As a result of the conquests of Alexander the Great between 334 and 323 B.C. and the foundation of kingdoms by his successors in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, Greek culture spread from Greece, southern Italy, and Sicily throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Greek became the international language of government, commerce, and learning. Schools of Greek grammar and rhetoric appeared in every city and town of any importance and provided an entry into the new society for non-Greeks, as well as a traditional education for the sons of Greek families who settled abroad. An ability to conduct business in Greek or speak Greek in a court of law was a necessary skill for a significant segment of the population, and even for those who might never make a formal speech, study of Greek literature and oratory brought with it an understanding of, and acceptance into, the dominant culture. Even the Jews of Palestine, the group with the strongest religious and cultural identity, increasingly attended Greek schools and used the Greek language.1
Because the beginnings of the systematic study of rhetoric in Greece were closely related to the needs of democratic government, it might initially seem that study of rhetoric would have declined under the autocratic governments of the Hellenistic period. There were, indeed, few opportunities for deliberative oratory on the scale of the orations of Pericles or Demosthenes addressing an assembly of citizens with the freedom to act on the basis of their collective decisions. A great deal of political debate now took place away from public view, for example in conferences between a ruler and his advisers. An orator might then have the task of announcing policy to the public or of arousing public opinion in favor of the ruler. This opened up the opportunity for epideictic oratory, including encomia and ceremonial addresses flattering a ruler or official at his court or on his visit to some city. Opportunity for deliberative oratory existed when ambassadors were sent, as frequently happened, from one Hellenistic state to another.2 Among the most important were embassies sent by Greek cities to Rome as the latter became increasingly powerful, or by the Romans to Greek rulers and Greek cities. We have some reports of these speeches, but not the original texts. Although international affairs were largely in the hands of the great kings, cities within their rule often retained control of local policy, and these matters were debated in muncipal councils or in the meetings of the leagues of cities that appeared in this period in Greece and Asia Minor. There was thus some continuing opportunity to apply a knowledge of rhetoric in public address. The fact that Hellenistic rhetoric continued to be primarily concerned with judicial oratory suggests that for the average person rhetorical skills were most useful in law courts. In most cases, however, the litigants were now addressing either a single judge or a small panel of judges, not the large juries of the Athenian democracy. A speaker could expect an opportunity to set out his case in a systematic fashion but also to be interrupted and interrogated by the judges.
These centuries were a period in which systematic learning flourished, often under the patronage of powerful rulers. The great Library and Museum at Alexandria was the most famous center of learning and was an institution for advanced research in science and literature: astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics, grammar, philology, and criticism. Athens and Pergamum were the main centers of philosophical studies. The high value put on learning encouraged the further development of theories of rhetoric as an important branch of learning. This took the form of working out in greater detail a system to describe the process of planning, writing, and delivering a speech. Work that was done by one scholar on grammar or dialectic or memory could be adapted by another into a rhetorical treatise. Two of the most conspicuous features of this process were the creation of stasis theory, a systematic method for identifying the question at issue in a speech; and the definition, with examples, of a large number of tropes, figures, and other stylistic devices that could be found in texts or used in composition.3
The role assumed by rhetoric in formal education was crucial to its survival and development. The curriculum that evolved continued to be followed through much of the history of the Roman Empire.4 For a long time schools were private institutions charging fees to support the teacher; a few Hellenistic cities provided public schools, and beginning in the second century of the Christian era the Roman emperors sought to require cities and towns to subsidize teachers. Some girls attended grammar schools, but study of rhetoric was almost exclusively the prerogative of boys.
At the age of six or seven a child might enter a primary school, taught by a grammatist
s. The method of instruction was rote memorization of the shapes and names of letters, then the sounds of syllables, and finally the pronunciation of words and sentences. Passages of poetry were memorized and recited, and dictations by the schoolmaster were laboriously copied out and corrected. Training of the memory was a pervasive feature of all ancient education.
When a child could read and write it was time to move on to the school of the grammaticus, the grammarian, for further study of language and literature. Coincidently a Greek boy had athletic training, perhaps geometry lessons, and often music lessons, but none of these was a concern of the school itself, which was exclusively devoted to literary studies. Our best primary source on Hellenistic grammar schools is a handbook written by Dionysius Thrax about 100 B.C. and used as a textbook for the next fifteen hundred years. Dionysius defines grammar as an acquaintance with what is said in the poets and prose writers, meaning the classical canon as it had emerged in his time. The subject has six parts which were the daily activities of teachers and students in school: reading aloud, including understanding meters used in verse; identification of tropes in the text; explanation of the meaning of rare words and historical references; construction of etymologies; practice in declining nouns and conjugating verbs, and what is called “judgment” of the poets. The latter refers to textual and literary criticism as practiced by professional grammarians, but some teachers probably tried to show their students what they regarded as the special merit of the texts studied.
A distinction was drawn between the teaching of the grammarian and the more advanced instruction of the rhetorician, which boys might begin at the age of twelve to fourteen. Rhetorical schools concentrated on study of prose writers and techniques of argument, amplification, and ornamentation, including figures of speech, but in practice advanced stages of grammar often overlapped with introductory stages of rhetoric, and some teachers taught grammar and rhetoric to different classes. Furthermore, grammarians introduced their students to the first stages of written composition, and this might then be continued in the rhetorical schools. The Greek term for these exercises is progymnasmata, exercises “preliminary” to the declamation of speeches. In the rhetorical school the teacher introduced the student to the theory of rhetoric in all its parts of invention, arrangement, style, memory (apparently added in the late second century), and delivery; some teachers may have read from a handbook, which the students then copied down; others lectured on the basis of their own organization of the subject while the students took notes. There is no evidence of written examinations, but teachers probably drilled their students orally about the parts of rhetoric and the definition of terms. Primarily, however, the student was expected to apply his growing understanding of rhetoric in practice speaking in the classroom, melet in Greek, declamatio in Latin. The teacher chose a subject, gave a discussion of possible treatments of it, and then declaimed a speech as a model treatment. Students were then assigned subjects for a speech, wrote out a version for correction by the teachers, and when he approved memorized and delivered the speech. The subject matter usually fell into one or the other of two types that in Roman schools were known as suasoriae or controversiae. The suasoria was regarded as the easier and seems to have been common in Greek schools. It provided training in deliberative oratory, for the student was asked to advise some mythological or historical figure what to do in a given situation: for example, “Advise Agamemnon whether or not to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia”; “Advise Alexander the Great whether to turn back at the Indus river or advance further east.” The controversia was a declamation in imitation of a speech in a court of law; the student was supplied with applicable laws, real or imaginary, and given a specific case to defend. According to Quintilian (2.4.41), declamation on imaginary deliberative and legal themes was first introduced into the schools in the time of Demetrius of Phaleron, which would mean about 300 B.C. Though there are references to declamation as well as to progymnasmata in works on rhetoric from the early first century B.C., most of our evidence, both Greek and Latin, comes from the time of the Roman Empire and will be discussed in later chapters.
At the pinnacle of the Hellenistic educational system was study in one of the philosophical schools. Athens was the main center of philosophy, but there were philosophical schools in Pergamum, Rhodes, and elsewhere. Plato’s successors, the Academics, and Aristotle’s successors, the Peripatetics, continued their founders’ interest in rhetoric, and the Stoic school, founded by Zeno about 300 B.C., studied the subject as well. The fourth leading school, the Epicureans, had little interest in rhetoric until Philodemus took up the subject in the first century B.C. Several philosophers wrote treatises or essays on specific aspects of rhetoric. This is the beginning of monographic treatments, especially of style, which subsequently become common.5 It was in the philosophical schools rather than in the rhetorical schools that some of the most important advances in rhetorical theory were made.
Theophrastus (c. 370–c. 285 B.C.), Aristotle’s successor as head of the Peripatetic school, probably made the most important contributions to rhetoric of any Hellenistic philosopher. About twenty works on rhetoric are found in the list of his writings given by Diogenes Laertius (5.42–50).6 In addition to an Art of Rhetoric in one book, he wrote separate studies of judicial, deliberative, and epideictic oratory; invention; enthymemes; examples; maxims, nonartistic proof; narration, style; humor; and delivery. What we know about these works, all of which are lost, suggests that Theophrastus closely followed Aristotle’s basic views of rhetoric but revised some of his master’s teaching and worked out in greater detail subjects that Aristotle had briefly touched on. His attitude toward invention is well brought out in a passage, reminiscent of Aristotle, quoted by Demetrius (On Style 226):
Everything should not be elaborated in detail, but some things should be left for the hearer to know and to reason out by himself; for recognizing what has been left out, he becomes not only your hearer but your “witness,” and a very friendly one too. For he thinks himself intelligent since you have furnished him a starting point of understanding, while to tell him everything as though he were ignorant makes you appear to feel contempt for the hearer.
Theophrastus’ treatise On Style was perhaps the most influential of his writings on rhetoric. Aristotle had said that the virtue of style, the one quality most desirable in prose, is clarity, but also that the language should not be flat nor above the dignity of the subject but appropriate (On Rhetoric 3.2.1); subsequently (3.5.1) he added that the first principle (arch) of style is to speak correct Greek, and in subsequent chapters he discussed several forms of ornamentation. Theophrastus reorganized this discussion into a theory of four virtues of style, which was adopted by most subsequent writers on the subject. Cicero summarizes the theory in Orator 79: “The language will be pure and good [Greek or] Latin, it will be clearly and distinctly stated, attention will be given to what is appropriate; one thing will be lacking7 which Theophrastus numbers fourth among the virtues of a speech, ornamentation that is pleasant and abundant.”
Purity or correctness (Gk. Hellenismos, Lat. Latinitas) is defined as the first of four virtues, rather than as the first principle of rhetorical style. In On the Orator (3.40), drawing on Theophrastus, Cicero says “we shall preserve case and tense and gender and number.” Clarity (Gk. to saphes, Lat. perspicuitas) is achieved by using “common words which clearly indicate what we wish to signify and declare, without any ambiguous word or construction, without too long phrases nor with metaphors too farfetched, without breaking up the thought, without confusing tenses or persons [of verbs], and without disturbing the order” (On the Orator 3.49). The virtue of propriety or appropriateness (Gk. to prepon, Lat. proprietas) had been discussed by Aristotle (3.7) and was especially important to the Peripatetics in that it was related to their principle, both in ethics and aesthetics, of seeking the mean between extremes. Expression should be appropriate to context and content, neither too elevated nor too colloquial. It may have been in connection with propriety that Theophrastus discussed levels of style, developing the subject beyond the two kinds of style identified by Aristotle (On Rhetoric 3.12), where they are identified with the species of rhetoric: the written or epideictic and the agonistic or style of debate, divided into deliberative and judicial. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Demosthenes 3) found in Theophrastus a discussion of three types of style: plain, grand, and mixed, the latter being a mean between the other two. Dionysius says that Theophrastus cited Thrasymachus as the earliest example of the mixed style; we know that he also discussed the style of Lysias and, from what Dionysius says (Lysias 14), criticized it severely as crude and overdone. This judgment is totally at odds with later discussions of Lysias; it certainly suggests that Theophrastus did not cite him as a fine example of the plain style, and it may mean that of the three styles Theophrastus approved only that which was a mean. The theory of three levels of good style (genera dicendi) appropriate to the subject was well established by the early first century B.C. when it is found, with examples, in Rhetoric for Herennius (4.11–14). Discussion of the three kinds of style there includes their faulty forms, and since Aristotle had included a discussion of faults in diction (3.3), as do several other writers, it is probable that Theophrastus discussed that subject as well.
A division of the subject of style into word choice and composition is implicit in Aristotle (3.2–5 vs. 6–12) and was perhaps specified by Theophrastus as it often is in later writers. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Isocrates 3), Theophrastus said that style becomes great, lofty, and unusual through choice of words, harmony (sound and rhythm), and the use of figures. Theophrastus may have divided ornamentation (Gk. kataskeu, Lat. ornatus) into sweetness and distinction; the beauty of a word, he said, is inherent in its sound or appearance or in its value in our minds (Demetrius, On Style 173). He agreed with Aristotle in disliking overly bold metaphors in prose (Longinus 32.3), and he continued Aristotle’s discussion of prose rhythm. We would like to know more about Theophrastus’ discussion of figures, since these become such an important aspect of the theory of style. To judge from Dionysius’ reference, he used the word schmata for figures;8 Aristotle did not and indeed had no technical concept of a figure of speech, though he discussed simile, antithesis, verbal techniques used by Gorgias, and various other features of style that come to be known as figures. Certainly Theophrastus discussed antithesis, probably as a figure; Dionysius says he divided it into three types: when opposites are predicated of the same thing or the same thing of opposites or opposites of opposites.
At the beginning of book 3 Aristotle notes in passing that the subject of delivery as a part of rhetoric had not been much studied. Theophrastus apparently developed the subject in his treatise On Delivery, discussing control of voice and gesture, the division of the subject found in later treatments. His discussion, however, seems not to have been restricted to delivery in oratory, probably ranging widely over music, acting, and recitation of poetry.9 Theophrastus himself is said to have lectured to as many as two thousand at once and to have given practical attention to his presentation (Diogenes Laertius 5.37), anointing and dressing himself with care and using gestures (Athenaeus 1.21a–b). We do not know whether he specifically divided rhetoric as a whole into the four parts of invention, arrangement, style, and delivery, though he did discuss all of these subjects separately.
Although Cicero, Quintilian, and others refer to Peripatetic rhetoric on a number of occasions, they sometimes mean Aristotle and Theophrastus, rather than later Peripatetics, and it does not seem possible to identify a specifically Peripatetic tradition in Hellenistic rhetoric. According to Strabo (13.1.54), writing about three hundred years later but with good sources of information, Theophrastus’ successors did not have the unpublished writings of Aristotle or Theophrastus until these were rediscovered and published in the first century B.C.; as a result they did not continue their founders’ philosophical thought and engaged primarily in dialectical debate on general issues, of which Strabo had a low opinion. Quintilian gives a somewhat more positive version, saying (12.2.25) that the Peripatetics “boast” that they are engaged in rhetorical study, “for they are more or less the ones who instituted debate of theses for the sake of practice.” The Peripatetics had, of course, Aristotle’s published works, including the Gryllus, which discussed whether or not rhetoric was an art. Individuals who had studied personally with Aristotle or Theophrastus would have been familiar with their theories and used them in their lectures or writings.
One such person was Demetrius of Phaleron. He was a statesman, orator, man of letters, and teacher with some following, and he wrote some books on rhetoric of which we know very little. He is more often mentioned for his style. According to Cicero (Brutus 37–38), it was more suited for the wrestling school than for combat: “He delighted the Athenians rather than inflamed them, for he came out into the sun and dust (of the public arena) not as one emerging from an army tent but from the shady retreat of Theophrastus, a most learned man. He was the first to modulate oratory and make it soft and delicate and he preferred to seem delightful, as he was, rather than serious.”
Some insight into Hellenistic debates about the nature of rhetoric, continuing the discussions in Plato’s Gorgias and Aristotle’s Gryllus, can be found in Quintilian’s survey of definitions of rhetoric (2.15) and whether it should be regarded as an art (2.17). The head of the Peripatetic school in the middle of the second century was Critolaus. Quintilian says (2.15.23) that he denied that rhetoric was a faculty (Aristotle’s dynamis), a science (epistm), or an art (techn), and called it a trib, a “knack,” as does Socrates in Plato’s Gorgias. Yet on the previous page (2.15.19) Quintilian attributes to Ariston, a pupil of Critolaus, a definition of the end of rhetoric in the following terms: “a science of seeing and pleading in civil questions by means of speech of popular persuasion,” and he adds that Ariston, as a Peripatetic, regarded rhetoric as a science, not as a virtue as the Stoics did. This is very confusing; the definition is partly Aristotelian, partly not. Quintilian was probably relying on secondary sources, and given the Peripatetic practice of debating issues, perhaps what we have are bits of such debate. But in the second century B.C., as noted in chapter 1, all the philosophical schools show a reaction against rhetoric, and Critolaus, lacking direct knowledge of Aristotle and Theophrastus’ views, may have gone back to more negative sources in the Gorgias and Gryllus. With the publication of Aristotle’s works in the first century, the Peripatetics resumed an interest in his theories. One of them, name unknown, went so far as to argue that Demosthenes had learned his art of rhetoric from Aristotle’s treatise on the subject, a view Dionysius of Halicarnassus seeks to refute on chronological grounds in his first Letter to Ammaeus.
A Greek textbook that shows direct knowledge of writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus on rhetoric, perhaps the earliest to do so, is the treatise On Style attributed to an otherwise unknown Demetrius.10 The date of composition has been much debated; a possible conclusion is that it was written in the early first century B.C., after Aristotle’s treatise On Rhetoric had been rediscovered but before the debate over Atticism, of which it shows no awareness. If this is right, Demetrius’ work is the earliest surviving monographic treatment of style. It begins abruptly—perhaps the introduction is lost—with a discussion of periodicity that resembles Aristotle’s account but introduces a novel distinction of three kinds: historical, conversational, and rhetorical. The historical period is a mean beween the other two.
The rest of the treatise consists of a discussion of four styles—the plain, the grand, the elegant, and the forceful—in terms of diction, composition, and subject matter, each with a corresponding faulty style and each illustrated with examples from classical Greek poetry and prose. This section begins (36–37) with criticism of earlier writers who recognized only two distinct styles, plain and grand, and regarded the others as intermediate, possibly a restatement of Theophrastus’ view. Theophrastus is not mentioned here but is quoted on four other occasions (41, 114, 173, 222). A theory of four rather than two or three styles is unusual; the only other reference to four styles is found in Philodemus’ On Rhetoric (vol. 1, p. 165, Sudhaus), written about 70 B.C., which, however, speaks of the “middle” rather than Demetrius’ “forceful” style. Demetrius’ work is a sensitive piece of literary criticism, based on an implicit concept of taste (e.g., 67, 137, 287).11 It is the earliest extant Greek work that makes a distinction between figures of thought and figures of speech and the earliest to show knowledge of technical names for figures, names that they often retain in later writers: examples include aposi
psis, prospopoeia, anadiplsis, and klimax. It is, however, difficult to compose a complete list of what the author regards as a figure. Is there any difference between epanaphora (61) and anaphora (141)? Figures of speech are described (59) as a “species of composition” involving repetition, changes of word order, or variation of grammatical forms. No definition of a figure of thought is offered, but examples of forceful figures of thought are given in 263–66 (pretending to pass over some subject, suppressing a word or statement when it is about to be made, and personification). After the discussion of figures in the forceful style there follows a discussion of diction, which includes the simile (273), also treated as something other than a figure in section 146. There is thus considerable confusion, in part because the author is not drawing up a list of figures but trying to describe the effect of different kinds of style. He is apparently unfamiliar with the concept of a trope but does treat metaphor as something distinct from a figure; the discussion of metaphor in 78–89 much resembles that in Aristotle and even quotes On Rhetoric on the subject (81).
An unusual feature of Demetrius’ work is his discussion of letter writing, citing letters of Aristotle and others (223–35). Letters, we are told, should be written in a mixture of the plain and elegant styles and are like one side of a dialogue. This discussion presumably reflects the increasing role of the epistle, public and private, literary and nonliterary, in the Hellenistic period. What is puzzling is not that Demetrius should discuss the subject but why other rhetoricians do not, considering the fact that the epistle was a widely used literary genre, beginning at least with Isocrates, and that the subject had practical value for students of rhetoric. Nor, so far as we know, was letter writing taught by grammarians. Cicero has much to say about letter writing in his own letters, and what he says seems to suggest classifications of different kinds and perhaps the existence of some manuals of letter writing, of which we have examples from later antiquity.12
The Stoic school of philosophy was founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens about 300 B.C. and was the most dogmatic of the Hellenistic philosophical movements, claiming that a wise man could have absolute knowledge of truth and should rise above all emotion, and insisting on an extremely austere concept of virtue. Many Stoics were notorious for their crabbed style of speaking and writing. Cicero says (De Finibus 4.7) that the Stoics Cleanthes (third century) and Chrysippus (second century) each wrote an Art of Rhetoric, “but of such a sort that it is the one book to read if anyone should wish to keep quiet. . . . They point the argument with their puny little syllogisms, like thorns. People may assent, but they are not convinced in their hearts and go away much as they came.” Yet Stoicism became the most popular of the philosophical schools, especially with Romans who found in it something resembling their own tradition of personal austerity. Diogenes Laertius (7.42–43) gives a brief account of Stoic rhetorical theory, which is probably chiefly derived from writings of Diogenes of Babylon, head of the Stoic school in the first half of the second century. The theory is of a standard sort:
They regard rhetoric as the science (epist
Discussing Stoic grammar a little later, Diogenes says (7.59),
The virtues of speech are five: Hellenism, clarity, brevity, propriety, ornamentation (kataskeu
The Stoics were especially interested in grammatical correctness. They taught that everything should be called by its proper name and carried this to the extreme of denying that any word is in itself obscene (Cicero, To His Friends 9.22.1). They preferred a simple, straightforward style, and their definition of ornamentation is a narrow one. According to Plutarch (On the Contradictions of the Stoics 28.1047a–b), in the first book of his work on rhetoric Chrysippus required “a liberal and simple adornment of the words,” while rejecting such niceties of style as avoidance of hiatus.
Stoic contributions to rhetoric came in part from their study of grammar. The student of classical Greek is required to learn a formidable number of irregular verbs and nouns, but in the spoken language, as in colloquial English, there was a tendency to simplify the inflectional system into a smaller number of patterns of conjugation and declension. Chrysippus wrote four books on “anomaly,” the doctrine that traditional usage, not regularity of forms, should determine what is grammatically correct. In this he was followed by Crates, the leading figure in the Stoic school at Pergamum in the second century. Grammarians at Alexandria took the opposite view and supported the doctrine of “analogy,” that insofar as possible consistency ought to be imposed on grammatical forms.14
Stoic grammatical studies probably created the theory of tropes. A trope is a single word used in a novel way, either because the idea to be expressed has no name of its own (no “proper” word) or for the sake of imagery or embellishment. The earliest study of tropes by a grammarian that is mentioned in our sources was the work of Crates’ pupil Tauriscus in the second century (Sextus Empricus, Against the Professors 1.249). Subsequently, Dionysius Thrax, as noted earlier, included exegesis of poetical tropes as a part of grammar. The difference between a trope and a figure is parallel to the difference between barbarism and solecism as defined above: a trope (in classical grammatical theory but not necessarily in modern literary theory), like a barbarism, involves only a single word; a figure, like a solecism, involves at least two words. So viewed, a metaphor is a trope, a simile is a figure. But, as Quintilian notes (9.1.1), many teachers did not clearly distinguish tropes from figures, and there is often much confusion in the discussions. It is possible that the distinction between figures of thought and figures of speech is also a Stoic innovation, for Fronto (On Eloquence 1.15) quotes a list of figures of thought from Chrysippus.
The most important Stoic philosopher of the second half of the second century was Panaetius of Rhodes, who visited Rome and became a close associate of the Roman statesman Scipio Aemilianus. His philosophy was more eclectic than that of earlier Stoics, for he was an admirer of the writings of Plato and Aristotle, and he sought to adapt Stoic ethics to the needs of upper-class Romans. One of his most important works was On Duties; this is now lost, but it was a major source for Cicero’s treatise of the same name. The passage on the power of speech in Cicero’s On Duties (1.132–37) is probably derived from Panaetius. It is part of a discussion of the virtue or duty of propriety. The power of speech is here said to be of two sorts, seen equally in formal debate and in conversation. The rhetoricians supply rules for the former; the latter subject has so far been neglected. The voice is the organ of speech; it should be clear and pleasant. Clarity can be improved by practice; a harmonious tone can be achieved by imitating those who speak in a restrained and smooth way. Some suggestions for conversation are offered. It should be easy, not too assertive, and show wit, with the tone adapted to the subject, whether serious or humorous. It should also keep to the subject and, consistent with Panaetius’ Stoic values, should generally avoid emotion. It is acceptable to reprove someone sternly, in which case the speaker may seem angry, but he should not allow himself actually to feel anger. Even with bitter enemies, even when treated outrageously, we should maintain dignity and repress anger.
Later in the work (2.48–51), as a part of a discussion of how to win true glory, the importance of eloquence is considered. Cicero says that although there are opportunities in assemblies and senates, the law courts are the primary source of fame for an orator. One should not prosecute a capital charge against a person who may be innocent, but to defend one who may be guilty is sanctioned by popular opinion, custom, and humane feeling; this, Cicero says (2.51), was the view of Panaetius. There is finally (2.66–69) a section on the duty of the patron to his client in legal cases. He will win gratitude but will offend others, to whom he needs to explain why he has done what he has done, offering future service to them.
Some Stoics sought to popularize their views by a kind of informal preaching, attacking the vices of society. Something similar, even more outrageous in tone, was practiced by Diogenes the Cynic in the fourth century, by Bion the Borysthenite in the third, and by other individuals who lived in poverty and wandered from city to city inveighing against the stupidity of social conventions. This kind of preaching is often referred to in modern times as the Stoic-Cynic diatribe.15 Some of its style and themes of invective can be found in the literary satires of the Roman poets Lucilius, Horace, and Juvenal. Aristotle (On Rhetoric 3.17.10) uses diatrib of a passage in a speech that dwells on a subject, such as the vices of an opponent or the virtues of a speaker, in an emotional way. In philosophical schools the word was used to refer to informal remarks of a teacher in which he addressed and rebuked students or refuted logical objections to his teaching.16 Versions of this are found in essays by Seneca, in speeches by Dio Chrysostom, in the Discourses of the Stoic Epictetus, and in Christian writing.
Plato’s Academy developed into the Academic school of the Hellenistic period, but in the third and second centuries Platonic dogmatism was abandoned by Arcesilaus and Carneades in favor of skepticism. Cicero regarded himself as an Academic, and we know their teachings best from his works, especially his Academics, which stresses their technique of disputation on two sides of an issue (in utramque partem disputare). In the late second century B.C. Academic philosophers, in common with Peripatetics and Stoics, became hostile to rhetorical study. Cicero says (On the Orator 1.46–47) that they all rejected the orator’s claims to greatness and restricted rhetoric to what was useful in law courts and assemblies; Plato’s Gorgias was studied in the school at this time and gave authority to such a view, while Aristotle’s On Rhetoric was still unknown. It is possible that the Academics were responsible for making memory a part of rhetoric; Cicero (On the Orator 2.360), after telling a traditional story of the use of a mnemonic system by Simonides of Ceos in early Greek times, jumps down to its practice by the Academics Charmadas and Metrodorus in the late second century, and Pliny the Elder (Natural History 7.89) says Metrodorus brought the system to perfection. Metrodorus subsequently abandoned Academic philosophy and became a teacher of rhetoric (Strabo 13.609).
At the end of his treatise Classifications of Oratory (Partitiones Oratoriae 139), a rhetorical catechism he wrote for his son, Cicero says the contents are derived from the teachings of “our Academy,” meaning the Academic school of the late second and early first century, but as the passage goes on to indicate, what he has in mind is Academic dialectic and ethics rather than a distinctive Academic rhetorical theory.
In 306 B.C. Epicurus founded a new philosophical school in Athens that differed sharply from the others of the period both in its physics—its doctrinaire materialism based on a theory of atoms and void—and its ethics, which sought imperturbability in retirement from the turmoil of life. Participation in public affairs was not encouraged, and study of political rhetoric was discouraged; Quintilian (12.2.24) says that Epicurus banished orators from his presence, ordering his followers “to flee all systematic study on the swiftest ship possible.”17 Epicureanism did, however, provide an opening for poetry and rhetoric that taught Epicurean doctrines or contributed to aesthetic pleasure and were nonpolitical. The Latin epic of Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, expounds Epicureanism in verse to free human beings from superstition and fear of death, using poetry to sweeten the bitter medicine of philosophy (1.935–50).
The only Epicurean whose writings on rhetoric are at all known to us is Philodemus. He came to Italy from Palestine early in the first century. Portions of his numerous Epicurean works have been discovered on charred papyri from a library excavated at Herculaneum, where they had been buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius about a century after his death. The papyri are exceedingly difficult to decipher, since the brittle rolls have to be opened with great care and the writing is essentially now black on black. Even when the text can be read, Philodemus’ Greek prose style is difficult, often ironic and idiosyncratic. Yet over the course of the last century scholars have had considerable success in reconstructing Philodemus’ writings; research continues today and in the course of time they will be better understood and additional portions may be discovered.
We have a considerable part of Philodemus’ Hypomnmatikon, a handbook that seems to set out the views on rhetoric of Philodemus’ Epicurean teacher Zeno of Sidon, and a longer, perhaps more original work, On Rhetoric.18 The most characteristic doctrine of Philodemus, and apparently of some Epicurean predecessors, is that of the three Aristotelian species of rhetoric only epideictic is artistic; success in judicial and deliberative rhetoric is solely the result of practice. Epideictic rhetoric, which Philodemus usually calls “sophistic” and of which the works of Isocrates are taken as the main model, is useless but gives pleasure from its beauty. These views are set out in both the Hypomnmatikon and in fragments of books 1 and 2 of On Rhetoric. Book 3, largely lost, apparently argued that sophists do not produce statesmen and are often harmful. Book 4 contained an original discussion of rhetorical invention, in which Philodemus seems to have argued that neither discovery nor judgment of arguments rightly belongs to the art of rhetoric; they are functions of other intellectual disciplines concerned with the specific subject matter of the arguments. What remains for rhetoric is the function of focusing and applying these arguments for rhetorical effect. This is reminiscent of Aristotle’s distinction between “specific” and “common” topics; knowledge is extrarhetorical, but there are rhetorical techniques in its utilization.19 Book 4 also discussed style, with some modification of Theophrastus’ theory of four virtues or the Stoic list of five, mentioned above. Philodemus seems to have identified six qualities to be sought in good prose style: correctness, clarity, forcefulness, brevity, propriety, and ornamentation.20 Forcefulness (emphasis) is an addition to the Stoic list and anticipates the interest in that quality, usually called deinots, in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Hermogenes, and other writers of the imperial period, though there is no evidence that they knew Philodemus’ work. Book 5 contrasted the unfortunate rhetor and the fortunate philosopher; book 6 attacked those philosophical schools that taught rhetoric, and this may have been continued in a seventh book.21 Although there are thus some positive views on rhetoric in Philodemus’ writings, his characteristic method is to set out and criticize views of earlier writers. His work On Poems, in at least five books, is especially important in this respect since it is a major source for otherwise lost Hellenistic poetic theory.
A change toward greater artificiality in style is characteristic of the Hellenistic period. Demetrius of Phaleron, as mentioned above, spoke more like a student of philosophy than a practical politician. Other forms of artificiality were especially noticeable away from Athens.22 Cicero describes the development in a colorful passage (Brutus 51):
But outside of Greece there was great enthusiasm for speaking and the greatest honors accorded in praise of it made the name of orator illustrious. For when eloquence once sailed from the Piraeus [the port of Athens], it passed through all the islands and visited all parts of Asia, with the result that it was infected with foreign diseases and lost all that healthiness and what might be called saneness of Attic diction and almost unlearned how to speak. From this came the Asiatic orators, not to be despised for their rapidity and abundance of speech, but too little restrained and too redundant. This is the phenomenon known as Asianism, which Cicero elsewhere (Orator 25) describes as “fat and greasy.” He distinguished two forms (Brutus 325): one is described as epigrammatic and pointed; the other swift and impetuous, with ornate words. Cicero was writing Brutus and Orator in 46 B.C. and was trying to combat the more extreme forms of the new Atticism movement of that time. “Asiatic” as a pejorative description of style seems to have originated then; when in Cicero’s earlier writings an orator is called “Asiatic” it only means he came from Asia Minor.
The earliest orator described as Asiatic is Hegesias of Magnesia, who lived in the third century; we have only short quotations from his speeches. These sound as though they come from declamations, and they seem to fall into the class Cicero described as “epigrammatic.” Hegesias favored short, rhythmical phrases and avoided long periodic sentences. The effect is somewhat reminiscent of the style of Gorgias. Hegesias’ style is, in fact, a continuation of developments of the fourth century that turned to greater artificiality, seen in fragments of speeches of Charisius and Cleochares, for example. Charisius, however, regarded himself as imitating Lysias (Brutus 286), and most orators would have claimed to be Attic. No critic ever promoted a theory of Asianism as the best style. What was out of fashion for a time was the style of Demosthenes, not fully appreciated until the writings of Cicero and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.
The best examples of the impetuous and ornate style in the third and second centuries come from elaborate inscriptions preserving letters of Hellenistic kings, such as that of Ptolemy II at Miletus around 260 B.C.23 This had apparently become the standard style for formal correspondence and official proclamation. It can also be found in formal writing on papyri in the Hellenistic period. In the late second and early first centuries a number of famous orators and teachers of rhetoric were active in Asia Minor. They included the brothers Menecles and Hierocles of Alabanda, who represent the epigrammatic style, and Aeschines of Miletus and Aeschylus of Cnidus in the ornate style. Theirs was the oratory Romans heard when they visited and studied in the East, and it had some effect on Latin oratory of the early first century. Cicero’s rival Hortenius was thought of as showing Asian characteristics, and they are not lacking in Cicero himself, especially in his earlier orations, including the Verrines. A rhetorical school on the island of Rhodes was started by Apollonius of Alabanda (also called Apollonius Molon) in the early first century, more restrained in style than the schools of Asia Minor. Cicero (Brutus 317) credits Apollonius with showing him how to control his own youthful impetuosity, reduce his tendency to redundancy, and generally discipline himself to become the great orator he was destined to be.
The most famous professional teacher of rhetoric in the Hellenistic period was Hermagoras of Temnos, who lived about the middle of the second century B.C. and who first worked out in detail a theory of the stasis or determination of the question at issue in a speech. His work is lost but can be reconstructed in some detail from use of his theory in Cicero’s On Invention, Rhetoric for Herennius, and later rhetorical writings.24
Hermagoras’ original book was a comprehensive rhetoric handbook for students in rhetorical schools, preparing them for declamation of judicial themes, though the nominal goal was ability at public speaking. Invention was given the most extensive treatment; arrangement and style were grouped under the heading “economy,” which was subdivided into judgment, division, order, and style (cf. Quintilian 3.3.9); discussion of memory and delivery perhaps followed.25 Hermagoras defined the duty of the orator as “to treat the proposed political question as persuasively as possible” (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 2.62). He seems to have concerned himself only with logical proof, not with ethos or pathos. “Political questions” were divided into two classes: theses and hypotheses. A thesis is a disputation that does not involve specific individuals or situations. Cicero (On Invention 1.8) attributes to Hermagoras such philosophical theses as “Whether there is any good except the honorable? Whether the senses are reliable? What is the size of the sun?” Hermagoras perhaps introduced debating of philosophical theses into his rhetorical school, for the Stoic philosopher Posidonius attacked his discussion of theses, perhaps as inappropriate for a rhetorician (Plutarch, Pompey 42.5). Hypotheses are specific cases involving persons and occasions. Seven attributes of the rhetorical situation (peristasis) were identified: actor, action, time, place, cause, manner, and starting point.
Aristotle (On Rhetoric 1.3.9) had distinguished between cases in which the question at issue (amphisbtsis) was one of fact (had someone done something?) and those in which it was one of law (was the action illegal?) and also (3.17.1) noted four possible questions in dispute: fact, injury, importance, and justice. Although he recognized the need to define the question at issue in a trial, Aristotle did not develop a theory to cover the various possibilities, nor did he use the term stasis. According to Quintilian (3.6.3), it was first employed either by Naucrates, a pupil of Isocrates, or by Zopyrus of Clazomene, and he points to the use of the word in Aeschines’ speech Against Ctesiphon (206) where the orator demands that Demosthenes be forced to speak about the real “stasis” of the case. The word literally means “stand, standing, stance,” describes the “stance” of a boxer toward an opponent, and perhaps was transferred from that context to the stand taken by a speaker toward an opponent. Quintilian (3.6.23) saw the influence of Aristotle’s dialectical categories of substance, quantity, relation, and quality on concepts of stasis, which in Latin is called constitutio or status. Hermagoras was certainly familiar with logic and dialectic as taught in the Peripatetic and Stoic schools of philosophy and probably drew on this knowledge.
In determining the question at issue in a judicial speech, Hermagoras began with the kataphasis, or charge of the prosecutor, which defined the aition, or cause of action. This was answered by the apophasis, denial by the defendant, which provided the sunechon, containment of the issue, and focused the basic conflict. Out of this process emerged the ztma, question, or krinomenon, the matter under judgment, which was then classified as either “rational” (subdivided into four types of stasis) or “legal” (also subdivided into four types, though these were not called staseis). Although a negotiation of the central issue goes on in the assertations and replies of speakers on the two sides of a case, the issue is really determined at the point where the defendant takes a final stand. Thus the process can be viewed as one of elimination of each type successively; for example, in the case of a rational question the defendant’s apophasis will, if possible, define the issue as stasis of fact (“you did”; “I didn’t”); if such a claim is not possible, recourse is had to stasis of definition (“you did”; “yes, but it wasn’t theft”), and only failing that to one of quality (“you did”; “but I had to,” or “I didn’t mean to”). Some cases were regarded as asystata, lacking stasis; these should not come to trial because the evidence is insufficient, is equally balanced on both sides, or is too one-sided, or because the subject presents some contradiction or difficulty that makes decision impossible.
Hermagoras’ four types of stasis in rational questions were the following:26
bkos or poiots, Latin generalis or qualitas, the issue of the “quality” of the action, including its motivation and possible justification: e.g., Was the murder of Y by X in some way justified by the circumstances?psis, Latin translatio, objection to the legal process or “transference” of jurisdiction to a different tribunal: e.g., Can this court try X for a crime when X has been given immunity from prosecution or claims the crime was committed in another city?Each of the four staseis was discussed in detail by Hermagoras, and subdivisions were made. In stasis of fact it is necessary to prove or disprove motive, ability, and desire. Further, the defendant’s person and character furnish evidence to indicate the probability or improbability of the alleged action. Cicero, following Hermagoras’ system (On Invention 2.28ff.), lists as topics name, nature, way of life, fortune, habits (subdivided into six headings), zeal, and purpose. The act itself furnishes evidence also, for the orator should consider its attributes, performance (place, time, and occasion), adjuncts, and result.
If the stasis is one of definition (On Invention 2.53ff.), the speaker should define the crime, prove the definition, compare it with the act of the person accused, introduce commonplaces on the enormity and wickedness of the crime, or, in the case of the defendant, on the utility and honorable nature of the act, attack the definition the opponent offers, compare similar cases, and finally attack the opponent personally. Though the speaker might make use of a law in establishing a definition of a crime, the applicability or justice of the laws was not at issue in stasis of definition; that fell under the rubric of legal questions, to be discussed later.
The most complicated type of stasis was that of quality. It was to be employed when the speakers agreed about what had been done and about the legal term to describe the action, but disagreed about such matters as whether the action was important, just, or useful. Here the defendant could claim mitigating circumstances. Hermagoras divided stasis of quality into four parts (throughout the system he seems to have favored division in four headings): deliberative, demonstrative, judicial, and pragmatic (On Invention 1.12; Quintilian 3.6.56ff.). Cicero protests the use of the species of rhetoric as names for types of stasis of quality, but they were probably intended by Hermagoras to refer to topics characteristic of the species, which could be used to justify an action. The topic of the “advantageous,” for example, is characteristic of deliberative rhetoric but useful in judicial speeches in explaining the quality of an action in terms of the speaker’s view of what a person should or would have sought or avoided; similarly, what is praiseworthy or blameworthy (epideictic), what is just or unjust (judicial). “Pragmatic” probably referred to what was or was not useful or practicable (cf. On Invention 1.12). Clearly the most important quality would be the justice or injustice of an action, and this Hermagoras further divided. The defendant might claim that an action was appropriate, in accordance with custom, and just in itself (kat’ antilpsin). If that could not be substantiated, he would have to look for some other mitigating circumstances (kat’ antithesin), “assumptive” stasis of quality. Hermagoras divided the latter into four types: antengklma, when the defendant brings a countercharge (e.g., “He was killed, but he was a robber”); antistasis, when the defendant claims some advantage resulted for somebody or that the act prevented something worse from happening; metastasis, when the blame is shifted to someone else, for example by a soldier to his commander who ordered an action; and syngnm, when a plea is made for forgiveness on the basis of having acted in ignorance or by accident.
Metalpsis, or stasis of transference, is used when the defendant argues that the prosecutor has no right to prosecute or the court has no jurisdiction over the case.
Parallel to these four types of stasis are four legal questions (nomika ztmata). The first of these, “by word and by intent,” involves whether a law should be interpreted literally or in accordance with the intention of the original framers of the law. An example in Rhetoric for Herennius (1.19) concerns a law that anyone remaining on board an otherwise abandoned ship can gain possession of it and its cargo. Yet, if one person is too ill to abandon a ship in a storm but unexpectedly survives, can that person claim possession? Did the lawgiver intend to reward only one who braved a storm? The letter of the law seems to include anyone remaining aboard, for whatever reason. The second involves contrary laws, when two laws seem in conflict. The third occurs when the law is ambiguous, and the fourth when there is no law covering a specific situation and the speaker has to reason from existing laws about analogous situations.
The discussion of stasis and legal questions seems to have made up Hermagoras’ account of invention. There followed an account of rhetorical “economy,” divided into the four parts of judgment, division, order, and style (Quintilian 3.3.9). Grouping these matters under economy was unusual and was not adopted by later rhetoricians, even when they follow Hermagoras in other ways. Hermagoras may have been responsible for expanding the number of parts of an oration from four, as commonly seen earlier, to six. Both Cicero’s On Invention and Rhetoric for Herennius, often dependent on Hermagoras in other ways, list six parts: introduction, narration, partition, confirmation, refutation, and conclusion. Hermagoras perhaps formalized the logical basis of the prooemium by distinguishing four kinds of cases: the honorable, the paradoxical, the doubtful, and the disreputable. These appear in Rhetoric for Herennius (1.5) as honestum, turpe, dubium, and humile. We know nothing about Hermagoras’ discussion of style; Cicero (Brutus 263, cf. also 271) says “the teaching of Hermagoras was meager in ornamentation, detailed in invention.”
Hermagoras’ system was a scholastic and even pedantic discipline. The constant use of four headings probably facilitated its memorization by a student. Later rhetoricians continued to debate how best to determine the question at issue in a speech, reduced or increased the number of categories and subcategories, and varied the terminology, but once introduced, stasis theory became a major part of classical inventional theory, most applicable to judicial rhetoric but often extended to include deliberative and even epideictic forms. Hermagoras seems to have envisioned the judicial process as it had existed in classical Greek courts of law, imitated in declamation, where the principals in a case spoke on their own behalf. The system could, however, with minor changes be adapted to the situation in Roman courts of law, where the speakers were more often advocates speaking for clients.
By the time of Hermagoras Romans had begun to study rhetoric with Greek teachers. Cicero describes the awakening in the following words (On the Orator 1.14):
When our empire over all the waves had been established and enduring peace made leisure possible, there was hardly an ambitious young man who did not think he should strive with all zeal for the ability to speak. At first, ignorant of the whole study, since they did not realize the existence of any course or exercises or rules of art, they did what they could with their own native ability and reflection. Afterward, when they had heard Greek orators and become acquainted with Greek literature and had studied with learned Greeks, our countrymen took fire with an incredible zeal for speaking.
We thus turn now to the beginnings of rhetoric in Rome.
1 Summary of the evidence can be found in Kinneavy, Origins, 56–100. A crucial step was the translation of the Jewish scriptures into Greek, the Septuagint, made in the Library of Alexandria in the third century B.C. The philosopher Philo of Alexandria and the historian Josephus are the most important Jewish thinkers to write in Greek.
2 See Wooten, “Ambassador’s Speech.”
3 Murphy, “Topos and Figura,” has suggested that the development of lists of figures of speech was closely connected with the cataloging of dialectical topics and provides lists that do seem to overlap, though the nomenclature is specific to rhetoric.
4 Cf. Marrou, Education in Antiquity.
5 The earliest antecedent could be said to be works by sophists that collected types of words, e.g., the Museums of Words of Polus; Aristotle’s lectures on style were probably originally separate from the rest of On Rhetoric; Theophrastus’ On Style may be the model for later monographic treatments, which include the work of Demetrius, Cicero’s Orator, the treatises of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Hermogenes, and numerous handbooks of figures of speech in Greek and Latin.
6 All the evidence for Theophrastus’ work on rhetoric can now be found, with English translation, in Fortenbaugh et al., Theophrastus, vol. 2, 508–59. See also Fortenbaugh and Mirhady, eds., “Peripatetic Rhetoric after Aristotle.”
7 Cicero is here speaking of the plain style, which lacks ornamentation.
8 Schma is common in the fourth century in a general sense of any form or shape; Isocrates describes his Antidosis (8) as in the schma of an apology; the earliest known definition of a schma is that attributed by Quintilian (9.1.14) to the fourth-century Cynic philosopher Zoilus, “to pretend one thing and say another,” which seems to describe only irony.
9 See Fortenbaugh, “Delivery.”
10 He was long thought to have been Demetrius of Phaleron; this seems impossible, even though Philodemus, writing about 70 B.C., may have attributed the work to him; see Grube, Demetrius, 54–56. There are English translations of the treatise by Roberts, Demetrius (reprinted in the Loeb Classical Library volume of Aristotle’s Poetics); by Grube, Demetrius; and by Innes in Russell and Winterbottom, eds., Ancient Literary Criticism, 171–215.
11 See Kennedy, Cambridge History, vol. 1, 196–98.
12 The evidence has been collected by Malherbe, “Ancient Epistolary Theorists.”
13 Memory was not yet recognized as a separate part of rhetoric.
14 In English, “I go, I went” is an example of anomaly; the colloquial barbarism “I go, I goed” results from analogy. Our main source on the anomaly/analogy controversy is Varro, On the Latin Language 9; Julius Caesar wrote a work entitled On Analogy, now lost.
15 See Kustas, Diatribe in Ancient Rhetorical Theory.
16 See Stowers, The Diatribe.
17 Some Romans, active in public life, were attracted by Epicureanism. The best example is L. Calpurnius Piso, whose Epicurean views are attacked by Cicero in his oration Against Piso.
18 References to Philodemus’ rhetorical works are usually given by volume and page number in the old edition by Sudhaus; there is now a better edition by Longo-Auricchio. Hubbell, “The Rhetorica of Philodemus,” provides an English paraphrase based on Sudhaus’ text; a collaborative project to produce complete translations of Philodemus’ writings is currently under way, though none has yet been published.
19 See Gaines, “Philodemus on the Three Activities of Rhetorical Invention.”
20 See Gaines, “Rhetorical Expression in Philodemus.”
21 See Innes, “Philodemus,” 218.
22 The discussion of Asianism here is based on the account of Wooten, “Style asiatique.” His article largely replaces earlier accounts.
23 See Norden, Antike Kunstprosa, 140–55.
24 A fuller account, primarily drawn from Matthes, “Hermagoras,” is given in my Art of Persuasion in Greece, 303–21.
25 See Matthes, “Hermagoras,” 107ff. If so, this would be the first discussion of memory in a rhetoric handbook. Rhetoric for Herennius, often indebted to Hermagoras in other respects, gives an excellent account of memory but says (3.38) that there were many Greek discussions of the subject. One may have been that of Metrodorus, mentioned among the Academics above.
26 The chief sources for the terms are Cicero, On Invention 1.10; Quintilian 3.1.56, 3.5.14, 3.6.56; and Augustine, On Rhetoric, in Halm, Rhetores Latini Minores, 142–43.