wholly free from faults. His contemporaries, as well as later Greek critics,
were conscious of a certain artificiality in his eloquence. It was, indeed, the
general custom of Athenian orators to prepare their speeches with great care:
the speakers who, like Aeschines and Demades, were able to produce a great
effect without preparation, and the rhetoricians who, like Alcidamas, thought of
the studied oration as but a poor imitation of true eloquence, were only a small
minority; and in general, not only was the arrangement of topics carefully
planned, but the greatest attention was paid to the sound and rhythm of the
sentences, and to the appropriateness and order of the words. The orator had
also his collections of passages on themes which were likely to recur
constantly, and of arguments on either side of many questions; and from these he
selected such passages as he required, and adapted them to his particular
purpose. The rhetorical teachers appear to have supplied their pupils with such
collections; we find a number of instances of the repetition of the same passage
in different speeches, and an abundance of arguments formed exactly on the model
of the precepts contained in rhetorical handbooks.[10] Yet with all this art
nothing was more necessary than that a speech should appear to be spontaneous
and innocent of guile. There was a general mistrust of the 'clever speaker', who
by study or rhetorical training had learned the art of arguing to any point, and
making the worse cause appear the better. To have studied his part too
carefully--even to have worked up illustrations from history and poetry--might
expose the orator to suspicion.[11] Demosthenes, in spite of his frequent
attempts to deprecate such suspicion, did not succeed wholly in keeping on the
safe side. Aeschines describes him as a wizard and a sophist, who enjoyed
deceiving the people or the jury. Another of his opponents levelled at him the
taunt that his speeches 'smelt of the lamp'. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, one of
the best of the ancient critics, says that the artificiality of Demosthenes and
his master Isaeus was apt to excite suspicion, even when they had a good case.
Nor can a modern reader altogether escape the same impression. Sometimes,
especially in the earlier speeches to the Assembly, the argument seems unreal,