in their public assemblies. For the present, let us endeavour to collect the true sense of Homer respecting oratory from his language concerning it, from the characters with whom he has particularly connected it, and from the knowledge which he may be found to have possessed of its resources. Although it is common to regard the Iliad as a poem having battle for its theme, yet it is in truth not less a monument of policy than of war; and in this respect it is even more broadly distinguished, than in most others, from later epics. The adjectives in Homer are in very many cases the key to his inner mind: and among them all there is none of which this is more true, than the grand epithet Kudiáveιpa. He confines it strictly to two subjects, battle and debate, the clash of swords and the wrestling of minds. Of Achilles, he says in the First Book", (490) οὔτε ποτ ̓ εἰς ἀγορὴν πωλέσκετο κυδιάνειραν, οὔτε ποτ ̓ ἐς πόλεμον. In every other passage where he employs the word, it is attached to the substantive páx. Thus with him μάχη. it was in two fields, that man was to seek for glory; partly in the fight, and partly in the Assembly. The intellectual function was no less essential to the warrior-king of Homer, than was the martial; and the culture of the art of persuasion entered no less deeply into his early training. How, says Phoenix to Achilles, shall I leave you, I, whom your father attached to you when you were a mere child, without knowledge of the evenhanded battle, or of the assemblies, in which men attain to fame, οὔπω εἰδόθ ̓ ὁμοιΐου πολέμοιο οὔτ ̓ ἀγορέων, ἵνα τ ̓ ἄνδρες ἀριπρέπεες τελέθουσιν. n He uses the epithet for battle in Il. iv. 225, 6. 124, 7. 113, 8. 448, 12. 325, 13. 270, 14. 155, and 24, 391. So he sent me to teach you the arts both of speech and fighto, μύθων τε ῥητῆρ' ἔμεναι, πρηκτῆρά τε ἔργων. Even so Ulysses, in the under-world, relates to Achilles the greatness of Neoptolemus in speech, not less than in battle, (Od. xi. 510–16.) Nay, the ȧyópn of little Ithaca, where there had been no Assembly for twenty years, is with Homer the ȧyópη Toλúpnμos". In a description, if possible yet more striking than that of Phoenix, Homer places before us the orator at his work. His hearers behold him with delight; he speaks with tempered modesty, yet with confidence in himself (ào paλéws); he stands preeminent among the assembled people, and while he passes through the city, they gaze on him as on a god¶. From a passage like this we may form some idea, what a real power in human society was the orator of the heroic age; and we may also learn how and why it was, that the great Bard of that time has also placed himself in the foremost rank of oratory for all time. It is in the very same spirit that Ulysses, in the same most remarkable speech given in the Odyssey", sets forth the different accomplishments by which human nature is adorned. The three great gifts of the gods to man are, first, corporeal beauty, strength and bearing, all included in the word oun; secondly, judgment or good sense (ppéves), and thirdly, the power of discourse, or ayoрnтús. To one man, the great gift last named is the compensation for the want of corporeal excellence. To another is given beauty like that of the Immortals; but then his comeliness is not crowned by eloquence: ἀλλ ̓ οὔ οἱ χάρις ἀμφιπεριστέφεται ἐπέεσσιν. For χάρις in Od. xi. 367 we have μoppǹ èπéwV. • Il. ix. 438-43. p Od ii. 150. 9 Od. viii. 170-3. ease". Varied descriptions of Oratory. 105 In full conformity with this strongly developed idea, the Poet places before us the descriptions of a variety of speakers. There is Thersites3, copious and offensive, to whom we must return. There is Telemachus, full of the gracious diffidence of youth', but commended by Nestor for a power and a tact of expression beyond his years. There is Menelaus, who speaks with a laconic There are the Trojan elders, oι δημογέροντες, who from their experience and age chiefly guide the Assembly, and whose volubility and shrill small thread of voice Homer compares to the chirping of grasshoppers. Then we have Nestor the soft and silvery, whose tones of happy and benevolent egotism flowed sweeter than a stream of honey. In the hands of an inferior artist, Phoenix must have reproduced him; but an absorbing affection for Achilles is the key-note to all he says; even the account in his speech of his own early adventures is evidently meant as a warning on the effects of rage: this intense earnestness completely prevents any thing like sameness, and thus the two garrulities stand perfectly distinct from one another, because they have (so to speak) different centres of gravity. Lastly, we have Ulysses, who, wont to rise with his energies concentrated within him, gives no promise of display: but when his deep voice issues from his chest, and his mighty words drive like the flakes of snow in winter, then indeed he soars away far above all competitors. It is very unusual for Homer to indulge thus largely in careful and detailed description. And even here he has left the one superlative, as well as other considerable, orators, undescribed. The eloquence of Achilles is left s Il. ii. 212. * Il. iii. 150. t Od. iii. 23, 124. u Il. iii. 213. z Il. iii. 216, 23. to describe itself; and to challenge comparison with all the choicest patterns both of power and beauty in this kind, that three thousand years since Homer, and all their ebbing and flowing tides, have brought within the knowledge of man. Although he modestly describes himself as beneath Ulysses in this accomplishment, yet in truth no speeches come near to his. But Homer's resources are not even now exhausted. The decision of Diomed, the irresolution of Agamemnon, the bluntness of Ajax, are all admirably marked in the series of speeches allotted to each. Indeed Homer has put into the mouth of Idomeneus, whom he nowhere describes as an orator at all, a speech which is quite enough to establish his reputation in that capacity. (Il. xiii. 275-94.) In reviewing the arrangements Homer has made, we shall find one feature alike unequivocal and decisive. The two persons, to whom he has given supremacy in oratory, are his two, his only two godlike heroes (Ocîoi), the Achilles and the Ulysses, each of whom bears up, like the Atlas of tradition, the weight of the epic to which he principally belongs. How could Homer have conceived thoughts like these, if government in his eyes had rested upon either force or fraud? Moreover, when he speaks of persuasion and of strength or valour, of the action of the tongue and that of the hand, he clearly does not mean that these elements are mixed in the ordinary conduct of a sovereign to his subjects: he means the first for peace, the latter for war; the first to be his sole instrument for governing his own people, the latter for their enemies alone. If, again, we endeavour to estimate the importance of Speech in the heroic age by the degree in which the faculty was actually cultivated, we must take the achievements of the Poet as the best indicators of the The orations of the Poems. 107 capacities of the age. The speeches which Homer has put into the mouths of his leading orators should be tolerably fair representatives of the best performances of the time. Nor is it possible that in any age there should be in a few a capacity for making such speeches, without a capacity in many for receiving, feeling, and comprehending them. Poets of modern times have composed great works, in ages that stopped their ears against them. 'Paradise Lost' does not represent the time of Charles the Second, nor the Excursion' the first decades of the present century. The case of the orator is entirely different. His work, from its very inception, is inextricably mixed up with practice. It is cast in the mould offered to him by the mind of his hearers. It is an influence principally received from his audience (so to speak) in vapour, which he pours back upon them in a flood. The sympathy and concurrence of his time is with his own mind joint parent of his work. He cannot follow nor frame ideals; his choice is, to be what his age will have him, what it requires in order to be moved by him, or else not to be at all. And as when we find the speeches in Homer, we know that there must have been men who could speak them, so, from the existence of units who could speak them, we know that there must have been crowds who could feel them. Now if we examine those orations, we shall, I think, find not only that they contain specimens of transcendent eloquence which have never been surpassed, but likewise that they evince the most comprehensive knowledge, and the most varied and elastic use, of all the resources of the art. If we seek a specimen of invective, let us take the speeches of Achilles in the debate of the First Iliad. If it is the loftiest tone of terrible declamation that we desire, I know not where |