These legends are only exaggerations of real occurrences, and every literature contains these high compliments to the art of the orator and the bard, from the Hebrew and the Greek down to the Scottish Glenkindie, who

  —­“harpit a fish out o’ saut water,
    Or water out of a stone,
  Or milk out of a maiden’s breast
    Who bairn had never none.”

Homer specially delighted in drawing the same figure.  For what is the “Odyssey,” but a history of the orator, in the largest style, carried through a series of adventures furnishing brilliant opportunities to his talent?  See with what care and pleasure the poet brings him on the stage.  Helen is pointing out to Antenor, from a tower, the different Grecian chiefs.  “Antenor said:  ’Tell me, dear child, who is that man, shorter by a head than Agamemnon, yet he looks broader in his shoulders and breast.  His arms lie on the ground, but he, like a leader, walks about the bands of the men.  He seems to me like a stately ram, who goes as a master of the flock.’  Him answered Helen, daughter of Jove:  ’This is the wise Ulysses, son of Laertes, who was reared in the state of craggy Ithaca, knowing all wiles and wise counsels.’  To her the prudent Antenor replied again:  ’O woman, you have spoken truly.  For once the wise Ulysses came hither on an embassy, with Menelaus, beloved by Mars.  I received them, and entertained them at my house.  I became acquainted with the genius and the prudent judgments of both.  When they mixed with the assembled Trojans and stood, the broad shoulders of Menelaus rose above the other; but, both sitting, Ulysses was more majestic.  When they conversed, and interweaved stories and opinions with all; Menelaus spoke succinctly, few but very sweet words, since he was not talkative, nor superfluous in speech, and was the younger.  But when the wise Ulysses arose, and stood, and looked down, fixing his eyes on the ground, and neither moved his sceptre backward nor forward, but held it still, like an awkward person, you would say it was some angry or foolish man; but when he sent his great voice forth out of his breast, and his words fell like the winter snows, not then would any mortal contend with Ulysses; and we, beholding, wondered not afterwards so much at his aspect.” [Iliad, III. 192.]

Thus he does not fail to arm Ulysses at first with this power of overcoming all opposition by the blandishments of speech.  Plutarch tells us that Thucydides, when Archidamus, king of Sparta, asked him, Which was the best wrestler, Pericles or he? replied, “When I throw him, he says he was never down, and he persuades the very spectators to believe him.”  Philip of Macedon said of Demosthenes, on hearing the report of one of his orations, “Had I been there, he would have persuaded me to take up arms against myself”; and Warren Hastings said of Burke’s speech on his impeachment, “As I listened to the orator, I felt for more than half an hour as if I were the most culpable being on earth.”