Institutio Oratoria

But I should like to ask whether Isocrates spoke in the Attic style. For there is no author less like Lysias. They will answer in the negative. And yet it is to the school of Isocrates that we owe the greatest orators. Let us look for something closer. Is Hyperides Attic? Yes, they reply, but of an over-sensuous character. I pass by a number of orators, such as Lyucrgus and Aristogeiton and their predecessors

But what of Aesehines, whom I mentioned just now? Is not his style ampler and holder and more lofty than theirs? And what of Demosthenes himself? Did not he surpass all those simple and circumspect orators in force, loftiness, energy, polish and rhythm? Does he not rise to great heights in his commonplaces Does he not rejoice in the employment of figures? Does he not make brilliant use of metaphor? Does he not lend a voice, a fictitious utterance to speechless things?

Does not his famous oath by the warriors who fell fighting for their country at Salamis and Marathon show that Plato was his master? And shall we call Plato an Asiatic, Plato who as a rule deserves comparison with poets instinct with the divine fire of inspiration? What of Pericles? Can we believe that his style was like the slender stream of Lysias' eloquence, when the comedians, even while they revile him, compare his oratory to the bolts and thunder of the skies?

What is the reason, then, why these critics regard that style which flows in a slender trickle and babbles among the pebbles as having the true Attic flavour and the true scent of Attic thyme? I really think that, if they were to discover a soil of exceptional richness and a crop of unusual abundance within the boundaries of Attica, they would deny it to be Attic, on the ground that it has produced more seed than it received: for you will remember the mocking comments passed by Menander [*](Georg. 35 sqq. (Koerte); ἀπέδωκεν ὀρθῶς καὶ δικαίως, οὐ πλέον, ι ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὸ τὸ μέτρον. ) on the exact fidelity with which the soil of Attica repays its deposits.