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Iteration in argument.

A striking trait of Isaeos in the province of argument is iteration; and the preference of emphasis to form which this implies is worth notice as suggesting how the practical view of oratory was beginning to prevail over the artistic. Sometimes the repetition is verbal—an indignant question or phrase occurs again and again, where Isokrates would have abstained from using it twice1. More often, it is an argument or a statement which the speaker aims at impressing on the hearers by urging it in a series of different forms and connexions2. Or even a document, cited at the outset, is read a second time, as if to make the jury realise more vividly that a circle of proof has been completed3.

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

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

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

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

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