CHAPTER I

THE SOPHISTIC TREND IN ANCIENT RHETORIC

REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

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.

A. THE TWO HISTORIC CONCEPTIONS OF RHETORIC

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.

B. THE SECOND SOPHISTIC[10]

1. Philostratus, _The Lives of the Sophists_[11]

_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.

2. The Character of Sophistic

a. VIRTUOSITY

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.

(1) _Declamatio_[17] (μελέτη)

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]

(2) Improvisation and Memory

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.

(3) Delivery

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:

I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche.

_Canterbury Tales_, C. 330.

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!

b. DILATION

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.

(1) _Ecphrasis_

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.”

c. PATTERN

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.

THE ELEMENTARY EXERCISES (προγυμνάσματα) OF HERMOGENES[57]

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?

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.

CHAPTER II[1]

ST. AUGUSTINE ON PREACHING (_DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA_, IV)

With this elaborate pedagogical tradition a clean break is made by St. Augustine. The fourth book of his _De doctrina christiana_[2] has historical significance in the early years of the fifth century out of all proportion to its size; for it begins rhetoric anew. It not only ignores sophistic; it goes back over centuries of the lore of personal triumph to the ancient idea of moving men to truth; and it gives to the vital counsels of Cicero a new emphasis for the urgent tasks of preaching the word of God.

Abstractly and in retrospect the very character of Christian preaching seems necessarily to reject sophistic. But at the time this seemed anything but inevitable. Sophistic was almost the only lore of public speaking then active. It dominated criticism and education. The Greek fathers Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen might expose its falsity of conception; but they could not escape it. It had brought them up. Its stylistic habits were ingrained in their expression. Augustine too had been brought up on sophistic. Nor could he escape it. Again and again his style rings with its tradition.[3] Not only had he learned it for good; he had taught it. He had been himself, in Plutarch’s sense and Strabo’s, a sophist. We must hasten to add that the great Christians of the fourth century, if they could not escape sophistic, at least redeemed it by curbing its extravagance and turning it to nobler uses. But Augustine did much more. He set about recovering for the new generation of Christian orators the true ancient rhetoric. He saw that for Christian preaching sophistic must not only be curbed; it must be supplanted. Against the background of his day his quiet, simple book, renouncing the balances and figures of his other works without renouncing their fervor, is seen to be a startling innovation.

Not the least striking trait of the innovation is its reserve. Augustine does not attack sophistic as the Gregorys do; he ignores it. In Chapter xxxi of Book II he had, indeed, mentioned it. Discussing there not style, but matter, he had contrasted the necessary training in argument with sophistic quibbling, and had then added, forecasting Book IV, that superfluous stylistic ornament also is sophistic.

But training in argument on questions of all such kinds as are to be investigated and resolved in sacred literature is of the highest value; only we must beware of the lust for quarrelling, and of the puerile display of skill in disappointing an opponent.... This sort of quibbling conclusion Scripture execrates, I think, in the text _Qui sophistice[4] loquitur odibilis est_. Even though not quibbling, a speech seeking verbal ornament beyond the bounds of responsibility to subject matter (_gravitas_) is called sophistic. II. xxxi.

But an uninformed modern reader of Book IV would hardly be aware that sophistic existed. No denunciation could be more scathing than this silence. In Augustine’s view of Christian preaching sophistic simply has no place. A good debater, instead of parrying he counters. He spends his time on his own case. A good teacher, he tells his neophytes not what to avoid, but what to do. He has so far renounced sophistic that he has no concern to triumph. He wishes simply to teach sound rhetorical doctrine. He achieves an extraordinary conciseness not so much by compression as by undeviating straightforwardness.

A reader familiar with the times, however, will be reminded of sophistic by many allusions. Single phrases or sentences some of them, a few more extended, they all serve to illuminate by contrast the true rhetoric.

All these things, when they are taught by rhetors, are thought great, bought at a great price, sold with great boasting. Such boasting, I fear, I may suggest myself in speaking so; but I had to answer those ill-educated men who think that our authors are to be despised, not because they lack the eloquence which such critics love too much, but because they do not use it for display. vii.

[But an audience of Christian sobriety] will not be pleased with that suave style in which though no wrong things are said, right things slight and frail are adorned with foamy circumlocution. xiv.

I think I have accomplished something not when I hear them applauding, but when I see them weeping. xxiv.[5]

Display, inflation, thirst for applause—every reader of Augustine’s time would recognize in these allusions a repudiation of sophistic.

For Augustine thinks that Christian preaching is to be learned best from Christian preachers. As if in reply to Julian’s scornful “Let them elucidate their Matthew and Luke,”[6] he recommends not only for doctrine, but for rhetoric, the Epistles, the Prophets, and the Fathers, and proceeds to analyze their style. The analysis, though based on the current Latin version, is generally transferable to the Greek, since it is much simpler than the classification set forth by sophistic. It exhibits sentence movement simply in climax, period, balance—those devices which are most easily appropriated and most useful. The general ancient counsels of aptness and variety are applied specifically to preaching. As to cadence (_clausula_), Augustine dispenses with all subdivisions, and even makes bold to assert that it must sometimes be sacrificed. Similarly omitting all classification of figures, he manages to suggest in a few words what figures are for. In a word, he shows how to learn from the Canon and the Fathers the rhetoric that is vital to homiletic.

This rhetoric, not only simpler than sophistic, but quite different in emphasis, is set forth in the terms of Cicero. Augustine has gone back four and a half centuries to the days before _declamatio_. The instruction that he draws from his analysis of Christian literature is planned upon the “instruct, win, move” (_docere_, _delectare_, _movere_) of _De oratore_ and upon the corresponding three typical styles (_genus tenue_—_medium_—_grande_) of _Orator_.[7] Evidently Augustine had the greater Cicero, not the lesser that sufficed for the Middle Age. He neither quotes nor cites any other rhetorician; and though his doctrine of aptness and of variety is common throughout the older rhetoric, for this too he had no need to go beyond the master’s two great works. Nor have any others been more persuasive as to imitation,[8] which is Augustine’s controlling idea. This first Ciceronianism, too immediately aware of the perverted imitation of style taught by sophists to fall into the archaism and redundancy of later worship of Cicero, is a penetrative recovery of Cicero’s larger meaning. Augustine’s application of the three typical styles is more just and more practically distinct than Cicero’s own. Would that all Ciceronians had been equally discerning!

TABULAR VIEW OF ST. AUGUSTINE’S _DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA_ IV

A. For learning to preach, models are more fruitful than rules i-v B. Eminent models are offered by the literature of Christian eloquence vi-viii 1. Christian eloquence not merely comparable with pagan, but distinctive. 2. Analysis of _Romans_ v. especially of climax, period, clauses, etc. 3. Analysis of _2 Corinth._ xi. 16, especially of variety. 4. Analysis of _Amos_ vi. especially of figures. C. Christian preaching must fulfil all three typical tasks of oratory summarized in Cicero’s _docere_, _delectare_, _movere_ ix-xix 1. _docere_, subordinating even _integritas_ to clearness ix-xi 2. _delectare_, necessary as a means, never an end xii-xvii 3. _movere_, to carry assent into action xviii, xix D. The three corresponding styles of oratory, Cicero’s _tenue_, _medium_, _grande_, are exemplified in the Canon xx 1. _genus tenue_ (_submissum_) in _Galatians_ iv. 21 and iii. 15 as demanding trained reasoning and memory. 2. _genus medium_ (_temperatum_) in 1 _Timothy_ v, _Romans_ xii, xiii, as rhythmical, but with cadence often sacrificed. 3. _genus grande_ in _2 Corinthians_ vi. 2, _Romans_ viii. 28, _Galatians_ iv. 10, the last without the usual stylistic means. E. They are also exemplified in St. Cyprian _Ad Cæcilium_ and _De habitu virginum_, St. Ambrose _De Spiritu_ and _De virginibus_ xxii F. No one of the three can effectively be constant xxii, xxiii G. Constancy is rather in the aim, which is always persuasion xxiv-xxvi 1. The speaker’s life is the greater means of persuasion in the third style xxvii-xxviii (Appended Note) The recital of borrowed sermons is permissible xxix Conclusion, with reminder of prayer, in thanksgiving xxx, xxxi

The fourth book of the _De doctrina Christiana_ is specifically linked by its proem to the preceding three as setting forth presentation (_modus proferendi_). Books I-III have dealt with study of the subject matter (_inventio_); Book IV is to deal with expression. Augustine thus makes the traditional fivefold division twofold. _Inventio_, which under sophistic had lapsed, he restores to its rightful place and gives it a new application to the exegesis of Scripture. Of the remaining four left to his second heading he discusses only style (_elocutio_). Delivery and memory are mentioned incidentally; plan is omitted. The omission is not negligent. The first chapter warns us not to expect a manual of rhetoric. Nevertheless a modern student cannot help wishing that so suggestive a treatise had both applied to preaching the ancient counsels as to plan and exhibited the New Testament in this aspect. Thus to analyze for imitation not only the style of the Pauline epistles, but their cogency of order, would doubtless have made the work unduly extensive. One hopes that seminarians of the fifth century were stimulated, and that seminarians of the twentieth century will be stimulated, by the example of the treatise itself to study _Romans_ not only for appeal, but for cogency. Meantime Augustine’s fourth book remains one of the most fruitful of all discussions of style in preaching.

Who dare say that the defenders of truth should be unarmed against falsehood? While the proponents of error know the art of winning an audience to good will, attention, and open mind,[9] shall the proponents of truth remain ignorant? While the [sophist] states facts concisely, clearly, plausibly,[10] shall the preacher state them so that they are tedious to hear, hard to understand, hard to believe? While the one attacks truth and insinuates falsehood by fallacious argument, shall the other have too little skill either to defend the true or to refute the false? Shall the one, stirring his hearers to error, urging them by the force of oratory, move them by terror, by pity, by joy, by encouragement, and the other slowly and coldly drowse for truth? ii.

But to learn such skill from rules, he goes on, is the way rather for boys than for men who have immediately before them the urgent tasks of preaching.

For eloquence will stick to such men, if they have the talent of keenness and ardor, more easily through their reading and hearing of the eloquent than through their following of the rules of eloquence. Nor does the Church lack literature, even outside the Canon established in the citadel of authority, to imbue a capable man with its eloquence, even though his mind be not on the manner but on the matter, provided he add practise in writing, in dictating, finally also in composing orally[11] what he feels according to the rule of piety and faith. Besides, if such talent be lacking, either the rules of rhetoric will not be grasped, or if by great labor some few of them are partially grasped, they will be of no avail.... [Young preachers] must beware of letting slip what they have to say while they attend to saying it in good form. iii.

They must, indeed, know the principles of adaptation (iv), and develop their expression as far as they can; but they will do so best by imitation.

Whoever wishes to speak not only with wisdom, but with eloquence.... I rather direct to read or hear the eloquent and to imitate them by practise than advise to spend his time on teachers of the art of rhetoric. v.

Expressed in modern terms, Augustine’s position is that rhetoric as a classified body of doctrine is properly an undergraduate study. It is not the best approach for seminarians because its method is analytical. The young preacher, needing rather promotion than revision, will advance more rapidly by imitation.

Starting from this principle, that the more fruitful study for learning to preach is imitation of Christian eloquence, Augustine proceeds to show (vi-viii) how distinctive is the eminence of such models and how repaying to analysis. His vindication should be pondered by those who still permit themselves to disparage without distinction the literary value of the New Testament, and by those who, granting poetic to Ambrose, remain unaware of his rhetoric.

At this point the question, perhaps, arises whether our authors, whose divinely inspired writings constitute for us a canon of most salutary authority, are to be called philosophers[12] only, or also orators. To me and to those who agree with what I am saying, the question is very easily answered. For where I comprehend them, nothing can seem to me either more philosophical or more eloquent. And all, I venture to say, who rightly comprehend what they speak, comprehend at the same time that they could not have spoken otherwise. For as there is an eloquence becoming to youth, another to age, nor can that be called eloquence which does not befit the character of the speaker, so there is an eloquence becoming to men most worthy of the highest authority and evidently inspired. Our authors have spoken with such eloquence. No other is becoming to them, nor theirs to others. For it is like themselves; and, the more it rejects display, the more it ranges above others not by inflation, but by cogency. Where on the other hand I do not comprehend them, though their eloquence is less apparent to me, I have no doubt that it is such as I find it where I do comprehend. The very obscurity of inspired and salutary utterances has been tinged with such eloquence that our minds should be stimulated not only in study [of their meaning], but in practise [of their art]. Indeed, if there were leisure, all the virtues and graces of eloquence with which those are inflated who put their style ahead of the style of our authors not by greatness, but by distension, could be exhibited in the sacred literature of those whom divine Providence has sent to instruct us and to draw us from this corrupt world to the world of happiness. But what delights me more than I can say in their eloquence is not what it has in common with pagan orators and poets. What I rather admire, what fills me with amazement, is that the eloquence which we hear around us has so been used, as it were through another eloquence of their own, as to be neither deficient nor conspicuous. For it should be neither condemned nor displayed; and they would have seemed to do the one if they shunned it, the other if it became noticeable. Even in those places where perhaps it is noticeable to experts, such is the message that the words in which it is expressed seem not to be sought by the speaker, but to subserve that message naturally, as if one saw philosophy issuing from her own home in the heart of the philosopher, and eloquence following as an inseparable servant even when not called.[13] vi.

The vindication of an eloquence distinctly Christian has the more weight because its doctrine of form and substance echoes from Cicero the best ancient tradition. The older tradition had in Augustine’s time been so overlaid that he could do no better service to rhetoric than to recall it. In fact, Christian eloquence redeemed public speaking by reviving the true persuasion.

The insistence on the Ciceronian doctrine that style is not separable has a bearing more than historical. Not only for Augustine’s time, but for any time, the truism must be reasserted. His iteration is more than preoccupation with Cicero, more than repudiation of sophistic. It springs from the cardinal importance of the truism for homiletic. In the pulpit the sophistic heresy of art for art’s sake becomes intolerable.

Augustine’s next step (vii) is to support his general claims for Christian eloquence, and to show how it may be studied, by analyzing briefly three typical passages. In the first, _Romans_ v. 3-5, he analyzes prose rhythm under the familiar heads of classical sentence movement (_compositio_): phrases and subordinate clauses (_cæsa_), coordinate clauses (_membra_), period (_circuitus_), climax (_gradatio_), adding the equivalent Greek terms.[14]

RHYTHMICAL ANALYSIS OF _ROMANS_ V. 3, 4, 5

(1) καυχώμεθα ἐν ταῖς θλίψεσιν, (1) Gloriamur in tribulationibus,

(2) εἰδότες ὅτι ἡ θλῖψις ὑπομονὴν (2) scientes quod tribulatio κατεργάζεται, patientiam operatur,

(3) ἡ δὲ ὑπομονὴ δοκιμήν, (3) patientiam autem probationem,

(4) ἡ δὲ δοκιμὴ ἐλπίδα, (4) probatio vero spem,

(5) ἡ δὲ ἐλπὶς οὐ καταισχύνει, (5) spes autem non confundit,

(6) ὅτι ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκκέχυται (6) quia caritas Dei diffusa est ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν, in cordibus nostris,

(7) διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου τοῦ (7) per Spiritum sanctum qui datus δοθέντος ἡμῖν. est nobis.

The passage is short enough, and the sentence movement simple enough, to be grasped readily. Its balance is striking without being monotonous, and is reinforced by a linking iteration that leads to a climax.[15] He is a wise teacher who begins with an instance so memorable. It must have seized even more quickly a generation familiar with both the terms and the method.

The next example, _2 Corinthians_ xi. 16-31, shows the same sentence devices carried through a much longer reach, and is therefore used both to reinforce the first and to add the importance of rhythmical variety. The counsel of variety, though a commonplace of the older rhetoric, had especial point by contrast with the sophistic fondness for trimming and prolonging balances. Incidental to the exhibition of variety is a reminder of aptness; and the analysis concludes:

Finally all this breathless passage is closed with a period of two members.... But how after this impetus the brief statement interposed comes to rest, and rests the reader, how apt it is and how charming, can hardly be said. vii.

The analysis of the third example, _Amos_ vi. 1-6, leads the study to longer and more sustained rhythmical reaches. Lest it seem the more difficult in the more figurative version of the Septuagint, Augustine quotes it “as translated from the Hebrew into Latin style through the interpretation of the priest Jerome, expert in both languages.”

ANALYSIS OF _AMOS_ VI. 1-6

(1) Woe to them that are at ease (1) Væ qui opulenti estis in in Zion and trust in the Sion et confiditis in mountains of Samaria, monte Samariæ, optimates, which are named chief capita populorum, of the nations, to whom ingredientes pompatice the house of Israel came! domum Israel;

(2) Pass ye unto Calneh, and (2) transite in Chalanne et see; and from thence go videte, et ite inde in ye to Hamath the great: Emath magnam, et descendite then go down to Gath of in Geth Palæstinorum, the Philistines: be they et ad optima better than these kingdoms? quæque regna horum, si or their border latior terminus eorum greater than your border? termino vestro est:

(3) Ye that put away the evil (3) qui separati estis in diem day, and cause the seat malum, et adpropinquatis of violence to come near; solio iniquitatis;

(4) That lie upon beds of ivory, (4) qui dormitis in lectis eburneis, and stretch themselves et lascivitis in stratis upon their couches, and vestris; qui comeditis eat the lambs out of the agnum de grege, et vitulos flock, and the calves out de medio armenti; of the midst of the stall;

(5) That chant to the sound of (5) qui canitis ad vocem psalterii: the viol,

(6) and invent to themselves (6) sicut David putaverunt se instruments of musick, habere vasa cantici, like David; that drink bibentes in phialis vinum, wine in bowls, and anoint et optimo unguento themselves with the chief delibuti; ointments:

(7) but they are not grieved for (7) et nihil patiebantur super the affliction of Joseph. contritione Joseph.

Much more urgent, leaping to attack, rising, prolonging, varying, subsiding to a pregnant close, the prophecy widens the conception of rhythmical range. Marking the rhythms briefly, Augustine uses it also to show the oratorical force of figures.[16] Thus a few pages of analysis are made to yield wide and definite suggestion. This, perhaps, is their outstanding merit; while they show the student what to look for, they invite him to go on for himself. But the pedagogical achievement does not stop there. The professor of rhetoric has seen that rhetorical analysis must be simplified, and that it must be made progressive. Where else shall we find so much drawn from three analyses? The first reduces the complicated lore of rhythm to its essentials. The second, reinforcing and extending these, dwells upon aptness as a corrective of rhetorical zeal, and as a constructive principle. The third, quoting rhythms still more urgent with emotion, passes to the emotional value of concrete words. To bring the over-classified lore of sophistic back to the simplicity of Aristotle was a service not only to homiletic, but to all rhetoric. A greater service was to substitute for the static and formalized pedagogy of the day a vital order. Augustine had been doubtless a popular professor; Christianity made him a great teacher.

Pedagogically, therefore, even his incidental definitions are worth noticing. That the function of grammar is traditionally to impart correctness of speech (iii) is used to support the contention that even this elementary skill comes best in fact from imitation. The period (vii) is defined so as to throw the emphasis on delivery. Its “clauses are suspended by the speaker’s voice until it is concluded at the end.” Therefore it “cannot have fewer than two clauses.” So he points out in the passage above from _Amos_ that the rhythm is available for delivery (_in potestate pronuntiantis_) either as a series of six or as three pairs, and that the latter is more beautiful. So he suggests limiting analysis to give room for oral interpretation.

This same passage which we have set as an example can be used to show other things relevant to the rules of eloquence. But a good hearer is not so much instructed by discussion in detail as he is kindled by ardent delivery. vii.

The next and longest section (ix-xix) is based on Cicero’s “inform, please, move” (_docere_, _delectare_, _movere_). Distinguishing each of these tasks clearly, Augustine is at the same time careful to unite them, by progressively iterative transitions, in the single and constant task of persuasion. In exposition (_docere_) clearness may demand the use of popular expressions. What avails correctness in a diction that is not understood?

He who teaches will rather avoid all words that do not teach. If he can find correct words that are understood, he will choose those; if he cannot, whether because they do not exist or because they do not occur to him at the time, he will use even words that are less correct, provided only the thing itself be taught and learned correctly. ix.

The correctness (_integritas_) of diction boasted by the sophists, and carried by them even to the pedantry of archaism, is here faced squarely. The assertion that it must sometimes be sacrificed, the making of clearness absolutely paramount, is the bolder at a time when Christian preaching was not yet recognized as having secure command of elegance. Unmistakable clearness, Augustine goes on, is so much more important in preaching than in discussions permitting question and answer that the speaker must be quick to help unspoken difficulties.

For a crowd eager to grasp will show by its movement whether it has understood; and until it has given this signal the subject must be turned over and over by various ways of expressing it—a resource beyond the power of those who deliver speeches written out and memorized.[17] x.

No warrant here, he adds (xi), for dilation beyond the demands of clearness, but good warrant for making instruction pleasant and appealing in order to hold attention. Passing thus to the two other tasks of oratory, he quotes (xii) Cicero’s “to instruct is of necessity, to please is for interest, to move is for victory.”[18] The three are then both carefully distinguished and shown to be a sort of geometrical progression. The first is first of necessity. It must be mastered; but it is rarely sufficient. To supply the lack, the second demands more rhetoric by demanding further adaptation to the audience; but it too must remain insufficient. So the third task, to move, is not merely the third item in a classification; it is the final stage in a progress. That progress is increasingly emotional. The last stage demands not only all the rhetoric of the preceding, but also the art of vivid imagery[19] and of urgent application. So Augustine arrives at one of those linking summaries which constitute almost a refrain.

Therefore the eloquence of the Church, when it seeks to have something done, must not only explain to instruct and please to hold, but also move to win. xiii.

The next chapter (xiv) warns against resting in the second stage.[20] To make the pleasing of the audience an end in itself is the typical vice of sophistic. If preaching tolerates it, “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” Augustine quotes, not these words of St. Paul, but Jeremiah, and rises to denunciation of mere pleasing. “Far from us be that madness.” One of Cyprian’s rare descriptive passages is adduced to show how “the wholesomeness of Christian preaching has recalled his diction from [sophistic] redundancy and held it to a graver eloquence of less display.” As the ultimate objection to the sophistic ideal is moral, so is the preacher’s ultimate resource. Since his strength is derived from a source deeper than human skill, his best preparation is prayer. Augustine is not above enforcing this reminder by playing upon the words _orare_, _orator_, _oratio_. Nevertheless human skill is to be cultivated. Prayer itself proves the folly (xvi) of making no other preparation. He who abjures human lore of preaching because God gives us our messages might equally well abjure prayer because God knows us and our needs. The Pauline counsels specify how Timothy should preach. As God heals through doctors and medicines, so he gives the gospel to men by men and through man.

The transition (xvii) to the final task of moving men to action is another full and explicit iteration of all three, and at the same time a preparation for the next section on the corresponding three typical styles. Since the subject matter of preaching is always great, at least in implication (xviii), does it not always demand a great style? No; for a great matter (xix) may at the time rather demand exposition; and this in turn demands a restrained style. Again, a great matter may at the time rather demand praise or blame; and here enters the second task of so adapting the style as to win sympathy.

But when something ought to be done, and we are talking to those who ought to do it and will not, then the great subject is to be expressed greatly and in such wise as to bend their minds.... What subject is greater than God? Is it therefore not a subject for instruction? Or how can any one expounding the unity of the Trinity do it except by confining himself to exposition, that so difficult a distinction may as far as is possible be understood? Is ornament demanded here, and not rather argument?[21] Is there here something that the audience is to be moved to do, and not rather something that it is to be taught to learn? Again, when God is praised in himself or in his works, what a vision of beautiful and splendid diction rises before any one praising as well as he can him whom no one praises aright and no one fails to praise in some way or other! But if God be not worshipped, or if idols be worshipped with him or even in his stead, whether dæmons or any other created being, then to meet so great an evil, and from this evil to save men, the preaching too must be great. xix.

Augustine has passed (xvii-xix) from Cicero’s three tasks of oratory to his three typical styles by applying to the preacher Cicero’s definition of the orator: “He, then, shall be called eloquent who can speak small things quietly, larger things proportionally, great things greatly.”[22] Thus the three styles are _genus submissum_ (or _tenue_), _genus temperatum_ (or _medium_), and _genus grande_. As in Cicero, these correspond to _docere_, _delectare_, _movere_, and the second is connected with panegyric.

Augustine now proceeds to exemplify the first style (xx) from _Galatians_ as calling for skill in reasoning and for a memory trained to bring in objections and difficulties where they can best be met. This debater’s memory is precisely the ancient _memoria_, the fifth of the traditional parts of rhetoric. It seems to have fallen into abeyance under sophistic. What the sophists boasted was verbal memory, which Augustine merely mentions in his appendix as something quite different.[23]

The same chapter (xx) exemplifies the second, or median style from _Timothy_ and _Romans_ as having the charm of aptness. Here Augustine confronts squarely the sophistic habit of making rhythmical beauty paramount and the pagan disparagement of Christian style. Some one may find the cadence of _Romans_ xiii. 14 defective. Certainly it would soothe the ear more rhythmically if the verb came last.

But a graver translator has preferred to keep the usual word-order [and, he might have added, the logical emphasis]. How this sounds in the Greek used by the apostle they may see whose expertness in that language goes so far. To me at least, the word-order, which is the same as in our version, does not seem there either to run rhythmically. Indeed, the stylistic beauty (_ornatum_) which consists of rhythmical cadences is defective, we must confess, in our authors. Whether this is due to our versions, or whether, as I incline to think, the authors deliberately avoided these occasions for applause, I do not venture to affirm, since I confess that I do not know. But this I know, that anyone who shall make their cadences regular in the same rhythms—and this is done very easily by shifting certain words that have equal force of meaning in the new order—will recognize that these inspired men lacked none of those things which he learned as great matters in the schools of the grammarians or rhetors. Moreover, he will discover many sorts of diction of so great beauty as to be beautiful even in our customary language, much more in theirs, and never found in the literature with which [the sophists] are inflated. But we must beware lest the addition of rhythm detract from the weight of inspired and grave sentences. Most learned Jerome does not carry over into his translation the musical skill in which rhythm is learned most fully, though our prophets did not lack even that, as he shows in the Hebrew meters of some of them; [and he gave this up] in order to keep truth to their words.... As in my own style, so far as I think I may do so modestly, I do not neglect rhythmical cadences,[24] so in our authors they please me the more because I find them there so rarely. xx.

The third, or great style, whether it be elegant or not, has for its distinguishing quality the force of emotional appeal. The instances are from _2 Corinthians_ vi and _Romans_ viii. _Romans_ is a long epistle, not a sermon. Though it was read aloud, of course, it is essentially a treatise, a philosophy of history. It is largely expository and argumentative. Since it is addressed primarily to reflection and reason, its main artistic reliance is on cogency of order. But even here presentation does not remain purely logical. For persuasion it must rise also emotionally. As we read in _Acts_ xvii the outline of the apostle’s Areopagus speech, we discern beyond the logical chain of propositions an expanding conception of the Life-giver. Who can doubt that the style too, as in _Romans_, rose to _grande_? The traditional doctrine of the peroration, easily as it may be abused, is only the expression in rhetoric of the audience’s final demand and the speaker’s final answer. That demand and that answer are emotional.

Adding _Galatians_ iv, Augustine says of it:

Although the whole epistle, except in the elegant last part, is written in the plain style, nevertheless the apostle inserts a certain passage of such moving force that it must be called great even though it has no such embellishments as those just cited.... Is there here either antithesis, or subordination for climax, or rhythm in phrase, clause, or period? None the less for that there is no cooling of the great emotion with which we feel the style to glow. xx.

After quoting without further comment examples from Cyprian and Ambrose, Augustine shows (xxii, xxiii) the need of variety. More even than other forms of oratory, preaching seems to suffer from a stylistic level. No one of the three styles, least of all the third, can effectively be prolonged; the change from style to style gives relief; and subordination of what might be heightened may enhance the emotion of what must be. What must be heightened is what is to rouse the audience to action. So the test of achievement in the third style is not applause, but tears and change of life (xxiv). So also the end of all eloquence, in whatever style, is persuasion (xxv).

In the restrained style the orator persuades of truth. In the great style he persuades to action. In the elegant style is he to persuade himself that he is speaking beautifully? With such an end what have we to do? Let them seek it who glory in language, who display themselves in panegyrics and such exercises, in which the hearer is neither to be instructed nor to be moved to any action, but merely to be pleased. But let us judge this end by another end. xxv.

Thus Augustine is more explicit than Cicero in showing that the three typical styles are but three ways (xxvi) of achieving a single end, even as the three corresponding tasks, though one of them absorbs attention at a time, are but three aspects of the single task. Nor can persuasion dispense with a means beyond art, the appeal of the speaker’s life[25] (xxvii). Though the Church speaks not merely through a man, but through his office, persuasion needs for full effect his whole influence. Because his life is without shame, the preacher speaks not shamelessly (xxviii), not only with restraint and charm, but with power, to win obedience to the truth.

The historical significance of the _De doctrina christiana_, important as it is, should not obscure its value as a contribution to homiletic. The first homiletic, though one of the briefest, remains one of the most suggestive. It omits no essential; while it reminds us of the general principles of rhetoric, it emphasizes those applications to preaching which are distinctive; and it proceeds pedagogically. Though the _doctrina_ of the title refers strictly to exposition, and this is amplified and iterated as a constant necessity, Augustine includes specifically and from the start both charm and appeal, and concludes by showing emotional appeal to be the final stage of the comprehensive task of persuasion. Homiletic is an application of rhetoric long established as permanent, consistent, and in both materials and conditions fairly constant. That it is also comprehensive, demanding all three typical styles, including argument in its exposition, winning sympathy in order to urge action, varying its art[26] while holding to its single aim, is most suggestively established here in its first great monument.

Not only does Augustine forbid the arid and the tedious, not only does he insist on emotional appeal; he also vindicates for Christian eloquence the importance of charm. This was the more delicate because charm was both abused by contemporary sophists and still suspected by contemporary preachers. Augustine presents it at once frankly and with just discrimination. To make it an end in itself, he is careful to show, is indeed sophistic; but to ignore it is to forget that preaching is a form of the oratory of occasion.[27] The Areopagus speech of St. Paul,[28] though it is only summarized in _Acts_ xvii, is evidently occasional, and has clear indications of that adaptation to win sympathy which is Augustine’s interpretation of Cicero’s _delectare_. The speech on occasion, favorite form of oratory in Augustine’s time, had been conventionalized to the point of recipe. The recipes, though he knew them all, Augustine simply ignores; the field he redeems. He shows Christian preaching how to cultivate it for real harvest. History has shown no other direction of rhetoric to be so peculiarly homiletic.

Already Christian eloquence had reached conspicuous achievement in panegyric and more widely in the field of occasional oratory. The pagan sophist must look to his laurels. But these very triumphs had brought the danger of lapsing into too familiar conventions. What in pagan oratory might be no worse than pretty or merely exciting, in Christian oratory would be meretricious. To hold his difficult course, the preacher, as Augustine reminds him again and again, must at every moment steer for his message. He must never deviate. Though sophistic lost its dominance centuries ago, it has never been quite dead, and it always besets preaching. Therefore a constant concern of homiletic is to exorcise it by a valid rhetoric; and no book has ever revealed this more succinctly, more practically, or more suggestively than the _De doctrina christiana_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Reprinted by courteous permission from vol. XXII (April, 1925) of Proceedings of the (British) Classical Association, to which it was presented under the title _St Augustine and the rhetoric of Cicero_.

[2] In _Patrologia latina_ and in the Vienna _Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum_; reprinted, Missouri Lutheran Synod, St. Louis, 1882; translated (1) by Dods (M.), Edinburgh, 1872-1875 (reprinted in Schaff’s Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers), (2) by Baker (W. J. V.) and Bickersteth (C.) in _Preaching and teaching according to St. Augustine_ (Book IV only, with _De catechizandis rudibus_), London, 1907, (3) by Sister Therèse, S.N.D. (IV, with text and commentary), Washington, 1928.

To the references and abbreviations at the head of Chapter I add: Barry (Sister Inviolata), _St. Augustine the orator_, Washington, 1924 (in the Catholic University of America Patristic Studies, VI); and Christopher (J. P.), _S. Aureli Augustini ... de catechizandis rudibus_ translated with an introduction and commentary, Washington, 1926 (in the same series, VIII).

[3] For detailed analysis, see Barry.

[4] Even though the application of the text from _Ecclus._ xxxvii. 20 be questioned, the rebuke of sophistic display, whether in dialectic or in style, is none the less clear.

[5] Other allusions may be found in the passages quoted below from vi, from xiv, and from xxv.

[6] βαδιζόντων εἰς τὰς τῶν Γαλιλαίων ἐκκλησίας ἐξηγησόμενοι Ματθαῖον καὶ Λουκᾶν. Julian, _Epist._ 42, cited in Gibbon’s twenty-third chapter.

[7] ARP 51, 56. The reminiscences of Cicero are so numerous as to show a pervasive preoccupation. See J. B. Eskredge, _The influence of Cicero upon Augustine_, etc. (Chicago dissertation), 1912.

[8] E.g., _De oratore_, II. xxi. 88.

[9] The traditional maxim for the _exordium_, _reddere auditores benevolos, attentos, dociles_, as again in iv.

[10] The traditional maxim for the _narratio_.

[11] Exercitatione sive scribendi, sive dictandi, postremo etiam dicendi. Cf. the close of xxi.

[12] Thus I venture to translate _sapientes_, remembering the connotation of the word both for Augustine and for his master Cicero.

[13] So toward the close “The Christian preacher prefers to appeal rather with matter than with manner, and thinks neither that anything is said better which is not said more truly, nor that the teacher must serve words, but words the teacher.” xxviii.

[14] For this sort of analysis see ARP, Chapter v, and the terms in the index. For the more elaborate sophistical analysis see Méridier, Guignet, and the other studies of Greek fathers cited above. To suggest such further study, the Greek of the first example and the King James English of the third have been set beside. St. Augustine not only confines himself to the Latin version, but disclaims competence in Greek style.

[15] The linking iteration is characteristic of climax as practised by sophistic.

[16] Chapter xxix of Book III relegates the study of figures to _grammatica_; but there also Augustine reminds his readers that figures, without regard to books or teaching, are a natural expression of the imaginative impulse.

[17] As to this form of _memoria_ see also Chapter xxix.

[18] Docere necessitatis est, delectare suavitatis, flectere victoriæ. Or. xxi. 69, with _docere_ for the original _probare_.

[19] Ante oculos dicendo constituis (xii) recalls the _De sublimitate_, and behind that the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle. Its immediate source is doubtless Cicero.

[20] The warning is repeated where Augustine is gathering the three tasks into the final and constant idea of persuasion: “But that which is handled in the way of charm ... is not to be made an end in itself (xxv) ... nor does it seek merely to please.” Nothing is more admirable in Augustine’s exposition than this expert linking of his chain of progress.

[21] Numquid hic ornamenta et non documenta quæruntur?

[22] _Orator_, xxix. 101.

[23] Cf. xxix with the quotation from x above; and see _memoria_ in the index to ARP.

[24] For his cadences, see Barry.

[25] Aristotle, _Rhetoric_ I. ii.

[26] That the Scriptures enter all the three fields of oratory indicated by Aristotle in _Rhetoric_ I. iii, is suggested by the language of a passage in Augustine’s third book: _Non autem adserit [scriptura] nisi catholicam fidem rebus præteritis et futuris et præsentibus. Præteritorum narratio est, futurorum prænuntiatio, præsentium demonstratio_, III. x. For the last two words suggest in the context ἐπιδεικτικός, and hence δικανικός for the first phrase of the sentence and συμβουλευτικός for the second, according to the Aristotelian division. If so, Augustine has not followed Cicero’s reducing of the fields to two (ARP 47, 53).

[27] In the passage quoted above from Chapter xix, and in other places there are clear references to occasional oratory.

[28] See Norden, _Agnostos Theos, Untersuchungen zur Formengeschichte religiöser Rede_. Leipzig, 1913. But this speech, to judge from the indications of _Acts_ xvii, was as original in plan as in idea.