Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/107

 ATHENIAN CHARACTER. 85 ve discourse and publicity of discussion, made subservient to practical business, so as at once to appeal to the intelligence, and stimulate the active zeal, of the multitude. Such peculiarities stood out more remarkably from being contrasted with the oppo> site qualities in Spartans, mistrust in conception, slackness in execution, secrecy in counsel, silent and passive obedience. Though Spartans and Athenians formed the two extremities of the scale, other Greeks stood nearer on this point to the former than to the latter. If, even in thai encouraging autumn which followed immediately upon the great Athenian catastrophe before Syracuse, the inertia of Sparta could not be stirred into vigorous action without the ve- hemence of the Athenian Alkibiades, much more was it neces- sary under the depressing circumstances which now overclouded the unofficered Grecian army, that an Athenian bosom should be found as the source of new life and impulse. Nor would any one, probably, except an Athenian, either have felt or obeyed the promptings to stand forward as a volunteer at that moment, when there was every motive to decline responsibility, and no special duty to impel him. But if by chance, a Spartan or an Arcadian had been found thus forward, he would have been destitute of such talents as would enable him to work on the minds of others 1 of that flexibility, resource, familiarity with the temper and move- ments of an assembled crowd, power of enforcing the essential views and touching the opportune chords, which Athenian demo- 1 Compare the observations of Perikles, in his last speech to the Athe. nians about the inefficiency of the best thoughts, if a man had not the power of setting them forth in an impressive manner (Thucyd. ii, 60). Katroe fj.ol TOIOVTQ uvdpl 6pytfecr$e, of ovdevbf oto/zai rjaauv elvai yvuvai re ra deovra Kal epfivev aai raira, QMirohif re Kal xpvpuruv Kpiir- TUV 5 re yap yvoi)<; Kal /j.rj oauf 6i6dt;a(, ev lau Kal el fir) eve&vfj.qdT], etc. The philosopher and the statesman at Athens here hold the same lan- guage. It was the opinion of Sokrates fiovovs afrovf elvai npiq roi)f eldoraf TU diovra, Kal ip ptjv evaai dvva/j.EVOvq (Xenoph. Mem. i, 2, 52). A striking passage in the funeral harangue of Lysias (Orat. ii, Epitaph 8. 19) sets forth the prevalent idea of the Athenian democracy authorita tive law, with persuasive and instructive speech, as superseding mutual vio lence (vdioq and Aoyof, as the antithesis of (3ia). Corrpare a similar senti ent in Isokrates (Or. iv, (Panegyr.) s. 53-56).