Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/360

S38 HISTORY OF GREECE. ing questions, addresses a stimulus and challenge to the intellect, spurring it on to ethical speculation. Putting all these points together, we see how much wider was the intellectual range of tragedy, and how considerable is the mental progress which it betokens, as compared with the lyric and gnomic poetry, or with the Seven Wise Men and their authoritative aphorisms, which formed the glory, and marked the limit, of the preceding centuiy. In place of unexpanded results, or the mere communication of single-minded sentiment, we have even in JEschylus, the earliest of the great tragedians, a large latitude of dissent and debate, a shifting point of view, a case better or worse, made out for distinct and contending parties, and a divination of the future advent of sovereign and instructed reason. It was through the intermediate stage of tragedy that Grecian literature passed into the rhetoric, dialectics, and ethical speculation, which marked the fifth century B.C. Other simultaneous causes, arising directly out of the business of real life, contributed to the generation of these same capac- ities and studies. The fifth century B.C. is the first century of democracy at Athens, in Sicily, and elsewhere : moreover, at that period, beginning from the Ionic revolt and the Persian invasions of Greece, the political relations between one Grecian city and another became more complicated, as well as more continuous ; requiring a greater measure of talent in the public men who managed them. "Without some power of persuading or confut- ing, of defending himself against accusation, or in case of need, accusing others, no man could possibly hold an ascen- dent position. He had probably not less need of this talent for private, informal, conversations to satisfy his own political parti- sans, than for addressing the public assembly formally convoked. Even as commanding an army or a fleet, without any laws of war or habits of professional discipline, his power of keeping up the good-humor, confidence, and prompt obedience of his men, depended not a little on his command of speech. 1 Nor was it only to the leaders in political life that such an accomplishment was indispensable. In all the democracies, and probably in See the discourse of Sokrates, insisting upon this point, as part of the dnUJS of n commander (Xen. Mem. iii, 3, 11).