had much love for set rhetorical display: his taste was for conversation—lively, ingenious, argumentative it might be, but still mainly in the colloquial key[1]. A good instance of the way in which he passes by an opportunity for oratory is his brief notice of the speech made by Themistocles just before the battle of Salamis[2]: "His theme was the contrast between all that is worthy and all that is base. He exhorted them to choose the better part in all that men's nature and condition permit; and then, having wound up his discourse, he ordered them to embark." The true rhetorician would have developed the topic which Herodotus barely indicates[3]. It may be noticed, too, that the ornament
- ↑ Dionysius says most truly of Herodotus that he has almost all the excellences of style except the ἐναγώνιοι ἀρεταί—the combative excellences,—such as were afterwards developed by strenuous controversy, political or forensic. οὐδὲ γὰρ δημηγορίαις πολλαῖς ὁ ἀνὴρ οὐδ' ἐναγωνίοις κέχρηται λόγοις, οὐδ' ἐν τῷ παθαίνειν καὶ δεινοποιεῖν τὰ πράγματα τὴν ἀλκὴν ἔχει (de Thuc. c. 23).
- ↑ Her. viii. 83, τὰ δὲ ἔπεα ἦν πάντα κρέσσω τοῖσι ἕσσοσι ἀντιτιθέμενα. ὅσα δὲ ἐν ἀνθρώπου φύσι καὶ καταστάσι ἐγγίνεται, παραινέσας δὴ τούτων τὰ κρέσσω αἱρέεσθαι καὶ καταπλέξας τὴν ῥῆσιν ἐσβαίνειν ἐκέλευε ἐσ τὰς νῆας.
- ↑ Cp. Plato, Hippias Major, p. 286, where the sophist Hippias tells Socrates that he has composed "an admirable discourse" on the theme of a question supposed to be put by Neoptolemus to Nestor after the taking of Troy—What are καλὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα? The phrase of Herodotus, καταπλέξας τὴν ῥῆσιν, reminds us of the tone in which the speakers of Thucydides sometimes decline to develop commonplaces.
