Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/410

388 38S HISTORY OF THE rhetoric of the time, that is, the art of speaking- as taught in the school. Dramatic poetry and oratory were so near one another from the begin- ning, that they often seem to join hands over the gap which separates poetry from prose. The ohject of oratory is to determine by means of argument the convictions and the will of other men ; but dramatic poetry leaves the actions of the persons represented to be determined by the developement of their own views and the expression of the opinions of others. The Athenians were so habituated to hear long public speeches in their courts and assemblies, and had snch a passion for them, that their tragedy, even in its better days, admitted a greater pro- portion of speeches on opposite sides of a question than would have been the case had their public life taken another direction. But, in process of time, this element was continually gaining upon the others, and soon transcended its proper limits, as we see even in Euripides, and still more in his successors. The excess consists in this, that the speeches, which in a drama should only serve as a means of explaining the changes in the thoughts and frame of mind of the actors and of influencing their convictions and resolves, became, on their own ac- count, the chief business of the play, so that the situations and all the labour of the poet were directed towards affording opportunities for the display of rhetorical sparring. And as the practical object of real life was, naturally enough, wanting to this stage-oratory, and as it depended on the poet alone how he should put the point of dispute, it is easy to conceive that this theatrical rhetoric would, in most cases, make a display of the more artificial forms, which in practical life were thrown aside as useless, and would approximate rather to the scholastic oratory of the sophists than to the eloquence of a Demosthenes, which, possessed by the great events of the time, raised itself far above the trammels of a scholastic art. Theodectes, of Phaselis, the chief specimen of this class of writers, flourished about Olymp. 106. b. c. 356, in the time of Philip of Mace- don. Rhetoric was his chief study, though he also applied himself to philosophy ; he belongs to the scholars of Isocrates, another of whom, a son of Aphareus, also left the rhetorical school for the tragic stage. Theodectes never gave up his original pursuits, but came forward both as orator and tragedian. At the splendid funeral feast, which the Carian queen, Artemisia, instituted in honour of Mausolus, the husband whom she mourned for so ostentatiously (Olymp. 106. 4. b. c. 353), Theodectes, in competition with Theopompus and other orators, de- livered a panegyric on the deceased, and at the same time produced a tragedy, the Mausolus, the materials for which were probably borrowed from the mythical traditions or early history of Caria ; but the author certainly had also in view the exaltation of the prince of the