The Greek orators

Oratory is one of the earliest necessities of society; as soon as men were organised on terms of equality for corporate action, there must have been occasions when opinions migh...

Antiphon is said to have been almost contemporary with Gorgias, but a little younger.[43] He was born about 480 B.C. He took no part in public life, perhaps disdaining to serve...

A new period begins with Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, who adopted Athens as his home. He is placed by Aristotle between Tisias, one of the founders of rhetoric, and Theodorus of B...

Though we attempt a chronological arrangement of the orators, such a treatment is apt to be misleading, for their lives and the periods of their activity overlap considerably. A...

Dionysius could find, in the authorities whom he consulted, no definite information about the life of Isaeus. The dates of his birth and death are unknown; we cannot, as Dionysi...

Isocrates was born in 436 B.C., and lived to the remarkable age of ninety-seven in full possession of his faculties. His childhood and youth were passed amid the horrors of the...

Many of the Sophists wrote imaginary speeches on legendary themes, and Isocrates, though this art was outside his province, strayed into it as a critic. The _Busiris_ (Or. xi.),...

The contemporaries of Isocrates are overshadowed by his genius; nevertheless there were in his time other speakers and teachers of ability. The only one of them who deserves ser...

Aeschines was for twenty years a bitter enemy of Demosthenes. This enmity was perhaps the chief interest in his life; at any rate it is the dominant motive of his extant speeche...

The art of rhetoric could go no further after Isocrates, who, in addition to possessing a style which was as perfect as technical dexterity could make it, had imparted to his nu...

Though as a rule an orator could not hope to be successful in fourth-century Athens without a professional training, yet there were at times men who, either through strength of...

Lycurgus according to Libanius, was older than Demosthenes,[400] though they were practically contemporaries. He belonged to the illustrious house of the Eteobutadae, who traced...

Owing to the extraordinary success of the Macedonian arms, Hellenic culture spread rapidly over a great part of the world; but it was beaten out thin in the process.[490]