E. M. Cope, Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle

---

---

‘Or deliver a panegyric’ (the ἐπιδεικτικὸν γένος) ‘if we had not the sea-fight at Salamis, and the battle at Marathon, or all that was done on behalf of the Heraclidae, or anything else of the like sort. For all (panegyrists) derive their encomiums from the fair deeds, renown, distinctions (of their hero), real or supposed’.

These are the stock subjects of the Athenian declaimers: οὐ χαλεπὸν Ἀθηναίους ἐν Ἀθηναίοις ἐπαινεῖν, I 9. 30, III 14. 11. Plato's Menexenus has all these topics, the Heraclidae, 239 B; Marathon, c. 10; Salamis, c. 11. Isocrates, Panegyricus, §§ 54—60; 64, 65; Marathon and Salamis, § 85 seq. Comp. Philipp. § 147. de Pace § 37. Panath. § 194, Eurystheus and the Heraclidae; § 195, Marathon. He can't even keep it out of the περὶ ἀντιδόσεως (though that speech is of a purely personal nature); where it appears again, § 306. Lysias, ἐπιτάφιος, §§ 11—16, 20—26, 27—43. And the same three topics recur in the same order, only more briefly treated, in the ἐπιτάφιος attributed to Demosthenes, § 8 seq. Pseudo-Dem. περὶ συντάξεως § 22. Aesch. c. Ctesiph. § 259. Demosth. c. Aristocr. § 198. These topics are not introduced in the Speech for the Crown.

The tragic poets wrote dramas upon the same stories of unfailing interest, as Aeschylus' Persae, and Euripides' Heraclidae; and Aristophanes refers derisively to this habit of self-glorification, Acharn. 696—7, Vesp. 711, Equit. 781—785, and 1334. The Μαραθωνομάχαι, the warriors of Marathon, Ach. 181, Nub. 986, is not applied altogether in jest.

[ἐν Μαραθῶνι is an instance of departure from the stereotyped ad verbial form Μαραθῶνι, without the preposition. See Cobet, Variae Lectiones, p. 201, and Dr Thompson's ed. of the Gorgias, p. 152.]