Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/531

509 LITERATURE OE ANCIENT GREECE. 509 the schoul of Isocratcs has extended its influence even to the oratory of our own day. Isocrates started from the style -which had heen most cultivated up to his time, namely, the antithetical.* In his earlier labours lie took as much pains -with this symmetrical structure as any Sophist could have done : but in the more flourishing period of his art he contrived to melt down the rigidity and stiffness of the antithesis, by breaking through the direct and immediate opposition of sentences, and by marshalling them in successive groups and in a longer scries. Isocrates has always one leading idea, which is in most cases of suit- able importance, fertile in its consequences, and capable of evoking not only thought but feeling; hence his fondness for general political sub- jects, which furnished him best with such topics. In these leading thoughts he seizes certain points opposed to one another, such as the old and the new times, or the power of the Greeks and that of the bar- barians; and expanding the leading idea in a regular series of sequences and conclusions, he introduces at every step in the composition the propositions which contradict it in its details, and in this way unfolds an abundance of variations always pervaded and marked by a recurrence of the original subject; so that, although there is great variety, the whole may be comprehended at one glance. At the same time, Isocrates is careful that the ear may be cognizant of the antitheses which are pre- sented to the thoughts, and he manages this after the fashion of the older Sophists: but he differs from them, partly in not caring so much about the assonances of individual words, as about the rhythm of whole sen- tences ; partly by seeking to break up the more exact correspondence of S2ntences into a system less marked by the stiff regularity of its members ; and partly by introducing into the' longer sets of antithetical sentences a gradual increase in the force and intensity of his language ; this lie effected by extending the sentences, especially in the third member and at the end ; t and thus an entirely new vigour of movement was given to the old antithetical construction. § 5. The ancients recognize Isocrates as the author or first introducer of the circle of language, as it was called,} although the Sophist Thrasy- machus, a contemporary of Antiphon, is acknowledged to have been master of " the diction which concentrates the ideas and expresses them roundly." It was the same Thrasyniachus whose chief aim it was f " Iii composite sentences," says Demetrius, de Elocut., § 18, " the last mem- ber must be longer than the others." % *"**•'!> orbis orationis. t it ffuffrp'tfoua-a to. ~&ia.vor,wu,Ta xu.) arfmyyuXu; Ixtpipovtra, XtJ;/?. See Theophrastus (ajmd Dionys. de Li/s. judic., p. 4114), Mho lays claim to this art on behalf of Lysias also. What is meant by the crptyyiXov appears clearly from the example which Hermogenes (Walz. Rhetores III., p. 7(W) has given from Demosthenes: u.u, ffii tcl&% olx av 'iyoa^ac ovru;, ay <rv vuv aku;, a}.o; ou ygayn, Such a sentence is lik.fi a circle which necessarily returns to itself.
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