and prizes or public shows of dancers and fencers,—by which they do not so much lead as cunningly catch the people. For to lead a people is to persuade them by reason and eloquence; but such allurements of the multitude nothing differ from the baits laid for the taking of irrational animals. 6. Let not yet the speech of a statesman be youthful and theatrical, as if he were making an harangue composed, like a garland, of curious and florid words; nor again—as Pytheas said of an oration made by Demosthenes, that it smelt of the lamp and sophistical curiosity—let it consist of over-subtle arguments and periods, exactly framed by rule and compass. But as musicians require that the strings of their instruments should be sweetly and gently touched, and not rudely thrummed or beaten; so in the speech of a statesman, both when he counsels and when he commands, there should not appear either violence or cunning, nor should he think himself worthy of commendation for having spoken formally, artificially, and with an exact observation of punctualities; but his whole discourse ought to be full of ingenuous simplicity, true magnanimity, fatherly freedom, and careful providence and understanding, joined with goodness and honesty, gracefulness and attraction, proceeding from grave expressions and proper and persuasive sentences. Now a political oration does much more properly than a juridical one admit of sententious speeches, histories, fables, and metaphors, by which those who moderately and seasonably use them exceedingly move their hearers; as he did who said, Make not Greece one-eyed; and Demades, when he affirmed of himself, that he was to manage the wreck of the state; and Archilochus, when he said Nor let the stone of Tantalus Over this isle hang always thus; and Pericles, when he commanded the eyesore[54] of the Piraeus to be taken away; and Phocion, when he pronounced of Leosthenes’s victory, that the beginning or the short course of the war was good, but that he feared the long race that was to follow. But in general, majesty and greatness more benefit a political discourse, a pattern of which may be the Philippics, and (amongst the orations set down by Thucydides) that of Sthenelaidas the Ephor, that of Archidamus at Plataea, and that of Pericles after the plague. But as for those rhetorical flourishes and harangues of Ephorus, Theopompus, and Anaximenes, which they made after they had armed and set in order the battalions, it may be said of them, None talks thus foolishly so near the sword.[55]