Sir Richard C. Jebb, The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos, The Matured Civil Eloquence., Why oratory develops in the law-courts, III. Outer history of Athens.

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III. Outer history of Athens.

III. The outer history of Athens, from the disaster in Sicily to the battle of Chaeroneia, presents but two moments favourable to a great political eloquence. One is the struggle with Philip of Macedon. The other is the restoration of Athens, in 378, to the headship of a Naval League, followed by the contest at Athens between the Boeotian and antiBoeotian parties. Around this contest cluster the greatest names in deliberative oratory that appear before the reign of Philip. Kallistratos of Aphidnae, the leader of the anti-Boeotian party, was probably the most eloquent statesman between Perikles and Demosthenes¹. His opponents, Aristophon of Azenia, Leodamas of Acharnae, Thrasybulos and Kephalos of Kollytos,—especially the two first—were powerful speakers. The meagre notices of their oratory warrant only two general inferences. First, that bold and vigorous illustration of argument was their characteristic merit. Secondly, that they had little or no pretension to artistic completeness of form².

1 On Kallistratos, see Schäfer, Dem. I. 11 f. Dem. de falsa legat. § 297, πολλοὶ παρ᾽ ὑμῶν ἐπὶ καιρῶν γεγόνασιν ἰσχυροί, Καλλίστρατος, αὖθις Ἀριστοφῶν, Διόφαντος (the proposer of the decree in 352 for sending a force to hold Thermopylae): de Cor. § 219, πολλοὶ παρ᾽ ὑμῖν...γεγόνασι ῥήτορες ἔνδοξοι καὶ μεγάλοι πρὸ ἐμοῦ, Καλλίστρατος ἐκεῖνος, Ἀριστοφῶν, Κέφαλος, Θρασύβουλος, ἕτεροι μυρίοι.

2 A figure quoted by Arist. Rhet. II. 6 from the orator Kydias —who used it in dissuading the division of the lands at Samos, 350 B.C.—is very remarkable for being just in the boldly imaginative style of Perikles—not at all in the manner of Demosthenes or his contemporaries:—ἠξίου γὰρ ὑπολαβεῖν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους περιεστάναι κύκλῳ τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὡς ὁρῶντας καὶ μὴ μόνον ἀκουσομένους ἃ ἂν ψηφίσωνται.

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

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

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III. Outer history of Athens.