Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/522

500 500 HISTORY OF TIIK monotonous parallelism of sentences, the antithesis being often one of ■words rather than one of thoughts : * Polus, or any other pupil of Gor- gias, could hardly have revelled move in assonances, f and such-like jingling rhetoric. § 4. It is probable that Lysias would never have escaped from this forced and artificial style, had not a real feeling of pain and anger, like that which was excited in his bosom by the audacious impudence of the ex-tyrant Eratosthenes, given a more lively and natural flow, both to his spirits and to his speech. Not that we fail to recognize, even in the speech against Eratosthenes, the school in which Lysias had lived up to that time ; for the tendency to divide, compare, and oppose, peeps out in the midst of the most violent and energetic declamation. But this tendency is here subordinated to the earnest vehemence with which Lysias unveils the baseness of his opponent. This occasion convinced Lysias what style of oratory was both the most suited to his own character and also least likely to fail in producing an effect upon the judges. He now began, in the 50th year of his life, to follow the trade of Antiphon, and wrote speeches for such private individuals as could not trust to their own skill in addressing a court. For this object a plain, unartificial style, was the best suited, because the citizens, who called in the aid of the speech writer, were just those who had no skill in speaking and no knowledge of rhetoric : + and thus Lysias was obliged to lay himself out for such a style, in which, of course, he became more and more confirmed by habit. The consequence was, that for his contemporaries, and for all ages, Lysias stands forth as the first, and, in many respects, the most perfect pattern of the plain (or homely) style. § Lysias distinguished, with the accuracy of a dramatist, between the different characters into whose mouths he put his speeches, and made every one, the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, speak according to Lis quality and condition : this is what the ancient critics praise under the name of his Ethopa'ia. || The prevalent tone, however, was that of the average man; accordingly, Lysias adhered to the looser collocation of sentences, •([ which is ob- setting no value on their life :" where body and life (^v^/i), form no real opposi- tion, but only a pivbii; avrlkirt;, according to the striking remark of Aristotle, li/tet. III., 9 e.rtr. f vragtiXKft'h such as [cvvptiv rrapd rri; tpri/jj'/i; y.ufiuv, Epitaph. § 3. % See Quinclil., Instit. Or. III. 8, $ 50, 51 : Nam sunt multsc a Grsccis Latinis- que composite orationes, quibus alii uterentur. ad quorum conditioncm vitamque aptanda, qure dicebantur, fuerunt : — ideoque Lysias optime videtur in iis, qua? scribebat indoctis, servasse veritatis fidem. § i itr%vi>;, aiptxi;; %x£u-*rYi(>, tenue dicendi ffenus. p. 589. If i%t; hccXiXvftiw, nearly the same as ii^ahr,.
 * As when Lysias says (§ 25) : " sacrificing their body, but for virtue's sake
 * Dionys. Halic. de Lysia jiid., c. 8, 9, p. 4G7 Reiske. Convp. d* hao, c. 3,