing matters to completion with the other; they were attendants upon those who suffered unjustly and chastisers of those who prospered unjustly; stubborn in pursuit of advantage, even-tempered in pursuit of what was fitting, checking the folly of impulse by the prudence of their judgement; insolent toward the insolent, orderly toward the orderly, fearless toward the fearless, formidable amid dangers. As witnesses of these things they set up trophies over their enemies, offerings to Zeus and monuments to themselves, men not inexperienced in inborn warlike spirit, nor in lawful loves, nor in armed strife, nor in beauty-loving peace; reverent toward the gods through their justice, holy toward their parents through their devotion, just toward their fellow citizens through their fairness, dutiful toward their friends through their loyalty. And so, though they died, the longing for them did not die with them, but lives on, immortal, in bodies that are not immortal, the longing for men who live no longer." . . . "The cities, then, were in a state of faction, and those which came to the matter later, on learning what had been done before, carried excess to far greater lengths in the ingenuity of their undertakings and in the strangeness of their reprisals. And they changed the accustomed meaning of words in their application to deeds, as they thought right. For reckless daring came to be considered loyal courage; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation, a screen for unmanliness; and to be intelligent in everything, to be useless in everything. Frantic impulsiveness was reckoned a man's part, while cautious deliberation was a fair-seeming pretext for shrinking back. The man who raged was always trusted, and the one who opposed him suspected. He who laid a plot and succeeded was intelligent, and he who suspected one still cleverer; but the man who took thought beforehand so as to need none of these things was held to be a dissolver of his faction and terrified of his opponents. In short, the man who anticipated another about to do some evil was praised, as was the one who urged on another who had no such intention. Indeed even kinship became more alien than comradeship, because comrades were readier to dare without making excuses. For such associations were not formed for advantage within the established laws, but in defiance of them, out of greed. And they confirmed their mutual trust not so much by divine law as by sharing together in some transgression. The fair proposals of their opponents they accepted with precautions of deed, if they were the stronger, not with generosity. To avenge oneself on another was worth more than not to have suffered at all. And oaths of reconciliation, if any were ever taken, were given by each side merely to meet a present difficulty, and held good only so long as they had no power from elsewhere." Such, then, was the diverging, elaborate, highly wrought style, filled with all the adventitious ornaments, of which Thucydides is the standard and rule, a man whom none of those who came after either surpassed or imitated to perfection.

2. The other style, the plain and simple kind, which seems to have a structure and force akin to the speech of an ordinary man and a likeness to it, had many good men as its champions—historians, philosophers, and orators. For those who set forth genealogies, those who composed local histories, those who philosophized about nature, and the writers of ethical dialogues (to which group belonged the whole Socratic school except Plato), and those who composed deliberative or forensic speeches—almost all of these belonged to this school of preference. Lysias, son of Cephalus, perfected it and brought it to the summit of its own excellence, living at the same time as Gorgias and Thucydides. What his preference was and what his power, has been made clear in the work before this one, and there is no need to speak again now of the same matters. It will be enough to say only this much: that these two men tuned the perfect harmony of the octave with one another, choosing and perfecting, with extraordinary zeal, both the extremes of style, which stand at the greatest distance from each other. And the relation which the highest string bears to the lowest in music, this relation the style of Lysias bears, in political discourse, to that of Thucydides. For the one can astound the mind, the other can please it; the one can contract and tighten the intelligence, the other can relax and soften it; the one can lead the hearer into passion, the other can settle him in a calm disposition. Yet to force and compel is proper to the style of Thucydides, while to deceive and steal away the facts is proper to that of Lysias; and innovation and boldness belong to the historian's own manner, while safety and freedom from risk belong to the orator's. . . . that it does not appear to be a matter of contrivance . . . it wishes to seem uncontrived. Each style, then, has been wrought to its full development and has reached the height of its own kind of construction; but the one inclines toward seeming greater than it naturally is, the other toward seeming less. Of this style too I think no examples are needed at present. These, then, are two characters of style, so different from one another in their procedures, and the men who took the first rank in them, whom I have described, are both formidable in their own works, but in the respect in which they were equal to one another, incomplete.

3. The third style . . . was the mixed and composite kind, made up of these two. Whether the man who first composed it and brought it to its present orderly form was Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, as Theophrastus believes, or someone else, I cannot say. But those who took it up and nurtured it and brought it not far from perfection were, among orators, Isocrates the Athenian, and among philosophers, Plato the pupil of Socrates; for it is impossible to find, apart from Demosthenes, any men other than these who either practised what is necessary and useful more successfully, or displayed elegance of language and adventitious ornament more excellently. Now the style of Thrasymachus, if indeed he was truly the fountainhead of the middle style, seems to have a preference worthy of serious attention; for it is well blended, and has taken what is useful from each of the others. But that he employed it with a power unequal to his intention is shown by this example from one of his deliberative speeches: "I could wish, men of Athens, to have had a share in that time of old and those affairs, when silence sufficed for the younger men, since circumstances did not compel them to speak and the elders governed the city aright. But since fate has set us in such a time that . . . we must hear of the city, and . . . its disasters . . . and that the greatest of these are not the work of the gods, nor of fortune, but of those in charge—then it is necessary to speak. For either insensible or most enduring is the man who will still offer himself to those who wish to do him wrong, and take upon himself the blame for the plotting and wickedness of others. The time past is enough for us, when, instead of peace, we came to be in war and danger, struggling to this present moment, loving the day gone by and dreading the day to come, and instead of concord we came to enmity and disturbance with one another. And whereas abundance of good things makes other men insolent and factious, we kept our self-control amid good things, but went mad amid evils, which usually bring others to their senses. Why then should anyone still proclaim aloud, when one is . . . grieved at present circumstances and thinks he holds something of the kind, so that there will be no more such trouble? First, then, I shall show that those who differ with one another, both among the orators and among the rest, have without reason come to be at odds with one another—which is what must happen to those who quarrel without judgement; for, thinking they say opposite things to each other, they do not perceive that they are doing the same things, nor that the argument of the others is present within their own argument. Consider, then, from the beginning, what each side seeks. First, the ancestral constitution causes them disturbance, though it is the easiest of all things to understand and the most common to all the citizens. As for whatever lies beyond our own knowledge, we must hear it told by the older men; but whatever the elders themselves witnessed, this we must learn from those who know." Such, then, is the style of Thrasymachus, midway between the two, well-tempered, and a timely starting-point toward both characters.

4. The style of Isocrates, who won the greatest name among the Greeks for wisdom—a man who never contested any case, private or public, but composed many fine writings in every kind of discourse—what character it seemed to me to have, I have shown earlier at greater length. But there is nothing to prevent my stating now in summary the most essential points. It has the purity and precision of the Lysianic style; for he uses neither archaic nor invented nor strange and out-of-the-way words, but the most common and familiar ones. It is ethical and persuasive and pleasing, and it has avoided figurative expression, as that style does; while from the style of Thucydides and Gorgias it has taken grandeur and dignity and elegance of language. And for instructing the hearer most clearly in whatever he wishes, he practises the simple and unadorned manner of expression of Lysias; but for astounding by the beauty of words, and for investing the subject matter with dignity and loftiness, he has modelled himself on the adventitious and elaborately wrought diction of the school of Gorgias. He goes wrong, however, in the places where he sometimes tries to be charming, emulating the youthful figures of Gorgias—for the antitheses and the balanced clauses and the like, when they are neither moderate nor used at the right moment, disgrace its grandeur—and still more in the places where, in pursuing euphony and rhythm, he treats it as a thing to be guarded against to let the vowels of the letters clash, and treats it as a thing to be guarded against to use any of the harsher ones. He pursues the period by every means, and not even a rounded and compact one, but a kind that is drawn out and broad, curving with many bends, like rivers that do not flow in a straight course. These things, however, in many places make his style longer than it should be and less true, unfeeling and lifeless, and suited to festal display rather than to actual contest. But I shall use examples a little later, when the occasion requires it.

5. The Platonic mode of expression, for its part, also wishes to be a mixture of both characters, the elevated and the plain, as I have said before; but it is not by nature equally fortunate with respect to both. Now whenever it practises the plain, simple, and unaffected style, it is extraordinarily pleasing and humane. For it becomes sufficiently pure and translucent, like the most transparent of streams, and precise and delicate beyond any other writer who has worked in the same style. It pursues the common usage of words and cultivates clarity, looking down upon all adventitious construction. The patina of antiquity creeps over it gently and imperceptibly, and it puts forth a fresh and flowering bloom, full of springtime grace; and, as from the most fragrant meadows, a sweet breeze is borne from it. It seems to make neither its clearness sound like prattle nor its elegance like the theatre. But whenever it takes an immoderate impulse toward verbosity and fine writing—which it is often wont to do—it becomes much worse than itself. For it grows both more unpleasant and worse in its Greek and more turgid; it darkens what was clear and makes it like a fog, and it stretches the thought out at length when it should be compressed into few words. It pours itself out into tasteless circumlocutions, displaying an empty wealth of words, and, disdaining the proper terms in common use, it seeks out the coined and the strange and the archaic-sounding. Above all it is storm-tossed about figurative expression, profuse in epithets, ill-timed in metonymies, harsh in its metaphors and not preserving the proportion in them. It wraps itself in allegories, many and long, having neither measure nor fitness. With poetic figures it produces the utmost distaste, and most of all in the figures of Gorgias, in which it luxuriates inopportunely and childishly. And the man is full of this ceremonial pomp in such passages, as Demetrius of Phalerum too has remarked somewhere, and many others before him. For the tale is not my own.

6. Let no one suppose that I say such things out of condemnation of the whole diverging and elaborately wrought style which Plato uses. For may I never become so dull or insensible as to hold such an opinion concerning a man so great, since I know of many great and wonderful things, on many subjects, that have been brought forth by him from the height of his power. Rather, I wish to make this point: that he is wont to commit such errors in his elaborate constructions, and that he becomes worse than himself whenever he pursues the great and excessive in his diction, but is by far better whenever he brings in the plain, precise mode of expression—the kind that seems unaffected but is in fact constructed with a blameless and simple construction. For in this either he commits no error at all, or some very slight one not worth a charge. But I should have thought a man so great would have guarded against all reproach. Yet his contemporaries too censured him as one who erred (whose names I have no need to mention), and so did he himself—and this is the most splendid thing of all. For he perceived, it seems, his own want of taste, and gave it the name of "dithyramb"—a name which I should now be ashamed to use, though it is true. And he seems to have suffered this, as I believe, because, though reared in the Socratic dialogues, which are most plain and most precise, he did not remain among them, but fell in love with the elaborate construction of Gorgias and Thucydides. So it was nothing beyond the likely that he should suffer, drawing in some of the faults along with the merits which the styles of those men possess.

7. I take as an example of the elevated style a passage from one of his most celebrated books, in which Socrates delivers his discourses on love to one of his companions, Phaedrus, from whom the book takes its title. For in this work the opening passages are full of charm and grace: "Dear Phaedrus, where now, and from where?" "From Lysias, Socrates, the son of Cephalus; and I am going for a walk outside the wall. For I spent a long time there, sitting from early morning until the reading of the speech of Lysias, and after the reading too for a while." Then, as when out of a calm and settled sky a great wind bursts forth, he disturbs the purity of his diction, carrying it off into poetic tastelessness, beginning here: "Come now, Muses—whether you have this title from the kind of your song as clear-voiced ones, or from the musical race of the Ligyans—take hold with me of the tale." That these are mere noises and dithyrambs, having much pomp of words but little sense, he himself will declare. For in setting forth from what cause love got its name as a passion, and using this expression—"For the desire that, without reason, has prevailed over the opinion that impels toward the good, leading toward the pleasure of beauty, and being strongly strengthened by its own kindred desires toward the beauty of bodies, the leading impulse named from its very strength was called love"—and after drawing out so long a circumlocution for a matter that could be embraced in a few words, he catches himself in his own untimeliness and says: "Hear me, then, in silence. For the place truly seems to be divine. So if, as my discourse proceeds, I should often become possessed by the nymphs, do not be surprised. For at this moment I am uttering things not far short of dithyrambs." "These things—not by others, but by our own words are we taken captive," as the tragedy has it, most divine Plato, you who have come to love the noise and nonsense of dithyrambs. And the things that Socrates says again in the recantation, when atoning to Love, beginning here: "The great leader in heaven, Zeus, driving his winged chariot, goes first, ordering all things and caring for them; and there follows him a host of gods and spirits, arranged in eleven divisions. For Hestia alone remains in the house of the gods. But of the rest, all those who are appointed in the number of the twelve gods as ruling gods lead the way each in the order in which he was appointed. Many, then, are the blessed sights and journeys within the heaven, which the race of blessed gods traverses, each doing his own work; and there follows ever whoever wills and is able, for envy stands outside the divine company." These things, and others like them, which are many, if they took on melody and rhythm like dithyrambs and processional songs, would seem to resemble the poems of Pindar—those addressed to the sun, as it seems to me:

Ray of the sun, what have you devised, O all-seeing one, mother of eyes? Star supreme, stolen away in the daytime, you have made the strength of men helpless and the path of their wisdom, rushing along a darkened track. Are you driving on some newer thing than before? But by Zeus, swift driver of horses, I beseech you, turn into some harmless course for Thebes, O lady, this portent shared by all. If you bring a sign of some war, or of failure of harvest, or of an overwhelming might of snow, or of deadly faction, or of an emptying of the sea over the plain, or of a frost upon the earth, or of a rainy summer streaming with furious water, or whether, flooding the land, you will make a new race of men from the beginning— I lament nothing, since with all the rest I shall suffer.

And here the allegory is not untimely, as it is in Plato.

8. But—lest my discourse advance further than it should—I shall leave Plato and proceed to Demosthenes, for whose sake I have enumerated the characters of style which I held to be the best, and the men who held sway in them—not all of them. For Antiphon, Theodorus, Polycrates, Isaeus, Zoilus, Anaximenes, and those who lived in the same times as these, practised nothing new or excessive, but constructed their own styles after these characters and according to these standards. Such, then, was the political style which Demosthenes inherited, already set in motion in so manifold a fashion; and, coming after men so great, he thought it right to become the emulator of no single one of them, neither of any character nor of any man, considering them all to be in some sense half-finished and incomplete. Rather, choosing out from all of them whatever was best and most useful, he wove these together and produced from many a single mode of expression: magnificent yet plain, elaborate yet unadorned, strange yet familiar, festal yet true, austere yet cheerful, intense yet relaxed, sweet yet bitter, ethical yet passionate—differing in nothing from the Proteus of the old poets' tales, who took on every form of shape without effort, whether he was some god or spirit deceiving human eyes, or some manifold thing of expression in a wise man, deceptive to every ear. The latter one might rather conjecture, since it is not lawful to attribute mean and unseemly shapes to gods or spirits. Such, then, is the opinion I hold concerning the style of Demosthenes, and I assign to him this character, mixed from every kind.

9. Whether I have understood the matter rightly, anyone who wishes may consider for himself, making his examination upon the examples themselves. The passages, then, which the orator has constructed after the character of Thucydides are of the following kind: "Many speeches being made, men of Athens, at almost every assembly, concerning the wrongs which Philip, ever since he made the peace, has been doing not only to you but also to the other Greeks; and all, I am sure, would say—even if they do not act accordingly—that we must both speak and act so that he may cease from his insolence and pay the penalty: yet I see all our affairs brought down and abandoned to such a point that I fear it may be a blasphemous thing to say, though true—that even if all who came forward had wished to speak, and you to vote, in such a way as to make matters as bad as possible, I do not think they could be brought into a worse condition than they are now." In what respect, then, do I hold this style to resemble that of Thucydides? In the very respect in which I am convinced that style differs most from the rest. This is that the thoughts are not brought out in a straightforward mode of expression, nor, as is customary for the others to speak, simply and plainly, but the diction is altered and turned aside from what is customary and natural into what is unfamiliar to most people and not as nature requires. What I mean is this. The speech would be simple and brought out in a straightforward mode of expression if one had constructed it thus: "Many speeches being made, men of Athens, at almost every assembly, concerning the wrongs which Philip does to you and to the other Greeks, ever since he made the peace." But as it is, the use of "almost" instead of "nearly," and the splitting of "Philip does wrong" and its recovering the sequence after a long interval, and the "not only to you but also to the other Greeks"—where the matter could have been shown even without a verb, by the construction alone—has made the style diverge from the customary and become elaborate. Likewise too with what is added to this. If it had to be said simply and without elaboration, it would have been reported thus: "And all saying—even if some do not do so—that we must both speak and act in such a way that he will cease from his insolence and pay the penalty." But as it has been brought out—"and all, I am sure, would say"—it does not preserve the straightforward path of the style. For the "I am sure" had no necessary place, and the use of "would say" instead of "asserting" reveals not the simple manner but the diverging and elaborate one. And like these are also the following: "Then do you think that, while he could have done no harm to those who could have done no harm to him, but who would perhaps have guarded themselves against suffering, he would choose rather to deceive these than to use open force after warning?" For here the style would have had nothing elaborate or crooked, had he brought it out thus: "Then do you think that those whom he saw able to do him no harm, but who would perhaps have guarded against suffering, he would choose rather to deceive than to use force after warning?" But by the changing of the case and the contracting of many conjunctions into a small space, the mode of expression has, I think, become elaborate and unfamiliar and divergent. Again these too are of the same kind: "But as it is, he did not do this—in which he would have honoured the people—nor did he make any such youthful display. But to me, who—whether anyone, men of Athens, wishes to consider it madness (for it is perhaps madness to do something beyond one's power), or also ambition—undertook the office of chorus-producer: he pursued me so openly and so vilely with his spite that he ended by keeping his hands off neither the sacred garments, nor the chorus, nor my person." What, again, is it in these passages that disturbs the natural utterance? First, that before completing the leading element—whether one should call it a thought or a clause—he throws in another, and, before the second has reached its end, joins on a third; then he sets down the sequence of the second thought upon the third which has reached its end; and then, after all of these, he gives back, at a long interval and when the mind no longer expects it, what was a part of the first. "But to me, who"—this has not yet reached its end—"whether anyone, men of Athens, wishes to consider it madness"—this is another thing, separated from the first, and itself incomplete—"for it is perhaps madness to do something beyond one's power"—this again is part of neither of the things said before, but stands by itself, for it is a kind of summary statement—"or ambition"—but this was part of the second clause, "whether anyone wishes to consider it madness." And what is said after all of these, "undertook the office of chorus-producer," was part of the first, "but to me, who." There are countless such things in Demosthenes, and especially in the speeches against Philip; or rather . . . none that are not so, except for one speech, that On the Halonnesus; and many also in the forensic contests, the public ones at any rate. And in general, both in these and in the deliberative speeches—by which sign, as I said—you may recognize, by this most ready mark, the character of Demosthenes. But anyone who tries to judge by whether the man used these devices more or less, with an eye to the natures of the subjects and the dignity of the persons, will go astray; which perhaps is not unreasonable.

10. Come now, let us also say in what respect the style of Demosthenes, when constructed after the same character, differs from that of Thucydides; for the discourse requires it. Not in quality, by Zeus; for in this respect both practise alike—I mean diverging from the customary, and pursuing not the common but the excessive. The difference lies in quantity, and still more in the matter of timeliness. For Thucydides uses elaboration without economy, and is led by it rather than leading it, and does not even know how to seize its right occasion skilfully, but often goes wrong in this very thing as well. By this, the immoderateness of his divergence makes his style obscure, and his failure to master the occasions makes it unpleasing. But the orator aims at sufficiency, and measures out the occasions, constructing his style not merely as an offering and a possession, like the historian, but also for use. And so neither has the clarity, which is the first thing needed in speeches of contest, been overstepped, nor has the appearance of being formidable—on which above all he is plainly intent—failed to be added. Such, then, are the passages which Demosthenes has constructed in imitation of the elevated, elaborate character that diverges from the customary—the character whose whole strength lay in formidable power, and of Thucydides, who took the first rank in it.

11. The passages constructed after the plain, precise, pure, and admired character . . . which, from the man who shone in it, might fairly be called Lysianic, are of the following kind. Nothing will prevent—indeed, it will perhaps make the inquiry more agreeable—if the style of Lysias is set down first, the style which I am convinced that of Demosthenes resembles, containing a narrative full of outrageous behaviour: "Archippus here, men of Athens, stripped for exercise in the same wrestling-school where Tisis, the defendant, also did. A quarrel arose, and they came to gibes and contradiction and enmity and abuse with one another. Now there is a certain Pytheas, a lover of the youth (for the whole truth shall be told to you), left as his guardian by his father. This man, when Tisis described to him the abuse in the wrestling-school, wishing to gratify him and to seem clever and a contriver, bade him—as we perceived from what was done and learned from those who knew well—be reconciled for the present, but watch for a chance to catch him somewhere alone. Persuaded of this, and reconciled, and associating with him and pretending to be his friend, Tisis went to such a pitch of madness, young as he was . . . And it happened that there was a horse-race at the festival of the Anaceia . . . him passing by the door with me; for they happen to be neighbours of one another. At first he invited us to dine together, and when he was unwilling . . . to a revel, saying that with him also . . . So, having dined, now as it was growing dark, we came and knocked at the door. They bade us come in. But when we got inside, they thrust me out of the house, and seizing this man here they bound him to the pillar, and Tisis took a whip and, after laying on many blows, shut him up in a chamber. Nor was it enough for him to commit this outrage alone, but—having emulated the most worthless of the young men in the city, and having recently taken over his patrimony, and pretending to be young and rich—again, when day had come, he bade his servants bind him to the pillar and flog him. And when his body was now in a wretched state, he sent for Antimachus and said nothing of what had happened, but claimed that he himself had been at dinner, and that the other had come in drunk, and, having broken down the door and entered, had abused him and Antimachus and their wives. Antimachus was angry with them, as men who had done great wrong; nevertheless, having summoned witnesses, he asked him how he had come in. And he said it was at the bidding of Tisis and his household. And when those who had come in advised that he be released as quickly as possible, and held what had happened to be terrible, they gave him back to his brothers. And as he could not walk, they carried him on a couch to the Deigma and showed him in such a condition to many of the Athenians and many of the other foreigners as well, so that those who saw him not only were angry with those who had done it, but also accused the city, because it does not, publicly and on the spot, punish those who commit such crimes."

12. This is the narrative of Lysias, from the speech Against Tisis. The one I am now about to quote is that of Demosthenes, from the speech Against Conon; and, leaving aside the resemblance in subject matter . . . let us consider the resemblance in style: "We went out, the year before last, to garrison-duty at Panactum, our service having been posted. Now the sons of this Conon pitched their tent near us, as I could have wished they had not. For it was from there that the enmity from the very start, and the collisions, came upon us; and you shall hear how. These men used to drink every day, the whole day long, as soon as they had finished their midday meal, and this they kept on doing all the while we were on garrison-duty; whereas we conducted ourselves out there just as we were accustomed to do here. And whatever hour it happened to be when the others were making their evening meal, by that time these men would already be in their drunken violence—for the most part against our serving-boys, but in the end against ourselves as well. For, claiming that the boys annoyed them with smoke while cooking, or spoke ill of them—whatever they pleased—they used to beat them, and emptied their chamber-pots over them, and made water on them, and left out no kind of indecency and insolence whatever. Seeing this and grieved by it, at first we sent them off; but when they jeered at us and would not stop, we reported the matter to the general—all of us mess-mates together, going to him in a body, I no more than the rest. And when he had rebuked them and reproached them, not only for their indecencies toward us but also for what they did generally in the camp, they were so far from stopping or feeling shame that, as soon as it grew dark, that very evening they came rushing in upon us. And at first they abused us, then they laid blows upon me as well, and made such an uproar and din about the tent that both the general and the company-commanders came, and some of the other soldiers, who prevented us from suffering any irreparable harm, and from doing any ourselves while being treated outrageously in our cups by these men. When the matter had come to this point, when we got back here, there was, as was natural, anger and enmity between us on account of these things. Yet I, for my part, did not think I ought either to bring suit against them or to make any account of what had happened, but I had simply resolved on this for the future—to take care and to guard against coming near such men. First, then, of the things I have told, I wish to produce the testimonies; and after that to show what I have suffered at this man's hands, so that you may know that the very man whose place it was to censure the first offences has himself, in addition to these, done things far more dreadful." [Witnesses.] "These, then, are the matters of which I thought I ought to make no account. But not long afterward, as I was walking in the evening, as I was accustomed, in the marketplace, with Phanostratus of Cephisia, one of my contemporaries, Ctesias, this man's son, came by, drunk, near the Leocorium, going past the house of Pythodorus. Catching sight of us, and crying out, and saying something to himself in the way that a drunken man does, so that one could not make out what he said, he passed on up toward Melite. Now there were drinking there, at the house of Pamphilus the fuller, this Conon, a certain Theodorus, Alcibiades, Spintharus the son of Eubulus, Theogenes the son of Andromenes, and a good many others, whom Ctesias roused up and brought along into the marketplace. And it happened that, as we turned back from the temple of Persephone and were walking again about that same Leocorium, we fell in with them. As we mingled together, one of them, some stranger, fell upon Phanostratus and held him fast; and this Conon and his son and the son of Andromenes, falling upon me, first stripped me, then tripped me up and flung me into the mire, and so handled me, leaping upon me and treating me with such outrage, that they split my lip and closed up my eyes. And they left me in so wretched a state that I could neither rise nor utter a word. And lying there I heard them saying many terrible things. Some of it contains blasphemies which I should shrink even from naming; but the one thing that is a sign and proof of this man's insolence, and that the whole affair was the doing of this man, this I will tell you: he sang in mimicry of the cocks that have won the victory, and the others thought fit to applaud him, beating their sides with their elbows in place of wings."

13. Are these passages not pure and precise and clear and constructed with proper and common words, like those of Lysias? To me, at least, they seem to be so. What then? Are they not concise and rounded and full of truth, and showing forth that simple, uncontrived nature, just like those of Lysias? Most assuredly. And are they not also persuasive, and spoken with a certain character, and preserving what is fitting to the persons and the circumstances assumed? And of the pleasure and persuasiveness and charm and timeliness, and all the other excellence that blossoms in the works of Lysias, is there not a large share? It is impossible to say otherwise. Indeed, if it were not through the title showing whose each speech is that each was known, but we had come upon them without titles, I think not many of us would readily distinguish which is Demosthenes' and which Lysias'—so great a resemblance do the two characters bear to one another. Of this kind too are the speech Against Apollodorus for Phormio, and the one For Damage Against Olympiodorus, and the one Against Boeotus concerning the Name, and the Appeal Against Eubulides, and the Counter-suit Against Macartatus, and all the other private speeches, which are not much more than twenty in number. Once you have come upon these for the present, you will know what kind of thing I mean. And many portions of the public contests too have been constructed in this character. I would bring forward examples from each, were the discourse not going to become longer than is moderate. In these it is plain that he was no more concerned about elegance of language and dignity and all the adventitious constructions than about precision. And the speech delivered in reply to the letter and the envoys from Philip, which Callimachus entitles On the Halonnesus, the one that has this beginning—"Men of Athens, it is not possible that the charges which Philip brings"—is wholly precise and delicate, and has modelled itself to the very fingernail upon the Lysianic character, but has little display of divergence or grandeur of speech or formidable power or any of the other qualities which naturally accompany the power of Demosthenes. What, then, is the difference even in these works? And how might one discern, when Demosthenes descends to the necessary character, in what respect he is superior to Lysias even in style? For you think it right to learn this too. A certain natural smoothness of speech and charm runs over the speeches of Lysias, as I said before too, by which he excels all the other orators except Demosthenes. This, however, like a south wind, carries him only as far as the prooemium and the narrative; but when he comes to the demonstrative passages, it grows faint and feeble, and in the passionate passages it is utterly quenched; for it has not much tension, nor strength. But in Demosthenes the tension is great, and the charm is self-sufficient, so that even in this he wins by what is sufficient and moderate, and in that he excels in everything. This is a second observation by which one might discern the style of Demosthenes, when it is brought together into these necessary matters. For he does not strip off the magnitude and the tension as he strips off the divergence and the verbosity and all the adventitious ornaments; rather, this is an inalienable part of his style, whether it is innate or present through practice in his utterance. It takes on, however, certain intensifications and relaxations in due proportion. And these things are by now familiar to those to whom I am speaking, and we have no need of examples.

14. So, then, concerning that character . . . But of the oratorical kind that lies between the two extremes—which Demosthenes inherited unfinished from Isocrates, and still earlier from Thrasymachus, and last from Plato, and which he perfected so far as was possible for human nature—one might take many examples from the deliberative speeches against Philip, and many from the other public speeches, but the most numerous and finest from the defence On Behalf of Ctesiphon; for this speech seems to me to have employed the finest and most moderate construction of style. If, then, I had sufficient time, I would set down the actual passages. But since many necessary matters still remain to me, this I shall leave aside, and at present I shall use only the briefest samples, speaking as to those who know. The following, then, are such examples of the middle character. From the prosecution of Aeschines: "It is always fitting, men of Athens, to hate and punish traitors and takers of bribes, but especially now, at this present crisis, it would be timely, and would benefit all men in common. For a terrible and grievous disease, men of Athens, has fallen upon Greece, one that needs much good fortune and care from you," and what follows. From the prosecution of Aristocrates: "Many such things there are among us as are nowhere else, but the most peculiar of all and the most august is the court on the Areopagus, about which so many noble things have been handed down, both legendary and such as we ourselves witness, as about no other court," and the rest. From the speech On the Immunities: "First, then, consider Conon, whether it is right, after finding fault either with the man or with his deeds, to make void anything of what was granted to him. For he, as you may hear from some of you who are of the same age, after the return of the people from the Piraeus, when our city was weak," and what follows. From the defence On Behalf of Ctesiphon: "As for what Philip seized and held before I entered public life and addressed the assembly, I shall pass over; for I consider none of these things to concern me. But what, from the day on which I undertook this task, I prevented him from taking—of these I shall remind you, and concerning these I shall render account, after first saying this much: a great advantage, men of Athens, lay ready for Philip. For among the Greeks—not among some, but among all alike—there occurred such a crop of traitors and bribe-takers and men hateful to the gods as no one remembers to have arisen before," and what is joined to these.

15. This character, for my part . . . if anyone should not most readily accept the reason why I hold neither those passages of Thucydides, excessive and divergent from the customary, to be the best, nor place the perfect excellence of style in the plain and contracted passages of Lysias, this is what I would say to him: Those who gather in the assemblies and the law-courts and the other gatherings, where political speeches are needed, are not all formidable and excellent and possessed of the mind of Thucydides, nor are they all laymen and inexperienced in the construction of noble speeches; but some have flowed together from farming, some from seafaring, some from the menial crafts, men whom one would please more by conversing in a simpler and more common manner. For what is precise and excessive and strange, and everything that is not customary for them to hear and say, disposes them with annoyance, and just as some of the very wearisome foods or drinks turn the stomach, so those things dispose the ears with annoyance. But there are also the political men, the men of the marketplace, and those who have come through the ordinary education, with whom one cannot converse in the same way as with those others, but must bring to them the elaborate and excessive and strange mode of expression. Such men are perhaps fewer than the others—indeed a very small fraction of them, and no one is ignorant of this—but they are not on that account worthy to be despised. The speech, then, that aims at the few and well-educated will not be persuasive to the worthless and uninstructed crowd; and the one that thinks it right to please the many and the laymen will be despised by the more refined. But the one that seeks to persuade both audiences will be less likely to miss its end. This is the one mixed from both characters. For these reasons I have considered the style so constructed to be the most moderate of all, and of speeches I most approve those that have avoided the excesses of either character.

16. Having said at the outset that Isocrates and Plato seem to me to have practised this kind of character best of all the rest, and to have advanced it to the greatest length, though not also to have perfected it, and having promised to show that Demosthenes worked out fully whatever each of those men had left wanting, I shall now proceed to this. I shall set out the passages of each of those two men that seem to be the best, and shall set beside them those of Demosthenes that were composed on the same subjects, so that the preferences and powers of the men may become more clearly manifest, taking the most exact

17. test upon similar tasks. Let Isocrates be brought in first, and let a passage of his be taken from the speech On the Peace, which seems to be most charming, and which he himself brings forward in the speech On the Antidosis, taking great pride in it—the passage in which he compares the constitution under their ancestors with the one then established, and sets the old deeds against the new, praising the ancient ones and finding fault with those of his own time, and declaring the demagogues to be the cause of the change for the worse, as men who did not propose the best policies but addressed the people with a view to its pleasure. Since the comparison is rather long, only the most essential parts have been taken by me. It runs thus: "For who that came from elsewhere, and was not corrupted along with us, but suddenly stood over our doings, would not think that we are mad and out of our minds?—we who pride ourselves on the deeds of our ancestors, and think it right to praise the city for what was then done, yet do none of the same things as they, but the very opposite. For they kept on making war against the barbarians on behalf of the Greeks, while we, having uprooted from there those who draw their living from Asia, have led them against the Greeks. And they, freeing the Greek cities and helping them, were judged worthy of the leadership; while we, enslaving them and doing the opposite of those men of old, are indignant if we shall not have the same honour as they. We have fallen so far short, both in deeds and in thoughts, of those who lived at that time, that they, for the salvation of the Greeks, dared to abandon their own fatherland, and, fighting both on land and at sea, conquered the barbarians; whereas we do not think it right to run risks even for our own aggrandizement, but seek to rule over all men, yet are unwilling to take the field, and undertake a war against well-nigh all mankind, yet for it we train not ourselves, but men—some stateless, some deserters, some who have flowed together from other crimes—who, whenever any others offer them more pay, will follow them against us. Yet so dearly do we love them that, on behalf of our own children, if any should commit some offence, we would not be willing to undergo a trial, but on behalf of these men's plunder and violence and lawlessness, though the charges are bound to come upon us, we not only are not indignant, but even rejoice whenever we hear that they have done some such thing. We have come to such a pitch of folly that we ourselves are in want of our daily bread, yet have undertaken to maintain mercenaries, and we ill-treat and exact tribute from our own allies in private, in order to provide the wage for the common enemies of all mankind. And we are so much worse than our ancestors—not only those who were of good repute, but even those who were hated—that they, if they voted to make war on any, with the Acropolis full of silver and gold, nevertheless thought it right to face the danger with their own persons for what had been decided; whereas we, who have come into such want and are so great in number, like the Great King make use of hired armies. And in those days, if we manned triremes, we put the foreigners and slaves aboard as sailors and sent out the citizens under arms; but now we use the foreigners as hoplites and compel the citizens to row, so that, whenever they disembark on the enemy's land, those who claim to rule the Greeks step ashore holding a rower's cushion, while men of the kind I described a little before face the danger under arms. Indeed, would anyone, seeing the affairs of the city well administered, take courage about the rest as well? Would he not be most indignant at these very things?—we who say that we are sprung from the soil and that this city of ours was founded before all others, and who, though it befitted us to be an example of governing well and in orderly fashion, administer our own affairs worse and more disorderly than those who are only now founding their cities; and we plume ourselves and are high-minded over being born better than the rest, yet more readily share this nobility with any who wish for it than the Triballians and Lucanians share their baseness."

18. Such, then, is the style of Isocrates that seems to be the finest of all, worthy of admiration for many reasons. For it is pure in its words, if any style is, and precise in its diction; and it is clear and common, and embraces all the other excellences out of which a clear style is best produced. It has, too, many of the adventitious ornaments; for it is elevated and dignified and stately, and fair-worded and pleasant and well-formed, sufficiently. Yet it is not perfect in this respect; there are points in which one might find fault with it as deficient—and not, by Zeus, in the most trifling matters. First, in conciseness; for, aiming at clarity, it often neglects moderation. But it ought to have provided equally for both. Next, in compactness; for it is supine and drawn out and flowing around the thoughts, like the styles of historians, whereas the style of contest aims at being rounded and well-knit and having nothing baggy. Besides these, the following too belong to the man. He is timid about figurative constructions, and faint-hearted, and does not introduce powerful tensions. And yet the athletes of true style must have strong holds and inescapable grips. He cannot rouse passion in his hearers to the degree he wishes—and for the most part he does not even wish it, but is convinced that it is enough for the political man to display an earnest thought and a fair disposition. And, to be sure, he attains each of these; for the truth must be testified. Yet the strongest of all things for one who is to persuade an assembly or a court was to lead the hearers to passion. Nor, indeed, does he hit the fitting mark in all things; but, claiming that the diction should at all costs be flowery and theatrical, as though pleasure held all the power in speeches, he sometimes falls short of what is fitting. Yet not all subjects demand the same diction; rather, as there is a garment fitting to bodies, so there is a phrasing suited to thoughts. To make the ears pleasant at all costs by the choice of euphonious and soft words, and to think fit to enclose everything in the rhythmical cadences of periods, and to adorn the speech with the figures of the theatre—this was not everywhere useful. But this very thing is taught us by those who wrote epics and tragedies and serious lyrics, who made not so great a grant to pleasure as to truth.

19. Whether I reckon these things rightly, and whether the man is somewhat deficient in these excellences, anyone who wishes may consider, making his examination upon the passage just now set down. At once, then, the first thought, which could have been brought out in a few words, he makes long by drawing it round in a circle and saying the same things twice or thrice. It was contained, in the first clause, "for who that came from elsewhere," in the addition "and was not corrupted along with us, but suddenly stood over our doings"; for in power both come to the same. And in "we who pride ourselves on the deeds of our ancestors," the "and think it right to praise the city for what was then done"; for to pride oneself and to praise are the same. And in "yet do none of the same things as they," the "but the very opposite"; for it would have sufficed to say one of the two. It was possible to make one period out of the two, both more concise and more graceful: "For who that came from elsewhere would not think us mad—we who pride ourselves on the deeds of our ancestors, yet do none of the same things as they?" There are many such redundancies, in well-nigh every period, occupying no necessary place, which make the expression more immoderate but the period more elegant. So long, then, is his style; but how is it broad and ill-knit? "And they, freeing the Greek cities and helping them, were judged worthy of the leadership; while we, enslaving them and doing the opposite of those men of old, are indignant if we shall not have the same honour as they." These baggy passages it was rather possible to tighten and make more rounded, somewhat thus: "And they, freeing Greece and preserving it, advanced to the leadership; while we, enslaving and destroying it, are indignant if we shall not obtain the like." And the thought after these is broadly stated and ill-knit: "We have fallen so far short, both in thoughts and in deeds, of those who lived at that time, that they, for the freedom of the Greeks, dared to abandon their own fatherland, and, fighting both on land and at sea, conquered the barbarians." It was possible to turn back its breadth by bringing it out thus: "We are so much worse than our ancestors, in that they, to save the Greeks, abandoned their own fatherland and, fighting against the barbarians, conquered." Countless samples of this weakness too may be taken. For except for a few cases, in which the compactness came about not so much by design as by accident, the rest is said with breadth. And how is the style lacking in tension and without strong holds? In bringing on the thoughts said before some such thought as this: "And we are so much worse than our ancestors—not only those who were of good repute, but even those who were hated—that they, if they voted to make war on any, with the Acropolis full of silver and gold, nevertheless thought it right to face the danger with their own persons for what had been decided; whereas we, who have come into such want and are so great in number, like the Great King make use of hired armies." Come now, how was it possible to say it more rounded? "But perhaps in these things we are worse than our ancestors, yet in the rest we are better—not, I mean, than those of good repute (how could we be?), but than the hated ones. And who does not know that they, having once filled the Acropolis with very much wealth, did not hire out the common riches against the enemy, but, contributing from their private means, thought it right sometimes to face danger with their own persons; whereas we, being so poor and so great in number, make war with mercenary armies, just like the Great King?" Moreover, that his diction is lifeless and not passionate, and has the smallest share of that breath which is most needed in speeches of contest, is, I think, plain to all even without a reminder. But if, after all, examples are needed—and there are many that one could mention—I shall be content to use a single thought. There succeeds the antithesis examined a little before another antithesis of this kind: "And in those days, if we manned triremes, we put the foreigners and slaves aboard as sailors and sent out the citizens under arms; but now we use the foreigners as hoplites and compel the citizens to row, so that, whenever they disembark on the enemy's land, those who claim to rule the Greeks step ashore holding a rower's cushion, while men of such natures as I described a little before face the danger under arms." In this I do not find fault with the man for his spirit, for the thought is noble and able to stir passion; what I blame is the smoothness and softness of the style. For it ought to have been rough and bitter and to produce something like a blow; but it is moist and even, flowing through the hearing soundlessly like oil, seeking, indeed, to charm and please the ear. But is it at least well off in figures suited to contests, since they are many and varied, and through them does it rouse passion in the hearers? Far from it. For the things that most enfeeble its power and turn the ear away are precisely these childish balanced clauses and frigid antitheses and the like. To begin with, in this very passage of which we are speaking, the whole matter is an antithesis, and its particular thoughts are set one against one, and each of the periods is constructed by antitheses, so as to wear out the hearers with distaste and surfeit. What I mean is this. Of every thought and period and premise the beginnings and the endings are of this kind: "they—but we, and"; "and they—but we, and"; "then—but now, and"; "as far as they—but we, and"; "this—but that." These he has turned in a circle from beginning to end. But turns and changes and varieties of figure, which naturally relieve the weariness of the thought, are nowhere. One could censure many such deficiencies of style in Isocrates, but even these are sufficient.

20. After him let Demosthenes be brought in, and let a passage of his too be taken, from one of the deliberative speeches against Philip, in which he too compares the deeds of his own time with those under their ancestors, and the new demagogues with the old—not setting each single ancient deed against a new one, nor making the comparison in a petty, point-by-point fashion, but making the whole antithesis from the whole position, in continuous fashion thus: "And yet consider, men of Athens, the chief points one might make of the deeds under our ancestors and of those of your own time. The account shall be brief and familiar to you; for it is not by using others' examples, but your own, men of Athens, that you may become prosperous. Those men, then—whom the speakers did not flatter, nor love as these men now love you—ruled the Greeks, with their consent, for forty-five years; they gathered into the Acropolis more than ten thousand talents; the king who held this land was subject to them, as it is fitting for a barbarian to be to Greeks; many and noble trophies they set up, both on land and at sea, in their own campaigns; and of all men they alone left behind a glory in their deeds greater than the envy of others. In the affairs of the Greeks, then, they were such; now look what they were in the affairs of the city itself, both in public and in private. In public, then, they built for us so many and such fine buildings and adornments of temples, and of the offerings in them, that to none of those who came after has any chance of surpassing them been left. In private they were so temperate, and so steadfast in the spirit of the constitution, that the house of Aristides and of Miltiades and of the others famous in that day, if any of you knows what it is like, sees that it is no more august than that of his neighbour. For the city's business was not done with a view to private gain, but each thought it right to increase the common good. And from managing the affairs of the Greeks loyally, those toward the gods piously, and their own affairs justly among themselves, they reasonably acquired great prosperity. Then, indeed, such was the state of affairs for them, using as leaders the men I have named. But now how do things stand with us, under these worthy men of the present? In the same and like fashion? And all the rest I pass over, though I have much to say; but to think how great a solitude you have come into, with the Spartans destroyed and the Thebans occupied, and none of the rest worthy to dispute the primacy with you—when it was open to us both to hold our own affairs in safety and to arbitrate the rights of others—we have been robbed of our own territory, we have spent more than fifteen hundred talents to no purpose, and the allies we won in the war these men have lost in peace, and we have trained up against ourselves an enemy so great. Or let someone come forward and tell me from what other source Philip has grown strong, if not from ourselves. 'Well, my good sir, if these things are poorly managed, at least matters within the city itself are now in a better state.' And what could one cite? The battlements that we whitewash, and the roads that we repair, and fountains, and trifles? Look, then, to those who manage these affairs, of whom some have become rich from beggars, and others honoured from obscure, while some have built their private houses more august than the public buildings; and the more the city's affairs have diminished, the more theirs have grown. What, then, is the cause of all this? And why was everything well then, and now not aright? Because then the people, themselves daring even to take the field, were master of the politicians and lord of all the good things, and each of the rest was content to receive from the people a share of honour and office and some good thing; whereas now, on the contrary, the politicians are lords of the good things, and through them everything is done, while you, the people, unstrung and stripped of your money, have become an appendage and an accessory, content if these men dole out to you the theoric money or send round a few sacrificial victims. And, most unmanly thing of all, you owe them thanks for what is your own. And, having shut you up in the city itself, they lead you on to these things and tame you, making you tractable to themselves. But it is never possible, I think, to acquire a great and youthful spirit while doing small and base things. For whatever men's pursuits may be, such of necessity must their spirit be too. These things, by Demeter, I should not be surprised if greater harm should come to me from you for saying them than to those who have done them. For freedom of speech is not always granted you about everything; rather, I am amazed that even now it has been." Who would not agree that this discourse differs from that of Isocrates in everything else? For he has interpreted the matters more nobly and more magnificently than that style, and . . . has embraced them in words, and has knit and contracted and rounded off the thoughts better, and has used more strength and weightier tensions, and has avoided the frigid and childish figures with which that style adorns itself beyond measure; but most of all, in respect of the active and contentious and passionate, it is wholly and entirely superior to it. At any rate, I will tell what I feel toward both styles; and I think I shall be telling a common experience of all men, and not one peculiar to me alone.

21. Whenever I read one of the speeches of Isocrates—whether those written for the courts and assemblies, or . . .—I become earnest in disposition and possess great steadiness of mind, like those who listen to the music of solemn flutes, or to Dorian and enharmonic melodies. But whenever I take up one of the speeches of Demosthenes, I am possessed and carried this way and that, passing from one passion into another—disbelieving, agonizing, fearing, despising, hating, pitying, well-disposed, angry, envious—passing through all the passions that naturally master the human mind; and I think I am no different from those who are initiated into the rites of the Mother of the Gods, and the Corybantic rites, and the like—whether those men are moved by odours . . . or by sounds or by the breath of the spirits themselves, and so receive their many and various phantasies. And I have indeed sometimes pondered what the men of that time must have felt on hearing him speak these things. For if we, who are so far removed in time and have no concern at all in the matters, are so drawn along and mastered, and go wherever the discourse leads us, how then were the Athenians and the other Greeks led on by the man, in the true and personal contests, when he himself was speaking his own cause, with the dignity that he possessed, displaying his own feeling and the resolution of his soul, adorning everything and giving it colour by the fitting delivery, of which he was the most formidable practitioner—as all agree, and as one may see from the very speeches I just now produced, which it is not possible for one who wishes to read through pleasantly as a mere recitation, but which themselves teach how they must be delivered, now ironically, now in indignation, now in resentment, and again threatening, and soothing, and admonishing, and exhorting, and showing forth in the utterance everything that the style wishes to do? If, then, the breath that has been infused into the books through so many years has such strength, and is so leading of men, surely there was at that time something prodigious and formidable in the delivery of his speeches.

22. But—lest, by dwelling on these things, I be forced to leave out some of what remains—I shall let Isocrates go, and the character of that manner; and concerning Plato I shall now speak my own opinion with frankness, adding nothing to the man's reputation and taking nothing from the truth, and especially since some think it right to declare him the most divine of all philosophers and orators in interpreting things, and exhort us to use this man as the standard and rule of speech at once pure and powerful. Indeed I have heard some saying that, if there is even among the gods a manner of speech such as the human race uses, the king of them, being a god, speaks no otherwise than as Plato does. Against such notions and prodigious sayings of half-finished men in matters of style, who do not know what the noble construction is, nor are able—laying aside all irony, as is my nature—I shall speak. But in what manner I think fit to make my examination of him, I wish to state beforehand. The formidable power of the man in the dialogues, and especially in those where he keeps the Socratic character, as in the Philebus, I greatly admire and have admired; but I have never emulated his want of taste in the adventitious constructions, as I said before too, and least of all in those passages where, descending into political subjects, he attempts to write encomia and censures, prosecutions and defences. For then he becomes another man than himself and disgraces the philosopher's dignity. And it has often come to me to say, upon such speeches of his, what is made in Homer when Zeus speaks to Aphrodite: "Not to you, my child, are the works of war given; but do you go after the lovely works"—of the Socratic dialogues—"while these shall be the care of political and oratorical men." I make all lovers of letters the common judges of my opinion, excepting any who are ambitious and who judge matters by reputation and not by truth. Now to pick out from all his speeches whatever has been said worst—which some others do—and then to set against these the best of Demosthenes' style, I did not approve. But to take from each what is most highly esteemed, and, setting these side by side, to examine the better—this seemed to me to be just, and to this very part I shall turn. Now there is one forensic speech in Plato, the Apology of Socrates, which never saw the door of a court or the marketplace, but was written with some other intention, having a place neither among speeches nor among dialogues. This, then, I pass over. Of deliberative speech there is none, unless someone wishes to call the letters deliberative speeches; let these too be dismissed. Encomia there are in the Symposium, many of Love, some of which are not worth serious attention, and one of Socrates, of whatever sort; for I have no need now to speak of this. The best of all his political speeches is the Menexenus, in which he runs through the funeral oration, in imitation, as it seems to me, of Thucydides, but, as he himself says, of Archinus and Dio . . . This speech, then, I shall take up, and against it shall examine certain passages of Demosthenes—not from the funeral oration, for this I do not consider to have been written by the man, but from his other speeches, all that are spoken concerning the noble and concerning virtue, or rather from a single contest; for I have not time to use as many examples as I wish, though I should have wished it above all. Such, then, will be my manner of comparison.

23. Let Plato be taken first; and since he seems to pride himself on precision and dignity of words, these I shall test upon his own writings, beginning, as he does, with the speech: "In deed these men have from us what is fitting to them, and, having obtained it, they go the appointed journey." The opening is admirable and fitting to the subject in beauty of words and dignity and harmony; but what is added is no longer like the first—at once the phrase, "escorted in common by the city, in private by their kinsmen." For in the saying that the buried men have everything fitting to them, there was contained also their bodies' being escorted to the burial both publicly and privately. So it was not necessary to say the same thing again, unless the man supposed this to be the finest of all the customs concerning burials—I mean, the presence of many at the funerals—and thought he did nothing strange in both including it with the rest and speaking of it alone by itself. He must then have been simple-minded, if he thought this the most splendid of the adornments with which the city adorned them. For—to pass over everything else—the public maintenance of their fathers in old age until death, and the rearing of their sons until manhood, how much better was it than the escorting of the bodies publicly? To me it seems far better. So this addition, Plato, is not necessary. But, granting it not to be necessary, was the clause perhaps taken in for the sake of beauty or of some other adventitious ornament? Far from it. For, besides having nothing worth serious regard, either in the choice of words or in their arrangement, it spoils as well the period before it, and at least ruins both its symmetry and its euphony. For now, embraced in two clauses, it is symmetrical and harmonious and rounded and has taken a sure footing; but if it takes on this clause, all this is dissolved, and it will take on the historical instead of the rhetorical stamp. And if we separate this clause from what precedes and bring it out by itself, neither will it become a period when it stands by itself, nor will it have, by Zeus, character or passion, nor any other persuasion and charm whatever. If, then, the addition was taken in neither for the sake of the necessary nor for the sake of the superfluous—but in these matters and in these the construction of style consists—what else could one call this but what it truly is, untimeliness? To these the man adds the following: "And in speech the law commands us to render the remaining honour to these men, and we must." The "and we must," set here again at the end—for the sake of what is it taken in, and why? Is it to make the style clearer? But even without this addition it is clear. Indeed, if it stood thus—"And in speech the law commands us to render the remaining honour to these men"—who would blame it as not clear? But is it pleasanter to hear and more magnificent? On the contrary, it has obliterated its dignity and ruined it. And this each man must learn not by argument, but recognize from his own feelings. For by the irrational senses all things annoying and pleasant are judged, and these need neither teaching nor exhortation.

24. "You are making a malicious charge of the matter," someone might perhaps say, "in demanding fine speech and elegance of language from a man not wise in these things. Examine the conceptions, whether they are fine and magnificent and found in none of the others. About these he was earnest; in these he was formidable. Of these take account from him, but let the manner of his style be." And how can one say this? For, on the contrary, everyone knows that the philosopher employed more ambition about the interpretation than about the matters. One could bring countless proofs of this; but this single passage suffices to display the man's empty zeal, which he employs about the excessive embellishment of his utterance. For instance, in adding to what was said before a thought neither excessive nor wonderful, but one said by many and often—that the praise of noble deeds can make the honours and memories immortal for the good has been said by countless men of old—having perceived that it has nothing wise or excessive in its conception, what was left, I suppose, was for him to make it pleasant by the beauty of his interpretation. Then, like the youths, descending from the noble and magnificent words and figures to these theatrical Gorgianic ones—I mean the antitheses and the balanced clauses—he adorns his phrasing with these trifles.

25. Let us hear, then, how he says it: "For of deeds well done, by a speech well spoken, there comes to the doers remembrance and adornment from the hearers." Here speech is set against deeds, "spoken" against "done," and "well" has been changed in name to "nobly," and the three members of the sentence are balanced against the three. And for the sake of the period's stepping safely, and of nothing necessary, the thought being already complete, the "from the hearers" has been added. Has this same thought, then, been interpreted in like manner by the poets, whom the philosopher despises and drives from his commonwealth, or more nobly and more grandly? "It is fitting that the brave be hymned . . . with the fairest songs. For this alone touches upon immortal honours: spoken . . . but a noble deed dies if left in silence." Pindar made this for Alexander the Macedonian, being more earnest about the melodies and rhythms than about the diction. But Plato, who professes wisdom, adorns his phrasing with dainty and over-elaborate figures. And this is not yet enough; he will be found doing the same things in the period after it. For he says: "There is need, then, of some such speech as will sufficiently praise the dead and kindly counsel the living." So an adverb is set against an adverb, and a verb against a verb—the "sufficiently" against the "kindly," and against "praise" the "counsel"—and these too are balanced clauses. These are no Licymnii saying them, nor Agathons—those who speak of "insolence or lust for hire from somewhere," or "the toil of fatherlands"—but the man divine in interpretation, Plato. And I do not censure the figures; for these too sometimes bring a bloom to speeches. For which reason I do not blame even the practice of them itself, and find fault only with their untimeliness—and most of all when it is done by such a man, whom we think fit to use as the standard of correct speech. For in this very speech there are these too: "things for which no poet has yet won and holds the worthy renown they deserve"; and again: "having walled herself and built ships, having received the war"; and further: "for which both first and last and throughout you must try with all eagerness to have every readiness in every way"; and again: "bearing their misfortunes manfully, they will seem to be truly the fathers of manly sons"; and these as well: "educating the one fitly, supporting the others worthily in old age"; and again somewhere: "and I myself beg on their behalf, of the one to imitate their own, of the others to endure for their own"; and these: "for the constitution is the nourishment of men, and the good a nourishment of the good, but the ignoble a nourishment of the bad"; and these still: "having conquered the enemy, having ransomed the friendly, having met with an unworthy fortune." There is a great crowd of such figures throughout the whole funeral oration. But, leaving off the precise discussion of these, I shall come to those other things—and to me, much ashamed and reluctant to say it, but say it I will: that they seemed to me signs of crudity and incapacity.

26. For the man, having said beforehand what figure it befits the speech to take, adds these words: "Upon these let us display the doing of the deeds, that they revealed themselves noble and worthy of these men." "To have revealed a worthy doing of deeds"—I do not know whether anyone who practises the fine and precise and pure mode of expression would have thought fit to say it. For matters are done, deeds are wrought, but it is sayings that are thought worthy of being revealed. This, then, is crudely said; and the enthymeme stated upon it is feebler still, for it is long-winded and incongruous, and has neither formidable force nor proper construction: "And of their nobility the first beginning for these men was the birth of their ancestors, which was not foreign, nor did it declare these their descendants to be settlers in the land, having come from elsewhere, but sprung from the soil and in truth dwelling and living and being nourished in their fatherland, not by a stepmother, as others, but by their mother, the land in which they dwelt; and now they lie, having died, in the proper places of her who bore and reared and received them." What nation of men using a pure mode of expression will speak of a birth as the one sprung from the soil and the other as foreign-come? For to be sprung from the soil, or not native, is something that has befallen us, not our birth. At any rate, a man born in one place can migrate elsewhere, but the birth itself cannot suffer this. And who that is earnest to speak well would think fit to say that the birth of the ancestors declared those who would be born later to be sprung from the soil and not settlers in the land in which they were born? For neither has the birth itself the nature to declare anything, nor can anyone migrate into the place in which he is born; rather, we declare sayings, and those who have come from another land are settlers in the one that received them. And who, wishing to preserve the sequence, having spoken of the birth and rendering his account about it, would have joined on the "having come from elsewhere"—the masculine to the feminine and the plural to the singular? For the language would surely have been congruous if, referring to the birth, of which he was speaking, he had added, "it having come from elsewhere." But if he intended to make his speech about the men from the start, he would have set down the phrasing thus: "And of their nobility the first beginning for these men were their ancestors, who were not foreign-come, nor did they declare these their descendants settlers in the land, having come from elsewhere, but sprung from the soil."

27. And it is worth observing, too—not in passing—what he has said about the nobility of the men, when he first praises the land from which they sprang. He says, then, that it is beloved of the gods, and produces as witnesses of this the gods who contended over it—a commonplace thing, said by well-nigh all who have praised the city. And it is not this that deserves a malicious charge, but how he has interpreted it that one should learn: "And there is witness to our argument in the strife and judgement of the gods who contended over her. And one whom gods praised, how is it not right that she be praised by all men?" Mean and unenviable seems to me the style, and having nothing worthy of the much-contested city, as it seems to me. For what wealth of words is here? What dignity? What loftiness? What is not softer than her worth? What is not more deficient than the truth? Was it thus that Plato ought to have spoken of the contention of Athena and Poseidon over Attica, the strife and judgement? Thus to bring down the love which the gods had for the honours in it to some mean and moderate phrase, saying "one whom gods praised"? But what he adds after these in praise of the land—that she first gave birth to the race of men and brought forth for it the cultivated fruits—is worth observing: "And she chose out of the living creatures and brought forth man, who in understanding surpasses the rest and alone acknowledges justice and the gods." I do not know whether any other most splendid matter has been said by Plato more cheaply than this, and in more ordinary fashion. Let us grant him to have spoken the encomium of man thus carelessly and feebly. But about his nourishment, at least, he will use a noble phrasing: "For she alone, in that time and first, brought forth nourishment for man, the fruit of wheat and barley." O gods and spirits, where is that rich Platonic stream, foaming with its great constructions? Does that twelve-fountained mouth of the wise man speak so meanly and trickle drop by drop? "He husbanded it, by Zeus, and lowered the construction of his own accord, perhaps," someone will say. And how so?—a man who does not think "milk" a dignified word, but renames it "the fountain of nourishment" in what follows.

28. Let us leave this too; but let us examine how he spoke of the greatness of the gift itself: "by which the human race is most beautifully and most excellently nourished." If one of us earth-dwellers and ground-walkers had said "most beautifully and most excellently," how much laughter would he have stirred? Yet let this too be dismissed. "Of this fruit she was not grudging, but gave a share to the others as well." If anyone should wish to take an example of . . . style, would not "the earth, not grudging of its fruit" stand first beside it? To me at least it seems so. And does she who shared her own good things with all men, and sowed with so great a wealth both barbarian and Greek land, deserve to be adorned with these phrases—that she did not grudge the seeds, and that she distributed them to the others? Ought he not either not to have mentioned the not-grudging-toward-one's-neighbours at all, or else to have embraced the distribution of the fruit in some more dignified word—gift, or grace, or some other of the kind? I let this pass. But the gift of Athena he has stated thus: "And after these the birth of the olive, a help in toils, she sent up for her descendants." Circumlocutions again here, and dithyrambs. And why need one say more? For going through the whole speech one would find some things said neither precisely nor delicately, others childishly and frigidly, others without strength and tension, others lacking pleasure and charm, others dithyrambic and vulgar. But I should have wished all to be noble and worthy of serious regard. For it is Plato who writes these things, who, if he shall not carry off even the first prize for style, will at least afford a great contest, about the second prize, to those who would compete. But about these matters enough.

29. But the passages which some think the man to have said best, at the close of the speech—and I agree—these I shall set down, and then turn to Demosthenes. For in running through their praise, he says that those who were about to die in the war charged those present with what they should report to their own children and fathers, if anything should befall them in the battle. They are these: "I will tell you both what I heard from those very men, and what they would now gladly say to you, recovering their power, conjecturing from what they then said. But you must think you are hearing from those very men the things I report. They are these: 'Children, that you are of good fathers, the present moment itself declares. For we, when we might have lived ignobly, choose rather to die nobly, before bringing you and those after you into reproaches, and before shaming our own fathers and all our former race—holding that for him who shames his own life is not to be lived, and that to such a man no one, of men or of gods, is a friend, neither on earth nor afterward when he has died. You must, then, remembering our words, whatever else you practise, practise it with virtue, knowing that, falling short of this, all possessions and pursuits are shameful and base. For neither does wealth bring beauty to its possessor along with cowardice—for such a man will be rich for others and not for himself—nor do beauty and strength, dwelling with a cowardly and base man, appear fitting, but unfitting, and they make his cowardice more conspicuous; and all knowledge, separated from justice and the rest of virtue, appears as villainy, not wisdom. For which reason both first and last and throughout you must try, with all eagerness, in every way, so that above all you may surpass both us and those before us in good repute; but if not, know that for us, if we conquer you in virtue, the victory brings shame, while the defeat, if we be defeated, brings happiness. And we should most be defeated, and you should conquer, if you prepare yourselves not to misuse the glory of your ancestors nor to spend it, knowing that for a man who thinks himself something there is nothing more shameful than to offer himself for honour not on his own account, but through the glory of his ancestors. The honours of parents are for their descendants a noble and magnificent treasure; but to use up a treasure of wealth and honours, and not to hand it on to one's descendants, is shameful and unmanly, from want of one's own possessions and good repute. And if you practise these things, you will come to us as friends to friends, when the proper fate brings you; but if you neglect them and prove base, no one will receive you kindly. To the children, then, let this be said. But our fathers, those who have them, and our mothers, we must ever console, that they may bear the misfortune most easily, if it should chance to happen, and not lament along with them. For they will not need anyone to add to their grief; the fortune that has come will be sufficient to provide that. But, healing and soothing them, we must remind them that the gods have heard their greatest prayers. For they prayed not that their children should become immortal, but good and of fair fame; and these they obtained, which are the greatest of goods. And it is not easy for a mortal man that all things in his life should turn out according to his mind. And bearing their misfortunes manfully, they will seem to be truly the fathers of manly sons, and themselves such; but yielding, they will furnish suspicion either that they are not ours, or that those who praise us speak falsely. But neither of these should be; rather, those above all should be our praisers in deed, showing themselves to be in truth fathers, men of men. For of old the saying "nothing too much" seems to be well said; for it is in truth well said. For the man for whom all things tending to happiness, or near it, depend upon himself, and are not suspended on other men, by whose faring well or ill his own affairs too are compelled to waver—for that man life has been best arranged; he is the temperate man, and he the brave and the prudent; he, when children and wealth come into being and are destroyed, most of all obeys the proverb; for he will appear neither rejoicing nor grieving overmuch, because of his trust in himself. Such men we both think fit, and wish, and say our own to be. And we now offer ourselves as such, neither indignant nor overly afraid, if we must die at the present moment. And we beg both our fathers and our mothers to pass the rest of their life using this same disposition, and to know that not by mourning and lamenting us will they most gratify us. But if there is any perception of the living among the dead, they would thus be most ungracious, ill-treating themselves and bearing their misfortunes heavily; whereas they would most gratify us by bearing them lightly and with moderation. For our own affairs will now have the end which is the noblest for men; so that it befits to adorn them rather than to lament. But by caring for our wives and children and rearing them, and turning their mind there, they would most be in forgetfulness of their fortune, and would live more nobly and more rightly and more dear to us. These things, then, are enough to report to our own from us. And to the city we give this charge: that they care for our fathers and our sons, the one educating fitly, the other supporting worthily in old age. But now we know that, even if we do not charge them, they will care for them sufficiently.' These things, then, parents and children of the dead, those men charged you to report, and I report them as most eagerly as I can." This style seems to be the finest in this speech of Plato. The most of it, indeed, is well done (for it does not seem false), except that its figure is that of political display, not of contest.

30. Let us, then, set against this a passage of Demosthenes, taken from the speech On Behalf of Ctesiphon. It is not an exhortation of the Athenians to nobility and virtue, as in Plato, but an encomium of the city, that it counts all other things of less worth than the honour and glory which noble deeds bring, even if one is not going to bring them to success. The passage is this: "But since he insists greatly on what has happened, I wish to say something even paradoxical; and let no one, in the name of Zeus and the gods, marvel at the exaggeration, but with good will consider what I say. For if it had been plain to all what was going to happen, and all had foreknown it, and you had foretold it and protested, crying and shouting—you who did not even utter a word—not even so ought the city to have stood aside from these things, if it had any regard for glory, or for its ancestors, or for the age to come. As it is, it seems to have failed of its purpose—which is common to all men, whenever the god so wills; but then, having claimed to stand at the head of the Greeks, and then having stood aside from this, it would have incurred the charge of having betrayed all to Philip. For if it had given up without a struggle those things for which our ancestors endured every danger whatsoever, who would not have spat upon you? Not, surely, upon the city or upon me. With what eyes, in the name of Zeus, should we have looked upon the men coming into the city, if matters had come round to what they now are, and Philip had been chosen leader and lord of all, while the struggle to prevent these things had been waged by certain others apart from us—and that when the city had never before, in all past time, chosen inglorious safety rather than danger for the sake of the noble? For who, of Greeks or of barbarians, does not know that both from the Thebans, and from the Spartans who were strong still earlier than they, and from the king of the Persians, it would gladly and with much gratitude have been granted to the city to take whatever it wished and keep its own, on condition of doing what it was bidden and allowing another of the Greeks to be at the head? But these things, it seems, were not for the Athenians of that day either ancestral or endurable or inborn, nor could anyone, in all time, ever persuade the city to attach itself in safe servitude to those who were strong but acted unjustly; but, struggling for primacy and honour and glory, it kept on facing danger throughout the whole of time. And these things you suppose to be so august and noble and befitting your characters that you most of all praise those of your ancestors who did them—and rightly. For who would not admire the virtue of those men, who endured to abandon both their land and their city, embarking on the triremes, rather than do what they were bidden—choosing as general Themistocles, who counselled these things, and stoning to death Cyrsilus, who declared that they must submit to what was commanded—not only him, but your wives also stoned his wife? For the Athenians of that day did not seek either an orator or a general through whom they might prosperously be slaves, but did not even think it right to live, if they were not to be allowed to do this in freedom. For each of them held that he had been born not to his father and mother alone, but also to his fatherland. And what is the difference? That the man who thinks he was born to his parents alone awaits the death appointed by fate and the natural death; but the man who thinks he was born to his fatherland too will be willing to die rather than see it enslaved, and will hold more terrible than death the outrages and dishonours that one must bear in an enslaved city. If, then, I had now undertaken to say this—that I led you to think things worthy of your ancestors—who would not reasonably have censured me? But as it is, I declare these resolutions to be your own, and show that even before me the city had this spirit; though of the service in each of the things done I say that I too had a share. But this man, accusing the whole and bidding you be bitter against me as the cause of fears and dangers to the city, is eager to rob me of the honour of the present moment, and takes away from you the praises of all time to come. For if, on the ground that I did not act for the best in public life, you shall vote against this man, you will seem to have erred, and not to have suffered what befell through the unkindness of fortune. But it cannot be that you erred, men of Athens, in taking up the danger for the freedom and safety of all—no, by those of our ancestors who faced the first danger at Marathon, and those who stood in array at Plataea, and those who fought at sea at Salamis and at Artemisium, and the many other brave men who lie in the public monuments, all of whom the city, judging them worthy of the same honour, buried, Aeschines—not those alone who prevailed among them or those alone who succeeded—and justly. For what was the work of brave men, all of them have done; but the fortune which the deity allotted to each, this they have used."

31. There is no one who would not agree—if only he had moderate perception in matters of style, and were neither malignant nor contentious—that the passage just now set down differs from the former by as much as weapons of war differ from those of a procession, and true forms from images, and bodies reared in sunlight and toils from those that pursue shade and ease. For the one practises nothing beyond comeliness, and its beauty consists in things not true; the other has nothing that does not lead to the useful and the true. And it seems to me that one would not err in likening the style of Plato to a flowery spot affording pleasant lodgings and ephemeral delights, and the style of Demosthenes to a fruitful and all-bearing land lacking neither the necessities of life nor the superfluities for enjoyment. And though I could, if I wished, examine in detail the particular successes of each, and show by how much the style of Demosthenes is superior to the Platonic—not only in respect of the true and the suited to contests (for this, as toward men who all alike know it, I think needs no argument), but also in respect of the figurative, in which Plato above all seems to be formidable—and though I have many starting-points for discussion, I put off this inquiry to another occasion, if time remains to me; for I shall not shrink from bringing out a separate treatise about it. But now, what fitted the present occasion has been said. And since it was not possible for us to pass Plato by, to whom some assign the first prize, while to wear out the discourse on this single inquiry alone would have been to forget the subject, let my account of these matters be thus circumscribed. But I wish also to gather up what has been said from the beginning, and to show that I have done everything that I promised when I began the inquiry into the topic of expression.

32. My purpose and the announcement of my discourse was to show that Demosthenes employed, most moderately of all, the best style, and one fitted to every human nature; and this I tried to establish by giving the proofs not from that style alone (for I knew that nothing is self-sufficient when contemplated by itself, so as to be seen for what it is, and clearly), but by setting against it the styles of the other orators and philosophers that seem to be the best, and making the better one manifest by the test of comparison. So that my discourse might take the natural road, I enumerated the most noteworthy characters of style, and went through the men who took the first rank in them; then, having shown all those men to be incomplete, and having reckoned up briefly in what respect I supposed each to fall short of the goal, I came to Demosthenes. Declaring that he became the emulator of no single character nor of any single man, but, having chosen the best from all, constructed a common and humane mode of expression, and that in this above all he differs from the others, I offered proofs of this, dividing his style into the three most general characters—the plain, the elevated, and the one between these—and showing that in all three kinds he succeeds beyond the others, taking certain passages of his, against which I set, in examination, others of the same kind, worth notice indeed, yet not wholly beyond reproach, nor, like his, possessing all the excellences. For the mention and comparison of Isocrates and Plato—admirable men though they are—was made by me not unreasonably, but because, since these became the emulators of the middle and best character and obtained the greatest reputation, it was so that I might show that, even if they are better than the others, they are not worthy to contend with Demosthenes for the prize of excellence. Having added a little more to these matters concerning style, I shall pass over to the remaining part of the inquiry.

33. These are the things which accompany the three styles alike, and are characteristic and inalienable marks of every Demosthenic speech. I shall remind you first of those things which I said belonged to the other styles . . . the peculiar excellences that have befallen the style of Demosthenes, that my account may become easier to survey. It seems to me, then, that, compared with those who use an elevated, excessive, and divergent style, Demosthenes is superior in employing a clearer and more common mode of expression. For these he aims at in every construction that has greatness, and he uses these as his most characteristic excellences in the elevated and strange diction, so far as may be. But compared with those who practise the plain, thin, and unadorned phrasing, he seemed to me to differ by the tension of his style, and by the weight and the compactness and the bitterness, for the most part; for these are characteristic of that style in him, and the like of these. But compared with those who have practised the middle mode of expression—which indeed I declare to be the best—I supposed him to differ in these respects: in variety, in symmetry, in timeliness, and besides these in the passionate and the contentious and the active, and last of all in the fitting, which in Demosthenes touches the very stars. These things, then, I said accompany each of the three styles severally, and from these I thought it right that the power of Demosthenes . . . by nature accompanying the other styles too, but having its strongest and most conspicuous appearance in these places. But if anyone shall think fit to bring a malicious charge against the division, because, distributing the excellences that accompany all the styles in common into three parts, it assigns to each its own, I would say this to him: that I think it right to assign each of the excellences to that place where it has the most pleasing appearance and the most useful application—since the writers of handbooks too declare the narrative to be the place of clarity and conciseness and persuasiveness, not as though these excellences should not be examined anywhere else (for that would be quite absurd), but as though they are most needed in the narrative.

34. Come now, these things having been said by us, let us now speak also of the arrangement of words which the man employs. That the harmony of Demosthenes' style is excessive, and differs by a great deal from that of the other orators, is not my own tale. For all, I am sure, would testify this excellence to him who are not wholly inexperienced in political speeches—seeing that even those who flourished in the same age as he are plainly admiring and emulating him most of all for this skill, and that too some who were not even kindly disposed toward him, so as to incur a reputation for flattery, but some of whom had even taken up against him hostilities most bitter and irreconcilable. Among these was Aeschines the orator, a man who possessed a most splendid natural gift for speech, and who seems not to fall far short of the other orators, and to be reckoned, after Demosthenes, second to none. Now this man, of the other formidable power that belonged to this man in respect of style, in some points carps and brings malicious charge, doing the work of an enemy. For he fastens upon him novelty of words and unpleasantness and over-elaboration, and this so-called obscurity and bitterness, and many other such things—being malignant, as I said, in these too, yet still taking some reasonable starting-points for his malicious charge. But concerning the arrangement of words he says nothing either greater . . . or such as to bring ridicule. And this is not yet the thing worth marvelling at, but that he is plainly even testifying in many places to the excellence of the orator, and emulating it. This would become clear from what he himself has said, writing in one place somewhat thus: "But when a man composed of words—and those bitter and over-elaborate" (for in these he does not, by Zeus, praise the choice of his words; for what emulation could there be of a bitter and over-elaborate diction?); and in another place saying thus: "for I dread to see you suffer harm, having delighted in the arrangement of Demosthenes' words." For here again he does not fear lest the Athenians should delight in the beauty and magnificence of his words, but lest, unawares, being bewitched by the arrangement, they should let him off even from his manifest crimes because of the Sirens of his harmony. From these things it is not hard to see that, while testifying to him a formidable power such as belonged to no other, and likening his music to the Sirens, and admiring him not for the choice of his words but for the arrangement, he has indisputably conceded to him this excellence.

35. This part, then, as needing not much discussion—I mean that Demosthenes is an excessive arranger of words, confirmed by trustworthy testimonies and by no one's being able to say the contrary—I shall let go. But what the character of his harmony is, and from what kind of practice it became such, and how one might recognize it by examining it against others—these I shall try to say, having first premised the following. Among the ancients there was a great desire and forethought for arranging words well, both in metre and apart from metre; and all who wished to bring out serious writings sought not only to name their thoughts well, but also to embrace the words themselves in a well-ordered arrangement; only they did not all practise the same harmony, so that they did not all come by the same roads. Of this I think there were many causes. The first is each man's nature, by which different men are well fitted by birth for different things; the second, the opinion that grows in us from reasoning and choice, through which we welcome some things and are weighed down by others; the third, the conviction built up by long habit, that the things whose customs we have taken on are worth serious regard; the fourth, the reference and imitation toward those with whom we happen to be in rivalry, whatever they may emulate. One could mention others too, but I, having said the most evident, let the rest be. Hence some practise the steady, weighty, austere, antique-loving, dignified harmony that flees everything elegant; others the polished, clear, theatrical kind, displaying much elegance and softness, by which festal gatherings and the mixed crowd are charmed; and others, composing from each the most useful elements, have emulated the mixed and middle manner.

36. For these are the three most general characters of serious arrangement, and the others, besides and from these, are constructed—being very many, and differing from one another by intensification and relaxation. A pure harmony, then, and an unmixed character throughout, could not be found in any poet, whether of metrical or of prose speech, nor should one demand such testimonies from anyone. For where not even the first elements, out of which the nature of the whole is constituted—earth and water and air and fire—is any one pure, but all share in all, and each is named after what predominates, what wonder is it if the harmonies of style, three in number, do not have a pure and unmixed nature, but, from what for the most part befalls them, have been judged worthy of a name and a character of their own? So that, whenever I produce samples of each and bring testimonies, setting down certain passages of the poets and writers who used them, let no one bring a malicious charge against the intermixtures and the qualities of the parts in them, but let him consider each of the passages cited according to what predominates, judging if the thing shown is of such a kind in many places, not if it is so in all.

37. Of the austere and antique-loving harmony, then, which practises not the elegant but the dignified, such is the character. It loves to use words that are great and of long syllables . . . and that have their seats very firmly planted, and to distinguish one element from another by the inclusion of considerable intervals of time. This shape of harmony is produced by the juxtaposition of vowel letters, whenever the preceding word ends in one of them and the one joined to it takes its beginning from one of them. For it was necessary that a considerable interval of time be left between the two. And let no one say: "What is this, or how could there be an interval of time which . . . sets words apart from one another by the meetings of the vowels?" For it is shown by musicians and metricians that the interval through the meeting of vowels can be filled up by the insertion of other, semi-vocal letters. And this could not happen unless some considerable silence separated the vowels from one another. This, then, is the first peculiarity of this harmony, for the most part. Another is of this kind: it wishes to take on checks and counter-supports and roughnesses in the interweavings of the words, gently astringing the hearing. Here again the power of the mute and semi-vocal letters is the cause, whenever the letters that end the leading members are . . . and have no nature to be either elided or fused with the leading ones in what follows. For much resistance arises in the meetings of these, just as also in the words themselves, whenever the so-called syllables are composed of letters that roughen the voice. And much craft is needed here, lest such conjunctions become, unawares, ill-sounding or unpleasant or bringing some other annoyance to the ears, but rather that there should bloom upon them a certain antique bloom and an unforced grace. For it is enough, speaking as to those who know, to say only this much: that no serious utterance has by nature any lack of its own loveliness and grace.

38. In the smallest and most elementary parts of style, then, these are characteristic of the first harmony; but in the so-called clauses, which are composed of words and fill up the periods, not only these things, but also that the rhythms which measure them out should not be mean nor soft nor ignoble, but elevated and manly and magnificent. For rhythm in speech is no trifling thing, nor one that holds the place of some unnecessary addition, but, if one must speak the truth, as my opinion is, it is the most authoritative of all things that can bewitch and charm the ears. And besides the rhythms, that the figures too should be noble and dignified—not only those that consist in the thoughts, but also those that arise in the very style. To enumerate now how many kinds of figures there are, both the named and the unnamed, and in which of them this kind of harmony most naturally delights, I have not time. Further, it is proper to this harmony that the periods should be self-made, as it were, and simple, and neither rounding off the sense by themselves, nor measured out to the breath of the speaker, nor using needless redundancies of words with respect to the underlying thought, nor ending in any theatrical and polished rhythms. And in general this arrangement does not, for the most part, welcome the period, but wishes to be constructed somewhat artlessly and simply, and for the most part in short members, making the unconstructed nature its model. And if at any time a well-rhythmed cadence accompanies the unstudiedly arranged members or periods or feet, it does not reject what comes from spontaneous chance. And these too are still characteristic of the ancient and austere harmony: not to use many conjunctions, nor continuous articles, but sometimes even fewer than are necessary; not to let the speech linger over the same cases, but frequently to change them; to hold the phrasing superior to the sequence of what has gone before, and not in correspondence; to yoke the parts together in an excessive and peculiar way, and not according to the supposition or wish of the many. Examples of it, among poets and lyric writers, are the style of Aeschylus, well-nigh all of it, and that of Pindar—except in so far as the Maiden-songs and the like require other constructions; and yet even in these there shows through a like nobility and dignity of harmony, preserving the antique bloom. Among prose writers, the most splendid and the one who succeeds most in this kind is Thucydides. And if anyone thinks the discourse still needs testimonies, passing over the poets, let him take from the style of Thucydides this: "Of this war the length advanced to great extent, and sufferings befell Greece such as no others in an equal time. For never were so many cities taken and laid waste, some by barbarians, others by themselves making war on one another, and there are some that even changed their inhabitants on being captured; nor so many flights of men and slaughter, some in the war itself, some through faction. And the things formerly told by report, but more rarely confirmed in fact, became not incredible—concerning earthquakes, which prevailed over a very great part of the earth at once and were most violent, the same; and eclipses of the sun, which occurred more frequently than is remembered from former time; and droughts in some places, great, and from them famines; and the not least harmful, and partly destructive, the plague-like disease." Such, then, is the first of the harmonies in its character—the noble and austere and high-minded, pursuing the antique-fashioned.

39. The one after this—the polished and theatrical, which chooses the elegant before the dignified—is of this kind. It always wishes to take the smoothest and softest of words, hunting for euphony and good melody, and from these for the pleasant. Then it thinks fit to set these down not just anyhow, nor to fit one to another without consideration, but, distinguishing what kinds set beside what kinds will be able to make the sounds more musical, and observing in what shape, when taken, they will produce more graceful conjunctions, so it tries to fit each together, taking very great care that all of them be polished smooth and fused together, and that the harmonies of all of them be smoothly running. And on this account it flees with all zeal the meetings of vowels, as tearing apart the smoothness and good utterance; and it flees, so far as it can, the conjunctions of semi-vocal and mute letters, all those that roughen the sounds and can disturb the ears. For since it is not possible for every word signifying a body or a thing to be composed of euphonious and soft letters, but it sometimes happens that the same words are also ill composed—which nature does not grant—it tries to take this in the conjunctions themselves, and so to make the voices more pleasant and softer. And indeed it even submits to insert among the necessary words certain others, with respect to the underlying sense neither necessary nor perhaps useful, but which will serve as a kind of bond or glue to the words placed before and after them—so that words ending in a rough letter and words taking their beginning from some such letter may not, on being joined to one another, make convulsions of the sounds and resistances; but, resting against the interposed word, may make the sounds appear soft and continuous. For its whole intention and great concern is that all the parts of the period be drawn together and woven together, producing the impression of a single word, and besides this, that the whole style, as in musical concords, be pleasant and clear. Of these things, the one is produced by the precisions of the harmonies, the other by the powers of the letters being congenial to one another in their sympathies according to the rules—about which the inquiry belongs to another science. The flow of the style, then, becomes tripping and downward-running, like streams borne down a sloping ground with nothing resisting them, and it runs through the hearing pleasantly somehow and welcomely, no less than the strains and melodies set to music through song and instrument. Further, it belongs to this arrangement that the members too are wonderfully like poems, soft-sounding and smooth, having much that is prattling, yoked to one another according to a certain natural affection, out of which the period is constituted; for it composes nothing outside the period. Further, of the rhythms into which it divides the periods, it does not wish to take the dignified, but the most graceful. They appear, therefore, well-crested and well-formed on this account, and end in a safe seat. And of the figures it pursues those most able to move crowds; for it adorns itself and blossoms with these, so far as it may proceed without paining the ears—among which are the balanced clauses and the similar endings and the antitheses and the words alike in sound, and those that turn back, and those repeated at the beginning, and many other such instruments of poetic and lyric style. Such, then, seem to me to be the characteristics of this harmony also. I make examples of it, among poets, Hesiod and Sappho and Anacreon, and, among those who used prose style, Isocrates the Athenian and those who came near him. Now certain passages have already been quoted before, in which I sketched the whole character of his style; from these the points concerning arrangement too, if they are such as we say, one might not hard see. But, lest we seem to break up the sequence by bidding the readers turn back to the examples given at the beginning, let a passage be taken here too from his Panegyric speech, one that will not detain the readers long, in which he runs through what the Athenians did about the sea-fight at Salamis. It is this: "For since they were not able to array themselves against both forces at once, taking the whole crowd from the city they sailed away to the neighbouring island, that they might face the danger in turns and not against both at once. And yet how could men be shown to be better, or more lovers of Greece, than these, who endured to look on—rather than to become to the many the cause of slavery—their city becoming desolate, their land being ravaged, their temples being plundered and shrines set on fire, and the whole war coming to be about their own fatherland? And yet not even this contented them, but they did not hesitate to fight at sea, alone, against twelve hundred triremes; nor, indeed, were they allowed to. For the Peloponnesians, shamed by their valour, and thinking that, if our men were first destroyed, they themselves too would not be saved, but that, if they succeeded, they would bring their own cities into dishonour, were compelled to share the dangers. And the tumults that arise in the action, and the shouts and the exhortations, which are common to all who fight at sea, I do not know why we should linger over telling. But the things that are peculiar, and worthy of the leadership, and in agreement with what has been said before—these it is my task to tell. For our city so far excelled, when it was whole, that, even after it had been laid waste, it contributed more triremes to the danger on behalf of Greece than all who fought at sea together, and triremes able to face twice as many. And no one is so ill-disposed toward us as not to agree that through the sea-fight we prevailed in the war, and that of this the city was the cause. And yet, when an expedition against the barbarians is to be, who ought to hold the leadership? Not those who most distinguished themselves in the former war, and often faced danger in their own behalf, and in the common contests were judged worthy of the prizes of valour? Not those who abandoned their own land for the salvation of the others, and of old became founders of most of the cities, and again preserved them from the greatest disasters? How would we not suffer terrible things, if, having shared the largest portion of the evils, we should be judged worthy to have a smaller share in the honours, and, having then been ranked before the rest, should now be compelled to follow others?"

40. Of the third harmony, which I said was mixed from both, choosing the most useful elements from each, there is no character of its own; but, according as those who pursue it have the preference or power to flee some things and take others, so the mixtures are blended, just as in painting. Of this harmony the best standard was the poet Homer, and no one could name a style better fitted than his to both these ends—I mean both the pleasant and the dignified. He was emulated by many poets of epic and of lyric, and besides by tragedians and comedians, and by ancient prose writers and philosophers and orators. To mention all of these would be a great task; it will be enough to bring forward only two of those who held sway in prose, whom I am convinced to be the best—of prose writers, Herodotus, and of philosophers, Plato; for both dignity and grace run over their harmonies. And whether I have judged rightly and reasonably about them, anyone who wishes may examine and consider. Come, then, who would not agree that this style is midway between the austere and the pleasant harmony, and has taken the best from each—the style which Herodotus has used, putting the speech into the mouth of Xerxes, when he was deliberating about the campaign against the Greeks? The passage has been transferred into the Attic dialect: "Men of Persia, I shall neither be the first to introduce this custom among you, but, having received it, shall use it. For, as I learn from my elders, we have never kept quiet, ever since we took over this leadership from the Medes, when Cyrus overthrew Astyages; but a god so leads us on, and to us ourselves, as we follow many courses, things turn out for the better. The nations which Cyrus and Cambyses and my father Darius subdued and added to our dominion, no one need tell to those who know. But I, since I took over this throne, took thought how I might not fall short of those who came before me in this office, nor acquire less power for the Persians. And taking thought, I find that at once glory accrues to us, and a land not less nor poorer than the one we now possess, but more fruitful, and at the same time vengeance and requital come about. For these reasons I have now gathered you together, that I may lay before you what I purpose to do. I intend, having yoked the Hellespont, to drive an army through Europe against Greece, that I may take vengeance on the Athenians for all they have done to the Persians and to my father. You saw, indeed, that Darius too was eager to make war on these men; but he has died, and it was not granted him to take vengeance. But I, on behalf of him and of the other Persians, shall not cease before I take and burn Athens—they who first began doing wrong to me and to my father. First, coming to Sardis with Aristagoras the Milesian, our slave, they burned the groves and the temples; and secondly, what they did to us when we landed on their soil, when Datis and Artaphernes were generals, you all, I suppose, know. For these reasons I have set myself to make war on them, and reckoning I find these good things in it: if we subdue these men and those who border on them, who inhabit the land of Pelops the Phrygian, we shall make the Persian land border on the upper air of Zeus. For the sun shall look down on no land bordering on ours, but I, together with you, shall make all of them into one land, passing through the whole of Europe. For I learn that it is thus: there is no city of theirs, nor any nation of men, left to us that will be able to come to battle, once these I have named are taken away. So both those who have done us wrong and the guiltless shall wear the yoke of slavery. And you would gratify me by doing this: whenever I signify to you the time at which it seems good for us to come, every one of you must eagerly be present. And whoever comes with an army most finely equipped, to him I shall give the gift which is held most honourable in our country. So, then, these things must be done thus. But, that I may not seem to take counsel by myself, I set the matter in the midst, and bid whoever wishes among you declare his opinion."

41. I should have wished to bring forward still more examples of the writer's manner; for thus the proof would have become stronger. But as it is I am restrained, hastening to the matters set before me, and at the same time suspecting a reputation for untimeliness. The wonderful Plato too will forgive me, if I shall not set down passages of his as well; for the reminder, as toward those who know, is enough. These things I went through—the differences of the harmonies, and their characters, and those who took the first rank in them—wishing this, that, whenever I declare my opinion that Demosthenes practised the middle and mixed harmony, no one may interrupt me, saying these things: "But what are the extreme harmonies? And what is the nature of each of them, and what is this mixture or blending?"—for none of the . . . extremes. First, then, for this reason, as I said, I was compelled to premise those things; and next, that my discourse might not be one-limbed or austere, but might have some well-educated diversions. For neither to confirm such additions, nor, when the discourse does not require it, to leave them out, would be well.

42. Now that the orator's choice has been shown by me, let everyone now consider for himself the things that have been said, that they are of such a kind, observing both how much the man has constructed with dignity and austerely and weightily, and how much delightfully and pleasantly. And if here too some proof shall seem to be needed, let him take up whichever of his speeches he wishes, and beginning from whatever part he wishes, let him go down through it and consider each of the things said—whether some have their harmonies suspended and set apart, and others glued and condensed together; and whether some roughen and embitter the hearing, while others soothe and smooth it; and whether some turn the hearers toward passion, while others lead them down to character, and others work yet other and many differences in the very arrangement. Of such a kind are these (I shall use examples not chosen of set purpose, but such as I happened upon, taking them from one of the Philippics): "But if any of you, men of Athens, seeing Philip prosperous, thinks him on that account formidable to fight against, he uses the forethought of a prudent man; for there is a great inclination—or rather fortune is everything—in all human affairs. Nevertheless, for my part, if anyone gave me the choice, I would choose the fortune of our city, provided you are willing to do, even in small part, what you ought, rather than his." In these three periods all the other words are composed euphoniously and pleasantly, by the very continuous and soft nature of their harmonies. There are only a very few that set the harmonies apart and make them appear rough: in the first period, in two places, the vowels clashing, both in the "men of Athens" and in the "seeing prosperous," which set apart the continuity; and in two or three other places the semi-vocal and mute letters falling next to one another, those that have no nature to be fused together—in the "Philip" and in the "on that account formidable to fight against"—disturb the sounds moderately and do not allow them to appear soft. In the second period the arrangement is roughened in the "for there is a great inclination," through the two letters r-r not being fused, and in the "human affairs" through the n not being smoothed into what follows. And it is torn apart in the "or rather fortune is everything," short vowels enclosing a long interval of time between them. In the third period the vowels, if one should wish to fuse and elide them, like the "I think" and "necessary," he would not find interlaced with one another. But of the consonants, in two or three places, those not preserving the smoothness with the words beside them will be found, in the "should give me the choice" and in the "the fortune of our city." Up to these points, then, the second harmony carries off the prize; but in what follows, the former (for it is more torn apart than the other): "For I see far more starting-points for having the goodwill of the gods present in you than in him. But, I think, we sit doing nothing; and it is not possible for a man who is himself idle to lay commands even on his friends, much less on the gods." For in these the vowels are plainly clashing in many places, and the semi-vocal and mute letters too, from which the harmonies take their stays and seatings, and the voices take frequent roughnesses. Then the periods that follow upon these take on no separations of vowels, and on this account their arrangement is tripping, but, scored across by the meetings of mute and semi-vocal letters, they roughen the voice in due measure. And the rest too has all been constructed in the same way. For why should one lengthen the discourse by saying more? It is not only the conjunctions of words that take on the mixed and middle harmony in him, but also the constructions and arrangements of the clauses, and the lengths and shapes of the periods, and the rhythms that embrace both them and the clauses. For much has been said by the man in short phrases, and . . . the most has been so constructed, and not a little in periods. And of the periods, some are well-crested and rounded as if from a lathe, while others are supine and diffuse and do not have their bases excessive. In length, some are shorter, so as to be measured to a man's breath, others much larger, such as proceed even to the fourth pause and then come to an end. And of the figures, in one place one would find the dignified and austere and ancient predominating, in another the clear and polished and theatrical. And of the rhythms, in many places the manly and dignified and noble, but rarely somewhere the dance-like and broken in the Ionic manner. About these we shall speak a little later; for there will be a more suitable place for them. But now, having added still what the discourse seems further to demand, I shall pass over to the rest of what was set before me.

43. And what is this? Since I said that the mixed arrangement is the best, and declare that Demosthenes used it most moderately of all the rest, and made in it noteworthy intensifications and relaxations, now making the manner more dignified, now more becoming—with what intention does he not always travel one and the same road? And by what standards does he define the predominance of this or that character in a given place? It seems to me that the man, taught by nature and by experience, learned first this: that the crowds streaming together to festal assemblies and lectures do not demand the same constructions of style as those who meet in the law-courts and the assemblies; but the former crave deception and entertainment, the latter teaching about the things they seek, and benefit. He thought, therefore, that the speech in the law-courts ought not to prattle and trill, nor the display speech to be full of dryness and patina. Now we cannot bring forward festal speeches of his; for I am convinced that all those attributed to him are spurious, and have not in the least his character, neither in the thoughts nor in the words, and fall short in arrangement wholly and entirely. Of this kind are the vulgar and empty and childish funeral oration, and the encomium to Pausanias, full of sophistic nonsense. But this is not the occasion to give the proofs about these.

44. From his contentious speeches, all those that were made for law-courts or assemblies, I conjecture that the man held this opinion. For I see him, whenever he took up matters that needed more graceful construction, giving them a festal harmony of style—as he has done in the speech Against Aristocrates, in many places and especially where he renders the account about the laws and about the courts for homicide, for whatever use each of them has been appointed; and in the speech Against Leptines, On the Immunity, in many parts, and especially in the encomia of the benefactors of the city, Chabrias and Conon and certain others; and in the speech On the Crown, and in many others. This, then, having first considered, he seems to me to fit the character of his arrangement to the subjects, and still further, having learned this, that not all kinds of speech demand the same ornament either of word-choice or of arrangement, but some the more polished, others the more austere; and following the use of these, to make the prooemia and the narratives have more of the pleasant than of the dignified, but the proofs and epilogues a smaller share of the pleasant arrangement and a larger of the austere and patinaed. For in those passages where the hearer must be flattered and must follow the matters, hearing narratives of others' evils, sometimes dry and unpleasant—there, if the arrangement does not bring in something to sweeten, or to console the weariness of the thought, the proofs will have no sure base; but in those passages where things tending toward the truth and the advantageous must be said—these the many demand to learn somehow simply and nobly and with austere dignity, while the prattling and deceptive in these has no charm, in speeches of contest. Knowing, then, that the nature of all is not the same, he thought that the same ornaments did not befit all, but that to the deliberative speeches the dignity and the grand utterance fit better, and to the forensic—where the judge becomes a hearer of others' evils, and the contest is for the soul and for all the other things most precious to men—the charm and the pleasure and the deception and the like. For this reason in the deliberations, and especially in those against Philip, he has used the austere harmonies more profusely; but in those composed for the law-courts the polished. And again, of the forensic speeches themselves, in the public ones, where the dignity of the city had to be guarded, he used the more magnificent harmonies more abundantly; in the private ones, less.

45. To speak briefly, not only with respect to the peculiarities of the speeches and the variations of the subjects did he think it right to make different blendings of the characters in the arrangement, but also, with respect to the very kinds of arguments—the completing parts having different natures, as he saw—he tried to adorn them with differing constructions of harmony: composing the maxims in one way, the enthymemes in another, the examples differently. It would be a long discourse, if I should wish to tell all the differences which that divine man, observing, and ever shaping his speech to each colour, dispensing each of the two harmonies by relaxation and intensification, moulded those fine speeches. And I do not think examples are needed here, in order that my discourse may gain more credit when the works of the orator are examined, whether they are such as I say. For the composition would take on much length, and there is fear that it might pass over from the form of a memorandum into the form of a school-treatise. But a few things taken from the many are sufficient evidence, and at the same time, toward those who know (for I am not writing these things for those inexperienced in the man), it is enough to show the matters symbolically. I return, then, to the rest of what I proposed at the beginning to speak about.

46. The second main point, then, was to show by what theorems he used, and through what kind of practice, advancing, he took the best part of the . . . harmony. I shall speak about these too, as I hold my opinion. There being two ends, so to speak, in every work—of which nature is the craftsman and the arts are the mothers—the beautiful and the pleasant, he saw that in speeches too, both those constructed in metre and those outside metre . . . it was going to be sufficiently provided with both of these. For each of them, separated from the other, besides not being perfect, also has its own excellence dimmer. Having understood this, then, and having supposed the beautiful to be the end of the austere, and the pleasant of the polished, he sought what things are productive of beauty and what of pleasure. He found, then, that the same things are causes of both—the melodies and the rhythms and the changes, and the fitting that accompanies all of them—yet not each shaped in the same way. What relation each of these has, I shall try to teach.

47. The first parts of style, which by some are called elements—whether these are three, as Theodectes and Aristotle think, nouns and verbs and conjunctions, or four, as those of the school of Zeno the Stoic think, or more—two things accompany alike: melody and time. By the acuteness and gravity of them the melody is determined, and by the lengths and shortnesses the time. This becomes rhythm, whether it begins to be constituted from two short syllables, as some think (and they call the rhythm so constructed the "leader," having the first ratio of equal times in raising and lowering), or from three shorts, as those of the school of Aristoxenus held, which is constructed first in the double ratio. And to the parts composed of the first parts of style the melody too now advances together toward increase, and the rhythms proceed into the so-called metres. And whenever each of these is about to overstep the measure, the change, entering in then, dispenses the proper good of each. And whenever these take their fitting place, then the fitting renders to them their proper loveliness. And this is not hard to learn from the works of music. For come, if someone, setting the most beautiful melody to songs or to the strains of instruments, should make no account of rhythm, could anyone endure such music? And what? If he provided moderately for both of these, but remained in the same melody and the same rhythms, changing nothing and varying nothing—would he not destroy the whole good of it? And if he aimed at this too, but appeared to have no forethought of the fitting for the subjects, will not all his toil about those things be useless to him? To me, at least, it seems so. Having learned these things, then, Demosthenes, reckoning up the melodies of the words and clauses and their times, tried so to fit them together that they should appear melodious and well-rhythmed; and he tried to vary and diversify each of them by countless figures and turns, and made such a grant to the fitting as none of those earnest about speeches made. And having considered, as I said, that the pleasant speech and the beautiful are produced through these same theorems, he examined again what then was the cause that the same things were not productive of the same effects. He found that there are differences of the melodies, which make some of them appear dignified and others polished, just as in music the colour-mode stands to the harmony; and that something similar happens in the rhythms too, so that some of them appear dignified and magnificent, others delicate and soft; and in the changes, that now the antique-fashioned and austere, now the honey-sweet and novelty-loving shows through. And the fitting, most of all, affords a great inclination toward each of them. Having understood these things, then, whenever he supposed that he needed more of the beautiful in his construction, he made the melodies magnificent and the rhythms dignified and the changes noble; but whenever the style appeared to him to need the other arrangement, he brought all these down to the more musical. And let no one suppose the argument strange, if I say that even prose style needs melodiousness and good rhythm and changes, like songs and instruments, if, on hearing the style of Demosthenes, he lays hold of none of these, nor let him suppose that I do violence in attributing to bare prose the qualities belonging to it. For these things the well-constructed style possesses, and most of all the style of this orator. But by its timeliness and quantity it escapes perception; for some things are confused together, others fused away, and others in some other way have passed beyond the precision of the construction, so that it seems wholly changed and to resemble poems in nothing.

48. Will anyone, then, demand of me here an account of melodies and rhythms and the figures in the changes and the fitting in each, claiming to hear what among them are those by which the antique-loving harmony is adorned, and what would belong to the prattling harmony? Or rather, bringing in the more proper good musical taste that he has from childhood, which he got from music and grammar (which have these theorems), and laying hold of the fact that the discourse lingers among the common and familiar things, will he not bring a malicious charge—especially seeing the measures of the occasion? I think, indeed—as I have a fair opinion about the rest, beginning from you, dearest Ammaeus, and drawing it from your good musical taste—that he will not. But if anyone shall demand to learn these things too, how they stand, let him take up the memoranda we have composed about the arrangement of words, and he will know all that he longs for of the things here omitted. I, having here somehow circumscribed the discourse about these matters, shall come to the part that remains.

49. For I promised to show this also still, how one might recognize the character of Demosthenes' arrangement, and by what signs one might distinguish it from the others. There is, then, no single mark of it so conspicuous as for it alone, and for none of the others, to accompany; but the concurrence and abundance, by which the knowledge of every matter and body is naturally tested, becomes its peculiar character. I shall use, for clarity's sake, a plain image—the bodies of men. For to all, of course, belong size and colour and shape and limbs, and a certain rhythm of the limbs, and the like. If, then, anyone should think fit to consider the character from one of these, he will know nothing precisely. For in many forms one would find some such other thing as he set down as the token of one form. But if he puts together all the attributes of the form, or the most, or the most authoritative, he will both take the knowledge very quickly, and will not be . . . by the resemblances. This, then, I would think right for those too who wish to know precisely the arrangement of Demosthenes—to test it from many peculiarities, I mean the strongest and the most authoritative: first, from the melodiousness, of which the best criterion is the irrational sense. But this needs much practice and long instruction; for not even modellers and the children of painters, unless they take much experience, having long worn down their eyes upon the works of the ancient craftsmen, would easily recognize them, nor could they say with assurance that this is the work of Polyclitus, this of Phidias, this of Alcamenes, and of the paintings that this is by Polygnotus, that by Timanthes, this by Parrhasius. And shall some men, then, from a few precepts and a brief instruction, precisely know the nature of melodious harmony in speeches? Far from it. This, then, I think one must consider first, with knowledge and habit, and after this the good rhythm. For there is no style of Demosthenes which has not embraced rhythms and metres, some complete and finished, others incomplete, having such interweaving among one another and so fitted together that it is not plain that they are metres. For political style could not otherwise become, in its very arrangement, like poems, unless it contained metres and certain rhythms placed within it imperceptibly. It is not, however, proper for it to seem metrical or rhythmical, lest it become a poem or a song, departing from its own character; but it is enough that it appear well-rhythmed and well-metred. For thus it would be poetic, yet not a poem, and melodizing, yet not a song. And what difference these have is not hard to see. The style that takes on similar metres and ordered rhythms, whether by the line or by the period (which the musicians call a strophe), and then again, with the same rhythms and metres, upon the same lines or periods (which they call antistrophes), and proceeds with this shape of construction from beginning to end, is metrical and rhythmical, and to such a style the names metre and song are given; but the style that embraces wandering metres and disordered rhythms, and preserves neither their sequence nor their pairing nor any other ordered likeness, is well-rhythmed and well-metred, since it is diversified with certain metres and rhythms, yet not rhythmical nor metrical, since they do not have the same ones nor in the same way. Such, I say, is all political style, in which the poetic beauty shows through. And I see that Demosthenes too has used it. The proofs about this part, having given them in what I wrote about arrangement, I do not think it necessary to state here too. A third and fourth peculiarity of the orator's arrangement was the varying in all manner of ways and the shaping in manifold fashion of the clauses and the periods. For there is no place at all that is not diversified with the variations and the figures, as all know; and these things seem to me to need no discussion, being familiar even to the most worthless.

50. These, then, seem to me to be the inalienable and characteristic marks of Demosthenes' arrangement, from which one might recognize the whole of it, if one wished to examine it. But if anyone shall, against these, take up the matter, saying that he marvels whether so great a man was so wretched that, when he wrote his speeches, he turned the parts of his style and the clauses composed from them upside down, fitting melodiousnesses and rhythms and metres—matters proper to the theory of music and of poetry—into political phrasing, in which there is no share of any of these: let him first consider this, that a man judged worthy of such great repute for speeches as no one before him, composing works that were to be eternal and handing them over to all-testing time, wrote nothing at haphazard. But just as he made a great grant to the management of the thoughts, so also to the harmony in the words, seeing, indeed, those men admired for wisdom and held to be makers of the best speeches—Isocrates and Plato—bringing forth speeches like things carved and chased; and considering that the good speaking has a twofold division, into the topic of the matter and into the topic of expression, and that, these two again being divided into equal sections—the matter into the preparation, which the ancients call invention, and into the use of what has been prepared, which they call management; and the expression into the choice of words and into the arrangement of those chosen—in each of these the latter parts have a larger share than the former: the management in the topic of matter, and the arrangement in the topic of expression. About these it is not the occasion now to be long. For these things one would consider, if one were not utterly dull or contentious, and would not marvel if Demosthenes took thought of melodies and rhythms and figures, and of all the other things by which the arrangement becomes pleasant and beautiful. Rather, one would the more suppose—a man neither little-toiling nor easily sated nor superficially clever—that it is hopeless and impossible either that the orator took no care, or only a poor one, of the harmony of his speeches, while wishing to leave behind immortal memorials of his own thought. For surely modellers and painters, displaying the dexterity of their hands in perishable material, bring to bear so many toils that they work out to perfection even the little veins and feathers and down and the like, and melt down their arts into these; and shall the craftsman of political speech, then—having surpassed all of his time both by nature and by toil—have made light of one of the smallest things toward speaking well, if indeed these too are of the smallest?

51. I should wish those still ill-persuaded toward what has been said to consider these things too: that, while he was still a youth and had only recently laid hold of the study, it was not unreasonable that he should hold both these and all the rest with much care and forethought; but that, when his long practice had wrought in him a great habit and had stamped strong impressions of the things he was ever practising, then he did it with the greatest ease and from habit. Such a thing happens also in the other arts, and not least in the so-called grammar. For this is sufficient to give evidence about the others as well, being the most evident of all and the most marvellous. For when we learn it thoroughly, first we take up the names of the elements of the voice, which are called letters; then their shapes and powers. And when we have learned these, then their syllables and the affections concerning these. And having mastered these, the parts of speech—I mean nouns and verbs and conjunctions—and the things that belong to these: contractions, lengthenings, acutenesses, gravities, genders, cases, numbers, moods, and the countless other things like these. And when we have embraced the knowledge of all these, then we begin both to write and to read, syllable by syllable and slowly at first, since the habit is still young; but as time advances and lays a strong intelligence upon the soul through the continuous practice, then, without stumbling and with much ease, we go through whatever book one gives us, no longer running over any of those many theorems, but reading with the very act of perceiving. Some such thing one must suppose to happen also about this art: that the habit, growing from the small and meagre theorems, comes in time easily to master them, so that the work of it is, with the very act of perceiving, both discriminating and unstumbling. And if to anyone these things seem to be works of much toil and great labour, he is quite rightly of that opinion, according to Demosthenes; for nothing great is to be bought for small toils. But if one will reckon up the fruits that follow upon them—or rather, if one will reckon up even the single fruit, the praise which time renders both to the living and after death—he will hold all the labour less than is fitting.

52. One discourse still remains to me, that concerning delivery, how the man has adorned his style with it—an excellence necessary to speeches, and especially the political. When it is present, there comes to be room and place for the other excellences too; but when it is absent, there is no benefit whatever from any one of them. And one might conjecture how great strength this element has, by learning how much those who act tragedies and comedies differ from one another. For, speaking the same poems, they do not all charm us in like manner; rather, with some we are vexed, and, as though wronged by their playing the part badly and corrupting the intentions of the poems, we are angry. This excellence, I say, speeches of contest much need, if they are to have much of the true and living. And of this above all, as of the rest, this man took forethought. Seeing its nature to be twofold, he was earnest about both its parts. For both the affections of the voice and the postures of the body, that he might have them at their best, he worked out with no small toil—and that, too, having used by nature no very fortunate gift toward these things, as Demetrius of Phalerum says, and all the others who have written his life. "And how do these things bear upon his style?" someone might say. The style, indeed, I would say, has been suitably constructed toward these things, being full of many characters and passions, and teaching what kind of delivery it needs. So that those who read this orator must observe carefully, in order that each thing may be said in this manner, the manner in which he wished. For the style itself teaches those who have a soul easily moved, with what kind of delivery it will need to be brought out. And this I shall make clear upon the examples.

53. For come, let someone try to bring out these numbers: "Olynthus indeed and Methone and Apollonia and thirty-two cities on the Thracian coast I pass over, all of which he has destroyed so cruelly that one could not easily say, on coming up to them, whether they had ever been inhabited. And the so great nation of the Phocians, destroyed, I keep silent about." Here the style itself teaches what delivery it needs. For having distinguished the multitude of cities on the Thracian coast destroyed by Philip, he says he will not speak of them. Must one not, then, say these things ironically, and at the same time with some indignation, and straining the tone? Then, even if he says he cannot tell them, as being terrible and beyond terrible, nevertheless he laments the catalogue of cities and goes through the complete destruction, as of cities having not even a trace left of their ancient habitation. Does it not, then, befit these things to be said with surpassing anger and pity? What, then, are the tones and inclinations of anger and lament, and the shapes of the face and the movements of the hands? Such as those who have truly suffered these things perform. For it is quite silly to seek some other school of delivery, abandoning the truth. And again the man brings on: "But how does Thessaly fare? Has he not taken away their constitutions and established tetrarchies, that they may be slaves not only by cities but also by nations? And are not the cities in Euboea already under tyrannies—and that in an island near Thebes and Athens?" These again demand a different delivery. For he questions, then puts a counter-answer, and at each point is indignant and heightens the dread. And there is a peculiar shape of question, a peculiar one of counter-answer, a peculiar one of amplification; these cannot be said with one tone and one form of voice. To these the following succeed: "And he does not write these things and fail to do them in deed, but he has gone off to the Hellespont, before that he came against Ambracia, he holds Elis, so great a city in the Peloponnese, he has plotted against Megara; neither Greece nor the barbarian land contains the greed of the man." Can these be brought out with pleasure, in passing strains, as if it were a piece of history? Do they not themselves cry out and teach how they must be said, all but uttering a voice: here a courteous tone; these say hurriedly; these in a drawn-out manner; here leave off the continuity; here join on what follows; with these grieve together; these despise; at these be terrified; these tear to pieces; these amplify? To me, at least, it seems so. Is it possible, then, for a man having the soul of an irrational creature—or rather, the dull nature of a stone, insensible, unmoved, unfeeling—to bring out the style of Demosthenes? Far from it; for the fairest good of it will perish, the breath, and it will differ in nothing from a body fair indeed, but unmoved and dead. One could say much upon this part; but the treatise having already taken on sufficient length, the discourse must somewhere here be brought to a stop—after rendering still this one thing, by Zeus, in addition to what has been said: that the style of Demosthenes, having all the excellences, is lacking in pleasantry, which the many call wit. For of it there is the largest share . . . for "the gods did not give all things at once to men," so as to grant also the urbanities . . . in the speeches of Demosthenes. For of none of the good things which the deity gave to certain others did he grudge them to that man.

54. As for the things which Aeschines writes about him, bringing malicious charge, as I said—now that he uses bitter and over-elaborate words, now unpleasant and vulgar ones—they have easy defences. If indeed one should wish to consider each of the charges separately, he will find some of them worthy of praise rather than of accusation, and others not truly said by him. For to make the diction bitter, whenever the occasions demand it—and they often demand it, and most of all in the passionate arguments—is an encomium of the orator, if indeed it is from the rhetorical power that we demand, either alone or most of all, the making of the hearer an austere guardian of the laws and a bitter examiner of crimes and an inexorable avenger of lawbreakers. But it is impossible, while adorning the diction with dainty words, to stir anger or hatred or any of the like passions; rather, one must both find out thoughts that will be productive of such passions, and embrace them in such words as the hearing is naturally embittered by. If, then, he had shown him using the embittering diction not at its proper occasion, or being excessive in it and missing the right quantity, he might reasonably have attacked him as erring. But, being able to show neither of these, and attacking in common the passionate diction, which is most fitted to be taken up into political speeches, he is transferring, unawares, encomia into accusations, as I said.

55. The same things one might say to Aeschines about the over-elaborate diction too, since he mocks this excellence of his as well. Let one understand the over-elaboration of words, as spoken of by him, to be spoken of now as excessive workmanship and divergence from what is customary. For surely, if our present-day life, setting many other names at random upon things, also turns this word "over-elaboration" round indifferently to mean meddlesomeness, it is not likely that the ancients too used it so. If, then, deriding the untimeliness or the excess of the divergent interpretation, he has said these things as though Demosthenes erred in each of these, he lies manifestly. For the man, in the deliberative speeches and the public contests, looking to the greatness and dignity of the subjects, has often used such construction; but in the private speeches, which he wrote about small contracts for private persons, he practises the common and customary diction, and rarely the excessive—and not even this caught in the act, but so as to escape notice. But if here too, making war on the whole kind of divergence, Aeschines has said these things, he does a strange thing, deriding the very formidable power of which the orator has most need. For the not bringing out the thoughts like the many, but driving the diction up toward the more dignified and more poetic, we most of all demand of the political power. These things, then, being encomia of the formidable power of Demosthenes, Aeschines, bringing them as faults—not truly, but perhaps plausibly, being an enemy and able to slander him in no other way—inconsiderately, as I judge, brings malicious charge.

56. But as for his asserting that the man used vulgar and unpleasant words—whence it came upon him, I have marvelled above all things. For I find none of these things lying in Demosthenes which Aeschines says he said—for example, that "one must not break off the alliance from the friendship," and that "certain men prune the city," and "the sinews of the people have been cut under," and "we are sewn up in matting," and "certain men thread us through the narrow ways like needles"—to which he himself adds, making comedy: "But these, you fox, what are they—words or wonders?" Nor have I been able to find any other vulgar and unpleasant words in any of the speeches of Demosthenes, and that too when the man has left behind five or six myriads of lines. If, however, there are in the spuriously-titled speeches certain unpleasant and vulgar and rustic constructions—as in the second Against Aristogeiton, and in the Defence about the Bribes, and in the speech On Not Surrendering Harpalus, and in the speech Against Neaera, and in the speech On the Compacts with Alexander, and in many others which Demosthenes did not write—the matters concerning Demosthenes are made clear by me in another treatise. And as for the things about which

57. Aeschines has censured him, these are enough. But there is also that point which some have noted, some as characteristic, some as a fault of the orator—I mean the sometimes signifying the same matter by many words, such as these: "It will be possible for Philip both to do and to accomplish whatever he wishes"; and "this Meidias, not knowing who in the world he is, nor recognizing him"; and "in the presence of his sister, while she was still a girl and a child"; and all such things. Now those who declare this to be a peculiarity of Demosthenes' character speak rightly; for the man has used it usefully, just as he has used the cutting brevity too, more than any other and more opportunely. But those who carry it in the rank of a fault, not having examined the causes for which he was sometimes wont to be abundant in his words, accuse him improperly; rather, those who bring this malicious charge seem to demand brevity at all costs—which, as I said, he provides more than any other and more opportunely—but none of the other excellences, no longer perceiving that the orator must aim also at clarity and vividness and amplification and the good rhythm in the arrangement of words, and, above all these, at making the style passionate and ethical and contentious, in which lies the largest share of persuasiveness. Of these excellences brevity cannot best produce each, but so can the abundance of certain words, which Demosthenes too has used. I would bring you examples of what has been said, were I not going to appear wearisome to you in saying them. These things, most excellent Ammaeus, we had to write to you about the style of Demosthenes. And if the deity preserve us, we shall render to you the discourse also about his formidable power in matters—a still greater and more wonderful theory than this—in what shall be written hereafter.