Political Precepts (5-6)

Yet are we not therefore so to lay the whole stress on virtue, as utterly to neglect all gracefulness and efficacy of speech; but esteeming rhetoric, though not the worker, yet a coadjutor and forwarder of persuasion, we should correct that saying of Menander,

The speaker’s manners, not his speech, persuade.

For both manners and language ought to concur, unless any one forsooth shall say that—as it is the pilot who steers the ship, and not the rudder, and the rider that turns the horse, and not the bridle—so political virtue, using not eloquence but manners as an helm and bridle, persuades and guides a city, which is (to speak with Plato) an animal most easy to be turned, managing and directing it (as it were) from the poop. For since those great and (as Homer calls them) Jove-begotten kings, setting themselves out with their purple, sceptres, guards, and the very oracles of the Gods, and subjecting to them by their majesty the multitude, as if they were of a better nature and more excellent mould than other men, desired also to be eloquent orators, and neglected neither the gracefulness of speech,

Nor public meeting, that more perfect they

Might be for feats of war,

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not only venerating Jupiter the counsellor, Mars the slaughterer, and Pallas the warrior, but invocating also Calliope,

Who still attends on regal Majesty,

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by her persuasive oratory appeasing and moderating the fierceness and violence of the people; how is it possible that a private man in a plebeian garb and with a vulgar mien, undertaking to conduct a city, should ever be able to prevail over and govern the multitude, if he is not endowed with alluring and all-persuading eloquence? The captains indeed and pilots of ships make use of others to deliver their commands; but a statesman ought to have in himself not only a spirit of government, but also a commanding faculty of speech, that he may not stand in need of another’s voice, nor be constrained to say, as did Iphicrates when he was run down by the eloquence of Aristophon, My adversaries have the better actors, but mine is the more excellent play, nor yet be often obliged to make use of these words of Euripides,

O that the race of miserable men

Were speechless!

and again,

Alas! Why have not men’s affairs a tongue,

That those fine pleaders who of right make wrong

Might be no longer in request?

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For to these evasions perhaps might an Alcamenes, a Nesiotes, an Ictinus, and any such mechanical persons as get their bread by their hands, be permitted on their oath to have recourse. As it sometime happened in Athens, where, when two architects were examined about the erecting a certain public work, one of them, who was of a free and voluble speech and had his tongue (as we say) well hung, making a long and premeditated harangue concerning the method and order of raising such a fabric, greatly moved the people; but the other, who was indeed the better workman though the worse speaker, coming forth into the midst, only said, Ye men of Athens, what this man has spoken, I will do. For those men venerate only Minerva surnamed Ergane (or the Artisan), who, as Sophocles says of them,

Do on the massy anvil lay

A lifeless iron bar, where they

With blows of heavy hammer make

It pliant to the work they undertake.

But the prophet or minister of Minerva Polias (that is, the protectress of cities) and of Themis (or Justice) the counsellor,

Who both convenes assemblies, and again

Dissolves them,

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making use of no other instrument but speech, does, by forming and fashioning some things and smoothing and polishing others that, like certain knots in timber or flaws in iron, are averse to his work, embellish and adorn a city. By this means the government of Pericles was in name (as Thucydides[*] says) a democracy, but in effect the rule of one principal man through the power of his eloquence. For there were living at the same time Cimon, and also Ephialtes and Thucydides,[*] all good men; now Thucydides, being asked by Archidamus, king of the Spartans, whether himself or Pericles were the better wrestler, thus answered: That is not easily known; for when I in wrestling overthrow him, he, by his words persuading the spectators that he did not fall, gains the victory. And this did not only bring glory to himself, but safety also to the city; for being persuaded by him, it preserved the happiness it had gotten, and abstained from intermeddling with foreign affairs. But Nicias, though having the same design, yet falling short in the art of persuasion, when he endeavored by his speech, as by a gentle curb, to restrain and turn the people, could not compass it or prevail with them, but was fain to depart, being violently hurried and dragged (as it were) by the neck and shoulders into Sicily. They say, that a wolf is not to be held by the ears; but a people and city are chiefly to be drawn by the ears, and not as some do who, being unpractised in eloquence, seek other absurd and unartificial ways of taking them, and either draw them by the belly, making them feasts and banquets, or by the purse, bestowing on them gifts and largesses, or by the eye, exhibiting to them masks and prizes or public shows of dancers and fencers,—by which they do not so much lead as cunningly catch the people. For to lead a people is to persuade them by reason and eloquence; but such allurements of the multitude nothing differ from the baits laid for the taking of irrational animals.

Let not yet the speech of a statesman be youthful and theatrical, as if he were making an harangue composed, like a garland, of curious and florid words; nor again —as Pytheas said of an oration made by Demosthenes, that it smelt of the lamp and sophistical curiosity—let it consist of over-subtle arguments and periods, exactly framed by rule and compass. But as musicians require that the strings of their instruments should be sweetly and gently touched, and not rudely thrummed or beaten; so in the speech of a statesman, both when he counsels and when he commands, there should not appear either violence or cunning, nor should he think himself worthy of commendation for having spoken formally, artificially, and with an exact observation of punctualities; but his whole discourse ought to be full of ingenuous simplicity, true magnanimity, fatherly freedom, and careful providence and understanding, joined with goodness and honesty, gracefulness and attraction, proceeding from grave expressions

and proper and persuasive sentences. Now a political oration does much more properly than a juridical one admit of sententious speeches, histories, fables, and metaphors, by which those who moderately and seasonably use them exceedingly move their hearers; as he did who said, Make not Greece one-eyed; and Demades, when he affirmed of himself, that he was to manage the wreck of the state; and Archilochus, when he said

Nor let the stone of Tantalus

Over this isle hang always thus;

and Pericles, when he commanded the eyesore[*] of the Piraeus to be taken away; and Phocion, when he pronounced of Leosthenes’s victory, that the beginning or the short course of the war was good, but that he feared the long race that was to follow. But in general, majesty and greatness more benefit a political discourse, a pattern of which may be the Philippics, and (amongst the orations set down by Thucydides) that of Sthenelaidas the Ephor, that of Archidamus at Plataea, and that of Pericles after the plague. But as for those rhetorical flourishes and harangues of Ephorus, Theopompus, and Anaximenes, which they made after they had armed and set in order the battalions, it may be said of them,

None talks thus foolishly so near the sword.

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