Note 129 — Chapter XXIV · GORGIAS. (continued 2)

The reply composed by the rhetor Aristeides to the Gorgias of Plato is well deserving of perusal, though (like all his compositions) it is very prolix and wordy. See Aristeides, Orationes xlv. and xlvi. — Περεὶ Ῥητορικῆς, and Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων. In the last of the two orations he defends the four eminent Athenians (Miltiades, Themistoklês, Periklês, Kimon) whom Plato disparages in the Gorgias.

Aristeides insists forcibly on the partial and narrow view here taken by Plato of persuasion, as a working force both for establishing laws and carrying on government. He remarks truly that there are only two forces between which the choice must be made, intimidation and persuasion: that the substitution of persuasion in place of force is the great improvement which has made public and private life worth having (μόνη βιωτὸν ἡμῖν πεποίηκε τὸν βίον, Orat. xlv. p. 64, Dindorf); that neither laws could be discussed and passed, nor judicial trial held under them, without ῥητορικὴ as the engine of persuasion (pp. 66-67-136); that Plato in attacking Rhetoric had no right to single out despots and violent conspirators as illustrations of it — εἶτ’ ἐλέγχειν μὲν βούλεται τὴν ῥητορικήν, κατηγορεῖ δὲ τῶν τυράννων καὶ δυναστῶν, τὰ ἄμικτα μιγνύς — τίς γὰρ οὐκ οἶδεν, ὅτι ῥητορικὴ καὶ τυραννὶς τοσοῦτον ἀλλήλων κεχωρίσται, ὅσον τὸ πείθειν τοῦ βιάζεσθαι (p. 99). He impugns the distinction which Plato has drawn between ἰατρική, γυμναστική, κυβερνητική, νομοθετική, &c., on the one side, which Plato calls τέχναι, arts or sciences, and affirms to rest on scientific principles — and ῥητορική, μαγειρική, &c., on the other side, which Plato affirms to be only guess work or groping, resting on empirical analogies. Aristeides says that ἰατρικὴ and ῥητορικὴ are in this respect both on a par; that both are partly reducible to rule, but partly also driven by necessity to conjectures and analogies, and the physician not less than the rhetor (pp. 45-48-49); which the Platonic Sokrates himself affirms in another dialogue, Philêbus, p. 56 A.

The most curious part of the argument of Aristeides is where he disputes the prerogative which Plato had claimed for ἰατρική, γυμναστική &c., on the ground of their being arts or reducible to rules. The effects of human art (says Aristeides) are much inferior to those of θεία μοῖρα or divine inspiration. Many patients are cured of disease by human art; but many more are cured by the responses and directions of the Delphian oracle, by the suggestion of dreams, and by other varieties of the divine prompting, delivered through the Pythian priestess, a woman altogether ignorant (p. 11). καίτοι μικρὰ μὲν ἡ πάντας εἰδυῖα λόγους ἰατρικὴ πρὸς τὰς ἐκ Δελφῶν δύναται λύσεις, ὅσαι καὶ ἰδίᾳ καὶ κοινῇ καὶ νόσων καὶ παθημάτων ἁπαντων ἀνθρωπίνων ἐφάνθησαν. Patients who are cured in this way by the Gods without medical art, acquire a natural impulse which leads them to the appropriate remedy — ἐπιθυμία αὐτοὺς ἄγει ἐπὶ τὸ ὄνησον (p. 20). Aristeides says that he can himself depose — from his own personal experience as a sick man seeking cure, and from personal knowledge of many other such — how much more efficacious in healing is aid from the Gods, given in dreams and other ways, than advice from physicians; who might well shudder when they heard the stories which he could tell (pp. 21-22). To undervalue science and art (he says) is the principle from which men start, when they flee to the Gods for help — τοῦ καταφυγεῖν ἐπὶ τοὺς θεοὺς σχεδὸν ἀρχή, τὸ τῆς τέχνης ὑπεριδεῖν ἔστιν.