Lanterna Rally

Author: Henry Hardwicke

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-04

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13: 9781330688595

Excerpt from History of Oratory and Orators: A Study of the Influence of Oratory Upon Politics and Literature, With Special Reference to Certain Orators Selected as Representative of Their Several Epochs, From the Earliest Dawn of Grecian Civilization Down to the Present Day Oratory is the parent of liberty. By the constitution of things it was ordained that eloquence should be the last stay and support of liberty, and that with her she is ever destined to live, flourish, and to die. It is to the interest of tyrants to cripple and debilitate every species of eloquence. They have no other safety. It is, then, the duty of free states to foster oratory. The importance of oratory is attested by the belief, according to the fables of Greece and Egypt, that the art of eloquence was of celestial origin, ascribed to the invention of a god, who, from the possession of this art, was supposed to be the messenger and interpreter of Olympus. It is also witnessed by the care with which the art was cultivated at a period of the remotest antiquity. With the first glimpse of historical truth which burst from the regions of mythology, in that dubious twilight which scarcely descries the distinction between the fictions of pagan superstition and the narrative of real events, a school of oratory, established in the Peloponnesus, dawns upon our view. After the lapse of a thousand years from that time, Pausanius, a Grecian geographer and historian, says that he had read a treatise upon the art composed by the founder of this school, a contemporary and relative of Theseus in the age preceding that of the Trojan war. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.