As Thucydides must have repeatedly heard Pericles[1]—whom he describes as the first of Athenians, most powerful in action and in speech[2],—it would be strange if he had not endeavoured to give at least some traits of the eloquence which so uniquely impressed contemporaries. Pericles is said to have left nothing written[3]: but Aristotle and Plutarch have preserved a few of the bold images or striking phrases which tradition attributed to him[4]. Several examples of such bold imagery occur in the Thucydidean speeches of Pericles[5], and it can hardly be doubted that they are phrases which have lived in the historian's memory. But the echo is not heard in single phrases only. Every reader of the
- ↑ See e.g. ii. 13, ἔλεγε δὲ καὶ ἄλλα οἷάπερ εἰώθει Περικλῆς.
- ↑ i. 139.
- ↑ Plutarch, Pericl. c. 8: ἔγγραφον μὲν οὐδὲν ἀπολέλοιπε πλὴν τῶν ψηφισμάτων, ἀπομνημονεύεται δὲ ὀλίγα παντάπασιν.
- ↑ Arist. Rhet. iii. 10 § 7: ὥσπερ Περικλῆς ἔφη τὴν νεότεητα τὴν ἀπολομένην ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ οὕτως ἠφανίσθαι ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, ὥσπερ εἴ τις τὸ ἔαρ ἐκ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ ἐξέλοι: ib. τὴν Αἴγιναν ἀφελεῖν ἐκέλεθσε τὴν λήμην τοῦ Πειραιέως. Plut. Per. 8 § 5 quotes his saying, τὸν πόλεμον ἤδη καθορᾶν ἀπὸ Πελοποννήσου προσφερόμενον: and of those who fell at Samos, ἐγκωμιάζων ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος ἀθανάτους ἔλεγε γεγονέναι καθάπερ τοὺς θεούς· οὐ γὰρ ἐκείνους αὐτοὺς ὁπῶμεν, ἀλλὰ ταῖς τιμαῖς ἃς ἐχουσι καὶ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἃ παρέχουσιν ἀθανάτους εἶναι τεκμαιρόμεθα.
- ↑ E.g. ii. 43, τὸν ἀγήρων ἔπαινον κάλλιστον ἔρανον προϊέμενοι . . . : 41, μνημεῖα κακῶν κἀγαθῶν ἀΐδια ξυγκατοικίσαντες . . . : 43, ἀνδρῶν ἐπιφανῶν πᾶσα γῆ τάφος . . . , and others passim in the ἐπιτάφιος: in ii, 62, κηπίον καὶ ἐγκαλλώπισμα πλούτου, and many more. Bold imagery of this kind was characteristic of the elder school of oratory, and generally of what Dionysius calls the αὐστηρὰ ἁρμονία: cp. Attic Orators, vol. i. p. 27.
