At  threescore  winters'    end I   died

                A   cheerless   being,  sole    and sad;

The nuptial knot    I   never   tied,

                And wish    my  father  never   had.

                                (Anonymous, The Greek   Anthology   7.309,  translated  by  William Cowper)

Later Greek Literature: Oratory

Greek literary expression during the Roman Empire did not confine itself to poetry. Authors writing in
prose were very active and prolific in the areas of history, oratory, philosophy, and medicine, and a great
deal of their literary output has survived. Modern sensibilities do not incline us to regard oratory as a
particularly elevated branch of literature, or even as a form of literature at all. But to the ancient Greeks
(and Romans), the orator was a literary artist who engaged in a sort of high-risk public performance that
could result in great rewards, in terms of political success and prestige, or equally great humiliation. The
orator put his person on public display and invited his character and his command of the Greek language
to be appraised. For this reason, oratory always held an important place in establishing standards of
expression and formed a vital part of Greek education. The great impetus for the development of public
oratory had come in democratic Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, where citizens trained by the
sophists hoped to sway the assembly and shape public policy. After the end of the Classical Period,
however, public policy in Athens and elsewhere was shaped by Macedonian kings and, later, by Roman
emperors and by the proconsuls and procurators who administered the provinces of the Roman Empire. It
might be expected that, under these conditions, the need for skill in public speaking would evaporate. But
verbal proficiency had for so long virtually defined Greek culture that new outlets for its display were
developed and Greek oratory experienced a renewed efflorescence in the first three centuries after Christ.
Indeed, these changed circumstances presented a challenge to highly educated Greeks to use their
rhetorical skill as a means of repossessing the past, thereby reshaping the past for their own purposes and
asserting publicly their own control over it. Having had centuries of practice in reinventing their past, the
Greeks rose to the challenge to do so once again.