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Isaeos: Style

The judgement of Dionysios

AT the conclusion of his essay on Isaeos¹, Dionysios explains the principle of selection which has guided him in this and in the two other criticisms which are properly its companions, the essays on Lysias and Isokrates. He has chosen men who are not merely interesting in themselves but who have a certain typical significance. Lysias is the representative of those who cultivate terse, closelyreasoned discourse with a view to real contests, deliberative or forensic; and, having made a study of Lysias, he has felt himself exempted from discussing in detail the austere Antiphon, the frigid, inane and ungraceful Polykrates, the correct and subtle Thrasymachos, who, though inventive and forcible, is still a merely scholastic writer, the artificial Kritias and Zoilos, to whom, in different ways, the same general observation would apply. Isokrates, again, stands for all who have succeeded in the poetical, the elevated and stately manner; and, in like sort, absolves the critic from discussing Gorgias, ‘who lapses from moderation and is everywhere childish’; Alkidamas, his pupil, who is ‘somewhat coarse’; Theodoros of Byzantium, whose technical inaccuracies are not adequately compensated by ability, deliberative or forensic, and who, moreover, is antiquated; Anaximenes of Lampsakos, who aims at completeness, who would fain stand foursquare to rivalries from every quarter, but who, in every kind, is weak and devoid of persuasive charm; or, lastly, those contemporary imitators of Isokrates, in regard to expression, who are confessedly his inferiors, such as Theodektes, Naukrates, Philistos, Kephisodoros, Ephoros, Theopompos. But what or whom does Isaeos represent except himself? Might not he, if any man, he, an exclusively forensic writer, and that in the ‘plain’ manner, he, the close student and direct imitator of Lysias, have been taken as characterised when Lysias had been criticised? This is the answer of Dionysios:—‘As ² to the third—Isaeos—if anyone were to ask me why I added him (to Lysias and Isokrates), being, as he is, an imitator of Lysias, I should assign this reason;—Because I think that the oratorical power ( δεινὄτης) of Demosthenes—power which everyone deems to have reached an incomparable perfection— took its seeds and its beginnings from Isaeos³.’⁴

The significance of Isaeos, when looked at closely, will prove to be something more independent and substantive than this judgment seems to make it. But here, at least, are two cardinal points for an attempt to estimate the place of Isaeos in the development of Attic oratory. We must endeavour to determine, first, his relation to Lysias; secondly, his relation to Demosthenes.

Isaeos compared with Lysias

A comparison of Isaeos with Lysias may begin in the province of expression, with its two departments of diction and composition, and thence pass to the province of subject-matter.

Diction.

As regards diction, the resemblance is close. Isaeos, emulous of that persuasive ‘plainness’ ( ἀφέλεια) in which Lysias was so consummate an artist, takes the first step towards attaining it by imitating Lysias in the correctness, the conciseness, the simplicity of his language. When some errors of the manuscripts have been amended⁵, few blemishes remain discernible in the purity both of grammar and of idiom with which Isaeos writes Attic⁶. The true exceptions to his conciseness are equally rare⁷; and, if anyone would see how remote is Isaeos from a really inartistic diffuseness, he need only compare the oration On the Estate of Hagnias with two speeches, one of them concerning the same inheritance, which have wrongly been ascribed to Demosthenes—the speech Against Makartatos and the speech Against Olympiodoros⁸. In the combination of brevity with clearness, Isaeos stands, indeed, next to Lysias. In the avoidance of rare or poetical expressions, of tropes, of novel compounds, or of phrases akin to comedy, the nearest rival of Lysias is Isokrates; but Isaeos follows at no long interval⁹. Lastly, the diction of Isaeos, like that of Lysias, has vividness— ἐνάργεια—aptitude for ‘bringing under the senses what is narrated’¹⁰. It is when we turn from diction to composition, from the choice of words to the way of putting them together, that the marked unlikeness begins.

Composition.

Lysias, as we have seen, had exchanged the rigid monotony of the old periodic writing for a manner better suited to real contests, for a style more flexible and more various, in which the periods are relieved by sentences not periodic, and the proportion borne by one element to the other is determined by the scale of the subject. Lysias was, however, fond of antithesis; and the result is that, while his composition as a whole has variety, the structure of his periods themselves is apt to be too stiff and uniform¹¹. Now Isaeos is exempt from this desire of formal antithesis, and, as a consequence, from this rigidity. His non-periodic passages have much of the old ‘running’ style; the use of τε in linking clause to clause is archaic¹²; and the pursuit of free movement is occasionally carried even to an ungraceful negligence¹³. Yet, on the whole, the composition of Isaeos is mainly distinguished from that of Lysias by the stamp of art. The composition of Isaeos tends to keep the hearer's mind at strain by a continual sense, not merely of earnestness, but of trained and confident skill; it cannot be quite content to forego the advantage resigned by Demosthenes and the great deliberative speakers —of seeming comparatively artless; at the same time, its own eager strength renders it profoundly incapable of suppressing tones which are militant and aggressive. It is important to see clearly the general distinction between the two orators;—that, while Lysias is secure in a modest art of his own, Isaeos is halting between this indirect art, in which he is too sophisticated and morally not fine enough really to excel, and the direct, masterly art of eloquence to which he has not perfectly attained.

Proems of Lysias and Isaeos compared.

Good illustrations are afforded by those ‘proems,’ or openings, of Lysian and Isaean speeches which Dionysios has compared¹⁴. In the speech of Lysias ‘For Pherenikos¹⁵,’ an Athenian citizen thus prefaces his defence of his Theban friend:—

‘I think, judges, I must first tell you of my ¹⁶ friendship with Pherenikos, lest some of you should wonder why I, who have never been any man's advoeate before, am his now. His father Kephisodotos was my friend, judges; and when we were exiles at Thebes I stayed with him—I, and any other Athenian who would; and many were the good offices, public and private, that we received from him before we came home. Well, when he and his son had the like fortune, and came to Athens banished men, I thought that I owed them the fullest recompense, and made them so thoroughly at home in my house that no one coming in could have told, unless he knew before, whether it belonged to them or to me. Pherenikos knows as well as other people, judges, that there are plenty of better speakers than I, and better experts in affairs of this kind; but still he thinks that my close friendship is the best thing he can trust to. So, when he appeals to me and asks me to give him my honest help, I think it would be a shame to let him be deprived, if I can help it, of what Androkleides gave him.’

Now take the opening of a speech by Isaeos¹⁷. The speaker, Xenokles, is asserting the liberty of a freedman named Eumathes whom the heirs of his former master claimed as a slave:—

‘Once, judges, on a former occasion, I proved ¹⁸ useful to Eumathes the defendant; and, on this, I shall be justified in aiding you, as best I can, to rescue him. Allow me, however, to say a few words to guard against any of you fancying that it is in a petulant spirit, or in any mood of aggression, that I have meddled with his concerns. When I was trierarch in the archonship of Kephisodoros, and tidings came to my kinsfolk that I had been killed in the sea fight,—property of mine being then in the hands of Eumathes,—he sent for my relations and friends, produced the property which I had entrusted to him, and restored the whole amount correctly and honestly. When I returned in safety, I therefore became still more intimate with him; and, when he proposed to establish a bank, I made him a farther advance. When, subsequently, Dionysios claimed him, I vindicated his freedom, knowing that he had been made free in a lawcourt by Epigenes.’

Lysias wrote a defence¹⁹ for a guardian whom his wards had accused of abusing the trust:—

‘It is not enough, judges, for guardians to have ²⁰ all the trouble they have from their office, but, for keeping their friends’ properties together, they are vexatiously accused by the orphans in many cases; and such is my case now. I was appointed trustee, judges, of the estate of Hippokrates, I managed the property till the sons came of age, I handed over to them the money which had been left in my keeping, and now they bring a vexatious and unjust law-suit against me.’

Isaeos, too, wrote a defence for a guardian against his ward:—

‘I could have wished, judges, that the plaintiff's ²¹ tendencies, where money is concerned, had not been so discreditable as to engage him in designs on the property of others and in law-suits such as the present. With better reason still might I have wished that my own nephew, the master of a patrimony ample enough for the discharge of public services, a patrimony of which you placed him in possession, had looked after his own fortune instead of grasping at mine. Thrift might have given him a better name with all men; and a larger liberality would have made him a better citizen for you. Now, however, as he has squandered, mortgaged, disgracefully and miserably wrecked his own property, and trusting to cabals and clap-trap, has assailed mine, there is nothing for it, I suppose—however much one may deplore such a character in a relation—but to meet his charges or his irrelevant slanders with the most energetic reply that I can address to you.’

Lysias supplied a defence²² to a young Athenian who had lately succeeded to his paternal estate, and who was sued by one Archebiades for a debt alleged to have been contracted by the defendant's father:—

‘As soon as Archebiades brought this action ²³ against me, judges, I went to him, represented that I was young, unskilled in such affairs, and not at all desirous of entering a law-court. ‘I appeal to you, then,’ I said, ‘not to make capital out of my inexperience, but to take my friends and your own into council and explain to them how the debt arose. If they think your story true, you shall have no more trouble, you shall get your money and go your way. You ought, however, to give the full and complete story,—since the transaction was before my time,—in order that we may learn any facts that we do not know before we discuss your case, and so determine, if possible, whether you are making a dishonest attempt on my property, or are trying to get back your own.’ This was my challenge;—but he would never consent to have a meeting, or to talk over his claims, or refer them to arbitration, until you enacted the law concerning arbitrators.’

Isaeos wrote a speech for a man who claimed from his demesmen a farm which he had pledged to them; the speaker is supposed to be young and untrained ( ἰδιώτης); and he begins thus:—

‘I should have wished, judges, if possible, not ²⁴ to be injured by any of my fellowcitizens—or, at least, to have found adversaries with whom my controversy would have caused me less disquietude. But now I am in a very painful situation; I am wronged by the men of my own deme, whom I can scarcely allow to rob me, yet with whom it is distressing to quarrel, seeing that our common rites must be celebrated in their society. It is hard, of course, to hold one's own against a multitude; numbers are no small help to plausibility; nevertheless, as I felt confident in my case, though a host of trying circumstances beset me, I resolved that I would not shrink from the endeavour to obtain my rights by your aid. I ask you, then, to be indulgent if, youthful as I am, I have ventured to address a court. It is through the fault of those who wrong me that I am compelled to take a part so alien from my character. But I will attempt to set the case before you from the outset, and in the fewest words.’

Êthos in Isaeos.

These examples will illustrate what it is needful to see clearly—that, in matter of expression, the difference between Lysias and Isaeos is one, not of diction, but of composition. They will always show how far, and in what sense, Isaeos sacrifices êthos to his more trenchant and metallic emphasis: it is the portrayal of the ingenuous youth or the plain man, the ἰδιώτης, that is damaged in point of art. So far from its being true that êthos is wanting in the speeches of Isaeos, there is perhaps only one of them—the third—in which it is not an effective element; and, in the third speech, the reason of its absence is simple—there is no room for it: all is argument. In the moral persuasion of vigorous insistance, of reasoned remonstrance, or of just indignation, Isaeos is at least equal to Lysias. It is in the attraction of a guileless and gracious simplicity that he is inferior. Where Lysias would have said, It is shameful, Isaeos says, It is absurd²⁵ .

His use of Figures.

Mention must be made once more of the technical distinction between ‘figures of language’ and ‘figures of thought’. A ‘figure of language’ is a combination of words for the artificial expression of an idea—as by antithesis. The object of such a figure is rhetorical ornament; and, if the form of expression is changed, the figure of language is destroyed²⁶. A ‘figure of thought’ consists in the suggestion of an idea which is itself artificial, having for its object, not ornament, but êthos or pathos— moral persuasion or the excitement of emotion²⁷. If the speaker prefaces a statement by asking the question which he is himself about to answer: if he feigns perplexity for the sake of giving the greater effect to his own solution: if, instead of relating what other persons have said, he introduces those persons as speaking with their own mouths: if he imagines his adversaries as raising an objection which he goes on to refute—these and the like devices are ‘figures of thought’. Unlike the figures of language, these figures of thought are independent of any form of words; the form of words may be changed without affecting them. Their general tendency is to give animation. The elder school of Attic oratory was too grave and too stately to admit this animation; Antiphon, who uses the figures of language sparingly, uses the figures of thought hardly ever²⁸. That Andokides uses the figures of thought so much, is a strong mark of his comparative modernism and of his detachment from the art of his day²⁹. Lysias, the founder of a style free from the old rigour, had a reason of his own for still using the figures of thought with moderation,— namely, because they are too suggestive of thrust and parry, and, though they may serve êthos, tend to mar the special êthos at which he chiefly aimed, since they present the speaker too much as a combatant. Isaeos, while still desirous of a persuasive plainness, is also bent on exerting the essential vigour of his art. He has no longer, then, the same motive as Lysias for declining aids to vivacity or even vehemence; and accordingly—while he usually avoids the figures of language³⁰—he uses the figures of thought³¹ with a freedom which brings him decidedly nearer than any of his predecessors to the practice of their greatest master³², Demosthenes. When Photios says that Isaeos ‘set the example of using figures’, πρῶτος σχηματίζειν ἤρξατο—a statement strange at first sight in reference to one who came after Isokrates—this, it can hardly be doubted, is the meaning³³.

³⁴

It remains to notice one minor trait of the Isaean composition which is not without historical interest. Isokrates, as we saw, studiously shuns allowing a vowel at the end of one word to be followed by a vowel at the beginning of the next³⁵. The fashion thus set seems gradually to have found a modified acceptance in contemporary or later prose. In the earliest speech of Isaeos—the fifth—there is no trace of it: and in seven others (II., III., IV., VI., IX., X., XII.) there is very little. On the other hand, the avoidance of hiatus is marked in VIII. (375 B. C.), XI. (359 B. C.), VII. (353 B. C.), and I., as well as in two of the longer fragments³⁶; though it is nowhere so systematic as with Isokrates³⁷.

Treatment of Subject-matter.

That divergence of Isaeos from Lysias which thus widens at each step from the starting point of a common diction is found complete when we turn from the formal to the real side of his work. It is in the treatment of subject-matter that the distinctive art of Isaeos is fully manifested. Lysias adheres strictly to the simple fourfold partition—proem, narrative, proof, epilogue. Sometimes a narrative, properly so-called, may not be needed; sometimes the narrative may be in itself the proof; but, where the four parts are present, Lysias keeps them distinct and in their proper order³⁸. Isaeos shows the ³⁹ most daring and dexterous ingenuity, the most consummate generalship, in every novel adjustment or interfusion of these elements that can help the case in hand; his forces are moved with a rapidity and combined with an original skill which swiftly throws the stress of the assault precisely on the enemy's weakest point and assails it with blow upon blow. Everything varies with the occasion; nothing is managed by rule, yet all is done with art—art of which the artist is not the servant but the master⁴⁰.

Proem.

Sometimes there is an ordinary proem, much in the manner of Lysias, explaining the friendship of the speaker for the litigant⁴¹ or seeking to prepossess the court against the adversary⁴². Sometimes there is no proem, properly so called. Thus the third and ninth speeches open at once with the briefest possible statement of the case,—followed, in IX., by a sketch of what the speaker will go on to prove ( πρόθεσις, § 1),—in III., by a preliminary argument ( προκατασκευή, §§ 1—6). The same sort of preliminary argument forms the opening of Or. v., §§ 1—4; and immediately follows the recitation of laws which introduces Or. XI.⁴³ This bold abruptness is characteristic of Isaeos. The genuine forensic speeches of Demosthenes show not a single instance in which he ventured to dispense with a proem.

Narrative.

The narrative is sometimes short⁴⁴, and followed by a separate argument; more often it is a long and elaborate statement divided into sections, of which the proofs—from witnesses, from documents or from laws—are given, not collectively at the end, but section by section⁴⁵. The sixth speech, On the Estate of Philoktemon, is a good example. Here the adversaries (1) denied that the testator had adopted a son, (2) asserted that he had sons of his body; and there is a corresponding division of the narrative into two distinct parts (§§ 5—7, §§ 18—42), with the proofs subjoined. Will-cases would often, of course, involve such a long and intricate narrative; it would be difficult or impossible for the judges to follow the chapters of an argument detached from the corresponding chapters of facts; but Isaeos, in obeying a necessity, made it a virtue, and carried to a high perfection the combination of luminous recital with perspicuous reasoning. ‘Reading the narratives of Lysias,’ says Dionysios, ‘one would suppose that nothing was said artificially or insidiously, but everything in accordance with the dictates of nature and of truth,—forgetting that the imitation of nature was the chief task of his art. The narratives of Isaeos are apt to give the opposite sensation, and to make one fancy that nothing is spontaneous or unpremeditated, even when things are related as, in fact, they happened. All seems the result of artifice; all seems contrived to deceive, or to secure some sort of underhand advantage. Lysias will be believed even when he lies; Isaeos will not be heard without suspicion even when he tells the truth⁴⁶.’ Dionysios greatly over colours the contrast,—as he sometimes does through that solicitude for ‘the meanest capacity’ which belongs to his eager and genial interpretation; but the main point is clear—the consummate and victorious art which he finds in the narrative of Isaeos. Now here we may almost certainly recognise a practical lesson which Isaeos owed to Isokrates—whose teaching in the matter of expression had influenced him so little. The Aeginetikos is perhaps the earliest example of narrative interwoven with proof in the manner which Isaeos perfected⁴⁷.

Proof.

In regard to proof, whether massed or sectional, the characteristic difference between Isaeos and Lysias is fairly represented by the remark of the same critic, that Lysias uses enthymeme, Isaeos uses also epicheireme⁴⁸. By enthymeme, Aristotle meant a ⁴⁹ rhetorical syllogism: that is, a syllogism drawn, not from the premisses ( ἀρχαί) proper to any particular science—such, for instance, as medicine—but from propositions relating to contingent things in the sphere of human action⁵⁰, which are the common property of all discussion; propositions which he classifies as general ( εἰκότα) and particular ( σημεῖα); and accordingly defines an enthymeme as ‘a syllogism from probabilities and signs⁵¹.’ A misapprehension of Aristotle's meaning had, as early as the first century B.C., led to the conception of the enthymeme as not merely a syllogism of a particular subject-matter, but also as a syllogism of which one premiss is suppressed⁵². The term epicheireme was then brought in to denote a rhetorical syllogism which is stated in full—an ‘essay’ to deal thoroughly with the issue at stake⁵³. Dionysios means, then, that Lysias is content with a sketching style of proof, a proof which is not formally complete, whereas Isaeos, aiming at a precise development, goes through every step of his argument. In other phrases of Dionysios himself, Lysias proves ‘briefly’ and ‘generally,’—Isaeos, ‘at length,’ and ‘accurately’ ( διεξοδικῶς—ἀκριβῶς⁵⁴). The difference between ⁵⁵ epicheireme and enthymeme is well exemplified in the seventh speech. The question is whether Apollodoros, the testator, had really adopted the speaker. The speaker first proves the adoption by direct testimony, and then says that he will bring, further, some indirect testimony. At this stage, Lysias would probably have been content with an enthymeme to the following effect:—‘Thrasybulos, the nephew of the female claimant, has made no claim, though his right is better than hers.’ Isaeos, however, will be satisfied with nothing less than a systematic and rigorous demonstration. Eupolis had two daughters,—the claimant, and another, who has left a son. Now there is, indeed, a law which gives brother and sister equal claim to the estate of a brother. But, where the kinship is less near, men precede women. Hence, if the adoption is invalid, this daughter of Eupolis has no claim, while her nephew, Thrasybulos, has a right to all. But Thrasybulos has raised no claim. Presumably, therefore, he recognises the adoption as valid⁵⁶. Isaeos, as Sir William Jones well says, lays close siege to the understandings of the jury. His reasonings, generally based on positive law, are constraining even when they are not persuasive. Often, again, an argument is founded on the feeling or conduct of the testator towards the speaker and the adversary respectively⁵⁷: on the conduct of the adversary, as being inconsistent with his assumption⁵⁸: on the services rendered by the speaker's client to the deceased⁵⁹ or to the State⁶⁰: on the demerits of the adversary as regards general character⁶¹, on his omission to perform public services⁶², or on his anxiety to obtain the estate while he is content that the testator's house should be left desolate⁶³. The example which the Greek critic selects is, for us, the only considerable specimen of the orator's work in a cause not testamentary⁶⁴. Euphiletos had been struck off the list of his deme on the ground that he was not a trueborn citizen, and has appealed to a jury:—

Example: For Euphiletos

‘You have now heard, judges, not only our ⁶⁵ evidence but the testimony of all the kinsfolk that Euphiletos the plaintiff is our brother. Consider, first, what motive our father could have had for telling an untruth, or for adopting this man if he had not been his son. You will find that all who act thus are constrained either by the want of trueborn sons or by poverty, hoping for benefits from the persons who by their means have become Athenians. Neither condition applies to our father. He has, in us, two legitimate sons, so that childlessness could not have prompted the adoption. Nor, again, did he look to Euphiletos for maintenance or wealth; he has substance enough; further, it has been deposed before you that he maintained the plaintiff from infancy, educated him, enrolled him in his clan —and these are no light expenses. Our father, then, was not likely, judges, to attempt anything so unjust when it could do him no good. Nor, again, will I be suspected of such madness as bearing false witness for the plaintiff in order to have my patrimony divided among a larger number. Hereafter, of course, I could not for a moment dispute the relationship; no one of you would endure the sound of my voice, if I, who now, standing in peril of the law, testify that he is our brother, should be found contradicting that statement. The probability is, judges, that true testimony has been borne, not only by us, but by the other kinsmen too. Reflect, in the first place, that the husbands of our sisters would never have perjured themselves in the cause of the plaintiff: his mother was the stepmother of our sisters, and somehow stepmothers and the daughters of a former marriage are wont to disagree: so that, if the plaintiff had been our stepmother's son by another than our father, our sisters, judges, would never have allowed their husbands to be witnesses. Again:—our maternal uncle, being, of course, no relation of the plaintiff, would not have gratified the plaintiff's mother by making a false deposition fraught with the manifest injury to us involved in our adoption of a stranger as our brother. Further, judges, how could any of you impute perjury to Demaratos, who stands there, or to Hegesippos, or Nikostratos—men whose whole lives will show a stainless record, and who, being our intimate friends and knowing us all, have severally testified their kinship with Euphiletos?

‘I should be glad, then, to learn from the most respected of our adversaries whether he could establish his Athenian citizenship by any other proofs than those which we have brought for Euphiletos. For my part, I do not think he could do more than show that both his parents are Athenians, and adduce the testimony of his relatives to the truth of that assertion. Then again, judges, supposing our adversaries were in peril, they would expect you to believe their friends rather than their accusers; as it is, though we have all that testimony on our side, shall they require you to put faith in their own story rather than in Euphiletos, in me and my brother, in our clansmen, in our entire family? Moreover, the adversaries are acting from private enmity, without personal risk to one of their number; we, who give our evidence, stand, one and all, within the peril of the law.

‘In addition to these testimonies, judges, the mother of Euphiletos, whom the adversaries allow to be an Athenian, was willing to take an oath before the arbitrator at the Delphinion that she and our father are the parents of Euphiletos; and who should know better? Then our father, judges, who ought to be the next best authority, was and is willing to swear that Euphiletos is his son by his wedded Athenian wife. If this is not enough, judges, I was thirteen years old, as I said before, when Euphiletos was born, and I am ready to swear that Euphiletos is the son of my father. Justly then, judges, might you deem our oaths more trustworthy than the adversaries' assertions; we are willing to make oath on a matter of which we have accurate knowledge, while they retail hearsay from the plaintiff's ill-wishers, or inventions of their own. We, moreover, bring our kinsmen as witnesses before you as before the arbitrators,—witnesses who have a claim to be believed; while, since Euphiletos brought his first suit against the corporation and its demarch now deceased, the adversaries have failed to find any evidence that he is not my father's son, though the case was before the arbitrator for two years. To the conductors of the arbitration these facts afforded the strongest presumption of falsehood, and both of them decided against the adversaries.—(Read the evidence of the former award.)—You have heard that the former arbitration went against them. I claim, judges, that just as the adversaries would have urged an award favourable to themselves in evidence of Euphiletos not being the son of Hegesippos, so the opposite result should now be testimony to the truth of our story, since they were adjudged guilty of having erased the name of Euphiletos, an Athenian citizen, after it had been duly registered. That, then, Euphiletos is our brother and your citizen, and that he has been subjected by the conspirators in his deme to injurious and outrageous treatment, sufficient proof, judges, has, I think, been laid before you.’

Iteration in argument.

A striking trait of Isaeos in the province of argument is iteration; and the preference of emphasis to form which this implies is worth notice as suggesting how the practical view of oratory was beginning to prevail over the artistic. Sometimes the repetition is verbal—an indignant question or phrase occurs again and again, where Isokrates would have abstained from using it twice⁶⁶. More often, it is an argument or a statement which the speaker aims at impressing on the hearers by urging it in a series of different forms and connexions⁶⁷. Or even a document, cited at the outset, is read a second time, as if to make the jury realise more vividly that a circle of proof has been completed⁶⁸.

Epilogue.

The epilogue in Isaeos is usually a brief recapitulation, often concluding with an appeal in which the judges are urged to remember their duty to the dead⁶⁹, whose house must not be left without some one who can make offerings at the grave: or there is a prayer for indulgence⁷⁰ on account of inexperience,— though this is sometimes, and more naturally, placed in the introduction⁷¹. The third speech ends no less abruptly than it opens—by the speaker calling on the clerk of the court to read a deposition; the eighth has the like ending, with this further peculiarity, that the testimony called is to a fact stated in the epilogue. A remark which applies to all the work of Isaeos applies especially to the epilogue; Isaeos represents the emotions more generically⁷² than Lysias,—that is, with less attention to a special or personal propriety.

Isaeos and Lysias compared to schools of painting.

Dionysios sums up the relation of Isaeos to Lysias in one of those illustrations which he loves to draw from painting or sculpture. ‘There are some old pictures, simply wrought as to colouring, with no variety of tints, but accurate in drawing, and thereby delightful; while the later paintings are inferior in drawing, but more elaborate, with variety of light and shade, and derive their effectiveness from the multitude of their hues⁷³.’ Lysias is compared with such correct and conscientious draughtsmen as Polygnotos and Aglaophon; Isaeos with such subtle chiaroscurists or colourists as Zeuxis and Parrhasios⁷⁴. The estimate agrees substantially with the judgment of Hermogenes⁷⁵,— delivered in his own technical dialect:—‘In Isaeos, ⁷⁶ besides the other things which constitute Political Oratory in the proper sense⁷⁷ (i.e. Forensic and Deliberative speaking), the element of fiery earnestness⁷⁸ is large,—bringing him near, indeed, to the noblest type of civil eloquence. His finish, again, is consummate beyond the measure of Lysias. Complete, too, is his skill in amplifying, and in the other constituents of grandeur⁷⁹, especially in a certain striking vigour; so that, in these respects, though he is not a little inferior to Demosthenes, he is far superior to Lysias. That power which is shown in method is considerable in Isaeos,—but less than in Lysias.’ The last remark might seem disputable; for, as Dionysios truly says⁸⁰, Isaeos greatly excels Lysias in arrangement ( οἰκονομία): by ‘method,’ however, Hermogenes means the faculty of seizing ‘the proper moment⁸¹’ for each oratorical artifice; and his estimate, therefore, amounts to this—that Isaeos, compared with Lysias, is superior in power, but inferior in tact. The result, obtained by too rigid and mechanical a process, is incomplete; but it is interesting for its careful and respectful estimate of an orator whom (with the great exception of Dionysios) the criticism of the Roman age neglected⁸²; and it is not, so far as it goes, incorrect.

Isaeos and Lysias— Summary.

In diction, Isaeos has, then, like Lysias, purity, conciseness, clearness, simplicity and vividness; in composition, while still aiming at ‘plainness,’ he uses, on the whole, a more open and more vigorous art, and has, if not less ethical power, less of ethical charm; he abstains, like Lysias, from the more elaborate figures of language, but uses far more largely the figures of thought: in regard to subject-matter, his arrangement is not, like that of Lysias, uniform, but varies with each case, and is especially marked by the frequent interfusion of proof with narrative, and by the completeness with which the proof is worked out.

Isaeos and Demosthenes.

Now let us ask what is the meaning of that statement—so brief, so general, yet so strikingly emphatic—in which Dionysios embodies his reason for regarding the work of Isaeos, not as a mere result of Lysias, but as possessing a substantive and permanent interest. In what sense is it true that the oratorical power of Demosthenes took its ‘seeds and beginnings’ from Isaeos? The first point to observe is that, besides such special limitations of this statement as Dionysios himself elsewhere furnishes, there is a general qualification which from the outset we must supply for ourselves. Like other ancient critics ⁸³ less excellent in detail than he, Dionysios tends to test the criticism of oratory too much on literary grounds. To one who reads Lysias, Isaeos and Demosthenes successively, it must be manifest that, in certain important respects of literary development, Isaeos stands between the other two. This was the sense to which Dionysios—reading the orators, three centuries after they spoke, as literature—has given expression in a phrase of which the emphasis is exaggerated by the vagueness; but of which it need not, perhaps, be very difficult to define the proper bearing.

Careers of Isaeos and Demosthenes.

Isaeos was, through life, a professional writer of speeches for the lawcourts, and this, so far as appears, almost exclusively in private causes. Demosthenes, after the lawsuit with his guardians, sought to repair the fortunes which they had brought low by working in the calling which such men as Antiphon, Lysias and Isaeos had followed before him. A host of private speeches, not his, are given to him in the collection of Kallimachos. But, to take those only of which the genuineness is tolerably certain, we have proof that he wrote for private causes from 361 to ⁸⁴ 345 B.C. After the two speeches Against Aphobos in 363 and the two Against Onetor in 362, we have, probably in 361, the speech Against Spudias (XLI.) and the speech Against Kallikles (LV.); in 356 (probably) the speech Against Konon (LIV.); in 352, the speech For Phormio (XXXVI.); in 350, the speech Against Boeotos concerning the Name (XXXIX.); in 345, the speech Against Pantaenetos (XXXVII.), and probably the speech Against Nausimachos (XXXVIII.)⁸⁵. But, meanwhile, he had another occupation, a higher, and one which, for him, made a stepping-stone to the highest. During the years 355—350 B.C. he was concerned with four public causes—Against ⁸⁶ Androtion, Against Leptines, Against Timokrates, Against Aristokrates,—the object in each case being to obtain the repeal of a new decree or law which had been carried by corrupt influences and which was dangerous to the public interests. Each of these four speeches is at once an interpretation of positive right and a vindication of political morality —a protest against the civic apathy which was suffering the resources of the State to be crippled, its powers to be abused for personal ends, its safeguards against foreign foes to be broken down. The same five years saw Demosthenes enter on that ⁸⁷ direct participation in public life for which this concernment with public causes formed a preparation; his speech On the Navy Boards was delivered in 354, the First Philippic in 351. Thus, while continuing to exercise the profession of Isaeos, Demosthenes had already passed through a second phase of activity, and had even made trial of that crowning sphere in which the great work of his life was to be done. Almost from the first, therefore, Demosthenes ⁸⁸ exerted his force under more liberal conditions than those prescribed by the narrow scope of the writer for private causes; almost from the first his natural intensity was free to ally itself with the oratorical bent of the age, and, instead of refining on the art which hides itself, to wield the art which triumphs and commands. A comparison of the two orators cannot reach far; but, within its limits, it will serve to warn us against doing wrong to either.

Similarities between Demosthenes and Isaeos

As regards composition, the likeness consists in ⁸⁹ adaptation to real contests by the blending of terse, vigorous, and not too formal periods with passages of more lax and fluent ease⁹⁰; in vividness of presentment⁹¹; and in that dramatic vivacity which is given by rhetorical question, by irony, and, in general, by the ‘figures of thought⁹².’ As regards treatment of ⁹³ subject-matter, Demosthenes has borrowed the versatile arrangement of Isaeos; he shifts or interweaves the divisions according to the case; though his more temperate art nowhere copies his master in discarding the proem. That, however, in which the discipleship of Demosthenes to Isaeos is most surely and most strikingly seen is in his development and elaboration ⁹⁴ of systematic proof — depending sometimes on a chain of arguments, sometimes on a single proposition illustrated and confirmed from several points of view, but always enforced by keen logic and apt law⁹⁵. Closely connected with this is the most distinctive single trait which the younger man took from the elder, and which is the more noticeable because it is perhaps the chief Isaean lesson which Demosthenes was able to carry from the Forensic field into the Deliberative: what in Greek would be called τὸ ἐναγώνιον, and in English might be paraphrased as ‘the art of grappling.’

The art of grappling.

It was the secret of waging an oratorical contest, not, in the more stately manner of an elder school, as from contrary stages, but at close quarters, with the grip as of wrestlers, with the instance of pleaders who urge their case, point by point, on critics as exact as themselves, with the intensity of a prosecutor or prisoner, a plaintiff or defendant, who knows that the imminent award will be given by men whom the habit of listening to acute discussion has led to set their standard high, for whom the detection of sophistry has become a pastime and its punishment a luxury, and whose attention can be fixed only by a demonstration that the speaker is in earnest. Since the time when Kleon⁹⁶ described that keen and brilliant fencing in the ekklesia at which the majority of the citizens delighted to assist as at a spectacle, the fitness for such encounter had been becoming more and more important to deliberative oratory: but its peculiar sphere was forensic, and in that sphere Isaeos was its earliest master. As an example of the ‘agonistic’ quality of Isaeos—the new manner of strenuous and cogent assault—take this passage, in which the speaker is pressing home his argument⁹⁷:—“What, in the name ⁹⁸ of heaven, are the guarantees of credibility for statements? Are they not witnesses? And what are the guarantees of credibility for a witness? Are they not tortures? Yes: and on what ground are the adversaries to be disbelieved? Is it not because they shrink from our tests? Assuredly. You see, then, that I am urging this inquiry and bringing it to the touch of proof; the plaintiff is shifting them to a basis of slanders and hearsays—precisely the course that would be taken by a grasping adventurer. If he meant honestly, and was not trying to delude your judgments, obviously this was not the way for him to set to work: he ought to have given us figures and brought witnesses: he ought to have gone through each several item in the account, examining me thus—‘How many payments of wartax do your books show?’—‘So many.’—‘What sum was paid on each occasion?’—‘This.’—‘In accordance with what decrees?’—‘With these.’—‘Who received the money?’—‘Persons who are here to certify it.’— He ought to have examined the decrees, the amounts imposed, the amounts paid, the persons who collected them, and then, if all was satisfactory, he ought to have accepted my statement; or, if it was not, he ought now to have brought witnesses regarding any false item in the outlay which I charged to my wards' account.” It is the same kind of close and vehement insistance that gives their stamp to such passages as ⁹⁹ this in the Third Olynthiac¹⁰⁰: ‘What—do you mean a paid army?’ I shall be asked. Yes—and the same arrangement forthwith for all, Athenians, that each, getting his dividend from the State, may be what the State requires. Is peace possible? Then you are better at home, removed from the temptation to act dishonourably under the stress of want. Is there such a crisis as the present? Better to accept such allowances as I have described, and to be a soldier, as you ought, in your country's cause. Is any one of you beyond the military age? What he now gets by an anomaly, and without doing any good, let him receive under a regular system in return for supervising and managing necessary affairs. In a word—without taking away anything or adding anything, but simply by abolishing anomalies, I bring the city into order, I establish a uniform system of remuneration for service in the army, for service on juries, for general usefulness in accordance with the age of each citizen and the demands of each occasion.’ It is a peculiarity of Isaeos that he loves to make the epilogue, not an ¹⁰¹ appeal to feeling or to character, but the occasion for grappling with the adversary in a strict and final argument; there could scarcely be a better example of τὸ ἐναγώνιον than this ending of the speech On the Estate of Philoktemon: —

‘I ask you, then, judges,—in order that you may not be deceived,—to take note of the affidavit on which you have to give the verdict. Insist that his defence, like our plaint, shall be relevant to that affidavit. He has stated that Philoktemon did not give or bequeath the estate to Chaerestratos; this has been proved to be a falsehood: he gave and bequeathed it, and those who were present are the witnesses. What more? He says that Philoktemon died childless. Now, in what sense was he ‘childless’ who had left his nephew as his adopted son and heir, an heir to whom the law allows the succession just as to the issue of the body? The provision in the law is express—that if a son is born to a man who has already adopted a son, both sons shall share alike in the inheritance. Let the defendant prove then, as anyone of you would prove, that his clients are legitimate. Legitimacy is not demonstrated by stating the mother's name, but by a proof that the statement is true, supported by the evidence of the kinsfolk, of those who knew the woman to be Euktemon's wife, of the demesmen and of the clansmen, to these points:—whether they have heard, or are aware, that Euktemon ever discharged a public service on account of his wife's property: where, or among what tombs, she is buried; who saw Euktemon performing the rites at her grave; whither her sons still repair with offerings and libations for the dead; and what citizen or what servant of Euktemon has seen it. These things together will give us—not abusive language, but—a logical test. If you keep him to this, if you bid him give his proof in conformity with his affidavit, your verdict will be religious and lawful, and these men will get their rights.’ The First and ¹⁰² Second Speeches Against Onetor were written just at the time when the influence of Isaeos on Demosthenes was probably most direct and mature. They have no mark more specially Isaean than this, that both conclude, not, like the two earlier speeches Against Aphobos, with a peroration of the more ordinary type, but with a keen argument swiftly thrust home¹⁰³ .

Demosthenes essentially manifold.

Isaeos influenced Demosthenes directly and decisively in the forensic province, and, through this, in the deliberative also. But Demosthenes himself is manifold; it is his very distinction that he is of no one character, the exclusive disciple of no one master¹⁰⁴; he excels the elder ‘lofty’ school in clearness, the ‘plain’ school in nerve, in gravity, in penetrating and pungent force, the ‘middle’ school in variety, in symmetry, in felicity, in pathos,—above all, in true propriety and in effectual strength¹⁰⁵; taught by nature and practice, he saw that the crowds who flow together to festivals or schools demand another style than the audiences in a law-court or in the ekklesia; that, for the former, there is need of glitter and of entrancement; for the latter, of exposition and help; that too much pedantry is as little suited to epideictic speaking, as a style too diffuse or too florid to practical oratory¹⁰⁶. Sometimes, accordingly, he has slowly-moving and spacious periods; sometimes his periods are close and compact; sometimes he stings, sometimes he soothes, the mind of the listener, sometimes he appeals to êthos, sometimes to passion¹⁰⁷; in Deliberative Speeches, he makes most use of the ‘stately harmonies;’ in Forensic, of the ‘smooth;’ yet, here again, in differing measures according as it is a public or a private cause, and with this further discrimination, that simplicity and grace predominate in proem and narrative, dignity and more austere power in proof and epilogue¹⁰⁸. Even in that single field of private ¹⁰⁹ causes which Isaeos and Demosthenes share, Demosthenes proves the compass of his resources. The logical fineness of the two speeches Against Onetor, the moral dignity of the defence For Phormio, the vivid delineations of character in the speeches Against Pantaenetos and Konon, could have met in no other man of the age.

Place of Isaeos in Attic Oratory

Relatively to the history of Attic Oratory, it is, for us, the unique interest of Isaeos that he represents the final period of transition. His profession was to write speeches which others were to speak in the law-courts, and this almost wholly in private causes. He takes account, therefore, of the pattern first made clear by Lysias; he tries somewhat to make it seem as if the private person his client, and ¹¹⁰ not an expert, were speaking; he aims at plainness, ἀφέλεια. But, since the time of Lysias, the expert's art itself has been growing more complete, more confident, more irrepressible. By the side of the Lysian ‘plainness’ there has arisen, in its full strength, technical mastery, δεινότης,—no longer haughty, ¹¹¹ distrustful, self-secluding, as in the days of Antiphon, but now each day more frankly and fearlessly triumphant. If Isaeos had been an artist of genius, he would have made his choice, even if he had not widened his scope, and probably would have hastened by one generation the maturity of civil eloquence. But, confined almost wholly to private causes, he did not dare altogether to forsake the Lysian simplicity for which he had no real gift, or decisively to assume that open, energetic art towards which his inborn strength drew him. He hesitated: and he remains, therefore, an able compromise—the ¹¹² first advocate who was at once morally persuasive and logically powerful, without either entrancing by the grace of his ethical charm or constraining by the imperious brilliancy of his art; one from ¹¹³ whom Demosthenes learned the best technical lessons that Antiphon or Thucydides could teach, in a form, at once strict and animated, serviceable under conditions which they had not known; a contributor, by these means, to the success of Demosthenes both in the forensic and in other fields, but no more the author of his victories than he is the kindler of his enthusiasm: yet, for the modern world, not the ¹¹⁴ less, but the more, a man who speaks with his own voice and stands for his own work—the earliest master of forensic controversy.

The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos. Sir Richard C. Jebb. London. 1876.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by National Endowment for the Humanities.

Current edition Perseus

The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos (English) (The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, author. London: Macmillan, 1876.)

Notes on the current edition

The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos

1. Dionys. Isae. c. 19.

2. Distinction of Isaeos, according to Dionysios.

3. Dionys. Isae. 20, ὅτι μοι δοκεῖ τῆς Δημοσθένους δεινότητος, ἣν οὐθείς ἐστιν ὃς οὐ τελειοτάτην ἁπασῶν οἴεται γενέσθαι, τὰ σπέρματα καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς οὗτος ὁ ἀνὴρ παρασχεῖν. Cp. ib. c. 3, where he says that the composition of Isaeos, in respect of the power, the impressiveness, of its embellishment ( τῇ δεινότητι τῆς κατασκευῆς) ‘is in truth a fountain ( πηγή τις) of the faculty of Demosthenes.’

4. The estimate needs qualification.

5. I. § 1, βοηθεῖν τε τῷ πατρὶ τῷ ποιησαμένῳ με καὶ ἐμαυτῷ, where we should probably read βοηθεῖν τῷ τε. and so in VIII, § 1, οὗτυί τε τοῦ κλήρου λαγχάνουσιν ὡς ἐγγυτάτω γένους ὄντες, ἡμᾶς τε ὑβρίζουσιν. Similarly, in I. § 48, a false reading is καὶ νῦν μὲν ἐβούλετο ἡμᾶς, instead of καὶ νῦν ἐβ. ἡμᾶς μέν: in II. § 26, μὲν αὑτῷ for αὑτῷ μέν: in VI. § 18, Εὐκτήμων μὲν γὰρ ἐβίω ἔτη for Ἐ. γὰρ ἐβίω μὲν ἔτη, κ.τ.λ.—In VI. § 10, ἐπειδὴ δὲ προδιαμεμαρτύρηκεν ὡς υἱὸν εἶναι γνήσιον Εὐκτήμονος τοῦτον, Blass ( Att. Ber. II. 469) would read for ὡς υἱὸν εἶναι γνήσιον Ε. τοῦτον, υἱοὺς εἶναι γνησίους— τούσδε. In XI. § 10, ἡμεῖς δέ, ἐγὼ καὶ Στράτιος καὶ Στρατοκλῆς—παρεσκευάζοντο, the 1st pers. plur. is no bold change.Priscian XVIII. c. 25 says:— Attici ὅταν ἔλθῃ de futuro dicunt. Isaeus etiam de praeterito: ὅταν ἔλθῃ, εἰώθει παρ’ ἐκείνῳ κατάγεσθαι . Et iterum: ὅταν ἔλθω, παρ’ ἐκείνῳ κατηγόμην. Antiquiores tamen ὅτε ἔλθοι de praeterito dicunt. These impossible solecisms must have been mere blunders of the copyist for ὅτε ἔλθοι, ὅτε ἔλθοιμι.

6. One or two instances of incorrectness or inelegance may be noticed. (1) VII. § 36, ἐγὼ τοίνυν ἕν γε τῶν ὑπ’ ἐκείνου δοκιμασθέντων πεποίηκα: ‘I have done one at least of the things about which he had satisfied himself’—i. e., which he felt sure that I would do [the speaker had been saying that he had been approved by his actions, δεδοκιμασμένος, to the testator, as likely to do public services]. where we should have expected πιστευθέντων. (2) VIII. § 6, λόγων ἀκοῇ καὶ μαρτύρων—objective and subjective genitives harshly joined. (3) I. § 41, διαθήκας... ἀψευδεῖς ἀπέφηναν, καὶ οἱ μὲν τὸ παράπαν οὐ γενομένας, ἐνίων δ’ οὐκ ὀρθῶς βεβουλευμένων. (4) III. § 35, οὐ χαλεπὸν γνῶναι ὅτι φαίνεται περιφανῶς, κ.τ λ.

7. The clumsy wordiness of a few passages seems to come from the wish of ἀφέλεια: e.g. II. § 38, Βούλομαι ὑμῖν καὶ αὐτους τούτους μάρτυρας παρασχέσθαι, καὶ ἐμοὶ μαρτυροῦντας ἔργῳ καὶ οὐ λόγῳ, ἐξ ὧν ἔπραξαν αὐτοί, ὅτι ἐγὼ τἀληθῆ λέγω, cf. ib. § 18: VII. § 14, Ἀπολλοδώρῳ γὰρ ἦν υἱός, ὃν ἐκεῖνος καὶ ἤσκει καὶ δἰ ἐπιμελείας εἶχεν, ὥσπερ καὶ προσῆκον ἦν. On the other hand, Isaeos never repeats himself, as Lysias sometimes does, through the desire of parallelism.

8. XLIII. πρὸς Μακάρτατον: XLVIII. κατὰ Ὀλυμπιοδώρου βλάβης. See Schäfer, Dem. u. seine Zeit, III. Append. 5, 6, pp. 229—241: who thinks that they are by the same hand. The Hagnias of Isaeos and the Makartatos have to do with the same inheritance. Isaeos begins (XI. § 8) ‘Hagnias, Eubulides, Stratios (uncle of Hagnias), and myself, are sons of cousins’:—the pseudo-Demosthenes goes through the entire stemma of the Buselidae (§§ 19—21). Cf. Blass, II. 470.

9. A few exceptions may be noticed:—1. Rare or poetical expressions σχέτλιος (XI § 5), ἀναίνεσθαι (II. § 25), ὁ ἐν Ἅιδου (II. § 45): ἀποσυλᾶν (V. § 30): λυμαίνεσθαι (VI. 18). —2. Tropes: καταφυγὴ τῆς ἐρημίας καὶ παραψυχὴ τοῦ βίου, said of Adoption (II. § 13): βραβευτάς in sense of δικαστάς (IX. § 35) μαρτύρια, = μνημεῖα ἀρετῆς, V. § 41: δοκιμασία in general sense of ‘test’, VII. § 34, and so βάσανος, IX. § 29: παρανοίας αἱρεῖν, to convict (the dead) of folly, ib. § 36: ἵνα αὐτῶν ἐκκόψαιμι ταύτην τὴν ἱεροσυλίαν, ‘that I might radically frustrate this their sacrilege’ (i.e. this attempt to rob the dead, VIII. § 39): ἃ παρακαταθέμενος ὑμῖν, ‘deposited in your memories’ (XI § 32). 3. Novel compounds: καθιπποτρόφηκας, κατεζευγοτρόφηκας (V § 43): ὑποπαρωθῶν (VIII. § 38): καταπεπαιδεραστηκέναι (X. § 25)—4. Phrases akin to Comedy: ἐπὶ τὰ Νικοστράτου ᾄξαντες (IV. § 10): ἐν τοῖς λιθουργείοις κυλινδεῖται (VI. § 44): ὑποπεπτωκότες τῇ ἀνθρώπῳ, of legacy-hunters (VI. § 29): οὐκ ἐτόλμησε γρῦξαι (VIII § 27).

10. Vol. I. p. 172.

11. Vol. I. pp 166, 170.

12. e.g. II. § 11, VI. § 7, VII. § 39, VIII § 18.

13. See, e.g., VII § 5: τούτοις οὐσίαν ὁ πατὴρ κατέλιπε πολλήν, ὥστε καὶ λειτουργεῖν ἕκαστον ἀξοῦσθαι παρ’ ὑμῖν. ταύτην ἐκεῖνοι τρεῖς ὄντες ἐνείμαντο πρὸς ἀλλήλους. τούτων τῶν δύο τελευτησάντων, κ τ λ. VIII. § 7: καὶ ἐκείνην τε ἔτρεφε παρὰ τῆ γυναικὶ καὶ μετὰ τῶν ἐξ ἐκείνης παίδων, ἐκείνων τε ἔτι ζώντων. In the following places, the extreme abruptness has the air of an affectation: VI. § 3, Φιλοκτήμων γὰρ ό Κηφισιεὺς φίλος ἦν Χαιρεστράτῳ τουτωΐ δοὺς δὲ τὰ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ υἱὸν αὐτὸν ποιησάμενος ἐτελεύτησεν. IX. § 1, ἀδελφός μοι ἦν ὁμομήτριος, ὦ ἄνδρες, Ἀστύφιλος, οὗ ἐστιν ὁ κλῆρος ἀποδημήσας οὖν μετὰ τῶν ξἰς Μιτυλήνην στρατιωτῶν ἐτελεύτησεν: X. § 3, Ἀρίσταρχος γὰρ ἦν, ὦ ἄνδρες, Συπαλλήτιος. οὖτος ἔλαβε Ξεναινέτου Ἀχαρνέως θυγατέρα, κ.τ λ.

14. The three pairs of proems which follow are given by Dionysios De Isaeo, cc. 5—11, in this order.—(1) c. 5, Isaeos ‘For Eumathes,’ c. 6, Lysias ‘For Pherenikos’; c. 7, comments. (2) c. 8, Isaeos ‘Defence of a Guardian,’ Lysias ‘Against the sons of Hippokrates’; c. 9, comments. (3) c 10, Isaeos ‘Against the Demesmen,’ Lysias ‘Against Archebiades’; c. 11, comments.Speaking of Lysias and Isaeos, Sir W. Jones says in his Prefatory Discourse (XI.) that it is ‘almost impossible to convey in our language an adequate notion of the nice distinction between the different originals’; but this is too strong; and the ethical contrast in the specimens taken by Dionysios lessens the difficulty.

15. Vol. I. p. 312.

16. 1. Lysias, ‘For Pherenikos.’

17. For a notice of these and the two following fragments of Isaeos, see ch. XXI. ad finem.

18. Isaeos, ‘For Eumathes’

19. The speech ‘Against the sons of Hippokrates,’ vol. I. p. 313.

20. Lysias, ‘Against the sons of Hippokrates.

21. Isaeos, ‘Defence of a Guardian.’

22. The speech ‘Against Archebiades,’ vol. I. p. 314.

23. 3. Lysias, ‘Against Archebiades.’

24. Isaeos, ‘Against the Demesmen.’

25. VI. § 1, δεομένων τούτων καὶ συνεξέπλευσα καὶ συνεδυστύχησα καὶ ἑάλωμεν εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους. ἄτοπον δὴ εἰ ἐκεῖνα μὲν ὑπέμενον, νῦν δὲ οὐ πειρῴμην συνειπεῖν.

26. This is even the criterion taken by the rhetor Alexander Numenios ( flor. circ. 120 A.D. under Hadrian) in his treatise περὶ τῶν τῆς διανοίας καὶ τῆς λέξεως σχημάτων, c. 1 ( Rhet. Graec. vol. III. p. 10, Spengel).— τὸ μὲν τῆς λέξεως κινηθείσης τῆς συσχούσης τὸ σχῆμα ἀπόλλυται...τοῦ δὲ τῆς διανοίας σχήματος, κἂν τὰ ὀνόματα κινῇ τις, κἂν ἑτέροις ὀνόμασιν ἐξενέγκῃ τις, τὸ αὐτὸ σχῆμα μένει. He gives this instance:—the sentence, ἀλλ’ ἢ τούτους μεταπεμπτέον ἢ ἄλλην μὴ ἐλάττω στρατιὰν ἐπιπεμπτέον, the ‘figure of language’ (paronomasia) would be destroyed by the mere change of ἐπιπεμπτέον into ἀποσταλτέον.

27. Volkmann, die Rhet. der Griech. u. Rom, pp. 395, 416. For his whole analysis of the figures in both kinds, pp. 396—430.

28. Vol. I. p. 29.

29. ib. p. 99.

30. Such ‘figures of language’ as occur are chiefly—Antithesis, as I § 15, X. § 1,—with parison, V. § 39, —with parison and paromoion, V. § 44; cf. VII. § 44: anaphora ( ἀφείλετο δὲ τὴν Δημοκλέους γενομένην γυναῖκα, ἀφείλετο δὲ καὶ τὴν Κηφισοδότου μητέρα) V. § 9, VI. § 43, XI. § 9: asyndeton [unlike Lysias] VI. § 62, VII. § 41, XI. § 41: polysyndeton, VII. § 42.

31. e.g. II. 21. ἡδέως δ’ ἄν μοι δοκῶ τούτου πυθέσθαι τοῦ φάσκοντος εὖ φρονεῖν, τίνα ποιήσασθυι ἐχρῆν ἀπὸ τῶν συγγενῶν; πότερα τὸν υἱὸν τὸν τούτου; ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἂν αὐτῷ ἔδωκεν, κ.τ.λ. (‘hypophora’—suggested objection which the speaker solves); —so V. § 45, VII. § 33, XI. 25.—V. 13, πείθει Μενέξενον, τὸν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν τε καὶ ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ πράττοντα, ἃ ἐγὼ αἰσχυνόμενος ἀναγκάζομαι διὰ τὴν ἐκείνου πονηρίαν λέγειν,—τί ποιῆσαι (rhetorical question, ἐρώτησις); so VI. §§ 36, 63.—VI. § 53, πῶς ἄν τις περιφανέστερον ἐξελεγχθείη τὰ ψευδῆ μεμαρτυρηκὼς ἢ εἴ τις αὐτὸν ἔροιτο· Ἀνδρόκλεις, πῶς οἶσθα, κ.τ.λ. (prosopopoiïa): so VIII. § 24

32. Cic. Orator xxxix. § 136,

Sed sententiarum ornamenta [ τὰ τῆς διανοίας σχήματα] maiora sunt; quibus quia Demosthenes frequentissime utitur, sunt qui putent idcirco eius eloquentiam maxime esse laudabilem. Et vero nullus fere ab eo locus sine quadam conformatione sententiae dicitur

, &c.

33. Phot. cod. 263. After observing that it is hard to discern the work of Isaeos from that of Lysias, πλὴν κατά γε τοὺς σχηματισμούς, Photios adds— καὶ γὰρ πρῶτος Ἰσαῖος σχηματίζειν ἤρξατο καὶ τρέπειν ἐπὶ τὸ πολιτικὸν τὴν διάνοιαν. Spengel ( συναγωγὴ τεχνῶν, p. 181) explains the σχηματίζειν by that variety and subtlety in the distribution and arrangement of all the elements (including figures) of the spcech on which Dionysios dwells ( de Isae c 3), and which will be noticed presently. But this explanation, though ingenious, is strained. Photios rather means that Isaeos was the first who really used the σχήματα of civil oratory—the σχήματα διανοίας. This is exactly confirmed by the striking remark that Isaeos was the first who turned his mind ἐπὶ τὸ πολιτικόν. Blass ( Att. Ber. II. 465) seems to render the words of Photios:—‘He was the first to give his thought an artistic form ( σχηματίζειν διάνοιαν) and to dress it in tropes ( τρέπειν),:— quoting, for τρέπειν, Phot. cod. 259 (of Antiphon), μὴ κεχρῆσθαι τὸν ῥήτορα τοῖς κατὰ διάνοιαν σχήμασιν, ἀλλὰ κατευθὺ αὐτῳ καὶ ἀπλάστους τὰς νοήσεις ἐκφέρεσθαι, τροπὴν δὲ καὶ ἐνάλλαξιν οὔτε ζητῆσαι τὸν ἄνδρα. κ τ.λ. But surely σχηματίζειν does not govern διάνοιαν,—it is used absolutely; and τρέπειν means simply ‘to turn’.—As Blass notices, πολιτικὸς [add ἀγωνιστικὸς] λόγος is opposed by Aristeides to ἀφελής, ἁπλοῦς: Ars. Rh I. 1. Speng. Rh. Gr. II.

34. Hiatus.

35. Supra p 66.

36. Those of the Speech ‘Against the Demesmen’, and of the ‘Defence of a Guardian against his Wards’—1 and 2 of the Fragments noticed in Ch. XXI.

37. Oration I. is, on the whole, as careful as any in the avoidance of hiatus; yet, even there, in § 3 we read— εἴ τι ἡμῖν ἢ τῷ πατρὶ ἐγκαλεῖ τῷ ὑμετέρῳ, ἀπεκρίνατο.

38. Vol. I. pp. 179 f.

39. Variety of Arrangement.

40. The general characteristics of Isaeos, as compared with Lysias, in regard to treatment of subjectmatter, are bricfly noticed by Dionysios De Isae. c. 3: the special characteristics, in regard to (1) narrative, (2) proof, in cc. 14—18.

41. e.g. Or. IV. (Nikostratos) § 1; very brief: Or. VI. (Philoktemon) §§ 1—2: and the fragment For Eumathes.

42. e.g. Or. I. (Klconymos) §§ 2— 7: Or. VIII. (Kiron) §§ 1—5.

43. See, too, the fragment ‘Against Aristogeiton and Archippos’, ch. XXI. ad fin.

44. e.g. Or. X. (Aristarchos) §§ 4— 6. So it was (Dionys. Isae. 14) in the lost speeches Against Medon and Against Hagnotheos, and in that speech Against the Demesmen of which the proem remains.

45. e.g. Or. III. (Pyrrhos) §§ 1—56: Or. v. (Dikaeogenes) §§ 5—24: Or. VII. (Apollodoros) §§ 5—28. So it was (Dionys. Isae. 14) in the lost specches Against Hermon, and Against Eukleides, and in that speech For Euphiletos of which a large fragment remains.

46. Dionys. Isae. 4.

47. Cf. Dionys. De Isocr. c. 4: vol. I. p. 180. In the Aeginet. (vol. VI. p. 218) we have—(1) narrative, §§ 5—9: proof, §§ 10—15: (2) narrative, §§ 16—33: proof, §§ 34—46.

48. Dionys. Isae. 16, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἀποδεικτικοῖς διαλλάττειν ἂν δόξειεν Ἰσαῖος Λυσίου τῷ μὴ κατ’ ἐνθήμημά τι λέγειν ἀλλὰ καὶ κατ’ ἐπιχείρημα.

49. Enthymeme and Epicheireme.

50. See Arist. Rh. I. 1—3. Rhetoric, like Dialectic, deals with τὰ ἐνδεχόμενα ὔλλως ἔχειν. But, while Dialectic deals with all such things, Rhetoric deals only with a certain class of them, viz. τὰ βουλεύεσθαι εἰωθότα, τὰ πραττόμενα, things of which men can influence the course: in short, τὰ ἐνδεχόμενα ἄλλως ἔχειν, ἐφ’ ἡμῖν ὄντα.

51. Arist. An. Pr. II. 27, συλλογισμὸς ἐξ εἰκότων καὶ σημεἰων .

52. Quint. v. 10 § 3: this is what Juvenal means, Sat. VI. 449, by curtum enthymema. That the suppression of one premiss was not essential to Aristotle's conception of the Enthymeme, has been shown unanswerably by Sir W. Hamilton, Lectures on Logic, XX. vol. III. pp. 386 f. He observes: 1. That Aristotle, who regards the syllogism, not in relation to expression, but as an exclusively mental process ( An. Post. I. 10 § 7), would not have distinguished a class of syllogisms by a verbal accident: 2. That, having defined the enthymeme as a syllogism of a peculiar matter ( An. Pr. II. 27), he cannot have defined it by another difference (the suppression of a premiss) which has no analogy to the former. I would add: 3. That in Arist. Rh. I. 2, where the enthymeme is said to consist ἐξ ὀλίγων τε καὶ πολλάκις ἐλαττόνων ἢ ἐξ ὧν ὁ πρῶτος συλλογισμός, the πολλάκις can be explained on no other view. As to the interpolation ἀτελής in An. Pr. II. 27, see Sir W. Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy, pp. 153 f.

53. On the epicheireme, see Volkmann, die Rhetorik der Griechen und Romer (1872), pp. 153 f.—Sir W. Jones ( Prefatory Discourse, p. x) describes it with substantial correctness as ‘that oratorical syllogism where the premises are respectively proved by argument before the speaker draws his conclusion:’ but it was enough to constitute the epicheireme that the premisses should be stated. See Quint. v. 10 § 5, Propria eius appellatio et maxima in usu est posita certa quaedam sententiae comprehensio, quae ex tribus minimum partibus constat. Cicero rendered it by ratiocinatio, which Quintilian likes better than ratio or aggressio: he himself keeps epichirema.

54. Dionys. Isae. 16. The necessary amplitude of epicheirematic, as compared with enthymematic, proof, is well expressed by the phrase of Dionys. Dinarch. c. 6 (of Hypereides as compared with Lysias)— πιστοῦται δ’ οὐ κατ’ ἐνθύμημα μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ κατ’ ἐπιχείρημα πλατύνων .

55. Example: Or. VII.

56. Or. VII. §§ 18—21.

57. e.g. Or. I. (Kleonymos) §§ 30— 33: Or. III. (Pyrrhos) § 75: Or. VII. (Apollodoros) § 8: Or. VIII. (Kiron) § 18: Or. IX. (Astyphilos) §§ 16 f., 31.

58. e.g. Or. I. (Kleonymos) § 22: Or. II. (Menekles) § 39: Or. VI. (Philoktemon) § 46: Or. VIII. (Kiron) §§ 21 f.

59. To the deceased: e.g. Or. II. (Menekles) §§ 18, 36: Or. VII. (Apollodoros) § 37: Or. IX. (Astyphilos) § 27.

60. To the State: e.g. Or. VI. (Philoktemon) § 60: Or. VII. (Apollodoros) § 41: Or. VIII. (Kiron) §§ 35, 40 f.

61. e.g. Or. II. (Menekles) § 37, Or. IV. (Nikostratos) § 28, Or. VI. (Philoktemon) passim.

62. e.g. Or. v. (Dikaeogenes) §§ 35 f., 43: Or. VII. (Apollodoros) § 39.

63. e.g. Or. II. (Menekles) §§ 26, 37: Or. VII. (Apollodoros) §§ 31 f., 44.

64. On the fragment For Euphiletos—now ranked as Or. XII.—see ch. XXI.

65. Isaeos, ‘ For Euphiletos.’

66. See (e.g.) Or. III. (Pyrrhos) §§ 37, 39: and §§ 45, 49, 51.

67. Thus in Or. III.—the longest of all, and for this very reason, since there is no narrative proper—the argument that, if Philê had been the true-born daughter of Pyrrhos, her relations would have acted differently, is drawn out in regard (1) to Nikodemos, (2) to Endios, (3) to the uncles of Pyrrhos: §§ 45—80.

68. Thus the argument, §§ 1—4, in Or. v. begins and ends with the reading of the ἀντωμοσία.

69. e.g. Or. II. (Menekles) § 47: Or. IX. (Astyphilos) § 36.

70. e.g. Or. IX. § 35.

71. e.g. Or. X. (Aristarchos) § 1.

72. Dionys. Isae. 16, τὰ πάθη ποιεῖν γενικώτερον. It is easy and tempting to conjecture γεννικώτερον, ‘with more spirit.’ But the true meaning of γενικώτερον is shown by another passage in Dionysios — de Demosth. c. 39, where ἡ γενικὴ ἁρμονία is a manner of composition which does not stoop to petty neatnesses,— μὴ τὸ κομψὸν ἀλλὰ τὸ σεμνὸν ἐπιτηδεύουσα, as he elsewhere puts it (§ 37): and so γενικώτατοι χαρακτῆρες , ib. Ernesti ( Lex. Tech.) is mistaken in rendering γενικὴν ἁρμονίαν by ‘characterem orationis naturalem.’

73. Dionys. Isae. 4.

74. See Overbeek, Die Antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der Bildenden Künste bei den Griechen (1868), esp. pp. 67, 110, 204. Cf. Quint. XII. 10 §§ 1—6.—Can it be that, when Dionysios used this illustration, he had in his mind that place of the Poetics (I. 6) where Aristotle speaks of poets related to each other as Zeuxis to Polygnotos— ὁ μὲν γὰρ Πολύγνωτος ἀγαθὸς ἠθογράφος, ἡ δὲ Ζεύξιδος γραφὴ οὐδὲν ἔχει ἦθος —a comparison which so exactly and curiously suits the relationship between Lysias and Isaeos?

75. Hermog. περὶ ἰδεῶν B. C. 11 (Spengel Rh. Gr. II. 411).

76. Hermogenes on Isaeos.

77. ἁπλῶς: as opposed to the sense in which it includes the πανηγυρικὸς λόγος: vol. I. p. 90.

78. As to ‘fiery earnestness’ ( γοργότης), ‘finish’ ( ἐπιμέλεια) and ‘amplification’ ( περιβολή), in the language of Hermogenes, see vol. I. p 91 f.

79. ‘Grandeur’ ( μέγεθος, for which ἀξίωμα or ὄγκος is sometimes a synonym) denotes, for Hermogenes, one of those seven cardmal excellences of oratory which he finds in Demosthenes, his canon of eloquence: περὶ ἰδ, A. 1. This μέγεθος is, in its turn, composed of six specifie qualities ( ἰδέαι): and all of these, says Hermogenes, Isaeos has. They are:—1. σεμνότης, majesty. 2. The power of ‘amplifying ( περιβολή) just mentioned;—by which Hermog. means sometimes generalisation, sometimes development of an idea. 3. ‘Vigour,’ — ἀκμή, — a quality which springs, as a rule, from the union of the two next (see περὶ ἰδ. A. 10). ἀκμαῖος λόγος is a robust, sinewy eloquence, which presses the adversary hard. 4. τραχύτης, asperity: 5. λαμπρότης, brilliancy: 6. σφοδρότης, vehemence. [On the distinction between 4 and 6 see περὶ ἰδ. A. 7: τραχύτης is properly said of rebuking superiors—e.g. judges or ekklesiasts. σφοδρύτης, of rebuking (real or assumed) inferiors, e.g. ἀντίδικοι, or those whom the hearers like to hear censured: it is σφοδρότης when Demosth, assails Philip]Of these, 2 and 3 are named in the text: but we must bear in mind that the other four are understood .

80. Isae. 14.

81. καιρὸς ἴδιος: Hermog. περὶ μεθόδου δεινότητος c. 1: above, vol. I. 91.

82. ‘After all, one cannot help wondering, that, although Dionysius lived in the very age of Cicero, and was copied almost too closely by Quintilian, yet the name of Isaeus is not so much as mentioned in the rhetorical pieces of the two Romans’ (Sir W. Jones, Pref. Discourse, p. vi).Cicero, it is true, never mentions Isaeos. Quintilian, however, does once mention him—and then in not very select company. Speaking of the ‘Attici,’ he says (XII. 10 § 22), ‘Transeo plurimos, Lycurgum, Aristogitona, et his priores Isaeum, Antiphontem: quos, ut homines, inter sc similes, differentes dixeris specie.’ The style of Lykurgos was not highly esteemed by the Augustan or later critics; he is αὐξητικός and σεμνός, says Dionysios, but not ‘elegant or pleasing’ ( ἀστεῖος—ἡδύς ), vet. scrip. cens. 3. As to Aristogiton, the adversary of Demosthenes (see [Dem.] Orr. XXV. XXVI. and Deinarchos Or. II.), he was of small repute every way. Maximus Planudes speaks of that sycophantic oratory, ἡ συκοφαντική, ἧς ἡγήσαντο Ἀριστογείτων καὶ Ἡγήμων (Proleg. in Walz Rh. Gr. v. 214): and he is mentioned, with Phrynon and Philokrates, among the ἄδοξα πρόσωπα by the scholiast on Hermog., ib. IV. 90. The truth is that Quint. made no careful study of the Greek orators, except Isokrates, Demosthenes, and (in a measure) Lysias: but this treatment of Isaeos is especially remarkable.

83. Criticism of Dionysios— subject to a reserve.

84. Demosthenes engaged in Private Causes:

85. On the Private Speeches of Demosthenes, cf. Schäfer I. 311—315, and the Appendices to vol. III. Blass would seem to leave the question of genuineness open as to the πρὸς Σπουδίαν and the πρὸς Καλλικλέα: Att. Ber. II. 465. In the παραγραφὴ πρὸς Ζηνόθεμιν, Demon, the speaker, quotes his cousin Demosthenes as thus excusing himself for not appearing as advocate: — ἐμοὶ συμβέβηκεν, ἀφ’ οὗ περὶ τῶν κοινῶν λέγειν ἠρξάμην, μηδὲ πρὸς ἓν πρᾶγμα ἴδιον προσεληλυθέναι. Mr G. A. Simcox, in the able Life of Demosthenes prefixed to ‘Demosthenes and Aeschines On the Crown,’ takes this to be a clue given us by Demosthenes himself. In that case, it would follow that Demosthenes had written for no private cause after 354. But Schäfer has shown, I think ( Dem. u. seine Zeit, III. App. VII. pp. 296 f.), that the πρὸς Ζηνόθεμιν is certainly not by Demosthenes: and that it must be later than 336 B.C. Whether the author was Demon himself—as Schäfer thinks —or not, the statement about Demosthenes loses much of its authority.

86. in Public Causes:

87. in Politics

88. Resulting difference.

89. Likeness of Demosthenes to Isaeos—in Composition:

90. See, e.g., Dem. Or. XXXVI., For Phormio. The ease of Isaeos sometimes tends to be slipshod; that of Demosthenes, never.

91. Cf. Plut. Δημοσθένους καὶ Κικέρ. σύγκρισις, c. 1: Δημοσθένης ...ὑπερβαλλόμενος ἐναργείᾳ μὲν καὶ δεινότητι τοὺς ἐπὶ τῶν ἀγώνων καὶ τῶν δικῶν συνεξεταζομένους.

92. See above, p. 285.

93. in Treatment of Subject-matter:

94. especially of Proof.

95. Theon celebrates the legal learning of Demosthenes, referring to him as an exemplar of argument for the abrogation ( ἀνασκευή) of laws—e.g. in the Speeches Against Timokrates, Aristokrates and Leptines ( προγυμν. II. p. 166, Sp. Rh. Gr. II. 69): again in I. 150 ( ib. p. 61) he adds to these the De Corona and Androtion as proofs that οἱ κάλλιστοι τῶν Δημοσθενικῶν λόγων εἰσιν, ἐν οἷς περὶ νόμου ἢ ψηφίσματος ἀμφισβητεῖται .

96. Vol. I. p. 39.

97. Dionys. Isae. 12. The extract is from that same ‘Defence of a Guardian’ from which he quotes in c. 8: see ch. XXI.

98. Example from Isaeos.

99. Example from Demosthenes.

100. Dem. Olynth. III. §§ 34—35.

101. Agonistic Epilogue in Isaeos — Or. VI.

102. Epilogues of the Speeches Against Onetor.

103. Πρὸς Ὀνήτορα A (Or. XXX.) §§ 37—39: and B, §§ 10—14.—The comparison in Dionys. Demosth. cc. 17—22 between Isokrates De Pace §§ 41—50 (355 B.C.) and the Third Olynthiac §§ 23—32 (348 B.C.) exhibits in its perfection that which Demosthenes derived from Isaeos,—heightened in effect by the strongest contemporary contrast that could have been found.

104. ἑνὸς μὲν οὐδενὸς...οὔτε χαρακτῆρος οὔτ’ ἀνδρὸς ζηλωτήν,.. ἐξ ἁπάντων δὲ τὰ κράτιστα ἐκλεξάμενον: Dionys. Demosth. 33.

105. ib. 34.

106. ib. 44. The word which I represent by ‘glitter’ is ἀπάτη,—a term used here like τὸ ἀπατηλόν in c. 45, merely of theatrical effect. In c. 45, again, Forensic Oratory is said to require ἡδονή—χάρις— ἀπάτη, where the last means artful ψυχαγωγία. It is very important to discriminate both these more innocent senses from that in which there is said to have been δόξα γοητείας καὶ ἀπάτης about Isaeos; de Isae. 4.—‘Florid’ is τὸ λιγαίνειν—exactly what we mean by an operatic style.

107. ib. 43

108. ib. 45.

109. Various colouring of his Private Speeches.

110. between ἀφέλεια

111. and δεινότης.

112. His meaning,

113. relatively to Demosthenes,

114. and in himself

Sir Richard C. Jebb The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos 2.20