ancient analogue of journalism which seems to lead opinion by skilfully mirroring it—unsparing in attack, masterly in all the sources of style, but careful, where positive propositions are concerned, to keep within the limits of safe and accepted generalities.
Just as the Old Comedy was losing its freedom of utterance, a new agency began to appear, which invites comparison with journalism of a calmer and more thoughtful type. Rhetoric, of which we already feel the presence in Athenian drama, had now become a developed art. Skill analogous to that of the modern journalist was often required, for purposes of speaking, by the citizen of a Greek republic[1]. He might desire to urge his views in a public assembly where the standard of speaking was high and the audience critical. He might be compelled to defend his fortunes, or even his life, before a popular jury of many hundreds, when the result would depend in no small measure on oratorical dexterity. Already a class of men existed who composed speeches for private persons to deliver in law-courts. The new art was naturally enlisted in the service of party politics. A skilful writer now felt that there was a way of producing an effect which would be less transient than that of a speech in the assembly. From the end of the fifth century B.C. we begin to meet with a species of composition which may best be described as a political pamphlet.
The paper on the Athenian polity, which has
- ↑ In the Attic Orators, vol. ii. p. 42, I pointed out this analogy.
