Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/519

497 LITERATURE 01 ANClbNt GREECE. 4^7 when a new career "was opened to him by an event which touched him very nearly. Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty, wished to avail himself of the advantage granted to the Thirty Tyrants under the general am- nesty, namely, that it should extend to them also, if they would submit to a public inquiry, and so clear themselves of all guilt. Eratosthenes relied on having belonged to the more moderate party of Theramenes, who, on account of his greater leniency, had fallen a victim to the more energetic and violent Critias. And yet it was this very Eratosthenes who had, in accordance with a decree of the Thirty, arrested Polemarchus in the open street, carried him off to prison, and accomplished his judicial murder. When his conduct was submitted to public investi- gation,* Lysias came forward in person as his accuser, although, as he says himself, he had never before been in court, either on his own busi- ness or on that of any other person, t He attacks Eratosthenes, in the first instance, on account of his participation in the death of Pole marchus and the other misfortunes which he had brought upon his family ; and then enters on the whole career and public life of Erato- sthenes, who had also belonged to the Four-hundred, and was one of the Five Ephori whom the Hctcerice, or secret associations, got elected after the battle of yEgospotami : and in this he maintains, that Theramenes, whose leniency and moderation had been so much extolled, had, by his intrigues, been a principal cause of all the calamities that had befallen the state. The whole speech is pervaded by a feeling of the strongest conviction, and by that natural warmth which we should expect in the case of a subject so immediately affecting the speaker. He concludes with a most vehement appeal to the judges : " I shall desist from any further accusations; ye have heard, seen, and experienced : — ye know ! — decide then !" § 2. This speech forms a great epoch in the life of Lysias, in his employments and studies, in the style of his oratory, and, we may add, in the whole history of Attic prose. Up to that time, Lysias had prac- tised rhetoric merely as a Sophist of the Sicilian school, instructing the voung and composing school-exercises. The peculiarity and manner- ism, which must have naturally resulted from such an application of eloquence, were the less likely to be escaped in the case of Lysias, as he was entirely under the influence of the school which had produced Gorgias. Lysias shared with Gorgias in the endeavour to evince the power of oratory, by giving probability to the improbable, and credibility to the incredible ; hence resulted a love of paradox, and an unnatural and forced arrangement of the materials, excessive artifice of ornament in the details, and a total want of that natural earnestness which springs from conviction and a feeling of truth. The difference between these 2 K
 * = ii-'Jv;;. ■!■ iUT IpauroZ Turrsr; oilrl &X.0T£IH <7oayv,UTCC Tou^a;, EratOSth, } •!.