Speeches by Choricius the Sophist of Gaza

Contents

1. Διάλεξις Part IX (Dialexis)

   Choricius explains why he put off a performance his students had long pressed him for. He quotes the old saying of Gyges that each should look to his own, and tells how Terpander's servant turned away any listener who could not tune the lyre; when the students whispered that he seemed a coward, the jibe stung him into agreeing to speak.

2. Πολυδάμας Part X (Declamation: Polydamas)

   After Hector's death Achilles, in love with Polyxena, offers the Trojans his alliance as the price of marrying her, and Polydamas argues in council for accepting against Priam. A preface sets out the strategy, with Demosthenes as model. The speech denies that the offer hides a trick and ends by bidding Priam let his remaining sons care for him in old age and prepare the wedding that the fathers, children and mothers of Troy ask for.

3. Διάλεξις Part XI (Dialexis)

   A defence of the author's teacher, Procopius of Gaza, against those who blamed him for no longer appearing at public gatherings of speakers: quiet befits old age. Peleus, who left the fighting to his son, is set against Nestor, whom Homer calls relentless because he never rests from toil, and the piece ends by calling on the Muses, as Socrates did before speaking to Phaedrus, though the speaker writes in prose.

4. Ἀντιλογία Πρίαμος Part XII (Antilogia: Priam)

   Priam replies to Polydamas, at the request of listeners who had cried out at the end of the previous speech that the old man must not be forced. Unable to belittle Achilles' strength, he attacks his character: his boasting, his loves, his quarrel over Briseis, his outrage on Hector's body, and the wife and son on Scyros who must soon draw him home. He closes on Hecuba holding out the breast that once quieted the infant Hector.

5. Οἱ Λυδοί Part XIV (Declamation: The Lydians)

   Cyrus, having taken Croesus prisoner, made the Lydians give up their arms, dress as women and learn to sing and play the lyre. Now, about to march on the Massagetae, he offers their arms back, and the Lydians speak against it. As the preface explains, they feign unwillingness so as not to rouse his suspicion, slipping in hints of their old prowess, and promise to sing his victory at the feasts on his return.

6. Διάλεξις Part XV (Dialexis)

   Thamyris lost his song to the Muses for his pride, and Choricius retells the story in prose to answer a charge of arrogance. At a wedding speech he had quoted Homer's line on Eumelus, last in the chariot race and yet the best, and the next day found a written complaint against him. He explains that he happened at the time to be running last, and meant the verse as an excuse for slowness, not a boast.

7. Διάλεξις Part XVI (Dialexis)

   Roses are in season, and the prologue serves the audience a myth as seasoning for the feast. Ares, jealous of Adonis, kills the youth; Aphrodite in her grief goes barefoot, treads on a thorn, and her blood gives the rose its colour. The speaker repays the flower for the roses the young men had thrown at him, and asks what pleasant thing could follow Adonis, Aphrodite and roses.

8. Μιλτιάδης Part XVII (Declamation: Miltiades)

   Miltiades, after Marathon, asked the Athenians for a fleet, promising wealth from a land he would not name, besieged Paros and was lamed in the leg; Xanthippus now prosecutes him for deceiving the people. Where Herodotus left him silent, Choricius gives him a voice: he recalls his victory over Datis, blames the wound rather than his intent, urges his son to finish the work at Paros, and imagines Rumour carrying the trial to Darius.

9. Διάλεξις Part XVIII (Dialexis)

   Every art fails without constant exercise: the students hear this to spur them to harder practice. Hesiod, though taught by the Muses while herding sheep, still bids men toil; Lysander lost his Spartan vigour to Ionian luxury; and an Aesopic race between a horse and a tortoise is begun and laid aside. It closes with Agamemnon urging on Teucer, who needed no urging.

10. Διάλεξις Part XIX (Dialexis)

    Homer brings Odysseus to the Phaeacians, where Demodocus takes up his lyre midway through Alcinous' dinner and gives the guests a pause between the courses; the Olympic festival likewise allowed a rest between contests. So a prologue may stand in the middle of a speech that needed a second sitting, and Choricius adds that he has kept this one short so that the speech need not run to a third.

11. Ἀριστεὺς νέος Part XX (Declamation: The Young Champion)

    A rich miser wants his son to marry an ugly heiress, but the young man has fallen for a poor and beautiful girl seen at a festival. Having won the prize for valour in war and with it the right to ask any reward, he asks for her against his father's objection. He argues that an ill-matched, jealous wife would bring strife and public scandal, and closes sure of his father's consent, seeing him now look kindly on his son.

12. Διάλεξις Part XXI (Dialexis)

    This preface to the father's speech argues that a speaker must take on the character of the person he plays. As a dancer in the theatre of Dionysus becomes Achilles one moment and the love-struck Phaedra the next, and as Homer seems to become each of his heroes, Choricius asks for Athena's wand to make him the old miser whose son loved a poor girl. Rhetoric, unlike painting, can veil ugliness.

13. Διάλεξις Part XXII (Dialexis)

    A traveller rests at an inn before finishing his road; Philippides, resting on his errand, dreamt that Pan promised the Athenians help against the Medes; Cyrus the Younger halted at Midas' spring. So the old miser's speech may take a second sitting: if the young war hero was given two days, it is hard to make an old man run the whole course in one.

14. Φιλάργυρος πρεσβύτης Part XXIII (Declamation: The Miserly Old Man)

    The father answers his son, the young war hero who wants a poor girl instead of the rich, plain bride chosen for him. The preface shows a man in love with a dowry, whose every word aims at money. He paints the children of a poor marriage crying for bread, dismisses the son's claim to be content with little, and closes on a praise of wealth as the nurse of cities and friendships, bidding the son recant.

15. Διάλεξις Part XXIV (Dialexis)

    Apollo is painted now with the lyre, now with the bow: he sang love songs to Daphne yet shot true when Agamemnon spurned Chryses. So, the prologue argues, love speeches do no harm to declamations on other themes. Checking itself for taking a god as its example, it turns to a pupil of Marsyas, whose piping was often, but not only, of love.

16. Διάλεξις Part XXV (Dialexis)

    Interest on a debt: so Choricius presents the new prologue he brings to complete a speech left unfinished. He cites Simonides' definition of justice as paying what is owed, Socrates' rebuke to Callicles for leaving an argument midway, and the young Cyrus of Xenophon, who at his grandfather's Median table preferred plain Persian fare, to commend the simple dishes he now serves.

17. Τυραννοκτόνος Part XXVI (Declamation: The Tyrannicide)

    The law grants a tyrant-slayer any reward he asks. A man climbed the acropolis to kill the tyrant, found him absent and killed his only son; the father, seeing the body, killed himself. The assassin claims the reward against an opponent, defending his self-praise by the examples of Pericles and Demosthenes, and asks as his prize a painting of the whole scene, with the people granting the reward and his opponent left out.

18. Διάλεξις Part XXVII (Dialexis)

    The young men want their teacher to appear more often; he replies that a measured interval is useful. Lovers of horse-racing long for it more in the pause; a countryman enjoys his orchard less than the townsman who visits it. He retells in Attic speech Herodotus' story of Arion, saved by a dolphin, and suggests the singer left Corinth for Italy so that Corinth would miss him.

19. Διάλεξις Part XXVIII (Dialexis)

    An apology for length, after the previous day's speech broke off midway when the speaker's voice failed. On the way home a friend asked why, having chosen a Spartan theme, he did not speak like a Spartan, citing Menelaus' few words in Homer. Choricius answers with the Spartan envoys who came to Athens after Cleon's success and said their custom of brevity did not forbid length when need required.

20. Σπαρτιάτης Part XXIX (Declamation: The Spartan)

    Because Spartan girls are born ugly, Delphi orders a statue to appease Aphrodite; Praxiteles makes one modelled on his mistress Phryne and urges the Spartans to accept it, and a Spartan speaks against it. The preface recalls Demosthenes setting the sober Iatrocles beside Aeschines. The speaker, himself unmarried, asks for an image to warn the city never again to slight the goddess, and advises Praxiteles to give up Phryne and marry a Spartan woman.

21. Διάλεξις Part XXX (Dialexis)

    Moderation keeps good fortune from slipping away. In this prologue Timoleon of Corinth has aretē for a companion and Fortune at his heels, and gives Fortune the credit for his deeds, unlike Conon's son, who claimed everything for himself and was dropped. Epaminondas, on the day after Leuctra, went out in a shabby cloak to humble himself; Choricius ranks the Corinthian higher still.

22. Διάλεξις Part XXXI (Dialexis)

    When a speech runs long, the speaker should set a prologue in its middle. The Persians say they dine better than Greeks because sweetmeats are brought between courses; Alyattes of Lydia marched on Miletus to pipes pitched for men and for women, the one to whet courage, the other to soothe. So a relaxed style, Choricius argues, eases the fatigue of the strenuous.

23. Ὁ λόγος ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐν Διονύσου τὸν βίον εἰκονιζόντων Part XXXII (Defence of Those Who Represent Life in the Theatre of Dionysus)

    The mimes, actors who imitate life on the stage of Dionysus, are defended here against the charge of corrupting their audiences. A preface invokes Thucydides' portrait of Pericles and a saying of Pindar on danger. The speech argues that fathers let their sons watch mimes and recite comedy without harm, and ends on Dionysus himself, giver of wine, who taught the mixing of wine with water and is honoured at Athens in town and country.

24. Διάλεξις Part XXXIII (Dialexis)

    Only aretē, Choricius argues here, can never be taken from the one who has it. Odysseus came naked to the Phaeacians yet Nausicaa saw his worth; Achilles without his armour still frightened the Trojans. Diogenes told a man that the way to grieve an enemy was to be good, and Phocion refused Alexander's hundred talents. It ends with the tragic line that aretē shines even for the dead.

25. Διάλεξις Part XXXIV (Dialexis)

    Alexander would trust only Lysippus to portray him; Timomachus painted Medea with love for her children and anger mixed, her jealousy prevailing; Myron's heifer was said to deceive calves, bulls and herdsmen. From these Choricius argues that a speaker must keep the character of his subject through the whole speech, since the tongue, as comedy says, is a ball that turns any way.

26. Παιδοκτόνος Part XXXV (Declamation: The Child-Killer)

    A tyrant demands the daughter of a leading citizen of a neighbouring city; the city chooses war, and under siege the father kills the girl on the wall in sight of the enemy, who withdraw. A young man who loved her then kills himself, and his father prosecutes hers. A preface recalls the daughters of Leos and Iphigenia at Aulis; the girl's father defends himself and ends with a petition to the gods that the tyrant's passion turn to the daughters of his own subjects.

27. Διάλεξις Part XXXVI (Dialexis)

    This year's declamation is presented as a debt owed, like a farmer's annual crop. The water of the Muses, unlike the Nile, never runs low, and a speaker needs neither Hesiod's cranes nor the Pleiades to tell him the season. Choricius follows the Athenian custom of a yearly gathering in the theatre, where old plays too were revived, and calls his audience together while the festival is still in progress.

28. Διάλεξις Part XXXVII (Dialexis)

    A critic said the speech was too long for the speaker's powers, and Choricius answers him. A smith of Tydeus' size would not make Ajax a shield to his own measure, nor Lysippus an Alexander of his own height, nor a short painter a small Orestes; so a speech for Patroclus must match Patroclus' case. Xenophon's child in an oversized tunic shows that the fault lies in any mismatch with the subject.

29. Πάτροκλος Part XXXVIII (Declamation: Patroclus)

    Patroclus, weeping, tries to reconcile Achilles to the Greeks after Agamemnon's embassy, with Briseis and the gifts, has failed. The preface asks why the friend who shared Achilles' anger now parts from it, and finds the answer in Homer's gentle Patroclus. He argues that Apollo was appeased with less when Chryseis was returned, and ends by bringing out Achilles' armour and his father's ash spear and calling the Myrmidons to arm.

30. Διάλεξις Part XXXIX (Dialexis)

    The audience has had its fill of the usual rose myth, so Choricius offers a new one. At the judgement of Paris, Hera and Athena object to Aphrodite's girdle; she lays it aside, bathes in the Scamander, finds the rose by its scent and returns to Ida crowned with roses, so lovely that her rivals kiss the flower and crown her again.

31. Ἀριστεύς Part XL (Declamation: The Champion)

    A law requires the city's champion to be painted in the guise in which he won. A general who put on women's clothes and overcame the enemy by night asks not to be painted, while the other general, beaten earlier by the same enemy, presses for the portrait. Choricius speaks as the victor: honours exist to bind the givers, not to force a prize on the unwilling, and a picture in women's dress would shame him before wife, household and city.

32. Διάλεξις Part XLI (Dialexis)

    Nestor told the son of Tydeus in the Achaean assembly that he had not reached the end of his speech, and Socrates rebuked Euthyphro for leaving his account of piety unfinished. With these two reproaches Choricius justifies calling his audience back to the theatre to pay what his speech of the day before still owed: a soldier might leave a speech half-woven, but the orator he is playing could not.

33. Ῥήτωρ Part XLII (Declamation: The Orator)

    With his city under siege, an orator goes out alone, talks the enemy into lifting the siege and claims the reward the law grants whoever ends a war successfully; a soldier objects that the law rewards victory won with arms. A preface sets the soldier beside Thrasonides, Menander's boastful soldier. The orator argues that for an unarmed, unready city ending the war was victory, and closes by letting the enemy city lament that one unarmed man defeated its army.