Demosthenes: an Encomium (16-20)

‘But when you come to your hero’s acts of humanity, his pecuniary sacrifices, his grand political achievements’ (and he was going on in full swing to the rest of the catalogue, when I interrupted, with a laugh: ‘Must I be dowsed with the remainder of your canful, good bath-man?’ ‘Most certainly,’ he retorted, and went straight on), ‘the public entertainments

‘I believe you think, my good man,’ I protested, ‘that I have never had the deeds of Demosthenes drummed into me; I should be singular among rhetoricians, then.’ ‘It was on the assumption,’ he said, ‘implied by you, that we want assistance. But perhaps your case is a very different one; is the light so bright that you cannot manage to fix your eyes on the dazzling glory of Demosthenes? Well, I was rather like that about Homer at first. Indeed, I came very near turning mine away, thinking I could not possibly face my subject. However, I got over it somehow or other; became gradually inured, as it were, superior to the weakness of vision that would have condemned me for a bastard eagle and no true son of Homer.

‘But now here is another great advantage that I consider you have over me. The poetic faculty has a single aim; from which it follows that Homer’s glory must be laid hold of at once and as a whole. You on the other hand, if you were to attempt dealing with the whole Demosthenes all at once, would never know what to say; you would waver and not be able to set your thoughts to work. You would be like the gourmand at a Sicilian banquet, or the aesthete who has a thousand delightful sights and sounds presented to him at once; they do not know which way to turn for their conflicting desires. I suspect that you too are distracted and find concentration impossible; all round you are the varied attractions—his magnanimity, his fire, his orderly life, his oratorical force and practical courage, the endless opportunities of gain that he scorned, his justice, humanity, honour,

It may well be that, when you behold on this side decrees, ambassadors, speeches, laws, on the other, fleets, Euboea, Boeotia, Chios, Rhodes, the Hellespont, Byzantium, you are pulled to and fro among these too numerous invitations, and cannot tell which to accept.

you have only to take hold of one single clue, no matter which—his oratory, if you will, so that it is taken by itself—, and stick to that one throughout your present discourse. You will have ample material; his oratory is not of the Periclean type. Pericles could lighten and thunder, and he could hit the right nail on the head; so much tradition tells us; but we have nothing to judge for ourselves by, no doubt because, beyond the momentary impression produced, there was in his performances no element of permanence, nothing that could stand the searching test of time. But with Demosthenes’s work—well, that it will be your province to deal with, if your choice goes that way.