Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/483

461 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 46 1 speeches of Pericles the slightest employment of those means hy which the orators of a later age used to set in motion the violent and unruly impulses of the multitude. To judge from the descriptions which have heen given of the manner of Pericles when he ascended the bema, it was tranquil, with hardly any change of feature, with calm and dignified gestures ; his garments were undisturbed by oratorical gesticulations of any kind, and the tone and loudness of his voice were equable and sus- tained.* We may conceive that the frame of mind which this delivery expressed, and which it excited in the hearers, was in harmony and unison with it. Pericles had no wish to gratify the people otherwise than by ministering to their improvement and benefit. He never condescended to flatter them. Great as was his idea of the resources and high des- tinies of Athens, he never feared in particular cases to tell them even the harshest truths. When Pericles declaimed against the people, this was thought, according to Cicero, a proof of his affection towards them, and produced a pleasing impression ;t even when his own safety was threatened, he was content to wait till they had an opportunity of becoming convinced of his innocence, and he never sought to produce this conviction otherwise than by a clear and energetic representation of the truth, studiously avoiding any appeal to transient emotions and feelings. lie was just as little anxious to amuse or entertain the populace. Pericles never indulged in a smile while speaking from the bema.J His dignity never stooped to merriment. § All his public appearances were marked by a sustained earnestness of manner. Some traditional particulars and the character of the time enable us also to form an opinion of the diction of the speeches of Pericles. lie employed the language of common life, the vernacular idiom of Attica, even more than Thucydides :|| but his accurat.: discrimination of mean- ings gave his words a subtilty and pregnancy which was a main ingredient in the nervous energy of his style. Although there was more of reasoning than of imagination in his speeches, he had no diffi- culty in giving a vivid and impressive colouring to his language by the use of striking metaphors and comparisons, and as the prose of the day was altogether unformed, by so doing, he could not help expressing him- self poetically. A good many of these figurative expressions and apo- phthegms in the speeches of Pericles have been preserved, and especially by Aristotle : as when he said of the Samians, that " they were like little children who cried when they took their food ;" or when at the funeral of a number of young persons who had fallen in battle, he used the beautiful figure, that " the year had lost its spring. "^f f Cicero.de Orat. II I. 34. J Plutarch, Peru:/. 5 ; ■xootrarrov c-jtrrairi; Upturn; u; yiXurx. § Sunana auctoritas sine omni hilaritate, Cic. tie Offic. I. 30. II Aristotle, Rhetor. I. 7 ; III. 1, 10.
 * Plutarch, Pericl. V.
 * This appears from the fact mentioned near the end of Chap. XXVII.