Palmer L.R. The Greek Language

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'Men of Athens, I should have preferred to belong to the good old days and affairs when it sufficed for the younger

men to remain silent, when affairs did not compel them to speak and when our seniors governed the city wisely

and well. Now seeing that the deity has set our lives in such times as the present, so that the prosperity of the city

we know only by hearsay, but see with our own eyes her misfortunes and, what is more, the greatest of these being

not the work of the gods or of luck but of those who have charge of affairs, this makes it necessary to speak.'

The antithetic character of the style comes out well in the following passage:

'With others it is the abundance of good things that makes them arrogant

and factious. We showed good sense in the midst of blessings and lost our senses when things went badly...'

Noting that these two foreign immigrants seem to have written excellent Attic as contrasted with Protagoras, who

remained faithful to his native Ionic, so that the passage quoted will probably date long after their first arrival in

Athens, we may now turn to an early native writer of artistic prose.

Antiphon of Rhamnus in Attica (c. 480-411 B.C.) composed speeches to be delivered by others in court. His

Tetralogies are model rhetorical exercises in the form of double agones: each set falls into two pairs of opposing

speeches

on imaginary themes, the speech of the prosecutor being followed by that for his defence.

There is a contemporary namesake, Antiphon the Sophist, from whom we have fragments of a work On Truth and

another On Concord. These two literary personalities may well be different facets of one person, for the differences

of style

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could be accounted for as differences of genre. This is, in any case, true of the works ascribed to the Rhamnusian

Antiphon. The Tetralogies have Ionic forms such as

(for ), (for ),

(for or ), (for ), etc. Another explanation for stylistic differences is of a

chronological character. Attic prose was developing at a rapid rate during Antiphon's lifetime and in his later years

he must have been exposed to the influence of Gorgias and Thrasymachus. Thus Orations I and V are archaic in

flavour in their studied antithetic structure and their diction, but the influence of Gorgian figures is already

apparent. Oration VI is clearly more Thrasymachean. Above all, there is greater sophistical influence in the syntax

of the period, with less reliance on the archaic participial expressions, while the vocabulary is purer and more

restrained.

The first specimen is from the second Tetralogy (IIa 1-3), which deals with the case of a boy accidentally killed by

a javelin:

'Such crimes as are plotted by just anyone are not difficult to convict. But what is done by men who are of fair

natural endowments, have experience in court proceedings, and are at a time of life when they have the greatest

power of taking thought for themselves, these things are difficult to detect and to be shown up. For, because of the

magnitude of their danger, they look far ahead to the security of what they are plotting and do not take action until

they have taken precautions against all suspicion.'

We enumerate once again the recurrent features of this archaic Attic prose: poetical colouring, forced and strange

expressions, bold new coinages and substantivized neuters of participles and adjectives (e.g. II

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. 'For them their danger and their sense of shame, being

greater than their hate, even if they had intended to commit this crime, was sufficient to restrain the anger of their

spirit.'). We may add the abundance of participial expressions: an extreme example is

'For either the killers, seeing some persons approaching, leaving them (their victims), made off in flight before they

had despoiled them.'

The stiff antithetic arrangement with its mechanical symmetries is tricked out with the usual phonetic devices:

'And if one, deeming the action and the misfortune to be shared by both parties, concludes from what has been said

that he is neither to be acquitted nor condemned, in this case it is right to acquit rather than condemn him. For it is

not right that the plaintiff should succeed when he has not clearly proved that he has suffered wrong or that the

accused should be convicted of impiety when he has not been clearly proved guilty of the charges brought against

him.'

The great progress that artistic prose has made will be brought out by contrasting Antiphon's work with what is the

oldest specimen of Attic prose. This is the anonymous pamphlet (written by the 'Old Oligarch' possibly before the

outbreak of the Peloponnesian War) on The Constitution of Athens, which has been preserved among the works of

Xenophon. The author states at the outset that he is no democrat, but then goes on to dispel possible illusions about

the internal weaknesses of democratic Athens. On the contrary, what the Athenian demos does is based on rational

calculation of what is profitable to the masses as against the richer few. The untidy arrangement, the awkward

syntax, and above all the monotonous diction make it difficult

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to maintain that the Old Oligarch had gone to school with the Sophists. The opening paragraph, where we might

expect the greatest polish and elaboration, immediately gives the impression of an untutored and unpractised hand:

. 'Concerning the constitution of the

Athenians, that they chose this form of constitution, I do not approve for this reason, (namely) because thus

choosing they chose that the base citizens should fare better than the good. For this reason I do not approve.' The

literary inexperience is shown up by the constant verbal repetitions. For instance, the word

'well disposed' in

the passage justifying the intervention of the Athenians in favour of the masses in faction-ridden states, (III. 10)

. 'For in no city is the upper class favourable to the demos, whereas the lower class

in each city is favourable to the demos. For like is favourable to like.'

Although Aristotle (Rhet. III 12.2, 1413 b 17) recommends such repetition as a device in

oral compositions, this author neglects the injunction to vary the expression. The third section of the work provides

a particularly crass illustration. In the first place it begins

, which echoes the beginning of the first section. Then he goes on to

deal with complaints about delays in securing justice at Athens. In comparatively few lines we encounter in the

following order

ending with the sentence

. 'In addition to this one must

needs bear in mind that the Athenians need to celebrate festivals during which it is not possible for the courts to

sit.'

The impression of a long rambling conversational tone is heightened by the sudden direct appeals to the reader:

e.g.

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'Look now, but someone will say judgment there has to be, but fewer should judge.' But, despite these stylistic

defects and the often ungainly syntax, the Old Oligarch can make his points forcibly and sometimes with humour.

As an example we may quote the passage (I. 10) which explains why it is not the custom in Athens for free citizens

to strike slaves:

'Why this is the local custom, I will tell. If it were customary for the slave or the metic or the freedman to be

beaten by the free man he (scil. the free man) would often strike out, thinking that the Athenian was a slave. For

there the common folk is not better in dress than the slaves and the metics and, in appearance, too, they are no

better.'

Here the subject of

qualified by the participle has to be supplied from and

is treated as singular and plural in successive clauses.

We are now in a position to evaluate the language and style of the first Attic prose work of world rankthe History

of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, who tells us that he began his preparations at the outbreak of the war, a

passage written in 404 B.C. or after, when the war was over. Born c. 460 B.C., he had reached mature manhood by

the beginning of the war (431); he was exiled in 424 and did not return to Athens until twenty years later. The first

point to be made, therefore, is that his formative years coincided with the growing influence of the Sophists in

Athenian thought and expression. Yet the work as we have it was composed about 404 B.C. The question arises

whether its style, particularly in the speeches, is anachronistic. The question may be posed still more precisely. Is

Thucydides' style Gorgianic, the finest flower of that first period of artistic Attic prose which, until the coming of

the Sophists in 427 B.C., had still been crude and undeveloped? An affirmative answer would imply in particular

that the ways of thinking and the modes of expression attributed to the leading speakers in his history were those

current in the Athens of the returned exile

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rather than in the early years of the war. In view of the scanty evidence for pre-war political oratory the approach

to the question must be indirect. J. H. Finley has tackled the problem by studying the resemblances between the

thought and expression of Euripides and Thucydides.

The first point of importance is that certain leading ideas expressed by the Old Oligarch recur in the speeches of

Thucydides and that further resemblances of the same kind can be detected in the early plays of Euripides.

Moreover, the influence of Sophistic education becomes manifest through the use of certain stock arguments

common to the pamphleteer, the tragic poet, and the historian. Examples are the argument from likelihood

from advantage

, and from what is fight and just , which are traceable to the Sicilians

Corax and Tisias and were popularized in Athens by Protagoras. Finley's conclusion is that the ideas and modes of

argument attributed by Thucydides to his speakers were current at the time of the dramatic date and that both he

and Euripides reflect a common rhetorical tradition. How far this reaches back is shown by the accomplished use

of opposing pairs of speeches, antilogiai, in the earliest extant plays of Sophocles, the Ajax and the Antigone, for,

as we have seen, disputation by this means was a main feature of Sophistic training.

If then there are good grounds for believing that Thucydides in his history conveyed a reasonably accurate picture

of Athenian modes of thought and argument at the outset of the war, we may ask whether the same is true of his

style. What gives pause is precisely the uniformity of style even though many of the chief characters in his history

must have spoken other dialects than Attic. But the trend of our argument is that this personal style of Thucydides

was hammered out in his formative years. In other words, it antedates the arrival of Gorgias in 427 B.C. As has

been shown, the outstanding feature of the archaic style is its use of antithetical formulations, and while

Thucydides uses a plain and matter-of-fact style in the narrative and purely descriptive parts of his exposition, it is

in the more philosophical parts, and especially in the speeches, that the antithetical style reaches its pinnacle. The

supreme example is the Funeral Oration of Pericles (II. 36-46), from which our illustration is taken (37. 1):

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. 'We live under (literally 'use') a

constitution that does not emulate the laws of our neighbours, being ourselves a model for some rather than

imitating others.'

'No enemy has yet encountered our full forces because of our simultaneous concern with naval matters and our

expeditions by land against many objectives. If by chance they engage with some part (of our forces), defeating

some of us, they boast that they have repulsed us all, but being beaten, that they have been worsted by us all. And

if we choose to take risks by a relaxed way of life rather than laborious training with a courage that springs not so

much from legal compulsion but from force of character, we gain the advantage that we are not dismayed in

advance by troubles to come and when we are involved show outselves no less courageous than those who so

constantly are in hard training.'

40. 1 (This passage is set out so as to bring out the complex antithetic structure.)

'We are lovers of beauty without extravagance (lit. 'with cheapness'). We are lovers of things intellectual without

softening of our fibre. Wealth we use more as an opportunity of action rather than boastful words. As for poverty,

it is no disgrace

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for a man to confess it, but quite disgraceful not to take action to escape it.' This passage illustrates the frequent

unnatural distortion in the effort to achieve a verbal antithesis. Thus the genitive in

'boastfulness of

speech' is otiose and put in merely to balance 'opportunity for action'.

'Briefly then, I say that our whole city is the school of Greece, and that each individual among us, in my opinion,

could in his own person show himself fully competent in the most varied forms with great versatility and grace.

And that this is no empty boast on the present occasion but the actual truth, the very power of our city, which we

have acquired by these qualities, gives witness. For alone of her contemporaries she is better than her repute when

she is put to the test, and alone she causes no vexation to the attacking enemy because of the kind of men by whom

he is worsted, and no reproach to her subjects, on the grounds that their rulers are unworthy.'

'Offamous men the whole earth is the sepulchre, and not merely does an inscription on tombstones in their native

land give witness, but in lands not their own, an unwritten memorial, of their spirit rather than their deeds, lives on

in every man's heart.'

This is the antithetical style at its finest. With its unremitting search for variation, both of phrasing and of syntax,

in the

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contrasting members, Thucydidean prose is worlds apart from the mechanical matching, the static equilibrium and

the wearisome assonances of Gorgias. Examination of the extant works of the Sophist suggests that his essential

contribution to the development of artistic prose was to make the comma into the functional unit of the sentence

and to exaggerate the features of exact balance, word-play and assonances. He cannot be credited with antithesis

itself, for this is endemic in Greek thought from the very beginning. It is a reflection of the analytical mind which

proceeds to dissect a whole by successive dichotomies into A and non-A. As noted above, the procedure was

systematized and given stylistic expression by Protagoras whose influence on the art of debate can be detected at

least as early as 442 B.C. in the works of Sophocles, for this is the date of the Antigone, while the Ajax will be

earlier, and may go back to the preceding decade. If so, the Medea of Euripides will be fully twenty years later

(431), and by then the younger dramatist had brought the antithetical debate to a high pitch of technical perfection

with balanced clauses tricked out with the so-called 'Gorgianic' effects, e.g. 408-9:

'Women quite helpless for any good ends, but highly skilled contrivers of all manner of evil.'

Antithesis and 'equalization' (parisosis) are also the cardinal figures of Antiphon's style, and he also makes discreet

use of paromoiosis, that is assonance achieved by similarities at the extremities of the cola. The conclusion must

be that on the evidence available there is little or nothing to justify the key role in the development of artistic Attic

prose assigned to Gorgias even in the most recent handbooks, which repeat the statements of ancient critics. But,

as has been pointed out by J. H. Finley, there is no evidence that fourth-century Athenians were aware of the

crucial importance in their literary history of Gorgias' visit to Athens in 427 B.C. The tradition about its importance

goes no further back than Diodorus Siculus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, both writing in the first century B.C.

The ancient critics characterize the language of Thucydides as archaic and 'glossematic', that is, studded with

exotic words.

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While he expressed himself in the Old Attic of his youth, he obeyed the convention of Greek literature in making

polite bows to the dialect appropriate to the genre, in his case to Ionic. Thus he avoided what might have appeared

Attic parochialisms and wrote

for ( ) and for ( ), but apart from such superficial

details, there is virtually nothing in his language which can be certainly established as Ionic. He is an Athenian

through and through, the exemplar in thought and style of the Sophist-trained generation that grew to manhood in

the years of Periclean Athens before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.

3. Classical Attic Prose: Peak and Decline

The main lines for the development of prose were laid down and the steps to full fruition may be briefly sketched.

The history of Attic prose is a gradual emancipation from its poetical origins, the enfranchisement and

ennoblement of ordinary speech. In this the Athenian orators (and Greek prose is through and through oratorical)

followed the precept and example of Thrasymachus in preference to Gorgias. The driving force was the adaptation

of formal speaking to its function, and this, in a word, was 'persuasion' (

) whether in the courts or in the

assembly.

The prime virtue of effective speaking is clarity (

) and this requires in the first place the vocabulary of

everyday speech (Arist. Rhet. III 2. 1-2):

'Of nouns and verbs [a

phrase meaning collectively the vocabulary] it is the normal ones that produce clarity'. This is plain common sense,

for unnaturalness and preciosity of diction not only lack clarity but divert the hearer's attention from the argument

to the expression and may prejudice him against the speaker by their pretentiousness and vanity. The psychological

effects of diction were pointed out by Aristotle (Rhet. III 2. 4):

... 'Hence it is necessary to cover up when doing

this [using high-flown language] and not to appear to be speaking in an artificial way but naturally, for this is

persuasive...'.

Sentence structure, too, plays a vital part in clarity. It was here that the style of the orators was bound to differ from

that of

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