“As to this [education of an orator] the great men of the past had made up their minds. To bring it about they discerned the need not of declamatio in the schools of the rhetors, nor of exercising tongue and voice in imaginary controversiæ without specific relation to actuality, but of filling the mind by the technic (artibus) of discussing (disputatur, i.e., discussing after the manner of the philosophers) good and evil, honor and dishonor, justice and injustice; for this is the orator’s subject matter (subiecta ad dicendum materia).” Tacit. Dial. 31, 1.
[The dialogue, which of course gives more than one point of view, but none the less clearly shows the position of Tacitus, proceeds from such general studies to the old custom of apprenticing oneself to an experienced orator (31-34), and then contrasts the modern habit as follows.]
“But now our striplings are drawn off into the schools of those who are called rhetors. How little, just before Cicero’s time, these teachers pleased our ancestors is evident from the fact that the censors Crassus and Domitius bade them close, as Cicero puts it, their ‘schools of impudence.’ Well, as I started to say, the boys are drawn off into schools in which it would be hard to say whether the place itself, or their fellow students, or the sort of exercise, is likely to do their talents more harm. The place has no respect, since every one is equally unskilled; the fellow students give no impetus to progress, since boys among boys and youths among youths speak and are heard with equal carelessness; but the exercises are in great part positively thwarting. For two sorts of themes are handled with the rhetors: suasoriæ and controversiæ. Of these the suasoriæ, as being easier and demanding less foresight (prudentia), are left to the boys; the controversiæ are assigned to those of more power. My word! what assignments! and how incredibly composed! It follows, moreover, that declamatio may be applied to an assignment far removed from actuality. So it comes to pass that they pursue with great words rewards for tyrannicides, or the choice to be made by ravished maidens, or incests of matrons, or whatever is argued as often in school as seldom in the forum. When they come before real judges—” ... Tacit. Dial. 35, 1-7.
What Quintilian deplores, then, in the practise of declamatio Tacitus shows to have been none the less common. All the more significant is the slight and as it were unwilling consideration that Quintilian gives to these fashionable aspects. Even while he insists on the value of declamatio for general training, he deprecates that wide departure from actual pleading in themes, conception, and style which Seneca records as a matter of course and Tacitus derides as habitual. The use of declamatio by mature speakers not for exercise, but for exhibition, he passes over incidentally in a few sentences as a perversion. Its undoubted prevalence he admits sadly as something that a serious teacher should ignore.[31] Both the scorn of the historian and the reservations of the teacher spring from the older, larger tradition of rhetoric. To this both Tacitus and Quintilian discerned in declamatio a menace. How far their fears were justified will appear in later narrowing and perversion. Meantime they have supplied for interpreting the collection of Seneca not only the ancient standard, but also the necessary information.
B. Character and Scope of Seneca’s Collection
Seneca’s Controversiæ[32] is a collection of the declamationes made by celebrated rhetors. Though Seneca may well have used published material, his extensive reports, as it were verbatim,[33] at once attest the grasp of the ancient memoria and suggest, amid considerable variety, a fund of stock cases. To exhibit the rhetors’ skill by competition, his plan is to show side by side different treatments of the same theme. He interpolates specific, and, in the prefaces to the several books, general criticism. Though he does not offer his collection of models explicitly as a comprehensive guide, his pervasive implication is that declamatio exhibits the cardinal virtues. Rhetoric might with more safety tend to monopolize education so long as it had its old comprehensiveness; but as it was narrowed, it tended to put the cart before the horse. “Give your mind to eloquence,” says Seneca; “from this you can range easily into all arts.”[34] The idea is almost opposite educationally to Cicero’s view that eloquence is nourished by all studies; and the eloquence exhibited by Seneca is itself much smaller than that intended by Cicero.
(1) Subjects for Suasoriæ
Suasoriæ were deliberative; controversiæ, forensic. Though in actual practise the one field of oratory seems as difficult as the other, in pedagogical use suasoriæ were generally assigned as elementary exercises, the boy’s first extended compositions with the rhetor.[35] The seven surviving specimens of Seneca’s collection are on the following themes:—
1. Alexander debates whether to embark on the ocean.
2. The three hundred Spartans sent against Xerxes debate, after the flight of the expeditionary forces from the rest of Greece, whether they too shall flee.
3. Agamemnon debates whether to sacrifice Iphigenia, when Calchas has declared that the Trojan expedition cannot otherwise set sail with the consent of the gods.
4. Alexander the Great debates the entry into Babylon after the auguries have warned that danger lurks for him there.
5. The Athenians debate whether to remove the monuments of their victories over the Persians, Xerxes having threatened to come back unless they do so.
6. Cicero debates whether to appeal to Antonius for mercy.
7. Cicero debates whether to burn his writings, Antonius having offered him immunity on this condition.[36]
That the subjects seem to have been always historical reminds us that Roman deliberative oratory was barred from its natural field of the living present. Thus restricted, it is meager even for a school exercise.
(2) Subjects for Controversiæ
The cases assigned for the controversiæ of older students, though more various, were even more removed from actuality. The list of those used by Seneca to exhibit the skill of the rhetors themselves fully justifies the exclamation of Tacitus,[37] quales, per fidem! Posed as available for argument on either side—a rhetor would sometimes espouse now one side, now the other—they are difficult, subtle, sensational, often so dubious as to preclude quotation, always remote. On their face they were chosen and iterated by men who desired sensation, prized ingenuity, and had turned the art of persuasion to advertisement.
A Disinheriting Uncle (I. 1)
“Children who refuse support to their parents are liable to imprisonment.”
Two brothers quarreled. The son of one of them, in spite of his father’s prohibition, supported his uncle, who had fallen into poverty. Disinherited on this account, he made no legal protest. He was adopted by his uncle. Through a legacy the uncle became rich. The father began to be in want. The son supported him in spite of the uncle’s prohibition. He was disinherited. [Speak for either the young man or the disinheriting uncle.]
The Pirate Chief’s Daughter (I. 6)
[A young man] captured by pirates wrote to his father for ransom. He was not ransomed. The pirate chief’s daughter induced him to promise marriage if he got his freedom. He promised. She left her father to follow him. He has returned to his father and has married her. An orphan heiress comes along. His father bids him repudiate the pirate chief’s daughter and marry the heiress. When he refuses, he is disinherited. [Defend either the father or the son.]
An Oath of Husband and Wife (II. 2)
A husband and a wife made an oath that if anything happened to either, the other would die. The husband, traveling abroad, sent a messenger to his wife to announce that her husband had died. She threw herself from a cliff. Having recovered, she is bidden by her father to leave her husband. She refuses. She is disinherited. [Speak for either the wife or her father.]
Poison Given to a Maniac Son (III. 7)
A father has given poison to a son who was raging mad and did violence to himself. The mother brings action for cruelty. [Speak for either the father or the mother.]
Crucifixion of a Slave who Refuses Poison to his Master (III. 9)
A sick man has asked his slave to give him poison. The slave has not given it. The master provides in his will that his heirs shall crucify the slave. The slave appeals to the tribunes. [Speak for either the appellant or the respondent.]
An Exiled Father Excluded from his Lands (VI. 2)
“Aiding an exile with shelter or food is prohibited.”
“The penalty for homicide shall be exile for five years.”
The father of a son and a daughter was found guilty of homicide and exiled. He used to come to one of his properties near the frontier. The son learned this and punished the overseer. The overseer excluded the father. The father began to go to his daughter’s. Tried for harboring an exile, she was acquitted on the plea of her brother. The five-year period having expired, the father disinherits the son. [Speak for either the father or the son.]
Against such subjects, against others equally subtle and unreal, even indecent and perverted, both Tacitus and Quintilian protest in the name of education. Training for actual pleading, they urge, is not to be had from tyrannicide, rape, incest, wizards, pestilence, and stepmothers. Seneca leaves no doubt that such subjects were typical; but he expressly repudiates the assumption that controversiæ should be exercises to train for the bar.[38] That declamatio was quite different not only in his view, but in fact, there is no room to doubt. The difference between what Tacitus and Quintilian urge on principle and what they themselves, as well as Seneca and Pliny, record as practise is decisively sharp. It is the difference between the old rhetoric and the new. Even in Seneca’s time, much more in that of Quintilian, declamatio was measured as a special form of public speaking. As such Seneca seems to regard it with complacency. That he thinks it self-sufficient and self-justifying seems evident from his pains to give its oral triumphs the permanence of written record. Declamatio might be cursed by the older tradition as bad education, or justified as originally good by ignoring what it had become. None the less it had gone quite out from the old rhetoric, and had been accepted and widely applauded as an end in itself.
That it perverted schooling, as Tacitus complains, was partly due to its inevitable tendency to turn the school into an auditorium. The rhetor remained, indeed, a teacher; but even in teaching he offered himself as a model.[39] The transition was easy to offering himself to the public as an orator in the latest style of oratory. While this was one of the few ways left under the Empire for appeal to a large audience, it was also one of his chief means of publicity. What the rhetor was thus to become throughout the Roman Empire may be clearly forecast from Pliny’s account of Isæus.
(3) Pliny on Isæus
Great as is the reputation that had prepared me for Isæus, I found him greater. He has in the highest degree mastery, abundance, fertility. He speaks always extempore, but as if he had long written. The diction is Greek, nay Attic; the prelude, neat, simple, winsome, or grave and lofty. He asks for several controversiæ, and lets the audience choose, often even the side. He rises; his robe is right; he begins. Instantly everything is ready, and ready almost equally. Deep thoughts respond at once and words, but what words! chosen and refined. From his impromptus gleam much reading and much writing. He introduces aptly, states the case lucidly, argues keenly, sums up strongly, in style is superb. In a word, he instructs, charms, moves;[40] and which he does best you hardly know. The enthymemes are frequent, and so are the terse and finished syllogisms, an achievement difficult even for writing. His memory is incredible. He resumes what he has spoken extempore, and does not slip on a single word. Such control he has attained by study and practise; for day and night he does nothing else, hears nothing else, says nothing else. Past his sixtieth year, he is still only a schoolman; and nothing is more ingenuous than that sort of man, or more unsophisticated, or better. We who are crowded at the bar and in real cases learn, even against our will, much cunning. The school and the auditorium, with their made-up cases, are inoffensive and innocuous—and none the less happy, for old men especially. For what is happier in old age than what is pleasantest in youth? Therefore I account Isæus not only most eloquent, but also most blest; and if you have no desire to know him, you are made of stone and iron. So come, if not for other reasons, if not on my account, at least to hear him. Have you ever read of the man of Gades who was so stirred by the name and fame of Livy that he came from the ends of the earth to see him and, once having seen him, forthwith went his way? ’Tis crass, uncultured, stupid, almost base, to think no more highly of an experience than which nothing is pleasanter, or prettier, or more refined. You will say, “I can read no less eloquent orators here.” Yes; but there is always a chance to read, not always to hear. Besides, the living voice, as the phrase goes, is far more moving. For though what you read may be more vehement, yet what is fixed by the delivery, the mien, the bearing, the very gesture of a speaker abides deeper in the mind. Else we give the lie to the story of Æschines, who when he had read aloud to the Rhodians a speech of Demosthenes, and every one was admiring it, is said to have added: “What if you had heard the beast himself?” And Æschines, on the testimony of Demosthenes, had a most brilliant delivery. None the less he admitted that the man who had begotten that speech delivered it far better. All this goes to prove that you should hear Isæus, if only to say that you have heard him. Pliny, Epist. II. 3.
In essentials this description applies to the controversiæ preserved by Seneca. The Greek rhetor Isæus whom Pliny heard at the end of the first century is recognizably like the Roman rhetors whom Seneca heard some hundred years before.[41] A century had only fixed the type as a distinct form of oratory, and extended its vogue. Succeeding centuries repeated it, in Greek and in Latin, throughout the Roman world. Meantime Tarsus may have taught declamatio to its most famous citizen. Certainly St. Jerome knew it well. “We have been rhetoricated,” he says with grim humor, “and have played a bit in the way of the declamatores.”[42] Indeed, the rhetoric that came first and most actively to the Fathers of the Church must have come through declamatio.[43] Its influence as late as the fourth century on St. Augustine throws into sharp relief his ignoring of it in his rhetoric for preachers, the fourth book of De doctrina christiana. With such real work of oratory declamatio has nothing to do.
C. Seneca’s Classification and Treatment
Instead of giving his specimens entire, Seneca divides them by a threefold critical classification: (1) sententiæ, (2) divisio, (3) colores. The treatments of the same case by different declamatores are thus compared specifically as to (1) the significances, (2) the analysis, (3) the imaginative handling.
(1) The term sententiæ might imply such interpretations as were significant because they were leading. Taken thus, it suggests the saliences which mark, stage by stage, the development of a single, controlling interpretation. But sententiæ was used familiarly of such interpretations as were valuable rather separately than together, for themselves rather than for the furthering of a progressive development—in a word, aphorisms, or epigrams. The latter sense had become the more common, and in fact is what Seneca exhibits. His declamatores seem more concerned to strike now and strike again than to urge on. Though they still distinguish the formal parts (proem, statement, etc.),[44] they are no longer preoccupied with the onward march of the older tradition. For the cogency of progressive development they have substituted the momentary effectiveness of striking summaries.
(2) Seneca’s divisio, the analysis of the case, shows similarly not the stages of a consecutive order, but merely the components of an arbitrary classification. Given such cases as were posed, even the divisio called for ingenuity. Its preliminary quæstiones sometimes suggest an ingenious and perverted application of the traditional status.[45]
(3) Under colores[46] Seneca exhibits the imaginative development. Meaning generally the tone, or cast—in a large sense, the style, colores means specifically in Seneca’s collection (1) descriptive amplification, and (2) dramatic characterization. Even the descriptions were more than concrete realization of the facts; they were imaginative elaborations.
Quintus Haterius, on the side of the father [in the case of the pirate chief’s daughter, above, page 92] evoked a very fine picture. In the abrupt style habitual with him he began to describe, as if he heard the tumult, how everything was laid waste and ravaged, the farms given to the flames, the peasants’ flight; and, when he had amplified the terror, he added: “Why shudder, young man? ’Tis the arrival of your father-in-law.” Seneca, Controversiæ, I. 6. 12.
[Fabianus] was apter at suasoriæ. The local color of places, the courses of rivers, the sites of cities and the habits of their peoples, no one described more amply. Never did he pause for lack of a word. His soothing speech would flow about everything with swiftest and easiest course. Ibid. II. præf. 3.
More boldly and ingeniously imaginative was the characterization. The case itself being fictitious, the treatment might go the whole length of fiction. At least the declamatio must so enter into the motives, and especially the emotions, of the parties as to make them dramatis personæ; at most he might go so far as to supply his imaginary dialogues with a plot.[47] Thus a guilty son is staged in dialogue with his father:
I shall die. I shall die.
Perhaps. I shall not weep.
Heart, why quiverest thou? Tongue, why tremblest? Eyes, why are ye dulled? It is not yet the thirtieth day.
You beg for life? I gave it; and you have lost it.
It is your will that your son should die.
My will? No, your madness, your blind and rash desire, yes, and her father, too soon overborne by your prayers.
Seneca, Controversiæ, II. 3. 1.
That such dramatization is obviously an extension of the school prosopopœiæ[48] shows how pervasive was the preoccupation with imaginative development. “Asinius Pollio used to say that the color was to be exhibited in the statement of facts, and carried out in the arguments.”[49] What was left of the old rhetoric? The interpretations demanded by sententiæ and divisio were at least intellectual; but the main interpretation, the goal and measure of skill, was imaginative. The surest way to fame was through colores. Through colores what had once been useful as a school exercise was artificially extended, and forensic was turned into a form of occasional oratory.
Sententiæ, divisio, colores, epigrams, ingenious analysis, imaginative development, seem a poor substitute for the traditional five parts of rhetoric. Especially impoverishing was the restriction of the ancient inventio. With investigation supplanted by fiction, debate lost its typical training and its typical power. With the shift of emphasis to imagination, rhetoric was confused with poetic,[50] to the impairing of both. Nor was dispositio furthered by sententiæ and divisio. Salience, instead of being used to further consecutiveness, became an end in itself. The whole was sacrificed to the parts. Elocutio, thus left to itself, tended inevitably toward an art of display. The history of rhetoric has no more striking proof that style, when cultivated in artificial isolation, goes bad.
So wide a departure suggests a divergence in conception, a divergence older and deeper than the particular innovations of declamatio. Beside Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric as the art of giving effectiveness to truth there had persisted the conception of it as the art of giving effectiveness to the speaker. Though the two conceptions are not mutually exclusive, the dominance of the one or of the other tends either to give rhetoric those manifold relations and that constant answer to reality which mark its great ancient achievements, or on the other hand to narrow it toward virtuosity and display. The large pedagogy of Quintilian is animated by the Aristotelian conception. The other conception, brilliant in Gorgias and his like, had already animated not only the declamatores at Rome, but that larger “second sophistic”[51] which became pervasively the rhetoric of the imperial centuries, in Greek and in Latin, throughout the Roman world. Ancient rhetoric offers the historic example, then, of a divergence that has remained typical.
FOOT-NOTES:
[1] Historical studies are relegated to a later volume.
[2] The long and wide influence of Quintilian will be discussed in a later volume. It is briefly indicated by Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, vol. I, and traced more specifically by Ch. Fierville in his admirable French edition of Book I (Paris, 1890), which also offers the best biography and bibliography. Much of the introduction in W. Peterson’s edition of Book X (Oxford, 1891) is devoted to Quintilian’s literary criticism.
The two modern English translations are (1) by J. S. Watson in the Bohn Library (Oxford, 1891, and probably earlier), and (2) by H. E. Butler in the Loeb Classical Library (London, 1921-2). Both occasionally miss the significance of technical terms. The former, providing summaries and many of the valuable notes of Spalding and Capperonier, is the more useful.
[3] Since Quintilian’s survey includes all the cardinal terms of classical rhetoric, the corresponding Greek terms have been added for convenience of reference.
Compare the valuable analysis of the treatise Ad Herennium (current in the middle age as Cicero’s) in the introduction to Wilkins’s edition of Cicero’s De oratore, vol. I, pages 56-64.
[4] recte loquendi scientiam et poetarum enarrationem, I. iv. 2. ratio loquendi et enarratio auctorum, quarum illam methodicen, hanc historicen vocant, I. ix. 1.
[5] John of Salisbury, for instance, discusses it about 1159 in Metalogicus, Migne, 850 C. D.
[6] Προγυμνάσματα. The widely used compend of them by Hermogenes (late second century) includes myth, tale, chria, proverb, analysis destructive and constructive, commonplace, encomium, comparison, characterization (ἠθοποιία), description (ἔκφρασις), thesis, and the proposal of a bill.
[7] orbis ille doctrinæ quam Græci ἐγκύκλιον παιδείαν vocant, I. x. 1.
[8] Thus Hermogenes on the exercise of retelling myths: “Myths are sometimes to be expanded, sometimes to be told concisely. How? By now telling in bare narrative, and now by feigning the words of the given characters. For example, ‘the monkeys in council deliberated on the necessity of settling in houses. When they had made up their minds to this and were about to set to work, an old monkey restrained them, saying that they would more easily be captured if they were caught within enclosures.’ Thus if you are concise; but if you wish to expand, proceed in this way. ‘The monkeys in council deliberated on the founding of a city; and one coming forward made a speech to the effect that they too must have a city. “For see,” said he, “how fortunate in this regard are men. Not only does each of them have a house, but all going up together to public meeting or theater delight their souls with all manner of things to see and hear.”’ Go on thus, dwelling on the incidents and saying that the decree was formally passed; and devise a speech for the old monkey.” Προγυμνάσματα, ed. Rabe, 2-3.
The exercise is still used in French schools, and for older pupils is carried, as by the ancients, into a sort of historical fiction.
[9] Though the word seems to refer rather to the masters than to the pupils, the whole passage none the less clearly indicates the nature and scope of the exercise for students. The dramatic skill of a declamator is described again in similar terms at X. i. 71; the use of prosopopœia in the peroration of legal pleading, at VI. i. 25-27.
[10] Suasoriæ and controversiæ, Quintilian adds, should not be treated as essentially different. So far as prosopopœia goes, they differ hardly at all; and otherwise they differ mainly in degree, controversiæ being more difficult.
Besides the consecutive discussion of declamatio in chapter x of Book II, much of which is quoted above, Quintilian has many incidental references and allusions. At IV. ii. 29, he defines declamatio as forensium actionum meditatio, “exercise in pleading”, and he implies the same definition in ad declamandum ficta materia (I. x. 33) and in fictas ad imitationem fori consiliorumque materias (i.e., controversias suasoriasque, II. iv. 41). Steadfastly ignoring its use as a form of public speaking, he consistently treats it as a school exercise. He implies that declamatio embraced a large part of actual teaching when he complains (II. i. 8) that it is forecast by grammaticus, and calls rhetor (II. i. 3) declamandi magister. He says repeatedly that it depends largely on imaginative realization of character and emotion (VI. i. 25-27; X. i. 71; and the passage on prosopopœiæ quoted above). He admits the use of it as an exhibition of virtuosity (in ostentationem, II. x. 10), but satirizes this (II. xx. 3) by the anecdote commemorating the futile skill of a man who could throw grains through the eye of a needle. Though he regards it as a gymnastic profitable for mature speakers in providing variety and relief (X. v. 17), he has no patience with the common practise of keeping up indefinitely what is properly a school exercise (XII. xi. 15). Finally he repeats explicitly and implicitly his warning that declamatio should be kept close to actuality; and in a long passage (V. xii. 17-22) concluding his discussion of the sedes argumentorum, he indignantly condemns its perversion into prettiness as an emasculation of oratory.
Lucian, whose satire does not spare rhetors, makes specific mention now and then of declamatio, using the term μελέτη or μελετᾶν: Demonax, 33, 36; Rhetorum præceptor, 17. One passage is very like Quintilian’s in the text above: “But the chief exercise and the aim of the art of dancing, as I said, is acting, which is practised in the same way by rhetors, especially by those who cultivate the so-called declamationes. Their art is the more applauded for its adaptation to the assigned characters and for its consonance with the persons introduced, whether princes, tyrannicides, poor men, or farmers.” De saltatione, 65. Some of his satires, e.g., Tyrannicida, Abdicatus, and some of the encomia, sound like mock declamationes.
[11] Watson’s (Bohn) translation quotes (foot-notes to pages 212-13 of volume I) Capperonier’s tabular summary of the doctrine of status found in Quintilian, Cicero, the treatise Ad Herennium, and Hermogenes. For Cicero see also pages 49-51 above.
Jæneke’s Leipzig dissertation (1904) De statuum doctrina ab Hermogene tradita compares by tabular view (pages 23-4, 120-1) the system of Hermagoras, as it is inferred from Cicero, Quintilian, and St. Augustine, with that of Hermogenes.
[12] The maxim was reddere auditores benevolos, attentos, dociles. The classical lore on the third of these functions is surveyed by F. P. Donnelly, S. J., in A function of the classical exordium, Classical Weekly, V. 204-7, New York, May 11, 1912.
[13] Curam ergo verborum rerum volo esse solicitudinem. VIII, proem, 20. The passage goes on: “For generally the best words are inseparable from their things, and are discerned by their own light. But we look for them as if they were always lurking and hiding. So, forgetting that they must be near the subject-matter, we seek them elsewhere and, when we have found them, lay hold of them by force. A higher spirit is needed for essaying eloquence; for if she is in sound health throughout her frame, she will not think her care should be spent on manicuring and hairdressing.” Fronto, on the contrary, praises the young Marcus Aurelius for digging up words, “ut verbum ex alto eruas et ad significandum adcommodes,” ed., Haines, I. 6.
[14] For Aristotle’s treatment see above page 24; for Cicero’s, pages 53, 57; for those of Dionysius and “Longinus,” Chapter V.
[15] in rebus spiritus et in verbis sublimitas et in affectibus motus omnis et in personis decor. X. i. 27.
[16] For an interesting note on dictation as practised by a professional orator, see H. von Arnim, Leben und Werke des Dio von Prusa, page 140.
[17] via, X. vii. 5; intendendus animus ... usque ad ultimum, X. vii. 16.
[18] imagines, X. vii. 15.
[19] The interpretation is substantially that of Luigi Valmaggi: “Insomma il precetto di Quintiliano è questo, che occorre o recitare a memoria o improvvisare sia pure su appunti presi meditando il discorso, ma è d’uopo evitare assolutamente una miscela dei due sistemi.” Osservazioni sul libro x di Quintiliano, in Atti della reale accademia delle scienze di Torino, 37:228.
[20] Our modern habits of writing and reading hinder our comprehension of the speaking and listening ancient world. Especially are we liable to misinterpretation of the idea of writing in the ancient rhetoric. This contemplated primarily general training in style. It also included some written preparation for a particular speech, and finally the writing out of some speeches, especially speeches on occasion, in full. But that this last was the general ancient practise has never been sufficiently supported and is a priori improbable. The writing out of speeches after they had been spoken, and the common ancient practise of writing speeches for other men to learn and deliver, are not in point, and must be kept apart from the question of written preparation. The traditional quarrel between the ancient oratory which relied more and that which relied less on writing is admirably summed up by Van Hook, Alcidamas versus Isocrates; the spoken versus the written word, in the introduction to his translation of the attack of Alcidamas On those who write written speeches, Classical Weekly, XII, 89-94, New York, Jan. 20, 1919. Though there is ground for difference of opinion in interpreting what we can learn of the habit of Demosthenes or of Cicero, there is no ground for assuming that the ancient counsels of care in preparation generally imply writing out. Quintilian, who leans toward written preparation, is by himself almost sufficient testimony to the contrary.
[21] Cogitatis, with obvious reference to cogitatio in X. vi. vii.
[22] Note that memoria is vigor of mind, and that it is first, as often, applied to extempore speaking.
[24] See the tabular view above (page 63, with foot-note 3) and Quintilian’s own review and forecast in the proem to Book VIII.
[25] How deliberate and consistent is his order appears, for instance, at the opening of II. xi, where the definitions begin: Iam hic ergo nobis inchoanda est ea pars artis ex qua capere initium solent qui priora omiserunt.
[26] See Chapter III, pages 38, 46.
[27] The best edition is Sénèque le rhéteur, controverses et suasoires, traduction nouvelle (with expository introduction), texte revu (in fine print at the bottom of each page), Henri Bornecque (Lille), 2 volumes, Paris (Garnier), 1902.
The best discussion is also by Bornecque, Les déclamations et les déclamateurs d’après Sénèque le père, Travaux et mémoires de l’Université de Lille, nouvelle série, I. Droit, Lettres—fascicule 1, Lille, au siège de l’Université, 1902 (bibliography, index of authors cited other than Seneca, catalogue raisonné of declamatores).
Incidental and more general discussion will be found in standard treatises on Roman literature of the Empire, in G. Boissier’s La fin du paganisme, and in his Tacite, pages 200-240.
Peterson’s translation of the Dialogus of Tacitus is published in the Loeb Classical Library.
[28] For a summary of the earlier Greek history see Bornecque, Déclam., 40.
[29] E.g. De orat. I. 140.
[30] Commentabar declamitans—sic enim nunc loquuntur. Brutus, 310. On this point Seneca has no doubt:—Declamabat autem Cicero non quales nunc controversias dicimus, ne tales quidem quales ante Ciceronem dicebantur, quas thesis vocabant. Hoc enim genus maxime, quo nos exercemur, adeo novum est, ut nomen quoque ejus novum sit. Seneca, Controversiæ, I. præf. 12.
[31] See above, pages 70-73 and foot-note 10. The objection of Petronius, Satyricon i. 2, is less specific.
[32] Seneca the Elder (sometimes called the Rhetor, circ. 56 B.C.-39 A.D.) made the collection in his last years.
[33] Bornecque, Déclam. 25, thinks that the Controversiæ may be taken as substantial reproductions.
[34] Controv. II, præf. 3. J. W. H. Walden quotes a similar counsel from Libanius, Ep. 248: καὶ σύ τοι τὸ ἄρχειν ἔχεις ἀπὸ τοῦ δύνασθαι λέγειν. The Universities of Ancient Greece, page 78, foot-note.
Bornecque, Déclam. 135, sums up the situation as follows: “la rhétorique, devenue l’étude unique, perd, du même coup, le contact avec la réalité ... et elle dépouille à peu près toute valeur comme moyen d’éducation oratoire et général.”
[36] C. T. Cruttwell translates the second of these at page 335 of his History of Roman Literature.
The subjects mentioned incidentally by Quintilian are similar:—Deliberant Patres conscripti an stipendium militi constituant. III. viii. 18. Deliberant Patres conscripti an Fabios dedant Gallis bellum minitantibus. 19. Deliberat C. Cæsar an perseveret in Germaniam ire, cum milites passim testamenta facerent. 19.
Pompeius deliberavit Parthos, an Africam, an Ægyptum peteret. 33. Deliberat Cæsar an Britanniam impugnet. VII. iv. 2.
[38] Deinde res ipsa diversa est: totum aliud est pugnare, aliud ventilare. Hoc ita semper habitum est, scholam quasi ludum esse, forum arenam. III. præf. 13.
The same point of view is taken by Pliny in the letter (Epist. II. 3) quoted below.
The following controversia was assigned to the young Marcus Aurelius by his master Fronto: “I have sent you an outline; the case is serious. A consul of the Roman people, laying aside his robes, has donned a coat of mail and among the young men at the feast of Minerva has slain a lion in the sight of the Roman people. He is denounced before the Censors. Put into shape and develop.” Correspondence of Fronto, ed., with a translation, C. R. Haines, London and New York (Loeb Classical Library), 1919, vol. I, page 210 (see the further correspondence on this theme, pages 212, 214).
[40] For all its informality, Pliny’s letter runs, as it were inevitably, into the traditional channels of the formal parts of a speech (proœmiatur, narrat, pugnat) and the three ends of oratory (docet, delectat, afficit). Indeed, it shows throughout a familiarity with rhetorical technic, and assumes a like familiarity on the part of its recipient.
[41] H. Keil’s editio maior of Pliny’s Letters (Leipzig, 1870) dates the second book A.D. 97-100, within a few years of Quintilian’s Institutio. For Isæus see Philostratus, Vit. Soph. i. 20, and Juvenal’s satirical phrase “Isæo torrentior” (I. iii. 74).
[42] “Rhetoricati sumus, et in morem declamatorum paululum lusimus,” quoted by Labriolle, Histoire de la littérature latine chrétienne, Paris, 1920, page 470. Lusimus corresponds to Seneca’s description of declamatio as ludus (foot-note 38 above).
[43] The history of declamatio as a direct and an indirect influence is reserved for a later volume. It is summarized suggestively by Bornecque in both the introduction to his edition of Seneca and his treatise cited in foot-note 27. Walden’s ample summaries of the work of Libanius (4th century) in his Universities of Ancient Greece corroborate what Bornecque says of St. Augustine.
[44] See Pliny’s letter on Isæus above.
[46] The long and intricate history of colores, extending, with that of its Romance cognates, through the middle ages, must be postponed; but its interest may be divined by merely glancing at the successive uses recorded in a few dictionaries. The importance of exploring the term has been urged again by Fletcher in his “True Meaning” of Dante’s Vita Nuova, Romanic Review, XI. 119.
[47] For the literary influence of this habit of oral fiction see Bornecque, Décl.
[49] Seneca, Controversiæ, IV. iii. 3. Doubtless Quintilian had such perversion of narratio in mind when he wrote: “[The narratio] should be neither dry and starved ... nor again winding and seductive with far-fetched descriptions, into which many are led by imitation of the license of poetry.” II. iv. 3.
[50] See the section on Ovid in Chapter VII below. Bornecque sums up the tendency acutely as “pénétration réciproque de la poésie et de la déclamation,” Déclam. 115.
[51] The development of this history is reserved to a later volume.