Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/495

473 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 473 of whose choreutae had been poisoned while under training. All these speeches refer to charges of murder,* and for this reason have beeu classed with the Tetralogies, the assumed subjects of which are of the same kind : a distribution of the works of Greek orators according to the nature of the different suits was very common among the learned gram- marians,! and many ancient citations refer to this division ; for instance, when speeches referring to the duties of guardians, to money-transactions, or to debts, are quoted as belonging to different classes. In this manner Antiphon's speeches on charges of murder have alone been preserved, and the only orations of Isteus which have come down to us, are those on the law of inheritance and wills. In these speeches of Antiphon we see the same ingenuity and shrewdness, and the same legal acumen, as in the Tetralogies, combined with far greater polish and elaboration of style, since the Tetralogies were only designed to display skill in the discovery and complication of arguments. These more complete speeches may be reckoned among the most im- portant materials that we possess for a history of oratory. In respect to their style, they stand in close connexion with the history of Thucydides and the speeches with which it is interspersed, and confirm the statement of many grammarians, that Thucydides was instructed in the school of Antiphon, — a statement which harmonizes very well with the circum- stances of their liv.es. The ancients often couple Thucydides with Anti- phon, § and mention these two as the chief masters of the old austere oratory, || the nature of which we must here endeavour rightly to com- prehend. It does not consist (as might be conjectured from the expres- sions used in speaking of it,*! which are justified only by a comparison with the smooth and polished oratory of later days) in any intentional rudeness or harshness, but in the orator's confining himself to a clear and definite expression of what he had clearly and definitely conceived. Although it is no f. to be denied that the orators of that time were defi- cient in the fluency which results from practice, they had on that account all the more power and freshness of thought ; many reflections, which afterwards became trivial from frequent repetition, and in this way came to be used in a flippant and superficial manner, were then delivered with all the energetic earnestness of real feeling; and, without taking into I The most important authority is Cscilius of Calacte, a distinguished rheto- rician of Cicero's time, many of whose striking judgments and important remarks arc still extant. See the Vitw X. Orator., c. 1. Photius, Biblioth. Coder, 259 § When rhetorical studies were still a novelty, Thucydides at the age of twentj might easily have hecn the scholar of Antiphon, who was eight years his senior. 1| Dionvs. Hal., de verb, com})., p. 150, Iteiske. Tryphon, in "YYalz, Rhet., t. VIII., p. 7o0. % ai/trrneos x a Z K *' rr '?-> «"**«{" aoij.ona, austerum dke/idi genus ; see Dioliys. Hal., de compos, verborvm, p. 117, seqq.
 * Qivixoci Yixai. t This occurs frequently in Dionysius of I lalicarnaBSUS.