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

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II. Union of military and political functions.

II. In the true Greek conception the citizen was at once general and statesman. So long as this identity lasted, the men at the head of the State neither had leisure for the laborious training necessary to eminence in artistic oratory, nor felt its attainment to be of paramount importance. It was the separation of military from political functions that enabled some men to become finished speakers while others became accomplished soldiers. Perikles spoke the epitaph of those whom he had led to battle; but he had neither opportunity nor inducement to cultivate the art of war with the exactness of an Iphikrates, or the art of oratory with the exactness of a Demosthenes¹. Yet the division of labour, when it came, was a proof that the civic life of Athens was decaying. Kleon's disaster at Amphipolis was enough, indeed, to indicate that such a division would thenceforth be the rule. The versatility of Alkibiades combined the two parts with a success which had no later parallel. But the definite and recognised separation of military from political leadership cannot be put much above the days of Timotheos and Kallistratos².