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Rhetoric and Criticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

D. A. Russell
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Extract

The words ‘rhetoric’ and ‘rhetorical influence’ come readily enough to the tongue when people talk of Greek and Latin literature, but all too often a great vagueness hangs about them; one is seldom sure whether they are being used historically with reference to certain facts of ancient education or as terms of abuse for some ‘insincerity’ or ‘artificiality’ in literature which the speaker invites us to deplore. My object here is to supply a few facts about the ancient rhetoricians and their intentions, and then to add some observations about the relevance of what they were doing to our own understanding of the ancient writers. Most of what I say is about Greek rather than Latin rhetoric, but I shall of course draw on Latin material, which, for some parts of the subject, is both more abundant and more intelligent than what survives hi Greek. Richard Volkmann, on whose great book we still depend, confessed that the only way by which he came to understand what rhetoric meant to the ancients, and to feel that he had in his hands an ‘Ariadne's thread’ to the labyrinth, was by the repeated reading of Quintilian.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , October 1967 , pp. 130 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1967

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References

page 130 note 1 This paper is based on one read to the Oxford Classical Society in Trinity Term 1965. I have tried to handle some of the same topics briefly in articles on Rhetoric and Literary Criticism for the second edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary.

page 130 note 2 Die Rhetorik der Griechen und Römer, ed. 2 (Leipzig, 1885). The recent book of Kennedy, George, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (London, 1963)Google Scholar, provides an excellent introduction to the Greek part of the subject, down to and including Dionysius of Halicarnassus; a Roman sequel is promised. See also Clark, D. L., Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education (New York, 1957)Google Scholar; Clarke, M. L., Rhetoric at Rome (London, 1953).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 130 note 3 Reported by Cicero, Brutus 46 = L. Radermacher, Artium Scriptores (a thorough collection of pre-Aristotelian texts on rhetoric), A. V. 9.

page 131 note 1 Phaedrus 266 d.

page 131 note 2 Cf. Antiphon v. 26. This speech (On the Murder of Herodes) is the best example of early forensic technique.

page 131 note 3 Russell, D. A. on ‘Longinus’ 3. 5 (edition Oxford, 1964).Google Scholar

page 131 note 4 Texts in Radermacher, , op. cit., B VIIGoogle Scholar: Helena, ed. Immisch, O. (Bonn, 1927).Google Scholar See now Grube, G. M. A., The Greek and Roman Critics (London, 1965), 16 ff.Google Scholar

page 131 note 5 Plato, , Meno 95 c.Google Scholar

page 131 note 6 Cf., e.g., Hermogenes, , de ideis 2, p. 389.Google Scholar 22 Rabe: ποίησις = πανηγυρικ⋯ς (i.e. epidictic)λόγος ⋯ν μέτρῳ. Aristotle's different view (Poetics I) did not affect this tradition.

page 132 note 1 5. 5.

page 132 note 2 Isocrates often speaks of his pupils and his aims as a teacher; see, e.g., Philippus 17 ff., Antidosis 178 ff.; Grube, , op. cit., 38 ff.Google Scholar

page 132 note 3 Autobiography, ed. Norman, A. F. (Oxford, 1965), xx ff.Google Scholar More is known about Libanius' relations with his pupils than about any other teacher in antiquity.

page 133 note 1 Gorgias 462 e ff.

page 133 note 2 271 c ff.

page 133 note 3 See Cic. de oratore iii. 141.

page 133 note 4 Caplan's Loeb edition is a particularly valuable introduction to the whole subject.

page 134 note 1 e.g., ‘Longinus’ 44.

page 134 note 2 The elder Seneca's declaimers include Livy and Ovid. His controversiae and suasoriae have often been discussed: convenient edition by H. Bornecque (Garnier series), best introduction in Bonner, S. F.'s Roman Declamation (Liverpool. 1949).Google Scholar

page 134 note 3 The nineteenth-century collection by C. Walz and the three-volume selection by L. Spengel have not been completely replaced by modern critical texts; the Teubner, Rhetores GraeciGoogle Scholar by H. Rabe and others contains some important works (e.g. Hermogenes and Prolegomenon Sylloge), but its completion is far off.

page 134 note 4 The history of Latin rhetoric in late antiquity and the Middle Ages is of course outside the scope of this survey. Brief account in Curtius, E. R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (London, 1953), 62–78.Google Scholar

page 135 note 1 Ancient speakers either spoke extempore or wrote out their speeches and learnt them by heart, speaking without them. Revised versions were then prepared. When Cicero tells us (pro Plancio 74) that the first speech he made in the senate after his return ‘propter rei magnitudinem dicta de scripto est’, he implies that it was exceptional; he was being specially careful not to put a foot wrong.

page 135 note 2 Heinze, R., Virgils epische Technik (ed. 4, Darmstadt, 1957), 239 ff.Google Scholar

page 135 note 3 In the first century a.d. See Macrobius, , Saturnalia, 5. 19. 2.Google Scholar

page 136 note 1 Fragments edited by D. Matthes (Teubner); see Kennedy, , op. cit. 303 ff.Google Scholar The doctrine underwent considerable modifications later.

page 136 note 2 Cf. fr. 10 d Matthes.

page 136 note 3 Sensible and useful ‘interpretations’ of some of Cicero's speeches (e.g. pro Milone) are given in Neumeister, C., Grundsätze der forensischen Kketorik (1964), 34 ff.Google Scholar, 82 ff.; see also Solmsen, F., ‘Cicero's First Speeches: A Rhetorical Analysis’, TAPA lxix (1938).Google Scholar

page 137 note 1 Demetrius περ⋯ ⋯ρμηνείας 173; cf Cic. de oratore 3. 150 ff.

page 137 note 2 Ed. W. Rhys Roberts. See now Grube, , op. cit. 217 ff.Google Scholar

page 137 note 3 Russell, D. A. on ‘Longinus’ 16–29Google Scholar, for the distinction between ‘figures’ and ‘tropes’ and for some bibliography.

page 137 note 4 Spengel, , Rhetores Graeci iii, p. 7.Google Scholar

page 138 note 1 de corona 208: stock example of σχ⋯μα ⋯μοτικόν, see Goodwin ad loc.

page 138 note 2 See, e.g., Hendrickson, G. L. in AJP. xxv (1904), 125 ff.Google Scholar and xxvi (1905), 249 ff.; Quadlbauer, F. in Wiener Studien lxxi (1958), 55 ff.Google Scholar; Kennedy, , op. cit. 278 ff.Google Scholar; Grube, , op. cit. 107 f.Google Scholar

page 138 note 3 For Demetrius see Grube, G. M. A.'s translation (A Greek Critic: Demetrius on Style [Toronto, 1961])Google Scholar; for Hermogenes, Hagedorn, D., Die Ideenlehre des H. (1964).Google Scholar

page 139 note 1 On some meanings of the difficult term θος, see Lockwood, J. F.CQ xxiii (1929), 180 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Russell, D. A. on ‘Longinus’ 9. 15.Google Scholar Hermogenes' primary concern is with the orator's power to make a sympathetic impression.

page 139 note 2 πυργώσας ῥήματα σεμνά, Frogs 1004; οἰδο⋯σαν … ἴσχνανα ibid. 940–1.

page 139 note 3 Poetics 1459b14.

page 140 note 1 ‘Longinus’ 43 provides examples.

page 140 note 2 [Hermogenes] pp. 8 ff. Rabe; Latin version (which I have drawn on) in Priscian, , p. 554Google Scholar Halm (Rhetores Latini Minores). For a general account of these exercises see Clark, D. L., op. cit., 177–261.Google Scholar

page 140 note 3 Iliad ii. 24.

page 141 note 1 Obscure, and slightly different in the Latin version. Key terms (βουληφόρος, εὓδειν) are replaced by their opposites.

page 141 note 2 The Latin gives Sail. Cat. 2. 8: ‘multi mortales dediti ventri atque somno indocti incultique vitam sic ut peregrinantes transiere’.

page 141 note 3 Two random (not perfect) examples from Horace: Odes iii. 4. 65–80, the γνώμη vis consili expers mole ruit sua; ii. 10. 1–12, the precept of moderation.

page 141 note 4 Controversiae I. 2. Bonner's book (above, p. 134, n. 2) gives a good account of the declamations, their influence and their critics.

page 141 note 5 Cf. Abrams, M. H., The Mirror and the Lamp, ch. i.Google Scholar

page 142 note 1 Seneca, , Epist. mor. 114. 1.Google Scholar

page 142 note 2 For a short account of this concept, Wellek, R.–Warren, A., Theory of Literature (1949: Peregrine Books edition 1963), ch. 17.Google Scholar

page 143 note 1 So long as we assume that criticism (and not only history) must take account of the intentions of poets.

page 143 note 2 See, e.g., Cherniss, H. F., Me in versiculis parum pudicumGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Elegy and Lyric, ed. Sullivan, J. P. (London, 1962), 15–30.Google Scholar

page 143 note 3 To quote a standard text-book (Wellek, R. and Warren, A., op. cit., chap. 7)Google Scholar: ‘There is no relation between “sincerity” and value as art. The volumes of agonizingly felt love poetry perpetrated by adolescents and the dreary (however fervently felt) religious verse which fills libraries are sufficient proof of this.’

page 144 note 1 15. 4, cf. 15. 2 for a similar idea.