Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

George A. Kennedy

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A NEW HISTORY OF CLASSICAL RHETORIC

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Preface.........................................................................................................xiCHAPTER ONE Introduction: The Nature of Rhetoric...............................................................3CHAPTER TWO Persuasion in Greek Literature before 400 B.C......................................................11CHAPTER THREE Greek Rhetorical Theory from Corax to Aristotle..................................................30CHAPTER FOUR The Attic Orators.................................................................................64CHAPTER FIVE Hellenistic Rhetoric..............................................................................81CHAPTER SIX Early Roman Rhetoric...............................................................................102CHAPTER SEVEN Cicero...........................................................................................128CHAPTER EIGHT Rhetoric in Augustan Rome........................................................................159CHAPTER NINE Latin Rhetoric in the Silver Age..................................................................173CHAPTER TEN Greek Rhetoric under the Roman Empire..............................................................201CHAPTER ELEVEN The Second Sophistic............................................................................230CHAPTER TWELVE Christianity and Classical Rhetoric.............................................................257CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Survival of Classical Rhetoric from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages.....................271Bibliography....................................................................................................285Index...........................................................................................................297

Chapter One

The English word "rhetoric" is derived from Greek rhetorike, which apparently came into use in the circle of Socrates in the fifth century and first appears in Plato's dialogue Gorgias, probably written about 385 B.C. but set dramatically a generation earlier. Rhetorike in Greek specifically denotes the civic art of public speaking as it developed in deliberative assemblies, law courts, and other formal occasions under constitutional government in the Greek cities, especially the Athenian democracy. As such, it is a specific cultural subset of a more general concept of the power of words and their potential to affect a situation in which they are used or received. Ultimately, what we call "rhetoric" can be traced back to the natural instinct to survive and to control our environment and influence the actions of others in what seems the best interest of ourselves, our families, our social and political groups, and our descendants. This can be done by direct action—force, threats, bribes, for example—or it can be done by the use of "signs," of which the most important are words in speech or writing. Some concept of rhetoric, under different names, can be found in many ancient societies. In Egypt and China, for example, as in Greece, practical handbooks were written to advise the reader how to become an effective speaker.

Classical writers regarded rhetoric as having been "invented," or more accurately, "discovered," in the fifth century B.C. in the democracies of Syracuse and Athens. What they mean by this is that then, for the first time in Europe, attempts were made to describe the features of an effective speech and to teach someone how to plan and deliver one. Under democracies citizens were expected to participate in political debate, and they were expected to speak on their own behalf in courts of law. A theory of public speaking evolved, which developed an extensive technical vocabulary to describe features of argument, arrangement, style, and delivery. In recent years, the term "metarhetoric" has been coined to describe a theory or art of rhetoric in contrast to the practice or application of the art in a particular discourse. The first teachers of rhetoric were the itinerent lecturers of fifth-century Greece known as "sophists," to be discussed in the next chapter; beginning with Isocrates in the fourth century, regular schools of rhetoric became common, and throughout the Greco-Roman period the study of rhetoric was a regular part of the formal education of young men.

Classical rhetoricians—that is, teachers of rhetoric—recognized that many features of their subject could be found in Greek literature before the "invention" of rhetoric as an academic discipline, and they frequently used rhetorical concepts in literary criticism. Conversely, the teaching of rhetoric in the schools, ostensibly concerned primarily with training in public address, had a significant effect on written composition, and thus on literature. All literature is "rhetorical" in the sense that its function is to affect a reader in some way—"to teach and to please," as the Roman poet Horace and many other critics put it—but beginning in the last three centuries B.C., much Greek and Latin literature is overtly rhetorical in that it was composed with a knowledge of classical rhetorical theory and shows its influence.

In the third chapter of his lectures On Rhetoric, Aristotle distinguished three "species" of rhetoric. An audience, he says, is either a judge or not a judge of what is being said. By this he means that an audience either is or is not being asked to make a specific decision on an issue presented to it. If the audience is a judge, it is either judging events of the past, as in a court of law, in which case the speech is classified as "judicial," or it is judging what action to take in the future, in which case the speech is "deliberative." If the audience is not being asked to take a specific action, Aristotle calls the speech "epideictic" (i.e., "demonstrative"). What he has in mind are speeches on ceremonial occasions, such as public festivals or funerals, which speeches he characterizes as aimed at praise or blame. These three categories—judicial, deliberative, epideictic—remained fundamental throughout the history of classical rhetoric and are still useful in categorizing forms of discourse today. The concept of epideictic rhetoric, however, needs to be broadened beyond Aristotle's definition. In later antiquity, some rhetoricians included within it all poetry and prose. Perhaps epideictic rhetoric is best regarded as any discourse that does not aim at a specific action but is intended to influence the values and beliefs of the audience.

In its fully developed form, as seen for example in writings of Cicero in the first century B.C. and of Quintilian a century later, classical rhetorical teaching consisted of five parts that parallel the act of planning and delivering a speech. Since a knowledge of how to speak in a law court was probably the skill most needed by most students, classical rhetorical theory primarily focused on judicial rhetoric. Rhetoricians, however, usually also gave some attention to deliberative and epideictic forms, and from the time of the Roman Empire some treatises describe epideictic forms in considerable detail.

The first of the five parts of classical rhetoric is "invention" (Gk. heuresis, Lat. inventio). This is concerned with thinking out the subject matter: with identifying the...