Scaife ATLAS

CTS Library / The Hall

The Hall (17-18)

urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0062.tlg009.perseus-eng2:17-18
Refs {'start': {'reference': '17', 'human_reference': 'Section 17'}, 'end': {'reference': '18', 'human_reference': 'Section 18'}}
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"As to the other point which my opponent made, that a beautiful hall spurs a speaker on and makes him more ambitious, I think it does the opposite. It dazzles and frightens him, disturbs his thought and makes him more timid, for he reflects that it is disgraceful beyond everything that his discourse

v.1.p.195
should not match a place so beautiful. For such surroundings put a man most clearly to the proof. It is ’ asif he should put on a handsome coat of mail and then take to his heels.before the rest, making his cowardice only the more conspicuous for his armour. This, ‘I think, is the consideration which causes Homer's famous orator[*] to think very little of good-looks and even make himself appear ‘ an utter know-nothing’ in order that the beauty of his words may seem more striking by comparison with that which is uglier. Besides, it is inevitable that the speaker’s own mind should be occupied in looking, and that the accuracy of his thinking should be disturbed because what he is looking at gets the better of him, attracts him and ‘does not allow him to attend to what he is saying. So how can he help speaking very badly, when in spirit he is busied with the praise of all that he sees?

“I forbear to say that even those who are present and have been invited to the lecture become spectators instead of hearers when they enter such a hall as this, and no speaker is enough of a Demodocus, a Phemius, a Thamyris, an Amphion or an Orpheus to distract their minds from looking. Why, every one of them is flooded with beauty the instant he crosses the threshold, and does not give the least sign of hearing [*] what the speaker says or anything else, but is all absorbed in what he sees, unless he is stone-blind or like the court of the Areopagus, listens in the dark!

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