Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/361

 DEMAND FOR RHETORIC. 331 leveral governments which were not democracies, but oligarchies of an open character, the courts of justice were more or less numerous, and the procedure oral and public : in Athens, espec- ially, the dikasteries whose constitution has been explained in a former chapter were both very numerous, and paid for attendance. Every citizen had to go before them in person, without being able to send a paid advocate in his place, if he either required redress for wrong offered to himself, or was ac- cused of wrong by another. 1 There was no man, therefore, who might not be cast or condemned, or fail in his own suit, even with right on his side, unless he possessed some powers of speech to unfold his case to the dikasts, as well as to confute the false- hoods, and disentangle the sophistry, of an opponent. More- over, to any man of known family and station, it would be a humiliation hardly less painful than the loss of the cause, to stand before the dikastery with friends and enemies around him, and find himself unable to carry on the thread of a discourse without halting or confusion. To meet such liabilities, from which no citizen, rich or poor, was exempt, a certain training in speech became not less essential than a certain training in arms. Without the latter, he could not do his duty as an hoplite in the ranks for the defence of his country ; without the former, he could not escape danger to his fortune or honor, and humiliation in the eyes of his friends, if called before a dikastery, nor lend assist- ance to any of those friends who might be placed under the like necessity. Here then were ample motives, arising out of practical pru- dence not less than from the stimulus of ambition, to cultivate the power both of continuous harangue, and of concise argumenta- tion, or interrogation and reply : 2 motives for all, to acquire a 1 This necessity of some rhetorical accomplishments, is enforced not less emphatically by Aristotle (Rhetoric, i, 1, 3.) than by Kallikles in the Gor- gias of Plato, c. 91, p. 486, B. training: " Ego hoc tcmpore omni, noctes et dies, in omnium doctrinarum mcdita- tione vcrsubar. Eram cum Stoico Diodoto, qui cum habitavisset apud mo mccumque vixissct, nuper est domi meae mortuus. A quo qnum in aliis rebus, turn studiosissimc in dialectic;! versabar j qucc quasi contracta et astricta
 * Sec the description which Cicero gives, of his own laborious oratorical