by her persuasive oratory appeasing and moderating the fierceness
and violence of the people; how is it possible that a private man
in a plebeian garb and with a vulgar mien, undertaking to conduct a
city, should ever be able to prevail over and govern the multitude,
if he is not endowed with alluring and all-persuading eloquence? The
captains indeed and pilots of ships make use of others to deliver their
commands; but a statesman ought to have in himself not only a spirit
of government, but also a commanding faculty of speech, that he may
not stand in need of another’s voice, nor be constrained to say, as
did Iphicrates when he was run down by the eloquence of Aristophon,
“My adversaries have the better actors, but mine is the more excellent
play,” nor yet be often obliged to make use of these words of Euripides,
O that the race of miserable men
Were speechless!
and again,
Alas! Why have not men’s affairs a tongue,
That those fine pleaders who of right make wrong
Might be no longer in request?[50]
For to these evasions perhaps might an Alcamenes, a Nesiotes, an
Ictinus, and any such mechanical persons as get their bread by their
hands, be permitted on their oath to have recourse. As it sometime
happened in Athens, where, when two architects were examined about
the erecting a certain public work, one of them, who was of a free
and voluble speech and had his tongue (as we say) well hung, making
a long and premeditated harangue concerning the method and order of
raising such a fabric, greatly moved the people; but the other, who was
indeed the better workman though the worse speaker, coming forth into
the midst, only said, “Ye men of Athens, what this man has spoken, I
will do.” For those men venerate only Minerva surnamed Ergane (or the
Artisan), who, as Sophocles says of them,
Do on the massy anvil lay
A lifeless iron bar, where they
With blows of heavy hammer make
It pliant to the work they undertake.
But the prophet or minister of Minerva Polias (that is, the protectress
of cities) and of Themis (or Justice) the counsellor,
Who both convenes assemblies, and again
Dissolves them,[51]
making use of no other instrument but speech, does, by forming and
fashioning some things and smoothing and polishing others that, like
certain knots in timber or flaws in iron, are averse to his work,
embellish and adorn a city. By this means the government of Pericles
was in name (as Thucydides[52] says) a democracy, but in effect
the rule of one principal man through the power of his eloquence.
For there were living at the same time Cimon, and also Ephialtes
and Thucydides,[53] all good men; now Thucydides, being asked by
Archidamus, king of the Spartans, whether himself or Pericles were the
better wrestler, thus answered: “That is not easily known; for when I
in wrestling overthrow him, he, by his words persuading the spectators
that he did not fall, gains the victory.” And this did not only bring
glory to himself, but safety also to the city; for being persuaded
by him, it preserved the happiness it had gotten, and abstained from
intermeddling with foreign affairs. But Nicias, though having the
same design, yet falling short in the art of persuasion, when he
endeavored by his speech, as by a gentle curb, to restrain and turn
the people, could not compass it or prevail with them, but was fain to
depart, being violently hurried and dragged (as it were) by the neck
and shoulders into Sicily. They say, that a wolf is not to be held by
the ears; but a people and city are chiefly to be drawn by the ears,
and not as some do who, being unpractised in eloquence, seek other
absurd and unartificial ways of taking them, and either draw them by
the belly, making them feasts and banquets, or by the purse, bestowing
on them gifts and largesses, or by the eye, exhibiting to them masks
and prizes or public shows of dancers and fencers,—by which they do
not so much lead as cunningly catch the people. For to lead a people
is to persuade them by reason and eloquence; but such allurements of
the multitude nothing differ from the baits laid for the taking of
irrational animals.
6. Let not yet the speech of a statesman be youthful and theatrical,
as if he were making an harangue composed, like a garland, of curious
and florid words; nor again—as Pytheas said of an oration made by
Demosthenes, that it smelt of the lamp and sophistical curiosity—let
it consist of over-subtle arguments and periods, exactly framed by
rule and compass. But as musicians require that the strings of their
instruments should be sweetly and gently touched, and not rudely
thrummed or beaten; so in the speech of a statesman, both when he
counsels and when he commands, there should not appear either violence
or cunning, nor should he think himself worthy of commendation for
having spoken formally, artificially, and with an exact observation of
punctualities; but his whole discourse ought to be full of ingenuous
simplicity, true magnanimity, fatherly freedom, and careful providence
and understanding, joined with goodness and honesty, gracefulness
and attraction, proceeding from grave expressions and proper and
persuasive sentences. Now a political oration does much more properly
than a juridical one admit of sententious speeches, histories, fables,
and metaphors, by which those who moderately and seasonably use them
exceedingly move their hearers; as he did who said, Make not Greece
one-eyed; and Demades, when he affirmed of himself, that he was to
manage the wreck of the state; and Archilochus, when he said
Nor let the stone of Tantalus
Over this isle hang always thus;
and Pericles, when he commanded the eyesore[54] of the Piraeus to be
taken away; and Phocion, when he pronounced of Leosthenes’s victory,
that the beginning or the short course of the war was good, but that he
feared the long race that was to follow. But in general, majesty and
greatness more benefit a political discourse, a pattern of which may be
the Philippics, and (amongst the orations set down by Thucydides) that
of Sthenelaidas the Ephor, that of Archidamus at Plataea, and that of
Pericles after the plague. But as for those rhetorical flourishes and
harangues of Ephorus, Theopompus, and Anaximenes, which they made after
they had armed and set in order the battalions, it may be said of them,