Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/375

 case of a work meant to be heard rather than to be read, like the early Greek prose works, it has the obvious recommendation of helping to keep the attention alive. Even the longer speeches in Herodotus have usually the conversational tone rather than the rhetorical. On the other hand, there are a few which may be considered as properly rhetorical, that is, as efforts by Herodotus to work up a vague tradition in the most effective form. The debate in the Persian cabinet on the invasion of Greece is a case in point. The speeches of Xerxes, Mardonius, and Artabanus have been carefully elaborated, and have the elementary dramatic merit of expressing views which Persian speakers could conceivably have taken. Another example is the debate of the Persian conspirators after the death of the false Smerdis. Otanes argues for democracy,