The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic

by Daniel S. Richter

  Steskal, M., K. Grossschmidt, M. Heinz, F. Kanz, and H. Taeuber. 2003. “Die Damianosstoa in Ephesos. Bericht über die Ausgrabung 2002 im Abscnitt Kathodos III.” Österreichische Jahreshefte 72: 241–273.

  Steskal, M., and M. La Torre. 2008. Das Vediusgymnasium in Ephesos. Forschungen in Ephesos 14/1. Vienna.

  Strong, D. E., and J. B. Ward-Perkins. 1962. “The Temple of Castor in the Forum Romanum.” PBSR 30: 1–30.

  Szewczyk, M. 2015. “Nouveaux éléments pour l’étude d’un portrait de notable.” Rev. Ét. Anc. 117: 129–151.

  Thomas, E. V. 2007. Monumentality of the Roman Empire: Architecture in the Antonine Age. Oxford.

  Thomas, E. V. 2013. “Translating Roman architecture into Greek regional identities.” In Les Grecs Héritiers des Romains, Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique 59, edited by Paul Schubert, 147–202. Vandœuvres.

  Thomas, E. V. 2014. “On the Sublime in Architecture.” In Art and Rhetoric in Roman Culture, edited by J. Elsner and M. Meyer, 37–88. Cambridge.

  Valentini, R., and G. Zucchetti. 1940–1953. Codice topografico della città di Roma. Rome.

  Vassilantonopoulos, S. L., and J. N. Mourjopoulos. 2009. “The Acoustics of Roofed Ancient Odeia: The Case of Herodes Atticus’ Odeion.” Acta Acustica United with Acustica 95: 291–299.

  Virgili, P. 1996. “Odeum, Odium.” In Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, edited by E. M. Steinby, 3:359–360. Rome.

  Volpe, R. 2007. “Le Terme di Traiano e la ξυστιχήσύνοδος.” In Res bene gestae: Ricerche di storia urbana su Roma antica in onore di Eva Margareta Steinby, edited by A. Leone, D. Palombi, and S. Walker, 427–437. Rome.

  Waelkens, M., and Poblome, J. 2011. Sagalassos: eine Römische Stadt in der Südwesttürkei. Cologne.

  Walker, S. 1987. “Roman nymphaea in the Greek world.” In Roman Architecture in the Greek World, edited by S. Macready and F. H. Thompson, 60–71. London.

  Watson, F. R. 1930. Acoustics of Buildings, Including Acoustics of Auditoriums and Sound-Proofing of Rooms. 2nd ed. New York and London.

  Weber, W. 1907. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrianus. Leipzig.

  Willers, D. 1990. Hadrians panhellenisches Programm: Archäologische Beiträge zur Neugestaltung Athens durch Hadrian. Basel.

  Winter, B. W. 2002. Philo and Paul among the Sophists. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI.

  Yegül, F. 1986. The Bath-Gymnasium Complex at Sardis. Cambridge, MA.

  Yegül, F. 1992. Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity. New York and Cambridge, MA.

  P A R TIV

  RHETORIC AND RHETORICIANS

  CHAPTER 13

  GREEK AND LATIN RHETORICAL CULTURE

  LAURENT PERNOT

  REDISCOVERING prosperity and prestige after the troubled times of the Roman conquest, the Greek world, from the first century CE, experienced a cultural renaissance of which rhetoric was a major manifestation. An imposing body of preserved texts is witness to rhetoric’s importance: in the field of practical oratory, the collections of orations and other works by Dio of Prusa, Aelius Aristides, and Lucian; in rhetorical theory, the treatises handed down under the name of Hermogenes, as well as the other handbooks gathered under the name of Rhetores Graeci. These sources belong to the period of the High Empire (first to third centuries AD), which corresponds to the era traditionally assigned to the Second Sophistic; they testify to massive and omnipresent rhetorical activity. In Latin, the works of Quintilian, Fronto, and Apuleius represent, in certain ways, a community of spirit with the Greek Second Sophistic.

  13.1 RHETORICAL FORMATION

  Rhetoric was an educational system, a social practice, and a mental tool.

  Already present in secondary schooling, rhetoric was the core curriculum of higher education. Instruction rested on three pillars: reading, exercises, and theory. Students were encouraged to read and comment upon the major authors of the classical period, in order to steep themselves in the procedures of those writers’ artistry and habits of language. Rhetoric, with its companion, grammar, thus encompassed what we call “literary criticism” and “linguistics.”

  Exercises—the second pillar—formed a graduated series: first the “preparatory exercises” (in Greek progymnasmata, in Latin praeexercitamenta), that is, prose composition exercises in the fable, narrative, commenting upon maxims, confirmation or refutation of a tale, commonplaces (topoi), praise, invective, comparisons, speeches “in character” (prosôpopoiia), description, outlining a thesis to be argued, and proposal of a law. Next came “declamation” (in Greek meletê, literally “training”; in Latin declamatio), which involved composing a fictional speech under the guise of an actual oration, dealing with actions mythological or historical, or with an unspecified time or place. In Latin terminology, controversiae, belonging to the legal genre and imitating a courtroom speech, whether for the plaintiff or the defense, were distinguished from suasoriae, which belonged to the deliberative genre and imitated advice given before an assembly or council, supporting or opposing some measure or action.

  A progressive principle informed these exercises, leading the students from the easiest to the more difficult, from the more narrative types of exposition to those requiring the greatest argumentative effort. Thus they provided an apprenticeship in discursive structures, by means of creative written work and spoken and written handling of varied texts. At the same time, precise heuristic rules framed this inventive pedagogy.

  Finally, theory training dealt with the five components of discourse, which the imperial age codified down to the smallest details, following the research of classical and Hellenistic theorists: discovery (“invention”) of key ideas, arranging of arguments (whether to prove or disprove), style, memorization, and oral delivery.

  The teaching of rhetoric developed the aptitude for reasoning and for synthesizing complex and intricate sources of information. It fostered deepening familiarity with the great classics, aiming at perfecting language and imitating the major authors. It developed and employed a linguistic, literary, and historical culture, as well as legal knowledge. After this training, students were equipped for the major literary, political, and administrative careers to which rhetoric led. A complementary method of oratorical education was the “apprenticeship in public life” (tirocinium fori), which formed part of the Roman “ancestral custom” (mos maiorum). The young man was placed under the care of some leading citizen; he escorted him everywhere and was instructed by his example (Tac. Dial. 34).

  Additionally, rhetoric, as a discipline meant for the education of the young, inculcated in them a certain sense of what a man was supposed to be, in the ways of thinking, speaking, upholding one’s social rank, choosing one’s words and ideas, placing the voice, dressing. It was a school of citizenship and also, given the male dominance of the time, a school of manliness. The characters and texts on which it focused conveyed values relating to morality, cultural identity, and society. Rhetorical training was not just instruction, it was cultural formation (paideia) as well.

  13.2 THE OMNIPRESENCE OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

  Shifting from the classroom to public life, one observes that the Roman Empire provided numerous opportunities for speaking. Some authors, both ancient and modern (beginning with the Tacitus of the Dialogus), have written that a decline in oratory marked the imperial era, since a monarchy had replaced the Roman Republic and the cities of Greece were subservient to Roman power. The rhetoric of this period, they say, when it was not academic, was empty and artificial. But this is too quick a judgment. In fact, rhetoric retained a usefulness and effectiveness in many situations that were not insignificant.

  In the Greek world, the council and assembly continued to debate real issues; the cities and orators preserved some room for maneuvering under the control of Roman authority. The works of the sophist-philosopher Dio of Prusa, for example, include a series of speeches that shed light on the realities of municipal politics. In the reign of Vespasian, Dio strove to calm the citizenry after a grai
n riot: the rioters meant to stone the orator and burn down his house with his wife and child inside, and his speech aims at preventing the recurrence of such agitation (Or. 46). Under Nerva and Trajan, Dio steps up his speaking, especially on behalf of his pet project of large public works and on the relations of Prusa with its neighbor, Apamea (Or. 41–51). With their fellow citizens’ mandate, the sophists—and politicians in general—gave repeated advice, exhortations, requests: their deliberative orations involved addresses before municipal and provincial assemblies, ambassadorial missions to provincial governors and emperors, and speeches on general policy concerning the empire, such as Dio’s four orations On Kingship (Or. 1–4) and the Roman Oration of Aelius Aristides (Or. 26).

  As for courtroom oratory, it obviously remained in use before all the tribunals of the empire, and the sophists pleaded cases on a regular basis. The father of Alexander Peloplaton was an expert in legal speeches, and Chrestos of Byzantium counted three celebrated lawyers among his students (Philostr. VS 570, 591). Often the sophists pleaded on their own behalf, for example, before the proconsul or the emperor, when they were accused of homicide—a charge attested several times (555–556, 588, 626)—or when they had to justify their exemption from public duties, or defend their property and political influence (512, 517, 560–561, 614, 622–623). Besides these cases where they had no choice, Philostratus informs us that Nicetes, Ptolemy of Naucratis, Apollonius of Athens, and Philostratus of Lemnos were court regulars (511 and 516, 595, 600, 628); Scopelian, Polemo, and Damian of Ephesus are expressly presented as lawyers, taking fees but also agreeing to speak gratis on occasion (519, 524–25, 606). Thanks to their legal expertise, certain sophists obtained the post of advocatus fisci, and the missions they led in the name of their city could make authentic pleas before the emperor’s tribunal.1 They spoke for themselves, because it would be strange were a professor of rhetoric to have recourse to a borrowed mouthpiece; they paraded their influence before the municipal tribunals, which remained places of political rivalry; they particularly hankered after major cases, the sort that worked their way up to the emperor.

  The third form of oratory, called epideictic (“display”), acquired an unprecedented importance during the empire. There was no ceremony without its speech, whether it was the big events of private life, life in the schools, or political and religious life. Orators tirelessly lauded members of the leading families, holders of public office, the emperor, cities, the gods. In humorous counterpoint, the mock encomium dealt with topics like hair, a fly, or a parrot.

  13.3 KNOWLEDGE AND POWER

  The figure of the sophist combines literary activity and political influence. Rhetoric is their secret link.

  Consider the standard image of the sophist as it emerges from the Lives of the Sophists by Philostratus. Declamation is the defining activity of the Second Sophistic, in the two forms of ethical declamation and historical declamation: “the Second Sophistic described the types of the poor man, rich man, valiant man, and tyrant, and dealt with the nominative subjects history furnishes” (VS 481).2 The sophist in the strict sense, according to Philostratus, was a professor of declamation.

  This definition explains Philostratus’s choices, and especially the overwhelming importance of declamation in his biographies. It also explains the author’s interest in kindred elements: improvisation, because talent in this area was a characteristic of the successful declaimer; the genre of prolalia, or dialexis, which served as a “warmup” to declamations; stylistic issues, because style in the eyes of Philostratus represents the most difficult facet of oratory and, therefore, the principal topic of higher education; finally, everything to do with teaching, like anecdotes of life in the schools, collegial relations, the ties of master to disciple.

  Yet Philostratus makes it quite clear that the sophists were not sequestered in schools and that they indeed had a public function. Declamation was not cut off from social life. Performances of declamations were open to outside, nonacademic listeners; performances might take place in the theater, and the emperors themselves did not disdain attendance. Moreover, on a larger scale, political and social issues were at stake in instructional activity. Star sophists attracted the sons of the leading families: Chrestos of Byzantium had a hundred paying students, many of whom went on to successful careers (VS 591). Nominations to the chairs of rhetoric at Athens and Rome depended on the emperor. One point particularly worth stressing is the role sophistic teaching played in affirming Hellenic identity. The schools of declamation were the conservatories of the Greek language (Atticism was the practice there) and Greek culture (they revered the great authors of the past and brought back to life the famous figures of ancient history). They were Panhellenic sites, melting pots of students from all the provinces of the Greek-speaking East communing in a shared paideia. So the sophists, as such, propagated Greek identity, which was inextricably bound up with its cultural standards and fundamental myths. They maintained the uniqueness of the Greek-speaking East within the heart of the Roman Empire.

  Moreover, the life of the sophists was not reduced to teaching. They delivered public speeches, to which Philostratus sometimes alludes, and the majority of them performed various civic functions, whether in the city of their birth or in their adopted homeland; they held magistracies and acted as benefactors through the largess they personally disbursed or that they obtained from governing authorities. They traveled, and cities honored them; the greatest received the accolades of emperors. The most celebrated cases are Polemon of Laodicea and Herodes Atticus, two very important figures, whose biographies represent, at the center of Philostratus’s work (one at the end of book 1, the other at the beginning of book 2), the culminating point of his presentation. The portrait of Scopelian of Clazomenae provides a telling example, in which description of declamations is framed, on the one hand, by mention of addresses to the assembly and the tribunal, and by the recounting, on the other, of missions he undertook to Domitian on behalf of the city of Smyrna and the province of Asia. The professor stands revealed as both orator and politician (VS 519–520).

  Philostratus does not explicitly establish a connection between the two panels of the diptych, declamation on one side, social influence on the other. But he suggests that based on their ability as professor and declaimer, the sophists extended their reach in public life. Rhetoric (with all that accompanies it, such as teaching, culture in general, language, the values of Hellenism, etc.) contributed to the sway many sophists exercised. It is a key to understanding the period. And the witness of epigraphic and archeological evidence echoes that of the Life of the Sophists.3

  It is understandable why, in the Greek of the imperial age, use of the words sophistês and rhêtôr overlaps, each being equally applicable to the same individual. The sophist was defined first by rhetoric, and even by what was the most rhetorical aspect of rhetoric: the fictional oration, the school. That is the source from which the sophist acquired his specialty, his technê. Rhetoric, for the ancients, was simultaneously an intellectual discipline and the instrument of political and social life. The sophist, as master of the art of oratory, was not confused with a man of letters or with a specialist who excelled in some skill removed from the world. His domain was the spoken word, and through it public action; it implied, ipso facto, some social influence. In ancient civilization, one who masters speech and transmits this mastery to others is a model of man useful to the community and worthy of success. Through rhetoric, the art of the sophist effected the alliance of knowledge and power.

  13.4 THE ART OF THE ENCOMIUM

  The principal rhetorical innovation of the Second Sophistic was the development of the epideictic genre. In the realm of theory, treatises devoted exclusively to the encomium appeared for the first time. The handbooks of preparatory exercises included a chapter on the enkômion that provided small studies, still quite simple, but already free-standing, on praise and invective, as is readily apparent in Aelius Theon, Hermogenes, and their successors. Mor
e extensive treatments divide into two groups. Some (for example, the first treatise attributed to Menander Rhetor, third century CE) consider successively the different objects: praise of a god, of a city, of a man, of an animal, of a thing. Others (for example, the Rhetoric of Pseudo-Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the second treatise attributed to Menander Rhetor) classify epideictic material according to types of speech: no more question of praise of a god, a city, a man, but of welcome speech, bon voyage speech, epithalamium, funeral oration, address to a governor, praise of the emperor, panegyric, and so on. One cannot insist too much on the importance of this latter group, which has no equivalent in the treatises concerned with the two other genres: the encomium is no longer conceived of as an abstract rhetorical form, but as a social activity incarnated in speeches given on specific occasions.

  The preserved treatises represent only a fraction of a much larger theoretical output that responded to need. Epideictic practice was indeed quite rich. The Second Sophistic developed traditional forms, like praise of the sovereign or the funeral oration. It gave unprecedented frequency to types of orations previously rare, like the civic encomium, the inaugural address, the prose hymn. The imperial age also witnessed the development of encomiastic competitions. The encomium achieved a greater importance in genres whose deliberative aspect was previously more marked, like the panegyric and the embassy speech. Finally, occasions for speaking grew in number. Throughout the empire, ceremonial addresses, delivered by sophists, punctuated the circumstances of public and private life.

  During the High Empire, the Greeks had a ruler, over and above the governors: cities were in the control of leading men; prosperity encouraged civic growth, peace favored travel, festivities in honor of the gods and emperors multiplied. All these developments, culminating in the second century CE, offered new objects and new opportunities for rhetorical praise, prompting it and making it more useful than before. Teaching adapted itself to this situation by offering students an at least rudimentary training in encomiastic studies. As for the masters of ceremonies, they were the sophists, who turned epideictic oratory into one of their principal activities.