| Ameringer | Ameringer (T. E.), The stylistic influence of the second sophistic on the panegyrical sermons of St. John Chrysostom, Washington, 1921 (Catholic University of America Patristic Studies). |
| ARP | Baldwin (C. S.), Ancient rhetoric and poetic, New York, 1924. |
| Boulanger | Boulanger (A.), Ælius Aristide et la sophistique dans la province d’Asie au ii siècle de notre ère, Paris, 1923. |
| Burgess | Burgess (T. C.), Epideictic literature, University of Chicago Studies in Classical Philology III (1902), 89-251. |
| Campbell | Campbell (J. M.), The influence of the second sophistic on the style of the sermons of St. Basil the Great, Washington, 1922. |
| Guignet | Guignet (M.), St. Grégoire de Nazianze, orateur et épistolier, Paris, 1911. |
| Hubbell | Hubbell (H. M.), The influence of Isocrates on Cicero, Dionysius, and Aristides, New Haven (Yale dissertation), 1914. |
| Méridier | Méridier (L.), L’influence de la seconde sophistique sur l’œuvre de Grégoire de Nysse, Paris, 1906. |
| Wright | Wright (W. C), Philostratus and Eunapius, the lives of the sophists, with an English translation, London and New York, Loeb Library, 1922. |
Plato’s distrust of rhetoric is a permanent reminder. It is so significantly typical that it recurs throughout the history of education, and must recur. Again and again educational practise has found that it cannot do without rhetoric; again and again educational theory has grudgingly inquired what to do with it. For distrust of rhetoric may be more than the impatience of the philosopher with the orator, of speculation with ordered presentation, of the quest for truth with persuasion. This is involved too; for philosophers have often been impatient of presentation. They have wished to think aloud, or to question and answer, or merely to analyze for themselves, without being held to consecutive explanation. Plato himself falls short of discerning the importance of making truth available and effective for the mass of men incapable of scientific analysis; and this is the ground of Cicero’s rejoinder.[1] But Plato’s distrust is more deeply of rhetoric as he heard it taught. Even in his day Greek rhetoric was largely sophistic, the rhetoric of personal display and triumph. In the Gorgias[2] Socrates admits the function of a nobler rhetoric, but cannot find it in use. In the Protagoras[3] he asks the vital question, “About what does the sophist make a man more eloquent?” In the Phædrus, which discusses rhetoric more specifically, his satire is most evidently of sophistic. To this the ultimate objection is moral. A man should train himself “not with a view to speaking and acting before the world, but for the sake of making himself able ... to please the gods.”[4] Plato challenges not merely the method of the sophists, but their ideal. Since rhetoric has almost always had some part in education, and since it always ultimately involves morality, Plato raises a leading question.
The ultimate, the only final answer to Plato’s challenge is the Rhetoric of Aristotle. This proceeds from a conception not only larger than the sophistic of Gorgias and Protagoras, but also significantly divergent in aim. The true theory of rhetoric as the energizing of knowledge, the bringing of truth to bear upon men,[5] is there established for all time. Aristotle amply vindicated rhetoric by defining its place among studies, its necessary correlation with inquiry and with policy, its permanent function. He settled the question of rhetoric philosophically. He established its theory. But this theory was oftener accepted than followed. The sophists had, indeed, been put in their place more surely by Aristotle than by Plato; but they continued to thrive, until ancient rhetoric became more and more sophistic.
The conception animating the practise and the teaching of sophistic, far from being limited to antiquity, is medieval as well, and modern. Apparently it is permanent. Rhetoric is conceived by Aristotle as the art of giving effectiveness to truth; it is conceived alike by the earlier and the later sophists and by their successors as the art of giving effectiveness to the speaker. The conceptions are not contradictory. The second may be theoretically included within the first; and actually Demosthenes may learn something from Isocrates. But to embody them in educational procedure, to carry out either as the controlling idea of a course of study, is to discover that sooner or later they become practically incompatible. Ingenuous youth will be devoted either to energizing truth or to exploiting itself. There will come a parting of the ways; for the two conceptions are divergent. What Aristotle discerned as differentiating is differentiating still. The flaw in sophistic is moral. It may not impair technical training; but by deviating motive it tends to impair education.
For Aristotle’s theory is a touchstone. To recall rhetoric to the true function discerned by him has repeatedly been the object of reform in teaching. What has intervened to deviate rhetoric and frustrate its best use has again and again been the preoccupation with giving effectiveness not to the message, but to the speaker. Ancient sophistic is thus typical. It is not merely historical; it is historic. The false conception divined by Plato, and exposed finally by Aristotle’s demonstration of the true conception, led ancient rhetoric through empty personal triumphs into an elaborate art of display, devoid, at its worst, of other motive. As sophistic spread, as its idea of rhetoric became dominant, ancient education was narrowed;[6] and ancient oratory eddied in shallows until it found a new course with the new motive of Christian preaching.
In exorcising the false conception Aristotle removed the false sophistic emphasis from style. He does not despise, nor even slight, technic. He finds analysis of sentence rhythms necessary. But his goal in this, as in his analysis of figures, is beyond the technical means of securing particular effects. He does not classify figures for reference; he seeks in both phrase and cadence the function; and he discusses neither until he has spent some two-thirds of his treatise on the function of rhetoric as a whole course of study. This he finds philosophically necessary. Otherwise rhetoric cannot be justified; otherwise, he clearly implies, it is narrowed and degraded. For him rhetoric is so inextricably moral that it should never be divorced from subject matter of real significance.
But what subject matter of real significance has oratory when it is barred from discussion of present policy? Here appears a strong external cause of the spread of sophistic. The sophistical trend, already marked, was furthered by the narrowing of public discussion. Of the three fields[7] of oratory distinguished by Aristotle, deliberative, forensic, and occasional, the first was restricted by political changes. It faded with democracy. So later it faded at Rome, and still later in other realms. Deliberative oratory presupposes free discussion and audiences that vote. The steady increase of government from above administered by an appointed official class hastened also the tendency of the second kind of oratory, forensic, to become technical, the special art of legal pleading. Thus the only field left free was the third, occasional oratory, encomium, or panegyric, the commemoration of persons and days, the address of welcome, the public lecture. A favorite field even in Plato’s time, it is in any time the freest field for imaginative and emotional appeal and for personal triumphs. Thus it was early and assiduously cultivated by the sophists. Though it opens, on the other hand, the highest reaches of eloquence, though Isocrates is more than a sophist and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is as far from sophistic as possible, still its becoming the main field of Greek oratory gave the lead to sophistic. In such conditions sophistic could control education; and its control of education reacted upon the conditions to make a vicious circle. Oratory and the training for it became preponderantly an art of display; and the rhetoric finally bequeathed by the ancient schools was sophistic.
In sum, the sophistic tendency, which may be found in any highly developed literature, was confirmed in Greek by causes both intrinsic and extrinsic. Becoming a habit, it became a scheme of education. Against this Plato represents Socrates in fundamental opposition. Aristotle does more than oppose it; he establishes constructively a rhetoric whose persuasion shall be more than personal appeal and personal triumph. But the rhetoric nobly and philosophically conceived by him did not succeed in supplanting the tendency seen at its best in Isocrates. The conception of Isocrates in Philostratus, though inadequate, is not wrong essentially.
The siren which stands on the tomb of Isocrates the sophist—its pose is that of one singing—testifies to the man’s persuasive charm, which he combined with the laws and habits of rhetoric. Balances, antitheses, rimes, though he was not their discoverer but only the skilful user of what had been discovered already, he put his mind to, and also to amplitude, rhythm, sentence-movement, beat. These things prepared the diction of Demosthenes, who was a pupil, indeed, of Isæus, but a disciple of Isocrates. Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, I. 17 (Wright’s translation, page 50, modified).
The Isocratean ideal of eloquence, influential even upon its critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus, even upon so great an orator as Cicero,[8] became more sophistic in the practise of the schools. In the first century of our era sophistic had won its place, by the second century an eminence undisputed till Christian preaching returned to the sound ancient tradition.
For sophistic is the historic demonstration of what oratory becomes when it is removed from urgency of subject matter. Seeking some inspiration for public occasions, it revives over and over again a dead past. Thus becoming conventionalized in method, it turns from cogency of movement to the cultivation of style. Cogency presupposes a message. It is intellectual ordering for persuasion, the means toward making men believe and act. Style, no longer controlled by such urgencies of subject, tends toward decoration and virtuosity. A necessary study in any rhetoric, it had been highly cultivated during Greek democracy; but under monarchy and Empire it became a preoccupation, almost a monopoly. Sophistic practically reduces rhetoric to style. The old lore of investigation (inventio), paralyzed by the compression of its trunk nerve, has little scope beyond ingenuity. Organized movement[9] (dispositio), similarly impaired at the source, tends to be reduced to salience and variety, or to be supplanted by pattern. Memory becomes verbal. But style and delivery, becoming the main reliance, are elaborated into a systematic technic to a degree almost incredible to-day. In sheer virtuosity the second sophistic has hardly a parallel in earlier or later centuries. It is more like the art of Paderewski or Bernhardt than like that of Demosthenes.
The Lives of the Sophists by Philostratus derives the “new” sophistic of his day from the old. New, says he, it is not. We may call it a second sophistic; but it keeps an old tradition. Far from apologizing for sophistic, old or new, Philostratus is proud of it. He sets out to celebrate it as a great tradition. Gorgias is not defended from Socratic exposure; he is claimed as a distinguished ancestor.[12] That rhetoric is not what Aristotle urged, that it is after all sophistic, Philostratus assumes. Nor is the assumption merely provincial vanity; it was widespread and secure. There was no need to vindicate what was generally accepted. Moreover the facts justify not only the assumption of Philostratus, but his history. Though he is not historical in method, his assertion of continuity from Gorgias down to the platform artists of his day has been approved by studies really historical, and affirmed for the fourth century as well. The Lives of the Sophists, therefore, exhibit the second sophistic as the fixing of an old tendency in habitual practise and teaching.
During the second, third, and fourth centuries, and throughout the Roman world, rhetoric meant a sophistic generally constant. The leanings of particular schools, such as Stoic Pergamum, were not wide enough to bring new departures. They were merely shifts of emphasis within a common doctrine and practise. The cult of “Atticism” was too artificial to check the general tendency to “Asianism.”[13] What was learned at Athens could be practised at Rome; and neither Athens nor Rome dimmed the glory of Smyrna and Antioch.[14] The schools of Bordeaux were to become essentially like those of Gaza and Carthage. The same “Gorgian figures” were learned by St. Augustine in Latin Africa, by St. Gregory Nazianzen in the Greek East, and by the pagan Libanius. Greco-Roman rhetoric was as pervasive as Roman law and almost as constant.
In estimating this rhetoric, then, little allowance need be made for place or date.[15] Its main characteristics were so constant as to stand out clearly. The most obvious arise from the general aim of virtuosity. This is the constant assumption of Philostratus. Individual triumphs were not so much triumphs of individuality as outstanding exhibitions of skill in working out a pattern. In method, in composition, there was little difference between a teacher’s assignments to his amateur pupils and his own professional orations.[16] Sophistic is largely an oratory of themes.
THEMES OF THE SOPHISTS CELEBRATED BY PHILOSTRATUS
Historical or Semi-historical Themes
The Lacedemonians deliberate concerning a wall. I. 20 (70).[18] (Isæus; so Aristides, II. 9 (220).)
Demosthenes swears that he did not take the bribe.
Should the trophies erected by the Greeks be taken down?
The Athenians should return to their demes after Ægospotami.
Xenophon refuses to survive Socrates.
Solon demands that his laws be rescinded after Pisistratus has obtained a bodyguard. I. 25 (122-132). (Polemo.)
The Cretans maintain that they have the tomb of Zeus. II. 4 (188). (Antiochus.)
Scythians, return to your nomadic life. II. 5 (194). (Alexander of Seleucia; so Hippodromus, II. 27 (296).)
The wounded in Sicily implore the Athenians who are retreating thence to put them to death with their own hands.
Pericles urges them to keep up the war even after the oracle declares Apollo’s support of the Lacedemonians. (II. 5; both also of Alexander.)
Isocrates tries to wean the Athenians from their empire of the sea.
Callixenus is upbraided for not having granted burial to the Ten.
Deliberation on affairs in Sicily.[19]
Æschines, when the grain had not come.
Those whose children have been murdered reject a treaty of alliance. II. 9 (220, seq.) (Aristides.)
Hyperides, when Philip is at Elatea, heeds only the counsels of Demosthenes. II. 10 (230). (Hadrian of Tyre.)
Islanders sell their children to pay taxes. II. 12 (238). (Pollux.)
The Thebans accuse the Messenians of ingratitude. II. 15 (244). (Ptolemy.)
Callias tries to dissuade the Athenians from burning the dead. II. 20 (256). (Apollonius of Athens.)
The citizens of Catana.
Demades against revolting from Alexander while he is in India. II. 27 (296). (Hippodromus.)
Fictitious Themes
The adulterer unmasked. I. 25 (132). (Polemo.)
The instigator of a revolt suppresses it. I. 26 (136). (Secundus.)
The ravished chooses that her ravisher be put to death. II. 4 (188). (Antiochus.)
A tyrant abdicates on condition of immunity. (Ibid.)
The man who fell in love with a statue. II. 18 (250). (Onomarchus.)
The magician who wished to die because he was unable to kill another magician, an adulterer. II. 27 (292). (Hippodromus.)
Evidently the themes were generally the same as those of the declamationes celebrated by Seneca.[20] Some of them were identical. Such subjects give the oratory of the imperial centuries, both Greek and Latin, the air of athletics, and make its teaching seem largely gymnastic. Gregory Nazianzen, indeed, calls the sophists “oratorical acrobats.”[21] But instead of dismissing sophistic with so obvious a sarcasm, we may learn something from its delight in verbal artistry.
For what, then, ultimately do we blame them? For their absolute emptiness of thought? But who shall say that they were trying to think, or that they were asked to think?... a kind of eloquence, and also a system of education, of which we have not any longer even the notion; for it rested on a sentiment which has disappeared, the absolute and disinterested love of speaking well—disinterested not always, indeed, as to personal advantage, but always as to thought. Who knows whether thought was for them anything else or anything more than a simple motif, a theme to be developed, something which sustained the discourse without imparting to it any value, something like the libretto of an opera?[22]
Since the oratory of display is still with us, the second sophistic should be taken to heart as a complete historic demonstration of what must become of rhetoric without the urgencies of matter and motive.
Philostratus has no qualms. For him declamatio (μελέτη), far from being merely a school exercise, is a form of public speaking on a par with any other. It is even the form of his sophists. He pays little attention to any other except encomium, which is also a school exercise. Reading the past with the eyes of the present, he finds it in Gorgias,[23] who elaborated “encomia of the Medic trophies.” “Medics” (Μηδικά), dilations on the old glories of the Persian wars, were the favorite subjects of declamatio. This is evident both from their frequent recurrence and from Lucian’s satire.[24] Scopelian, Philostratus thinks, was best
in Medics, in the Darius and Xerxes things, I mean; for, to me at least, he of all the sophists seems to render these best and to set a tradition of rendering for his successors. I. 21 (84).
Ptolemy of Naucratis, however, was nicknamed Marathon.[25] The wonder is that the nickname was sufficiently distinctive.[26]
The vogue of such subjects does much to explain the otherwise incredible accounts of improvisation. “Propose a theme,” the sophist’s challenge which Philostratus traces back to Gorgias,[27] becomes less startling when we find that the theme, as well as the treatment, might come from stock. Even so the readiness and fluency seem phenomenal and were the great boast. See Mark of Byzantium recognized by pupils in the school of Polemo.
Accordingly when Polemo asked for themes to be proposed, they all turned towards Mark.... Mark, lifting up his voice and tossing his head, said: “I will both propose and execute.” Thereupon Polemo ... discoursed at him long and wonderfully on the spur of the moment; and when he had declaimed and heard Mark declaim, he was both admired and admiring. I. 24 (104).
Aristides was exceptional in declining to speak thus; and Philostratus thinks the less of him.[28] Generally improvisation was expected as a mark of virtuosity.[29] The locus classicus, perhaps, of improvisation, the most daring and phenomenal virtuosity, is ascribed by Eunapius to Prohæresius.
Then from his chair the sophist first delivered a graceful prelude ... then with the fullest confidence he rose for his formal discussion. The proconsul was ready to propose a definition for the theme, but Prohæresius threw back his head and gazed all round the theater ... and beheld in the farthest row of the audience, hiding themselves in their cloaks, two men, veterans in the service of rhetoric, at whose hands he had received the worst treatment of all, and he cried out: “Ye gods! There are those honourable and wise men! Proconsul, order them to propose a theme for me. Then perhaps they will be convinced that they have behaved impiously.”... Whereupon, after considering for a short time and consulting together, they produced the hardest and most disagreeable theme that they knew of, a vulgar one, moreover, that gave no opening for the display of fine rhetoric. Prohæresius glared at them fiercely, and said to the proconsul: “I implore you to grant me ... to have shorthand writers assigned to me.”... Then he said: “I shall ask for something even more difficult to grant ... there must be no applause whatever.” When the proconsul had given all present an order to this effect ... Prohæresius began his speech with a flood of eloquence, rounding every period with a sonorous phrase.... As the speech grew more vehement and the orator soared to heights which the mind of man could not describe or conceive of, he passed on to the second part of the speech and completed the exposition of the theme. But then, suddenly leaping in the air like one inspired, he abandoned the remaining part, left it undefended, and turned the flood of his eloquence to defend the contrary hypothesis. The scribes could hardly keep pace with him, the audience could hardly endure to remain silent, while the mighty stream of words flowed on. Then, turning his face towards the scribes, he said: “Observe carefully whether I remember all the arguments that I used earlier.” And without faltering over a single word, he began to declaim the same speech for the second time. (Wright’s translation, 493.)
This performance is extraordinary only in degree. That of Isæus, as reported by Pliny,[30] seems the same in kind; and so, apparently, are many other recorded triumphs. Taken together, they reveal strict limits. The improvisation was mainly of style. It consisted in fluency of rehandling, of variations upon themes, and in patterns, so common as to constitute a stock in trade. It permitted the use over and over again not only of stock examples and illustrations, but of successful phrases, modulated periods, even whole descriptions. It was the art of a technician, not of a composer.[31] Memory, too, thus trained, was no longer the orator’s command of his material;[32] it was the actor’s command of words. Though a sophist might, indeed, be a thinker, he hardly needed to be for the purposes of his oratory. His fluency was typically not in seizing and carrying forward ideas and images, but in readiness to draw upon a store.
The character of this oratory is further expressed in the records of its delivery. Even more than modulation Philostratus exhibits sonority and force. Polemo’s delivery was thrilling as an Olympian trumpet.[33] Scopelian imitated the volume of Nicetes and had the sonority of Gorgias.[34] Favorinus fascinated even those who did not understand Greek.[35] The carrying voice spoke in marked rhythms. Gesture, pushed sometimes to the extent of acting, was habitually demonstrative. Sitting at first, the orator might then leap to his feet, smite his thigh, walk, stamp, sway as a Bacchante. If such theatrical delivery seems to moderns of the West more violent than it seemed to its own audiences, it has never been extinct; and any one familiar with the oratory of display in any time will recognize the sophist’s heavy frown, his mien of deep thought, his air of authority.[36] Chaucer’s Pardoner speaks for the whole sophist line:
Such weight and vehemence of delivery, sometimes conceding a benignant smile, oftener relying on arrogance,[37] was the bodily expression of the impressiveness (δεινότης) cultivated no less assiduously in style. The sophist was over-expressive lest for a moment he should cease to be impressive. The audience need not be held to any course of thought; it must not be held too long by any one device of style; but it must unflaggingly admire. It must be spellbound. The constant implication of Philostratus probably echoes the ideal of orator and audience alike: behold a great speaker!
Such oratory must be dilated, even inflated. That it was so in fact any one may satisfy himself who has the patience. The amplification[38] practised by Cicero and taught by Quintilian, though in print it may seem over-anxious, is an oratorical necessity. It is not merely Greek expansiveness; for it moves also the more stinted Latin. In any language it must almost always be practised as a means to oral clearness.[39] But sophistic amplification has no such warrant. It is often purely decorative. Instead of marking a stage of progress, it often merely dwells on a picture, or elaborates a truism, or acts out a mood. It is there for itself, expecting its own applause. Many of the figures of speech are devices of dilation; for sophistic is an art not only of elaboration, but of elaborateness.
Without enumerating devices that constitute a large part of sophistic, we may see the characteristic dilation at the full in the single form known as ἔκφρασις.[40] An ecphrasis is a separable decorative description, usually of a stock subject. “I will draw this for you in words,” says Himerius,[41] using the formula of introduction, “and will make your ears serve for eyes.” The natural beauty of a prospect or of the human body is detailed for admiration, even oftener the artistic beauty of statue or temple. The orator turns on, as it were, a storm, a feast, the prospect of a city. The essentially artificial character of the ecphrasis is obvious in the favorite exercise of word-painting a peacock.[42] Apparently a boy could carry this peacock from school to the platform and continue to use it with merely verbal variations.
Of course the ecphrasis might rise to a higher level. So it did often. An accomplished orator might make it splendid, even really moving. Oratory cannot afford to neglect the appeal of oral description. None the less the ecphrasis had two essential vices. First it was extraneous, separable, detachable, a clear sign that sequence did not count. Secondly, instead of following the Aristotelian counsels of specific concrete imagery, it habitually generalized and rapidly became conventional.
Ecphrasis is no less significant for poetic. A form of Alexandrianism[43] avoided by Vergil and adopted with enthusiasm by Ovid, it perverts description because it frustrates narrative movement. The habit of decorative dilation in oratory confirmed a decadent habit of literature.[44] That the habit is decadent even when indulged with more taste is suggested by certain passages in De Quincey, in Pater, most clearly perhaps in that English sophist Laurence Sterne. Among the ecphrases of the Sentimental Journey is one that he executed upon a theme taken from the most expert mocker of the sophists, Lucian,[45] and has made quite typical of the soothing rhythms and the elegant dilation of sophistic eloquence.
The town of Abdera, notwithstanding Democritus lived there, trying all the powers of irony and laughter to reclaim it, was the vilest and most profligate town in all Thrace. What for poisons, conspiracies, and assassinations, libels, pasquinades and tumults, there was no going there by day; ’twas worse by night. Now when things were at their worst, it came to pass that the Andromeda of Euripides being represented at Abdera, the whole orchestra was delighted with it. But of all the passages which delighted them, nothing operated more upon their imaginations than the tender strokes of nature which the poet had wrought up in that pathetic speech of Perseus, “O Cupid! prince of gods and men.” Every man, almost, spoke pure iambics the next day, and talked of nothing but Perseus’ pathetic address—“O Cupid! prince of gods and men!” In every street of Abdera, in every house—“O Cupid! Cupid!” in every mouth, like the natural notes of some sweet melody, which drop from it whether it will or no, nothing but “Cupid! Cupid! prince of gods and men!” The fire caught; and the whole city, like the heart of one man, opened itself to love. No pharmacopolist could sell one grain of hellebore; not a single armorer had a heart to forge one instrument of death. Friendship and Virtue met together and kissed each other in the street. The golden age returned and hung over the town of Abdera. Every Abderite took his oaten pipe, and every Abderitish woman left her purple web, and chastely sat her down, and listened to the song. “’Twas only in the power,” says the fragment, “of the god whose empire extended from heaven to earth, and even to the depths of the sea, to have done this.”
For the composition of the whole speech sophistic generally had little care. That planned sequence, that leading on of the mind from point to point, which is the habit of great orators and the chief means of cogency, presupposes urgency toward a goal. Sophistic often had no goal. The audience need be won only to admiration, not to decision. Easily, therefore, rhetoric came to pay no more attention to logical movement than poetic to movement in narrative. Like Alexandrian narrative, sophistic oratory cares little for onwardness; and its lore is reduced to prescription for detail.
If Philostratus seems occasionally aware of the value of planned movement, scrutiny will reveal that he is thinking not of the order of the whole, but only of sentences. For instance, the passage praising Isocrates for his “brilliant composition”[46] specifies his handling of rhythms; “for thought after thought concludes upon a balanced period.”
This lack of plan may seem paradoxical in the works of writers as artistic as the Greek men of letters. So, indeed, it is; but it is explained by the quite different conception that the Greeks—at least those of the decadence—have of the beauty of a discourse. For them the whole value is in the detail. The perfecting of the whole is secondary; they have no taste for it. By a sort of deliberate intellectual myopia they restrict their field of vision to the analysis of a paragraph, a period, a phrase, even a word. Their esthetic sense, so to speak, is fragmentary.[47]
As if to mark the lack of individual planning for cogency, sophistic is commonly composed upon set patterns. No other body of oratory has so uniformly resigned itself to forms. The orator could devote his whole attention to each separate development because its place was predetermined in a traditional series of topics. The encomium[48] of a country was expected to deal with its situation, climate, products, its race, founders, government, its advancement in learning and literature, its festivals and its buildings, unless indeed the whole encomium were based on one of these topics. Similar topics controlled the praise of a city, a harbor, a bay, an acropolis. The classification of these as separate forms goes on to enumerate the speech at an embarkation, a marriage, a birthday, a festival, etc., as in a complete letter-writer.[49] Similarly prescribed was the encomium of a person. So pervasive were its topics that they invaded even written biography.[50] Philostratus follows them in his account of Herodes Atticus.[51] Basil, on the other hand, explicitly rejects them as inept for encomia of Christian martyrs; and his protest shows at once their prevalence and their typical vice.
The school of God does not recognize the laws of the encomium, but holds that a mere telling of the martyr’s deeds is a sufficient praise for the saints and sufficient inspiration for those who are struggling towards virtue. For it is the fixed habit of encomia to search out the history of the native city, to find out the family exploits, and to relate the education of the subject of the encomium, but it is our custom to pass over in silence such details and to compose the encomium of each martyr from those facts which have a bearing on his martyrdom. How could I be an object of more reverence or be more illustrious from the fact that my native city once upon a time endured great and heavy battles and after routing her enemies erected famous trophies? What if she is so happily located that in summer and winter her climate is pleasant? If she is the mother of heroes and is capable of supporting cattle, what gain are these to me? In her herds of horses she surpasses all lands under the sun. How may these facts improve us in manly virtue? If we talk about the peaks of mountains near, how they out-top the clouds and reach the farthest stretches of the air, shall we deceive ourselves into thinking that drawing praise from these facts we give praise to men? Of all things it is most absurd that when the just despise the whole world, we celebrate their praises from those things which they contemned.[52]
Such composing upon a pattern is legitimately a school exercise. Its use in elementary education is not confined to sophistic. What is sophistic is its extent and its prescriptiveness, still more its extension from school into adult and professional practise. How far the oratory of the imperial centuries was controlled by fixed topics becomes startingly evident in its conformity to the rules set forth by the manuals of elementary exercises.[53] Theon’s of uncertain date may have been superseded[54] by that of Aphthonius in the fourth century, which at any rate had a long life.[55] But the pattern is most concisely shown in the second century by Hermogenes,[56] whose work is typical of them all. There some of the most characteristic habits of form in sophistic oratory are seen as prolongations of school exercises.
Myth (Fable)
Myth is the approved thing to set first before the young, because it can lead their minds into better measures.
Myths appear to have been used also by the ancients, Hesiod telling that of the nightingale, Archilochus that of the fox.
From their inventors myths are named Cyprian or Libyan or Sybaritic; but all alike are called Æsopic, because Æsop used myths for his dialogues.
The description of a myth is traditionally something like this. It may, they say, be fictitious, but thoroughly practical for some contingency of actual life. Moreover it should be plausible. How may it be plausible? By our assigning to the characters actions that befit them. For example, if the contention be about beauty, let this be posed as a peacock; if some one is to be represented as wise, there let us pose a fox; if imitators of the actions of men, monkeys.
Myths are sometimes to be expanded, sometimes to be told concisely. How? By now telling in bare narrative, and now 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 end 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. So much for this.
The style of recital, they say, should be far from periods and near to pleasantness. The moral to be derived from the myth is sometimes put first, sometimes last. Orators[58] too appear to have used myth instead of example.
Tale
A tale, they say, is the setting forth of something that has happened or of something as if it had happened. Sometimes, however, authorities set the chria instead of this.
A tale differs from a story as a poem from an extended poetical work. For a poem or a tale is about one thing, a poetical work or a story about several. Thus a poetical work is the Iliad, for example, or the Odyssey; but a poem is (one of the component parts, such as) the making of the shield, the visit to the shades, or the slaying of the suitors. And again, a story is the history of Herodotus or the composition of Thucydides; a tale is the incident of Arion or that of Alcmæon.
The forms of the tale are said to be four: the mythical; the fictitious, which is also called the dramatic, as those of the tragic poets; the historical; and the political or personal. But for the present we consider the last.
The modes of tales are five: direct declarative, indirect declarative, interrogative, enumerative, comparative. Direct declarative is as follows: “Medea was the daughter of Æetes. She betrayed the golden fleece”; and it is called direct because the whole discourse, or the greater part, keeps the nominative case. Indirect declarative is as follows: “The story runs that Medea, daughter of Æetes, was enamored of Jason,” and so on; and it is called indirect because it uses the other cases. The interrogative is this mode: “What terrible thing did not Medea do? Was she not enamored of Jason, and did she not betray the golden fleece and kill her brother Absyrtus?” and so on. The enumerative mode is as follows: “Medea, daughter of Æetes, was enamored of Jason, betrayed the golden fleece, slew her brother Absyrtus,” and so on. The comparative is as follows: “Medea, daughter of Æetes, instead of ruling her spirit, was enamored; instead of guarding the golden fleece, betrayed it; instead of saving her brother Absyrtus, slew him.” The direct mode is suited to stories, as being clearer; the indirect, rather to trials; the interrogative to cross-questioning; the enumerative, to perorations, as rousing emotion.
Chria
A chria[59] is a concise exposition of some memorable saying or deed, generally for good counsel.
Some chriæ are of words, others of deeds, still others of both: of words, i.e., essentially sayings, as “Plato said that the Muses dwell in the souls of the fit”; of deeds, i.e., essentially doings, as “Diogenes, seeing an ill-bred youth, smote his tutor, saying ‘why did you teach him thus?’”
A chria differs from a memoir mainly in scope; for some memoirs may run to considerable length, but a chria must be concise. It differs from a proverb in that the latter is a bald declaration, whereas a chria is often (developed) by question and answer; and again in that a chria may be based upon deeds, whereas a proverb is based only upon words; and again in that a chria introduces the person who did or said, whereas the proverb has no reference to a person.
Chriæ have been distinguished, mainly by the ancients, as declarative, interrogative, and investigative.
But now let us come to the point, that is the actual working out. Let this working out be as follows: first, brief encomium of the sayer or doer; then paraphrase of the chria itself; then proof or explanation. For example, Isocrates said that the root of education is bitter, but its fruit sweet: (1) encomium, “Isocrates was wise,” and you will slightly develop this topic; (2) chria, “said, etc.,” and you will not leave this bare, but develop the significance; (3) proof, (a) direct, “the greatest affairs are usually established through toil, and, once established, bring happiness”; (b) by contrast, “those affairs which succeed by chance require no toil and their conclusion brings no happiness; quite the contrary with things that demand our zeal”; (c) by illustration, “as the farmers who toil ought to reap the fruit, so with speeches”; (d) by example, “Demosthenes, who shut himself up in his room and labored much, finally reaped his fruit, crowns and public proclamations.” (e) You may also cite authority, as “Hesiod says, ‘Before virtue the gods have put sweat’; and another poet says, ‘The gods sell all good things for labor.’” (4) Last you will put an exhortation to follow what was said or done.
So much for now; fuller instructions you will learn later.
Proverb
A proverb is a summary saying, in a statement of general application, dissuading from something or persuading toward something, or showing what is the nature of each: dissuading, as in that line “a counsellor should not sleep all night”; persuading, as in the lines “he who flees poverty, Cyrnus, must cast himself upon the monster-haunted deep and down steep crags.” Or it does neither of these, but makes a declaration concerning the nature of the thing: “Faring well undeservedly is for the unintelligent the beginning of thinking ill.”
Again, some proverbs are true, others plausible; some simple, others compound, others hyperbolic:
(1) true, such as “no one can find a life without pain”;
(2) plausible, such as “never have I asked what manner of man takes pleasure in bad company, knowing that birds of a feather flock together”;
(3) simple, such as “wealth may make men even benevolent”;
(4) compound, such as “no good comes of many rulers; let there be one”;
(5) hyperbolic, such as “earth breeds nothing feebler than man.”
The working out is similar to that of the chria; for it proceeds by (1) brief encomium of him who made the saying, as in the chria; (2) direct exposition; (3) proof; (4) contrast; (5) enthymeme; (6) illustration; (7) example; (8) authority. Let the proverb be, for example, “a counsellor should not sleep all night.” (1) You will briefly praise the speaker. Then to (2) direct exposition, i.e., to paraphrase of the proverb, as “it befits not a man proved in counsels to sleep through the whole night”; (3) proof, “always through pondering is one a leader, but sleep takes away counsel”; (4) contrast, “as a private citizen differs from a king, so sleep from wakefulness”; (5) “how, then, might it be taken? if there is nothing startling in a private citizen’s sleeping all night, plainly it befits a king to ponder wakefully”; (6) illustration, “as helmsmen are incessantly wakeful for the common safety, so should chieftains be”; (7) example, “Hector, not sleeping at night, but pondering, sent Dolon to the ships to reconnoiter.” (8) The last topic is the one from authority. Let the conclusion be hortatory.
Refutation and Confirmation
Destructive analysis is the overturning of the thing cited; constructive analysis, on the contrary, its confirmation.
Things fictitious, such as myths, are open to neither destruction nor construction; destruction and construction apply only to things that offer argument on either side.
Destructive analysis proceeds by alleging that the thing is (1) obscure, (2) incredible, (3) impossible, (4) inconsistent or, as it is called, contrary, (5) unfitting, (6) inexpedient: (1) obscure, as “in the case of Narcissus the time is obscure”; (2) incredible, as “it is incredible that Arion in the midst of his ills was willing to sing”; (3) impossible, “it is impossible that Arion was saved on a dolphin”; (4) inconsistent or contrary, “quite opposite to preserving popular government is wishing to destroy it”; (5) unfitting, “it was unfitting for Apollo, being a god, to love a mortal woman”; (6) inexpedient, when we say that it is of no use to hear this.
Confirmation proceeds by the opposites of these.
Commonplace
The so-called commonplace is the amplification of a thing admitted, of demonstrations already made. For in this we are no longer investigating whether so-and-so was a robber of temples, whether such-another was a chieftain, but how we shall amplify the demonstrated fact. It is called commonplace because it is applicable to every temple-robber and to every chieftain. The procedure must be as follows: (1) analysis of the contrary, (2) the deed itself, (3) comparison, (4) proverb, (5) defamatory surmise of the past life (of the accused) from the present, (6) repudiation of pity by the so-called final considerations and by a sketch of the deed itself.
Introductions will not be merely within the commonplace, but will be maintained up to it. For instance, if the commonplace be about a temple-robber, the introduction, not in sense but in type, may be as follows: “All evil-doers, honorable judges, should be hated, but especially those whose audacity is directed toward the gods”; or again, “If you wish to deprave other men, let this one go; if not, punish him”; or again, “To outward seeming the only one on trial here is the accused, but in truth you judges, too; for to be false to one’s oath of office may be more criminal than transgression.”
Then, before proceeding to the deed itself, (1) discuss its contrary; e.g., “Our laws have provided for the worship of the gods, have reared altars and adorned them with votive offerings, have honored the gods with sacrifices, festal assemblies, processions.” Then the application to the indictment. “Naturally, for the favor of the gods preserves cities; and without this they must be destroyed.” (2) Now proceed to the case in hand. “These things being so, what has this man dared?” and tell what he has done, not as explaining it, but as heightening. “He has defiled the whole city, both its public interests and its private; and we must fear lest our crops fail; we must fear lest we be worsted by our enemies,” etc. (3) Next go on to comparison. “He is more dangerous than murderers; for the difference is in the object of attack. They have presumed against human life; he has outraged the gods. He is like despots, not like them all, but like the most dangerous. For in them it appears most shocking that they lay hands on what has been dedicated to the gods.” And you will bring into the denunciation comparisons with the lesser, since they are destructive. “Is it not shocking to punish the thief, but not the temple-robber?” (4, 5 above.) You may draw defamation of the rest of his life from his present crime. “Beginning with small offenses, he went on to this one last, so that you have before you in the same person a thief, a housebreaker, and an adulterer” (5, 4 above). You may cite the proverb in accordance with which he came to this pass, “Unwilling to work in the fields, he wished to get money by such means”; and, if you are denouncing a homicide, (you may tell) also the consequences, “a wife made widow, children orphans.” (6) Use also the repudiation of pity. Now you will repudiate pity by the so-called final considerations of equity, justice, expediency, possibility, and propriety, and by description of the crime. “Look not on him as he weeps now, but on him as he despises the gods, as he approaches the shrine, as he forces the doors, as he lays hands on the votive offerings.” And conclude upon exhortation. “What are you about to do? what to decide concerning that which has been already judged?” So much for the present; the ampler method you will know later.
Encomium
Encomium is the setting forth of the good qualities that belong to some one in general or in particular: in general, as encomium of man; in particular, as encomium of Socrates. We make encomia also of things, such as justice; and of animals without reason, such as the horse; and even of plants, mountains, and rivers. It has been called encomium, they say, from poets’ singing the hymns of the gods in villages long ago; and passes also used to be called villages.
Encomium differs from praise (in general) in that the latter may be brief, as “Socrates was wise,” whereas encomium is developed at some length. Observe too that censure is classified with encomia, either because the latter may be euphemistic or because both are developed by the same commonplaces. In what, then, does the encomium differ from the commonplace? For in some cases the two seem very much alike. The difference, they say, appears in the end, in the issue. For whereas in the commonplace the aim is to receive a reward, encomium has no other (end) than the witness to virtue.
Subjects for encomia are: a race, as the Greek; a city, as Athens; a family, as the Alcmæonidæ. You will say[60] what marvelous things befell at the birth, as dreams or signs or the like. Next, the nurture, as, in the case of Achilles, that he was reared on lions’ marrow and by Chiron. Then the training, how he was trained and how educated. Not only so, but the nature of soul and body will be set forth, and of each under heads: for the body, beauty, stature, agility, might; for the soul, justice, self-control, wisdom, manliness. Next his pursuits, what sort of life he pursued, that of philosopher, orator, or soldier, and most properly his deeds, for deeds come under the head of pursuits. For example, if he chose the life of a soldier, what in this did he achieve? Then external resources, such as kin, friends, possessions, household, fortune, etc. Then from the (topic) time, how long he lived, much or little; for either gives rise to encomia. A long-lived man you will praise on this score; a short-lived, on the score of his not sharing those diseases which come from age. Then, too, from the manner of his end, as that he died fighting for his fatherland, and, if there were anything extraordinary under that head, as in the case of Callimachus that even in death he stood. You will draw praise also from the one who slew him, as that Achilles died at the hands of the god Apollo. You will describe also what was done after his end, whether funeral games were ordained in his honor, as in the case of Patroclus, whether there was an oracle concerning his bones, as in the case of Orestes, whether his children were famous, as Neoptolemus. But the greatest opportunity in encomia is through comparisons, which you will draw as the occasion may suggest.
Similarly also living things without speech, so far as they permit. You will draw your encomia from the place in which the thing lives; and in addition to the country of its birth you will tell to which of the gods it is dedicated, as the owl to Athena, the horse to Poseidon. In like manner also you will tell its nurture, the nature of soul and body, its deeds and their use, the length of its life; and you will use throughout such comparisons as fall in with these topics.
Encomia of things done you will draw from their inventors, as the things of the chase from Artemis and Apollo; from those who practised them, as heroes. But the best procedure for such encomia is to consider those who pursue them, of what sort these are in soul and body, e.g., hunters as manly, courageous, more alert in intelligence, physically vigorous. Finally you will observe that we must make encomia of the gods; and it is to be borne in mind that such encomia must be called hymns.[61]
Furthermore plants similarly, each from the topics of its habitat, of the god to which it is dedicated, as the olive to Athena, of its nurture, as how it is grown. If it needs much care, you will marvel at this; if little, at that. You will tell concerning its body, its rapid growth, its beauty, and whether it is ever-blooming, as the olive. Then its usefulness, on which you will dwell most. Comparisons you will lay hold of everywhere.
Furthermore encomium of a city you may undertake from these topics without difficulty. For you will tell of its race that its citizens were autochthonous, and concerning its nurture that they were nourished by the gods, and concerning its education that they were educated by the gods. And you will expound, as in the case of a man, of what sort the city is in its manners and institutions, and what its pursuits and accomplishments.
Comparison
Comparison has been included both under commonplace as a means of our amplifying misdeeds, and also under encomium as a means of amplifying good deeds, and finally has been included as having the same force in censure. But since some (authors) of no small reputation have made it an exercise by itself, we must speak of it briefly. It proceeds, then, by the encomiastic topics; for we compare city with city as to the men who came from them, race with race, nurture with nurture, pursuits, affairs, external relations, and the manner of death and what follows. Likewise if you compare plants, you will set over against one another the gods who give them, the places in which they grow, the cultivation, the use of their fruits, etc. Likewise also if you compare things done, you will tell who first undertook them, and will compare with one another those who pursued them as to qualities of soul and body. Let the same principle be accepted for all.
Now sometimes we draw our comparisons by equality, showing the things which we compare as equal either in all respects or in several; sometimes we put the one ahead, praising also the other to which we prefer it; sometimes we blame the one utterly and praise the other, as in a comparison of justice and wealth. There is even comparison with the better, where the task is to show the less equal to the greater, as in a comparison of Heracles with Odysseus. But such comparison demands a powerful orator and a vivid style; and the working out always needs vivacity because of the need of making the transitions swift.
Characterization (ΗΘΟΠΟΙΙΑ)[62]
Characterization is imitation of the character of a person assigned, e.g., what words Andromache might say to Hector. (The exercise is called) prosopopœia when we put the person into the scene, as Elenchus in Menander, and as in Aristides the sea is imagined to be addressing the Athenians. The difference is plain; for in the one case we invent words for a person really there, and in the other we invent also a person who was not there. They call it image-making (εἰδωλοποιία) when we suit words to the dead, as Aristides in the speech against Plato in behalf of the Four; for he suited words to the companions of Themistocles.
Characterizations are of definite persons and of indefinite; of indefinite, e.g., what words a man might say to his family when he was about to go away; of definite, e.g., what words Achilles might say to Deidamia when he was about to go forth to war. Characterizations are single when a man is supposed to be making a speech by himself, double when he has an interlocutor: by himself, e.g., what a general might say on returning from a victory; to others, e.g., what a general might say to his army after a victory.
Always keep the distinctive traits proper to the assigned persons and occasions; for the speech of youth is not that of age, nor the speech of joy that of grief. Some characterizations are of the habit of mind, others of the mood, others a combination of the two: (1) of the habit, in which the dominant throughout is this habit, e.g., what a farmer would say on first seeing a ship; (2) of the mood, in which the dominant throughout is the feeling, e.g., what Andromache might say to Hector; (3) combined, in which character and emotion meet, e.g., what Achilles might say to Patroclus—emotion at the slaughter of Patroclus, character in his plan for the war.
The working out proceeds according to the three times. Begin with the present because it is hard; then revert to the past because it has had much happiness; then make your transition to the future because what is to happen is much more impressive. Let the figures and the diction conform to the persons assigned.
Ecphrasis[63]
An ecphrasis is an account in detail, visible, as they say, bringing before one’s eyes what is to be shown. Ecphrases are of persons, actions, times, places, seasons, and many other things: of persons, e.g., Homer’s “crooked was he and halt of one foot”; of actions, e.g., a description of a battle by land or sea; of times, e.g., of peace or of war; of places, e.g., of harbors, sea-shores, cities; of seasons, e.g., of spring or summer, or of a festal occasion. And ecphrasis may combine these, as in Thucydides the battle by night; for night is a time and battle is an action.
Ecphrasis of actions will proceed from what went before, from what happened at the time, and from what followed. Thus if we make an ecphrasis on war, first we shall tell what happened before the war, the levy, the expenditures, the fears; then the engagements, the slaughter, the deaths; then the monument of victory; then the pæans of the victors and, of the others, the tears, the slavery. Ecphrases of places, seasons, or persons will draw also from narrative and from the beautiful, the useful, or their contraries. The virtues of the ecphrasis are clearness and visibility; for the style must through hearing operate to bring about seeing. But it is no less important that the expression correspond to the thing. If the thing be fresh, let the style be so too; if it be dry, let the style be similar.
Note that some precisians do not make ecphrasis a (separate) exercise on the ground that it has been anticipated both in fable and in tale, in commonplace and in encomium; for in these too, they say, we expatiate descriptively on places, rivers, deeds, and persons. Nevertheless, since some (authors) of no small account have numbered this also among their exercises, we too have followed them, lest we be accused of negligence.
Thesis
The limits of the thesis are traditionally that the thesis is a discussion of a matter considered apart from every particular circumstance. For the thesis usually occupies the field of general debate, not referring to any assigned person, but simply taking a typical course of exposition, as of any person whatsoever, by consideration of such things only as are inherent in the subject matter. Thus when we analyze the advisability of marriage, we speak not with reference to such and such an one, as Pericles or Alcibiades, nor to one in such and such circumstances, time of life, or fortune; but subtracting all these, we shall consider simply the subject in itself, making our analysis of what is inherent in that, i.e., whether this should be done by anybody whatsoever because such and such are the results for those who do so; whereas if we take a definite person and circumstances, and thus make our exposition of reasons, it will be not a thesis, but an hypothesis.
Some theses are political, some not. Political are such as fall within common considerations, e.g., the advisability of studying oratory, etc.; unpolitical are such as are peculiar to a certain field of knowledge and proper to those versed in it, e.g., whether the heavens are spherical, whether there are many worlds, whether the sun is a fire. These suit the philosophers; the others are the exercises of the rhetors. Some have called the latter practical, the former theoretical; for action underlies the former, whereas the goal of the latter is theory.
The thesis differs from the commonplace in that the commonplace is the amplification of a subject matter admitted, whereas the thesis is an inquiry into a matter still in doubt. Some theses are simple, others relative, others twofold: if we discuss the advisability of marriage, simple; if the advisability of marriage for a king, relative; if we discuss whether it is better to contend in games than to farm, twofold, for we must dissuade from the one and persuade to the other.
Theses are determined by the so-called final headings: justice, expediency, possibility, propriety; e.g., that it is just to marry and make to life the contribution of life itself; that it is expedient, as bringing many consolations; that it is possible by analogy; that it is fitting, as showing a disposition not savage. Thus for your constructive argument; your destructive will be from the opposites. You will refute also whatever theses may have been found on the other side. At the end, exhortations and the common moral habits of mankind.
Introducing a Bill
Some include in their exercises the introduction of a bill. And since in practise lawmaking and the categories falling within it constitute a (separate) study, they make this distinction. In practise there is a (particular) circumstance; in an exercise there is not; e.g., if “in dearth of necessaries it is proposed that governmental positions be put on sale,” you have an occasion in the dearth; in an exercise there is none, but simply a proposal to put governmental positions on sale, without occasion or other circumstance.
It is determined as evident, just, legal, expedient, possible, proper; evident, as in Demosthenes “but that this is just is simple and evident for all to know and learn”; legal, as when we say “it is contrary to the ancient laws”; just, as when we say “it is contrary to nature and morals”; expedient, as when we say “nor can it be done”; proper, as when we say “it hurts our reputation.”
Arid, impersonal as arithmetic, pedantically over-classified, sometimes inconsistent, these rules[64] are nevertheless illuminating. They expose sophistic oratory. The patterns set forth for boys are recognizably the patterns of the public oratory of men. Such higher attainment as might come with experience was not in composition. In composition adult oratory too, as well as these elementary exercises, was feeble at the source. For lack of animating conception and advancing urgency of thought, it eddied in forms. It is the historic demonstration of the doom of an oratory of themes. The resounding reputations so expertly cultivated for themselves time has reduced to absurdity. Hippodromus, Mark, Polemo, Scopelian—which of the beadroll of Philostratus is even the echo of an echo?
The long reign of sophistic reduced rhetoric to style.[65] That this was the preoccupation even of the earlier sophistic we may guess from the derision of the Phædrus and from other references.[66]