Page:EB1911 - Volume 12.djvu/538

 rhetorical schools. Such were Ephorus of Cyme and Theopompus of Chios, both pupils of Isocrates; and the writers of Atthides (chronicles of Attic history), the chief of whom were Androtion and Philochorus. Timaeus of Tauromenium was the author of a great work on Sicily, and introduced the system of reckoning by Olympiads.

The steps by which an Attic prose style was developed, and the principal forms which it assumed, can be traced most clearly in the Attic orators. Every Athenian citizen who aspired to take part in the affairs of the city, or even to be qualified for self-defence before a law-court, required to have some degree of skill in public speaking; and an Athenian audience looked upon public debate, whether political or forensic, as a competitive trial of proficiency in a fine art. Hence the speaker, no less than the writer, was necessarily a student of finished expression; and oratory had a more direct influence on the general structure of literary prose than has ever perhaps been the case elsewhere. A systematic rhetoric took its rise in Sicily, where Corax of Syracuse (466 ) devised his Art of Words to assist those who were pleading before the law-courts; and it was brought to Athens by his disciple Tisias. The teaching of the Sophists, again, directed attention, though in a superficial and imperfect way, to the elements of grammar and logic; and Gorgias of Leontini—whose declamation, however turgid, must have been striking—gave an impulse at Athens to the taste for elaborate rhetorical brilliancy.

Antiphon represents the earliest, and what has been called the grand, style of Attic prose; its chief characteristics are a grave, dignified movement, a frequent emphasis on verbal contrasts, and a certain austere elevation. The interest of Andocides is mainly historical; but he has graphic power. Lysias, the representative of the “plain style,” breaks through the rigid mannerism of the elder school, and uses the language of daily life with an ease and grace which, though the result of study, do not betray their art. He is, in his own way, the canon of an Attic style; and his speeches, written for others, exhibit also a high degree of dramatic skill. Isocrates, whose manner may be regarded as intermediate between that of Antiphon and that of Lysias, wrote for readers rather than for hearers. The type of literary prose which he founded is distinguished by ample periods, by studied smoothness and by the temperate use of rhetorical ornament. From the middle of the 4th century the Isocratic style of prose became general in Greek literature. From the school of Rhodes, in which it became more florid, it passed to Cicero, and through him it has helped to shape the literary prose of the modern world. The speeches of Isaeus in will-cases are interesting,—apart from their bearing on Attic life,—because in them we see, as Dionysius says, “the seeds and the beginnings” of that technical mastery in rhetorical argument which Demosthenes carries to perfection. Isaeus has also, in a degree, some of the qualities of Lysias. Demosthenes excels all other masters of Greek prose not only in power but in variety; his political speeches, his orations in public or private causes, show his consummate and versatile command over all the resources of the language. In him the development of Attic prose is completed, and the best elements in each of its earlier phases are united. The modern world can more easily appreciate Demosthenes as a great natural orator than as an elaborate artist. But, in order to apprehend his place in the history of Attic prose, we must remember that the ancients felt him to be both; and that he was even reproached by detractors with excessive study of effect. Aeschines is the most theatrical of the Greek orators; he is vehement, and often brilliant, but seldom persuasive. Hypereides was, after Demosthenes, probably the most effective; he had much of the grace of Lysias, but also a wit, a fire and a pathos which were his own. Portions of six of his speeches, found in Egypt between 1847 and 1890, are extant. The one oration of Lycurgus which remains to us is earnest and stately, reminding us both of Antiphon and of Isocrates. Dinarchus was merely a bad imitator of Demosthenes. There seems more reason to regret that Demades is not represented by larger fragments. The decline of Attic oratory may be dated from Demetrius of Phalerum (318 ), the pupil of Aristotle, and the first to introduce the custom of making speeches on imaginary subjects as practised in the rhetorical schools. Cicero names him as the first who impaired the vigour of the earlier eloquence, “preferring his own sweetness to the weight and dignity of his predecessors.” He forms a connecting link between Athens and Alexandria, where he found refuge after his downfall and promoted the foundation of the famous library.

In later times oratory chiefly flourished in the coast and island settlements of Asia Minor, especially Rhodes. Here a new, florid style of oration arose, called the “Asiatic,” which owed its origin to Hegesias of Magnesia (c. 250 ).

The place of Plato in the history of Greek literature is as unique as his place in the history of Greek thought. The literary genius shown in the dialogues is many-sided: it includes dramatic power, remarkable skill in parody, a subtle faculty of satire, and, generally, a command over the finer tones of language. In passages of continuous exposition, where the argument rises into the higher regions of discussion, Plato’s prose takes a more decidedly poetical colouring—never florid or sentimental, however, but lofty and austere. In Plato’s later works—such, for instance, as the Laws, Timaeus, Critias—we can perceive that his style did not remain unaffected by the smooth literary prose which contemporary writers had developed. Aristotle’s influence on the form of Attic prose literature would probably have been considerable if his Rhetoric had been published while Attic oratory had still a vigorous life before it. But in this, as in other departments of mental effort, it was Aristotle’s lot to set in order what the Greek intellect had done in that creative period which had now come to an end. His own chief contribution to the original achievements of the race was the most fitting one that could have been made by him in whose lifetime they were closed. He bequeathed an instrument by which analysis could be carried further, he founded a science of reasoning, and left those who followed him to apply it in all those provinces of knowledge which he had mapped out. Theophrastus, his pupil and his successor in the Lyceum, opens the new age of research and scientific classification with his extant works on botany, but is better known to modern readers by his lively Characters, the prototypes of such sketches in English literature as those of Hall, Overbury and Earle.

(C) The Literature of the Decadence.—The period of decadence in Greek literature begins with the extinction of free political life in the Greek cities. So long as the Greek commonwealths were independent and vigorous, Greek life rested on the identity of the man with the citizen. The city state was the highest unit of social organization; the whole training and character of the man were viewed relatively to his membership of the city. The market-place, the assembly, the theatre were places of frequent meeting, where the sense of citizenship was quickened, where common standards of opinion or feeling were formed. Poetry, music, sculpture, literature, art, in all their forms, were matters of public interest. Every citizen had some degree of acquaintance with them, and was in some measure capable of judging them. The poet and the musician, the historian and the sculptor, did not live a life of studious seclusion or engrossing professional work. They were, as a rule, in full sympathy with the practical interests of their time. Their art, whatever its form might be, was the concentrated and ennobled expression of their political existence. Aeschylus breathed into tragedy the inspiration of one who had himself fought the great fight of national liberation. Sophocles was the colleague of Pericles in a high military command. Thucydides describes the operations of the Peloponnesian War with the practical knowledge of one who had been in charge of a fleet. Ictinus and Pheidias gave shape in stone, not to mere visions of the studio, but to the more glorious, because more