Ancient Rhetoric: From Aristotle to Philostratus

293 Pages·2017·2.13 MB·English

by  Thomas Habinek

Translated and Edited by
Thomas Habinek

ANCIENT RHETORIC
From Aristotle to Philostratus
Contents
Introduction
ANCIENT RHETORIC
WHY STUDY RHETORIC?
from
Cicero, On the Orator, Book 1
WHAT IS RHETORIC?
from
Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book 1
Quintilian, Oratorical Instruction, Book 2
THE SYSTEM OF RHETORIC
from
Aristotle, Rhetoric, Books 1, 2 and 3
INVENTION OR DISCOVERY OF ARGUMENTS
from
Rhetoric to Herennius, Book 1
ARRANGEMENT
from
Cicero, On Invention, Book 1
STYLE
from
Rhetoric to Herennius, Book 4
MEMORY
from
Rhetoric to Herennius, Book 3
Quintilian, Oratorical Instruction, Book 11
DELIVERY
from
Quintilian, Oratorical Instruction, Books 6 and 11
RHETORIC AND COGNITION
from
Cicero, On the Orator, Book 3
Quintilian, Oratorical Instruction, Books 8 and 9
RHETORICAL ORNAMENT
from
Cicero, On the Orator, Book 3
THE LIFE OF THE ORATOR
from
Quintilian, Oratorical Instruction, Book 2
Cicero, Brutus
Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, Book 1
Notes
Chronology
Further Reading
Glossary
Follow Penguin
PENGUIN CLASSICS
ANCIENT RHETORIC
FROM ARISTOTLE TO PHILOSTRATUS
THOMAS HABINEK is Professor of Classics at the University of Southern
California. He has published extensively on Roman literature and culture, Greek
and Roman rhetoric, and the afterlife of classical thought. His books include The
Politics of Latin Literature (1998), The World of Roman Song (2005), Ancient
Rhetoric and Oratory (2005), and Cicero: On Living and Dying Well (2011).
Introduction
Classical rhetoric is one of the earliest and best-attested versions of what is today
sometimes referred to as media studies. Although the ancient rhetoricians were
chiefly concerned with the production and analysis of public oratory, whether in
the courtroom, in the legislature or on ceremonial occasions, the techniques they
developed were considered applicable to virtually all communicative systems,
including the visual and plastic arts, music, writing and scientific discourse.
According to the two most influential definitions from antiquity, rhetoric was
either the art of finding in any given context the most effective means of
persuasion or the art of speaking well, with ‘well’ implying the moral, logical,
pragmatic and aesthetic aspects of communication. Rhetoric considered – and
fostered – the interplay between artist, audience and message in specific
contexts.
Rhetoric came into being as a technical discourse due to the high value placed
on oral communication, persuasion and deliberation in the emerging city-states
of the ancient Mediterranean world. New frameworks for collective decision-
making, as well as the substitution of formal legal procedures for violent conflict
resolution, required participants who could clearly articulate issues for others
and move members of an audience to decisive action, even when their individual
or family well-being was not at stake. In addition, the expansion of political and
cultural communities beyond kinship networks, and the persistence of such
communities over time, required the articulation of unifying ideals and cultural
memories through formal procedures of praise, blame and recollection,
responsibility for which gradually passed from priests and poets to orators and
statesmen.
The earliest teachers of rhetoric built their instructional system on the
successful strategies of communication they encountered in the practice of
speakers and writers in their midst. In turn, the training they provided generated
certain expectations among the informed members of political, judicial and
ceremonial audiences. The teachers of rhetoric thus created a kind of feedback
loop whereby the more effectively they taught, the greater the need for their
continued instruction. As a result, the production of guidebooks for students of
rhetoric took on something of a life of its own, starting (probably) in the late
fifth century BCE and continuing through and beyond the end of classical
antiquity. No two handbooks of rhetoric contained exactly the same set of
guidelines, as writers sought to differentiate themselves from their rivals and
predecessors without straying too far from standard topics and approaches.
The present volume attempts to recreate an idealized version of classical
rhetoric through direct quotation of the leading ancient authors on the subject
without giving pride of place to any one text or approach. Treatises translated
here include works originally written in Greek as well as Latin, dating from the
fourth century BCE to the third century CE. The reader will note occasional
differences in definitions of terms or handling of topics between one author and
another. Inclusion of such variation is intentional, as it conveys a sense of the
fluid and sometimes controversial nature of rhetorical instruction. The works
presented here also vary in historical context and in the type of oratory they refer
to, from the deliberative speeches of the Athenian democracy, to the judicial
orations that played a key role in the political and legal system of the Roman
Republic, to the display speeches of the so-called sophists who travelled from
city to city during the heyday of the Roman Empire. The adaptability of classical
rhetoric to changing political and social circumstances in the ancient world
anticipates its continued revival and reuse in the centuries after the end of
antiquity.
The selections translated in this volume are organized not in chronological
order of composition, but according to the logic of instruction that characterized
ancient training in rhetoric: first, an exhortation to the study of the field,
followed by a set of possible definitions; an overview of the system; and
separate sections on what came to be the five canonical tasks of the orator
(invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery). At this point, the ancient
model is set aside, and three additional sections address aspects of classical
rhetoric that cut across the ancient divisions but have proven to be of interest to
subsequent students. These include a brief section on the underlying model of
human cognition that informs a great deal of rhetorical teaching, especially on
the part of Roman authors; a lengthier section on the theory and practice of
ornamentation, or the reworking of the raw material of language to make it more
impressive (a subject of great interest to theorists of other arts besides public
speaking); and a set of readings that illustrate the lived experience of the ancient
orator – from childhood education, through a career in the forum and beyond.
Indeed, one of the most compelling reasons for studying classical rhetoric is the
insight it provides into the daily lives and social interactions of the educated
citizens of ancient communities. Although at times it must have seemed like an
austere or forbidding subject, rhetoric was the lifeblood of ancient politics, law
and administration, a shared discourse that enabled communication across
boundaries of ethnicity, status and ideology. The rhetoricians and orators
presented in this volume include political outsiders who rose to high office,
distinguished professors and anonymous schoolteachers, natives of mainland
Greece and Italy as well as Gaul (modern France), Spain, Asia Minor (modern
Turkey) and Rhodes. A larger volume could easily have included material from
North Africa, Syria and Britain.
Of the treatises that are excerpted at length in this volume, the earliest in date
is Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was an important Greek
philosopher, the student and successor of Plato and founder of a programme of
scientific research and instruction that encompassed biology, physics, zoology
and meteorology, as well as politics, psychology, ethics, logic and literature. He
was born in Stagira, in northern Greece, relocated to and spent much of his life
in Athens, which was the centre of Greek intellectual activity, but was eventually
recruited to the court of Macedon by King Philip to serve as mentor to his son,
the future Alexander the Great. Although his political writings treat the
achievements of the Athenian democracy respectfully, they have a consistently
conservative tone and show a preference for orderly leadership on the part of the
propertied sectors of society. Returning to Athens after Alexander succeeded to
the Macedonian throne and embarked on his career of conquest, Aristotle
resumed teaching and research there, only to depart suddenly, shortly after the
untimely death of his patron.
The Rhetoric of Aristotle is a three-volume treatise, which Aristotle regarded
as an extension of his work on politics. Like all surviving works of Aristotle, it
seems to consist of detailed notes assembled by the philosopher himself or his
students for use within expert circles. It lacks stylistic polish and contains
numerous digressions, corrections-in-stride and internal summaries. It treats
some issues in great detail and passes over others with barely a mention. Despite
its analytical form, it contains many decidedly evaluative pronouncements. For
all that, it is an invaluable work for two reasons. First, it introduces clear and
distinct terminology for various aspects of rhetoric, such as ethos, pathos and
logos (persuasion via character, emotion and reasoning, respectively),
enthymeme (formal argument concerning probable truths) and the typology of
speeches as judicial (pertaining to trials), deliberative (arguments for or against a
course of action) or epideictic (speeches of praise and blame). Second, it places
special emphasis on deliberative oratory, in other words the speeches made in
assemblies or other political gatherings concerning public policy. Aristotle thus
takes for granted the political value of free yet orderly deliberation aimed at
persuading a decision-making body of the advantages of one or another course
of action. He seeks to establish a framework for reasoned debate in which all
participants inform themselves about the issue under discussion.
Next in order historically is the anonymous Latin treatise called the Rhetoric
to Herennius. Probably composed in the 80s BCE for a burgeoning audience of
politically ambitious Roman and Italian youths, the treatise seems to hew closely
to the form and style of Hellenistic Greek manuals. It is both more concise and
more detailed than Aristotle in its coverage of the mechanics of speech-making
and the preparatory exercises to be undertaken by the student of rhetoric. If
Aristotle provides a systematic overview of the discipline of rhetoric, the author
of the treatise to Herennius shows how to put it into practice on a step-by-step
basis, providing numerous examples along the way. In this volume, the Rhetoric
to Herennius is used as the primary source for instruction in the identification of
issues, for a long list of figures of thought and figures of speech that contribute
to the enrichment of a speaker’s style and for one of the memory-systems used to
help orators deliver speeches with a minimum of prompting.
The numerous examples contained in the treatise, most of which were
composed by the author for instructional purposes, with many alluding to
episodes in Roman history of the generation just preceding his, give an insider’s
view both of the day-to-day types of cases and personalities one might encounter
in Roman public life and of the effective use of rhetorical speech at moments of
high controversy and crisis. The author seems at least mildly sympathetic to the
political programme of the reform wing of the Roman elite, figures like the
brothers Gracchi and Saturninus, who sought the empowerment of the popular
assemblies (at the expense of the senate) and repeatedly proposed land reform as
a solution to Roman Italy’s acute economic and demographic problems. Indeed,
the use of rhetoric by newcomers and reformists at Rome partly accounts for the
low regard in which teachers of rhetoric were viewed, at least during some
periods of Roman history.
Apart from their political significance, the examples provided by the
anonymous author also provide rare access to a Roman listener’s or reader’s
likely reaction to various devices found in Latin literature, whether poetry or
prose. By telling his students the goals they can achieve by using, for example,
metaphor or rhetorical question or unusual word order, the author is also helping
the modern reader understand how Romans might have reacted to their use by
others. The ease with which this author, like others who appear in this volume,
moves between examples from prose and examples from poetry gives a sense of
the ways in which rhetoric informed literary composition of every sort.