It will now be useful to look back on the whole development from Antiphon to Demosthenes, and to trace the main lines of its course.

The ground for an artistic Athenian oratory was prepared partly by the popular Dialectic of the eastern Sophists, partly by the Sicilian Rhetoric. Intermediate between these stood the earliest artist of oratorical prose, Gorgias; differing from the eastern Sophists in laying more stress on expression than on management of argument, and from the Sicilian Rhetoricians in cultivating his faculty empirically, not theoretically.

Two early tendencies—the Rhetorical and the Gorgian

Outline of development

Two principal tendencies appear in the beginnings of Attic oratory. One of these sets out from the forensic Rhetoric of Sicily, in combination with the popular Dialectic of the Sophists, and is but slightly affected by Gorgias. It is represented by the writers of the ‘austere’ style, of whom Antiphon and Thucydides are the chief. From Thucydides to Demosthenes this manner is in abeyance, partly because it is in itself unsuited to forensic purposes, partly because its grave emphasis has come to seem archaic. The second tendency is purely Gorgian, and, after having had several obscure representatives, is taken up by Isokrates, who gives to it a corrected, a complete and a permanent form. From a compromise between this second tendency and the idiom of daily life arises the ‘plain’ style of Lysias. The transition from Lysias to a strenuous political oratory is marked by Isaeos. Then comes the matured political oratory, giving new combinations to types already developed, and, in its greatest representative, uniting them all.