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STATESMEN AND ORATORS. 183fortune; particularly of keeping splendid equipages, andsupporting other extravagances; which contributed not alittle to the downfal of the Athenians." His history is sowell known, that it is not necessary to establish these remarks by any particularreferences ;his whole life from beginning to end is a confirmation of them.The men who have thus far been named, united, thoughin different degrees,the characters of the statesman and thegeneral. By what means was such an entire separation ofthe two produced, asmay be observed in the thirdperiod,which we have named from Demosthenes ? The name aloneexplains to us distinctly enough, that the reason is to belooked for in the dominion of eloquence but;the questionremains still to be answered, Why and from what causes dideloquence obtain so late its ascendency in politics ?We do not read that Themistocles and Aristides wereskilled in oratory as an art. It is certain, that of all practical statesmen, Pericles was the first who deserved that praise ;although it is uncertain whether he took advantage of theinstructions which then began to be given by the teachers1of eloquence. But though the orations of Pericles wereartfully composed, they cannot be called works of art in thesame sense with those of Demosthenes and his contemporaries. As Pericles left no writings,it must remain undecidedwhether he wrote out his speeches word for word. A circumstance, of which the memory is preserved by Plutarch,appears to make this very uncertain. " He was accustomed,"says the biographer, 2 " whenever he was to speak in public,previously to entreat the gods, that he might not utter,against his will, any word which should not belong to the subject."Does not this seem to show, that he was not accustomed to write his orations, and deliver them from memory,but that he rather left much to be filledup by the impulseof the moment ? The speech which Thucydides representshim to have delivered/is the work of the historian ;but1According to Plutarch, i. p. 594, the sophist Damon was his instructor ;but, as it appears, rather his political counsellor, than his instructorregularin eloquence. He made use of the pretext, says Plutarch, of teaching himmusic. Gorgias of Leontium^ who iscommonly mentioned as beginning theclass of sophists, can hardly have been his master. See the fragment fromthe Schol ad Hermog. ap. Beisk. Or. Gr. viii. p. 195.2 Plut. Op. 11 3p. 604Thucyft ii 0.