CHAPTER VIII

RHETORIC IN ANCIENT CRITICISM OF POETIC

A. THE PERVASIVENESS OF RHETORIC

The Aristotelian distinction of poetic from rhetoric has been sometimes blurred, sometimes ignored, by criticism. Such confusion as thus arises became more common in ancient criticism with the waning of ancient art; it was widespread in the middle age; it has reappeared many times since the Renaissance.[1] For consistent development of poetic as a technic distinct from rhetoric is beyond the occasion of most criticism, whether ancient or modern. At an ebb tide of creation especially, the average critic is likely to confine his observations to style; and there the two technics have much common ground. Even in criticism of composition we have seen often in our own time such familiar terms as unity, emphasis, and coherence restricted to their rhetorical definitions, and yet imposed in these senses on composition whose actual control was quite different. The unity of the _Ancient Mariner_, for instance, has been interpreted as the logical control of the proposition “He prayeth best who loveth best,” though surely that composition was unified quite otherwise. Or the term coherence is permitted to suggest that the progress of Burke’s speech on _Conciliation_ from paragraph to paragraph is like the progress of _Othello_ from scene to scene, though the two technics have little resemblance. Such warping of poetic has sometimes been even urged by ancient or modern schoolmasters and text-books. It has seemed thrifty to make Molière, for instance, exhibit those principles of composition which pupils must use in writing essays upon him. But even without such pedagogical perversion it is easy to think of poetic in terms of rhetoric; for rhetoric is in everybody’s head.

It was so much more a preoccupation of ancient thought that the conception of poetic as a distinct movement seems to have become less and less active. Though a few critics, even under the Empire, held the Aristotelian distinction, generally ancient poetic was more and more warped toward rhetoric. With rhetoric determining education, with even Cicero and Tacitus discussing poetic as contributory, with the later _declamatores_ habitually blending the two, with even poets yielding to the common tendency, poetic could hardly be conceived often as a distinct movement of composition. While Vergil’s art revealed a critical conception unknown to Seneca and Lucan, Horace could repeat Aristotle without following his distinctive idea. Cicero and Tacitus, best of Latin critics, naturally contemplate in poetic rather its imagery than its movement;[2] and Quintilian,[3] even more naturally, explores only its treasures available for orators. That ancient criticism never lost the Aristotelian distinction altogether appears in the anonymous and undated _De sublimitate_[4] and in a few of the many words of Dio Chrysostom;[5] but Plutarch’s poetic is indistinguishable from rhetoric.

B. CRITICISM FROM GRAMMARIANS

The overwhelming preponderance of rhetoric in ancient critical thought followed naturally from the dominance of rhetoric in education.[6] Formal schooling in poetic, what we now call primary instruction in literature, began with _grammaticus_,[7] and he was committed in advance to preparing his boys for their studies in rhetoric. With his task of inculcating correctness in reading, speaking, and writing were associated his lectures (_prælectiones_) on the poets. Though these may often, given the highly selected group of students, have done much for appreciation of literature, they can hardly have ranged far in poetic. _Grammaticus_ probably confined himself in most cases to what is known in French schools as _explication des textes_. Within its limits this is admirable; but given the age of the pupils and their specific object, it cannot often have gone beyond words and sentences into the poetic composition of the whole. Criticism _ad hoc_, the detailed study of a particular poem passage by passage, is a method not only necessary for schooling, but valuable more widely. By sheer prevalence it must always be influential; illumination must in fact have come oftener from such interpretation than from a systematic treatise on poetry. None the less it needs more correction and extension from other forms of criticism than was usually possible in the ancient world. By itself it tends toward a pedestrian analysis of diction and toward emphasis on those aspects of poetic which are available for rhetoric.

Criticism by labels, the classifying of authors by accepted adjectives, is not, unfortunately, confined either to antiquity or to grammarians. A certain amount of criticism, apparently, must always be devoted to telling people what they ought to say. But the classifying habit seems to have been especially prevalent in ancient criticism. At any rate, the labels affixed by grammarians were widely repeated. Even so discerning a critic as Quintilian thus makes his tenth book a convenient “survey.” The satisfaction of an audience in neat and recognizable characterization is given by Apuleius.

“Any speech composed by Avitus will be found everywhere so consistently perfect that Cato would not miss in it his dignity, nor Laelius his smoothness, nor Gracchus his vehemence, nor Cæsar his warmth, nor Hortensius his clear plan, nor Calvus his subtleties, nor Sallust his conciseness, nor Cicero his richness.” Apuleius, _Apologia_.

Each orator has the right label, as in a cram-book; and the same classifying neatness disposes of the poetic of Philemon.

“You who are sufficiently acquainted with his talent, hear briefly of his end. Or will you hear somewhat also of his talent? This Philemon was a poet, a writer of the Middle Comedy. He wrote pieces for the stage in the time of Menander, and in competition with him, perhaps not as an equal, but certainly as a rival. In these contests, I am sorry to say, he was often the winner. At any rate, you will find in him much that is piquant, plots neatly woven, recognitions clearly unfolded, characters adequate to the action, thoughts approved by experience, humor not too low for comedy, seriousness not involving tragedy. Seductions in his plays are rare; even legitimate loves are treated as aberrations. None the less he shows the perjured pimp, the passionate lover, the shrewd slave, the deceiving mistress, the interfering wife, the indulgent mother, the scolding uncle, the conniving crony, the bellicose soldier, not to mention greedy parasites, stingy fathers, and voluble harlots.” Apuleius, _Florida_, XVI.

Nor was the habit confined to rhetors. It was widespread in the “three styles”[8] of oratory, in the ten canonical Attic orators, in “Asianism” versus “Atticism,” in the bias of even Dionysius of Halicarnassus[9] toward classification. True, it appears generally in criticism of rhetoric, and is common enough in modern times; but in ancient criticism it amounts to a preoccupation,[10] and is more readily carried over into poetic.

Grammar in those wider reaches now comprehended in the term philology has much to contribute to the criticism of older poets. Theon, for instance, whose manual of school exercises (προγυμνάσματα[11]) has come down to us from the time of Augustus, annotated with _scholia_ the tragic and the comic poets. The tradition of the Alexandrian grammarians included, besides syntax and exegesis, textual criticism. But such criticism depends for much of its value on science little explored by the ancients; and typically it makes little contribution to poetic.[12] By no good fortune, then, “philology and poetry went hand in hand in the ancient and classical literature of Italy.”[13] The result of this companionship was not, indeed, always nor necessarily so arid and confined as the criticism of the second-century lexicographer Aulus Gellius;[14] but at most it had little range.

C. CRITICISM FROM PROFESSIONAL PUBLIC SPEAKERS

Not only did the prevalence of rhetoric make poetic generally subsidiary, but the prevalence of _declamatio_[15] in later teaching and practise tended actually to confuse the two. This rhetoric was itself largely poetic, largely an art of appeal by description. Sometimes carrying descriptive dialogue into a sort of oral fiction, it had no occasion for poetic movement. The pattern of a speech sufficed as well as another where the opportunity was less of the whole than of the parts.[16] Immediate popular oral effects were then, as now, gained rather by stinging epigrams and dramatic realizations than by any onward course. The poetic that shall win a crowd on the spot is more likely than the poetic that shall be savored by individual readers to be sensational. Sensational in fact it was commonly, to judge by examples ranging all the way from Seneca’s _Controversiæ_ well into the Christian centuries.

Even those rhetors who were not sensational in their own practise were little more likely, in a time of such preoccupations, to conceive poetic distinctively; and rhetors purveyed, among other things, literary criticism. Besides teaching and exhibiting at home, the more popular rhetors traveled as occasional orators and lecturers. Though their speeches were oftenest, of course, occasional, and, when they were rather lectures, were commonly in the fields of philosophy and ethics, still professional public speakers must have purveyed, at home and on their journeys, a good deal of the current literary criticism. Where this was incidental, it need not be taken too seriously. No device of public speaking is more persistent than the flattering of an audience by literary allusions and accepted adjectives of admiration.[17] Such passages, in ancient speeches or in modern, show merely what is regarded as the right thing to say, and are almost always limited to style. But where a rhetor develops a literary topic, even for a paragraph or two, he may be as significant as any other literary critic.

The particular rhetor might be a teacher of rhetoric primarily, or secondarily, or hardly at all. Though he hardly ranked as a philosopher,[18] yet he was an active purveyor of philosophy. An expert in public address, he professed a variety of considerable range. Occasional oratory of itself invites ranging in both emotion and thought. Conventional as he appears when considered merely as one of a numerous class, he might nevertheless be an outstanding individual; and even as a type he was at least accomplished and influential.

Apuleius, lively and daring enough in his narrative,[19] seems in the excerpts preserved from his oratory quite conventional. The _Florida_ show certain typical _encomia_, two passages of critical labels, three long pieces on philosophy, and several of those _exordia_ which traveling lecturers prepared, and still prepare, for extempore adaptation. If the Great Unknown’s _De sublimitate_[20] was a public address—and its suggestiveness is strongly oral—its author rose quite above the type without losing the typical opportunity of oral criticism. One may fancy the close of that noble appeal echoing long in the ears of a rapt audience. But without any flight of fancy one may read the possibilities of ancient oral criticism in certain of the orations of Dio of Prusa, often called Dio Chrysostom.[21]

(1). _Dio of Prusa_

Dio’s speech known as the Olympic, and having for subtitle The Primary Conception of God, opens with a proem characteristic of the form, an introduction separable, adjustable, ostensibly impromptu, but none the less following a type. A fable of the owl—occasional oratory seems inevitably to begin with a story—leads to other proverbs, to historical allusions, to the speaker’s profession of modesty, sincerity, and homeliness. “I am just come from the Getæ. Shall I tell you about this interesting people?” A rhetor’s offering the choice of theme to the audience might be merely conventional; for Dio effectively recalls it by adding: “Here at Olympia, beside your wondrous statue of the Olympian, shall I not rather speak of Zeus himself?”

So is approached a discourse upon embodiments of deity in poetry and in sculpture, a lecture carefully conducted from point to point, and delivered doubtless in these words, certainly by this plan, in more than one welcoming city. Such a prepared address needed only the adjustment of the proem to the place and the occasion.[22] The lecture itself remained substantially the same. This one makes first the following points.

The knowledge of Zeus comes through nature; men become aware of him as the nourisher of them all. To such realization is added that of poetry, of cult, and finally of the arts of painting and sculpture, not to mention the theories of the philosophers. Limiting ourselves to poetry and sculpture, let us begin (49) with Phidias, whose marvelous statue here compels our admiration. Does this statue embody deity truly?

That question was answered to the Athenians of the same generation quite differently, by a speaker less different than his conclusion, a Roman Jew of Tarsus, one Paul. Dio goes on, after an encomium of Phidias:

Phidias might well reply that it is true to tradition as that is conceived and defined by the poets (55-57), that since we yearn for a personal divine, the human body is its best expression, and that Homer too (62) made his gods human.

There follows a comparison of sculpture with poetry (70). Though this stresses unduly, perhaps, the mere range of verbal suggestion, it make none the less clearly a fundamental distinction.

“Again, besides this, the very conditions of working out a conception in sculpture impose one form for each statue, a form immovable and permanent, [yet] such as to comprehend in itself the god’s whole nature and power; but poets may easily include in their poetic many forms and all sorts of shapes, for they add such movements or repose as they think appropriate to each moment, actions too, words, and finally, I think, the illusion of time.”

So (Phidias is supposed to go on) my Zeus, embodying in a single representation the typical Greek conception (74) of the ruler of an ordered world, shows him as gentle, grave, serene, as giver, father, savior, protector, and yet does not exclude his other aspects (75). How could I represent him (78) continually hurling the thunderbolt, sending rain or stretching the rainbow, renewing battle-lust? Our art is adjusted to the immediate and clear test of actual seeing (79).

An encomium of Phidias, a _discours de circonstance_, has been made to involve two large principles of artistic theory. The first is ethical, expressing a fundamental relation of art to human life. Art, and especially poetry, is a revelation to us of what we vaguely feel to be divine; it interprets communal experience as communal vision. The second is æsthetic, deriving a difference of technic from the fundamental difference between stimulating mental images by successive verbal suggestions, visual, auditory, motor, and actually representing to the eye alone all together and all at once. While poetry ranges through successive suggestions, sculpture focuses statically by typical representation. Though it is easy to read into these principles from modern criticism more than Dio intended, they can hardly be regarded as less than penetrative and fundamental. The first, often reaffirmed in modern times and sometimes apparently rediscovered, is often implied in ancient criticism. Dio’s contribution is to formulate it explicitly, and to express it with unusual warmth. The second is clear, though less explicit, in Aristotle’s _Poetic_. It is ignored by both Horace and Plutarch.[23] As Dio’s words went down the ancient wind, so Lessing’s almost identical distinction[24] has not precluded much bland modern confusion of the arts.

More and more a moralist as his life advanced, turning from rhetor into preacher, Dio nevertheless maintains a variety reminding us that this form of oratory had great range. The prelude of his _Euboica_, extensively descriptive of simple frontier life, is almost a short story. Quite different from the conventional expatiation, which Dio elsewhere does not despise, it shows him expert not only in the theory of narrative, but also in its practise. Some of his discourses are less speeches than what we should call essays. The one on Practise in Speaking[25] is in topics, plan, and style quite conventional. The remarkable one on Greek drama is as it stands an essay in literary criticism. By the insertion of recited passages it could easily and effectively have been expanded into a lecture; but even without these it is both sustained and suggestive.

DIO CHRYSOSTOM, ORATIO LII

ÆSCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, AND EURIPIDES, OR THE BOW OF PHILOCTETES

1. [I rose early, walked, meditated, prayed, exercised, bathed, breakfasted.] 2. I chanced upon certain tragedies of the masters, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, all upon the same theme. It is that of the theft of the bow and arrows of Philoctetes—perhaps one should say the seizure. At any rate, Philoctetes was deprived of his arms by Odysseus, and himself brought to Troy, largely of his own free will, partly also by the persuasion of necessity, since he was bereft of the arms which provided at once his living on the island, his courage in such disease, and his glory. 3. Well, I feasted on the spectacle, and I reflected that even if I had been at Athens in their time, I could not have seen all three great men in competition. Some, indeed, did see the competition of the young Sophocles with the old Æschylus, and of the older Sophocles with the younger Euripides; but Euripides was quite outside of the generation of Æschylus, and competed with him seldom, if ever, in the same drama. My having all three to read together seemed a revel, and a fresh consolation for my inability [to see them].

4. Well, I imagined myself putting the plays on quite splendidly, and tried to fix my attention as a judge of the first tragic choruses. But though I had taken my oath, I could not have given a decision; nor, for all me, would any of those masters have been held inferior. The greatness of mind in Æschylus and his sense of tradition, as well as his austerity of thought and expression, seemed appropriate to tragedy and to the ancient heroic ethics—nothing contrived or glib or low. 5. Even Odysseus he introduced as shrewd and crafty in the way of that time, [a way] so far removed from the baseness of to-day that what is really traditional [in Æschylus] seems beyond those who now try to be simple and high-minded.

When Athena transforms him, nothing more is needed to keep Philoctetes in ignorance of who he is. So Homer made the story, and after him Euripides. Therefore, if some unfriendly critic should accuse Æschylus of taking no care as to how Odysseus shall be convincing without being recognized by Philoctetes, (6) his defense, I think, would be as follows. While the time was not, perhaps, so great that the character could not be sustained (i.e., through ten years), yet the disease of Philoctetes, his misery, and his having passed the interim in a desert are sufficient to make plausible his not recognizing Odysseus. For many have experienced the same lapse, some from weakness, some from misfortune. No, the chorus had no need, as in Euripides, to excuse themselves to him. 7. Both [poets] represented the chorus as composed of Lemnians. Euripides has made them at once apologize for their former neglect because for so many years they had not come to Philoctetes or helped him at all. Æschylus simply brought on the chorus—a method far more tragic as well as simpler, whereas that of Euripides is more oratorical and precise. If [dramatists] could escape all absurdities in their tragedies, perhaps there would be reason for not neglecting this; but actually they make their heralds accomplish in one day several days’ journey. 8. Now the case was not quite that none of the Lemnians came to him or gave him any care. Probably he would not have passed ten years without finding any help at all. Probably he did find it, though rarely and of no great account; and no one chose to take him in and tend him because of the loathsomeness of his disease. Euripides, forsooth, out of his own head introduces Actor, one of the Lemnians, as an acquaintance who went out to Philoctetes and often helped him.

9. Neither does it seem to me that any one can justly find fault with making [Philoctetes] narrate to the chorus, as if they did not know it, his abandonment by the Achæans and everything else that happened to him; for an unfortunate is wont to recount his mishaps often, even to those who know them in detail, and wearies those who have no need to hear his woes by telling them over and over again. Moreover the deceit of Odysseus toward Philoctetes, and the arguments by which he induces him, are not only more in character, such as befit a hero and unlike the pleas of Eurybatus or Patæcion, but also, I think, more convincing. 10. For what need was there of manifold art and device with a sick man, and a bowman at that, whose strength became useless so soon as one but stood near? And the announcing of the mishaps of the Achæans, that Agamemnon was dead, that Odysseus was to blame most disgracefully, that the army had perished utterly—all this is not only useful for putting Philoctetes in a good humor and disposing him to accept the speech of Odysseus, but is not in any wise improbable, considering the length of the campaign and what had happened not long before through the wrath of Achilles, when Hector almost went to burn the beached ships.

11. The intelligence of Euripides, that unfailing care which neither leaves anything unconvincing or unprovided nor simply uses actions but [uses them] with all force in the expression, is as it were the converse of the habit of Æschylus, being most oratorical, most rhetorical, most available for the use of debaters. At the very beginning, for instance, Odysseus has been represented in the prologue as revolving in his mind political enthymemes and at first doubtful of himself, lest while he seems to the crowd to be wise and distinguished in intelligence, he may be the opposite. 12. It is open to him to live unfretted and inactive; but his wish is to be always in deeds and dangers. The cause of this, he says, is his emulation of men goodly and noble. For these who are bent on good report and universal fame willingly undertake the greatest and most difficult toils. “Nothing is born so proud as man.” Then sapiently and precisely he discloses the plot of the drama and why he has come to Lemnos. 13. He says he has been transformed by Athena so that when he meets Philoctetes he shall not be recognized. (Euripides imitates Homer in this; for Homer had Odysseus transformed by Athena when he met not only others, but even Eumæus and Penelope.) He says an embassy is about to come from the Trojans to Philoctetes, to ask that he offer them himself and his arms in return for the kingship of Troy. [Thus Euripides] makes the action more various and invents occasions for the arguments by which, when he turns them the other way around, Odysseus seems most resourceful and most sufficient for anything.

14. He has represented Odysseus as arriving not alone, but with Diomed (Homeric this, too). All in all, as I said, through all the drama, he displays the greatest intelligence and plausibility in action, extraordinary and marvellous force in the speeches, dialogue at once sapient and natural and oratorical, and lyrics that not only please, but also strongly move to virtue.

15. Sophocles seems to be between the two, having neither the austerity and singleness of Æschylus nor the precision and sharpness and oratorical cast of Euripides, but a grave and magnificent poetic embracing all that is most tragic and most eloquent, uniting the greatest charm with sublimity and gravity. For his action he has used the best and most convincing plan, representing Odysseus as arriving with Neoptolemus, since it was fated that Troy should be taken by Neoptolemus and by Philoctetes using the bow of Hercules. [He has] Odysseus concealed, but Neoptolemus sending to Philoctetes and advising him what to do. He has made the chorus not, as Æschylus and Euripides, Lemnians, but shipmates of Odysseus and Neoptolemus.

16. The characters are marvellously grave and free. That of Odysseus is much gentler and more single than Euripides has made it; that of Neoptolemus, surpassingly single and high-bred, first when he wishes to get the better of Philoctetes not by craft and deceit, but by force and in the open, then when at the instance of Odysseus he has deceived him and got possession of the weapons. When Philoctetes becomes aware and urges a cheated man’s reproaches, Neoptolemus is so moved that he is about to give them back; and even when Odysseus intervenes, still at last he gives them, and as he gives them tries by argument to make Philoctetes go to Troy of his own free will.

17. When Philoctetes will in no wise yield nor be persuaded, but begs Neoptolemus to keep his promise of taking him back to Greece, he undertakes that and is ready to do it, till the intervention of Hercules wins the consent of Philoctetes to embark for Troy. The lyrics have not so much of the sententious and hortatory as those of Euripides, but a marvellous charm and magnificence. Not at random Aristophanes said of him: “The mouth of Sophocles is anointed with honey, as if he had licked the box.”

Conventional as this is in making the usual contrast between Æschylus and Euripides, with Sophocles as a golden mean, it defines these distinctions afresh with suggestive precision. Moreover, the essay is free from the usual preoccupation with diction. What is said on that point, though not original, is tersely subordinated. If the manuscript is complete, therefore, the close upon the quotation from Aristophanes gives a false emphasis; for the criticism as a whole is quite different from the usual comparison of style with style.

Plot, indeed, is not developed extensively as a separate item; but it is clearly implied in the treatment of characterization. The constant theme is motivation, the bringing out of character through the movement of the plot, the dramatic management of persons through interaction. Thus Dio has made his criticism singularly consistent. Instead of merely appreciating one dramatist after the other, he has made his comparison progressive. The oral criticism uttered by Greek and Roman rhetors of the Empire, we may guess from what has survived in manuscript, was not often either so sustained or so free from the bias of rhetoric. Perhaps Dio’s unusual grasp came from his missionary sense of the tradition of Hellenism.

D. PLUTARCH’S _HOW YOUTH SHOULD READ POETRY_[26]

Literary criticism has often taken direction from philosophy. In ancient criticism such a slant was habitual. Most ancient critics show definite preoccupation with some school of philosophy.[27] For example, there was a Stoic theory of style; and “the æsthetic theories of Panætius are reproduced in the first book of Cicero’s _De officiis_.”[28] Such cases are typical even to the involving of æsthetics with ethics; for ancient literary criticism, more generally and avowedly than modern, is ethical. Aristotle is almost alone in proposing for poetic principles frankly æsthetic. The general tendency of ancient criticism is to give poetic a moral color. This ethical direction of critical thought confirmed the tendency to conceive poetic in terms of rhetoric. Not only are the implications of rhetoric inevitably moral, but the theories of rhetoric associated with ancient theories of morals were often extended to include even poetic expression. Ancient poetic was thus rhetoricated partly by being moralized.

An extreme instance of this ancient habit is Plutarch’s Greek treatise of the first century, _How Youth Should Read Poetry_. Here the familiar idea that poetry is a means of ethical education is so expounded as to reveal the limits of Plutarch’s conception. He is not merely, as _grammaticus_ commenting Homer in school, offering poetry as a propædeutic to philosophy; he is repeating a narrow and commonplace æsthetic. His treatment of imitation, ignoring Aristotle’s use of that term,[29] has in mind faithfulness to fact. Ignoring also the Aristotelian idea of poetic movement, he repeats the commonplace and misleading analogy from painting[30] with a barren literalness.

“We shall still more thoroughly ground the young man, if, on introducing him to poetry, we explain to him that it is an imitative art and agent, analogous to painting. Not only must he be made acquainted with the common saying that poetry is vocal painting, and painting silent poetry, but we must also teach him that when we see a painting of a lizard, an ape, or the face of Thersites, our pleasure and surprise are occasioned, not by the beauty of the object, but by the likeness of the painting to it.... In such instances it is especially important that the young man come to understand that we do not praise the action imitated, but the art, provided the subject is treated accurately.”[31]

Poetry is pictorial in this sense not to authors whose creative bent is distinctively dramatic or narrative, but to the describers and expatiators, not to Vergil, but to Ovid.

For this narrow conception of poetic truth Plutarch’s recurring terms[32] are not merely narrow; they are distinctly rhetorical. They are the very ones commonly used by rhetoricians to describe success in _prosopopœia_,[33] or characterization according to type. That Plutarch means them so is clear in section x on characterization in Homer.

“It is worth while, in this connection, to notice the conduct of Agamemnon; for he passes Sthenelus by without noticing him, yet he does not neglect Odysseus, but answers him, ‘seeing how he was wroth, and took back his saying.’ Had he apologized to all, he would have appeared undignified and servile, and had he disdained all, arrogant and unreasonable.... It is also a good idea to take notice of the difference between the ways in which a discreet man and a pompous soothsayer addresses a crowd. Thus Calchas.... One should notice as well the differences in racial characteristics. For example, the Trojans rush ferociously to battle with savage cries, but the Greeks ‘in silence feared their captains’; for to fear officers in the presence of the enemy is the mark of heroism and obedience.... Hence foresight is Grecian and civil; rashness, barbaric and rude; the one to be emulated, the other to be avoided.”

In a word, Plutarch’s moralizing of poetic is definitely rhetorical. For the schools of philosophy generally poetic was incidental to the consideration of diction; for him it was indistinguishable in method.

E. HORACE’S _ARS POETICA_

That the unsystematic epistolary reflections of a Latin poet on poetry should for centuries have influenced criticism of poetic more than the searching analysis and consecutive synthesis of the greatest Greek philosopher has seemed strange to the point of irony. Not only was Horace quoted while Aristotle was forgotten, but even after the recovery of the _Poetic_ he was quoted still. He is quotable. He abounds in _sententiæ_; and they have a long life. Though he would have been himself the first to smile at the putting of his epistle to the Pisos beside Aristotle’s _Poetic_, he knew none the less the sort of criticism that people like. We have been often reminded that _Ars Poetica_ is neither Horace’s title nor accurately descriptive. But it is a title naturally given by grammarians who hardly conceived poetic as a distinct technic, and naturally accepted by readers who found Horace’s epigrams no less suggestive because they were detached. Certainly the epistle is not an _ars_; but certainly its criticism has enough shrewdness, lucidity, brilliancy, adaptability to the short flights of ordinary thinking on the subject, to explain all its popularity. One need not be cynical to think that the poetic of a Horace will usually be more popular than the poetic of an Aristotle.

At the risk of wronging Horace, his editors and other critics have tried to brief this epistle. Wickham,[34] for instance, finds three parts: (1) 1-118, “the original principles of poetry, unity of conception, choice of words, style of diction;” (2) 119-284, characterization in drama, the Greek practise of drama; (3) 285-end, “the two aims of poetry, the necessity of excellence.” But this is not a division at all. Wilkins,[35] admitting difficulties of sequence, even digressions and repetitions, nevertheless finds “three main sections”: (1) 1-72, unity of style and conception; (2) 73-288, application of “these general principles ... to the various kinds of poetry, and especially to the drama”; (3) 189-476, requisites for cultivating poetry, and difficulties. None of these coincides with any of Wickham’s. Plessis[36] more cautiously says: “His principal counsels are three: the importance of composition and of the harmony of the parts, the supremacy of taste, perfection of craftsmanship.” Three again, and again not the same three. Could there be clearer proof that the epistle is not logical, nor even consecutive?

Since it is in fact one of the least consecutive of Horace’s epistles, so expert a composer must have meant it to be taken, as it has been taken, not as a logical progress, but as a collection of _sententiæ_. These, whatever their particular source or sources,[37] may safely be taken as generally current in Græco-Roman literary circles. Thus they have the more significance; for Horace’s originality is hardly in conception. His contribution to criticism, like Cicero’s, is in finality of phrase. The maxims that have echoed so often down the corridors of criticism have the carrying power of simplicity.

Denique sit quodvis, simplex dumtaxat et unum (23). Lucidus ordo (41). Non satis est pulchra esse poemata; dulcia sunto (99). Si vis me flere, dolendum est Primum ipsi tibi (102). Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet (127). Difficile est proprie communia dicere (128). Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus (139). Semper ad eventum festinat et in medias res Non secus ac notas auditorem rapit (148). Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetæ, Aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere vitæ (333). Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci (343). Ut pictura poesis (361). Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non di, non concessere columnæ (372).

Commonplaces some of these must have been even in Horace’s time; but they have persisted in criticism because he stamped them.

The one that is most clearly a distinctive principle of poetic is the familiar “_Semper ad eventum festinat_,” etc. (148). The idea of so adjusting the time of the plot as to insure a significant beginning and a continuous and accelerated movement up to an issue is central in Greek drama. That Horace applies it to epic evinces no sharp discrimination of technic. _Ut pictura poesis_ (361) is not, as in Plutarch,[38] a comparison of the technic of poetry with that of painting; it merely insists that a poem, as a picture, be judged according to its kind, according to its specific object. Horace may, indeed, imply a vindication of his own poems beside those of longer reach and more sustained power; or he may be merely repeating his dominant idea of appropriateness; but in either case he is not formulating a principle of poetic. The rule of five acts (189), wherever he got it, is not vital. Though he spends more time on drama than on any other mode, though he uses Aristotle, he does not carry out the principle of dramatic movement.

The conception of characterization is clearly rhetorical,

“It will matter much whether a god speak or a hero, ripe age or the ardor of budding youth, a matron of authority or an anxious nurse, a traveling merchant or a farmer bound to his field, a Colchian or an Assyrian, a Theban or an Argive. Follow tradition, or invent what fits each character. If perchance your poem revives time-honored Achilles, let the active, touchy, stubborn, fierce hero think that laws were not made for him, and rest his claim on arms. Let Medea be cruel and unconquered, Ino tearful, Ixion faithless, Orestes gloomy.” (114-124.)

“Each time of life demands your study of its habits. As natures and years move on, you must assign to each what is appropriate. The boy who is old enough to answer when he is spoken to, and steps off firmly, yearns to play with his mates, takes offense as quickly as he lays it by, and changes from hour to hour. The beardless youth....” (156-178.)

and so on through Horace’s seven ages of man. Thus stripped of their style, these counsels might have come from any classical rhetoric. Nothing was more firmly fixed in the tradition of the schools than characterization according to age, sex, race, occupation. Such characterization by type suffices for _prosopopœia_ in school, for the fathers and sons and pirates of _declamatio_, for even the spendthrifts and slaves and parasites of Latin comedy; it does not suffice for Œdipus or Neoptolemus, for Medea or Dido. Nor is the difference merely in degree; it is in the distinctively poetic habit of creating. Poetic movement, if Horace indeed glimpses it as distinct from that of rhetoric, he does not fully define; poetic characterization he seems not to regard as distinct at all.

Indeed, most of the _Ars Poetica_ applies equally to _ars rhetorica_.

Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetæ, Aut simil et iucunda et idonea dicere vitæ (333-4).

If _oratores_ be substituted for _poetæ_ we have the familiar _docere_, _delectare_ of rhetoric, as we have it in the summary _miscuit utile dulci_ (343); and with Horace the _movere_ that remains hardly suggests a different technic. _Si vis me flere, dolendum est_ (102) will be found in Cicero and Quintilian. The counsel of congruity with which he begins, and to which he reverts again and again, is a preoccupation of ancient rhetoric. No better phrase has been found for the progress of a speech than _lucidus ordo_ (41); and the _iunctura_ (47) to which it is immediately applied is a term of _compositio_. In the thought of Horace’s circle the distinction between rhetoric and poetic as two movements, two ways of composing, seems to have been inactive. Rather Horace seems to think of composition as generally constant throughout various forms, and as involving mainly the control of conception by congruity and plan, of expression by adaptation and finish. That such ideas were salutary when _declamatio_ had begun to threaten both rhetoric and poetic, and that they are salutary still, no one should deny; but they make no contribution to the distinctive development of poetic.

Grammarians, rhetors, philosophers, men of letters seem thus to converge under the Empire toward a poetic strongly tinged with rhetoric, no longer distinct as a movement having its own technic. The inference, though not conclusive, is suggestive as an hypothesis. Less conclusive, but still suggestive, is the further inference that this habit of critical thought was intensified in the specifically Latin tradition. In sustained emotional movement the _Æneid_ is solitary; and even while it was revered, its poetic seems less influential than that of Ovid. Vergil had turned for his poetic from the newer Greek ways adopted by his countrymen to the tradition interpreted by Aristotle. That older tradition is no longer active in the poetic descending from the Roman Empire through the Holy Roman Empire.

The ancient experience with rhetoric and with poetic is seen in retrospect as typical. The theory of rhetoric as the energizing of knowledge and the humanizing of truth is explicitly the philosophy of Aristotle and implicitly that of Cicero, Tacitus, Quintilian. What the later ancient professors of rhetoric had rather in mind is the training of immediate personal effectiveness; and this theory of rhetoric as the art of the speaker is at once as old as the other and as permanent. Its name is sophistic. Aristotle deprecated it in his first chapter; St. Augustine turned his back on it at the end of the ancient world; but meantime it had been for centuries, and it has been again and again, a popular pedagogy. Further discussion of these traditions, and of such details as the persistence of classical metric after the beat of more popular stress rhythms had become insistent, is properly historical. Historical interpretation of the ancient lore of composition and of its influence in the middle ages is relegated to another volume. The expository task of this one concludes naturally with the completion of the ancient experience.

FOOT-NOTES:

[1] See D. L. Clark, _Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance_, New York, 1922 (Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature).

[2] So, e.g., does Petronius, _Satyricon_, 118.

[3] See above, page 80.

[4] See above, Chapter V. B.

[5] Section C. 1, below.

[6] To what has already appeared from the preceding chapters may be added the opinion of George Converse Fiske: “from the Hellenistic period on, and throughout the Roman world of letters, the study of rhetoric was a prerequisite for literary composition in every field.” _The Plain Style in the Scipionic Circle_, page 62 (University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, number 3, 1919).

[7] See above, page 68.

[8] See above, pages 56, 57.

[9] See above, page 102. What Alfred Croiset says of him seems true rather of the habit of his time: “questions arrêtées d’avance et toujours les mêmes; c’est dresser son signalement suivant un formulaire, qu’il s’agit simplement de remplir.” _Hist. de la litt. grecque_, V. 368.

[10] Nettleship, _Literary Criticism in Latin Antiquity_ (Lectures and Essays, Second Series).

[11] See above, page 63.

[12] See the scornful comment of Croiset, V. 358.

[13] Nettleship, _Lectures and Essays_, I. 176 (on Horace’s _Ars Poetica_).

[14] See Nettleship, op. cit., 248. Saintsbury, _Loci Critici_, 74, quotes his _Noctes Atticæ_ xvii. 10, on Vergil’s _Æneid_, III. 570.

[15] See pages 68-73, 94-97.

[16] See foot-note 50 to Chapter IV, foot-note 70 to Chapter VII.

[17] See the quotations from Apuleius in the preceding section.

[18] For the varying relations of the “second sophistic” to rhetoric on the one hand and to philosophy on the other see the introduction to H. von Arnim’s _Leben und Werke des Dio von Prusa, mit einer Einleitung, Sophistik, Rhetorik, Philosophie in ihrem Kampf um die Jugendbildung_, Berlin, 1898; and, for later periods, A. Boulanger, _Ælius Aristide et la sophistique ... au IIe siècle_, Paris, 1923; W. C. Wright, _Philostratus and Eunapius, the Lives of the Sophists_, London and New York (Loeb Library), 1922, introduction; L. Méridier, _L’influence de la seconde sophistique sur l’œuvre de Grégoire de Nysse_, Paris, 1906, chapter i.

Philostratus, _Vit. Soph._ ii (Wright, p. 34), says that Hippias of Elis discoursed (διελέγετο) on painting and sculpture.

[19] See page 221.

[20] See Chapter V. B.

[21] The definitive discussion of Dio is that of H. von Arnim cited above in foot-note 18. The latest complete edition is that of J. de Arnim, Berlin, 1893. A translation by W. E. Waters is announced for the Loeb Classical Library. Meantime Professor Waters’s translation of Oratio XII (discussed below) is printed in Volume XIV (1919-1922) of the _Colonnade_, published by the Andiron Club of New York University, 1922, pages 183-201. The translation below of Oratio LII is my own.

[22] H. von Arnim (op. cit. 171) finds manuscript evidence of several such adjustable preludes. Compare those preserved in the _Florida_ of Apuleius, e.g. page 227, above.

[23] See the following sections.

[24] For the significance of the well-known passage in the _Laokoön_, and of the psychological formulation of Lemaître, see my _College Composition_, page 183. For further discussion of this oration, see Ehemann, _Die XII Rede von Dio Chrysostom_, Kaiserslautern, 1895. See also W. A. Montgomery, _Dio Chrysostom as a Homeric Critic_, Baltimore, 1901 (Johns Hopkins dissertation).

[25] Περὶ λόγου ἀσκήσεως, Oratio XVIII, de Arnim, II, page 250.

[26] _Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat_, in the collection generally entitled _Moralia_. For English translations of the _Morals_ see the preface to F. M. Padelford’s modern translation of this particular essay, _Essays on the Study and Use of Poetry by Plutarch and Basil the Great_, New York, 1902 (Yale Studies in English, XV). Padelford has added a concise and suggestive introduction on Plutarch’s theory of poetry.

[27] This bald statement may be confirmed by the more comprehensive histories of Latin literature.

[28] G. C. Fiske, _The Plain Style in the Scipionic Circle_, University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, 3, page 62.

[29] See above, page 141.

[30] See Nettleship, _Lectures and Essays_, Second Series, page 49 (on Dionysius of Halicarnassus). For the pictorial habit of much ancient description see above, page 217, on Ovid, and compare Croiset, _Hist. de la litt. grecque_, V. pages 771 and following.

[31] III, in Padelford’s translation, which is followed in this and the other quotations.

[32] ὅμοιον, εἰκός, πρέπον, πιθανῶς. Padelford, page 24, points out their narrowness.

[33] See above, pages 71-73, and also pages 99, 218.

[34] _The Works of Horace_, Oxford, 1891, Volume II, page 384.

[35] _The Epistles of Horace_, London, 1889, page 334.

[36] _La poésie latine_, Paris, 1909, page 320.

[37] Nettleship’s hypothesis, that Horace, “writing with a Greek treatise before him, was using it for practical application to the particular circumstances of his own time,” and that the Greek treatise was probably by Neoptolemus of Parium (_Lectures and Essays_, I. 168), is rejected by Wickham (page 385).

[38] See above, section D.

TABULAR INDEX OF LATIN AND GREEK RHETORICAL TERMS

The references are to pages. The terms are also included alphabetically in the General Index, and may be explored in the indexes of the Cope and Sandys Aristotle, the Wilkins Cicero, the Rhys Roberts Dionysius, and the other editions cited in the bibliographical notes at the head of each section.

The plan is generally that of Quintilian (see pages 63-66).

The Greek terms of drama and epic may be found in the General Index and, through the tabular view of Aristotle’s _Poetic_ on pages 135-139, in the Greek index of Bywater’s edition.

I. προγυμνάσματα, 63, 68, 228 A. grammatica, 66, 68, 73, 102, 226-229, 240 1. prælectio, 63, 64, 66, 226 2. μῦθος, chria, χρεία, κατασκευή, etc., 63, 68, 72 3. pronuntiatio (see VII below) B. rhetorica, 64, 68, 71, 73, 88, 90, 94 (see sub-headings) 1. fabula, argumentum, historia, 64 2. laudatio, ἐγκώμιον; comparatio, σύγκρισις, 64, (234-238) 3. materia, 66, 69, 73, 78, 88 4. amplificatio, exaggeratio, αὔξησις, 25, 44, 55, 64, 98, 124, 127 5. ethopœia, ἠθοποιία, 68, 71, 187; prosopopœia, προσωποποιία, 71, 72, 73, 99, 218, 222, 241, 245 6. declamatio, μελέτη, 46, 48, 68-74, 87, 88, 89, 90, 94-97, 100, 101, 187, 190, 210, 218, 220, 221, 225, 229, 245, 246 (a) suasoriæ, 64, 70, 72, 73, 88, 90, 91, 218 (b) controversiæ, 62, 64, 70, 72, 73, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91-96

II. genera dicendi, 8, 14, 15, 35, 64 A. deliberativum, συμβουλευτικόν B. iudiciale, δικανικόν, 93, 100 C. demonstrativum, ἐπιδεικτικόν, 33, 130, 230-238

III. ratio dicendi A. docere, δηλῶσαι, διδασκαλία, 24, 51, 56, 95, 246 (Cicero) B. conciliare, delectare, 51-52, 58, 120; cf. ἦθος, 11, 12, 18, 50 (Cicero) C. movere, 51-52, 58, 65, 120, 246; cf. πάθος, 12, 18, 25, 32, 50 (Cicero) A′. sententiæ, 1, 45, 97, 99, 100 (Seneca) B′. divisio, 83, 97, 98, 99, 100 (Seneca) C′. colores, 97-100 (Seneca) 1. ἔκφρασις, 68, 203, 218

IV. inventio, εὕρεσις, 21, 42, 43, 47-51, 64, 65, 67, 76, 85, 100, 104, 123, 135 A. status, στάσις, 36, 49-51, 65, 67, 74-76, 77, 98 1. coniectura, status coniecturalis, στοχασμός 2. finis, status definitivus, ὅρος 3. qualitas, status generalis, ποιότης B. πίστεις, 8, 10, 46 1. ἄτεχνοι 2. ἔντεχνοι (a) ἦθος, πάθος, 50 (and see above under III) (b) τόποι, 14, 15, 20; sedes argumentorum, 51, 74 (c) confirmatio (see below under V)

V. dispositio, collocatio, τάξις, οἰκονομία, 22, 33, 34, 42, 47, 52, 64, 65, 77, 85, 100, 103, 104, 107, 123, 135 (cf. σύνταξις, 127) A. exordium, προοίμιον, 33, 47, 53, 65, 76, 78, 95 B. propositio, πρόθεσις; partitio, 34, 65 C. narratio, διήγησις, 34, 35, 47, 53, 65, 68, 76, 95, 99 D. confirmatio, ἀπόδειξις, 65 (for sub-headings see Quintilian V) 1. ἐνθύμημα, 36 2. παράδειγμα, 20, 36 E. refutatio, λύσις, 20, 65 1. petitio principii, post hoc, reductio ad absurdum, 20 2. altercatio, 65 F. peroratio, ἐπίλογος, 36, 65

VI. elocutio, λέξις, 21-33, 42, 44, 53-55, 56, 64, 78-82, 100, 102-131 A. genera, 56, 58, 59 1. tenue 2. medium 3. grande (a) sublimitas, ὕψος, 122-131 (cf. δίαρμα _vs._ αὔξησις, 127) B. electio, ἐκλογή, 25, 53, 65, 103, 104 1. proprietas, 53 2. perspicuitas, 24, 53 3. ornatus (a) imagines, φαντασίαι, 23, 24, 81, 127 (b) tropi, τρόποι (for classification of tropes see Quintilian VIII. vi) (c) figuræ, σχήματα (for classification of figures see Quintilian IX) C. compositio, σύνθεσις, 25-33, 53, 58-61, 65, 67, 79, 83, 102-122, 125, 202, 210, 246 1. numerus, ῥυθμός, 25-31, 56, 58-61 (a) periodus, ambitus, circuitus, περίοδος, 27-30, 60 (1) membra, κῶλα, 28, 60 (2) incisa, κόμματα, 28, 60 (b) clausula, 27, 28, 60, 61, 79 2. decorum, τὸ πρέπον, 25, 32, 119, 241 3. ἐνέργεια, 31, 32 4. ἁρμονίαι: αὐστηρά, γλαφυρά, εὔκρατος, 119 D. facilitas, 66, 79, 80, 81, 95 1. cogitatio, meditatio, 73, 80, 83 2. silva, 80

VII. pronuntiatio, actio, ὑπόκρισις, 21-24, 42, 48, 53, 64, 67

VIII. memoria, μνήμη, 42, 53, 66, 67, 82-84, 90, 95

GENERAL INDEX

[The references are to pages. A parenthesis indicates that the Latin or Greek term occurs in the original of the translation or summary on that page.]

Achilles Tatius, 222

acting, 22, 23, 73, 147, 156, 173, 175, 176, 187, 191

_actio_, (21-24), 42, 64, 67, (156), (173), (174)

action, 140, 141, 145, 147, 151, 161, 184, 186, 192

adaptation, 8, 17, 18, 19, 20, 24, 32, 53, 66, 72, 73, 74, 76, 104, 114, 115, 119, 245, 246

_Æneid_, 192, 195, 197-215, 216, 219, 225, 241, 247

Æschylus, 169, 171, 177, 180, 219, 238

ἀηδής, 29

Alcidamas, 82

Alexandrian, 218, 221, 222, 228

allegory, 180, 218, 221

alliteration, 216

allusion, 204, 212, 213

_altercatio_, 65

Ammon, G., 104

amplification, 25, 39, 44, 55, 64, 98, 124, 127, 173, 192, 201, 209, 217, 220, 222

ἀναγκαῖος, (150), (151), (152), (155) (see causation)

ἀναγνώρισις, (145), 152, 156 (see recognition)

analogy, 20

ἀνθηρός, 119

antithesis, 31

ἀπόδειξις, (_confirmatio_), 65

Apollonius, 207, 215

appropriateness, 24, 119, 145, 245, 246 (see adaptation)

_a priori_, 20

Apuleius, 221-223, 227-228, 230, 231, 232

Archilochus, 124

argument, 36, 65, 128

_argumentum_, 64

Aristotle, _Rhetoric_, 2, 4, 5, 6-36, 38, 40, 43, 58, 59, 67, 79, 83, 100, 112, 120, 126, 129, 130, 131, 247; _Poetic_, 112, 132-168, 172, 175, 176, 179, 180, 196, 198, 225, 234, 240, 242, 245, 247

ἁρμονία, 26

Arnim, H. von, 80, 230, 232

_Ars Poetica_ (Horace), 210, 225, 234, 242-247

articulation, 204, 205, 219

artificiality, 71, 211, 217

ἄσκησις, 185, 234

Attic, 61, 228

audience, 11, 12, 17-20, 23, 164, 171, 174, 184, 191, 192

Augustine, St., 75, 97, 131, 247

Aulus Gellius, 229

αὔξησις (_amplificatio_), 127

αὐστηρός, 119

Bacchylides, 124

Bacon, 128

balance, 31, 58

Baldwin, C. S., 8, 30, 107, 114, 234

Beowulf, 192, 195, 197

Blair, 4

Boissier, 87

Bornecque, H., 37, 87, 89, 90, 97, 98, 99, 100

Boulanger, A., 230

Browning, 117, 127

Brunetière, 167, 179, 214

Butcher, S. H., 132, 135, 141, 142, 153

Bywater, I., 132, 134, 135, 140, 146, 147, 153, 155, 156, 157, 166

Cadence, 27, 28, 59-61, 79

Cæcilius of Calacte, 105

Capperonier, 74

Carlyle, 119

catharsis, 145, 147, 152, 154, 155, 164

causation in drama, 148-152, 154, 155, 197, 207

Causeret, C., 38

character in an audience, 18, 19

characterization in oratory, 71, 72, 76, 98, 99; in drama, 134, 141, 145, 148, 154-156, 161, 163, 174, 176-180, 184, 187, 188, 189, 191, 239; in Vergil, 207-211; in Ovid, 219; in Apuleius, 222; by types, 210-211 (see _prosopopœia_)

Chariton, 222

Chaucer, 107, 176, 218

Chickering, E. C., 186, 187

chorus, 157, 173, 174-176, 186

_chria_, 63, 68, 78

Cicero, 5, 37-61, 75, 78, 87, 88, 90, 103, 105, 109, 120, 124, 127, 191, 207, 225, 239, 244, 246, 247

Clark, D. L., 224

clauses, 21, 28-31, 58, 60, 114, 118, 119, 120

_clausula_, 27, (28), 60, 61, 79

close (see conclusion)

_cogitatio_, 80, 83

coherence (see consecutiveness)

Colin, l’Abbé, 37, 59

_collocatio_ (see _dispositio_)

_colores_, 97, 98, 99, 100

comedy, 140, 144; —Latin, 188-192; —New, 188, 190

communal, 170-172, 174-176, 177, 192-196, 233

_comparatio_, 64

comparison and parallel, 64, 234-238

complication, of plot, 156

_compositio_, (25-33), 53, (58-61), 65, 67, 79, 83, (102-122), (124), 125, (173), (202), (210), 246

_conciliare_ (one of the three tasks of oratory), 51-52, 58, 65

conclusion, 146, 147, 150, 152, 158, 160, 161, 164, 165, 181, 184, 185, 194, 207, 244 (see peroration, καταστροφή)

concrete for vividness, 12, 20, 22, 24, 35, 40, 81, 128, 129, 194, 202, 212-213

_confirmatio_, 65

_coniectura_ (_status coniecturalis_, see _status_)

connotation, 173, 198, 203, 212-213 (see allusion, concrete, rhythm, verse)

consecutiveness, 34, 52, 77, 78, 98, 127, 134, 135, 149, 150, 152, 160-162, 182, 184, 185, 187, 194, 200, 202, 203, 205, 219, 221, 222, 223, 229, 244, 246

consistency, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 200, 201, 204

continuity (see consecutiveness)

_controversiæ_, 62, 64, 70, 72, 73, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91-94, 95, 96

convention, 217-218, 234

Cooper, Lane, 122, 132, 189

Cope, E. M., 6, 7, 10, 19

correlation, 6, 9, 11, 14, 16, 40, 68

creation, 141, 142, 143, 151, 159, 164, 194-195, 209, 215, 220, 246

crisis, 2, 154, 158, 160, 161, 164, 204, 209 (see περιπέτεια)

criticism, 56, 102, 130, 224-247; —by classification, 227, 228; —of texts, 228

Croce, B., 167

Croiset, A., 221, 228, 240

Croll, M. W., 27, 61

Cruttwell, C. T., 91, 216, 218, 219

Dance, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 158, 175, 176

Dante, 199, 207, 208

debate, 9, 65, 100

_declamatio_, 46, 48, 64, 67, 68-73, 74, 87, 88, 89, 90, 94-97, 100, 101, 187, 190, 210, 218, 220, 221, 225, 229, 245, 246

definition (see _status_)

deliberative oratory, 8, 14, 15, 16, 18, 35, 36, 64, 90, 210

delivery in oratory, 21, 22, 23, 24, 48, 53, 58, 63, 66; —in drama, 156, 173, 174, 187

_demonstrativus_, 64

Demosthenes, 30, 61, 118, 121, 124, 126, 127, 128

_dénoûment_ (see solution)

De Quincey, T., 4

description, 68, 98, 194, 201-203, 212, 217, 218, 220, 221, 222, 229, 234, 241

_De Sublimitate_, 4, 122-131

_deus ex machina_, 156, 201

dialectic (see logic)

dialogue, 40, 135, 139, 187, 209, 222

διάνοια, 126 (145)

δίαρμα, 127

dictation, 80

diction, 1, 2, 21-33, 57, 145, 148, 157, 172-174, 211-213, 215 (see style)

διήγησις (_narratio_), (33), 34, 35, 65

δικανικός (_iudicialis_), 8, 15, 35, 64

Dio Chrysostom, or Dio of Prusa, 225, 230-239

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 21, 102-122, 125, 130, 131, 198, 228

discovery (see recognition)

_dispositio_, 21, 33, 34, 42, 47, 52, 64, 65, 66, 77, 85, 100, 103, 104, 123, 135

dithyramb, 140, 144

_divisio_, 83, 97, 98, 99, 100

_docere_ (one of the three tasks of oratory), 51, 56, 65, 95, 246

Donnelly, F. P., 76

Doxopater, 105

drama, 133-192, 205-207, 208, 215, 229, 245

_dramatis personæ_ (see _personæ_)

Economy, 181, 185, 202, 209

_écrivains d’idées et écrivains d’images_, 4, 134

Egger, M., 103

εἰκός, (150), (151), (152), (155), 241

ἐκλογή (_electio_), 25, 65, 103

ἔκφρασις, 68, 203, 218

elaboration, 211-212

electio, 25, 53, 65, 67, 103, 104

Elizabethan drama, 141, 153, 162, 179

_elocutio_, 21, 42, 44, 53-55, 56, 64, 65, 67, 78-82, 100, 102-131

emotion, 3, 13, 18, 19, 32, 35, 52, 53, 124, 125, 126, 128, 140, 141, 145, 147, 148, 163, 165, 175, 210

emphasis, 100, 200, 201, 202, 208, 222; —of sentences, 113-114

ἔμπρακτος, 128

ἐναλήθης, 128

ἐνέργεια, 31

enhancing, 17, 44, 147, 173, 207 (see style)

ἐνθύμημα, 36

enthymeme, 7, 9, 13, 20, 31, 36, 65

ἐπεισοδιώδης, (152)

epic, 134, 135, 139, 140, 144, 146, 157, 158, 168, 192-198, 200, 201, 204, 205, 207, 210, 211, 213-215, 244

ἐπιδεικτικός (_demonstrativus_), 8, 14, 33, 35, 64, 130

ἐπίλογος (_peroratio_), 36, 65

episodic, 152

ethics (see morals)

_ethopœia_, 68, 71

εὔκρατος, 119

εὐμαθής, 27

euphony, 24, 64, 65

εὕρεσις (_inventio_), 21, 64, 65

Euripides, 3, 128, 156, 169, 171, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 184, 185, 207, 238

εὐσύνοπτος, 28, 120

Evanthius, 191

_Everyman_, 180

exordium, 33, 47, 53, 65, 76, 78

extempore, 67, 69, 80, 81, 83, 95

ἠθοποιία, 68, 71, 187

ἦθος, 11, (13), 18, 25, 32, 50, 58, 120, 141

Fable, 20, 63, 72

_fabula_, 64

_facilitas_, 66, 79, 81

fairy mistress legend, 177-178

Fierville, Ch., 63

fiction in oratorical narrative, 72, 99, 100, 220, 222, 229

figures, 24, 31, 124, 128, 129, 201, 251. VI. B. (see concrete)

_finis_ (_status definitivus_, see _status_)

Fiske, G. C., 226, 239

Flickinger, R. C., 169

folklore (see legend)

forensic, 8, 14, 17, 18, 35, 36, 60, 64, 71, 90, 100

forms of discourse, 4

forms of literature, 3, 5, 167

Fouqué, 178

Fowler, W. W., 208

French classical tragedy, 162, 177, 178, 181

Froissart, 29

Fronto, 79, 94

_Genus tenue_, _genus medium_, _genus grande_, 56-59

γλαφυρός, 119

Glover, T. R., 200, 202

γνώμη, 20

Goodell, T. D., 169, 182

Gorgias, 58, 101

grammar, 66, 226-229

_grammatica_, 66, 68, (226-229)

_grammaticus_, 66, 73, 102, 226, 240

γραφικός, 33

Greek Romances, 221-223

Greek tragedy, 168-186

Gummere, F. B., 193

Haigh, A. E., 169

Haines, C. R., 94

Hardy, T., 146

harmony, 58, 67, 111, 113, 119, 174, 213 (see rhythm, _clausula_)

Harrington, K. P., 217

Harris, Ella I., 186

Havell, H. L., 122

Heinze, Richard, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 206, 208, 209, 210, 218, 219

Heliodorus, 222

Hellenistic, 201, 206, 215 (see Alexandrian)

Hendrickson, G. L., 38, 51, 56

_Herennium, Rhetorica ad_, 37, 63, 75

Hermogenes, 68, 72, 75

hero, tragic, 154-155, 176-177, 178; —epic, 196, 208-209

Herodotus, 27, 29, 30, 58, 106, 150

hiatus, 58, 119

history and oratory, 57, 66; —and poetry, 1, 2, 150, 157, 165

Homer, 105, 108, 115, 119, 124, 126, 135, 158, 192, 193, 195-198, 199, 200, 202-204, 208, 209, 210, 213-215, 240

Horace (see _Ars Poetica_)

Hubbell, H. M., 38, 103

Hugo, V., 30, 162

Hyperides, 124, 128

Iamblichus, 222

Ibsen, H., 163, 170

idealizing, 144, 174, 175, 186

idiom, 25, 53, 54, 110

imagery, 20, 24, 31, 35, 81, 128, 129, 134, 194, 202, 212, 213 (see concrete)

imaginative composition, 1, 2, 3, 40, 70, 71, 72, 98, 100, 124, 125, 126, 128, 134, 135, 139, 140-223, 232-247; —diction, 24, 35, 129 (see concrete, style)

_imago_ (φαντασία), 81

imitation for study, 48, 66, 68, 69, 80, 102; —as a principle of drama, 139, 140, 141, 142, 147, 149, 150, 159, 164; —in epic, 194, 204, 213-215; —as conceived by Plutarch, 240

_incisum_, 60

intensification, 127, 144, 146, 158, 159, 163, 183, 197

interaction, 180, 187, 203, 239

interpretation, 151, 157, 161, 163-166, 184, 214

introduction (see exordium)

_inventio_, 21, 42, 43, 47-51, 64, 65, 67, 76, 85, 100, 104, 123, 135

investigation (see _inventio_)

Isæus, 95, 96

Isocrates, 3, 33, 58, 82, 103, 120, 121, 130

Jebb, R. C., 6, 24, 28

Jerome, St., 96

John of Salisbury, 68

Julius Pollux, 189

_iunctura_, 246

Juvenal, 96

κάθαρσις (145)

καλόν, τὸ, 114

καταστροφή, 184 (see conclusion)

Kittredge, G. L., 193

Knapp, C., 189, 191

Lallier, R., 188, 189

Laurand, L., 37

legend, 194-195

Legrand, P. E., 188

Lessing (_Laokoön_), 32, 202, 234

LeJay, P., 200, 206

λεκτικός, 26

length of sentences and of clauses, 114

Leo, F., 188

Lewis, C. M., 116-118

λέξις (_elocutio_), 21-33, 64, 65, (145)

λῆμμα, 128

logic, 7, 8, 13, 109, 110, 148

logical exclusion, 20

λογογράφος, 33

“Longinus on the Sublime,” 102, 122-131, 219, 225, 231

loose sentence, 27-29

Lucan, 1, 2, 225

Lucian, 2, 3, 74, 130

_ludus_, 96

λύσις (_refutatio_), 20, 65

Lysias, 73, 124

Mackail, J. W., 199, 204, 212

_materia_, 66, 69, 73, 78, 88

material and art, 10, 11, 12, 49, 113, 146, 213-214

Matthews, Brander, 169, 179, 182

maxims, 20, 63

_meditatio_, 73 (see _cogitatio_)

μελέτη, 74 (see _declamatio_)

melody, 26, 114, 141, 145 (see music)

μελοποιία, (145)

_membrum_, 60

_memoria_, 21, 42, 53, 64, 66, 67, 82-84, 90, (95)

memory, 28, 69 (see _memoria_)

Menander, 188, 190

_mensio_, 58

_mensura_, 58

Méridier, L., 230

messenger in Greek tragedy, 173, 183-184

metaphor, 24, 31, 32, 124, 157 (see figure, imagery)

meters in prose, 26, 27, 59, 60, 118, 121, 140

Michaut, G., 189, 191

Miller, F. J., 186, 216

Mill’s Canons, 20

Milton, 116, 122, 130, 158, 170, 195, 197, 198, 200, 207, 214

mime, 135, 139, 140

μίμησις, 142, (144), (145), (148), 166 (see imitation in drama, in epic)

μιμητικός, 142

μνήμη, 21, 64 (see _memoria_)

_modus motorius_, 191

_modus statarius_, 191

Montgomery, W. A., 234

Moody, William Vaughn, 177

moral appeal, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 32, 50, 51, 52, 148, 195, 200, 205, 233

morals in literary criticism, 239, 240, 242

Morgan, M. H., 189

motivation, 154, 155, 164, 184, 191, 201, 207, 220, 239

movement, 144, 149, 158-162, 165, 172, 191, 220, 222, 229, 239, 240, 246 (see consecutiveness, sentence-movement)

_movere_ (one of the three tasks of oratory), 51, 52, 58, 65

Murray, Gilbert, 169, 175, 181, 183

μῦθος (68, 72, see legend, myth)

music, 26, 111, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 148, 158, 174, 175

myth, 68, 72, 176-178, 195, 216, 218, 221

Nageotte, E., 212

_narratio_, 35, 47, 53, 65, 68, 76, 99

narrative, 30, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 157-158, 167, 168, 173, 183, 192-223, 234 (see epic)

Nassal, F., 38, 103, 105

Nettleship, H., 200, 205, 221, 228, 229, 240, 243

_Nibelungenlied_, 192

νόημα, 127

νόησις, 126

_numerus_, 56, 59

Occasional oratory, 8, 14, 33, 35, 53, 56, 64, 100, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234

ὄγκος, 25

οἰκονομία, 103, 107

ὅμοιος, 241

onomatopœia, 116

_orbis doctrinæ_, 68

order (see consecutiveness, movement)

originality, 213-215

ὅρος (_finis_), 65

Ovid, 186, 203, 207, 209, 210, 216-220, 221, 241, 247

Owen, S. G., 216, 218, 219

ὄψις (145)

Padelford, F. M., 239, 241

painting, 143, 144, 240, 241, 244

πάθος, 12, 18, 25, 32, 50, 58, 120, 141, 153

panegyric (see occasional oratory)

παράδειγμα, 20, 36

parts of a play, 153; —of a speech, 33-35, 47, 65, 76-77, 95, 97; —of rhetoric, 21, 22, 42, 66, 85, 100, 107

Patterson, W. M., 27, 61

Paul, St., 96, 232

period, 27-30, 60, 83, 104, 119, 120, 135

περίοδος, 27-30

περίοπτος, 120

περιπέτεια, 2, (145), 152, 154 (see reversal)

peripety (see reversal)

peroration, 33, 36, 65, 77

_personæ_, 40, 41, 72, 99, (148), 151, (154), (171), 176-180, 187, 188, 189, 201, 208

personality, 5, 12, 85, 100, 130

persuasion, 7, 8, 10, 17, 20, 21, 26, 51, 77, 92, 126

Peterson, W., 63, 87

_petitio principii_, 20

Petronius, 89, 225

Philodemus, 18

Philostratus, 96, 230

πιθανός, 10, 241

Pindar, 120, 124

πίστις, 65; πίστεις ἄτεχνοι—ἔντεχνοι, 8, 10 (46)

pitch, 22, 114

pity and fear, 145, 152, 154, 164 (see catharsis)

plan, 77, 78, 80, 81, 83, 197, 205-206 (see plot)

Plato, 40, 41, 118, 121, 124, 140

Plautus, 188-189, 192

Plessis, F., 243

Pliny, 93, 94-96

plot, 145, 148-158, 163, 179-186, 187, 191, 205-206, 239

Plotinus, 139

Plutarch, 190, 210, 225, 234, 239-242, 244

poetic, 1-5, 132-247; —in rhetoric, 100, 125-126, 229

poetic justice, 164-165

poetry and oratory, 126, 127, 173

poetry and sculpture, 232-234 (see painting)

poetry in prose, 1, 2, 31, 66, 70, 128

ποιητής (151), (166), (195)

ποιητικός, 1, 139, 141, (151)

ποιότης (_qualitas_), 65

Polybius, 2, 3

_post hoc_, 20

Pound, Louise, 193

_prælectio_, 63, 64, 66, 226

πρᾶξις, 141, (145)

preparation, dramatic, 205-206

πρέπον, 119, 241

Price, T. R., 202

Prickard, A. O., 122

προγυμνάσματα, 63, 68, 228

πρόθεσις (proposition), (34)

prologue, 180, 186, 191

_pronuntiatio_, 21-24, 48, 53, 67

proof, 7, 33, 65, 77

προοίμιον, 65

proposition, 34

_prosopopœia_, 71, 72, 73, 99, 218, 222, 241, 245

προσωποποιία, 71 (see _prosopopœia_)

_Quæstio_, 98

_qualitas_ (_status generalis_, see _status_)

Quintilian, 1, 5, 58, 61, 62-87, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 99, 101, 102, 127, 131, 225, 227, 246, 247

Racine, 170

reading aloud, 66, 80

rebuttal (see refutation)

recognition in tragedy, 145, 152, 153, 156, 158

recurrence, 26, 205, 216-217

_reductio ad absurdum_, 20

_refutatio_, 65

refutation, 20, 53, 65, 77, 83

representation, 134, 140, 141, 142, 147, 158, 164, 174, 233

reversal (peripety), 145, 152, 153, 154, 160, 165, 206

revision, 61, 66, 122, 203, 212

rhetor, 64, 66, 68, 71, 73, 88, 90, 94, 229-230

rhetoric, definition, 1-10, 41, 44-47, 100-101, 134, 145; —relations, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 40, 44, 45; —scope, 41, 44-47, 54, 85, 86, 90; —three fields, 8, 47; —three tasks, 51; —in poetic, 187, 206, 209-212, 220, 222, 224, 225, 227, 240-242, 245-247

rhythm, 2, 25-31, 58-61, 67, 79, 83, 104, 108, 114, 118, 119, 120, 140, 144, 147, 173, 174, 198

ritual, 171, 212

Roberts, W. Rhys, 103, 104, 108, 122, 130

_Roland, Chanson de_, 192

romantic, 162, 181, 185, 208

Sagas, 192, 198

Sainte-Beuve, 158, 199, 200, 202

salience (see emphasis)

_sapientia_, 54

Sandys, J. E., 6, 37, 56, 58, 61, 63

Sappho, 120, 126

scenario, 156

scenery, 148, 174

scenes, 134, 150, 152, 161-165

Schevill, R., 218

sculpture and poetry, 143, 232-234

_sedes argumentorum_, 51, 74

Sellar, W. Y., 200, 209, 211, 216

Seneca (rhetor), 62, 71, 87, 89-101, 225, 229

Seneca (dramatist), 186-188

sensational, 92, 221, 222, 223, 229

sentence-movement, 21-33, 53, 58-61, 65, 67, 79, 83, 102-122, 202, 210, 213

_sententia_, 1, 45, 97, 99, 100 (229), 242, 243

sequence (see consecutiveness)

serious (of dramatic theme), 144, 146, 149

Shakspere, 117, 128, 155, 162, 173, 181, 182, 185, 203, 214, 218

Shelley, 177, 219

significance, 126, 146, 151, 158, 160, 163

_silva_, 80

simplicity, 197-198

soliloquy, 218, 220

solution, 156 (see conclusion)

song, 145, 147 (see music)

Sophistic, 101, 230, 247

Sophocles, 124, 156, 159-161, 169, 171, 178, 179, 180, 181, 185, 238

sound, connotation of, 115-118

speaking (see delivery, writing and speaking)

spectacle, 145, 174

σπουδαῖος (144), 146

stanza, 216-217

στάσις, 36, 65 (see _status_)

statement of facts, 33, 68, 77

_status_, 36, 49-51, 65, 67, 74-76, 77, 98

Stevenson, R. L. (_Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature_), 107, 109, 115, 118

Stoic, 210, 239

στοχασμός (_coniectura_), 65

Strabo, 3

style, 1, 2, 21-33, 39, 44, 53-61, 65, 67, 78-82, 100, 102-131, 173, 187, 194, 197-198, 211-213, 216, 224, 230

_suasoriæ_, 64, 70, 72, 73, 88, 90, 91, 218

_sublimitas_, 103, 122, 123

suggestion, 141, 142, 147, 158, 232, 233 (see connotation)

σύγκρισις, (238)

συμβουλευτικός (_deliberativus_), 8, 14, 15, 35, 64

symbolism, 176, 178

σύνθεσις, 25, (58-61), 65, 103, (202), (210), (see _compositio_)

σύνταξις, 127

σύστασις (145), 155 (see plot)

syllogism, 7, 9, 13

σχῆμα, 25

Tacitus, 2, 87-89, 90, 91, 94, 103, 225

Tasso, 195, 214

τάξις (_dispositio_), 21, 22, 33, 64, 65

Terence, 188-191

theater, Greek, 172, 174

Theon, 228

Thrasymachus, 58

three fields of oratory, 14-15, 130

three styles, 56, 57-59, 228

Thucydides, 2, 118, 120

time in drama, 149, 150, 157, 160-162, 182; —in epic, 199, 204

τόποι, _loci communes_, _sedes argumentorum_, 14, 15, 20

tradition, 174, 177, 194, 195, 199, 212, 215

tragedy, 140, 142, 144-157, 159-161, 168-188

transition, 202, 219

transposition in sentences, 113-114

Tyrrell, R. Y., 200, 204

Unity, 127, 149, 150, 151, 157, 158, 161-162, 180-185, 197, 205-206

ὑπόκρισις, 21-24, 64, (156), (173), (see _actio_)

usage, 110

ὕψος, 122, 126

Valmaggi, L., 81

VanHook, L., 82, 169

variety, 59, 60, 104, 114, 115, 119, 158, 173, 221, 222

Vergil (see _Æneid_)

verse, dramatic, 173; —epic, 198 (see meter)

Villani, 29

Walden, J. W. H., 90, 97

Waters, W. E., 231

Watson, J. S., 37, 63, 74

Weil, H., 110

Welldon, J. E. C., 6, 10, 23, 24

Wickham, E. C., 243

Wilkins, A. S., 37, 42, 43, 63, 243

Wolff, S. L., 222

Woodberry, G. E., 199, 208, 212, 213

Wright, W. C., 230

writing and speaking, 23, 32, 33, 44, 66, 69, 70, 72, 81, 82-84

φαντασία, 23, 127

φύσις, 142

χρεία, 63, 68, 78

ψυχρός, 25