The figures of question and interrogation[1] also possess a specific
quality which tends strongly to stir an audience and give energy to the
speaker's words. "Or tell me, do you want to run about asking one
another, is there any news? what greater news could you have than that a
man of Macedon is making himself master of Hellas? Is Philip dead? Not
he. However, he is ill. But what is that to you? Even if anything
happens to him you will soon raise up another Philip."[2] Or this
passage: "Shall we sail against Macedon? And where, asks one, shall we
effect a landing? The war itself will show us where Philip's weak places
lie."[2] Now if this had been put baldly it would have lost greatly in
force. As we see it, it is full of the quick alternation of question and
answer. The orator replies to himself as though he were meeting another
man's objections. And this figure not only raises the tone of his words
but makes them more convincing.
[Footnote 1: See Note.]
[Footnote 2: _Phil._ i. 44.]
2
For an exhibition of feeling has then most effect on an audience when it
appears to flow naturally from the occasion, not to have been laboured
by the art of the speaker; and this device of questioning and replying
to himself reproduces the moment of passion. For as a sudden question
addressed to an individual will sometimes startle him into a reply which
is an unguarded expression of his genuine sentiments, so the figure of
question and interrogation blinds the judgment of an audience, and
deceives them into a belief that what is really the result of labour in
every detail has been struck out of the speaker by the inspiration of
the moment.
There is one passage in Herodotus which is generally credited with
extraordinary sublimity....