[5] However, we should not on this account neglect the charm and power of eloquence and ascribe everything to virtue, but, considering oratory to be, not the creator of persuasion but certainly its coworker, we should correct Menander’s line,
for these sayings ought perhaps to be granted as a refuge to Alcamenes, Nesiotes, Ictinus,
7
and all artisans and craftsmen if they take an oath that they are no speakers; as once at Athens, when two architects were being questioned with a view to a public work, one of them, a wheedling and elegant speaker, moved the people by declaiming a prepared speech about the construction of it, but the other, who was a better architect but lacked the power of speech, came forward and said:
Men of Athens, what he has said, I will do. For, as Sophocles says,
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only those are servants of the goddess of artistry who
on the anvil with a heavy hammer and with blows work the yielding and inanimate material of their art. But the spokesman for Athena of the City and Themis of Counsel,
The speaker’s nature, not his speech, persuades,
1
for both his nature and his speech do so; unless, indeed, one is to affirm that just as the helmsman, not the tiller, steers the ship, and the rider, not the rein, turns the horse, so political virtue, employing, not speech, but the speaker’s character as tiller or rein, sways a State, laying hold of it and directing it, as it were, from the stern, which is, in fact, as Plato says,
2
the easiest way of turning an animal about. For those great and, as Homer calls them,
Zeus-descended kings pad themselves out with purple robes and sceptres and guards and divine oracles, and although they enslaved the multitude by their grandeur, as if they were superior beings, they wished nevertheless to be
speakers of words and they did not neglect the charm of speech,
Nor the assemblies in which men make themselves greatly distinguished,
3
and they worshipped not only Zeus of the Council, Ares Enyalius, and Athena of War, but they invoked also Calliopê,
who accompanies reverend monarchs,
4
softening by persuasion and overcoming by charms the fierce and violent spirit of the people. How, then, is it possible that a private person of ordinary costume and mien who wishes to lead a State may gain power and rule the multitude unless he possesses persuasion and attractive speech? Now the pilots of ships employ others to give orders to the rowers, but the statesman needs to have in himself the mind that steers and also in himself the speech that gives orders, that he may not require some other man’s voice and be obliged to say, as Iphicrates did when defeated through the eloquence of Aristophon’s orators,
My opponents’ actor is better, but superior my play, and may not often need those lines of Euripides,
Oh that the seed of wretched men were mute,
5
and
Ah, would that deeds of men possessed a voice,
That clever speakers might become as naught
6
;
She who dismisses assemblies of men and who also convenes them,
9
employing speech as his only instrument, moulding and adapting some things and softening and smoothing off those which are hindrances to his work, such as would be knots in wood or flaws in iron,
10
is an ornament to the city. For this reason the government in Pericles’ time was
in name, as Thucydides says,
11
a democracy, but in fact the rule of the foremost man, because of his power of speech. For Cimon also was a good man, as were Ephialtes and Thucydides, but when the last named was asked by Archidamus King of the Spartans whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler, he replied,
Nobody can tell; for whenever I throw him in wrestling, he says he was not thrown and wins by persuading the onlookers. And this brought not only reputation to Pericles but safety to the State; for while it was swayed by him it preserved its existing prosperity and refrained from foreign entanglements. But Nicias, whose policy was the same, but who lacked such power of persuasion and tried to rein in the people with speech as easy as a snaffle, could not restrain or master it, but against his will went off to Sicily on its back and together with it came a cropper. The wolf, they say, cannot be held by the ears; but one must lead a people or a State chiefly by the ears, not, as some do who have no practice in speaking and seek uncultured and inartistic holds upon the people, pulling them by the belly by means of banquets or gifts of money or arranging ballet-dances or gladiatorial shows, by which they lead the common people or rather curry favour with them, tor leadership of a people is leadership of those who are persuaded by speech; but enticing the mob by such means as have just been mentioned is exactly like catching and herding irrational beasts. Praecepta gerendae reipublicae. Plutarch. Harold North Fowler (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1936.
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