s necessary either to expand it into weakness, or
to compress it into almost impenetrable density. The latter is generally
the choice of an able man, and was assuredly the choice of Thucydides.

It is scarcely necessary to say that such speeches could never have been
delivered. They are perhaps among the most difficult passages in the
Greek language, and would probably have been scarcely more intelligible
to an Athenian auditor than to a modern reader. Their obscurity was
acknowledged by Cicero, who was as intimate with the literature and
language of Greece as the most accomplished of its natives, and who
seems to have held a respectable rank among the Greek authors. Their
difficulty to a modern reader lies, not in the words, but in the
reasoning. A dictionary is of far less use in studying them than a clear
head and a close attention to the context. They are valuable to the
scholar as displaying, beyond almost any other compositions, the powers
of the finest of languages: they are valuable to the philosopher as
illustrating the morals and manners of a most interesting age: they
abound in just thought and energetic expression. But they do not
enable us to form any accurate opinion on the merits of the early Greek
orators.

Though it cannot be doubted that, before the Persian wars, Athens had
produced eminent speakers, yet the period during which eloquence most
flourished among her citizens was by no means that of her greatest power
and glory. It commenced at the close of the Peloponnesian war. In
fact, the steps by which Athenian oratory approached to its finished
excellence seem to have been almost contemporaneous with those by which
the Athenian character and the Athenian empire sunk to degradation. At
the time when the little commonwealth achieved those victories which
twenty-five eventful centuries have left unequalled, eloquence was
in its infancy. The deliverers of Greece became its plunderers and
oppressors. Unmeasured exaction, atrocious vengeance, the madness of the
multitude, the tyranny of the great, filled the Cyclades with tears,
and blood, and mourning. The sword unpeopled whole islands in a day.
The plough passed over the ruins of famous cities. The imperial
republic sent forth her children by thousands to pine in the quarries
of Syracuse, or to feed the vultures of Aegospotami. She was at length
reduced by famine and slaughter to humble herself before her enemies,
and to purchase existence by the sacrif