"Greece alone is a sufficient witness of this:—for though she was fired with a wonderful love of Eloquence, and has long since excelled every other nation in the practice of it, yet she had all the rest of the arts much earlier; and had not only invented, but even compleated them, a considerable time before she was mistress of the full powers of elocution. But when I direct my eyes to Greece, your beloved Athens, my Atticus, first strikes my sight, and is the brightest object in my view: for in that illustrious city the orator first made his appearance, and it is there we shall find the earliest records of eloquence, and the first specimens of a discourse conducted by rules of art. But even in Athens there is not a single production now extant which discovers any taste for ornament, or seems to have been the effort of a real orator, before the time of Pericles (whose name is prefixed to some orations which still remain) and his cotemporary Thucydides; who flourished—not in the infancy of the State, but when it was arrived at its full maturity of power.
"It is, however, supposed, that Pisistratus (who lived many years before) together with Solon, who was something older, and Clisthenes, who survived them both, were very able speakers for the age they lived in. But some years after these, as may be collected from the Attic Annals, came the above-mentioned Themistocles, who is said to have been as much distinguished by his eloquence as by his political abilities;—and after him the celebrated Pericles, who, though adorned with every kind of excellence, was most admired for his talent of speaking. Cleon also (their cotemporary) though a turbulent citizen, was allowed to be a tolerable orator.
"These were immediately succeeded by Alcibiades, Critias, and Theramenes, whose manner of speaking may be easily inferred from the writings of Thucydides, who lived at the same time: their discourses were nervous and stately, full of sententious remarks, and so excessively concise as to be sometimes obscure. But as soon as the force of a regular and a well- adjusted speech was understood, a sudden crowd of rhetoricians appeared—such as Gorgias the Leontine, Thrasymachus the Chalcedonian, Protagoras the Abderite, and Hippias the Elean, who were all held in great esteem—with many others of the same age, who professed (it must be owned, rather too arrogantly) to teach their scholars—how the worse might be made, by the force of eloquence, to appear the better cause. But these were openly opposed by the famous Socrates, who, by an adroit method of arguing which was peculiar to himself, took every opportunity to refute the principles of their art. His instructive conferences produced a number of intelligent men, and Philosophy is said to have derived her birth from him;—not the doctrine of Physics, which was of an earlier date, but that Philosophy which treats of men, and manners, and of the nature of good and evil. But as this is foreign to our present subject, we must defer the Philosophers to another opportunity, and return to the Orators, from whom I have ventured to make a sort digression.
"When the professors therefore, abovementioned were in the decline of life, Isocrates made his appearance, whos house stood open to all Greece as the School of Eloquence. He was an accomplished orator, and an excellent teacher; though he did not display his talents in the Forum, but cherished and improved that glory within the walls of his academy, which, in my opinion, no poet has ever yet acquired. He composed many valuable specimens of his art, and taught the principles of it to others; and not only excelled his predecessors in every part of it, but first discovered that a certain metre should be observed in prose, though totally different from the measured rhyme of the poets. Before him, the artificial structure and harmony of language was unknown;—or if there are any traces of it to be discovered, they appear to have been made without design; which, perhaps, will be thought a beauty:—but whatever it may be deemed, it was, in the present case, the effect rather of native genius, or of accident, than of art and observation. For mere nature itself will measure and limit our sentences by a convenient compass of words; and when they are thus confined to a moderate flow of expression, they will frequently have a numerous cadence:—for the ear alone can decide what is full and complete, and what is deficient; and the course of our language will necessarily be regulated by our breath, in which it is excessively disagreeable, not only to fail, but even to labour.
"After Isocrates came Lysias, who, though not personally engaged in forensic causes, was a very artful and an elegant composer, and such a one as you might almost venture to pronounce a complete orator: for Demosthenes is the man who approaches the character so nearly, that you may apply it to him without hesitation. No keen, no artful turns could have been contrived for the pleadings he has left behind him, which he did not readily discover;—nothing could have been expressed with greater nicety, or more clearly and poignantly, than it has been already expressed by him;—and nothing greater, nothing more rapid and forcible, nothing adorned with a nobler elevation either of language, or sentiment, can be conceived than what is to be found in his orations. He was soon rivalled by his cotemporaries Hyperides, Aeschines, Lycurgus, Dinarchus, and Demades (none of whose writings are extant) with many others that might be mentioned: for this age was adorned with a profusion of good orators; and the genuine strength and vigour of Eloquence appears to me to have subsisted to the end of this period, which was distinguished by a natural beauty of composition without disguise or affectation.
"When these orators were in the decline of life, they were succeeded by Phalereus; who was then in the prime of youth. He was indeed a man of greater learning than any of them, but was fitter to appear on the parade, than in the field; and, accordingly, he rather pleased and entertained the Athenians, than inflamed their passions; and marched forth into the dust and heat of the Forum, not from a weather-beaten tent, but from the shady recesses of Theophrastus, a man of consummate erudition. He was the first who relaxed the force of Eloquence, and gave her a soft and tender air: and he rather chose to be agreeable, as indeed he was, than great and striking; but agreeable in such a manner as rather charmed, than warmed the mind of the hearer. His greatest ambition was to impress his audience with a high opinion of his elegance, and not, as Eupolis relates of Pericles, to sting as well as to please.
"You see, then, in the very city in which Eloquence was born and nurtured, how late it was before she grew to maturity; for before the time of Solon and Pisistratus, we meet with no one who is so much as mentioned for his talent of speaking. These, indeed, if we compute by the Roman date, may be reckoned very ancient; but if by that of the Athenians, we shall find them to be moderns. For though they flourished in the reign of Servius Tullius, Athens had then subsisted much longer than Rome has at present. I have not, however, the least doubt that the power of Eloquence has been always more or less conspicuous. For Homer, we may suppose, would not have ascribed such superior talents of elocution to Ulysses, and Nestor (one of whom he celebrates for his force, and the other for his sweetness) unless the art of Speaking had then been held in some esteem; nor could the Poet himself have been master of such an ornamental style, and so excellent a vein of Oratory as we actually find in him.—The time indeed in which he lived is undetermined: but we are certain that he flourished many years before Romulus: for he was at least of as early a date as the elder Lycurgus, the legislator of the Spartans.
"But a particular attention to the art, and a greater ability in the practice of it, may be observed in Pisistratus. He was succeeded in the following century by Themistocles, who, according to the Roman date, was a person of the remotest antiquity; but, according to that of the Athenians, he was almost a modern. For he lived when Greece was in the height of her power, but when the city of Rome had but lately freed herself from the shackles of regal tyranny;—for the dangerous war with the Volsci, who were headed by Coriolanus (then a voluntary exile) happened nearly at the same time as the Persian war; and we may add, that the fate of both commanders was remarkably similar. Each of them, after distinguishing himself as an excellent citizen, being driven from his country by the wrongs of an ungrateful people, went over to the enemy: and each of them repressed the efforts of his resentment by a voluntary death. For though you, my Atticus, have represented the exit of Coriolanus in a different manner, you must give me leave to dispatch him in the way I have mentioned."—"You may use your pleasure," replied Atticus with a smile: "for it is the privilege of rhetoricians to exceed the truth of history, that they may have an opportunity of embellishing the fate of their heroes: and accordingly, Clitarchus and Stratocles have