Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/481

459 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 459 put into his mouth. This wonderful triad of speeches forms a beau- tiful whole, which is perfect and complete in itself. The Jirst speech* proves the necessity of a war with the Peloponnesians, and the proba- bility that it will be successful : the second,^ delivered immediately after the first successes obtained in the war, under the form of a funeral ora- tion, confirms the Athenians in their mode of living and acting ; it is half an apology for, half a panegyric upon Athens : it is full of a sense of truth and of noble self-reliance, tempered with moderation ; the third, } delivered after the calamities which had befallen Athens, rather through the plague than through the war, and which had nevertheless made the people vacillate in their resolutions, offers the consolation most worthy of a noble heart, namely, that up to that time fortune, on which no man can count, had deceived them, but they had not been misled by their own calcula- tions and convictions ; and that these would never deceive them if they did not allow themselves to be led astray by some unforeseen accidents. § § 4. No speech of Pericles has been preserved in writing. It may seem surprising that no attempt was made to write down and preserve, for the benefit of the present and future generations, works which every one considered admirable, and which were regarded as, in some re- spects, the most perfect specimens of oratory. || The only explanation of this that can be offered is, that in those days a speech was not con- sidered as possessing any value or interest, save in reference to the par- ticular practical object for which it was designed : it had never occurred to people that speeches and poems might be placed in one class, and both preserved, without reference to their subjects, on account of the skill with which the subjects were treated, and the general beauties of the form and composition. ^f Only a few emphatic and nervous expressions of Pericles were, kept in remembrance; but a general impression of the grandeur and copiousness of his oratory long prevailed among the Greeks. We are enabled, partly by this long prevalent impression, which is men- tioned even by later writers, and partly by the connexion between Pericles and the other old Attic orators, as also with Thucydides, to form a clear conception of his style of speaking, without drawing much upon our imagination. § A speech of Pericles, in which he took a general survey of the military power and resources of Athens, is given by Thucydides (II. 13,) indirectly and in outline, because this was not an opportunity lor unfolding a train of leading ideas. TtXiwTXTo; ik rh* p»Te£ixr,v, and refers for the cause to his acquaintance with the speculations of Anaxagoras, Phcedr. L'70. Cicero, in his Brutus XII., calls him " oratorcm prope perfeetum," only to leave something to be said for the other orators. 11 [All the speeches which have been preserved to us from antiquity have been preserved by the orators themselves. Pericles appears to have made no record of his speeches; and probably he would have considered it degrading, in his eminent position, to place himself on the footing of a y.oyoyeufo;. — Editor.]
 * Thucyd. I., 140—144. f Thucyd. II. =55— 4G. + Thucyd. II. 60—64.
 * Plato, though not ve/y partial to Pericles, nevertheless considers him as