Dionysius’ second exemplar of the middle or well-blended style is Isocrates. His
diction is elegant and smooth; his clauses are arranged in parallel both in syntax and
sound within gracefully rounded periods which flow continuously without any
abruptness or hiatus in sense or sound, for the general aim is euphony and musical
effect. He cites an elegant passage from On the Peace(41) contrasting the attitudes
of the Athenians of his day towards threats from abroad with the conduct of their
heroic ancestors at the time of the Persian Wars.
Now what if a stranger from abroad were to come and suddenly find himself
embroiled in our affairs, before having the time to become corrupted by our
depravity: would he not think us insane and beside ourselves, when we glory in
the deeds of our ancestors, and think it right to sing the city’s praises by recounting
the achievements of their day, and yet act in no way like them but do exactly the
opposite? For, whereas they waged ceaseless war on behalf of the Greeks against
the barbarians, we expelled from their homes those who derive their livelihood
from Asia and led them against the Greeks; and whereas they liberated the cities
of Greece and came to their aid, and so earned the right to be their leaders, we
try to enslave them and feel aggrieved when we are not honoured as they were.
We fall so far short of the men of those times in both our deeds and our aspirations
that, whereas they had the courage to leave their country in order to save Greece,
and fought and conquered the barbarians on both land and sea, we do not see fit
to run any risk, even for our own gain, but seek to rule over all mankind, though
we are unwilling to take the field ourselves for this but employ instead stateless
men, deserters and fugitives who have come together as the result of other crimes
and who, whenever others offer them higher pay, will follow their leadership
against us.Dionysius praises the purity of Isocrates’ diction, his precision in idiom, his clarity of
expression and the shapely structure of his sentences, but he also finds cause for
criticism in the lack of concision and in the sluggishness of effect. He feels that his
style can be circumlocutory, repetitious and long-winded. He criticises Isocrates for
timidity in the use of metaphor, for sacrificing intensity and emotion to mellifluousness
of effect, and for a lack of variety in his use of figures, most especially in his exhausting
predilection for parallelisms and antitheses.
These comments, indeed much of what has been said about Lysias, are by way
of prelude and preamble to the main subject of the essay in which they occur,
Demosthenes, who in Dionysius’ verdict is the supreme orator, combining, in an
eclectic style, the virtues of all the various styles he has described, while avoiding
their various limitations: the obscurity that can be a deficiency in Thucydides, the lack
of emotional vigour that can characterise Lysias, the lack of variety and the diffuse-
172 THE GREEKS