Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/491

469 LITERATURE OF A.N'CIEWT GREECE. 469 standing how this artificial prose, which was neither poetry nor vet the language of common life, was so successful on its first appear- ance at Athens. That such a style was highly suitahle to the taste of the age as it gradually unfolded itself, is also shown by its rapid extension and further developement, especially in the school of Gorgias. We have already spoken of Agathon's parallelisms and anti- theses ;* but Polus of Agrigentum, the favourite scholar and devoted partizan of Gorgias, went far beyond all others in his attention to those ornaments of language, and carried this even into the slightest minutiae of language : + similarly, Alcidamas, another scholar of Gorgias, who is often mentioned by Aristotle, exceeded his master in his showy, poetic diction, and in the affectation of his elegant anti- thesis. I CHAPTER XXXIII. § 1. Antiphon's career and employments. § 2. His school-exercises, the Tetra- logies. § 3 ( His speeches before the courts; Character of his oratory. § 4, 5. More particular examination of his style. § 6. Andocides; his life and character. § 1. The cultivation of the art of oratory among the Athenians is due to a combination of the natural eloquence, displayed by the Athenian states- men, and especially by Pericles, with the rhetorical studies of the Sophists. The first person in whom the effects of this combination were fully shown was ANTirnoN, the son of Sophilus of Rhamnus. Antiphon was both a practical statesman and man of business, and also a rhetorician of the. schools. With regard to the former part of his character, we are told by Thucydides that, though the tyranny of the Four-hundred was ostensibly established by Pisandcr, it was Antiphon who drew up the plan for it, and who had the greatest share in carrying it into effect ; " he was a man," says the historian, § " inferior to none of his contemporaries in virtue, and distinguished above all others in forming plans and recom- mending his views by oratory. lie made no public speeches, indeed, nor did he ever of his own accord engage in the litigations of the court; but being suspected by the people from his reputation for powerful t In the address : £ Ztrri llwXt, Plato ridicules his fondness for the juxtaposition of words of a similar sound. + The declamations which remain under the names of Gorgias, Alcidamas, and Antisthenes (another scholar of Gorgias), have been justly regarded as imitations of their style by later rhetoricians. ( VIII., 08.
 * Chap. XXVI., § 3.