Chapter I: The Sophistic Trend in Ancient Rhetoric (2)

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?

d. ELABORATION OF STYLE

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]

And there is also Polus, who has schools of diplasiology and
gnomology and eikonology, and who teaches in them the words of
which Licymnius made him a present; they were to give a polish.
_Phædrus_, 267, Jowett’s translation.

The wider scope demanded by Aristotle’s different conception is recognized in the traditional fivefold division[67] found in Cicero and Quintilian. This division, which has such validity as to be essential for securing the educational values proposed by the ancients, seems to have been inactive from Quintilian on to the fall of Rome.[68] That the limitation to style impoverishes rhetoric and impairs even the study of style itself is evident in the sophistic period and is confirmed in the medieval.

Incidentally, the focus on style contributed to the confusion of rhetoric with poetic.[69] Neither being conceived often in its larger aspects of movement, both being studied habitually for words and sentences, the distinction between the two was the more easily blurred. Here poetry had the more to lose. The use of poetic diction to decorate oratory must have confirmed the tendency to conceive poetic itself as an art of decoration.

But the main results of giving to style a monopoly are the cultivation of literary flavor, with conformity to past usage, and the forcing of figure and rhythm. The style inevitably acquired by those who seek style is decorative and elaborate. In order to sound literary, the orator is impelled both to depart from common speech and to force his note. Devices valuable in revision, to clarify and impress a message, become artificial in practise and unduly elaborated in theory by being pursued for themselves.

(1) Literary Allusion and Archaism

The preoccupation that seized any opportunity for “Medics”[70] led to frequent literary allusions. Allusion is a legitimate, sometimes an important, means of heightening eloquence. Reviving old associations by familiar words and rhythms, it helps to suggest a mood or intensify an appeal.

Who is this that cometh from Domrémy? Who is she in bloody
coronation robes from Rheims? Who is she that cometh with
blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen? De Quincey,
_Joan of Arc_, last paragraph.

But the sophists used this form of suggestion so incontinently, and often so conventionally,[71] as to betray an anxiety to sound literary.

The same anxiety led to their frequent use of obsolescent words. Archaism became an habitual form of decoration. They borrowed the language of Demosthenes to welcome a proconsul and win from him some otiose appointment, or played upon an audience to capture its applause for literary tone. “Atticism” was often little more than pride in a highly sanctioned diction. The aim of the sophists was not to model their composition on Demosthenes, still less on the restrained habit of Lysias, but to borrow from them words enough to give antique flavor. Presuming to be apostles of Hellenism, they were anxious to sound traditional. That they often thereby became stilted is early evidence that this conception of elegance is false.[72]

(2) Decorative Imagery

Metaphor, which is a reliance of all popular oratory, seldom has in sophistic the suggestiveness of fresh observation. Rather the sophist relied on far-fetching or on the abundance of his literary stock.[73] “Living tombs,” said of vultures, is ascribed to Gorgias by the treatise _On the Sublime_,[74] and passed on through the schools. If Athens was “the eye of Greece,” another city might be “the eye of Asia.” Sophistic metaphor generally lacks vitality. That it should achieve so little imaginative suggestion is a clear sign of artificiality. No less conventional and decorative are the frequent similes. They are more sophistic only in being more elaborate. In both cases it is not the imagery that is sophistic; it is the straining, or the conventional decoration, or the dilation. For all its store of tropes, for all its lavish use of them, sophistic is poor in active imagery. Quintilian’s eighth book analyzes the heightening of diction which comes from concreteness[75] (iii), amplification (iv), epigram (_sententia_, v), and tropes (vi). Of these the second and third were the reliance of the sophists. The first they neglected; the fourth they had conventionalized.

(3) Balance

Imagery, what the ancients called trope, covers all that is usually meant by the term _figure_ in modern use. Ancient manuals and their medieval derivatives generally use _figures_ to mean typical adaptations of sentence movement. These are minutely classified even in the older rhetoric. The treatise _Ad Herennium_,[76] which does not distinguish them from tropes, enumerates sixty-one and groups them by the traditional twofold division followed by Quintilian: _figuræ sententiarum_ (σχήματα διανοίας), and _figuræ verborum_ (σχήματα λέξεως). Quintilian (IX), distinguishing them from tropes, both reduces the number of figures and by grouping simplifies the analysis. Of _figuræ sententiarum_ he enumerates twelve.[77] _Figuræ verborum_ he groups as: (1) variations of syntax, (2) modes of iteration, (3) word-play, (4) balance and antithesis. The sophists especially cultivated these figures, most of all the last, those forms of balance which were traditionally called the figures of Gorgias (Γοργίεια σχήματα).[78]

Balance, as an obvious way of marking a comparison or a contrast, is so familiar in every language and in every period as hardly to be thought of as a figure. It becomes a figure by becoming a preoccupation; and the preoccupation, evident in certain modern literary periods, has never been stronger than in sophistic. The sophists pursued balance with such zeal as to display its typical faults of padding and superficiality. A habit of balance tends to slip in here and there a makeweight of mere words, or to force the sense into the form. Over-balancing, sophistic shows abundantly, invites false balance. It is the way not to precision, but to epigram.

Description of the several forms of balance distinguished by sophistic cannot go far without examples. The only sufficient examples must be sought in Greek and Latin; for the sophistic refinements often depend upon the recurrence of inflections or upon transpositions possible only in a language that is highly inflected. Modern languages depend so much less on inflection that they chime less readily and can transpose for symmetry sometimes only by more conspicuous violation of normal sentence order. Nevertheless some of the sophistic forms of balance, with other figures of words, can be exhibited accurately, and the character and effect of them all can be generally suggested, by English examples. Both the charm and the danger of the ancient figures are exemplified by De Quincey in what he called “impassioned prose.”

De Quincey’s encomium _Joan of Arc_, insistent in apostrophe, has one hyperbole that might have been uttered by Polemo or Scopelian. “The graves that had closed sixty years ago seemed to fly open in sympathy with a sorrow that echoed their own.” His alliteration, too, often suggests the same anxiety to enhance. In the ecphrasis on the forest and fountain of Domrémy (paragraph 12), and again in the corresponding one toward the close, he is more delicate. On the other hand he uses with sophistic fondness the device of a carrying iteration. The encomium opens:

What is to be thought of _her_? What is to be thought of the
poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine,
that—like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests
of Judea—rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety,
out of the religious inspiration rooted deep in pastoral
solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more
perilous station at the right hand of kings?[79]

An even more marked example is the paragraph next to the last. Its opening and its close are as follows:

The shepherd girl that had delivered France—she, from her
dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from her
duel with fire, as she entered her last dream—saw Domrémy,
saw the fountain of Domrémy, saw the pomp of forests in which
her childhood had wandered.... For all, except this comfort
from her farewell dream, she had died—died amidst the tears
of ten thousand enemies—died amidst the drums and trumpets of
armies—died amidst peals redoubling upon peals, volleys upon
volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs.

There are few more striking examples of a value in iteration much sought by the sophists, its carrying on to a climax. Refrain carrying to climax is used at greater length, and with finer balances and allusions, in the twenty-eighth paragraph of _The English Mail-Coach_.

The situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful ulcer,
lurking far down in the depths of human nature. It is not that
men generally are summoned to face such awful trials; but
potentially, and in shadowy outline, such a trial is moving
subterraneously in perhaps all men’s natures. Upon the secret
mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected, perhaps,
to every one of us. That dream so familiar to childhood, of
meeting a lion, and, through languishing prostration in hope
and the energies of hope, that constant sequel of lying down
before the lion, publishes the secret frailty of human nature,
reveals its deep-seated falsehood to itself, records its
abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us escapes that dream;
perhaps, as by some sorrowful doom of man, that dream repeats
for every one of us, through every generation, the original
temptation in Eden. Every one of us, in this dream, has a bait
offered to the infirm places of his own individual will; once
again a snare is presented for tempting him into captivity to
a luxury of ruin; once again, as in aboriginal Paradise, the
man falls by his own choice; again, by infinite iteration, the
ancient earth groans to heaven, through her secret caves, over
the weakness of her child: “Nature, from her seat, sighing
through all her works,” again “gives signs of woe that all is
lost”; and again the counter sigh is repeated to the sorrowing
heavens for the endless rebellion against God. It is not
without probability that in the world of dreams every one of
us ratifies for himself the original transgression. In dreams,
perhaps under some secret conflict of the midnight sleeper,
lighted up to the consciousness at the time, but darkened to
the memory as soon as all is finished, each several child of
our mysterious race completes for himself the treason of the
aboriginal fall.

Whether De Quincey’s reading of Greek may have dwelt too long on Isocrates is less important than that his devices of style spring from similar preoccupations. The balances of Sir Thomas Browne, whose style he tells us that he studied, have none of this sophistic chiming and oral dilation. De Quincey reminds us of the sophists because he is a sophist. Sophistic was not extinguished with the Roman Empire; and De Quincey’s style has marked family traits. Thus it is easy to detach many suggestive examples of the Gorgian figures, balances used not for clearness, but generally for emotional emphasis and sometimes for emotional expansiveness.

No! for her voice was then silent;
no! for her feet were dust.

_Joan of Arc_, 1.

The moments were numbered;
the strife was finished;
the vision was closed.

_The English Mail-Coach_, last paragraph.

These are simple balances. “Which was heaven’s vicegerent, and which the creature of hell” marks the antithesis by reverse balance (_chiasmus_). The following are enhanced by alliteration:

Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for her.
_Joan of Arc_, 2.

It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such
a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions, and hear
angelic voices. _Ibid._, 10.

Nor does De Quincey’s refinement stop there. The following balances have antithesis, alliteration, chiasmus, hyperbaton. The first varies its contrasting rhythms; the second leads up to the climax quoted above (“For all, except this comfort”).

Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a
scaffold—thou upon a down bed. But, for the departing minutes
of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis,
when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from
its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have
the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into
sleep; together both sometimes kindle into dreams. _Joan of
Arc_, 30.

The storm was weathered; the skirts even of that mighty storm
were drawing off. The blood that she was to reckon for had been
exacted; the tears that she was to shed in secret had been
paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had been
faced steadily, had been suffered, had been survived. And in
her last fight upon the scaffold she had triumphed gloriously;
victoriously she had tasted the stings of death. _Ibid._, 31.

The sophistic marking of balance by rime (_homœoteleuton_), easy in Greek or Latin through the recurrence of inflectional endings, is so forced in English as to be very rare and in very bad taste. Word-play, on the other hand, has always been one of the commonest devices for enhancing balance into epigram. “Figures do not lie. The trouble with statistics is not that figures lie, but that liars figure.” Paronomasia is not sophistic; but, like other jingles, it attracted the sophists too much, as to-day it attracts Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Bernard Shaw.

(4) _Clausula_

Balance is only one mode of rhythm. The sophists were so preoccupied with it as often to risk monotony. For though they boasted of variety, they were too fond of certain rhythms, and too anxious to mark them, to achieve much flexibility. Their idea of aptness as conformity to an assumed character or occasion led them rather to cast a whole passage in one stylistic pattern.

Next to the perfecting of balances, they studied most attentively sentence cadences.[80] Of _clausulæ_, as of other effects of style, they had a classified store for selection. Though we find it hard to follow them here, and impossible to translate their _clausulæ_ in terms of English stress rhythms, we are not warranted in dismissing their studies of rhythm as idle. True, they often overdid rhythm as they overdid technic in general; but English prose has rarely been in danger of this excess, and in particular it has been surest with those who have controlled cadence. Sentence emphasis is the clue to mastery of sentence movement. Its greater masters, modern as well as ancient, have grasped this not only as logic, but as cadence. The flaw in sophistic rhythms is their emptiness, the pursuit of them for themselves. The difference between the sounding _clausula_ of dilation and the solving _clausula_ of mounting emotion can be heard in the same English sophist. All the following sentences conclude well for the ear; but whereas the first two are prolonged by decorative additions, the last is an ascending period.

The boy rose to a splendour and a noonday prosperity, both
personal and public, that rang through the records of his
people, and became a by-word amongst his posterity for a
thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah.
_Joan of Arc_, 1.

How if it should be some Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen,
coming forward on the scaffold, and presenting to the morning
air her head, turned grey by sorrow, daughter of Cæsars
kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that
worships death? _Ibid._, 26.

Still in the confidence of children that tread without fear
every chamber in their father’s house, and to whom no door is
closed, we, in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is revealed
for an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy steps from
the sorrow-stricken fields of earth upwards to the sandals of
God. _The English Mail-Coach_, 32.

(5) Vehemence

“Scopelian, when one of Polemo’s pupils said that his instrument was the drum, picked up the sneer with ‘the drum, indeed; but it is the shield of Ajax.’”[81] The passage is characteristic not only in allusion, figure, and ingenuity, but in grandiloquence. It is itself a drum-beat; and the sophistic harmony was fond of drums. The stylistic effects most sought are those most marked.[82] Scott’s deprecatory “The big bow-wow strain I can do myself”[83] has neither this aim nor this attitude. He is generously wishing that he could control the quiet sureness of Jane Austen. A sophist was complacent in his own style. He was anxious only that his bow-wow should always be big, or, to return to Scopelian’s more precise figure, that the audience should always hear the drum. It is the drum that marks sophistic. Few of the devices of style so carefully cultivated are sophistic in themselves. What is sophistic is the use of them all, as from a classified store, in excess and with insistent emphasis. The sophistic style cannot be escaped. It is always saying, Here is style.

Such rhetoric is not worthless. Some of its technical skill is available for better ends. But as other arts, to survive and progress, must be more than technics, so especially the art of words cannot go far without being animated by power of conception.[84] Technic is promotive and educative only as it gives free course to motive and vision. As a system of education, therefore, sophistic was hollow. This is the issue raised by Plato; and he is justified by history. Sophistic could use its many devices only to exhibit skill, not to guide either the state or the individual. The only force that could revive rhetoric with the lore older than this spent tradition was a new motive.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _De orat._ I. xiii.

[2] 503.

[3] 312.

[4] 273-4.

[5] ARP Chapter II, especially pages 9-11.

[6] Cf. Tacitus, _Dialogus_, in ARP 88.

[7] ARP 14-17.

[8] See Hubbell.

[9] This defect is discerned as early as the _Phædrus_ (264, seq.); but Socrates does not carry the remedy beyond logical analysis into cogency of sequence.

[10] The term _second sophistic_ is generally applied to the Greek rhetoric and oratory of the second, third, and fourth Christian centuries, and is also applicable to the Latin. Already defined as a tendency in the first century (ARP IV. ii), it is reviewed at that point by H. von Arnim in the introduction to _Leben und Werke des Dio von Prusa_, Berlin, 1898. The second century is reviewed more specifically by Boulanger. Wright’s introduction provides the best summary guide and bibliography for English readers. The studies of the influence of the second sophistic on the Christian orators of this period (see the list at the head of this chapter) review and define sophistic more precisely and more significantly than the general works cited in their bibliographies. But E. Norden’s _Die antike Kunstprosa_ and E. Rohde’s _Der griechische Roman_ are still suggestive.

[11] Written between 230 and 238. For the dates of the orators celebrated by Philostratus see Wright, xxii-xl.

[12] I. 9 (30). Substantially the same things, including the public honors, are recorded of Scopelian, I. 21 (84), and of Polemo, I. 25 (112).

[13] See the general histories, Guignet, 85, and Campbell’s summary, pages 7-10.

[14] Boulanger, 16, 57; Méridier, 46-47. “By the middle of the first century A. D., Ephesus, Smyrna, Miletus, and Mytilene were become world centers for the instruction of rhetoric.” Campbell, 10.

[15] “L’abandon du point de vue historique, qui serait condamnable ailleurs, devient légitime pour la sophistique, puisque toute évolution y est rendue impossible par l’existence d’un canon oratoire réligieusement observé. Libanios s’applique à copier Aristide, qui croit être un imitateur fidèle de Démosthène.” Méridier, page vi.

[16] “Un public qui ne se lasse pas de faire éternellement sa classe de rhétorique.” Boulanger, 271.

[17] See προγυμνάσματα under section c below, and, in the index to ARP, _declamatio_.

[18] The references are to sections and, in parenthesis, to Wright’s pages.

[19] Cf. Ælius Aristides XXIX and XXX D, summarized by Boulanger, 275.

[20] ARP Chapter IV. ii. 90-93.

[21] xxvii, page 12. A; quoted by Guignet, 46.

[22] Petit de Julleville, _L’école d’Athènes au quatrième siècle_, 105. Méridier arrives at the same estimate: “Or, dans aucun de ces exercices oratoires, le sophiste n’a à compter avec la réalité.... La question de fond importe peu; elle sert simplement de thème, de point de départ, pour ne pas dire de prétexte.... La grande affaire, c’est de donner au public l’impression d’un tour de force surprenant exécuté sans difficulté apparente. Le sophiste est proprement un virtuose qui est capable de jouer, sur n’importe quel thème, des variations brillantes. Indifférent aux sujets qu’il traite, il s’applique à multiplier les difficultés de la forme.” 9. Pliny’s account of Isæus Rhetor (ARP 95) gives substantially the same impression.

[23] I. 9 (32).

[24] E.g., _Demonax_, 33, 36; _Rhetorum præceptor_, 17.

[25] II. 15 (244).

[26] “Troics” Τρωικά, which Philostratus traces back to Hippias of Elis (I. 11 (36)), seem more like ἠθοποιίαι (ARP 68, 71, 187, and see Hermogenes below, section c). The Τρωικά of Dio Chrysostom are an exercise of another sort, the refutation of a classic (Boulanger, 249). It is discussed by Von Arnim, 166.

Further on μελέτη see Boulanger, Chapter ii, section v; Méridier, Chapter i.

[27] Introduction (8).

[28] II. 9 (222).

[29] I. 24 (102); II. 15 (244). Several of the sophists celebrated by Philostratus withdrew for a brief meditation after receiving the theme: Scopelian, I. 21 (82); Dionysius of Miletus and Isæus, I. 22 (90); Polemo, I. 25 (120). Apollonius of Naucratis, he complains, took too long. II, 19 (254).

[30] ARP 95.

[31] The sound ancient doctrine of _facilitas_ is most definitely formulated by Quintilian in his tenth book (see ARP 79). It is different not only in detail, but in its conception and method.

[32] See _memoria_ in the index to ARP.

[33] I. 25 (130).

[34] I. 21 (80-82).

[35] I. 8 (28).

[36] II. 8 (212), 10 (226).

[37] “Polemo was so arrogant that he conversed with cities as his inferiors, emperors as not his superiors, and the gods as his equals.” I. 25 (114).

[38] See _amplification_ in the index to ARP.

[39] E.g., see _chria_ in the index to ARP and in section c below.

[40] Méridier, 41-44, and Chapter ix; Guignet, Chapter ix; Burgess, 201; Ameringer, 72, 78, 87; and the “Tempe” and “Memnon” of Dio Chrysostom. For restraint of this form of dilation by Augustine see Barry, 246; by Basil, Campbell, 128. For ἔκφρασις in the προγυμνάσματα see below, section c.

Among his many sallies Lucian has inserted a sober warning: “Restraint in description of mountains, walls, rivers, and the like is very important; you must not give the impression that you are making a tasteless display of word-painting, and expatiating independently while the history takes care of itself.... You have the mighty Homer’s example in such a case.... If Parthenius, Euphorion, or Callimachus had been in his place, how many lines do you suppose it would have taken to get the water to Tantalus’ lips; how many more to set Ixion spinning?” _Quomodo historia_, 57; Fowler’s translation, II. 134.

[41] Orat. x, quoted by Guignet, 188. Hermogenes uses much the same words. See below, section c.

[42] E.g., [Hippodromus] “recited an encomium on fair-speaking, beginning with the peacock and showing how admiration makes him spread his plumage aloft.” II. 27 (288). For this peacock see also Méridier, 144.

[43] ARP 168, 203, 218.

[44] ARP 100.

[45] The theme, which Lucian handles with biting conciseness, is at the opening of _Quomodo historia_.

[46] ἡ συνθήκη λαμπρά I. 17 (50) (54). Συνθήκη here seems to be used for σύνθεσις, and νόημα in the context to be equivalent to _sententia_, as in I. 22 (90) of Dionysius of Miletus. If so, τάξις also, which in the older rhetoric means _dispositio_, is restricted by Philostratus to _compositio_. The latter, at any rate, is all that he ever discusses specifically.

[47] Guignet, 214.

[48] Menander Rhetor, περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν, analyzed by Burgess, 110 seq. Cf. Boulanger, 342, 363. See below, pages 30, 31.

[49] The same topics, indeed, are found in letters, anticipating the medieval _dictamen_. See Guignet, _Les procédés épistolaires de St. Grégoire de Nazianzen_, Paris, 1911 (added to the work previously cited).

[50] Miss Kennedy shows that the cramping of biography by encomiastic pattern hampers Ammianus in imitating Tacitus, whose method is narrative (_The Literary Work of Ammianus_, Chicago, 1912, pages 11-14).

[51] II., opening.

[52] Basil, _In Gordium_, 142 D-143 A, as translated by Campbell, 147.

[53] For προγυμνάσματα in a general sense see ARP 249.

[54] Sandys, _History of Classical Scholarship_, I. 311. Theon is quoted by Walden, _The Universities of Ancient Greece_, 200-1, 205-10.

[55] E.g., there is a commentary on Aphthonius by the Byzantine John Doxopater in the twelfth century, and an Amsterdam edition as late as 1665.

[56] “The most famous technical writer on rhetoric in the second century ... categories quoted by all the technical rhetoricians who succeeded him.” Wright, xxxvi. See also Boulanger, 241; and Radermacher in Pauly-Wissowa.

[57] My translation is from the Teubner text of Rabe, Leipzig, 1913, pages 1-27.

[58] This section and the following remind both of the traditional importance of narrative and description in oratory and of the general confusion of poetic with rhetoric.

[59] The exercise is still included in the Jesuit Latin manual of rhetoric, Kleutgen’s _Ars dicendi_ (1898), but is relegated to an appendix.

[60] The topics for encomium of a person are analyzed by Burgess (120) from Aphthonius, and by Méridier (15, 44, 226) and Burgess (120 seq.) from Menander Rhetor. Menander distinguishes four kinds: simple encomium (of one dead some time), funeral oration, monody, speech of consolation. The topic _achievements_ might also be divided as of war and of peace, or by virtues. That the topic _comparison_ (σύγκρισις) might be distributed, as in Menander, Hermogenes admits below.

APHTHONIUS MENANDER

I. prologue

{ 1. nationality native country
II. race { 2. native city race
{ 3. ancestors birth
{ 4. parents nature

{ 1. pursuits education
III. education { 2. art pursuits
{ 3. laws

{ 1. of soul { (a) manliness
{ { (b) judgment
{
IV. achievements { { (a) beauty
(the main topic) { 2. of body { (b) speed achievements
{ { (c) strength
{
{ { (a) power
{ 3. of fortune { (b) wealth
{ (c) friends

V. comparison comparison with
each of the
foregoing

VI. epilogue

[61] For the relation of encomium to poetry, see Burgess, 130.

[62] For ἠθοποιία and προσωποποιία see the index to ARP.

[63] See above, page 17.

[64] The other works of Hermogenes deal with _status_ (Περὶ στάσεων), with _inventio_ (Περὶ εὑρέσεως), with the rationale of impressiveness (Περὶ μεθόδου δεινότητος), with types of style (Περὶ ἰδεῶν). They show him to be not altogether a pedant, nor incapable of style. He was frequently commented, especially by the Byzantines. For modern comment see, besides Radermacher in Pauly-Wissowa, Jæneke, _De statuum doctrina ab Hermogene tradita_, Leipzig, 1904; Becker, _Hermogenes de rhythmo oratorio_, Münster, 1896.

[65] See above, section A.

[66] See O. Navarre, _La rhétorique grecque avant Aristote_.

[67] ARP 21, 42, 64.

[68] Hermogenes, though he has a treatise on _inventio_ (εὕρεσις), and a separate one on _status_ (στάσις), deviates the former into the formal parts of _dispositio_ and still more widely into _elocutio_.

[69] ARP, 125-6, 229; Burgess, 166.

[70] See above, page 13.

[71] See the store classified by Burgess, 150.

[72] See Boulanger, 57; Méridier, 17; and St. Augustine on _integritas_, below, page 65.

[73] “En principe, il fallait ‘bourrer’ sa matière du plus grand nombre d’images possible, même quand rien n’y obligeait. En fait, on ne devait donner asile dans ses écrits qu’à certaines images ... dont la nature et le nombre étaient rigoureusement fixés.” Guignet, 132.

[74] iii.

[75] Quintilian’s use of the terms ἐνάργεια and φαντασία are among the evidences that he remembered the vital counsels of Aristotle (see ARP 23, 127), though his own treatment of metaphor (VIII. vi. 4) is hardly vital.

[76] Long thought to be Cicero’s. The list of figures is given, pages 62-64, in Wilkins’s digest, section 5 of his introduction to Cicero’s _De Oratore_.

[77] Interrogatio (rhetorical question), præsumptio (πρόληψις), dubitatio (ἀπορία, with several modifications), simulatio (including παρρησία and prosopopœia), apostrophe, sub oculos subjectio (ὑποτύπωσις, corresponding to the trope evidentia), dissimulatio (εἰρωνεία, distinguished from the trope ironia, and appearing also as ἀντίφρασις, confessio, concessio, consensio), reticentia (ἀποσιώπησις, with interruptio and digressio), imitatio (ἠθοποιία), pœnitentia, emphasis (also a trope), and finally various forms of insinuation by hint and double meaning. Other figures, as included by Rutilius Lupus and Celsus, Quintilian lists (IX. ii. 102), but does not describe.

[78] For convenience of reference Quintilian’s grouping of _figuræ verborum_ in IX. iii. may be tabulated as follows:—

Group 1, variations of syntax (3-27), such as hyperbaton.

Group 2, modes of iteration (28-65), figuræ per adjectionem; e.g., ἐπάνοδος (regressio), πολύπτωτον, μεταβολή, πλοκή, συνωνυμία, πλεονασμός, διαλλαγή (with the accompanying syntactical variations, βραχυλογία, ἀσύνδετον, πολυσύνδετον), and, most important, climax (κλῖμαξ, gradatio), a term applied consistently to progressive iteration; related figuræ per detractionem, συνεζευγμένον, παραδιαστολή (distinctio).

Group 3, word-play, paronomasia, annominatio (66-73), e.g., ἀντανάκλασις.

Group 4, balance and antithesis (74-86). Quintilian introduces these Gorgian figures by saying: “Magnæ veteribus curæ fuit gratiam dicendi paribus et contrariis acquirere. Gorgias in hoc immodicus, copiosus ætate prima utique Isocrates fuit. Delectatus est his etiam M. Tullius” (74), and proceeds (75) to divide balance into: πάρισον, ὁμοιοτέλευτον, ὁμοιόπτωτον, ἰσόκωλον.

The Gorgian figures are analyzed and exemplified by Méridier, 33. 162; Guignet, 106. Campbell includes them in a different classification, more distinctive for his analysis, and is generally followed by Sr M. Inviolata Barry, _St Augustine the orator, a study of the rhetorical qualities of St. Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum_, Washington, 1924 (Catholic University of America Patristic Studies, VI). Sr Barry’s table, pages 18-19, is useful for reference.

[79] Incidentally the comparison and contrast with David is carried out much in the manner of a σύγκρισις.

[80] For Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian on sentence rhythm, see ARP 27, 28, 59-61, 79.

[81] Philostratus, I. 21 (84).

[82] See Méridier’s analysis (20) of the distinction made by Hermogenes between true and false δεινότης.

[83] Diary, March 14, 1826.

[84] The classic formulation of this is the treatise _On the Sublime_, viii.