Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom? (5-8)

Athens, to be sure, possessed no famous writer of either epic or melic poetry; for Cinesias[*] seems to have been an infelicitous dithyrambic poet. He was himself without family or fame but, jeered and mocked by the comic poets, he acquired his share in unfortunate notoriety. And for the dramatic poets, the Athenians considered the writing of comedy so undignified and vulgar a business that there was a law forbidding any member of the Areopagus to write comedies. But tragedy blossomed forth and won great acclaim, becoming a wondrous entertainment for the ears and eyes of the men of that age, and, by the mythological character of its plots, and the vicissitudes which its characters undergo, it effected a deception wherein, as Gorgias[*] remarks, he who deceives is more honest than he who does not deceive, and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived. For he who deceives is more honest, because he has done what he promised to do; and he who is deceived is wiser, because the mind which is not insensible to fine perceptions is easily enthralled by the delights of language.

What profit, then, did these fine tragedies bring to Athens to compare with the shrewdness of Themistocles which provided the city with a wall, with the

diligence of Pericles which adorned the Acropolis, with the liberty which Miltiades bestowed, with the supremacy to which Cimon advanced her? If in this manner the wisdom of Euripides, the eloquence of Sophocles,[*] and the poetic magnificence of Aeschylus rid the city of any of its difficulties or gained for her any brilliant success, it is but right to compare their tragedies with trophies of victory, to let the theatre rival the War Office, and to compare the records of dramatic performances with the memorials of valour.

Is it, then, your pleasure that we introduce the men themselves bearing the emblems and badges of their achievements, and assign to each their proper entrance? Then from this entrance let the poets approach, speaking and chanting to the accompaniment of flutes and lyres,

Now speak not a word of evil sound, and keep clear the way for our chorus,

Whoever in words like these is unskilled and whose mind is not free from uncleanness,

Who never has sung and never has danced in the rites of the noble Muses,

Nor has ever been trained in the Bacchic rites of the tongue of bull-eating Cratinus![*]

Let them bring with them their equipment, their masks and altars, their stage machinery, their revolving changes of scene, and the tripods that commemorate their victories. Let their tragic actors accompany them, men like Nicostratus and Callippides, Mynniscus, Theodorus, and Polus, who robe Tragedy and bear her litter, as though she were some woman of wealth; or rather, let them follow on as though they were painters and gilders and dyers of statues.[*] Let there be provided also a bounteous outlay for stage furnishings, supernumeraries, sea-purple robes, stage machinery, as well as dancing-masters and bodyguards, an intractable crowd. It was in reference to all this that a Spartan[*] not ineptly remarked that the Athenians were making a great mistake in wasting their energies on amusements, that is to say, in lavishing on the theatre what would pay for great fleets and would support armies in the field. For, if we reckon up the cost of each tragedy, the Athenian people will be seen to have spent more on productions of Bacchae, Phoenissae, Oedipuses, and Antigones, and the woes of Medea and Electra, than they spent in fighting for their supremacy and for their liberty against the barbarians. For the generals often ordered their men to bring along uncooked rations when they led them forth to battle; and the commanders, I can swear, after providing barley-meal and a relish of onions and cheese for the rowers, would embark them on the triremes. But the men who paid for the choruses gave the choristers eels and tender lettuces, roastbeef and marrow, and pampered them for a long time while they were training their voices and living in luxury. The result for the defeated choregoi [*] was to be held in contumely and ridicule; but to the victors belonged a tripod,[*] which was, as Demetrius says, not a votive offering to commemorate their victory, but a last oblation of their wasted livelihood, an empty memorial of their vanished estates. Such are the returns paid by the poetic art and nothing more splendid ever comes from it.

But let us now review the generals in their turn, as they make entrance from the other side; and at their approach those who have had no part in deeds of valour or political life or campaigns must in very truth speak not a word of evil sound and clear the way, whoever there be that lacks courage for such deeds as theirs and whose mind is not free from uncleanness, nor has ever been trained in the Bacchic rites that are the handiwork of Miltiades, bane of Medes, and Themistocles, slayer of Persians. This is the rebel-rout of the god of war, with battalions on land and squadrons on sea, laden with mingled spoils and trophies:

Hearken, Alala, daughter of War, Thou prelude of clashing spears, thou to whom are offered

Heroes in the holy sacrifice of death,[*]

as Epameinondas the Theban cried, when he and his men were dedicating themselves to the noblest and most resplendent of struggles for their native land, the graves of their fathers, and their holy shrines. I seem to see their victories advancing, not dragging along a bull or a goat as their prize, nor garlanded with ivy and redolent of the lees of Dionysus; but whole cities are theirs, and islands, and even continents, temples costing a thousand talents,[*] and colonies of vast population; and they are garlanded with all manner of trophies and spoils. Their ornaments and emblems are buildings like the Parthenon one hundred feet in length, southern Long Walls, [*] dockyards, Propylaea, Chersonese, and Amphipolis.[*] Marathon leads forward the Victory of Miltiades, and Salamis does the same for Themistocles’ Victory, poised upon the wreckage of a thousand ships. Cimon’s Victory brings an hundred Phoenician ships from the Eurymedon, and the Victory of Demosthenes and Cleon brings from Sphacteria the captive shield[*] of Brasidas and his soldiers in chains. Conon’s Victory fortifies the city with new walls, while that of Thrasybulus leads back from Phyle the people restored to freedom. Alcibiades’ Victories revive the city laid prostrate by her failure in Sicily. From the struggles of Neileus and Androclus[*] about Lydia and Caria Greece came to see that Ionia was rising. If you inquire of the other Victories in turn what good came to the State from each, one will reply Lesbos, another Samos, another Cyprus, another the Euxine, another five hundred triremes, another ten thousand talents, to say nothing of the glory and the trophies which they won. These are the things which the city celebrates in her festivals, for these she sacrifices to the gods, not for the dramatic victories of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Nor is the day celebrated when Carcinus[*] was successful with his Aüropê, or Astydamas[*] with his Hector, but even yet the State celebrates the victory at Marathon on the sixth of Boëdromion.[*] On the sixteenth of this month they pour a libation of wine in memory of Chabrias’s victory at Naxos.[*] On the twelfth they used to sacrifice thank-offerings for the recovery of their liberty, for on that day the exiles returned from Phylê.[*] On the third they won the battle of Plataeae.[*] The sixteenth of Munichion they dedicated to Artemis, for on that day the goddess shone with full moon upon the Greeks as they were conquering at Salamis. The conflict at Mantineia[*] has made the twelfth of Scirophorion more sacred; for in this battle, when the other allies were overpowered and routed, it was the Athenians alone who defeated the force opposed to them and erected a trophy taken from the victorious enemy. These are the things which have uplifted Athens to heights of glory and greatness; it was for these that Pindar[*] addressed Athens as

The mainstay of Greece,

not because she had guided the Greeks aright with the tragedies of Phrynichus and Thespis, but because, as he himself says, first at Artemisium

Sons of the Athenians laid the far-shining foundation of freedom.[*]

And when at Salamis and Mycalê and Plataeae they had firmly established, as in adamant, the liberty of Greece, they handed it down to all mankind.

But the compositions of the poets we may affirm to be but a childish pastime; orators, however, have some claim when compared with generals; wherefore with good reason Aeschines[*] asserts derisively that Demosthenes declares that he will enter a suit for possession on behalf of the Speakers’ Platform against the War Office. Is it, then, right to prefer Hypereides’ Plataean oration to Aristeides’ victory at Plataea? Or Lysias’s speech against the Thirty[*] to Thrasybulus’s and Archinus’s slaughter of those tyrants? Or Aeschines’ oration against Timarchus’s wanton ways to Phocion’s expedition to Byzantium,[*] by which he prevented the sons of Athenian allies from becoming victims of the wantonness and drunken lust of Macedonians? Or with the crowns[*] which the Athenian people in common received when they had given freedom to Greece shall we compare

Demosthenes’ oration On the Crown? For in this speech the orator has made this matter exceedingly perspicuous and intelligible in taking his oath by the memory of those of our ancestors who risked their lives for us at Marathon, [*] not by the teachers who in the schools gave them as youths their early training.

Wherefore the State has given public burial not to men like Isocrates, Antiphon, and Isaeus, but to these men, whose remains she has taken in her embrace; and these men it was that the orator deified in his oath when he swore by men whose example he was not following.[*] But Isocrates, although he had declared[*] that those who had risked their lives at Marathon had fought as though their souls were not their own, and although he had hymned their daring and their contempt of life, himself (so they say), when he was already an old man,[*] replied to someone who asked him how he was getting on, Even as does a man over ninety years of age who considers death the greatest of evils. For he had not grown old sharpening his sword nor whetting his spear-point nor polishing his helmet nor campaigning nor pulling at the oar, but in glueing together and arranging antitheses, balanced clauses, and inflexional similarities, all but smoothing off and proportioning his periods with chisel and file. How could this person do other than fear the clash of arms and the impact of phalanxes, he who feared to let vowel collide with vowel, or to

utter a phrase whose balance was upset by the lack of a single syllable?[*] For Miltiades set forth for Marathon, joined battle the next day, and returned victorious with his army to the city; and Pericles,[*] when he had subdued the Samians in nine months, was prouder of his achievement than was Agamemnon, who captured Troy in the tenth year. But Isocrates consumed almost twelve years in writing his Panegyric [*]; and during this period he took part in no campaigns, nor served on any embassy, nor founded any city, nor was dispatched as commander of a fleet, although this era brought forth countless wars. But while Timotheüs was freeing Euboea, and Chabrias[*] with his fleet was fighting at Naxos, and Iphicrates near Lechaeum was cutting to pieces the Spartan division,[*] and the Athenian people, having liberated every city, bestowed upon Greece equal suffrage with themselves, Isocrates sat at home remodelling a book with mere words, as long a time as sufficed for Pericles to erect the Propylaea and his temples a hundred feet long. Yet Cratinus[*] pokes fun even at Pericles for his slowness in accomplishing his undertakings, and remarks somewhat as follows about his Middle Wall:[*]

Pericles in his talk makes the wall to advance,

By his acts he does nothing to budge it.

But consider the petty spirit of this sophist, which caused the ninth part of his life to be spent on the composition of one speech. Is it, then, greatly worth our while to compare the speeches of the orator Demosthenes with the deeds of Demosthenes the general? To compare the speech Against Conon [*] for assault and battery with Demosthenes’ trophies won at Pylos? To compare the speech directed at Arethusius[*] on the slaves with Demosthenes’ reduction of the Spartans to slavery? The orator’s age when he wrote his speeches against his guardians[*] was the same as that of Alcibiades when he united the Mantineans and Eleans against Sparta.[*] And indeed Demosthenes’ public orations have this wonderful characteristic: in the Philippics he spurs his countrymen on to action and he praises the action of Leptines.[*]