Classical rhetoric is one of the earliest and best-attested versions of what is today sometimes referred to as media studies. Although the ancient rhetoricians were chiefly concerned with the production and analysis of public oratory, whether in the courtroom, in the legislature or on ceremonial occasions, the techniques they developed were considered applicable to virtually all communicative systems, including the visual and plastic arts, music, writing and scientific discourse. According to the two most influential definitions from antiquity, rhetoric was either the art of finding in any given context the most effective means of persuasion or the art of speaking well, with ‘well’ implying the moral, logical, pragmatic and aesthetic aspects of communication. Rhetoric considered – and fostered – the interplay between artist, audience and message in specific contexts.
Rhetoric came into being as a technical discourse due to the high value placed on oral communication, persuasion and deliberation in the emerging city-states of the ancient Mediterranean world. New frameworks for collective decision-making, as well as the substitution of formal legal procedures for violent conflict resolution, required participants who could clearly articulate issues for others and move members of an audience to decisive action, even when their individual or family well-being was not at stake. In addition, the expansion of political and cultural communities beyond kinship networks, and the persistence of such communities over time, required the articulation of unifying ideals and cultural memories through formal procedures of praise, blame and recollection, responsibility for which gradually passed from priests and poets to orators and statesmen.
The earliest teachers of rhetoric built their instructional system on the successful strategies of communication they encountered in the practice of speakers and writers in their midst. In turn, the training they provided generated certain expectations among the informed members of political, judicial and ceremonial audiences. The teachers of rhetoric thus created a kind of feedback loop whereby the more effectively they taught, the greater the need for their continued instruction. As a result, the production of guidebooks for students of rhetoric took on something of a life of its own, starting (probably) in the late fifth century BCE and continuing through and beyond the end of classical antiquity. No two handbooks of rhetoric contained exactly the same set of guidelines, as writers sought to differentiate themselves from their rivals and predecessors without straying too far from standard topics and approaches.
The present volume attempts to recreate an idealized version of classical rhetoric through direct quotation of the leading ancient authors on the subject without giving pride of place to any one text or approach. Treatises translated here include works originally written in Greek as well as Latin, dating from the fourth century BCE to the third century CE. The reader will note occasional differences in definitions of terms or handling of topics between one author and another. Inclusion of such variation is intentional, as it conveys a sense of the fluid and sometimes controversial nature of rhetorical instruction. The works presented here also vary in historical context and in the type of oratory they refer to, from the deliberative speeches of the Athenian democracy, to the judicial orations that played a key role in the political and legal system of the Roman Republic, to the display speeches of the so-called sophists who travelled from city to city during the heyday of the Roman Empire. The adaptability of classical rhetoric to changing political and social circumstances in the ancient world anticipates its continued revival and reuse in the centuries after the end of antiquity.
The selections translated in this volume are organized not in chronological order of composition, but according to the logic of instruction that characterized ancient training in rhetoric: first, an exhortation to the study of the field, followed by a set of possible definitions; an overview of the system; and separate sections on what came to be the five canonical tasks of the orator (invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery). At this point, the ancient model is set aside, and three additional sections address aspects of classical rhetoric that cut across the ancient divisions but have proven to be of interest to subsequent students. These include a brief section on the underlying model of human cognition that informs a great deal of rhetorical teaching, especially on the part of Roman authors; a lengthier section on the theory and practice of ornamentation, or the reworking of the raw material of language to make it more impressive (a subject of great interest to theorists of other arts besides public speaking); and a set of readings that illustrate the lived experience of the ancient orator – from childhood education, through a career in the forum and beyond. Indeed, one of the most compelling reasons for studying classical rhetoric is the insight it provides into the daily lives and social interactions of the educated citizens of ancient communities. Although at times it must have seemed like an austere or forbidding subject, rhetoric was the lifeblood of ancient politics, law and administration, a shared discourse that enabled communication across boundaries of ethnicity, status and ideology. The rhetoricians and orators presented in this volume include political outsiders who rose to high office, distinguished professors and anonymous schoolteachers, natives of mainland Greece and Italy as well as Gaul (modern France), Spain, Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and Rhodes. A larger volume could easily have included material from North Africa, Syria and Britain.
Of the treatises that are excerpted at length in this volume, the earliest in date is Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was an important Greek philosopher, the student and successor of Plato and founder of a programme of scientific research and instruction that encompassed biology, physics, zoology and meteorology, as well as politics, psychology, ethics, logic and literature. He was born in Stagira, in northern Greece, relocated to and spent much of his life in Athens, which was the centre of Greek intellectual activity, but was eventually recruited to the court of Macedon by King Philip to serve as mentor to his son, the future Alexander the Great. Although his political writings treat the achievements of the Athenian democracy respectfully, they have a consistently conservative tone and show a preference for orderly leadership on the part of the propertied sectors of society. Returning to Athens after Alexander succeeded to the Macedonian throne and embarked on his career of conquest, Aristotle resumed teaching and research there, only to depart suddenly, shortly after the untimely death of his patron.
The Rhetoric of Aristotle is a three-volume treatise, which Aristotle regarded as an extension of his work on politics. Like all surviving works of Aristotle, it seems to consist of detailed notes assembled by the philosopher himself or his students for use within expert circles. It lacks stylistic polish and contains numerous digressions, corrections-in-stride and internal summaries. It treats some issues in great detail and passes over others with barely a mention. Despite its analytical form, it contains many decidedly evaluative pronouncements. For all that, it is an invaluable work for two reasons. First, it introduces clear and distinct terminology for various aspects of rhetoric, such as ethos, pathos and logos (persuasion via character, emotion and reasoning, respectively), enthymeme (formal argument concerning probable truths) and the typology of speeches as judicial (pertaining to trials), deliberative (arguments for or against a course of action) or epideictic (speeches of praise and blame). Second, it places special emphasis on deliberative oratory, in other words the speeches made in assemblies or other political gatherings concerning public policy. Aristotle thus takes for granted the political value of free yet orderly deliberation aimed at persuading a decision-making body of the advantages of one or another course of action. He seeks to establish a framework for reasoned debate in which all participants inform themselves about the issue under discussion.
Next in order historically is the anonymous Latin treatise called the Rhetoric to Herennius. Probably composed in the 80s BCE for a burgeoning audience of politically ambitious Roman and Italian youths, the treatise seems to hew closely to the form and style of Hellenistic Greek manuals. It is both more concise and more detailed than Aristotle in its coverage of the mechanics of speech-making and the preparatory exercises to be undertaken by the student of rhetoric. If Aristotle provides a systematic overview of the discipline of rhetoric, the author of the treatise to Herennius shows how to put it into practice on a step-by-step basis, providing numerous examples along the way. In this volume, the Rhetoric to Herennius is used as the primary source for instruction in the identification of issues, for a long list of figures of thought and figures of speech that contribute to the enrichment of a speaker’s style and for one of the memory-systems used to help orators deliver speeches with a minimum of prompting.
The numerous examples contained in the treatise, most of which were composed by the author for instructional purposes, with many alluding to episodes in Roman history of the generation just preceding his, give an insider’s view both of the day-to-day types of cases and personalities one might encounter in Roman public life and of the effective use of rhetorical speech at moments of high controversy and crisis. The author seems at least mildly sympathetic to the political programme of the reform wing of the Roman elite, figures like the brothers Gracchi and Saturninus, who sought the empowerment of the popular assemblies (at the expense of the senate) and repeatedly proposed land reform as a solution to Roman Italy’s acute economic and demographic problems. Indeed, the use of rhetoric by newcomers and reformists at Rome partly accounts for the low regard in which teachers of rhetoric were viewed, at least during some periods of Roman history.
Apart from their political significance, the examples provided by the anonymous author also provide rare access to a Roman listener’s or reader’s likely reaction to various devices found in Latin literature, whether poetry or prose. By telling his students the goals they can achieve by using, for example, metaphor or rhetorical question or unusual word order, the author is also helping the modern reader understand how Romans might have reacted to their use by others. The ease with which this author, like others who appear in this volume, moves between examples from prose and examples from poetry gives a sense of the ways in which rhetoric informed literary composition of every sort.
The composition of the Rhetoric to Herennius probably took place during the young adulthood of the most famous of all Roman orators, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE). In addition to his many speeches, which earned him fame and political power during his lifetime, Cicero composed philosophical dialogues, letters, epic poetry (mostly lost) and several treatises on rhetoric, including a technical handbook, On Invention (which he says he wrote while a young man), a more reflective dialogue, On the Orator, and a memoir of famous Roman orators called Brutus (after its dedicatee), all of which are featured in this volume. Cicero was born in the small town of Arpinum to a family that was locally prominent but had few significant connections in Rome. His early success as a courtroom pleader propelled him up the political ladder and he attained the highest magistracy, that of consul, in 63 BCE, at the youngest age legally allowable. As was customary for ex-consuls, Cicero remained actively involved in political, legal and cultural affairs at Rome, until the rise of the First Triumvirate, an informal power-sharing arrangement between Pompey, Julius Caesar and Crassus starting in 59 BCE, led to his temporary withdrawal from politics and the forum. During this period he maintained a public profile in part by writing treatises, including the magisterial work On the Orator, which considered the significance of rhetoric and oratory to the smooth functioning of the Roman Republic and explored the cultural and moral obligations of public speakers. Cicero soon returned to public life, only to retreat again during the dictatorship of Julius Caesar (48–44 BCE), once again remaining engaged with Roman affairs by writing philosophical and rhetorical treatises, including the Brutus (46 BCE), which integrates a narrative history of Roman oratory into an elegiac lament over its prospects under dictatorship. Cicero’s final return to public life after the assassination of Julius Caesar included a series of speeches aimed at Caesar’s successor, Mark Antony, which led to his execution by Antony’s soldiers in 43 BCE.
In the present volume, a selection from Cicero’s work On Invention serves to introduce principles of rhetorical disposition or arrangement. This is one of the most straightforward branches of rhetoric, since it involves breaking a speech down into its component parts and adopting the gestures, language and persuasive techniques appropriate to each. On the Orator is the source for three sections of this volume: Why Study Rhetoric?, Rhetoric and Cognition and Rhetorical Ornament. The work as a whole purports to record a conversation held among leading Romans in 91 BCE, shortly before the Roman world was convulsed by a series of civil conflicts, political assassinations and proscriptions that claimed the lives of a number of the figures represented in the dialogue. Cicero’s presentation of his characters’ commitment to the cohesive power of eloquence gains emotional force from his readers’ awareness of the consequences that follow on the collapse of institutions that guarantee reasoned deliberation.
The primary speaker in Cicero’s On the Orator is Crassus, who argues for the unity of wisdom and eloquence and presents the ideal orator as a kind of culture hero who deploys all the diverse knowledge available in Roman society of the time. In contrast, Antonius expresses scepticism about the importance of technical training in rhetoric and the ability of any human being to master the curriculum advanced by Crassus. Their discussion, which draws in a number of interlocutors, is less a sharp debate than a shared deliberation in which each prompts the other to refine, restate or further develop his position. The participants enact, in the context of a friendly discussion, the very principles of rhetorical discourse they jointly develop. Both main speakers draw heavily on the learning embedded in Greek rhetorical handbooks, but present it gracefully, and without the sometimes hectoring tone found in textbooks. Crassus’ discussion of ornament, in particular, integrates a detailed discussion of rhetorical devices and prose rhythms into a call for a refined or polished approach to life as well as language. It is perhaps no wonder that the discovery of the full manuscript of On the Orator (De Oratore) in Italy in 1421 was treated as a watershed event by European humanists, who interpreted the treatise as advancing both a theory of artistic style and a model of civilized discourse.
From Brutus we derive Cicero’s retrospective account of his own developing career as an orator, and in particular his rivalry with the slightly older orator Hortensius, who had died a few years before the composition of the treatise. As in On the Orator, Cicero tries to show how political, temperamental and stylistic differences can mask an underlying shared commitment to the principle of ethically responsible communication. The treatise also presents a genealogy of rhetorical achievement, with each generation learning from its predecessors and providing inspiration and examples for its successors. In Cicero’s account, rhetoric becomes not just a tool for addressing pressing contemporary issues, but also an honourable way of life to be passed down from one generation to the next, as he now seeks to pass the torch to Brutus.
Despite the political rupture at the end of the republic that Cicero feared would leave eloquence bereft, his own achievements as orator, statesman and writer served as inspiration and point of reference in the schools of rhetoric that proliferated under the Roman Empire. His political choices were debated, his fate lamented, his style held up for inspection and, generally speaking, admiration. Among his most ardent admirers was the first tenant of an endowed chair of rhetoric at Rome, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, i.e. Quintilian (c.35–100 CE). Quintilian’s life is not as well documented as that of Cicero, but he seems to have had a successful career as an orator and an instructor prior to the composition of his magnum opus, Oratorical Instruction. Aimed chiefly at his fellow instructors, Quintilian’s treatise describes the formation and career of an orator from infancy to retirement. Naturally he covers much of the same ground as Aristotle, the author of the Rhetoric to Herennius and Cicero, but he adds to their treatment a rich discussion of what actually happened in the rhetorical classroom and in the law-courts based on personal experience and observation. Quintilian understands the ideal orator to be a kind of Roman sage (Romanus sapiens), that is, a person who combines deep knowledge and wisdom with an ability to speak well and effectively in a variety of situations. Reading his treatise helps the modern reader to see how and why rhetoric was the favoured form of education among the elite and upwardly mobile sectors of the Roman citizenry. He can be respected as one of the first and most eloquent proponents of the view that a liberal arts education prepares the student not just for a career, but also for full participation in civic and cultural life, and, in Quintilian’s view, for full realization of one’s highest potential as a human being.
In recognition of the distinctive contributions of Quintilian’s treatise, the selections drawn from it here include his discussion of the multiple possible definitions of rhetoric, his account of the exercises used to prepare young boys for rhetorical training, his rejection of the memory-system proposed in the Rhetoric to Herennius and numerous anecdotes (some quite humorous) about misguided attempts to summon listeners’ emotions, or bizarre uses of gestures and vocal effects. While several of the other treatises illustrate the intersection of public oratory and political ideology, Quintilian puts us in the shoes of the anxious orator trying to make his case in the presence of rivals, judges and critics. He also provides ample evidence of the continuing vitality of rhetoric and oratory under the Roman emperors. Although politically charged public trials of the sort that characterized the career of Cicero had largely come to an end, and debate in the senate was to varying degrees constrained by the presence of the emperor or his agents, the day-to-day activities of trying cases and discussing policy continued, providing outlets for rhetorical talent and training. In addition, the type of education described by Quintilian seems likely to have been beneficial to Roman officials at various levels of administration, since it taught students how to consider opposing perspectives, evaluate evidence and develop and analyse arguments. For all of his emphasis on the practice of speech-making, Quintilian shares the understanding of rhetoric as a type of intellectual formation that characterizes the approach of Aristotle and Cicero as well.
The final treatise drawn upon in this volume is the collection of Lives of the Sophists by Lucius Flavius Philostratus (c.170–c.250 CE). Philostratus was a Greek intellectual who seems to have achieved some prominence in the imperial court at Rome, possibly as part of the circle around the empress Julia Domna. His account of famous travelling intellectuals, called sophists, from the fifth century BCE down to his own lifetime, serves as a kind of justification for his own intellectual status, in addition to commemorating the achievements of a group of men who often served as ambassadors of Greek communities to one another, and eventually to Rome. Although there has been much debate, in antiquity and among modern scholars, over the precise meaning of the term ‘sophist’, the individuals described by Philostratus share a common ability to speak fluently and intelligently before large audiences on a wide array of topics, often with little or no time for preparation. Sophists of the sort described by Philostratus didn’t replace the practitioners in the law-courts or political assemblies – and indeed they frequently participated in such activities as well – but their biographies illustrate the use of oratory as a form of display and even entertainment. While the speeches they delivered in praise of one city or another or offering advice to figures from the distant historical past may seem of little value in a strictly practical sense, they served to foster both local and cosmopolitan identities in the multi-ethnic context of the Roman Empire. Indeed among the most striking stories told of the sophists are those in which they are said to delight even listeners who could not understand what they were saying. With the sophists, rhetoric seemed to have found a way to liberate language from meaning.
In line with Cicero’s insistence that the serious orator needed a broad understanding of a wide range of issues and disciplines, classical rhetoric as a field, viewed synoptically, can be seen to encompass not just language, literature and other communicative systems, but also politics, psychology, law, history, aesthetics and child development. In at least one glaring respect, however, it was not the universalizing discourse it purported to be: rhetoric and oratory in the ancient world were almost exclusively the reserve of men. None of the rhetoricians presented here or cited within these texts are female, and references to female orators are few and far between in the ancient record. This is perhaps more puzzling than it might seem, since we do hear of female participation in philosophical training and female attendance at literary recitations, and the work of a small but significant number of female poets either survives or is explicitly mentioned by ancient sources. Girls also had access to elementary instruction in language and literature, in at least some contexts.
The exclusion of women from the world of the rhetoricians, which corresponds to their exclusion from political office and legal practice, may be due in part to the implicit understanding throughout much of antiquity that political and legal speech is a privilege granted in exchange for men’s availability to serve in the military. Rhetoric is often paired with military achievement as a contributor to a society’s well-being, as in the opening of Cicero’s treatise On the Orator; and the terminology used to describe courtroom procedures, in both Greek and Latin, echoes the language of aggressive physical confrontation. Indeed, it is precisely during the periods when upper-class men were freed from military obligations that rhetoric was put to uses that had little to do with the day-to-day management of civic affairs. To some extent, the quest for glory on the battlefield had been replaced by the competition for prizes in the school of declamation.
A final issue that has plagued the history of rhetoric is its alleged competition with philosophy for pre-eminence among the disciplines. Initially the quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy was a professional dispute as to who would inherit the traditional role of poets and priests as educators of succeeding generations. The discussion between the philosopher Socrates and rhetorician Gorgias in Plato’s Gorgias can be read as an attempt to negotiate the boundaries between the two fields (or, as Quintilian would have it, an assertion of the value of true rhetoric).
In time, however, it became clear that philosophy and rhetoric were, by and large, dealing with fundamentally different models of human thought and communication. Whereas philosophers like Plato emphasized the autonomous thinker’s observation and use of external reality to arrive at abstract truths and decontextualized knowledge, rhetoricians generally understood human thought to be embodied (hence the emphasis on emotions, gesture, delivery) and interactive or distributed (hence the significance of writing and memory-systems, as well as the deep respect for knowledge attained through shared discussion and deliberation). To be sure, there were forays from one camp into the other. For example, Aristotle, in his philosophical rhetoric, seeks to strip rhetoric of some of its embodied and interactive tendencies and to attribute special significance to rhetorical arguments or enthymemes that are, in his view, to be modelled on logical syllogisms. Moving in the opposite direction, the Stoic philosophers, with their account of the continuity of brain, body and environment and of the physicality of all actions, including thinking, perceiving and speaking, provided a philosophical foundation for the teachings of rhetoricians like Cicero’s speaker Crassus in On the Orator, or Quintilian, who, in Oratorical Instruction, explicitly derives his definition of rhetoric from the Stoics. Although the approach to thought as internalized and autonomous has tended to dominate academic discussion at least since the Enlightenment, many cognitive scientists have begun to return to an understanding of cognition as variously embodied, externalized and distributed. Whether such a shift in our understanding of cognition will lead to a revival of interest in rhetoric remains to be seen.
In the meantime we can appreciate classical rhetoric for its historical significance, its political idealism, its insights concerning human motivation and its precise analysis of techniques of persuasion that continue to be valid. The selections that follow have been chosen to illustrate all of these aspects of ancient rhetoric, in both theory and practice, and, hopefully, to provide a foundation for the continuing use of classical rhetoric today.