Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/496

474 4*74 HISTORY OF THE consideration the value and importance of their works as products of human genius, we rind in writers like Antiphon and Tlmcydides a con- tinual liveliness, an inexhaustible vigour of mind, which, not to go farther, places them above even Plato and Demosthenes, notwithstanding their better training and wider experience. § 4. We shall arrive at a clearer conception of the train of thought in these writers by considering, first the words, and then the syntactical combinations by which their style was distinguished. Great accuracy in the use of expressions* is a characteristic as well of Antiphon as of Tlmcydides. This is manifested, among other things, by an attempt to make a marked distinction between synonyms and words of similar sound : this originated with Prodicus, and both in this Sophist and in the authors of whom we are speaking occasionally gave an air of extrava- gance and affectation to their style. 1' Not to speak of individual words, the luxuriance of grammatical forms in the Greek language and the readiness with which it admitted new compounds, enabled these authors to create whole classes of expressions indicating the most delicate shades of meaning, such as the neuter participles. X In regard to the gram- matical forms and the connecting particles, the old writers did not strive after that regular continuity which gives an equable flow to the discourse, and enables one to see the whole connexion from any part of it : they considered it of more importance to express the finer modi- fications of meaning by changes in the form of words, even though this might produce abruptness and difficulty in the expressions. § With respect to the connexion of the sentences with one another, the lan- guage of Antiphon and Tlmcydides stands half-way between the con- secutive but unconnected diction of Herodotus || and the periodic style of the school of Isocrates. We shall consider in one of the following chapters how the period, which conveys an idea of a style finished and rounded off, was first cultivated in that later school : here it will be sufficient to mention the total want of such a finished periodic completeness in the writings of Antiphon and Thucydides. There t As when Antiphon says (c/e card. Herod., § 94, according to the probable read- ing) : " You are now scrutineers (ywanrrai) of the evidence ; then you will be judges Cbtxu.trrai) of the suit: you are now only guessers Q>oa.irra.i), you will then be deciders (xoiral) of the truth." See the similar examples in §§ 91, 92. X As when Antiphon says (Tetral. I., y. § 3) : " The danger and the disgrace, which had greater influence than the. quarrel, were sufficient to subdue the passion that was boiling in his mind" (trutppoMtrai <ro (vyjoifjAvov rr,; yyuy^s). Thucydides, who is as partial as Antiphon to this mode of expression, also uses the phrase, to {■vujovw'vov ?n; yvumyi;, VIII. G8. § As an example, we may mention Antiphon's common practice of passing from the copulative to the adversative. He often begins with xa), but substitutes a "Si for the corresponding *«) which should follow. This represents the two members as at first corresponding parts of a whole, and thus the opposition of the second to the first is rendered more prominent and striking.,'
 * KKoifroXriyia. It) <ro7; civifAcctrui, Marcellin., vita Thi/cyd., § 36.