Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/499

477 .ITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 477 convey an idea of his great scrupulousness and accuracy ; * lie will suggest an answer in the mind of his adversary, as if it was obvious and inevitable ;t or he will pervert the other party's words, so as to give them an entirely different signification ; and so forth. All these forms of speech are foreign to the old Attic oratory, for reasons which lie d eeper than in the history of tbe rhetorical schools, viz. in the developcment and progressive change of the Athenian character. These figures rest, as has just been shown, partly on a violence of passion which lays aside all claim to tranquillity and self-control ; partly in a sort of crafty dissimu- lation which employs every artifice in order to make the appearances all on its own side. J These two qualities — vehemence of passion and tricky artifice — did not become the prominent features of the Athenian character till a later period, and though they grew stronger and stronger after the shock given to the morality of Greece by the speculations of the Sophists, and at the same time by the party-spirit, which the Peloponnesian war engendered, and which, according to Thucydides, § nurtured the prevail- ing tendency to intrigue, yet it was some time before the art of speaking- arrived at that stage of developement which necessitated or admitted these peculiar figures of speech. In Antiphon, as well as in Thucydides, the old equable and tranquil style is still prevalent : all the efforts of the orator are directed to the. invention and opposition of the ideas which his argument requires him to bring forward : all that is unreal or delu- sive consists in the thoughts themselves, not in any obscurity produced by the excitements of passion. On the few occasions when Antiphon spoke, he must have spoken, like Pericles, with unmoved countenance, and in a tone of the most tranquil self-command, although his con- temporary Cleon, whose style of speaking was very far removed from the artificial oratory of the day, used to run backwards and forwards on the bema, throwing his mantle aside and smiting his thigh with violent and excited gesticulations. || § 6. Andocides, who stands next to Antiphon in point of time, and some of whose speeches have come down to us, is a more interesting- person in reference to the history of Athens at this period than in re- gard to the cultivation of rhetoric. Sprung from a noble family which furnished the heralds for the Eleusinian mysteries, ^f we find him employed at an early age as general and ambassador, until he was involved in the legal proceedings about the mutilation of the Hernue and the profanation of the mysteries ; he escaped by denouncing the + Uouicuoy'ia.. On this aCCOUDt the o- < rr,u,a.ra <r«; liuvoia; are Culled by Cuvilius Tg4Tr,v x Tov vravovsyou y.c/.i IvccXXaln. § Thueyd. III., SI. ever committed against the decency (koc-ij,*;) of public speaking. H ro ruv xnouKbiv t?i! tJWTnpicor'i&o; yivo;.
 * EpidiorthottSj also called Metanoea. f Anaclasis.
 * This is mentioned by Plutarch ( Nic. YII1., Tib. Gracch. II.) as the first offence