History of oratory and orators; a study of the influence of oratory upon politics and literature

Front matter

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Introduction

ORATORY is the parent of liberty. By the constitution of things it was ordained that eloquence should be the last stay and support of liberty, and that with her she is ever destined to live, flourish, and to die. It is to the interest of tyrants to cripple and debilitate every species of eloquence. They have no other safety. It is, then, the duty of free states to foster oratory.

The importance of oratory is attested by the belief, according to the fables of Greece and Egypt, that the art of eloquence was of celshsa^&tycrin, ascribed to the invention of a god, who, from th'< art, was supposed to

be the messenger ancFlittS-J : Hjtynpus. It is also

witnessed by the care w cultivated at

Et.

a period of the remotest antiquity."' ' ^moBe; /

With the first glimpse of historica from the regions of mythology, in that dubio which scarcely descries the distinction between the fktior/s of pagan superstition and the narrative of real events, a school of oratory, established in the Peloponnesus, dawns upon our view.

After the lapse of a thousand years from that time, Pausanius, a Grecian geographer and historian, says that hehad read a treatise upon the art composed by the founder of this school, a contemporary and relative of Theseus in the age preceding that of the Trojan war.

As is stated elsewhere, the .poems of Homer abound with still more decisive proofs of the estimation in which the powers of oratory were held, and of the attention with vi IN TROD UC TION.

which it was honoured as an object of instruction in the education of youth.

From that time, through the long series of Greek and Roman history, down to the dark and forbidding period in which the glories of the Roman republic expired, the splendour and the triumphs of oratory are multiplied and conspicuous. Then it was that the practice of the art attained a perfection which has not since been rivalled.

Oratory was power, in the flourishing periods of Athens and Rome. Eloquence was the key to the highest dignities, the passport to the supreme dominion of the state. The voice of oratory was the thunder of Jupiter; the rod of Hermes was the sceptre of the empire. In proportion to the wonders she achieved, was the eagerness to acquire the art. Eloquence was taught as the occupation of a life. The course of instruction commenced with the infant in the cradle, and continued to manhood. It was one of the chief objects of education, and every other part of instruction for childhood was compelled to yield to it. Letters, the sciences, arts, were to be.fl&a$££f^fl, upon the theory that an orator must be a nw: ^^.universal knowledge. Moral duties wt reason that none but a

good man &u\^jh&£pind$r$0*-

Learning, wisdom, even virtue herself, were estimated by tfaek stt^&$tfyie»€y to the purpose of eloquence, and the ity of man consisted in making himself a master of eloquence.

With the dissolution of Roman liberty, and the decline of Roman taste, oratory fell into decay.

In the United States, any one who knows the least of our system of government may perceive that every law that is passed must be submitted to the people in their representative or collective capacity, and there is no man, no matter how humble his station in life, who may not be called upon to serve as a legislator, or as a member of some body in which the art of speaking and the art of reasoning become absolutely necessary.

In political meetings which are held so often in our

IN TROD UC TIOiV. VI 1 country no man, thanks to the genius of our institutions, is precluded from delivering his sentiments with freedom upon any topic which it may be deemed expedient to consider, and the person who speaks well is sure never to miss applause, for by the aid of oratory useful truths are promulgated with effect. In order to succeed, however, natural abilities require the assistance of art. It is absurd to imagine that art imposes any fetters upon genius ; she aids and directs it.

Opinions differ as to the value of the ancient rhetorical writers. Lord Macaulay, in his essay, "On the Athenian Orators" thought that the ancient writers upon the subject of oratory would afford us but little assistance. He says when they particularise they are generally trivial ; and when they would generalise they became indistinct. He says that while Aristotle was a great philosopher he was without imagination, and that in Quintilian he can look for nothing but rhetoric, and rhetoric not of the highest order. Quintilian, undoubtedly, speaks coldly of ^Eschylus, while he warmly praises the plays of Euripides, and makes other erroneous judgments of the great classical writers of antiquity. With the merits of Cicero, every school-boy is familiar.

Longinus gives us no general rules. He gives us, however, many eloquent sentences, and Macaulay suggests very pertinently that " The Sublimities of Longinus " would be a better title for his treatise than " Longinus on the Sublime."

It may be doubted, however, whether any compositions which have ever been produced since the dawn of civilisation are equally perfect in their kind with the best orations of antiquity. From these the author has drawn freely.

Bare allusion is made to the history of oratory in other countries than those in which we have given an account of it. The small opportunity afforded for a display of senatorial or forensic oratory by the different governments of Germany has almost entirely checked its growth in that country, and the same remark is applicable to Spain, Portugal, and Italy.

V i 1 1 IN TROD UC 770 AT.

The difficulty which the author has experienced in selecting representative orators has been very great. He is aware of the fact that many eloquent men are not included whose lives would prove interesting and instructive.

The author ventures to indulge the hope that the noble lives he has put on record will act like an inspiration to others, for one of the great lessons of biography is to show what man can do by the development of his latent talents, and in this way the lives of great men are useful as guides, helps, and incentives to others. The splendour and variety of the lives of distinguished men make it somewhat difficult to distinguish the portion of time which ought to be admitted into history, from that which should be given to biography. These two parts are so distinct and unlike that they cannot be confounded without great injury to both ; either when the writer of biography obscures the portrait of an individual by a crowded picture of events, or when the historian allows unconnected narratives of the lives of men to break the thread of history. The author belives that the biographer never ought to introduce public events except so far as they are necessary to the illustration of character, and that the historian should rarely digress in biographical particulars except as far as they contribute to the clearness of his narrative of occurrences.

The lives of the subjects of the following sketches cannot become too well known on account of the usefulness of their examples.

HISTORY OF ORATORY AND ORATORS.

HISTORY OF ORATORY AND ORATORS.

Chapter I. Oratory IX Greece

TO trace the history of eloquence from its first rude origin through the various ramifications of human genius ; to mark the powers, the characters of the many orators, in the different ages of society, who have employed with success this fascinating art, would be a pleasing task. It would be instructive even to pursue the science as long as the records of civilised man permit, and to trace the progress of oratory from Pericles to the present time. But unfortunately the materials for such a critical investigation are few. The best effusions of oratory are but winged words. The music, the cadence, the action, with which they were graced, are lost, and even the substance of very few of the orations of antiquity are transmitted to us.

Not many of the orations of Demosthenes have outlived the depredations of time. It is a well known fact that Cicero, for many years, spoke almost daily in public, and yet a very small proportion of his numerous orations were committed to writing.

Oratory was, undoubtedly, studied and practised with considerable effect from almost the earliest periods. This is conclusively proved by the specimens of eloquence which we find recorded in the oldest writings extant.

Like their poetry, the oratory of the Hebrews was short and sententious, but in the speeches of Moses, and Samuel, and in the Book of Job, we have many beautiful examples of the sublime and pathetic in oratory.

The speeches in Homer are worthy of study. It is said that these speeches were composed by Homer, and are not to be ascribed to the characters from whose mouths they are supposed to issue, nor to the period in which they existed. This may be true, but the Iliad is known to be a dramatic representation of the age in which the poet lived; hence two inferences will follow — that it was then customary to address public assemblies in the manner of the heroes of Homer — and that no inconsiderable progress must have been made in eloquence as an art.

Eloquence is only to be looked for in free states, and free states are only to be found where eloquence is assiduously cultivated. Longinus, in his treatise on the sublime, says that liberty is the nurse of true genius ; it animates the spirit and invigorates the hopes of men ; excites honorable emulation, and a desire of excelling in every art.

In tracing the rise of oratory it is needless to go too far back in the early ages of the world, or delve for it among the monuments of Eastern or Egyptian antiquity. There was eloquence of a certain kind in those ages, but it was more like poetry than oratory. Philologists believe that the language of the first ages was passionate and metaphorical, owing to the small stock of words then known, and to the tincture which language naturally takes from the barbarous and uncultivated state of men, agitated by unrestrained passions, and struck by events, the causes of which, to them, were unknown. Rapture and enthusiasm, the parents of poetry, had an ample field in this state.

While the intercourse between different countries was unfrequent, when the words stranger and enemy were synonymous, and force and strength were the chief means employed in deciding controversies, the arts of oratory were comparatively unknown. The Assyrian and Egyptian empires, the first that arose, were despotic in character, and the people were led, or driven, not persuaded, and none of those refinements of society which make public speaking an object of importance were as yet introduced.

One of the earliest accounts of a trial is that which Homer has given us in his description of the shield made by Hephaestion, at the request of Thetis, for Achilles. The parties are represented as pleading themselves before the judges.

" The people thronged the forum, where arose The strife of tongues, and two contending stood : The one asserting that he had paid the mulct, The price of blood for having slain a man ; The other claiming still the fine as due. Both eager to the judges made appeal.

The crowds, by heralds scarce kept back, with shouts And cheers applauded loudly each in turn. On smooth and polished stones, a sacred ring, The elders sat, and in their hands their staves Of office held, to hear and judge the cause ; While in the midst two golden talents lay, The prize of him who should most justly plead."

From the time of Homer to the age of Pericles, there are no authentic orations on record.

The eloquence of Pericles must have been of a high order, for by his eloquence and his policy his influence was supreme in Athenian affairs for many years.

It is said that Pericles was the first Athenian who composed, and put into writing, an oration designed for the public. The golden age of Grecian eloquence extended from the time of Solon (about 600 B.C.) to that of Alexander (B.C. 336). Within this space the most renowned orators flourished. This was the brightest period in the history of Greece, at the close of which her sun went down in clouds, and never rose again in its native, dazzling splendour. It is said that Anaxagoras instructed Pericles in the sublimest sciences, and that Pericles acquired from him not only an elevation of sentiment, but a loftiness and purity of style far superior to that of any of his cotemporaries. Pericles was also noted for a remarkable gravity of countenance which never relaxed into laughter, a firm and even tone of voice, an easy deportment, and a decency of dress which no vehemence of speaking ever put into disorder.

These things and others of a like nature excited the admiration of his countrymen. In commenting upon the character of this wonderful man, Plutarch says : " The beauty of goodness has an attractive power; it kindles in us at once an active principle ; it forms our manners, and influences our desires, not only when represented in a living example, but even in an historical description. "

When the name of Pericles is mentioned to a lover of liberty, a crowd of glorious associations is called up. The splendid funeral oration over those who fell in the Peloponnesian war, is one of the grandest productions of antiquity. It exhibits a strong and ardent attachment to country, which true patriots always feel, and an undaunted courage in its defence, and willingness to pledge everything for the maintenance of civil liberty. Many portions of this peerless oration are almost as applicable to America as to Athens when delivered, but if the merits of the martyrs and heroes of the American Revolution could be justly set forth by an orator equal to the task, the renowned oration of Pericles would be eclipsed.

The author cannot forbear quoting a few passages from that celebrated address :

" I shall begin, first, with our ancestors, to whom it is at once just and becoming, on such an occasion as the present, that this honour of our commemoration should be paid ; for the' country which was ever their own home, they have handed down in the line of their successors to the present day, free, through their valour. Both they indeed are worthy of our praise, and still more our own fathers ; for having, in addition to what they inherited, acquired, not without hardship, the dominion which we possess, they have transmitted it to us.

"The greater portion of it indeed we ourselves, who are yet at the meridian of life, have still further augmented, till we have placed the city in all things in such a state of preparation that it is all-sufficient in itself for war and for peace.

" The warlike deeds by which all this has been effected, either by ourselves or by our fathers, in strenuously resisting the invasions, whether of barbarians or of Greeks, I omit, not wishing to enlarge upon them before the well informed ; but by what conduct we have come to this condition, by what policy and by what manners these great results have been brought about, these I will set forth before the eulogy of the deceased, deeming these things not inappropriate to be spoken on this occasion ; and that it will be beneficial to the whole assembly of strangers and citizens to listen to them.

" For we enjoy a form of government not emulating the laws of neighbouring states, being ourselves rather a model to others than copying from them. It has been called by the name of Democracy, as being the government not of the few but of the majority. It secures to all, under the laws, equality in their private controversies, — in proportion as a citizen is in any respect in good repute, he is preferred above others, not more on account of the class to which he may belong than his own merit ; while, on the other hand, as to poverty, no one qualified to serve the state is prevented from doing so by the obscurity of his condition. We perform our public duties on these liberal principles ; and as to mutual supervision in reference to the daily course of life, we take no offence at our neighbour for following his own inclination, nor do we subject ourselves to the annoyance of austerities which are painful, if not injurious. In this panegyric of the state of things in Athens there is a constant, though tacit contrast with the Spartan institutions and character.

" While our private intercourse, therefore, is without offence in our public concerns, we mainly fear to act illegally, ever obeying the magistrates for the time being and the laws, especially such of them as are passed for the protection of the oppressed, and such, though unwritten, as cannot be broken without acknowledged shame.

" Having displayed our power in noble manifestations, and most assuredly not without witnesses, we shall be the admiration of the present age and of posterity, not needing in addition the eulogy of Homer, or of any other poet, whose descriptions will charm the ear at the time, but whose conceptions of deeds is at variance with the truth; but having forced every sea and every land to be accessible to our enterprise, and having everywhere planted, together with our settlements, eternal monuments of injuries and of benefits. Combating therefore generously for such a city, and thinking it unjust that it should be wrested from them, these men laid down their lives ; and, of those who survive, it behooves every one to labour and suffer for it.

" Such, then, as became the city, were the departed. As for those who remain, you may desire indeed a safer career, but you must not deign to cherish a spirit in any degree less resolute toward the enemy ; — having regard not merely to the words of persons not wiser than yourselves, who may harangue you upon the honour of gallant resistance to the foe, but rather daily contemplating indeed the power of the state, till you become enamoured of it ; and when you have come to perceive its greatness, reflecting that brave men knowing their duty, and in their deeds shrinking from dishonour, have achieved it, — men who, even though they might fail in an enterprise, still felt that they ought not to deprive the 1 country of the benefit of their valour, but lavished upon it the most precious offering. Thus giving their lives to the public they received individually the praise that grows not old, and a most distinguished sepulchre, not so much that in which their bodies lie, as that in which their glory — on every occasion of word or deed — shall be left in everlasting remembrance.

ORA TOR Y IN GREECE. J

" For of illustrious men the whole earth is the sepulchre, and not the inscription alone of columns in their native land indicates it, but in countries also not their own, the unwritten memory which abides with every man of the spirit more than the deed.

" Emulous of men like these, do you also, placing your happiness in liberty, and your liberty in courage, shun no w r arlike dangers in defence of your country."

Pericles was not only an orator, but a statesman, and a general ; expert in business, and of consummate address. He had the surname of Olympias given him, and it was said, that, like Jupiter, he thundered when he spoke, but whether he could out-thunder Jupiter or not, is not certainly known. He was, however, humane, just, and patriotic, as well as generous, magnanimous, and public-spirited. The people had absolute confidence in his integrity, and never was that confidence betrayed. Although having ample opportunities to do so, he did not accumulate a fortune for himself, but spent vast sums of money in beautifying Athens, and in public works of great utility.

At his death he valued himself chiefly on having never obliged any citizen to wear mourning on his account.

After Pericles, those who were most noted for their eloquence, were Cleon, Alcibiades, Critias, and Theramenes.

The style of oratory which then prevailed was concise, vehement, and manly.

Eloquence was more assiduously cultivated after the death of Pericles than it was before. The precepts of oratory had not, until that time, been collected and reduced to anything like a system. There had been orators before the time of Pericles, of course, but in the nature of things, practice must precede theory. Oratory was undoubtedly prior in point of time to rhetoric. This must be the case with all arts. Many houses must have been built before a system of architecture could be formed ; many poems composed before an art of poetry could be written.

All didactic treatises must, necessarily, consist of rules resulting from experience, and that experience must be founded on previous practice. So, at the period mentioned,, a set of men called rhetoricians, and sometimes sophists,, sprang up. They were especially plentiful during the Peloponnesian war. Among them were Protagoras, Prodicus, and Thrasymus. The most eminent of the sophists, however, was Gorgias of Leontium. The most of the sophists joined to the art of rhetoric as taught by them, a subtile logic — and they were a sort of metaphysical skeptics, according to some writers, but Gorgias was a professed master of eloquence only. He was highly venerated in Leontium of Sicily, his native city, and money is said to have been coined with his name upon it. His style was quaint and highly artificial, and the fragment of his, which has been preserved,, abounds in antithetical expressions. In the hands of men like Gorgias, who professed to teach others how to speak for and against every cause whatever, oratory degenerated into a trifling and sophistical art. They were the first corrupters of true eloquence. The great and good Socrates exploded the doctrines of the sophists, and recalled the attention of the Athenians to natural language and useful thought.

Isocrates flourished in the same age, but a little later than Socrates. His writings are still extant. He was a teacher of eloquence, and an orator of ability, but his orations are greatly wanting in vigour. They have, however, been much admired on account of the sound morality which they inculcate, and for the smoothness and elegancy of the orator's style. Isocrates is said to have been the first rhetorician who introduced regular periods which had a studied music and harmonious cadence. He spent ten years in polishing one discourse, still extant, the Panegyric. Cicero was an admirer and, in some respects, an imitator of Isocrates, but it must be said to his credit, that he recognised and avoided his chief faults — his affectation, and the tiresomely uniform, regular cadence of his sentences.

Isaeus and Lysias belong also to this period. Lysias was somewhat earlier than Isocrates, but, unlike the latter, his style was unaffected and simple. He was a lawyer by pro-, fession, and his eloquence is almost exclusively forensic.

Thirty-four of his orations have been transmitted to us, and for their acuteness, clearness, and the method shown in their composition would not be bad models for the forensic orators of our own day, if we could not hear better ones in our courts at almost any time.

Isseus is chiefly remarkable for being the teacher of Demosthenes, the greatest orator, in many respects, that ever lived. The circumstances of his life are well known, and it is needless to dwell upon them at length. His ambition to excel in the art of speaking ; his frequent failures ; his untiring perseverance in surmounting all the disadvantages of person and address which he laboured under ; his resolution in shutting himself up in his subterranean retreat, that he might study without being disturbed ; his declamations by the seashore that he might accustom himself to the noise of a tumultuous assembly, and his use of pebbles in his mouth while practising, in order to cure certain defects of speech ; his speaking at home with a naked sword suspended over his shoulder, that he might check a habit which he had of raising and lowering it, to which he was subject, — all these circumstances show us how much can be accomplished by industry and application, and what great labour is necessary for the attainment of excellence in the art of oratory.

Demosthenes, despising the affected style of the orators of his day, chose Pericles as his model, hence the chief characteristics of his style were strength and vehemence.

Demosthenes had a wide field for the display of patriotic eloquence, when Philip of Macedon, by the aid of the most insidious arts, endeavoured to lay the Greeks asleep to their danger, and by force and fraud to overthrow Grecian liberty. He first crushed his enemies at home and then enlarged his kingdom abroad, then invited by the Thessalians to assist them against the Phocians, he sent an army into Thessaly, and made a determined and bold attempt to seize the key of Greece, the famous pass of Thermopylae. This decisive movement alarmed the Athenians at last, and an assembly of the people was convened for the purpose of determining the best course to be pursued for the purpose of arresting the progress of the enterprising Macedonian tyrant. Rising, like one inspired, Demosthenes, at this meeting, delivered, in impassioned tones, his first Philippic, and urged his hearers to make vigorous war against Philip. He realised the true state of affairs. He knew that many of the people had become corrupt and degenerate and incapable of estimating at its true value the great blessings of civil liberty ; that traitors to their country, in the pay of Philip, were continually urging the people not to fight against him, and knowing these facts he governed himself accordingly. The following are some of the best passages from this famous speech :

" When, therefore, O my countrymen ! when will you exert your vigour ? Do you wait till roused by some dire event ? till forced by some necessity ? What then are we to think of our present condition ? To freemen, the disgrace attending on misconduct is, in my opinion, the most urgent necessity. Or say, is it your sole ambition to wander through the public places, each inquiring of the other, ' what new advices ? ' Can anything be more new than that a man of Macedon should conquer the Athenians and give law to Greece ? ' Is Philip dead ? ' ' No ; but he is sick.' Pray what is it to you whether Philip is sick or not. Supposing he should die, you would raise up another Phillip, if you continue thus regardless of your interest !

" Then as to your own conduct, some wander about, crying, Philip hath joined with the Lacedemonians, and they are concerting the destruction of Thebes. Others assure us that he has sent an embassy to the king of Persia ; others, that he is fortifying places in Illyria. Thus we all go about framing our several tales. I do believe, indeed, Athenians ! he is intoxicated with his greatness, and does entertain his imagination with many such visionary prospects, as he sees no power rising to oppose him, and is elated with his success."

He continues in the same high strain in the third Philippic :

"All Greece, all the barbarian world, is too narrow for this man's ambition. And though we Greeks see and hear all this, we send no embassies to each other ; we express no resentment ; but into such wretchedness are we sunk, that even to this day we neglect what our interest and duty demand. Without engaging in associations, or forming confederacies, we look with unconcern upon Philip's growing power, each fondly imagining that the time in which another is destroyed is so much time gained on him ; although no man can be ignorant that, like the regular periodic return of a fever, he is coming upon those who think themselves the most remote from danger.

" And what is the cause of our present passive disposition ? For some cause sure there must be ; why the Greeks, who have been so zealous heretofore in defence of liberty, are now so prone to slavery. The cause, Athenians, is that a principle which was formerly fixed in the minds of all, now exists no more ; a principle which conquered the opulence of Persia, maintained the freedom of Greece, and triumphed over the powers of sea and land. That principle was an unanimous abhorrence of all those who accepted bribes from princes that were enemies to the liberties of Greece. To be convicted of bribery was then a crime altogether unpardonable. Neither orators nor generals would then sell for gold the favourable conjunctures which fortune put into their hands. No gold could impair our firm concord at home, our hatred of tyrants and barbarians. But now all things are exposed to sale as in a public market. Corruption has introduced such manners as have proved the bane and destruction of our country. Is a man known to have received foreign money ? People envy him. Does he own it ? They laugh. Is he convicted in form? They forgive him. So universally has this contagion diffused itself among us."