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Classical Attic and Imperial Attic Oratory: a Provable Relationship Or a Philological Misconception?

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Classical Attic and Imperial Attic Oratory: a Provable Relationship Or a Philological Misconception? Classical Attic and Imperial Attic Oratory: a provable relationship or a philological misconception? Overview Attic dialect flourished in the works of the orators of the 5th and 4th century BCE and was then revived at the time of the High Roman Empire. The research question that I have been exploring in this project is whether classical Attic and imperial Attic oratory are the same or they are simply perceived as such due to the obvious grammatical and dialectical similarities. Thus far I have developed computational techniques and linguistic metrics to quantify the Atticism and Greekness of classical Attic and Imperial Attic oratory. Greeks, Romans, and Easterners, such as Prusans, Smyrnaeans, and Syrians decide to reuse Attic. What we should determine is whether Attic is still the same, or we are dealing with a revived and reformed Atticism as well as how people’s choice of linguistic medium actually has also a bearing on their determination of their identity. More specifically, I have developed a novel computational method to comparatively explore Atticism as it first appeared in the 5th- and 4th-century BCE Greek oratory and was later revived by Imperial Greek authors in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Using Dionysius’s of Halicarnassus, the 1st-century BCE grammarian, and his appreciations of oratory and orators as a frame of reference and then expanding his inferences on works of Imperial era, I attempt to parameterize Atticism as a phenomenon. Bibliographical background Atticism as a literary and rhetorical style has been the focus of considerations and debates since the first century BCE up to our era. The appearance of the so-called Asianism prompted further discussions of the proper way of expression, always in favor or Atticism. Another significant turn in Atticism’s history is its modulation into a writing style beyond language. Roman orators and theoreticians espouse Atticism, theorize upon its construction, characteristics, and merits and wish to teach it for the benefit of Roman oratory. What makes the conversation more provoking is Dionysius’s of Halicarnassus account of rhetoric that corresponds to the aforementioned Roman considerations and practices. His apprehension of the revival of Atticism, albeit succinct at least in the introduction of this treatise, comprehensively summarizes the life of classical rhetoric and its subsequent reception in Roman times. The key point in our apprehension of Atticism as a choice of identity and/or linguistic accuracy becomes intriguing upon considering Dionysius’s accreditation of the Romans for the revival of Atticism in the introduction of his treatise On the Ancient Orators. Overall a major issue that surfaces lies in the definition of Atticism—at first the lucid and unambiguous style of Lysias was considered the model of Atticism. Cicero hastens to question that apprehensive rigidity and argues that Attic can be more elaborate and embellished without being branded as Asiatic. From the 19th century onwards modern scholars have attempted to define Attic rhetoric, demarcate its inherent characteristics, ultimately purporting to ascertain who should be included in the canon of the Attic orators as well as when and how Attic rhetoric was later revived. Radermacher in 1899 and then Wilamowitz in 1900 credit the rebirth of Atticism to the reaction to Asianism. The issue is revisited by Norden in 1915 and Dihle in 1977. Goudriaan (1989), Gelzer (1979), and Wisse (1995) provide us with comprehensive overviews of the debates along with elucidating parameterization of classicism and Atticism. 1 Project In this project, my intention is to parameterize Atticism, attempting to determine attributive characteristics of Lysias, Isocrates, and Demosthenes that have also been pinpointed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his treatises on the orators. Additionally, Imperial orators—Lucian, Dio Chrysostom, and Aelius Aristides—will be examined so as to determine whether their style is traditionally Attic or it is simply the usage of Attic dialect that has led modern scholars to the conclusion that Imperial orators revived Atticism. Finally, Thucydides, the historian, is also considered along the same parameters and on the basis of the said metrics. Dionysius of Halicarnassus discusses him as an Atticist, but, since he is not an orator, I use him as a control author versus the experimental authors. My intention is to compare his style with the aforementioned six orators, and derive more concrete conclusions regarding the latters’ style. Using the Arethusa framework, I annotated manually approximately 200 sentences, taking into consideration the grammar, syntax, and other unique structural phenomena that needed to be annotated and considered for the analysis. So as to explore syntactical constructions of both Classical Attic oratory and then perform objective comparative analysis against the backdrop of Imperial Attic oratory, I selected six authors—three of which belong to the Classical 5th- 4th- century BCE oratory and three from the 1st- and 2nd- century CE Imperial oratory. More specifically, I annotated selections from Lysias’s Olympic Oration, Isocrates’s Against the Sophists, Demosthenes’s First Philippic, Lysias’s Zeuxis, Dio’s Oration 42 An Address to his Native City, Aelius Aristides’s Encomium to Rome. I then developed a unified node-based metric formulation for implementing various syntactical construction metrics, indicative of the syntactical attributes of the sentences and proceeded to granulate the style of the aforementioned six authors and compare their stylistic particularities. In the second phase of the project I have proceeded with stylometric analysis. Using stylo, I have been comparing the same works against different backgrounds, namely words, characters, and ngrams. Therefore, I intend to determine whether the same affinities or lack thereof will be noted between those six orators when examined either on the basis of stylistic attributes or linguistic choices. Eder (Eder et al. 2013) and Burrows (Burrows 2002, 2006) used stylometry to achieve a multilevel analysis of texts. Therefore, I believe that whether there prove to be relationships between these authors or not, the conclusions will still be worthwhile, as they will be indicative of a syntactical and/or grammatical universalism of Atticism. My analysis so far indicates that there are indeed common denominators between classical Attic and Imperial Attic writing styles. However, one cannot talk about revived Attic oratory with the implication of simple repetition. Instead there are structures that emanate from the first Atticism but which are modulated and reformulated into a more elusive, complex, and stylistically evasive style that is in accordance with the very nature of the Second Sophistic. Future Directions Cicero and Quintilian among others espouse this stylistic existentialism, self-consciously describe themselves as Attics or advocates of Atticism, and offer their appreciations of other literary men. This signifies a turn in Atticism’s history, as it is modulated into a writing style beyond language. As it then becomes obvious that Atticism has transcended the boundaries of language and has transformed into a constructional rhetorical system, I believe that ultimately this study could apprise us of the usage of Atticism in Imperial Roman oratory as well. 2 .
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