Quintilian in the Graeco-Roman Rhetorical Tradition

Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (c.95 ce) provides a comprehensive statement on education based on the author’s belief that the study of rhetoric was essential both for the growth of the individual and also for serving the welfare of the state through effective leadership that united wisdom with eloquence. Quintilian’s Institutio is often identified exclusively as a work of Roman rhetoric. Viewing the Institutio as uniquely Roman is understandable. In the Institutio, Quintilian often used Cicero—the pre-eminent orator and rhetorician of the Roman Republic—as a model whose career illustrated the best features of Roman rhetoric and citizenship. However, viewing Quintilian’s Institutio as exclusively Roman distorts the influence that Greek rhetoric had on Quintilian’s work. Quintilian, and even his Roman model Cicero, were both influenced by Greek rhetoric, especially the contributions of Isocrates. Quintilian’s Institutio is better understood, and appreciated, as a ratio or system that was built upon a foundation of Hellenic rhetoric and a shining example of the Graeco-Roman rhetorical tradition. This chapter reveals a spectrum of Greek contributions in Quintilian’s Institutio ranging from isolated technical concepts to an overarching philosophy of civic rhetoric predicated on the officia or ‘duties’ of good, virtuous citizens eloquently applying rhetoric for social betterment. Quintilian’s use and command of Greek rhetoric is well demonstrated and his indebtedness to Greek sources for crafting his own ‘Roman’ rhetoric is evident throughout his Institutio.

Epitaphios logos – hybrydyczny gatunek retoryki ateńskiej

Athenian funeral oration (epitaphios logos) belongs to the epideictic rhetoric. But according to Aristotle the topics used in epideictic oratory could be applied in the deliberative kind, after some modification in the matters of language. In this article I consider the means proposed in the narrative part of the composition, which can be used instead of argumentation in epideictic oratory, i.e. amplification, metaphors and actualization (putting things before the eyes, gr. energeia, lat. evidentia). My purpose is to answer the question who was/is the recipient of Athenian funeral oration. In my opinion there are three kinds of primary recipients: the dead soldiers in the battle, the listeners present at the celebration (Athenians and foreigners) and the Idea of Democracy itself. I also try to find the so-called secondary recipient of Athenian funeral oration. I treat Athenian funeral oration as a hybrid genre of Greek rhetoric.

Greek Literature

I begin with a warm welcome for Evangelos Alexiou's Greek Rhetoric of the 4th Century bc, a ‘revised and slightly abbreviated’ version of the modern Greek edition published in 2016 (ix). Though the volume's title points to a primary focus on the fourth century, sufficient attention is given to the late fifth and early third centuries to provide context. As ‘rhetoric’ in the title indicates, the book's scope is not limited to oratory: Chapter 1 outlines the development of a rhetorical culture; Chapter 2 introduces theoretical debates about rhetoric (Plato, Isocrates, Alcidamas); and Chapter 3 deals with rhetorical handbooks (Anaximenes, Aristotle, and the theoretical precepts embedded in Isocrates). Oratory comes to the fore in Chapter 4, which introduces the ‘canon’ of ten Attic orators: in keeping with the fourth-century focus, Antiphon, Andocides, and Lysias receive no more than sporadic attention; conversely, extra-canonical fourth-century orators (Apollodorus, the author of Against Neaera, Hegesippus, and Demades) receive limited coverage. The remaining chapters deal with the seven major canonical orators: Isocrates, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Isaeus, Lycurgus, Hyperides, and Dinarchus. Each chapter follows the same basic pattern: life, work, speeches, style, transmission of text and reception. Isocrates and Demosthenes have additional sections on research trends and on, respectively, Isocratean ideology and issues of authenticity in the Demosthenic corpus. In the case of Isaeus, there is a brief discussion of contract oratory; Lycurgus is introduced as ‘the relentless prosecutor’. Generous extracts from primary sources are provided, in Greek and in English translation; small-type sections signal a level of detail that some readers may wish to pass over. The footnotes provide extensive references to older as well as more recent scholarship. The thirty-page bibliography is organized by chapter (a helpful arrangement in a book of this kind, despite the resulting repetition); the footnotes supply some additional references. Bibliographical supplements to the original edition have been supplied ‘only in isolated cases’ (ix). In short, this volume is a thorough, well-conceived, and organized synthesis that will be recognized, without doubt, as a landmark contribution. There are, inevitably, potential points of contention. The volume's subtitle, ‘the elixir of democracy and individuality’, ties rhetoric more closely to democracy and to Athens than is warranted: the precarious balancing act which acknowledges that rhetoric ‘has never been divorced from human activity’ while insisting that ‘its vital political space was the democracy of city-states’ (ix–x) seems to me untenable. Alexiou acknowledges that ‘the gift of speaking well, natural eloquence, was considered a virtue already by Homer's era’ (ix), and that ‘the natural gift of speaking well was considered a virtue’ (1). But the repeated insistence on natural eloquence is perplexing. Phoenix, in the embassy scene in Iliad 9, makes it clear that his remit included the teaching of eloquence (Il. 9.442, διδασκέμεναι): Alexiou only quotes the following line, which he mistakenly assigns to Book 10. (The only other typo that I noticed was ‘Aritsotle’ [97]. I, too, have a tendency to mistype the Stagirite's name, though my own automatic transposition is, alas, embarrassingly scatological.) Alexiou provides examples of later Greek assessments of fourth-century orators, including (for example) Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Hermogenes, and the author of On Sublimity (the reluctance to commit to the ‘pseudo’ prefix is my, not Alexiou's, reservation). He observes cryptically that ‘we are aware of Didymus’ commentary’ (245); but the extensive late ancient scholia, which contain material from Menander's Demosthenic commentaries, disappointingly evoke no sign of awareness.

Cicero's Rhetorical Works

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 bce) rose to prominence in the state during the final decades of the Roman Republic. Blessed with a goodly measure of natural ability, an extraordinary amount of self-discipline, and a remarkably broad and deep education not only in rhetoric but also in philosophy and the other noble arts, Cicero employed his oratorical skill to establish himself in the courts and on the Rostra as Rome’s finest orator. He was elected to the state’s chief political offices at the youngest possible age, and during the final months of his consulship (63 bce), he foiled a plot by L. Sergius Catilina to overthrow the government. His decisive action in that affair was the source of great glory and pride in having saved the state, but also of great pain and heartache, for some five years later he was forced into exile for his part in the summary execution of Catilinarian co-conspirators who were also Roman citizens. Following his return to Rome, he found himself at loggerheads with members of the so-called “First Triumvirate,” a situation that resulted for him in something like a forced retirement from political activity. A decade later, in the wake of Julius Caesar’s victory in the civil war and subsequent dictatorship, Cicero was placed in a similar situation. During both these occasions (namely, the mid-50s and mid-40s bce), he channeled his energies in the direction of his other great love, i.e., contemplation, study, and writing. Remarkably, these two periods saw him produce nearly a score of treatises, including his most important and influential rhetorical writings, wherein he enunciated his deeply-held conviction that eloquent speech (coupled with reason) was a chief civilizing factor in human society—a glue that binds and builds well-ordered communities when employed responsibly by its most expert practitioners. Following the assassination of Caesar and the emergence of Marcus Antonius as a force who appeared to be aiming to secure his own dictatorial powers, Cicero once again took up the mantle of the Republic, hoping for its restoration. He opposed Antonius and his actions by writing and delivering to the Senate and people a series of speeches known as the Philippics. But on the brink of success, young Caesar Octavianus allied himself with Antonius, and Cicero’s name found a prominent place on the list of those proscribed: his head and hands, severed by Antonius’s henchmen, were gruesomely displayed on the speaker’s platform in the Roman forum. See the separate Oxford Bibliographies article in Classics Cicero for a general and more comprehensive bibliography of Cicero and his other works. Other Oxford Bibliographies articles that may be of interest include Greek Rhetoric, Latin Rhetoric, and Rhetoric.