Book II - Wilbourhall.org

Hi INTRODUCTION. [iii.he found to be employed in poetry. Those artificeswhich are ascribed to Gorgias are known as ' figuresof language ' (o-xry/xara Ae^ews), and consist ofdvndfo-t.'i, parallelism in sense, Trapt'o-oxris, parallelismin form, Tra/ao/ioiwo-ts, parallelism in the soundof whole clauses, and rrapovofMacria, parallelism inthe sound of particular words. All these 'figures'are frequent in Homer.The new oratory, differing widely from that ofPericles, which had depended for its effect uponnatural and incommunicable gifts, produced a profoundsensation at Athens. Here was a man fromwhom every ambitious citizen could buy a substitutefor the gifts that nature had denied—a man whotransformed the prosaic debates of the Pnyx into anOlympian contest. It is not surprising that evenThucydides, now engaged in collecting material forhis history, was to some extent influenced by the newteaching. He had determined to insert speeches inhis work, because he wished to keep his own opinionsin the background,and to leave his readers to judgeof actions from the reasoning of those responsible forthem. This plan was quite new, and probablyit was from epic poetry that Thucydides took theidea.The speeches, however, form but a fifth part ofthe whole work, and, except in them and in afew passages written in the same manner, the influenceof Gorgias on his work is very slight. There is nodoubt that the historian was averse to the excessiveemployment of the figures, though he saw that theyhad their use. The only figure he uses freely is theantithesis, especially that between Aoyos and ipyov.