Extract from “Extemporary
Speech in Antiquity” a
dissertation by Hazel
Louise Brown, 1914. This
source is in the public
domain.
Even if Lysias did not write an art of rhetoric himself, he at
least served as a text for one. Plato's Phaedrus has very aptly been
described as "a dramatized treatise on rhetoric." Indeed, if one
can imagine a great genius dramatizing Aristotle's Rhetoric, the
result would probably be an approach to the second half of the
Phaedrus. The popular treatises on the art of rhetoric excited
Plato's ridicule and both in the Phaedrus and in the Gorgias he
holds them and their professors up to scorn." But in the Phaedrus,
as Thompson observes, Plato furnishes us with the scheme of a
new and philosophical rhetoric, founded partly on psychology and
partly on dialectic, and which he exemplifies in the second erotic
discourse. At the beginning of the Phaedrus, a speech attributed to
Lysias is read by Phaedrus, and criticized by Socrates. Phaedrus
thereupon demands that Socrates make a better speech on the same
theme. Socrates, after ironically depreciating his own ability as a
speaker, and the folly of his attempting to speak "extempore" on the
subject on which Lysias, the most able writer of the day, has spent a
long time, makes a speech which he immediately recants on the ground
of impiety, in the second erotic discourse, which exemplifies the theory
of rhetoric contained in the rest of the dialogue.
In the Phaedrus, the question discussed is the greater value of oral as
compared with written discourse, or rather, of oral as compared with
written instruction."
These remarks are introduced by the myth of Theuth, the scene of
which is laid in Egypt, the supposed source of written discourse.
The object of the fable is to show that the art of writing causes
men to neglect the cultivation of the memory, and gives them the
appearance and not the reality of wisdom. Written words, goes
on Socrates, are of no further value than to remind one who already
knows the subject of which the writings treat. Writing is like painting,
its productions seem alive, but they can neither answer
questions nor defend themselves when attacked. Writing is the
same for all, and cannot adapt itself to different persons, as the
true orator ought to do. The written word is only an eidolon of
the spoken discourse. Therefore the philosopher who has true ideas of
the just, the beautiful, and the good, will not, in his serious moods,
"write them in water" by committing them to paper; he will not sow
them in ink through a reed, in the form of discourses which are both
unable to defend themselves and to convey an exact impression of the
truth. This he will do only for the sake of recreation, and as a substitute
for the amusements of the many.
Rhetoric, then, is inferior to dialectic, which, when it works in minds
suited to it, is the surest way to propagate truths and preserve them
from extinction. As to speeches, it has been shown, says Socrates, that,
whether dialectic or persuasive, they cannot be constructed technically,
that is, scientifically, even so far as their nature admits of such
treatment, unless the speaker or writer has been thoroughly trained in
dialectic, and can define any term he uses and divide it into parts until
such division is no longer possible, and unless he can adjust his
discourse to the different types of mind.
Speech writing in itself is not disgraceful. The disgrace lies in writing
speeches ill.' The speech will be written well if the writer esteems his
art at its true value ; if he knows that the best of written speeches are
for the purpose of reminding those who already know, and that only in
discourses spoken and written for the sake of instruction is there found
what is clear and perfect and worthy of study.
If, then, those who write have composed their works knowing
the truth, and if they are able to defend what they have written, and
show by speaking that their own written productions are inferior
to their oral efforts, they must be given the higher name of
"philosopher." They must not be called poets, writers of speeches, or
compilers of laws. Such names apply only to those who have
nothing more valuable to offer than what they have written." In
this last class Plato places Lysias.
Of course, Plato as a teacher would naturally extol dialectic.
And it is true that he tries to make his own written compositions
approach as nearly as possible to the method he believed correct.
The dialogue form imitated most closely the method of oral teaching. In
the person of Socrates, Plato's ideas and beliefs are able to
defend themselves. They are not like the Athenian Orators, who,
we are told, are like books, and able neither to ask nor to answer
questions. But it seems that to such orators as Lysias Plato is
unfair.'' Lysias accomplished a great deal of necessary work which
Plato would not have done. The orator described in Plato's
Phaedrus, a perfectly wise man who knows all truth," could not
possibly exist, and even if he could, Plato himself tells us that the
people would never listen to him.' His only chance of being heard
would be inside the Academy with Socrates, Plato, and Theatetus
for his hearers. Plato's orator is a splendid ideal orator, not a human
being, with a human being's limitations. Such men as Lysias and
Antiphon were practical orators, whose speeches were to serve a
practical purpose, and aid ordinary men, not intellectual genuises.'
In depreciating the written speech Plato is not quite fair, and
it is very natural that he should be unfair. Immeasurably the
superior intellectually of any man of his time, it would be as unreasonable to expect him to come down to the level of an orator
who would write a clever speech for a given sum, as it would to
expect Lysias to rise to the ideal orator of the Phaedrus.
To take Plato's view of the written speech as typical of the time,
is of course impossible, but that a prejudice did exist against written
speeches we know from Isocrates.