The Public Orations of Demosthenes, vol 1 | Page 9

artificiality in his eloquence.
It was, indeed, the general custom of Athenian orators to prepare their
speeches with great care: the speakers who, like Aeschines and
Demades, were able to produce a great effect without preparation, and
the rhetoricians who, like Alcidamas, thought of the studied oration as
but a poor imitation of true eloquence, were only a small minority; and
in general, not only was the arrangement of topics carefully planned,
but the greatest attention was paid to the sound and rhythm of the
sentences, and to the appropriateness and order of the words. The orator
had also his collections of passages on themes which were likely to
recur constantly, and of arguments on either side of many questions;
and from these he selected such passages as he required, and adapted
them to his particular purpose. The rhetorical teachers appear to have
supplied their pupils with such collections; we find a number of
instances of the repetition of the same passage in different speeches,
and an abundance of arguments formed exactly on the model of the
precepts contained in rhetorical handbooks.[10] Yet with all this art
nothing was more necessary than that a speech should appear to be
spontaneous and innocent of guile. There was a general mistrust of the
'clever speaker', who by study or rhetorical training had learned the art
of arguing to any point, and making the worse cause appear the better.
To have studied his part too carefully--even to have worked up
illustrations from history and poetry--might expose the orator to
suspicion.[11] Demosthenes, in spite of his frequent attempts to
deprecate such suspicion, did not succeed wholly in keeping on the safe
side. Aeschines describes him as a wizard and a sophist, who enjoyed
deceiving the people or the jury. Another of his opponents levelled at
him the taunt that his speeches 'smelt of the lamp'. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, one of the best of the ancient critics, says that the

artificiality of Demosthenes and his master Isaeus was apt to excite
suspicion, even when they had a good case. Nor can a modern reader
altogether escape the same impression. Sometimes, especially in the
earlier speeches to the Assembly, the argument seems unreal, the joints
between the previously prepared commonplaces or illustrations and
their application to the matter in hand are too visible, the language is
artificially phrased, and wanting in spontaneity and ease. There are also
parts of the court speeches in which the orator seems to have calculated
out all the possible methods of meeting a particular case, and to be
applying them in turn with more ingenuity than convincingness. An
appearance of unreality also arises at times (again principally in the
earlier speeches) from a certain want of imagination. He attributes
feelings and motives to others, which they were really most unlikely to
have entertained, and argues from them. Some of the sentiments which
he expects Artaxerxes or Artemisia to feel (in the Speeches on the
Naval Boards and for the Rhodians) were certainly not to be looked for
in them. Similar misconceptions of the actual or possible sentiments of
the Spartans appear in the Speech for the Megalopolitans, and of those
of the Thebans in the Third Olynthiac (§ 15). The early orations against
Philip also show some misunderstanding of his character. And if, in
fact, Demosthenes lived his early years largely in solitary studiousness
and was unsociable by disposition, this lack of a quick grasp of human
nature and motives is quite intelligible. But this defect grew less
conspicuous as his experience increased; and though even to the end
there remained something of the sophist about him, as about all the
disciples of the ancient rhetoric, the greatness of his best work is not
seriously affected by this. For, in his greatest speeches, and in the
greatest parts of nearly all his speeches, the orator is white-hot with
genuine passion and earnestness; and all his study and preparation
resulted, for the most part, not in an artificial product, but in the most
convincing expression of his real feeling and belief; so that it was the
man himself, and not the rhetorical practitioner that spoke.
The lighter virtues of the orator are not to be sought for in him. In
gracefulness and humour he is deficient: his humour, indeed, generally
takes the grim forms of irony and satire, or verges on personality and
bad taste. Few of his sentences can be imagined to have been delivered
with a smile; and something like ferocity is generally not far below the

surface. Pathos is seldom in him unmixed with sterner qualities, and is
usually lost in indignation. But of almost every other variety of tone he
has a complete command. The essential parts of his reasoning (even
when it is logically or morally defective) are couched,