'Or^ / 'A^- / THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY EDITED HY E. CAPPS, PH.D., LI..D. T. E. PAGE, litt.d. W. H. D. ROUSE, LITT.D. ARISTOTLE THE "ART" OF RHETORIC ARISTOTLE WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION THE "ART" OP" RHETORIC BY JOHN HENKY FREESE FORMERLY FELLOW OF ST. JOHN's COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS MCMXXVI PR 587423 5 7. S-'^ Printed t?i G'ceat Britain CONTENTS — INTRODUCTION The beginnings of rhetoric—the Homeric poems—Themi- stocles and Pericles—the influence of the Sophists—Sicily the birthplace of rhetoric as an art—the Western or Sicilian school (Corax—Tisias—Gorgias—Agathon—Polus—Licym- nius — Evenus — Alcidamas — Lycophron — Polycrates — Callippus — Pamphilus) — Thrasymachus — the Eastern or Ionic school (Protagoras—Prodicus—Hippias—Theodoriis Theodectes)—decay of rhetoric—Demetrius of Phalerum treatment of rhetoric in Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus— other rhetorical works by Aristotle—date of the Rhetoric— Aristotle and Demosthenes—Aristotle and Isocrates—the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum—text of the Rhetoric. Rhetoric, in the general sense of the use of language in such a manner as to impress the hearers and in- fluence them for or against a certain course of action, is as old as language itself and the beginnings of social and political life. It was practised and highly esteemed among the Greeks from the earliest times. The reputation of Odysseus and Nestor as speakers, the reply of Achilles to the embassy entreating him to take the field again, the trial-scene represented on the shield of Achilles, bear witness to this, and justify the opinion of the ancient Greeks that Homer was the real father of oratory. After the age of Homer and Hesiod and the establishment of democratic in- stitutions, the development of industry and com- merce and the gradually increasing naval power of INTRODUCTION Athens compelled statesmen to become orators. Themistocles and Pericles were the foremost states- men of their time. The former, although not specially distinguished for eloquence, was regarded as a most capable speaker ; the latter was a great orator. It is much to be regretted that none of his speeches has survived ; but some idea of their lofty patriotism may be gained from those put into his mouth by Thucydides, while the genuine fragments, several of which have been preserved in Aristotle, are characterized by impressive vividness. The next step in the development of Greek prose and Rhetoric must be set down to the credit of the Sophists. Whatever opinion may be held, from a moral standpoint, of the teaching of these much- discussed professors of wisdom and of its effects on the national life and character, it is generally con- ceded that they have a claim to be considered the founders of an artificial prose style, which ultimately led to the highly-finished diction of Plato and Demo- sthenes. It is usual to make a distinction between eastern (Ionic) and western (Sicilian) sophistical rhetoric, the representatives of the former paying attention chiefly to accuracy (updoeTreia), those of the latter to beauty (cveTreta), of style. The birthplace of Rhetoric as an art was the island of Sicily. According to Cicero," Aristotle, no doubt in his lost history of the literature of the subject (^vvnyoiyrj tc^i'wi/), gives the following account of " its origin. After the expulsion of the " tyrants (467 B.C.), a number of civil processes were insti- " Cicero, Brutus, xii. 46. INTRODUCTION tuted by citizens, who had been previously banished and then returned from exile, for the recovery of property belonging to them which had been illegally confiscated by the tyrants. This made it necessary for the claimants to obtain assistance from others, and the Sicilians, " an acute people and born con- troversiaHsts," suppUed the want in the persons of Corax and Tisias (both of Syracuse), who drew up a system which could be imparted by instruction, and a set of rules dealing with such questions as were likely to arise. These two may therefore claim to have been the founders of technical Rhetoric, al- though Aristotle, in an early lost work called the Sophist, gives the credit to the philosopher Empedo- cles, whose pupil Gorgias is said to have been. CoRAX " was the author of the first of the numerous " Arts " (rexvai, handbooks of Rhetoric), and to " him is attributed the definition of it as the artificer of persuasion " (jreLdois 8r)[uovpy6<;). The speech was divided into three parts—exordium (Trpooi/uov), arguments constructive and refutative (dywves), and epilogue (eViAoyos), or into five, with the addition of narrative (Stvy-yr/o-ts), which followed the exordium, and TrapeKfSdaeisJ' It may be assumed that he also wrote speeches'' for his clients to learn and deliver in the courts, as it was no doubt the rule in " The sophists and rhetoricians here mentioned are limited (with the exception of Demetrius of Phalerum) to those whose names actually occur in the Rhetoric. * Apparently not to be understood in the more usual senses of " perversions " (of forms of government), or "digres- sions " (in a book or speech), but in that of "auxiliaries," subsidiary aids to the speech (irpb': einKovpiav tu>v Xeyofxifuv, quoted in vStephanus, Thesaurus, from the Prolegomena to Hermogenes). * Such writers were called " logographers " (see ii. 11. 7). INTRODUCTION Syracuse, as at Athens, that the Htigant should at least create the impression that he was conducting his own case. His pupil TisiAS, also the author of an " Art," is said to have tieen the tutor of Gorgias, Lysias, and Isocrates, and to have accompanied the first-named on his embassy to Athens. He laid even greater stress than his master on the argument from prob- abiUty (etKos) which he regarded as more valuable than truth " GoRGiAS of Leontini (c. 483-375 b.c.) first attracted the attention of Greece proper when he visited Athens as an ambassador (427 b.c.) from his native place, with the object of obtaining assistance against Syracuse. His view of rhetoric was that it was only a means of persuasion, and he was careful to explain that his only object was to make his pupils skilful rhetoricians, able to speak on every subject, either for or against, and not, like certain other sophists, to teach them virtue or wisdom. This made him pay greater attention to the style than to the subject matter of his discourses. In addition to fragments of these, from which there are several quotations preserved in the Rhetoric, two extant orations (En- comium of Helen and Defence of Palamedes) are now generally considered to be his. An " Art " of Rhe- toric has also been assigned to him. Regarded as the creator of artificial Greek prose, his writings were distinguished by flowery ornamentation, poetical colouring, unusual phraseology (as shown in the use of rare, compound, and poetical words), and many » On the relation of a fragment in Doric {Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iii. p. 27) to the r^x"**' of Corax and Tisias see W. R. Roberts in Classical Review, F'eb. 1904. INTRODUCTION new rhetorical figures, for the employment of which the contemptuous term " to gorgiaze " was invented. He further introduced an artificial and symmetrical structure of sentences and periods, which gave the impression of metre. According to Diodorus Siculus (xii. 53), the Athenians were astounded at his un- common style, his use of antitheses, his evenly balanced clauses of equal length, and the similarity of the (beginnings or) endings of words. Gomperz •* remarks that the English counterpart of the style of Gorgias is euphuism. In the Platonic dialogue, in the first part of which Gorgias takes a prominent part, it is noticeable that he is treated more leniently than might have been expected, considering Plato's opinion of rhetoric as taught and practised by him and his successors. Agathon (c. 447-401 B.C.), an Athenian, was by profession a tragedian. His beauty and affected manners made him the butt of the comic poets. '' A pupil of Gorgias, he imitated the flowery language, antitheses, and parallelisms of his master, and was fond of using the rhetorical figure antonomasia, the use of an epithet or patronymic instead of the name of a person. His first victory with a tragedy at the Lenaea is celebrated in the Platonic dialogue Sym- posium, in which he is one of the interlocutors. PoLUS, of Agrigentum, the favourite pupil of Gorgias, is one of the interlocutors in the Platonic Gorgias. In this he is attacked by Socrates, and the special attention paid by him to the ornamentation of his speeches and his affected style are severely criticized. He was the author of an " Art," of " Greek Thinkers, i. 478 (Eng. tr.). ^ Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae, 100. INTRODUCTION which some fragments are preserved in Plato and Aristotle, LicYMNius, pupil of Gorgias and a dithyrambic poet, was the author of an " Art." He invented a number of unnecessary technical terms," and classified nouns under the heads of the proper, compound, synonymous or quasi-synonymous, and single words or periphrases intended to take the place of nouns (KvpLa, (rvvBera, uSeAf/)a, eiriOeTo). By some he is considered to be a different person from the dithy- rambic poet. EvENUs, of Paros, elegiac poet and sophist, contem- porary of Socrates, wrote an " Art " and rhetorical rules or examples in verse.'' Alcidamas, of Elaea in Aeolis in Asia Minor, was the pupil and successor of Gorgias, the chief and last representative of his rhetorical school. A rival and opponent of Isocrates, against whom his treatise On the Sophists (now generally accepted as genuine), is directed, he lays stress upon the superiority of ex- tempore speeches to those written out. His writings are characterized by a bombastic style, excessive use of poetical epithets and phrases, and far-fetched metaphors.