Yet are we not therefore so to lay the whole stress on
virtue, as utterly to neglect all gracefulness and efficacy
of speech; but esteeming rhetoric, though not the worker,
yet a coadjutor and forwarder of persuasion, we should
correct that saying of Menander,
The speaker's manners, not his speech, persuade.
For both manners and language ought to concur, unless
any one forsooth shall say that—as it is the pilot who
steers the ship, and not the rudder, and the rider that turns
the horse, and not the bridle—so political virtue, using
not eloquence but manners as an helm and bridle, persuades and guides a city, which is (to speak with Plato) an
animal most easy to be turned, managing and directing
it (as it were) from the poop. For since those great and
(as Homer calls them) Jove-begotten kings, setting themselves out with their purple, sceptres, guards, and the very
oracles of the Gods, and subjecting to them by their majesty the multitude, as if they were of a better nature and
more excellent mould than other men, desired also to be
eloquent orators, and neglected neither the gracefulness of
speech,
Nor public meeting, that more perfect they
Might be for feats of war,
1
[p. 105]
not only venerating Jupiter the counsellor, Mars the
slaughterer, and Pallas the warrior, but invocating also
Calliope,
Who still attends on regal Majesty,
2
by her persuasive oratory appeasing and moderating the
fierceness and violence of the people; how is it possible
that a private man in a plebeian garb and with a vulgar
mien, undertaking to conduct a city, should ever be able to
prevail over and govern the multitude, if he is not endowed
with alluring and all-persuading eloquence? The captains
indeed and pilots of ships make use of others to deliver
their commands; but a statesman ought to have in himself
not only a spirit of government, but also a commanding
faculty of speech, that he may not stand in need of another's voice, nor be constrained to say, as did Iphicrates
when he was run down by the eloquence of Aristophon,
‘My adversaries have the better actors, but mine is the
more excellent play,’ nor yet be often obliged to make use
of these words of Euripides,
O that the race of miserable men
Were speechless!
and again,
Alas! Why have not men's affairs a tongue,
That those fine pleaders who of right make wrong
Might be no longer in request?
3
For to these evasions perhaps might an Alcamenes, a
Nesiotes, an Ictinus, and any such mechanical persons as
get their bread by their hands, be permitted on their oath
to have recourse. As it sometime happened in Athens,
where, when two architects were examined about the erecting a certain public work, one of them, who was of a free
and voluble speech and had his tongue (as we say) well
hung, making a long and premeditated harangue concerning the method and order of raising such a fabric, greatly
[p. 106]
moved the people; but the other, who was indeed the better workman though the worse speaker, coming forth into
the midst, only said, ‘Ye men of Athens, what this man has
spoken, I will do.’ For those men venerate only Minerva
surnamed Ergane (or the Artisan), who, as Sophocles says
of them,
Do on the massy anvil lay
A lifeless iron bar, where they
With blows of heavy hammer make
It pliant to the work they undertake.
But the prophet or minister of Minerva Polias (that is, the
protectress of cities) and of Themis (or Justice) the counsellor,
Who both convenes assemblies, and again
Dissolves them,
4
making use of no other instrument but speech, does, by
forming and fashioning some things and smoothing and
polishing others that, like certain knots in timber or flaws
in iron, are averse to his work, embellish and adorn a city.
By this means the government of Pericles was in name (as
Thucydides
5 says) a democracy, but in effect the rule of
one principal man through the power of his eloquence.
For there were living at the same time Cimon, and also
Ephialtes and Thucydides,
6 all good men; now Thucydides, being asked by Archidamus, king of the Spartans,
whether himself or Pericles were the better wrestler, thus
answered: ‘That is not easily known; for when I in
wrestling overthrow him, he, by his words persuading the
spectators that he did not fall, gains the victory.’ And
this did not only bring glory to himself, but safety also to
the city; for being persuaded by him, it preserved the
happiness it had gotten, and abstained from intermeddling
with foreign affairs. But Nicias, though having the same
design, yet falling short in the art of persuasion, when he
[p. 107]
endeavored by his speech, as by a gentle curb, to restrain
and turn the people, could not compass it or prevail with
them, but was fain to depart, being violently hurried and
dragged (as it were) by the neck and shoulders into Sicily.
They say, that a wolf is not to be held by the ears; but a
people and city are chiefly to be drawn by the ears, and
not as some do who, being unpractised in eloquence, seek
other absurd and unartificial ways of taking them, and
either draw them by the belly, making them feasts and
banquets, or by the purse, bestowing on them gifts and
largesses, or by the eye, exhibiting to them masks and
prizes or public shows of dancers and fencers,—by which
they do not so much lead as cunningly catch the people.
For to lead a people is to persuade them by reason and
eloquence; but such allurements of the multitude nothing differ from the baits laid for the taking of irrational animals.
