180 NOTES t)N 



It is upon passages like these that Euripides "Seeitts to have 

 formed his style ; that limpid and lucid flow of words, which 

 4s so sweet and musical, so plastic and -so melancholy : 



ris 5' oT5ei>, et tfv rov9\ ft KfK\ir)Tai Qaveiv, 

 'rb ^f 5e 6vf)ffKfiv cirri ir\)]v o/uws 

 ol P\4iroj/Tcs, ol 5' 6\(a\6res 

 ) ou5e KeKrrjvrai KO.KO.. 



The 'Greeks, especially the Attic Greeks, were a nation of 

 talkers and public speakers. In the Lesche, the Agora, the 

 'Palaestra, the Pnyx, the Dikasterion, they carried on their 

 Intellectual life. Afterwards, they met again for discussion. 

 and colloquy at banquets and wine-parties. These habits> 

 affected their prose style, which was apt to be declamatory 

 and conversational rarely meditative. It is never impressive 

 by profound suggestions. It lacks mystery the mystery of 

 brooding and indwelling thought. We cannot mention a 

 Greek of the good period, who wrote as though he were 

 writing for himself and truth, without relation to an audience. 

 The histories of Herodotus and Thucydides were planned for 

 recitation. The philosophical works of the Socratic school 

 assumed the form of dialogue. Prose, under these condi- 

 tions, failed to attain the perfection which might have been 

 expected from the language and the genius of the race. It 

 displayed weaknesses inherent in the flexibility of the Greek 

 speech, and in the sociability of those who used it. Fluid, 

 glittering, versatile, attractive anything but sternly earnest, 

 heart-felt, monumental Attic prose forecasts the advent of 

 the Grceculus esuriens. Even the golden periods of Plato 

 suffer from loquacity, a twittering reiteration of yap and yow 

 and JAW and 8e, a conversational expansiveness, a superfluous 

 use of expletives, a disproportion between the thing said and 

 the way of saying it. Much may be conceded to Plato's 

 dramatic aim, and no man of taste would wish for alteratioi 

 in the diction of such masterpieces as the .'Republic,' the 

 ' Symposium,' and the ' Phaedrus.' As specimens of a pecu- 

 liar kind of literary art, they are unassailable, preserving 

 with peculiar felicity the very form and pressure of the time 



