Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/85

image the majesty of the state, and enforce weighty counsels with lofty and impassioned fervour. A true artist, he grudged no labour which could make the least part of his work more perfect. Isocrates spent ten years on the Panegyricus. After Plato s death, a manuscript was found among his papers with the first eight words of the Republic arranged in several different orders. What wonder, then, asks the Greek critic, if the diligence of Demosthenes was no less incessant and minute? "To me," he says, "it seems far more natural that a man engaged in composing political discourses, imperishable memorials of his power, should neglect not even the smallest details, than that the veneration of painters and sculptors, who are darkly showing forth their manual tact and toil in a corruptible material, should exhaust the refinements of their art on the veins, on the feathers, on the down of the lip, and the like niceties." It may be surmised that much of the admiration professed for Demosthenes in modern times has been conventional. The clumsiest and coarsest forgeries which bear his name long received among general readers their share of the eulogy. A soundly critical study of his text is not yet sixty years old. To this day popular books occasionally show traces of the notion that everything which the manuscripts ascribe to him was written by him. But modern study has long since learned to recognize the surest traits of his style ; not, indeed, with the exquisite percep tion of his old Greek critics, yet sufficiently, as a rule, for the discrimination of genuine work from false, and on a firmer diplomatic basis. The modern world can never catch again the finer tones of that great music as they still

echoed on the ear of Greece in her calm after-time

when all the winds were laid, And every height came out, and jutting peak And valley, and the immeasurable heavens Brake open to their highest ;

but men can still hear the voice of a prophet whose resonant warnings rise above confused sounds of strife ; they can still feel the energy, the anguish, the indignation which vibrate through his accents ; and they can acknow ledge, with an admiration undiminished by the lapse of twenty centuries, the power of his words to quicken the sense of honour in craven hearts, to raise the votaries of selfish luxury to the loyalty of prolonged self-sacrifice, to nerve irresolute arms for an inevitable struggle, and, when all has been lost, to sustain the vanquished with the thought that, though a power above man has forbidden them to prevail, yet their suffering has saved the lustre of a memory which they were bound to guard, and has left them pure before the gods.

More than half of the sixty-one speeches extant under the name of Demosthenes are certainly or probably spurious. Much difference of opinion still exists in particular cases, especially as regards two or three of the private speeches. The results to which the preponderance of opinion now leans are given in the following table. Those marked a were already rejected or doubted in antiquity ; those marked m, first in modern times:—

I. DELIBERATIVE SPEECHES.

Genuine.

Or. 14. On the Navy Boards Or. 16. For the People of Megalopolis Or. 4. First Philippic Or. 15. For the Rhodians Or. 1. First Olynthiac Or. 2. Second Olynthiac Or. 3. Third Olynthiac Or, 5. On the Peace Or. 6. Second Philippic Or. 8. On the Affairs of the Chersonese Or. 9. Third Philippic 354 352 351 351 349 349 348 346 344 341 341 B.C.

Spurious.

(a) Or. 7. On Halonnesus (by Hegesippus) . B.C.

Rhetorical Forgeries.

(a) Or. 17. On the Treaty with Alexander. (a) Or. 10. Fourth Philippic. (m) Or. 11. Answer to Philip s Letter. (m) Or. 12. Philip s Letter. (m) Or. 13. Oil the Assessment (<TUVTO|IJ).

II. FORENSIC SPEECHES.

A. In Public Causes.
Genuine.

Or. 22. In (KO.T&} Androtionem Or. 20. Contra (Trp6s) Leptinem Or. 24. In Timocratem Or. 23. In Aristocratem Or. 21. In Midiam Or. 19. On the Embassy Or. 18. On the Crown... 355 354 352 352 349 343 330 339 B.C.

Spurious.

(a) Or. 58. In Theocrinem (a) Or. 25, 26. In Aristogitona I. and II. (Rhetorical forgeries).

B. In Private Causes.
Genuine.

Or. 27, 28. In Aphobum I. et II 364 B.C. (m) Or. 30, 31. Contra Onetora I. et II 362 ,, Or. 41. Contra Spudiam ? (m) Or. 55. Contra Calliclem ? Or. 54. In Cononem 356 B.C.? Or. 36. Pro Phormione , 352 ,, (m) Or. 39. Contra Boeotum de Nomine 350 ,, Or. 37. Contra Pantenetum 346-5 (m) Or. 38. Contra Nausimachum et Diopithem ?

Spurious.

(The first eight of the following are given by Schäfer to Apollodorus.)

(m) Or. 52. Contra Callippum 369-8 B.C. (a) Or. 53. Contra Nicostratum after 368 (a) Or. 49. Contra Timotheum 362 (m) Or. 50. Contra Polyclem 357 (a) Or. 47. In Evergum et Mnesibulum 356 (m) Or. 45, 46. In Stephanum I. et II 351 (a) Or. 59. In Neoeram 349 360-359 343 ? 341 347 346-5 ? 322-1 (m) Or. 51. On the Trierarchic Crown (by Cephisodotus ?) (m) Or. 43. Contra Macartatum (m) Or. 48. In Olympiodorum after (m) Or. 44. Contra Leocharem (a) Or. 35. Contra Lacritum (a) Or. 42. Contra Phoenippum (m) Or. 32. Contra Zenothemin (m) Or. 34. Contra Phormionem (m) Or. 29. Contra Aphobum pro Phano. (a) Or. 40. Contra Boeotum de Dote (m) Or. 57. Contra Eubulidem (m) Or. 33. Contra Apaturium (a) Or. 56. In Dionysodorum not before

Or. 60 (eViTct^jos) and Or. 61 (epam/tck) are works of rhe toricians. The six epistles are also forgeries ; they were used by the composer of the twelve epistles which bear the name of jEschines. The 56 Trpooluta, exordia or sketches for political speeches, are by various hands and of various dates. They are valuable as being compiled from Demosthenes himself, or from other classical models.

The ancient fame of Demosthenes as an orator can be

compared only with the fame of Homer as a poet. Cicero, with generous appreciation, recognizes Demosthenes as the standard of perfection. Dionysius, the closest and most penetrating of his ancient critics, exhausts the language of admiration in showing how Demosthenes united and elevated whatever had been best in earlier masters of the Greek idiom. Hermogenes, in his works on rhetoric, refers to Demosthenes, as [Greek], the orator. The writer of the treatise On Sublimity knows no heights loftier than those to which Demosthenes has risen. From his own younger contemporaries, Aristotle and Theophrastus,

who founded their theory of rhetoric in large part on his