First we must note that the elaborate format of the original roll described above 41 presupposes some value and popularity for the content. A work deemed worthy of being published in so attractive, not to say luxurious, a form as this was at least no school-boy's exercise. From the content we can draw some other general conclusions. It is hardly necessary to remark that the work, while dealing with Demosthenes and his career, discusses him in the third person. Thus any identification with a lost work of the orator himself is definitely precluded. We are then faced by the alternative that this is either (1) a historical work dealing with the latter half of the fourth century and incorporating, as such a work must, details of the part played by Demosthenes in that period; or (2) a special work on Demosthenes. In considering the possibility that this is a historical work, we must admit that the work was in that case of considerable compass or else the historical perspective was seriously at fault. There are here all told more or less intelligible remains of six columns all apparently discussing the benefits conferred by Demosthenes on the state.42 In that case then, if the conclusions drawn above as to the probable position of these fragments close to the end of the roll 43 are correct, one roll, or section, or book of the supposed history ended in a long encomium on Demosthenes. But this very highly laudatory tone is unexpected in a general history, and quite foreign to the usual attitude of ancient historians toward Demosthenes. If, for example, we consider the Atthides of Philochorus, and it is this work alone of histories which records the measure mentioned in frag. A,— we are struck at once by the terse impersonal character of his fragments, utterly incompatible with the warm admiration of our text. In fact the universal tendency of historical writers 41 See page 279. 42 If frag. E is correctly interpreted, the space devoted to Demosthenes was much greater than this. 43 See page 277. from the earliest times, with one exception, down to Diodorus varies only from cold indifference to open hostility and scandalmongering.44 That one exception is however an interesting one. Demochares, own nephew of Demosthenes, was the author of a "history of the course of events during his own lifetime at Athens, written in a style more rhetorical than historical." 45 That such a history by such a man would feature Demosthenes at great length and in the most favorable light is very probable. None of the few fragments preserved can however be directly connected with the present bit.46 More significant is the decree preserved in the Pseudo-Plutarch's Lives of the Ten Orators,47 said to have been proposed by Demochares in honor of his great uncle. After proposing the erection of a bronze statue to him, and σίτησις ἐν πρυτανείῳ and προεδρία for his descendants, the decree lists his benefits to the state with special emphasis on his financial support, public and private. No mention is made of this stratiotic measure however. The highly laudatory tone, the use of the technical appellation of EVEрYETηs,48 the occurrence of the words rò ȧvaλweev 49 to indicate the sums which he expended during the term of his office, all are points of contact between this papyrus and the decree. It may be that Demochares in his history expanded the contents of his decree in the form that we have here. In any case we may safely mark him and his decree as certainly an ultimate, if not the immediate, source of our work. Turning then to the alternative of a special treatise on Demosthenes, we are again justified by the laudatory character of the content in excluding one large and popular class of special 44 See Drerup, op. cit., pp. 12, 56, 122 f. 45 Cic. Brut. 83. 46 The sole fragment dealing with Demosthenes (frag. 1 M, Plut. Dem. 30) elevates his suicide to an act of divine Providence. 47 [Plut.] 850 F. Its authenticity is defended by Fr. Ladek, “Über die Echtheit zwei Urkunden bei Pseudo-Plutarch," Wien. Stud. XIII (1891), esp. pp. 77-111. 48 See frag. D, line 1. 49 [Plut.] l.c. 845 F. works, the biographies of the Peripatetic school. The norm for these was set by the sketches of the New Comedy and the satirical Characters of Theophrastus, and their general characteristics were "the acceptance of legendary tradition and combinations resting thereon, invention of characteristic traits, especially the promulgation, exaggeration, and fabrication of malicious gossip with hostile tendency." 50 Such being the case we may exclude the whole list of Demosthenes biographies from Idomeneus to Satyrus. We are then left with that class of special encomiastic literature which arose in the schools of rhetoric from an admiration of the rhetorical ability of Demosthenes, was extended to include a glorification of his political and personal career, and culminated in the extravagances parodied by Lucian and solemnly propagated by Libanius, each in his Praise of Demosthenes. It is obviously useless to suggest a name as the possible author of a work so fragmentary as this. I would merely note that the possibilities are not limited to authors whose names are preserved. In Ox. Pap. 1799 (1922) there is an unidentified fragment of an oration which in less flattering tone defends the policies of Demosthenes. To leave the problem with a final suggestion, in view of the date of the papyrus, toward the end of the second century A.D., it is possible that it contained the seriously encomiastic original on which Lucian at that time based his parody, for a parody without a widely known original is without point. 50 Fr. Leo. Die Griechisch-römische Biographie (Leipzig, 1901), p. 102, quoted by Drerup, op. cit., p. 61. |