He was, then, thoroughly competent; but he was careless. He passes from section to section with no logical and little formal connection; invective takes the place of argument, and even his abuse is incoherent. Everything is overdone; other writers have produced striking effects by slight changes in the order of words; Dinarchus disarranges his order without improving the emphasis.[482] Again, the repetition of a single word may give emphasis, as thus:—‘A hireling, men of Athens, a hireling he is and has been’; but this device is used _ad nauseam_.[483] His sentences, great concatenations of participles and relatives, trail along like wounded snakes.[484] Invective had its place in Athenian oratory, but when on every page we find such expressions as beast, foul creature, foul beast, scum, cheat, accursed, thief, traitor, perjurer, receiver of bribes, hireling, unclean, we feel that the orator is spitting rather than talking.[485] There is a similar lack of decency in his imputation of corrupt motives to all the public actions of Demosthenes, good or bad, and to his exaggeration of the latter’s offences. He becomes positively ridiculous when he describes Aristogiton’s first imprisonment—the first of many. Aristogiton, the worst man in Athens, or rather, in all the world ... has spent more time in prison than out ... the first time he went there he behaved so disgustingly that the other prisoners, the dregs of all the world, refused to have their meals with him, or associate with him on terms of equality.[486] This abuse of a man who is on trial for a merely political offence, is grossly over-coloured, and is probably as false as his description of Demosthenes’ callousness:—‘He went about exulting in the city’s misfortunes; he was carried in a litter down the road to Piraeus, mocking at the miseries of the poor.’ Finally, his plagiarisms from Demosthenes, Aeschines, and other orators are too numerous to record; he borrows whole passages without skill or appropriateness.[487] He borrows even from himself.[488] The ancient nicknames for him, ἀγροῖκος Δημοσθενής, κριθινός Δημοσθενής—‘the boorish Demosthenes,’ ‘the small-beer Demosthenes,’ are as apt as such characterisation can be.[489] To sum up: the very marked decline of which Dinarchus is typical, is due not to lack of technical ability, but to lack of originality on the intellectual side, and still more to moral causes:—lack of literary conscience, shown in the plagiarisms; lack of proper care, shown in the incoherence of the whole speeches; and lack of all sense of proportion and restraint, shown by the numerous exaggerations of various kinds which have been described above. CHAPTER XII THE DECLINE OF ORATORY Owing to the extraordinary success of the Macedonian arms, Hellenic culture spread rapidly over a great part of the world; but it was beaten out thin in the process.[490]