The shorter works of Dionysius have generally gone under the name of Scripta Rhetorica; but they contain more of literary criticism than of technical rhetoric. They are all in the form of letters addressed to some literary friend, patron or pupil. There is no internal evidence to show whether they were composed before or after the History was published; but it is generally assumed that Dionysius wrote them from time to time during the years that he was engaged upon his great work. Although no absolute dates can be assigned to these several treatises, the relative order in which they were composed can be determined in most cases by means of the frequent references in one to what the writer has already discussed or proposes to discuss in another. The order in which Roberts arranges them is as follows:
1. First Letter to Ammaeus.
2. On the Arrangement of Words.
3. On the Ancient Orators.
4. On the Style of Demosthenes.
5. On Imitation: Books I., II.
6. Letter to Cn. Pompeius.
7. On Imitation; Book III.
8. On Dinarchus.
9. On Thucydides.
10. Second Letter to Ammaeus.
Egger would transpose the second and third items, seeing a greater maturity of judgment in the treatise on the Arrangement of Words. As regards the Dinarchus, he says we can be sure only that it was later than the Ancient Orators.
The treatise on Imitation is known to us only from fragments. Only the first half of the study of the Ancient Orators is preserved, treating of Lysias, Isocrates and Isaeus; in the second part Demosthenes, Hyperides and Aeschines were discussed. The treatise on the Style of Demosthenes is thought to be an enlarged edition of the discussion of Demosthenes in the earlier series. Other Works which have been lost were on the Choice of Words, on Figures, and on Political Philosophy, the latter a defence of the rhetoric of Isocrates and his school against its Epicurean detractors. The early editions attributed to Dionysius an Ars Rhetorica, but this is no longer held to be his work.
For a detailed account of the Scripta Rhetorica the reader is referred to Max. Egger, Denys d’ Halicarnasse, pp. 20-246; a brief survey of these works may be found in W. Rhys Roberts, Dionysius of Halicarnassus: — The Three Literary Letters, pp. 4-34. Roberts also gives (pp. 209-19) a bibliography of the Scripta Rhetorica down to the year 1900.
To his labours as literary critic Dionysius brought a wide and thorough acquaintance with the works of the Attic prose writers, a discriminating taste, and great industry and zeal. His chief merit as a critic lies in his purity of taste; he rejoiced in the recent triumph of Atticism over Asianism and did his best to strengthen that victory. His rhetorical works have much in common with those of Cicero, due to their both using many of the same sources. Like Cicero, Dionysius held Demosthenes in the greatest admiration; but this excessive admiration for one man seems to have made him unfair in his judgment of others: — he tended to judge all the prose writers by the standards he set up for the orators. In other respects as well he is often narrow and superficial in his criticisms, and his manner is too dogmatic.
The first reference to Dionysius as a rhetorician in any extant author is in Quintilian, who merely names him three times in lists of rhetoricians. In the third century the circle of Libanius paid some attention to him. From the fifth century onward he was regarded by the Byzantines as the supreme authority on rhetoric.