Gorgias

“ Again rapturous admiration of this greatest and noblest of women led Gorgias to enthusiastic rhapsodies, until Dion exercised his office of soberer, and Barine asked tidings of her mother, her grandparents, and her sister. There was nothing but good news to be told. True, the architect had to wage a daily battle with the old philosopher, who termed it an abuse of hospitality to remain so long at his friend's with his whole family; but thus far Gorgias had won the victory, even against Berenike, who wished to take her father and his household to her own home. ”

“ See how the Lord will turn the skill of man to his discomfiture. General Gorgias is a fast fighter. He is famed for the rapidity with which he hurls his armies. He will not loiter in the plain. If I mistake not his tactics, he will essay to strike our camps even before he has made his own. If he were an Apollonius or a Seron it might be days before he would hazard a battle, in which event the tribesmen could have time to gather. But Gorgias will be too quick for them to help him. But here is the maiden."
"Have you heard from Micah of Hebron?" asked Deborah. ”

“ There is nothing striking or original in this peroration, which recalls the fragment of the funeral speech of Gorgias, especially in the forced and repeated contrasts between ‘mortal’ and ‘immortal.’ In manner and in substance it is infinitely inferior to the famous speech of Pericles, which, with all its extravagances of style, has a note of true feeling. The Epitaphios of Lysias rings hollow; it is feeble in imagery, it contains very little reference to the dead, and holds out no hope of comfort to the living. ”

“ There neither pleasure nor wisdom are allowed to be the chief good, but pleasure and good are not so completely opposed as in the Gorgias. For innocent pleasures, and such as have no antecedent pains, are allowed to rank in the class of goods. The allusion to Gorgias’ definition of rhetoric (Philebus; compare Gorg.) , as the art of persuasion, of all arts the best, for to it all things submit, not by compulsion, but of their own free will—marks a close and perhaps designed connection between the two dialogues. ”

“ The group is admirably arranged on the stage, and the effect is very fine as Theä, a young slave, holds back the drapery from the group while the moon illumines it with a soft light. At this moment an approaching tumult is heard. Theä drops the curtain, and Gorgias with his friends, heated with Cyprus wine, enters, accompanied by the 'myrmidons of the law.' He again demands the statues, for which Phidias has already received his gold. ”

“ But the cultivation of rhetoric and oratory as an art was first popularized by Gorgias of Leonti ́ni (see Map, p. 304) , who about 427 B.C. transplanted it from Sicily and saw it flourish in Athenian soil as it had never flourished before. Gorgias founded a school of eloquence at Athens, which was thronged by the great men of the time, eager to acquire the persuasive arts of the Sicilian teacher. Thus rhetoric became a fashion [Pg 256] able accomplishment; and to such account was it turned by the taste and genius of the Attic Greeks that they soon produced the greatest orators of history. ”

“ That former little peasant, the son of a gardener at Valmarie, Georges Plumet as he was called in the days of the Countess de Quédeville, and now Brother Gorgias of the Ignorantine Order, was a strong, thin, dark and knotty man, with a low stern forehead, projecting cheek-bones, and thick lips under a big nose shaped like an eagle's beak. As formerly mentioned, he was afflicted with a tic, a convulsive twitching of his upper lip on its left side, which thus disclosed his strong teeth, and formed a kind of involuntary rictus, having a violent and scoffing expression. ”

“ When Gorgias the rhetorician once read to the Greeks at Olympia a discourse upon peace and harmony, Melanthius exclaimed, ‘Here is a man giving us advice about peace and |C| harmony, when in private life he has failed to harmonize three people—himself, his wife, and his maidservant.’ For Gorgias, it appears, was enamoured, and his wife jealous, of the domestic. A man’s house ought to be in tune before he offers to set in tune a state, a public meeting, or friends. The public is more likely to hear of offences against a wife than of offences committed by her. ”

“ Gorgias anxiously begged him to relate what had happened, and the old man, drawing nearer, whispered that the pupil and assistant of Didymus—young Philotas of Amphissa, a student, and, moreover, a courteous young man of excellent family—had gone to a banquet to which Antyllus, the son of Antony, had invited several of his classmates. ”

“ Though we modern students cannot expect to rival him in these peculiar gifts, it is still possible for us to sympathize with his feelings. We cannot fail, in reading a speech like the Third Philippic, for instance, to appreciate how fully Demosthenes realizes the Platonic ideal, expressed in the Gorgias, that rhetoric is the art of persuasion. We need not pause to analyse the means by which he attains his end; he may resemble Lysias at one moment in a simple piece of narrative, at another he may be as involved and antithetical as Thucydides, or even florid like Gorgias ”

“ The sophist Hippias was Elis-born, and the statue of Gorgias from Sicily was erected among those of the athletes. And here rhetoricians from Gorgias to Lucian delivered their epideictic speeches; artists, painters, and musicians appealed to the eye or the ear; philosophies new or old were hotly debated.
But no Roman patronage could galvanize into real life the dying spirit of freedom. Professionalism grew apace. Christianity, established in the eastern empire, extinguished the fire on the ancient altar of Zeus. ”

“ The Sicilian Rhetoric had familiarised Athenian speakers with principles of division and arrangement [177] . Gorgias, with his brilliant gift of expression [178] , had for a while set the fashion of strained antithesis and tawdry splendour. It might have been expected from the character of his mind that Thucydides would be keenly alive to what was hollow and false in the new rhetoric. Several touches in the History show that he was so. Citizens in grave debate are contrasted with men who play audience to the empty displays of sophists [179] . ”

“ Even the oldest and most experienced men did not consider the surprising proposal utterly impossible and impracticable. Some, among them Gorgias, who during the restoration of the Serapeum had helped his father on the eastern frontier of the Delta, and thus became familiar with the neighbourhood of Heroonopolis, feared the difficulties which an elevation of the earth in the centre of the isthmus would place in the way of the enterprise. ”

“ This was the very Proculejus whom the dying Antony had recommended to the woman he loved as worthy of her confidence.
“In fact,” Gorgias continued, “he seemed in form and features one of the noblest of his haughty race. He came commissioned by Octavianus, and is said to be warmly devoted to the Cæsar, and a well-disposed man. We have also heard him mentioned as a poet and a brother-in-law of Mæcenas. A wealthy aristocrat, he is a generous patron of literature, and also holds art and science in high esteem. Timagenes lauds his culture and noble nature. ”

“ But when I think that she might follow me to Pyrrhus's cliff—"
"Don't flatter yourself with this hope," pleaded Gorgias. "Serious obstacles may interpose. I am to have another talk with the Nubian later. With no offence to others, I believe her advice will be the best. She knows how matters stand with the lofty, and yet herself belongs to the lowly. Besides, through Charmian the way to the Queen lies open, and nothing which happens at court escapes her notice. ”

“ Galen, x. 5, ἤριζον δ’ αὐτοῖς (the schools of Kos and Knidos) ... καὶ οἱ ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἰατροί, Φιλιστίων τε καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Παυσανίας καὶ οἱ τούτων ἑταῖροι κ.τ.λ. Philistion was the contemporary and friend of Plato; Pausanias is the disciple to whom Empedokles addressed his poem.
524. See Diels, “Empedokles und Gorgias” (Berl. Sitzb., 1884, pp. 343 sqq.) . The oldest authority for saying that Gorgias was a disciple of Empedokles is Satyros ap. Diog. viii. 58 (R. P. 162) ; but he seems to have derived his information from Alkidamas, who was the disciple of Gorgias himself. ”

“ I have suffered so long. Can you not relent?"
"My mother," she said, "was Gorgo before me and her mother was Gorgo and hers also and hers. No Gorgo ever relented. Nor I."
"I have been punished enough," he said. "More than enough. And all for a dog and a horse and a slave."
"Clearchos," she said, "you force me to talk. I do not want to talk. You are the only man I ever loved or ever will love. ”

“ Lifting his head and raising his arms toward the silent form on the dais, Gorulga cried in the deep, rich resonance that was the natural attribute of the Keshani priest: 'Oh, great goddess, dweller with the great one of darkness, let thy heart be melted, thy lips opened for the ears of thy slave whose head is in the dust beneath thy feet! Speak, great goddess of the holy valley! Thou knowest the paths before us; the darkness that vexes us is as the light of the midday sun to thee. Shed the radiance of thy wisdom on the paths of thy servants! ”

“ One illusion after another floated before her eyes first it was Gorgo, the idol of her old heart, lying pale and fair on a sea of surf that rocked her on its watery waste—up high on the crest of a wave and then deep down in the abyss that yawned behind it. She, too—so young, a hardly-opened blossom—must perish in the universal ruin, and be crushed by the same omnipotent hand that could overthrow the greatest of the gods ”

“ As if the statesman should not have taught the city better! He surely cannot blame the state for having unjustly used him, any more than the sophist or teacher can find fault with his pupils if they cheat him. And the sophist and orator are in the same case; although you admire rhetoric and despise sophistic, whereas sophistic is really the higher of the two. The teacher of the arts takes money, but the teacher of virtue or politics takes no money, because this is the only kind of service which makes the disciple desirous of requiting his teacher. ”

“ Away off in the beautiful country of Greece, a long, long time ago, there lived a little maiden, the daughter of a king. Her name was Gorgo—not a very pretty name, perhaps, to us who are used to calling little girls Maud and Ethel and Helen, but a strong name, and therefore quite appropriate to the little maid who bore it, as you shall see. In those old times there used to be many wars, and the country of Sparta, the part of Greece where Gorgo lived, was famous for its brave warriors, who never thought for a moment of their own safety when their country was in danger. ”

“ By main strength have they now shown mastery over us, as sadly witnesseth the overthrow of Gorice XI., ’gainst whom no mortal could stand up and wrastle and not die, till cursed Goldry, drunk with spleen and envy, slew him in the Foliot Isles. Nor was there any aforetime to outdo us in feats of arms, and Gorice X., victorious in single combats without number, made our name glorious over all the world. Yet at the last he gat his death, out of all expectation and by what treacherous sleight I know not, standing in single combat against the curled step-dancer from Krothering. ”

“ The young men marry among the Gorgios, or they are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and the fields and the road. There is disorder in all the world among the Romanys. The ancient ways are forgotten. Our people gather and settle upon the land and live as the Gorgios live. They forget the way beneath the trees, they lose their skill in horses. ”

“ There was much talk in the air at that period of boldly abolishing the dress distinction of sex. But when Gorgas appeared before them one afternoon in a neat, inconspicuous, tailor-made [226] gown, right as to style, but with a mysterious wonder in it of something just beyond the style, the family capitulated. Capitulated? They broke ranks and rushed over one another to cheer the enemy.
Mount Airy, after all, had always been a country village. Its main charm, in spite of its nearness to a large city, was not its suburbanity, but its rurality. ”

“ Gorlois dropped back under the bracken as though smitten through with a sword. He lay there a long while with his head upon his arms. A sudden breeze came up the valley, sounding through the trees, swaying the green fronds above the man's harness, calling a gradual clamour from the woods. The overmastering image of the King seemed to frown down Gorlois for the moment, and he crouched like a dog--with the courage crushed out of his soul. ”

“ Gorgas inquired wonderingly.
“I’m afraid not.” Blynn’s lips were compressed; his gaze was fixed on the farther trees. “Books have been written against it. Goodness is weakness, they tell us; and so it is. The only right is might, they tell us; and that is undoubtedly the law of survival. Deceit, the snare, devouring murder—that is the supreme law of Nature. I believe that; and yet.... I cannot take my side with evil, even though I perish.”
Suddenly he laughed. The slight hardness went out of his eyes—that hidden scourging priest deep within him—and mon capitaine took its place. ”

“ No one, I promise, will recognise you: every one will mistake you for Prince Dardavan, to whom Mistafor’s daughter Dogada is betrothed.”
“Good, very good,” said Goria, “if what you say prove true.” “It shall all come to pass as I have said,” replied the other. And thereupon the stranger desired Goria to go three steps backward and shut his eyes, and then open them again. On a sudden Goria saw before him a splendid palace of white marble, and in amazement, he exclaimed: “You are in truth the devil himself, and no man, to do such marvellous things!” ”