Norden and Navarre, then, pointed
to tragedy as a source of information on prose style, a legitimate and fruitful
procedure since the tragedians were in close touch with all the great
contemporary movements, rhetoric not least. Their successor Drerup, (note 49)
on the other hand, largely confined himself to the notices concerning the early
rhetoricians and to their actual fragments, when in a brilliant essay he sought
to show that the rudiments of two styles existed in
[43. See above, p. 62. [44. Cf. H. Mayer, Prodikos von Keos
(Paderborn 1913) 48-54.
[45. Cf. I 69.6; II 62.4; III 39.2, 72.1, 82.4.
[46. Cf. Arist. Rhet. III 9.8: <=de>a dÉ [[section]]st [47. Vorsokr. 9 II, fg. 5
(p. 265). [48. Ibid., fg. 1 (p. 263).
[49. "Theodoros von
Byzanz," Jahrbücher f. class. Philologie, Supplementband 27 (1902)
219-372.]
[[71]]
the late Periclean Age: the one, the truly periodic style of
Thrasymachus which, though it used antithesis, included it in a rhythmical and
rounded whole, and the other and earlier, the antithetical style as such, which
aimed at no larger periodic framework. This latter style he regarded as the
offspring of eristic (note 50)--"Sie beruht auf der gegensatzlichen Entwicklung
der Gedanken in der Antithese, die in der sophistischen Prosa zu einer
Grundlage stilistischer Kunst gepragt worden ist, nachdem sie langst schon von
den Vorlaufern der Sophisten, einem Heraklit und Zenon, gekannt war." And he
argued that it was wholly from this sophistic inheritance, not from Gorgias,
that Antiphon derived the antithetical style of his Tetralogies; for the
originality of Gorgias was not to have created that style but to have
embellished it. Accordingly he recognized the latter's influence only in the
artificial heightening of the antithesis by means of rhyme and wordplay,
concluding, (note 51) "Deshalb ist es eine sonderbare Verkennung der
Grundbedingungen dieses Stiles, wenn man allgemein mit der antiken Stilkritik
die Antithese zu den eigentlichen gorgian ischen `Figuren' rechnet. Gorgias hat
vielmehr den Gegensatz zur Grundlage seines Stiles genommen und auf dieser
Grundlage das complizierte System der schmückenden Figuren aufgebaut,
indem er die in der Antithese sich entwickelnden Wortkunsteleien und
Klangwirkungen mit Anlehnung an die Kunstmittel der Dichtersprache systematisch
ausbildete." This statement stands as a kind of landmark; for it expounds with
force and clarity the view adumbrated by Norden but for the most part still
neglected, that the antithesis is not in itself Gorgian but a stylistic
principle which Gorgias merely developed. Moreover,
[50. Ibid., p. 224. [51. Ibid.,p. 261; cf. p. 289.]
[[72]]
Drerup regarded that principle as to some extent dictating its own
effects; for in noting the pãrista and parÒmoia of the
Tetralogies, he could say that they arose not through the conscious
application of Gorgian rules (the developed Gorgian figures of the Helen
and the Palamedes being on the whole absent) but were rather (note 52)
"das Produkt einer naturlichen rednerischen Veranlagung und einer scharfen
logischeristischen Schulung des Verstandes." In other words, granted what was
remarked in the last paragraph, that antithesis and parallelism are the
readiest instruments of clarity, then a mind trained in eristic debate and
grappling with the logic of Sicilian argument would of itself tend to symmetry
of expression, the more so since Greek not only supplied the connectives te-te,
mcentsn ddeg. but the natural assonances of the verbal and nominal endings. But
if one accepts the argument so far, then its application to the style of
Thucydides is obvious. Though he expressly abstained from discussing it in
detail, Drerup remarks that it (note 53) "auf denselben Elementen beruht, wie
die altere sophistische Kunstprosa [i.e. pre-Gorgian prose] und aus ihr ganz
offenbar abgeleitet ist," In other words, one should not, like Rittelmeyer
(note 54) or indeed Dionysius, consider the historian's antitheses,
parallelisms, and occasional assonances as in themselves Gorgian, since they
appear likewise in the Tetralogies. Rather on such a theory these
figures would reflect the sophistic influences current in Thucydides' youth and
apparent in tragedy before 427, whereas the later influence of Gorgias could be
shown only insofar as the special Gorgian traits--short equal clauses, abundant
wordplay, consistent rhyme--likewise appear.
[52. Ibid., p. 288. [53. Ibid., p. 332.
[54. See
above, p. 57.]
[[73]]
Finally, it will be necessary to speak at greater length of Aly's (note
55) very suggestive monograph, though it seems more valuable for the study of
Antiphon than of pre-Gorgian prose, on which it is neither easy to follow nor
seemingly quite consistent. On the one hand, Aly speaks of Protagoras, in
Athens shortly after 450, as "der Schöpfer der perikleischen Geistigkeit"
(p. 133); attributes to him the concept of the unwritten laws (pp. 133, 173)
and the contemporary theory of democracy (p. 103); finds in his use of the
dialogue and of the antilogy Thucydides' model respectively for the Melian
Dialogue and the pairing of speeches (pp. 95-101) and in general considers his
influence that which "die Denkform des Thukydides von der des Herodot scheidet"
(p. 102). Further, he stresses the rise of oratory after the middle of the
century (p. 179) and admits the use of certain Gorgian figures in that period
(p. 75), since they appear in the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw of the
sophist Antiphon which he follows Altwegg in dating as early as 439 (p. 153).
(note 56) On the other hand, he thinks of Protagoras as having a figurative and
poetic style and as often expounding his ideas by myths (though it is not clear
how such a style or method comports with the logical content of his thought,
which accordingly Aly, despite the examples of Heraclitus and Parmenides,
declares incapable of real abstraction, p. 173). Similarly, he emphasizes the
imagery and the poeticisms of Pericles (p. 81), dismissing any possible
stylistic resemblances to the speeches given by Thucydides (p. 79); finally, he
says that Gorgias introduced the argument from efikÒw (pp. 53, 176) and
that rhetorical theory reached Athens in the twenties (ibid.).
Now undoubtedly Aly has a very real feeling, nurtured by his studies of
Herodotus, for archaic and popular
[55. For reference, see above, n. 18. [56. See below, pp.
92-96.]
[[74]]
expression; yet he seems too much influenced by Herodotus and too little
by tragedy. As has been remarked, (note 57) the Hippolytus of 428 and
the Oedipus Rex, commonly dated at about the same time, (note 58)
use the argument from efikÒw, as does the Phoenix (fgs. 811,
812), produced at the latest in 426 and very possibly somewhat earlier. (note
59) Indeed, as Drerup remarked, (note 60) the argument was probably used from
the first by Protagoras, being the most natural means of strengthening the
[[yen]]ttvn lÒgow. The use of tekmÆria, another Sicilian device,
is probably attested in the ÉAlÆyeia, (note 61) dated by Aly
himself in the thirties, (note 62) and certainly in the fragments of the
Phoenix cited above. Pericles himself uses the device in the famous
sentence on the dead in the Samian War, the exact wording of which seems to
have been quoted by Plutarch from Stesimbrotus (Per. 8 ad fin.),
oÈ går [[section]]ke[[currency]]nouw ir<<men,
éllå ta>w tima>w, ëw [[paragraph]]xousi, ka< to>w
égayo>w, ì pardeg.xousin, éyanãtouw
e[[perthousand]]nai tekmairÒmeya. In passing, the antithetical
arrangement and the assonance of [[paragraph]]xousi, and pardeg.xousin should
be noticed in this sentence. Thus Aly is incorrect in ascribing the Sicilian
arguments to Gorgias.Then again, if one turn to the debate of
the Medea of 431, an ëmilla lÒgvn (546) between the heroine
and Jason in which the latter, as the chorus remarks (576), expounds the
[[yen]]ttvn lÒgow, it is at once apparent that Aly underrates the
[57. Above, pp. 645. [58. Cf. Schmid-Stahlin, Gesch. d. griech.
Lit., I, 2 (1934), p. 361; M. Pohlenz, Griech. Trag., II 63; T. B.
L. Webster, Sophocles, pp. 4-5. Webster well observes the close
similarity of the debates in the two plays cited above, p. 64. Since the
arguments of Hippolytus transcend and include those of Creon, the
Hippolytus would appear to be the later play (so D. Grene, "The
Interpretarion of the Hippolytus of Euripides," CP 34 [1939] 53).
[59. See above, n. 28.
[60. "Theodoros von Byzanz," pp. 221-22.
[61.
Vorsokr. 9 II, fg. 44, col. 5.1-17 (pp. 349-50), where examples are
given to confirm a general statement.
[62. See below, pp. 97-103.]
[[75]]
conscious rhetoric of the Periclean Age. Medea, like Cleon in the
Mytilenean Debate (III 39) or the Corinthians at Athens (esp. I 40-4I), relies
on the argument from tÚ d[[currency]]kaion. After stating her husband's
shamelessness, she proves it, as do the aforementioned speakers, by retailing
her past benefits to him (465-95); she then goes on to an appeal to the
emotions of the sort attributed to Thrasymachus, and concludes by exclaiming on
the wickedness of men (496-519). Jason (522-75), like Diodotus (III 46-47) and
the Corcyreans (I 33), relies on the arguments from tÚ sumfdeg.ron and
from the irresistibility of natural impulses. (note 63) Being the second
speaker, he adopts a technique of rebuttal similar to that of Antiphon
(Tetr. A, b, 1-9) (note 64) and, after a brief introduction, refutes her
arguments in detail (522-44); then, again like the Corcyreans (I 32.1), he
states what he must prove (note 65) and does so, concluding with an attack on
women (569-75) which balances Medea's opposite conclusion. (note 66) Here then
is a perfect example of the pairing of speeches which Aly attributes to
Protagoras and considers Thucydides' model, and in fact, as has been said, the
speeches have many Thucydidean traits, But quite evidently the rhetorical
structure followed by Euripides is more developed than Aly asserts; hence by
his own argument the rhetoric taught in Athens by Protagoras was by no means
simple, and one can no more say that Gorgias was the first to introduce
rhetorical principles than one can attribute the Sicilian arguments to
him.
[63. For a fuller discussion see above, chap. 1 pp. 11-13, 29-33.
[64. Cf. also the opening paragraphs of the Corinthians (137-39) and of
Diodotus
(III 42-43).
[65. Lines 548-50, [[section]]n t"de
de[[currency]]jv pr<<ta mcentsn sofÚw geg~w, | [[paragraph]]peita
s~frvn, e[[perthousand]]ta so< mdeg.gaw f[[currency]]low | ka< pais< to>w
[[section]]mo>sin.
[66. I omit discussion of the similar debate in the
Hippolytus in which Phaedra relies on the argument from tÚ
kalÒn (373-430), and the nurse, very much like Diodotus (III 45),
rejoins by stating the irresistibility of natural impulses (433-81). See below,
pp. 99-100, and above, chap. 1 pp. 29-33.]
[[76]]
But the structure of the debate in the Medea leads on to its
style; for just as Medea's and Jason's speeches outwardly balance each other,
so internally they often fall into balanced and symmetrical clauses. Such
sentences as those of Jason (569-73),éllÉ [[section]]w
tosoËton [[yen]]keyÉ ÀstÉ
Ùryoumdeg.nhweÈn[[infinity]]w guna>kew pãntÉ
[[paragraph]]xein nom[[currency]]zete,un dÉ gdeg.nhtai jumforã
tiw [[section]]w ldeg.xow,tå l"sta ka< kãllista
polemi~tatat[[currency]]yesye,and
(601-2),tå xrhstå mÆ soi luprå
fa[[currency]]nesya[[currency]] pote,mhdÉ eÈtuxoËsa
dustuxØw e[[perthousand]]nai doke>n,
only exemplify a common practice confirmed on almost every page. Such
antitheses are perhaps commonest at the conclusion either of speeches or of
their natural subdivisions, but they are quite usual elsewhere. Occasionally
they are heightened by assonance as in the lines quoted by Norden (408-9, cf.
314-15),guna>kew, [[section]]w mcentsn [[paragraph]]sylÉ
émhxan~tatai,kak<<n dcents pãntvn tdeg.ktonew sof~tatai.
Hence if, as seems rnevitable, the structure and argumentation of such a debate
as this of the Medea reflect the teachings of the early sophists, particularly
Protagoras, then the style of the debate must do so equally. It may well be
that in narrating a myth such as that ascribed to him by Plato (Protag.
320d--322a), Protagoras used the poetic and imagistic style that Aly conceives.
Again, the fragment from his speech of condolence to Pericles (Vorsokr.
9 II, fg. 9, p. 268)--the passage most frequently cited as proof that
Protagoras used only simple sentences heightened by poetic words--
[[77]]
proves merely that, like Antiphon the sophist, (note 67) he did not use
antithesis in narratives. But that the man and the period which delighted in
the juxtaposing of opposite ideas should not have carried that principle
further and applied it to the structure of the sentence, particularly when we
see Euripides doing exactly that, is incredible, After all, the greater
antithesis of conflicting speeches and the lesser antithesis of balanced
sentences spring from the same habit of thought and reflect the same desire,
that of clarity enhanced by contrast.But the Medea does not
provide the earliest example of opposing speeches couched in antithetical
language. Indeed, Drerup (note 68) could see in Euripides' less poetic idiom
and longer sentences the marks of the periodic rather than of the earlier and
truly antithetical style, and undoubtedly the technical skill of the debate in
the Medea implies a period of development during which Euripides
mastered the art of debate and imposed his own style on it. It is rather with
the Ajax and the Antigone of Sophocles that the first complete
éntilog[[currency]]ai appear, and these plays, the latter produced in
442 or 441 and the former almost certaInly somewhat earlier, reveal very
clearly the first stages in the art which was to enjoy so great a vogue as the
century progressed. Doubtless, as Aly remarked, (note 69) the love of the
ég~n goes even further back to such contests as those between Homer and
Hesiod, Calchas and Mopsus, Solon and Croesus. The ninth book of the
Iliad shows arguments of a high order; and the Eumenides of
Aeschylus embodies the conffict of two principles. And yet precisely because
not even the conflict of the Eumenides achieves the clear and pointed
expression of opposing speeches, does the emergence of
[67. See below, p. 105. [68. "Theodoros von Byzanz," p. 229. Cf.
Arist. Rhet. III 2.5.
[69. "Formprobleme," p. 98.]
[[78]]
such speeches in the Ajax so clearly mark the beginning of a new
era when the art of debate was for the first time seriously
studied.The play contains two debates, the one between Ajax and
Tecmessa on the obligations of the eÈgenØw énÆr, the
other between Teucer and Menelaus concerning the ultimate authority in the army
at Troy. Both debates are highly symmetrical; in both the concluding lines so
pointedly echo each other that, when actually heard, they must greatly have
enhanced the effect of symmetry. As we have seen, Jason's and Medea's speeches
likewise end with closely similar lines, and there can be no doubt that both
playwrights consciously sought, and that the public had come to admire, this
somewhat statuesque form of opposition. Thus, after Ajax has concluded
(479-80),éllÉ u kal<<w z[[infinity]]n u kal<<w
teynhkdeg.naitÚn eÈgen[[infinity]] xrÆ. pãntÉ
ékÆkoaw lÒgon,Tecmessa, after replying to
his arguments and asking for pity, herself concludes
(520-24),éndr[[currency]] toi xre[[Delta]]nmnÆmhn prose>nai,
terpnÚn e[[daggerdbl]] t[[currency]] pou pãyoi.xãriw
xãrin gãr [[section]]stin <= t[[currency]]ktousÉ
ée[[currency]].~tou dÉ éporre> mn[[infinity]]stiw eÔ
peponyÒtow,oÈk ín gdeg.noitÉ [[paragraph]]yÉ
oÔtow eÈgenØw énÆr.
Similarly the debate between Teucer and Menelaus, after the passionate
opposition of the stichomythy, ends in two short symmetrical speeches each in
the form of a riddle (1142--58).
But if the elaborate symmetry of
these debates, remote as it is from anything in Aeschylus, strongly suggests
the contemporary influence of Protagoras' éntilog[[currency]]ai, so
does
[[79]]
their content. (note 70) No one would, to be sure, maintain that the
debates of the Ajax are abstract: Tecmessa's speech, for instance, owes
much to the famous appeal of Andromache in the Iliad and, throughout,
Sophocles seeks a dramatic, not a philosophic contrast. Yet the debates do
embody general ideas. Unlike the speeches of the ninth Iliad, which
concern purely concrete problems, these, as it were, lift the specific to the
general, so that the immediate case comes to illustrate a widespread truth.
(note 71) The matter is not easy to describe; indeed the debates of the
Ajax illustrate only an early stage in this quality of abstraction,
which is far better shown in the Antigone, the Medea, or the
Hippolytus. And yet one can at least say that whereas Homer's
generalizations almost entirely concern human beings--Odysseus in the ninth
book, for instance, speaks as the skilled and realistic orator, Achilles as the
impassioned youth, Phoenix as the sage elder, and thus like many of Homer's
characters, they embody lasting human attitudes--in the Ajax, on the
other hand, the first debate turns essentially on the abstract idea of
eÈgdeg.neia, the second on that of discipline.Take for
example the speech of Menelaus. After describing the outrages committed by Ajax
(1052-62), he goes on to forbid his burial on the grounds that no state can
survive without a hearty fear of authority, since fear alone holds an army
together (1073-86),oÈ gãr potÉ oÎtÉ ín
[[section]]n pÒlei nÒmoi kal<<wfdeg.rointÉ ên,
[[paragraph]]nya mØ kayestÆkh ddeg.ow,oÎtÉ ín
stratÒw ge svfrÒnvw êrxoitÉ
[[paragraph]]ti,mhdcentsn fÒbou prÒblhma mhdÉ afidoËw
[[paragraph]]xvn...
[70. Cf. Schmid-Stählin, I, 2, p. 490, "Mit diesen Wendungen ist
schon das Gebiet der antithetischen Denkform betreten, die, bei Aischylos erst
erwachend, durch Herakleitos, die Eieaten und besonders durch die rhetorischen
Beleuchtungskünste der Sophistik vulgarisiert worden ist." [71. Ibid.,
p. 483, "so dass aus dem Kampf der augenblicklichen Interessen ein Kampf der
Grundsatze zu werden scheint."]
[[80]]éllÉ *stãtv moi ka< ddeg.ow ti
ka[[currency]]rion,ka< mØ dok<<men dr<<tew ìn
<=d~meyaoÈk éntite[[currency]]sein aÔyiw ìn
lup~meya.
I have already discussed (note 72) the marked similarity of idea in this
passage not only to the speech of Creon in the Antigone (esp. 661-80)
but to those of Archidamus in Thucydides (I 80-85; II 11). There can, I think,
be no doubt that Menelaus, pointedly referred to as a Spartan (1102), was
intended to typify not merely the Spartan but, more widely, the oligarchic
attitude. His references to Teucer's ill-birth, to the fact that he was a
bowman rather than a hoplite (1120- 23), (note 73) to the question whether Ajax
came as an independent or a subordinate commander (1097-1101) that issue,
paramount since Salamis, (note 74) had not long since come to a head at
Ithome--only strengthen the central impression of the lines already quoted. But
if so, the similarities of thought between this passage and the speech of
Archidamus have an added significance. The fact that in both a Spartan is made
to expound in similar language the basic assumptions of the oligarchic state
shows that Sophocles was already familiar with certain of those political
generalizations which form the essence of Thucydides' speeches. Now Aly (note
75) saw the influence of Protagoras in the debate on constitutions of Herodotus
III 80-82. The great sophist professed a knowledge of government (Plato
Protag. 318e), and Aristoxenus found in his Antilogies the
substance of Plato's Republic (note 76) one thinks especially of Plato's
discussion of the different forms of government. Certainly one would believe
even without evidence that the rise of democratic Athens
[72. Above, chap. 1 pp. 14-17. [73. Cf. Wilamowitz (Herakles
2 1933) on H. F. 160, where Heracles is insulted for being a bowman.
[74. Thuc. I 91.7.
[75. "Formprobleme," p. 103.
[76. Vorsokr. 9
II, fg. 5 (pp. 265-66).]
[[81]]
stimulated widespread discussion of the contrary assumptions of
democracy and oligarchy, but, as it is, the passages where the subject is
actually discussed so markedly converge, as I have tried to show, (note 77)
that one can only posit a considerable body of known political argument in the
Periclean Age. And the first example of such argument, the more significant
because like most of the later examples it appears in a debate, is this passage
of the Ajax.Thus, even in this earliest of his extant
plays, Sophocles seeks in his debates a fundamental contrast of idea, and
though his method is less abstract than that of Euripides who in the
Medea opposes tÚ d[[currency]]kaion by tÚ sumfdeg.ron and
in the Hippolytus tÚ kalÒn by the dictates of nature, yet
basically it foreshadows these later debates. The Antigone seems to
stand midway; for Creon there speaks in more general terms than Menelaus in
setting forth much the same arguments (661-80), while Antigone by upholding the
êgraptoi nÒmoi, and the ties of family profoundly expresses the
opposite position (450-57). Haemon and Creon likewise expound contrasting but
equally general views on parental duty and the obligations of power (639-60,
684-739). In sum, if the later debates of Euripides and Thucydides, as Aly
argues and as would doubtless be generally agreed, reflect the continuing
influence of the éntilog[[currency]]ai of Protagoras, then it follows
irresistibly that the debates of the Ajax and the Antigone betray
the same influence at an earlier stage. For, although they are less developed
than those of Euripides, and although Sophocles, unlike his rival, never was so
fascinated by the abstract as to lose sight of purely human and personal
motives, yet his debates introduce a method unknown to Aeschylus, in form and
structure
[77. Above, chap. 1 pp. 14-17 (on oligarchy), pp. 21-25 (on democracy),
where the relevant passages (besides those already cited, notably the tract of
the Old Oligarch and Euripides' Suppliants) are discussed.]
[[82]]
markedly resemble those of Euripides, anticipate ideas later used for
similar contrasts by Thucydides, and in general, like the debates of both these
authors, raise the purely personal conflict of situation to the higher conflict
of idea. Certainly sophistic debate, if it taught anything, taught exactly this
art of seeing the general implications of the specific act.Thus
by a somewhat circuitous route we return to the question of the antithetical
style. As we saw, antithesis strongly marks the debate of the Medea, the
finished skill of which seemed however to imply an earlier period when
Euripides evolved not only his argumentation but, as Drerup contended, the more
periodic tendencies of his style. If, therefore, the debates of the Ajax
and the Antigone foreshadow those of the Medea and the
Hippolytus, then their style should do so likewise. And that is in fact
the case. The passage already cited from the Ajax, being antithetical
throughout and closing with an elaborate homoioteleuton, is sufficient evidence
from the earlier play, and for the Antigone one can perhaps do no better
than refer to the exhaustive list by which Navarre supported his contention
that Gorgias modeled his style on that of Sophocles. (note 78) There can,
then, be no question that in this period when, I have argued, Sophocles deeply
felt the influence of the sophistic debates, he also evolved an antithetical
style by which to express them.
But one point of difference between the styles of the two plays may make the
matter more clear and at the same time cast further doubt on Aly's contention
that Protagoras' style, as well as that of Pericles, must have been primarily
figurative and poetic. The difference is that, whereas the style of the
Ajax is extremely figurative and becomes
[78. Rhétorique Grecque, pp. 102-9.]
[[83]]
antithetical largely in the debates, the Antigone, though still
figurative, stands out as easily the most tightly woven, the most antithetical
of Sophocles' plays. In the former one thinks perhaps especially of the great
figures drawn from the changes of nature by which Ajax justifies his own
submission (670-76), but numerous others occur (8, 17, 140, 169-71, 196, 257,
582, 651, 1253-54), whereas in the Antigone the chief examples appear in
Creon's tirade against Antigone (473-78, though also 712-17), where they
are evidently intended as a contrast to her more measured speech. Now
Sophocles, so Plutarch reports, (note 79) said that he affected three styles
during his lifetime, first, the lofty style of Aeschylus, then an artificial
style which he described as pikrÚn ka< katãtexnon, and finally
his most characteristic style, further qualified as +/-yik~taton. One
inevitably seeks to apply the statement to the marked changes in style between
the Ajax and the Antigone. The former certainly cannot be in the
second, so-called artificial manner, and its numerous figures and generally
grandiose utterance seem to connect it with the first rather than with the
third manner, though, on the other hand, it is definitely less Aeschylean than
the fragments of the poet's earliest play, the Triptolemus. It may thus
possibly illustrate the declining use of the first manner. The Antigone,
on the other hand, from its very opening so consistently affects a balance and
compression quite peculiar to itself--one thinks of such lines as
(10),prÚw toÁw f[[currency]]louw ste[[currency]]xonta t<<n
[[section]]xyr<<n kakãor
(13-14),duo>n édelfo>n [[section]]sterÆyhmen dÊo,miò
yanÒntoin <=mdeg.r& dipl[[ordfeminine]] xer[[currency]]-
that it is difficult not to see in it an example of the second,
[79. Plut. de Prof. in Virt. 7, cf. Schmid-Stählin, I, 2,
313 n. 5.]
[[84]]
artificial period. (note 80) But whether or not one accepts this
interpretation, the fact remains that the Antigone, composed at a time
when Protagoras enjoyed a great reputation in Athens and reflecting the
antilogical mode of thought for which he was famous, is also in style the most
antithetical not merely of Sophocles' but probably of all extant Greek
tragedies. The fact cannot be a mere coincidence. Why should the poet have
brusquely abandoned the great tradition of poetic language and why should he
have sought the balance and intellectuality of prose, unless he was influenced
by prose?Finally, the decline in imagery between the Ajax
and the Antigone and the increase in antithesis much weaken Aly's
contention that not only Protagoras but Pericles sought their effects chiefly
through imagery. Unquestionably Pericles used striking and memorable images
such as the spring taken from the year, the Boeotians like old oaks breaking
their limbs against each other, or war coming like a cloud from the
Peloponnesus. But that was doubtless an immemorial usage known also to the
old-fashioned Cimon, who called Athens and Sparta the yokefellows of Greece.
Moreover, the practice continued with Antiphon and Gorgias, with whom poetic
figures were by no means incompatible with the antithetical style. Now as we
have seen, the debates of Sophocles and Euripides are expressed in an
antithetical style, and since the debate as a form goes back to Protagoras, it
has been argued that the style likewise did. Moreover, we have seen that
Sophocles abandoned the grandeur of the Ajax for the logical, balanced
manner of the Antigone, and again it was argued that the change is
explic-
[80. So T. B. L. Webster (Sophocles, pp. 143-62), though he
underestimates the differences between the styles of the Ajax and
Antigone and hence ascribes both to the second period. On the other
hand, K. Reinhardt (Sophokles [Frankfurt am Main 1933] 27) finds in the
imagery of the Ajax a mark of Sophocles' early style.]
[[85]]
able only by the increasing influence of prose. When, therefore, Aly
conceives that Pericles in his actual Funeral Oration primarily relied on
imagery and poetic diction, he is crediting him with fashions of speech quite
abandoned by Euripides in the Medea of the same year, beginning to be
abandoned even by Sophocles a decade earlier. Few would deny that tragedy was a
living instrument, highly sensitive to the intellectual currents of the time.
But if so, it clearly shows that the antithetical style attributed by
Thucydides to Pericles would in fact have been familiar to
him.Since the argument, except as concerns Antiphon the sophist,
is now complete, it remains only to summarize the chief points hitherto made.
The tradition that Gorgias in the autumn of 427 first introduced at Athens not
merely the so-called Gorgian figures but the antithetical style as such
derives, it was seen, from Diodorus, who almost certainly quotes no more
trustworthy a source than Timaeus and, moreover, wrote not as a serious critic
of style but for the sweeping purposes of a universal history. Dionysius,
though he regards the antithesis as Gorgian and can speak of Thucydides and
Gorgias in one breath, expressly doubts the view upheld by Diodorus, and
Cicero, possibly on the authority of Aristotle or Theophrastus, attributes
antithesis to Thrasymachus, certainly in Athens before 427. Athenians of the
fourth century seem to have been unaware of the importance of Gorgias' visit.
Aristotle, who cites his style as best exemplifying the poeticisms of an
earlier period of prose, is more interested in his use of set arguments and
koino< tÒpoi, which he likewise attributes to Protagoras. Plato contents
himself with parodying his mannered style in the speech of Agathon in the
Symposium, the dramatic date of which is just before the Sicilian
expedition, whereas in the Protagoras, imagined as taking place in the
Periclean
[[86]]
Age, he ascribes a highly antithetical speech to Prodicus, Since Plato
was careful to avoid anachronism, we may presumably take it as his opinion that
the influence of Gorgias was not to be found in the antithetical style as such,
which was used by earlier sophists, but in the artificial heightening of that
style by means of the constant balance of clauses and by the equally constant
rhyme and wordplay which were affected by the younger exquisites such as
Agathon. Plato's view, it was argued, is confirmed not merely by the fragments
of Agathon but by certain other considerations. First, the styles of Sophocles
and Euripides, which shows no trace of the narrower Gorgian influence felt by
Agathon, were evidently formed when antithesis was common, and are probably
more antithetical in their early than in their late plays. Then, if the
antithetical style was unknown in Athens before 427, the orator Antiphon must
have changed his style with unprecedented speed not only in the
Tetralogies, which were doubtless meant for students, but even in the
speech on the Samothracian tribute, the unfamiliar mannerisms of which must
then have shocked a jury of common men and thus have defeated their own ends.
Again, Aristophanes in the Daital[[infinity]]w and Thucydides in the Mytilenean
Debate speak of the rhetorical movement as widespread some months before
Gorgias arrived, and to dissociate that movement from the antithetical style,
particularly when it appears fully developed in Antiphon at or near the time
and when Thucydides takes special pains to use it in the speech of Diodotus,
truly requires an act of faith. Finally, in the Acharnians, produced a
year and some months it is true after the arrival of Gorgias, Aristophanes
describes the sentences then generally in vogue except among the older men as
stroggÊloi, the word used by Plato to describe the balanced sentences of
Phaedrus' highly sophistic speech.
[[87]]
Among modern scholars, Blass, it was seen, and others concerned more
narrowly with Thucydides accepted the antithetical style as Gorgian and
accordingly called the historian's speeches, in style at least, anachronistic.
Norden, on the other hand, largely moved by the evidence oftragedy, stated that
the style was common among the sophists of the Periclean Age. Navarre, though
he refused to dissociate early sophistry from rhetoric on the grounds that
Athens was in close touch with the West after about 450, and though he amassed
extremely full evidence on the antithetical style of the Antigone,
lacked Norden's penetration when, instead of asking how Sophocles came to adopt
that style, he tamely deduced that Sophocles was Gorgias' model. To Drerup
falls the very great credit of fixing closely on the developed Gorgian traits
of rhyme, wordplay, and consistent balance, and of stating that only their
united presence suffices to prove Gorgian influence Accordingly, he declared
that mere antithesis was not Gorgian, even when, as in the Tetralogies,
it is carried out with a certain rigor, but rather reflects the logical method
and the search for precision and clarity which were introduced by the first
generation of sophists.
Finally, Aly's detailed and in many ways penetrating study of early style gave
rise to a fuller treatment of the evidence from tragedy. For, although Aly laid
great weight on the dialogues and debates of Protagoras, particularly in their
effect on Thucydides, he underestimated both the argumentation which they imply
and their evident connection with the antithetical style. It was first pointed
out that the use of efikÒta and tekmÆria appears in tragedy before
the arrival of Gorgias; then, that the debates of the Medea and
Hippolytus show a very advanced skill in contrasting the arguments from
the just and the profitable,
[[88]]
the noble and the natural. These same debates, it was seen, are not only
symmetrical in outward form, but internally rely on clear and forceful
antitheses, and both these traits, the outward and the inward, were found in
the earlier Ajax and Antigone. Further, there seemed reason to
believe that these debates of tragedy do in fact reflect the influence of the
sophistic éntilog[[currency]]ai, particularly because they follow a
recognized form differing from anything known to Aeschylus, and because at
bottom they depend on those political and psychological generalizations which
were in all probability given currency by the earliest sophists. Finally, it
seemed more than a coincidence when Sophocles, in keeping with the spirit of
contrast which pervades the Antigone and differentiates it from the
earlier Ajax, also adopted an extremely antithetical style, which, it
was suggested, is the style of his second period described by him as
pikrÚn ka< katãtexnon. In any case, the Antigone shows the
declining importance of imagery in the tragic style and the great increase of
antithesis. This fact, it seemed, could not be dissociated from the current
fashions in argument and oratory, but rather encourages the belief that for a
decade before the outbreak of the war, antithesis was, as Plato and Thucydides
suggest, a common instrument of speakers.
III
These arguments then tend to discredit the view that Gorgias was, in the
famous phrase, the only begetter of the antithetical style. By so doing, they
likewise suggest that the speeches of Thucydides more faithfully echo the
Athenian oratory which he knew before his exile than has commonly been thought.
This is not the place to resume those larger questions which I attempted to
discuss beforehow far, for example, the accuracy of the speeches suffers
through their
[[89]]
numerous cross-references and pervading similarity of style (note 81)
or, again, how a rhetoric perhaps appropriate to Athenians comports with
Spartans or Corinthians (note 82) or, what is more important, whether we should
think of fifth-century speakers as using arguments so profoundly general in
character as those which appear in Thucydides (note 83)--in short, the larger
questions concerning the nature and purpose of Thucydides' speeches. But even
though these questions be left aside, still the fact, if granted, that not
Gorgias but the sophists of the Periclean Age caused the widespread use of the
antithetical style, would immensely enhance the essential truthfulness of the
History, the more so since, as was said at the start, the thought both
of Thucydides and of his speakers in many important ways demonstrably reflects
that of the earlier period of which he writes. If, in other words, we could
believe that, when at the beginning of the war, Thucydides first conceived the
idea of his History, he inevitably conceived it in terms of the
rationalism, the rhetorical method, and the style which were in the air about
him, then it would be a matter of less importance for us to fix the exact
proportion of fact and interpretation in the speeches (a task ultimately
impossible in such complex works of art). For we should at least be able to say
that, as a matter of historical fact, the great impulses shaping his thought
and his style were felt by him in Athens, and that his book consequently
reveals the Athenian mind as only something quite native can do. Then, though
it were granted that through years of exile Thucydides achieved a greater
pregnancy of style and a deeper abstraction of thought, still his book would in
essence remain, not a mere interpretation of the past written in a style then
unfamiliar, but a work
[81. Above, chap. 1 pp. 4-6, 52-53. [82. Above, p. 36.
[83.
Above, pp. 34-35, 52-53.]
[[90]]
which in style as well as in thought carries the imprint of the past
itself.But the foregoing argument on the antithetical style,
thus significant for our opinion of Thucydides, is seemingly confirmed by the
fragments of the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw and ÉAlÆyeia of
Antiphon the sophist. The question here turns very largely on the dating of the
two works, which Altwegg (note 84) and Aly, (note 85) against Jacoby (note 86)
and Diels, (note 87) ascribed to the decade 440-430. If on exammation the
formers' views appear to have merit, then these fragments can by no means be
neglected as evidence for the sophistic teachings of the Periclean Age. For
though broken, they are considerably longer than any similar fragments from the
same period, and though somewhat remote in subject matter from Thucydides and
hence less pertinent to the History than more political works would have
been, they would at least illustrate certain stylistic fashions current in the
historian's early manhood. The further question, seemingly insoluble on the
basis of our present knowledge, whether the sophist and the orator Antiphon are
one person or two, does not affect our argument. It is perhaps enough to say
that Xenophon (Memor. I 6), Plato (Menex. 236a), and Aristotle do
not distinguish between them, though Xenophon includes traits (note 88)
seemingly appropriate to the orator in a description which is generally taken
to be of the sophist, and Aristotle cites now one, now the other, with the
simple name Antiphon. Didymus (note 89) is the first person known to have
distinguished between them, but whether
[84. De Libro Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw Scripto, Basel 1908.
[85. "Formprobleme," p. 153.
[86. De Antiphontis Sophistae Per<
ÑOmono[[currency]]aw Libro, Berlin 1908.
[87. Vorsokr. 9 II, pp.
357, n. 14; 359, n. 2.
[88. His filargur[[currency]]a, Mem. I 6.11, cf. the
papyrus fg. of the Per< t[[infinity]]w metastãsevw (Cernet, Antiphon, p.
165), and Aly, "Formprobleme," p. 110.
[89. Cf. Hermogenes de Id. II 11.7,
quoted below, p. 92.]
[[91]]
he did so on good authority or merely because he assumed (as he might
perhaps in his own time) that a serious forensic orator would not have composed
the other more general works, is not known. A work on dreams, the purpose of
which, as Aly (p. 100) argues on the basis of de Divinatione, II 144,
was to give opposite and thus mutually destructive interpretations, was
ascribed to the sophist, as was a PolitikÒw, the nature of which is
unknown. Finally, if the Antiphon of Xenophon's portrait is in fact the sophist
rather than the orator (the reverse could hardly be the case), then he is
apparently as old as Socrates; if there is only one Antiphon, then his dates
are those given for the orator, ca. 480-411.Before
considering the dates of the two works, it is worthwhile to observe two ancient
criticisms of them. The first, on the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw, is from
Philostratus (V. Soph. I 15.4), who remarks, speaking of Antiphon,
lÒgoi dÉ aÈtoË dikaniko< mcentsn ple[[currency]]ouw,
[[section]]n o[[perthousand]]w <= deinÒthw ka< pçn tÚ
[[section]]k tdeg.xnhw [[paragraph]]gkeitai, sofistiko< dcents ka< ßteroi
mdeg.n, sofistik~tatow dcents i ÑUpcentsr t[[infinity]]w
imono[[currency]]aw, [[section]]n / gnvmolog[[currency]]ai te lampa< ka<
filÒsofoi semnÆ te épaggel[[currency]]a ka<
[[section]]phnyismdeg.nh poihtiko>w ÙnÒmasi ka< tå
épotãdhn *rmhneuÒmena paraplÆsia t<<n
ped[[currency]]vn to>w ple[[currency]]oiw. Two traits, then, of the Per<
ÑOmono[[currency]]aw especially impressed Philostratus: the abundance of
its gn<<mai and the poeticisms of its language.
The other commentary is from Hermogenes (de Ideis II 11.7, p. 385 Walz),
who, after saying that Didymus distinguished the orator from the author of the
PolitikÒw and of the two works in question here, goes on to state his
own doubts. On the one hand, he says, the two classes of works do differ in
style; especially does the ÉAlÆyeia differ from the rest. On the
other hand, the ancient testimony
[[92]]
(especially Plato's) does not suggest that there were two men, and
though Thucydides is often said to have been the pupil of the orator from
Rhamnus, yet tÚn mcentsn ÑRamnoÊsion efid[[Delta]]w
[[section]]ke>non, o[[apple]]per efisw te
êlloiw ka< t" diÉ épofãnsevn pera[[currency]]nein
tÚ pçn, ~ dØ toË éjivmatikoË te
lÒgou [[section]]st< ka< mdeg.geyow ir<<ntow, ÍchlÚw
dcents t[[ordfeminine]] ldeg.jei ka< traxÊw, Àste ka< mØ
pÒrrv sklhrÒthtow e[[perthousand]]nai. ka< peribãllei
dcents xvr tÚn
lÒgon ka< [[paragraph]]stin èsafØw tå pollã.
ka< [[section]]pimelØw dcents katå tØn sunyÆkhn ka<
taWe may now
consider the dates of the two works, and first, that of the Per<
ÑOmono[[currency]]aw. The evidence consists almost wholly in its
resemblances to certain passages of Sophocles and Euripides, perhaps the most
striking of which appear in the long fg. 49. (note 90) The author is there
expounding
[90. The references are to Vorsokr. 9 II.]
[[93]]
the difficulties of marriage: if it is unhappy, then to continue it is
misery and to end it means the enmity of one's wife's family; if on the other
hand it is happy, then to be responsible for another person is unbearable, when
to be responsible for oneself is labor enough (oÈk oÔn
d[[infinity]]lon, ~ti gunØ èndr[[currency]]... oÈdcentsn
[[section]]lãttouw tåw filÒthytaw pardeg.xetai ka<
tåw ÙdÊnaw u aÈtÚw aÍt" Ípdeg.r
te t[[infinity]]w Ígie[[currency]]aw diss<<n svmãtvn ktl).
As evidence that Euripides knew this passage, Altwegg, (note 91)
following Dümmler (note 92) and Nestle, (note 93) cited Alcestis
882-84,zhl<< dÉ égãmouw étdeg.knouw te
brot<<n:m[[currency]]a går cuxÆ, t[[infinity]]w
Íperalge>nmdeg.trion êxyow,
Hippolytus 258-59,tÚ dÉ Ípcentsr diss<<n
m[[currency]]an >>d[[currency]]neincuxØn xalepÚn
bãrow,
also Medea 1090-1115, on the troubles of raising children (a passage
which closely echoes the last lines of the fragment), and Medea 235-36,
where the heroine says of marriage,kén t"dÉ ég[[Delta]]n
mdeg.gistow, u kakÚn labe>nu xrhstÒn,
to which one may compare from the present fragment mdeg.gaw går
ég[[Delta]]n gãmow ényr~p[[florin]] and the similar
alternative that follows. Altwegg pointed to the exact parallel of ideas in the
first and second of these passages, to the fact that the third is not a
commonplace, since children are usually regarded as the protection and stay of
their parents, and to the pervading similarity of structure in the fourth. It
is true that Jacoby, who wrote independently on
[91. Pages 60-73; see above, n. 84. [92. Akademika, p.
171.
[93. Euripides, p. 249.]
[[94]]
the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw in the same year as Altwegg,
refused to deduce that Euripides knew the sophist's work. (note 94) Yet he was
able to cite from earlier poets only the statement that marriage can be a
blessing or a curse, (note 95) and he failed to explain the closer similarities
noted above. Diels, therefore, seems nearer the truth when he assumed borrowing
on one part or the other, (note 96) though his conclusion that Antiphon was the
borrower appears questionable for three reasons. First, when similar ideas are
expressed consecutively by one author but in scattered passages by another, it
is easy to see how the former could have influenced the latter but difficult to
imagine the reverse. Then, the assumption that Euripides was the borrower is
the more natural because he reverts to the ideas in question during the limited
period from the Alcestis to the Hippolytus. One need not adduce
instances to prove that one man may be influenced by another and lesser man
whose ideas for a time fit his own, and then later, as his thought changes,
escape that influence. Finally, Euripides seems to develop the ideas in his own
and characteristic way. In the Alcestis, the view of marriage presented
by Antiphon applies, as it does with him, to a man's life; in the Medea,
to a woman's; in the Hippolytus, it concerns not marriage but the life
ofa nurse. But an essential similarity of expression remains throughout, as if
Euripides had in mind a certain fixed series of thoughts which he then
increasingly diverted to his own uses.If these arguments hold,
then the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw was written before the
Alcestis of 438, and in fact it contains two parallels to the
Antigone, the only other extant play of about the same period. The
first, as has ofien been noted, is between fg. 61, énarx[[currency]]aw
dÉ oÈdcentsn kãkion ényr~poiw, and
Antigone
[94. Page 35; see above, n. 86. [95. Hes. Theog. 607,
Op. 702; Semon. fg. 6.
[96. Vorsokr. 9 II, p. 357, n. to line
14.]
[[95]]
672, énarx[[currency]]aw dcents me>zon oÈk [[paragraph]]stin
kakÒn. But it has not commonly been observed that the contexts of both
passages are closely similar. Just as Creon says that children should learn
obedience that they may later become good soldiers who can endure the shock of
battle, so Antiphon goes on, taËta gin~skontew ofl prÒsyen
ênyrvpoi épÚ t[[infinity]]w èrx[[infinity]]w
e[[daggerdbl]]yizon toÁw pa>daw êrxesyai ka< tÚ
keleuÒmenon poie>n, .na mØ [[section]]jandroÊmenoi efiw
megãlhn metabolØn fiÒntew [[section]]kplÆssointo.
Then fg. 62, o.[[florin]] tiw ín tÚ ple>ston t[[infinity]]w
<=mdeg.raw sun[[ordfeminine]], toioËton énãgkh
gendeg.syai ka< aÈtÚn toÁw trÒpouw, echoes the
thought of Ismene's lines (5634),oÈ gãr potÉ, Œnaj,
oÈdÉ [[breve]]w ín blãst[[dotaccent]]
mdeg.neinoËw to>w kak<<w prãssousin, éllÉ
[[section]]j[[currency]]statai.
The concept that a man's fortune and environment mold his character,
first emphatically expressed by Simonides, (note 97) plays a large part in the
thought of the fifth century, as Thucydides' account Of the corruption of
character through war and plague and Euripides' pervasive realism well show.
The wording of Antiphon's passage is more closely echoed by a fragment of the
Phoenix (fg. 812),toioËtÒw [[section]]stin oÂsper
[[yen]]detai jun~n,
but its spirit appears clearly in the realism not merely of the
Telephus, produced with the Alcestis in 438, but of the other
plays on human wretchedness which Aristophanes ridicules in Acharnians
410-79. Now the whole trend of the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw was tG
portray life, in the words of fg. 51, as eÈkathgÒrhtow... ka<
oÈdcentsn [[paragraph]]xvn perittÚn oÈdcents mdeg.ga ka<
semnÒn, éllå pãnta smikrå ka<
ésyen[[infinity]] ka< ÙligoxrÒnia ka<
énamemeigmdeg.na lÊpaiw megãlaiw. And if these words
suggest the sad quietism of Euripides' Suppliants (953) or of the
conclusion of the Heracles Mad, they are certainly
[97. Fg. 4 (Diehl), 10-11, prãjaw går eÔ pçw
énØr égayÒw, | kakÚw dÉ efi
kak<<w. Cf. C. M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry, pp. 343-44, also
chap. 1 above, p. 34.]
[[96]]
as applicable to the earlier plays just noted; for, as we have seen,
Aristophanes in 425 already thought of Euripides as portraying above all the
commonness and smallness of existence. None of the parallels adduced in this
paragraph necessarily points to the specific influence of the Per<
ÑOmono[[currency]]aw; indeed the reverse may rather be the case. But
they at least show that this work of Antiphon deals with important and
well-known ideas of the decade before the outbreak of the war, and by so doing,
they confirm the date suggested by the more precise parallels of fg.
49.There seems then no compelling reason why Jacoby (note 98)
should have seen in the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw merely a panacea for
the discords of Greece which Thucydides describes in III 82-83. It is true that
Kramer's (note 99) later dissertation, by showing that the word imÒnoia
was commonly used in a civic context, tended to confirm Jacoby's social
interpretation of the work against Altwegg's view that it wholly concerned the
individual's agreement with himself. Yet the extant fragments, as well as the
description in Iamblichus, (note 100) amply prove that Antiphon at least
emphasized the individual rather than the state, and no one who has in mind the
purely personal problems of love or misfortune which Euripides treated in the
thirties can say that such an emphasis is unthinkable at that time. On the
contrary, the peaceful years before 431 doubtless left men freer to ponder on
the new individualism fostered by the sophists than did the following period of
civic and factional heat. Finally, the parallels between Democritus (note 101)
and the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw prove nothing in regard to the date of
the latter; for it is not known in what work or when Democritus discussed
the
[98. Pages 9-11; see above, n. 86. [99. Quid Valeal imÒnia
in Literis Graecis, Göttingen 1915.
[100. Vorsokr. 9 II,
fg. 44a (p. 356).
[101. Fgs. 200, 227, 250, 255, 276.]
[[97]]
subject of concord. That his teachings as a whole were far more
systematic than Antiphon's and that his remarks on imÒnoia (esp. fgs.
250 and 255) appear to have been more social in their implication, may suggest
that Democritus was the later. In sum, it is difficult to escape Altwegg's
conclusion, accepted categorically by Aly, that the Per<
ÑOmono[[currency]]aw was composed shortly after 440. Certainly it
contains sufficiently close and sufficiently numerous parallels to the works of
roughly the same period to cast the burden of proof on those who dispute the
dating.The three papyrus fragments of the ÉAlÆyeia,
the first two of which were published in 1915 by Grenfell and Hunt and the
third in 1922, (note 102) were unknown to Altwegg and Jacoby, and it has
remained principally for Aly (note 103) to consider the date of the work of
which they form part of the second book. On several grounds he ascribes it to
the end of the decade 440-430. In the first place, its title reflects the
spirit of Parmenides and Protagoras, the former of whom expounded
ÉAlhye[[currency]]hw eÈkukldeg.ow étremcentsw [[Sigma]]tor
(1.29-30), while the latter wrote an ÉAlÆyeia u
katabãllontew. The descending line of influence thus suggested Aly (note
104) brilliantly confirmed by an analysis of the mathematical proofs known to
the three men. It is unnecessary to restate his argument here: in essence, it
is that Antiphon in the first book of the ÉAlÆyeia (fg. 13)
applied to the problem of squaring the circle the Eleatic idea of infinite
divisibility which Zeno, Protagoras, and Anaxagoras knew in a more general and
philosophic sense, but that Democritus, on the other hand, not only repudiated
the general idea in his atomic theory but specifically rejected its use in the
problem to which
[102. Vorskr. 9 Il, fg. 44 (pp. 346-55). [103.
"Formprobleme," pp. 115-56.
[104. pp. 115-16, 141-47.]
[[98]]
Antiphon had applied it; (note 105) finally, that Hippias (note 106)
approached the same problem by a more developed solution apparently unknown to
Antiphon. On this view, then, Antiphon would stand after Zeno and Protagoras
and feel their influence more strongly than did Hippias, while on the other
hand he would definitely precede Democritus, a point which confirms what was
suggested of their relationship in the last paragraph. The fact that
Anaxagoras, while in prison in 433 on the motion ofDiopeithes, (note 107) is
said to have diverted himself with the same problem (by what solution is not
known), indicates, as Aly says, the period when it had come to be of
interest.Then, Aly (note 108) seeks a second indication of date
in the argument of the papyrus fragments themselves on the relative authority
of fÊsiw and nÒmow. It is his general purpose to distinguish an
earlier period, when the difference between local and universal law first
became apparent, from a later period when that difference was used to justi
such doctrines of might as Plato attributes to Callicles and Thrasymachus, and
Thucydides to the generals at Melos. For certainly no such doctrines appear in
the ÉAlÆyeia, which, as another critic has justly said, (note 109)
merely argues that an individual, whether he wishes or not, must logically
prefer the consistent dictates of natural law to the follies and
inconsistencies of civic law. Though he presents such an individualism as
inevitable, Antiphon apparently does not consider it widespread; much less does
he advocate the unrestrained individualism which springs from the contempt of
civic law. When, therefore, Aly goes on to ascribe this
[105. Fg. 155. Aly, p. 115. [106. Fg. 21. Aly, pp. 144-46.
[107.
Plut. de Exil. 17; Per. 32. On the date of Anaxagoras' expulsion,
cf. H. T. Wade-Gery, "Thucydides the Son of Melesias," JHS 52 (1932)
220.
[108. Pages 117-33.
[109. F. Altheim, Klio 20 (1926)
257-70.]
[[99]]
later unrestrained individualism to the years after the Peace of Nicias
and to argue that the ÉAlÆyeia must therefore be sensibly earlier,
he seems to have much right on his side, the more so since the distinction
between local and universal law was well known to the Periclean Age, as is
clear from Empedocles fg. 135, Antigone 454, Herodotus III 38, and the
tradition in Suidas that Archelaus (note 110) expounded the doctrine. Both
Plato (Protag. 337c) and Xenophon (Mem. IV 4) cause Hippias to
talk of fÊsiw and nÒmow, but, as Aly remarks, his reputation for
encyclopedic learning suggests that he adopted rather than originated the idea.
Aly (p. 133) attributes its widespread currency to Protagoras, and with great
likelihood; but however that may be, it is at least certain that by the time of
the Antiffone the doctrine was already well known.Finally the
ÉAlÆyeia, like the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw, contains
resemblances to the early plays of Sophocles and Euripides. Perhaps the most
striking appears in the Hippolytus where Phaedra, after describing her futile
struggle to quench her love, concludes (403-4)[[section]]mo< går
e[[daggerdbl]]h mÆte lanyãnein kalåmÆtÉ
afisxrå dr~s[[dotaccent]] mãrturaw polloÁw
[[paragraph]]xein.Just so, in the opening lines of the first
papyrus fragment, (note 111) Antiphon says that a man will succeed best, efi
metå mcentsn martÊrvn toÁw nÒmouw megãuw
êgoi, nomoÊmenow dcents martÊrvn tå t[[infinity]]w
fÊsevw. For, he continues, transgressions of civic law are punished only
when they are known, but transgressions of the law of nature entail their own
automatic punishment (note 112)--tå oÔn nÒmima
paraba[[currency]]nvn efiån lãy[[dotaccent]] toÁw
imologÆsantaw, ka< afisxÊnhw ka< zhm[[currency]]aw
[110. Vorsokr. 9 II, A2 (p. 45). [111. Col. 1.16-23
(Vorsokr. 9 II, p. 346).
[112. Col. 2.3-20.]
[[100]]épÆllaktai: mØ lay[[Delta]]n dÉ oÎ.
t<<n dcents t[[ordfeminine]] fÊsei jumfÊtvn
[[section]]ãn ti parå tÚ dunatÚn biãzhtai,
[[section]]ãn te pãntaw ényr~pouw lãy[[dotaccent]],
oÈdcentsn [[paragraph]]latton tÚ kakÒn,
[[section]]ãn te pãntew [[daggerdbl]]dvsin, oÈdcentsn
me>zon
. Now, as was observed, (note 113) the debate between Phaedra and the
nurse, like the Mytilenean Debate in Thucydides, turns on the opposite concepts
of legal right and inescapable natural force. When, therefore, the nurse, in
opposing Phaedra's honorable desire to die, adduces the overwhelming power of
Aphrodite (438-58), whose shameful commands, she says, men perforce must
obey,[[section]]n sofo>si gårtãdÉ [[section]]st<
yhnt<<n, lanyãnein tå mØ kalã
(465-66),she clearly expounds the same doctrine
of natural law as Antiphon and echoes his precept of secrecy. Fragments of the
earlier Hippolytus (fgs. 433, 434) and of the Bellerophon (fg.
286) repeat the idea. The next resemblance is found in the Medea, (note
114) where Creon twice states that a man must anticipate his enemies by
vigorous action and not let afid~w interfere with policy. In the same way,
Antiphon confirms his argument by citing as an example of those who harm
themselves by following conventional rather than natural law, (note 115)
w ín payÒntew émÊnvntai ka< mØ
aÈto< <êrx>vsi toË drçn. It is significant that
Thucydides attributes this same realistic outlook to the Corcyreans in 433
(133.4). (note 116) The debates of the Medea and Hippolytus, as
has already been said, are permeated with the influence of the sophists, and it
would hardly be denied that that influence shows itself as much in a deeper
rationalism of outlook as in a more conscious rhetorical skill--indeed the two
are
[113. Above, n. 66. [114. Lines 289-91, 349 (afidoÊmenow
dcents pollå dØ dideg.fyora).
[115. Fg. A, col. 4.32-col.
5.3.
[116. Cf. above, chap. 1 pp. 12-13.]
[[101]]
merely facets of the same influence. When then these plays present close
resemblances to one fragment of the ÉAlÆyeia, brief as it is, it
is difficult not to see in it an example of the sophistic writings which those
plays reflect.Other indications of the same fact exist. For
instance, Aly (note 117) with some probability saw in the words (note 118)
oÈ går diå dÒjan blãptetai, éllå
diÉ élÆyeian the contrast between truth and opinion which
played an important part in the teachings of Parmenides (1.29) and probably of
Protagoras. (note 119) Again, the suggestion of fg. B that it is the mark of
barbarians to revere high birth echoes the judgment of Per< ÉAdeg.rvn
ÑUdãtvn TÒpvn (ch. XVI) and of Herodotus, while the
following argument that all men are in fact equal seems inspired by the same
enthusiasm for sweeping scientific truths which marks the former of the two
works just cited. Then, the doctrine that it is against nature to respect your
parents if they are bad seems just such a sophistic tenet as would prompt
Aristophanes to say that all pupils of the sophists beat their parents
(Vesp. 1038, Nub. 1338-41, 1420-29). He makes Pheidippides
justify the doctrine in Antiphon's way as a law of nature (1427-29), and is
again at one with him (fg. 25) in speaking of D>now (380), though certainly
Anaxagoras and Diogenes propounded the idea, which Antiphon doubtless merely
utilized in his first book. Since Aristophanes must necessarily have travestied
only the better known and therefore longer standing sophistic tenets, the
doctrines just spoken of were presumably familiar sometime before the
Wasps and the Clouds. In general, it can be said that
Aristophanes' portrait of a sophist as partly absorbed in the physical sciences
and partly givcn to novel and subversive ideas on human
[117. Page 115. [118. Fg. A, col. 2.21-23.
[119. Plato
Theaet. 166d.]
[[102]]
relations is admirably exemplified in the ÉAlÆyeia, the
first book of which treated the external world and the second, human society.
Finally, it may not be farfetched to see in the ÉAlÆyeia a certain
kinship to the Antigone. Both authors contrast universal with local
laws, though the pious Sophocles finds in the former a religious, not a
natural, force. In Creon's speech to Haemon on a child's duties to his parents
(639-47) Sophocles again touches a question which, as we have seen, was treated
by the sophist, though again the emphasis of the two works is quite different.
Lastly, when Creon says to Antigone that in honoring Polynices she dishonors
Eteocles (512-22), he states the dilemma of the third fragment which Antiphon
sums up by saying, (note 120) tÚ går <ê>llouw
>>feloËn êluw Blãptei. Since Antiphon is
illustrating the inconsistencies of civic law, his use of the idea is again
different from that of Sophocles, whose nobility of attitude is nowhere better
shown than in Antigone's reply that death cancels such inconsistencies. It need
hardly be said that there is no question here of direct influence, but when the
Antigone as a whole expounds a great philosophic problem with a kind of bare
clarity unknown to earlier verse and at the same time canvasses certain of the
minor problems which appear in the ÉAlÆyeia, it is perhaps not too
fanciful to believe that the vision of Sophocles, like his style, was then
being sharpened by the discussions of the first sophists. It would take us far
afield to consider whether, in maintaining the sanctity of strong character and
the awful but ultimately beneficent power of the gods, Sophocles was in fact
opposing an opportunism and an agnosticism which he felt in the sophistic
teachings about him. But the fact at least that, in however different a spirit,
he yet treats certain of the same
[120. Col. 2.30-32.]
[[103]]
questions as Antiphon, suggests something concerning the period when
those questions were of interest in Athens.Thus, although
absolute certainty cannot result from such discussions as the foregoing, the
strong probability must remain that the ÉAlÆyeia was written some
time near or just before the outbreak of the war, perhaps, as Aly suggests,
(note 121) a few years later than the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw.
Certainly, if both were written considerably later, they would apparently have
concerned ideas already somewhat commonplace, an assumption hardly just to
their evident seriousness. But if so much be granted, then we may return to the
main question of the essay and consider what light is cast by these works on
the stylistic fashions of pre-Gorgian Athens. For that purpose the foregoing
discussion was perhaps not strictly necessary; for even Jacoby, (note 122)
though he regarded the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw as somewhat later than
did Altwegg, agreed that it was written during the early years of the war, a
date likewise assumed by Altheim (note 123) for the ÉAlÆyeia.
Hence, on any current view the two works might naturally be thought to reflect
many stylistic elements of the years before 427. Yet so great has been the
magic of Gorgias' name, that it seemed best to set forth somewhat fully the
arguments in the case, which in fact tend to support the earlier date. For only
by so doing can one transcend the inveterate habit of seeing in the antitheses
of early Athenian prose the influence of Gorgias and of Gorgias alone.
It is unnecessary to analyze the style of the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw
in great detail since Jacoby (note 124) has already done so. As Aly observed,
(note 125) the work is apparently a sophistic epideixis, and as such it may be
expected to reveal a poetic
[121. Page 153. [122. Pages 10-11, 35; see above, n. 86.
[123.
See above, n. 109.
[124. Pages 48; see above, n. 86.
[125. Page
154.]
[[104]]
cast of speech and an abundance of gn<<mai foreign to the more
scientific ÉAlÆyeia. Jacoby noted its use of the old-Attic
jÊn, (note 126) of the Ionic -ss-, of poetic and Ionic words presumably
uncommon in normal speech, of words with unusual meanings (it is suggestive
that Harpocration often cites from the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw (note
127)), and of compound words. Significant as these traits are in connection
with the language of Thucydides, more significant is the author's marked
preference of nouns to verbs. Thus he uses such a phrase as Ípcentsr
toË kayÉ <=mdeg.ran b[[currency]]ou [[section]]w tØn
jullogÆn (note 128) or megãlvn pÒnvn...efiw
énãgkaw. (note 129) Similarly, he often makes an abstract noun
subject of the sentence (afl går <=dona< oÈk [[section]]p<
sf<<n aÈt<<n [[section]]mporeÊontai (note 130)), uses
neuter adjectives in a general sense ([[section]]n t" aÈt" ddeg. ge
toÊt[[florin]], [[paragraph]]nya tÚ <=dÊ,
[[paragraph]]nesti plhs[[currency]]on pou ka< tÚ luphrÒn (note
131)), and articular infinitives (ka< [[section]]n mcentsn t"
gegen[[infinity]]syai oÈk [[paragraph]]nestin, [[section]]n dcents t"
mdeg.llein [[section]]nddeg.xetai gendeg.syai (note
132)).This last example leads on to the structure of his
sentences which Jacoby (note 133) summed up by saying, "Nimirum scriptor
parallelismum sententiarum adeo excoluit, ut quasi stropham antistropha
excipiat." Antiphon commonly connects his sentences, it is true, by repeating a
word from one sentence in the next, a practice more reminiscent of Protagoras'
looser style (cf fgs. 4 and 9) than of the compression of Thucydides. Moreover,
he often uses such lists of nouns as appear in the
[126. On these usages in early Attic, cf B. Rosencranz, "Der lokale
Grundton und die personliche Eigenart in der Sprache des Thukydides und der
alteren attischen Redner," Indoger. Forsch. 48 (1930) 127-78. [127.
Cf. fgs. 67-71.
[128. Fg. 49, Vorsokr. 9 II, p. 359.6.
[129.
Ibid., p. 359.2.
[130. Ibid., p. 358.9-10.
[131.
Ibid., p. 358.8-9.
[132. Fg. 58, ibid., p. 363.18.
[133.
Page 65; see above, n. 86.]
[[105]]
second fragment of Protagoras just cited. Nevertheless, his style,
except in passages of narrative (an exception equally true for Thucydides and
Antiphon the orator), is unquestion ably based on antithesis and parallelism,
the more markedly so, the more abstract and gnomic his thought. A good example
is fg. 54, where Antiphon in simple, fluent sentences tells a fable on the use
of money. When he sums it up, his style becomes more balanced, (note 134)
~t[[florin]] gãr tiw mØ [[section]]xrÆsato mhdcents
xrÆsetai, ^ntow u mØ ^ntow aÈt" oÈdcentsn oÎte
pldeg.on oÎte [[paragraph]]lasson blãptetai. When he adds a
general reflection, he falls into truly antithetical clauses, ~t[[florin]]
går i yeÚw mØ pantel<<w boÊletai
égayå didÒnai éndr[[currency]], xrhmãtvn
ploËton parasx~n, toË kal<<w frone>n pdeg.nhta
poiÆsaw, tÚ ßteron éfelÒmenow
émfotdeg.rvn épestdeg.rhsen. Again in fg. 8 one sees how
naturally the abstraction of a gn~mh is clarified and made precise by
antithesis (note 135)--[[section]]lp[[currency]]dew dÉ oÈ
pantaxoË égayÒn: polloÁw går toiaËtai
[[section]]lp[[currency]]dew katdeg.balon efiw énhkdeg.stouw
sumforåw, ë dÉ [[section]]dÒkoun to>w pdeg.law
poiÆsein, payÒntew taËta énefãnhsan
aÈto[[currency]]. Jacoby (note 136) accordingly rejected Blass's
statement that the Gorgian figures were absent from the Per<
ÑOmono[[currency]]aw by adducing, in addition to the sentences just
quoted, such other examples as fg. 49, (note 137) dokoËnta +/-donåw
ktçsyai lÊpaw êgesyai, and, from the same passage,
[[daggerdbl]]sa fronoËntaw [[daggerdbl]]sa pndeg.ontaw, éji~santa
ka< éjivydeg.nta. Yet Blass's view is undoubtedly correct in the sense
that the more precise Gorgian traits of the Helen, that is, its short
balanced clauses, its punning, wordplay, and rhyme, are foreign to this work.
But if so, one is again led to the conclusion of the previous section, that
antithesis, occasionally heightened by par[[currency]]svsiw and
paromo[[currency]]vsiw, is not in itself Gorgian but, rather,
[134. Vorsokr. 9 II, p. 362.12-14. [135. Ibid., p.
364.3-6.
[136. Page 58; as above, n. 86.
[137. Vorsokr. 9 II, p.
358.4-5.]
[[106]]
characteristic of an earlier sophistic prose already widespread before
427. It was also argued that, being in essence merely an aid to clarity
particularly helpful in abstractions, antithesis must have been used by
Protagoras in the debates the influence of which is seen in the early plays of
Sophocles and Euripides. Certainly, the fact that Antiphon, revealing as he
does certain of the same stylistic traits as Protagoras, uses antithesis for
exactly that purpose must seem to confirm such an assumption.A1y
(note 138) has called the ÉAlÆyeia an ÍpÒmnhma or
scientific essay, similar in kind to the Per< ÉArxa[[currency]]hw
ÉIhtrik[[infinity]]w and perhaps, as has recently been argued, (note
139) to the tract of the Old Oligarch. In style and feeling it shows little of
the exuberance of the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw but approaches rather,
as Hermogenes suggests, if not the speeches of Thucydides, at least such
reasoned expository passages as the Archaeology or the description of
stãsiw (III 82-83). Like the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw, it uses
the old-Attic jÊn but, unlike it, at times the old-Attic -tt-. Its
language is not generally poetic or imaginative, but it perhaps even surpasses
the other work in its preference for substantives. For example, in the passage
(note 140) efi mcentsn oÔn tiw to>w toiaËta prosemdeg.noiw
[[section]]pikoÊrhsiw [[section]]g[[currency]]gneto parå t<<n
nÒmvn, to>w dcents mØ prosieumdeg.noiw éllÉ
[[section]]nantioumdeg.noiw [[section]]lãttvsiw, oÈk
én<Ònhton ín> [[Sigma]]n t<Ú to>w nÒ>moiw
pe> dcents fa[[currency]]new> prosieu tå
toiaËta tÚ [[section]] nÒmou d[[currency]]kaion
oÈx flkanÚn [[section]]pikoure>n, the author three times uses an
abstract noun in the nominative and once a neuter adjective. Similarly, he has
constant recourse to abstract neuter plurals and the articular infinitive. But
what most concerns ourselves is the marked symmetry
[138. Page 155. [139. K. I. Gelzer, "Die Schrift vom Staate der
Athener," Hermes, Einzelschriften 3 (1937) 93.
[140. Fg. A, col.
5.25--col. 6.9.]
[[107]]
of his clauses. As in the Per< ÑOmono[[currency]]aw, he sometimes
makes his transitions by repeating words and he occasionally gives lists, (note
141) but on the whole, his method is to make a statement and then to analyze it
in a series of contrasting clauses which, it must be agreed, admirably clarify
his somewhat complex train of thought. The opening lines of fg. A well
illustrate his method: dikaiosÊnh n tå t[[infinity]]w
pÒw nÒmima <[[section]]n> [[radical]] ín
politeÊhta[[currency]] tiw, mØ aba[[currency]]nein.
xr"tÉ ín oÔn ênyrvpow mãlista[y] *aut"
jumferÒntvw dikaiosÊn[[dotaccent]], efi metå mcentsn
martÊrvn toÁw nÒmouw megãuw êgoi,
monoÊmenow dcents martÊrvn tå t[[infinity]]w fÊsevw:
tå mcentsn går t<<n nÒmvn
<[[section]]p[[currency]]y>eta, tå dcents fÊsevw
éka>a: ka< tå t<<n nÒmvn
imologha oÈ fÊnn, tå
dcents evw fÊn imologhydeg.nta.
(note 142) Or again, one may quote, (note 143) ka< toÊtvn t<<n
efirhmdeg.nvn pÒllÉ ên tiw eÏroi poldeg.mia
t[[ordfeminine]] fÊsei: [[paragraph]]ni tÉ [[section]]n
aÈto>w [dÉ] élgÊnesya[[currency]] te mçllon,
[[section]]jÚn [[yen]]ttv[i], ka< [[section]]lãttv [[yen]]desyai,
[[section]]jÚn ple[[currency]]vm ka< kak<<w pãsxein,
[[section]]jÚn mØ pãsxein. In these two typical passages
the author's constant reliance on short antithetical clauses needs no comment,
but it is worth observing that he is thus led to emphasize single words with
that starkness which has often been observed in the style of Thucydides or of
the Tetralogies. Again, though his thought often falls into completely
balanced clauses, such symmetry seems to be less a mannerism with him than an
inevitable result partly of his struggle for clarity, partly of the similar
sounds and number of syllables in the Greek endings. For, like Thucydides and
unlike Gorgias, he at other times neglects perfect symmetry, as if he valued it
not for itself but for its usefulness. And if in this respect his style differs
from that of Gorgias, so in a
[141. Cf. fg. A, col. 2.30-col. 3.18. [142. The author continues
with the longer passage quoted above, pp. 99-100.
[143. Fg. A, col.
5.13-24, continued by the passage quoted on p. 106 above.]
[[108]]
larger sense does the nature of the tract itself. We have little reason
to believe that Gorgias often wrote on speculative and scientific subjects;
even his Per< toË mØ ^ntow has been regarded as both early and
essentially light. (note 144) Rather, one seems to see in the
ÉAlÆyeia the same rationalistic spirit of such a work as
Protagoras' ÉAlÆyeia u katabãllontew, the first sentence of
which has already been cited (note 145) as an example of this same (as one
might call it) clarifiing use of antithesis. If so, then this work ofAntiphon,
as the indications of its date suggest, must seem to derive in style as well as
in spirit from the earlier sophistic movement which antedated the arrival of
Gorgias in Athens by some twenty years.Thus the argument of this
section, except for one concluding point, is at an end. It has been impossible,
it is true, to discuss in detail the very real resemblances of thought or
language between Antiphon and Thucydides or to analyze the latter's style for
resemblances other than those briefly suggested in passing. But such an
analysis, even if it had been attempted, would not perhaps have yielded the
fullest evidence, especially in regard to the speeches, because these two works
of Antiphon, the one probably an epideixis and the other an
ÍpÒmnhma, differ in kind from any speech of Thucydides. It would
perhaps be fair to say that the style of a public oration would stand somewhere
between the exuberant sententiousness of the former and the cool logic of the
latter, and would thus mitigate the divergent extremes of each. The
aforementioned debates of tragedy, for instance, reveal in the clarity of their
argumentation some- thing of the logical spirit and antithetical method of the
ÍpÒmnhma, while at the same time their language is far more
varied and their movement less intense. Now, as I
[144. H. Gomperz, Sophistik und Rhetorik (Leipzig 1912) 1-35.
[145. Page 70.]
[[109]]
have tried to show, (note 146) we have no reason to believe that the
oratory of the latter half of the fifth century was specific in content, and
concerned, like the speeches of Lysias or most modern oratory, with separate
and unique circumstances. Rather, the very arguments from what is likely or
profitable or just and the practice both of the tragedians and of Thucydides
suggest that men were then primarily concerned with classes of events and the
broader aspects of thought, in the light of which they considered specific
events. In other words, a peculiar mark of fifth-century thought was its
capacity for general ideas, a capacity by no means unnatural even to uneducated
audiences in times of great change and opportunity, as the sermons of early
Protestantism and the writings of the French and American revolutions clearly
show. But if in its manner of reasoning and its concern with broad
generalizations, public oratory thus probably did not greatly differ from the
debates of tragedy or from these tracts of Antiphon, then it is hard to believe
that the antithetical style, which in both these classes of works is merely the
vehicle of abstract thought, was unknown to oratory. On the contrary,
considering the unity and alertness of Athenian life, we must rather believe
that oratory revealed the stylistic and intellectual influences of the early
sophists as much as any other class of writings, perhaps more than any other,
since the sophists were from the first teachers of oratory. Thus it must appear
natural that even the speeches of Thucydides' first books should abound in
generalizations couched in antitheses.This conclusion leads to a
final point concerning the remoter origins of the antithetical style. Diels,
(note 147) believing
[146. Above, chap. 1 pp. 34-35, 52-53. Cf. A. Croiset, Thucydide,
p. 101, "de là l'obligation d'aller chaque fois au fond des choses et
d'épuiser, pour ainsi dire, la théorie du sujet en question. Ce
charactère tient aussi au telnps: l`éloquence devait alors
être abscraite, parce que les idées générales
n'avaient pas encore été formulées." [147. "Gorgias
und Empedokles," Sitzungsber. d. Berl. Akad. (1844) 343-68.]
[[110]]
that Gorgias discovered antithetical prose, sought his model in the
verse of Empedocles; Norden, as has been said, sought it in the sentences of
Heraclitus, and Navarre in the early tragedies of Sophocles, though, as they
agreed, Greek from the first readily lent itself to such effects of balance and
contrast. Now in perhaps no part of early literature are these effects more
marked than in the gn<<mai of Homer and especially of Theognis. The
hexameter readily expressed antithesis in such lines asoÈk
égayÚn polukoiran[[currency]]h: eÂw ko[[currency]]ranow
[[paragraph]]stv (B 204)orafidomdeg.nvn
éndr<<n pldeg.onew sãoi +/-cents
pdeg.fantai,feugÒntvn dÉ oÎtÉ ír kldeg.ow
^rnutai oÎte tiw élkÆ (E
531-32).Even more so did the pentameter, in which the pause at
the middle of the line seems naturally to induce a balance of expression. One
could cite many such lines from the elegists as these of Theognis and
Solon,oÎte går ín pÒnton spe[[currency]]rvn
bayÁ lÆion ém"woÎte kakoÁw eÔ
dr<<n eÔ pãlin
éntilãboiw(Theogn.
107-8)orxrÆmata mcentsn da[[currency]]mvn ka<
pagkãk[[florin]] éndr< d[[currency]]dvsin,KÊrnÉ:
éret[[infinity]]w dÉ Ùl[[currency]]goiw
éndrãsi mo>rÉ ßpetai(Theogn.
149-50)ore[[perthousand]]nai dcents glukÁn oede
f[[currency]]loisÉ, [[section]]xyro>so dcents pikrÒn,to>si
mcentsn afido>on, to>si dcents deinÚn fide>n(Solon
1.5-6).Now, as was argued in the last paragraph, the oratory of
the fifth century was undoubtedly much given to generalization. Certainly it
could not be denied that the speeches of Thucydides, the debates of tragedy,
and the fragments of the sophist Antiphon contain many abstract and general
passages and that in these passages antithesis is most marked.
[[111]]
Thus, in the new edition of his Geschichte der griechischen
Literatur (I, 2, 483), Schmid could describe the style of Sophocles as
gnomic, though at the same time it is antithetical. Hence, rather than follow
Diels, Norden, or Navarre in seeking the model of the antithetical style in one
or another author, it would seem more natural to suppose that, partly through
the native logic of their tongue and partly for clarity's sake, the Greeks from
the first associated antithesis with those generalizations which were renewed
from age to age in the form of gn<<mai. Then when, after the middle of
the fifth century, prose increasingly supplanted verse as the vehicle of
serious thought, it in turn fell heir to the older tradition of gnomic
antithesis and carried it further, both because the tradition was firmly
established and because the generalizations of prose were more complex and
hence more in need of analysis. Thus, though the early sophists evolved their
setentious and antithetical style to emulate the dignity of gnomic verse, prose
soon so surpassed its model in balance and trenchancy, that Sophocles and
Euripides, in curtailing the chorus in favor of debates and orations more in
keeping with the rational spirit of their age, at the same time affected a more
balanced and sententious style than had been used by earlier poets. It is this
style that inspired the fragments of the sophist Antiphon and, so it has been
argued, the oratory known to Thucydides at the outbreak of the war and later
taken by him as the basis of the speeches in his History. Gorgias' part
in the development of the style seems therefore much less great than has been
supposed. It is possible that he evolved his strict antithetical manner in
Sicily some years before 427 and that other sophists carried his teachings to
Athens before he actually came. It is more probable that he neither discovered
the antithetical style nor brought it into general use, but
[[112]]
merely pressed it, so to speak, to its illogical conclusion, seeking in
every detail and by every means a symmetry and balance of expression which his
predecessors had used with greater moderation and largely for the sake of
clarity.
IV
A few words should be added m summary and in apology: in summary,
because the foregoing argument has necessarily often strayed from the original
question, how far Thucydides' style is representative of his age, and it will
therefore be useful to return briefly to the subject in conclusion; in apology,
because, as Dr. Jan Ros (note 148) has made clear, the traits of symmetry and
balance have doubtless been overemphasized. Dr. Ros pointed out that
Thucydides' style relies on three main elements, symmetry, variety
(metabolÆ), and departure from normal idiom ([[section]]jallagÆ),
and in treating the second of these, he had no difficulty in showing how the
historian repeatedly softens a too rigorous balance by any one of a number of
means tending to variety, for instance, by varying the construction of parallel
clauses or by using a synonym instead of repeating a word. He explained the
practice by showing that metabolÆ (poikil[[currency]]a) was regarded in
antiquity as essential to an artistic style. Now Aristotle similarly emphasizes
the importance of unusual and poetic words, (note 149) and, if the argument of
the two preceding pages has any merit, then antithesis, associated as it was
with the style of gnomic generalization, also sub- served the effect of
dignity. In other words, to say that Thucydides sought symmetry and variety of
expression and boldness of idiom is merely to say that, for the most
part,
[148. For reference, see n. 8. [149. Rhet. III 7.11. Unusual
diction played an even greater part in fifth-century prose (Rhet. III
1.8-10, 2.5).]
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he followed the contemporary standards of artistic prose. Hence it is
somewhat surprising when at the end of his monograph (note 150) Dr. Ros speaks
of Thucydides' style as unique, and, though that judgment was based on his
study of variety, still it naturally leads back to the main subject of this
essay. For, as Dr. Ros observes, the principle of variety is merely, as it
were, the obverse of the principle of symmetry, its purpose being to add
subtlety and richness to an otherwise uniformly balanced style. It is therefore
to be expected that the two practices would be found side by side and that when
the one became widespread, so would the other.In fact, as I
tried to show in reviewing Dr. Ros's book, (note 151) the variety which he
observes in the History is equally marked in Antiphon's Per<
ÑOmono[[currency]]aw. There is no need of repeating the evidence here;
it is enough to say that Antiphon too alters his constructions, uses synonyms,
and varies tense, mood, and number very much in the manner of the historian.
Similarly, a list of such variations compiled from the Medea was
sufficient to show that metabolÆ played its part beside antithesis and
balance in the later tragic style which, it has been argued, was much
infiuenced by the writings of the early sophists. Moreover, Antiphon's diction,
like that of the sophists, included both the poetic and Ionic forms of tragedy
and the newer but equally striking terminology of science. Hence it seems
beyond question that, broadly speaking, Thucydides subscribed to the standards
of artistic prose common during his early manhood, standards which, on the one
hand, aimed at the dignity of new and searching generalizations and, on the
other, embraced the unusual and varied diction of verse and
[150. Pages 458-63. [151. AJP 61 (1940) 96-102.]
[[114]]
science in a way quite foreign to the purer but more limited prose of
the fourth century.Yet, as Hermogenes remarked, (note 152)
Thucydides' abstractness has something in common with the style of the
ÉAlÆyeia, which, however, as a technical work, quite lacks
richness and variety but directs its balanced clauses almost wholly to the
reason alone. Now in discussing Dr. Ros's book, I ventured to suggest that
Thucydides did not seek variety for itself but had it, as it were, thrust upon
him by what he conceived to be the nature of his task, namely, to observe the
most rigorous and detailed accuracy and, at the same time, to set forth the
broader aspects and underlying laws of political behavior. In other words, his
History seeks to ally the specific and the general in a way not
attempted in the purely abstract ÉAlÆyeia, and thus it is cast ma
style far more complex and subtle than the latter's, though, on the other hand,
its underlying purpose has unquestionably something of the scientific
ÍpÒmnhma. Thus one could say that Thucydides employs the freer
usages of artistic prose, as exemplified in the Per<
ÑOmono[[currency]]aw, for an end which resembles, though it far
transcends, that of the ÉAlÆyeia. And insofar as his purpose seems
to have been unique, one could perhaps say that his style (being far more
varied than that of the usual ÍpÒmnhma or, conversely, more
abstract than that of the epideixis) is likewise unique. Yet in making such a
statement, one must remember that the elements of Thucydides' style--its
symmetry, its variety, its boldness of diction--were fully consonant with the
sophistic prose which he knew in Athens before his exile, and that his
individuality consists merely in his use of these elements, in his blending, as
it were, the styles of the ÍpÒmnhma and the epideixis.
[152. See above, pp. 91-92.]
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Moreover, in regard to the speeches, one must remember that, with the
exception of the fragment of Thrasymachus composed a dozen years after
Thucydides left Athens, we have no example of a symbouleutic speech of the
period covered by the History. One must, therefore, be very slow to
assert that the Athenians at least among his speakers could not possibly have
spoken in some such way as he says they did, especially when, apart from the
general likelihood that a man brought up in Athens would instinctively adopt
the manner in use there, we have the following reasons for believing in his
essential accuracy. First, Thucydides undoubtedly conceived many of his own
ideas in Athens; hence the likelihood exists that he likewise conceived there
the general concept of his speeches. Then, many of the ideas and forms of
argument actually used in the speeches are a