till the two champions of ancient liberty, Demosthenes and Cicero, were silenced, that the triumph of despotism in Greece and Rome was complete. The fatal blow to Athenian greatness was the defeat by Antipater, which drove Demosthenes to exile and to death; the deadly stroke at Roman freedom was that which smote off the head of Tully at Caieta.

WR

MIRABEAU'S DELIVERY

WE ARE told that when Mirabeau arose in the National Assembly and delivered one of those fiery speeches which, in their union of reason and passion, so remind us of Demosthenes, he trod the tribune with the supreme authority of a master, and the imperial air of a king. As he proceeded with this harangue his frame dilated; his face was wrinkled and contorted; he roared, he stamped; his hair whitened with foam; his whole system was seized with an electric irritability, and writhed as under an almost preternatural agitation. The effect of his eloquence, which was of the grandest and most impressive kind, abounding in bold images, striking metaphors, and sudden, natural bursts, the creation of the moment, was greatly increased by his "hideously magnificent aspect,” — the massive frame, the features full of pock-holes and blotches, the eagle eye that dismayed with a look, the voice of thunder that dared a reply, the hair that waved like a lion's mane. The ruling spirit of the French Revolution, he did, while he lived, more than any other man, "to guide the whirlwind and direct the storm> of that political and social crisis. When the clergy and the nobles obeyed the royal mandate that the National Assembly should disperse, and the commons remained, hesitating, uncertain, almost in consternation, it was his voice that hurled defiance at the king, and inspired the Tiers-État with courage. When he cried out to the astonished emissary of Louis: "Slave, go tell your master that we are here by the will of the people, and that we will depart only at the point of the bayonet!" the words sounded like a thunder-clap to all Europe, and from the moment the bondage of the nation was broken and the fate of despotism sealed. Startling the critics of the Academy by his bold, straightforward style of oratory, so opposed to the stiff, conventional manner of the day, he showed them that there was "a power of life» in his rude and startling language; that the most commonplace ideas could be endowed with electric power; and, had he not died prematurely, he might, perhaps, have dissuaded France from plunging into the gulf of anarchy, and shown a genius for reconstruction only inferior to that which he had displayed as a destroyer.

TRIUMPHS OF PULPIT ELOQUENCE

ITH the triumphs of sacred oratory it would be easy to fill a volume. Not to go back to the days of John the Baptist, or to those of Paul and Peter, whose words are the very flame breath of the Almighty,-not even to the days of Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed, who, when, like another Elijah, or John the Baptist risen from the dead, he reappeared among his townsmen of Antioch, after the austerities in the desert to which his disgust at their licentiousness had driven him, denounced their bacchanalian orgies in words that made their cheeks tingle, and sent them panic-stricken to their homes,-who is not familiar with the miracles which Christian eloquence has wrought in modern times? Who has forgotten the story of "the priest, patriot, martyr,» Savonarola, crying ever more to

the people of Florence, "Heu! fuge crudelas terras, fuge littus avarum!» Who is ignorant of the mighty changes, ecclesiastic and political, produced by the blunt words of Latimer, the fiery appeals of Wycliffe, the stern denunciations of Knox? Or what ruler of men ever subjugated them more effectually by his sceptre than Chalmers, who gave law from his pulpit for thirty years; who hushed the frivolity of the modern Babylon, and melted the souls of the French philosophers in a halfknown tongue; who drew tears from dukes and duchesses, and made princes of the blood and bishops start to their feet, and break out into rounds of the wildest applause ?

What cultivated man needs to be told of the sweet persuasion that dwelt upon the tongue of the swan of Cambray, the alternating religious joy and terror inspired by the silvery cadence and polished phrase of Massillon, or the resistless conviction that followed the argumentative strategy of Bourdaloue,- a mode of attack upon error and sin which was so illustrative of the imperatoria virtus of Quintilian, that the great Condé cried out once, as the Jesuit mounted the pulpit, «Silence Messierss, voici l'ennemi!» What schoolboy is not familiar with the religious terror with which, in his oraisons funebres, the "Demosthenes of the pulpit," Bossuet, thrilled the breasts of seigneurs and princesses, and even the breast of that king before whom other kings trembled and knelt, when, taking for his text the words, "Be wise, therefore, O ye kings! be instructed, ye judges of the earth!" he unveiled to his auditors the awful reality of God the Lord of all empires, the chastiser of princes, reigning above the heavens, making and unmaking kingdoms, principalities, and powers; or again, with the fire of a lyric poet and the zeal of a prophet, called on nations, princes, nobles, and warriors, to come to the foot of the catafalque which strove to raise to heaven a magnificent testimony of the nothingness of man! At the beginning of his discourses, the action of "the eagle of Meaux," we are told, was dignified and reserved; he confined himself to the notes before him. Gradually "he warmed with his theme; the contagion of his enthusiasm seized his hearers; he watched their rising emotion; the rooted glances of a thousand eyes filled him with a sort of divine frenzy; his notes became a burden and a hindrance; with impetuous ardor he abandoned himself to the inspiration of the moment; with the eyes of the soul he watched the swelling hearts of his hearers; their concentrated emotions became his own; he felt within himself the collected might of the orators and martyrs whose collected essence, by long and repeated communion, he had absorbed into himself; from flight to flight he ascended, until, with unflagging energy, he towered straight upwards, and dragged the rapt contemplation of his audience along with him in its ethereal flight.” At such times, says the Abbé Le Dieu, it seemed as though the heavens were open, and celestial joys were about to descend upon these trembling souls, like tongues of fire on the day of Pentecost. At other times, heads bowed down with humiliation, or pale upturned faces and streaming eyes, lips parted with broken ejaculations of despair, silently testified that the spirit of repentance had breathed on many a hardened heart.

All the foregoing are selections from "Oratory and Orators," by William Matthews, LL. D. By permission of the publishers, Scott, Foreman & Co., Chicago.

Successors to S. C. Griggs & Co.

RICHARD CLAVERHOUSE JEBB

(1841-)

ROF. R. C. JEBB, regius professor of Greek in Cambridge University, is accepted as the leading English authority on Attic oratory. He has written a very helpful work of comment and criticism on "the Ten Great Attic Orators" (1876). He was born in Dundee, Scotland, August 27th, 1841, and was graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge. He is one of the most frequent contributors to English reviews on subjects connected with the classics.

TH

THE ORATORY AND ORATORS OF ATHENS

HE development of Attic prose is seen most clearly in the history of Attic oratory. All the Greek poetry and prose of the earlier classical age was meant, in some measure, to be heard as well as read. The Greek ear was accustomed to look for musical rhythm and finished expression in prose as well as in verse. Public speaking, too, was cultivated as a fine art. It was indispensable to a citizen who wished to make his mark in the public assembly, or who had to defend himself before a law court. Greek audiences criticised the style of a speech much as we criticise the style of a book. Hence oratorical prose had a direct and vital bearing on Attic prose generally.

Two chief influences combined to form the earliest style of Attic prose. (1) One was that of the Sophists, teachers who undertook to prepare young men for the career of active citizens by training them to readiness in speech and argument, and who brought in a superficial logic and grammar. The word "sophist » (professor of learning or wisdom) was used almost as vaguely as the phrase "man of letters," and could be applied without any bad sense to such a man as Plato. Isocrates accepted the name, though he distinguished himself from "sophists of the herd." But the sophists, as a class of teachers, got a bad name partly from plain men of the old school who feared their subtlety, partly from philosophers who despised their shallowness. Protagoras and Prodicus were two of the chief sophists. (2) The other influence was that of the Sicilian Rhetoric. Corax of Syracuse invented his "Art of Words» (466 B. C.) to help people in pleading their cases before law courts; it was developed by his disciple Tisias, through whom it came to Athens. The Sicilians were a lively people, in some things like the Athenians and in others like the Irish,-fond of discussion, quick in repartee, and "never so wretched that they could not make a joke.»

Gorgias of Leontini in Sicily was neither a "sophist" in the proper sense nor a student of rhetoric as an art, but rather an independent cultivator of natural oratory, with a gift for brilliant expression of a poetical and often turgid kind. When he visited Athens in 427 B. C., his florid eloquence became the rage, and was afterwards the first literary inspiration of the orator Isocrates.

Antiphon (born 480 B. C.), the first in the list of the Ten Attic Orators drawn up by later Greek critics, has much in common with the style of Thucydides, and, with him, represents the early Attic prose. The style is elaborate; it moves with a grave dignity; much weight of meaning is concentrated in single words; and pointed verbal contrasts are frequent. There is a certain rugged grandeur, a stern pathos, a scorn for prettiness or florid ornament, but also a lack of ease, grace, and light movement. Antiphon was the ablest debater and pleader of his day, and in his person the new Rhetoric first appears as a political power at Athens. He took a chief part in organizing the Revolution of the Four Hundred, and when they fell, was put to death by the people (411 B. C.), after defending himself in a masterpiece of eloquence. Of his fifteen extant speeches, all relating to trials for homicide, twelve are mere sketches or studies, forming three groups of four each, in which the case for the prosecution is argued alternately with the case for the defense. The chief of the three speeches in real causes is that "On the Murder of Herodes,» a defense of a young Mitylenean charged (about 417 B. C.) with the murder of an Athenian citizen.

Andocides, born of a good family about 440 B. C., was banished from Athens in 415, on suspicion of having been concerned in a wholesale sacrilege, — the mutilation, in one night, of the images of the god Hermes, which stood before the doors of houses and public buildings. He made unsuccessful application for a pardon, first in 411 B. C., during the reign of the Four Hundred, then, after their fall, in 410, when he addressed the assembly in the extant speech, «On His Return. » From 410 to 403 he lived a roving merchant's life in Sicily, Italy, Greece, Ionia, and Cyprus. In 402, the general amnesty allowed him to return to Athens. But in 399 the old charges against him were revived. He defended himself in his extant speech, "On the Mysteries, "-so called because it deals partly with a charge that he had violated the Mysteries of Eleusis,-and was acquitted. During the Corinthian War he was one of an embassy sent to treat for peace at Sparta, and on his return made his extant speech, "On the Peace with Lacedæmon» (390 B. C.), sensibly advising Athens to accept the terms offered by Sparta. The speech, "Against Alcibiades," which bears his name is spurious. The chief interest of his work is historical; he is not an artist of style, but he has much natural force and keenness, and excels in vivid description.

Lysias did a great work for Attic prose, and is, in his own style, one of its most perfect writers. He broke away from the stiff monotony of the old school, and dared to be natural and simple, using the language of daily life, but with perfect purity and grace. His father was a Syracusan, and Lysias, though born at Athens, had not the rights of a citizen. After passing his youth and early manhood at Thurii in south Italy, he settled at Athens, a wealthy man, in 412 B. C. In 404 he fled from the Thirty Tyrants, who had put his brother Polemarchus to death; and, after the restoration of the Democracy, impeached Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty, in the most splendid of his extant speeches (403 B. C.), the only one which we know that he himself spoke at Athens. But in 388 B. C., he addressed the assembled Greeks at Olympia, in a fine speech of which we have a fragment, urging them to unite against the two great foes of Greece, Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse in the west, and Persia in the east. The speech, "Against Agoratus» (399 B. C.?), was written for the impeachment of an informer who had slandered away the lives of citizens under the Thirty Tyrants. The great majority of our thirty-four speeches were composed by Lysias for his clients to speak in public or private causes. They show the dramatic skill with which he could adapt his style to the condition and character of the speaker. The old critics regard Lysias as the model of the plain style of oratory, which conceals its art,

and studies the language of ordinary life, as opposed to the grand style represented by Antiphon, and the middle style of Isocrates.

Isocrates differs from the other Greek orators in this, that his discourses were meant to be read rather than spoken. He represents the genius of Attic Greek with less purity of taste than Lysias. But he founded a style of Greek literary prose, which, from about 350 B. C., became the standard one for general use. Its chief characteristics are the avoidance of poetical language and of declamation, the use of an ample flowing period, and great smoothness, obtained chiefly by systematic care against allowing a word ending with a vowel to be followed by a word which begins with one. This style, transmitted through the schools of rhetoric, became the basis of Cicero's; modern literary prose has been modeled largely on the Roman; and thus the influence of Isocrates has gone through all literature. He was born in 436 B. C., five years before the Peloponnesian War began, and died, aged ninety-eight, in 338, just after the battle of Charonea. Milton speaks of him as "the old man eloquent" whose heart was broken by the news, but the story of his suicide is doubtful.

We have twenty-one of his discourses. Five are for law suits, and belong to his earlier life. The rest are either scholastic,-letters, panegyrics, show pieces, essays on education,-or political. There are also nine letters to friends, including Philip and Alexander the Great. The ruling idea of his life was that of a war by the united Greeks against Persia. The most brilliant of his writings,-the "Panegyricus» (380 B. C.), on which he is said to have spent ten years,—is a plea for such a war, to be led by Athens; and in his "Philippus» he urges Philip to lead it. His "Areopagiticus» (355 B. C.) is a plea for restoring the old moral censorship of the Areopagus; and his discourse (355 B. C.) "On the Exchange of Properties» (so called from the fiction of a law suit on which it is based), is a defense of his "philosophy," or political culture founded on literary rhetoric. The "Encomium on Helen» has much beauty. The "Letter to Demonicus» is full of precepts which often recall the Socrates of Xenophon.

Isæus, born about 420 B. C., has left eleven speeches in will cases, ranging in date from about 390 (Oration V.) to 353 B. C. (Oration VII.). An Athenian could not disinherit his son, nor could he separate his estate from his daughter, though he could choose the person whom she was to marry. If childless, he could divert his estate from the next of kin by adopting, either during his life or by testament, an Athenian citizen as his son and heir. The speeches of Isæus throw a most interesting light on the relations of Attic family life. Their style (best seen in the eighth speech) marks a stage in the development of oratorical prose,- the transition from the "plain" style of Lysias to that full technical mastery which reaches its summit in Demosthenes. Isæus is the first great artist in forensic controversy.

Demosthenes, born in 384 B. C. and left an orphan in childhood, studied with Isæus before, in 363-2, he prosecuted Aphobus and Onêtor, the guardians who had wasted his property; and his speeches against them show that he had caught the master's secret of close, vigorous argument. He worked hard to make himself a good speaker; we are told how he put pebbles in his mouth and declaimed by the loud sea waves or while he ran up hill; how he wrote out Thucydides eight times; how he was laughed down by the assembly and comforted by an actor who found him moping about the harbor town. Not industry, however, or genius alone, but a great idea inspiring his whole life, lifted him to heights reached by no other orator of the old world. Athens, he believed, was the natural head of Greece. Athens must win the confidence of all the Greeks in order to guard Greece against internal or external violence. But before Athens can do this, the public spirit of Athenians must be revived.