he was so. Citizens in grave debate are contrasted with men who play audience to the empty displays of sophists[1]. A contempt for rhetorical commonplace is frequently indicated. Thus Pericles declines to dilate on the legendary glories of Athens[2] or on the advantages of patriotic fortitude[3], and Hermocrates begs to be excused from enlarging on the hardships of war[4] or the blessings of peace[5]. On the technical side, however, Thucydides shows the influence of the new art. This often appears in his method of marshalling topics and in his organisation of the more elaborate speeches[6]. It is seen still more clearly if his style is compared with that of the orator Antiphon. The extant work of Antiphon as a writer of speeches for the law-courts falls in the
- ↑ Thuc. iii. 38 § 7. σοφιστῶν [the word only here in Thuc] θεαταῖς ἐοικότες καθημένοις μᾶλλον ἢ περὶ πόλεως βουλευομένοις. Cf. § 5, μετὰ καινότητος λόγου ἀπατᾶσθαι ἄριστοι. Thucydides thrice uses ἐπίδειξις, but only once in reference to oratory, and then in a general, not in a technical sense (iii. 42). The regular speakers in the Ecclesia are thrice spoken of as ῥήτορες, and always in a more or less unfavourable tone (iii. 40; vi. 29; viii. 1).
- ↑ ii. 36.
- ↑ ii. 43.
- ↑ iv. 59.
- ↑ iv. 62. Compare what Alcibiades says at Sparta in declining to dwell on the evils of democracy—ἀλλὰ περὶ ὁμολογουμένης ἀνοίας οὐδὲν ἂν καινὸν λέγοιτο.
- ↑ As in the Plataean and Theban speeches to the Spartan judges (iii. 53—59, 61—67), in the speeches of Hermocrates and Athenagoras to the Syracusan assembly (vi. 33—34, 36—40), and in the Funeral Oration. We can recognise a conscious partition, more or less complete, into προοίμιον, πρόθεσις (or προκατασκευή), διήγησις, πίστεις, ἐπίλογος. Cp. Attic Orators, vol. i. pp. 36, 181; ii. 422.
