What Have the Greeks Done for Modern Civilisation?Mahaffy, J. P. (John Pentland)
Philosophy
What Have the Greeks Done for Modern Civilisation?
Mahaffy, J. P. (John Pentland)
Civilization; Greece -- Civilization; Greece -- Intellectual life
clients, studied not only the proper arguments to be urged, but that
these arguments must be presented “in character” and so they carefully
kept before them the personality of the speaker. In Lysias especially,
this expression of character in the speaker is part of his art, which so
perfectly apes simplicity that it requires a careful analysis to detect
behind the simple utterance of the homely citizen the subtle
rhetorician.
This refinement of legal rhetoric seems to me to have been disregarded
or abandoned when the pleaders became so celebrated that the fiction of
a client speaking for himself was no longer plausible, and when the
public that thronged the courts went to hear an oration of Demosthenes
or Hypereides delivered by his client. Hence the speeches of Demosthenes
are not so various in ethos, and many of them being delivered about his
own private affairs, had already taught the public to recognise his
great style. In particular, so many of his orations were not court
speeches but political harangues that this latter branch of eloquence
may be regarded as that in which he best showed his pre-eminence. And
there are not a few instances where the ostensible case was only an
excuse for promoting or vindicating a great policy. The acme of all this
branch of Greek literature is the famous _de Corona_ of Demosthenes,
which great lawyers and political orators like Lord Brougham have
declared to be the very _ne plus ultra_ of eloquence intended not only
to persuade, but also to persuade by all the arts of subtle logic, of
brilliant sophistry, of red hot argument. And remember men like Lord
Brougham, though infinitely better practical judges of the effect of
such a speech than are mere scholars, did not know one tithe of the
subtleties of style, which have only been detected by the minute
studies, not only of the old Greek critics, but of modern German
scholars.
Even in such a mighty speech as this you will notice the very scanty use
of ornament. There are none of what we moderns call the flowers of
rhetoric; there is no sounding peroration. It is the picture of a grave
patriot vindicating his life’s work against the carping of his enemies
and the criticism of his opponents. There are indeed passages of gross
vituperation, wherein by scathing reflections on his opponent’s previous
life, he replies to Æschines’ insinuations about his private character.
Nor has the character of Æschines ever recovered from this “raking of
his record,” which was probably not at all kept within the limits of the
truth. But the restraints which have been usual among modern gentlemen
in debate, especially the modern English gentlemen of the last century,
were not regarded as essential to the dignity of the highest Greek court
oration, and that was probably because the jury was composed of the
middle and lower classes who were not shocked by any want of refinement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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