THE NUMBER of editions and translations of the works of the ancient historians is in itself indicative of the tremendous interest of the men of the Renaissance in history. But from ancient writers on rhetoric and oratory they also derived ideals of historical writing which were to motivate and direct their own endeavors. From ancient histories they determined the purposes and principles of historical writing, but treatises on rhetoric and oratory reinforced many of their conceptions of the methods and the qualities of the historian.
The traditional acceptance of rhetoric as a means to win the reader or the hearer to belief made it inevitable that the political writer or orator should be advised to use history for political ends. Thus Aristotle in his Rhetoric recommended for those engaged in making laws “so much Politically or Civill Philosophy as to know what are the severall kindes of Governements; and by what meanes, either from without or from within, each of those kinds is preserved, or destroyed.” Such knowledge, he said, is acquired “partly by observing the severall governments, in times past by History; and partly by observing the government of the times present, in severall Nations by Travell.”1
Thomas Wilson, “Doctor of the Civill Lawes,” and author of The Art of Rhetoric, published in 1570 the translation of seven orations of Demosthenes on which he had been working since 1556, stressing in his preface the fact that the orator was much indebted to Thucydides, whose history he had eight times copied out in his own hand, and from whom he borrowed whole sentences. Wilson's preface described Demosthenes as “chiefe Orator among the Grecians,” and his orations as “most nedeful to be redde in these daungerous dayes, of all them that love their Countries libertie, and desire to take warning for their better avayle, by example of others.” His dedication of the work to Sir William Cecil suggests further that Demosthenes was a counsellor in his country as Cecil is in England, wherefore “he is your glasse I am well assured whereupon you do often loke, and compare his time, with this time: Countrie with Countrie: neighbours with neighbours: and King with King.” Pollard refers to a story published in the Literary Magazine for 1758 that Wilson was employed by the government to translate Demosthenes with a view to rousing national resistance to Spain. At any rate, Wilson records that Cardinal Bessario used one of the orations when he went to ask Louis XI of France to make peace with Charles of Burgundy and turn his war against the Turks, and that since, as Thucydides said, “like time bringeth forth lyke examples, so long as the world lasteth, and the course of nature remaineth,” Demosthenes must continue to be similarly useful:
Quintilian summed up this contribution of history to oratory in one of the most favored quotations of Renaissance historiographers: “History, also, may provide the orator with a nutriment which we may compare to some rich and pleasant juice.”3
But it was Cicero who furnished the motto emblazoned on every banner waved by the apologists for history, a motto so much quoted that Sidney made it the theme of the egotistic burbling of the historian who entered the scene to advance the claims of history over philosophy and poetry:
Cicero made a contribution to historiography, however, which went far beyond this distillation of praise when he scorned the idea that it was enough for a man not to be a liar in order to write history and stressed the responsibility of the orator to historical writing. One of the speakers in his De oratore is, indeed, made to summarize the requirements for a writer of history, and these requirements were so basic to the sixteenth-century theorists and practitioners that I propose to recapitulate them here. The historian must tell the truth and the whole truth without partiality or malice. But beyond this, “the completed structure rests upon the story and the diction.” History demands “chronological arrangement and geographical representation.” It chronicles important events and should indicate what actions and results are approved. It demands an account not only of what was done and said but also of the manner in which it was done and said. It must consider causes “whether originating in accident, discretion, or foolhardiness” in estimating consequences. The individual actors of events of importance must be described in detail. And he adds:
Then again the kind of language and type of style to be followed are the easy and the flowing, which run their course with an unvarying current and a certain placidity, avoiding alike the rough speech we use in Court and the advocate's stinging epigrams.5
Of special significance, too, was a statement attributed by Cicero to the same speaker:
In proof he instanced Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Callisthenes, and Timaeus. Here is a basis for the Renaissance belief of the so-called rhetorical school that history is a phase of rhetoric.
Viewing history as a form of creative expression, the writers on rhetoric and oratory provided the Renaissance also with the materials upon which to base their understanding of different literary forms by their differentiation of history and poetry, history and tragedy, history and oratory. The famous passage from Aristotle's Poetics was the subject of almost endless exegesis during the Renaissance, and for the English reader was amplified in Sidney's Defence of Poesie. Aristotle said:
The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse—you might put the work of Herodotus into verse, and it would still be a species of history; it consists really in this, that the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
And Aristotle also said:
It is evident … that the poet must be more the poet of his stories or plots than of his verses, inasmuch as he is a poet by virtue of the imitative element in his work, and it is actions that he imitates. And if he should come to take a subject from actual history, he is none the less a poet for that; since some historic occurrences may very well be in the probable and possible order of things; and it is in that aspect of them that he is the poet.7
Elsewhere he explained further that while a drama, and ideally also an epic poem, must be based on a single, complete action, a history deals, not with one action, but with one period, no matter how many concurrent but disconnected events may have to be included.8
Along with Aristotle and Cicero, Quintilian is to be reckoned among the most influential writers and the most familiar in the Renaissance. He, too, discussed history at length and insisted that, while the orator made use of history, his function was distinct from that of the historian:
For history has a certain affinity to poetry and may be regarded as a kind of prose poem, while it is written for the purpose of narrative, not of proof, and designed from beginning to end not for immediate effect or the instant necessities of forensic strife, but to record events for the benefit of posterity and to win glory for its author. Consequently, to avoid monotony of narrative, it employs unusual words and indulges in a free use of figures.... It is, however, occasionally permissible to borrow the graces of history to embellish our digressions.…9
Of special interest also is his discussion of history as one of the three kinds of narrative:
First there is the fictitious narrative as we get it in tragedies and poems, which is not merely not true but has little resemblance to truth. Secondly, there is the realistic narrative as presented by comedies, which, though not true, has yet a certain verisimilitude. Thirdly there is the historical narrative, which is an exposition of actual fact. Poetic narratives are the property of the teacher of literature. The rhetorician therefore should begin with the historical narrative, whose force is in proportion to its truth.10
While ancient history thus brought to the Renaissance an awareness of the usefulness of history and provided models for historical writing, ancient orators and rhetoricians reinforced example by precept. Above all, they influenced the concept of history as a form of creative writing, opposed to the idea of history as a set of records. Furthermore in viewing it as a part of rhetoric they made possible the inference that like rhetoric it could be an effective instrument for capturing men's interest and directing their wills.