The Classical Tradition. Rhetoric and Oratory

THE CLASSICAL TRADITION: RHETORIC AND ORATORY A PUBLIC ADDRESS GIVEN BY HARRY CAPLAN

Cornell University Goldwin Smith Professor Of Classical Languages And Literature (1941-67)

AT THE THIRD ANNuAL CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, HAYWARD CONFERENCE IN RIHETORI-

CAL CRITICISM

May 11, 1968

EDITED AND RECONSTRUCTED BY Richard Leo Enos (Texas Christian University) Mark James (Texas Christian University) Harold Barrett (California State University, Hayward, Emeritus) Lois Agnew (Texas Christian University)

WITH A FOREWORD BY Edward P. J. Corbett (Ohio State University, Emeritus)

Foreword

At least two facets of the document printed here for the first time are remarkable. The first remarkable facet is how the text, which was originally deliv-

ered orally to a listening audience, was converted into an edited, annotated text that a literate audience could read almost thirty years after it was originally delivered. The second remarkable facet is the enormous scope and informativeness of this history of rhetoric and oratory that covers a period of nearly 2500 years.

What is so remarkable, you may be asking, about a speech being finally converted into a printed text that hundreds of literate people could read many years later? Almost any educated person today could designate at least one spoken text that was eventually converted into a written text, in some cases many hundreds of years later. Perhaps the most notable example of such a conversion are the many spoken words of Jesus that were transcribed by the Evangelists into koine Greek and published in primitive manuscripts and later translated into hundreds of modem languages that are preserved in printed texts. I do not mean to equate the words that Harry Caplan spoke at California State University on May 1 1, 1968 with the portentous words of Christ. I just want to remind you that many texts originally delivered orally were later translated and published in written form. Well, then, what is so remarkable about Harry Caplan's spoken lecture being later converted into a printed text? When you read Richard Leo Enos's account (in the Introduction that follows) of what he and Harold Barrett, Mark James and Lois Agnew had to go through to recover and edit and annotate the original speech in order to get it into print, you will agree with me that it is amazing that we now have a printed version of that speech.

RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly 7 Volume 27, Number 2 Spring 1997

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8 RHETORIC SOCIETY QUARTERLY

You will really understand what I mean when I refer to the remarkable range and informativeness of Harry Caplan's lecture after you finish reading it. But at this point, I can at least prepare you for what you are about to read. Harry Caplan presents a history of rhetoric and oratory from the time of the ancient Greeks to the end of the 19th century. I would divide the body of his lecture into these nine segments:

I. The origins of rhetoric, first in Sicily and then in Greece

II. The period of the Second Sophistic, beginning with the first Christian century

III. Roman rhetoric and oratory

IV. The fight between rhetoric and philosophy

V. The struggle between rhetoric and sacred studies during the first Chris- tian Century

VI. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages

VII. Rhetoric in the Renaissance Period

VIII. Rhetoric in the 18th and 19th centuries

IX. Some of the great orators of the Western world, primarily those of the 19th and 20th centuries

George Kennedy devoted an entire book to cover the same span of history, Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Traditionfrom Ancient to Mod- ern Times.

The reconstruction and edited text of Harry Caplan's lecture took up forty-six double-spaced typed pages. One would expect such a speech to take at least two hours to deliver. (Remarkably, the recording time of the speech is seventy min- utes, which is a sign of Caplan's rate of delivery.) Even those members of the listening audience at California State University who were passionately inter- ested in the history of rhetoric would have struggled to keep up. The written text published here is much more audience-friendly. The great service that the four editors of this text have done for teachers and students of rhetoric this late in the twentieth century is to make available the full text of that illuminating lecture in a printed text that can be absorbed and savored by readers at their leisure.

Edward P. J. Corbett

Preface If it is not already known to readers, it will soon become apparent in the "In-

troduction" that Harry Caplan was one of this century's great scholars of rhetoric. Caplan's international respect as a scholar did much to add credibility to the historical study of rhetoric, and his impact-personally and academically-is difficult to measure. Perhaps the best index of his impact is that the quality of his



CLASSICAL TRADITIONs/RwETORIC AND ORATORY 9

pathbreaking research is undiminished after decades of subsequent scholarship on rhetoric's history. Some of Caplan's more ardent admirers may even point to him as one of the sources of inspiration that initiated the amount and quality of excellent scholarship in the history of rhetoric that we have witnessed in the latter decades of the twentieth century. While we are mindful of the great gains that have been made since the achievements of individuals such as Caplan and his colleagues, we also recognize their worth and our indebtedness.

In this sense, Caplan's address is a primary source for our present history of rhetoric. That is, our reconstruction of Caplan's address should be seen in three respects. First, as a statement of importance in its own right, offering a wealth of insight gained through a career of productive scholarship. Second, as a source of evidence for historians who wish to engage in the task of chronicling rhetoric in the twentieth century. Without reconstruction, this manuscript could have remained buried in storage at Cornell. Now we have the opportunity to offer Caplan's insights and opinions to historians for their examination and analysis. Third and finally, as valuable as this contribution of Harry Caplan's is in its own right, we hope that this project is also a paradigm, an illustration of the need for historians of rhetoric to engage in primary research and bring to light the arti- facts of our own current history.

Introduction Harry Caplan was the Goldwin Smith Professor of Classical Languages and

Literature at Cornell University from 1941 to 1967. Caplan's tenure as the Goldwin Smith Professor parallels and is commensurate with a period of humanistic scholarship in rhetoric at Cornell that is unparalleled in our field. While the research in historical rhetoric at Cornell was wide-ranging, the standards were so uniform and identifiable that they collectively came to be known as The Cornell School of Rhetoric. This tradition of humanistic scholarship in rhetoric was forged by some of the founding luminaries of our discipline: Hoyt H. Hudson, James A. Winans, Lane Cooper, Alexander Drummond, Everett Lee Hunt, Herbert A. Wichelns, Wilbur Samuel Howell, Harry Caplan, and Carroll C. Arnold.

The scholarship produced by these and other members of The Cornell School of Rhetoric is lucidly accounted for in Edward P. J. Corbett's "The Cornell School of Rhetoric" (1989) as well as other readings suggested at the back of this monograph. In the headnote to his essay Corbett expressed his belief that many-particularly those in English-were not "aware of the contributions that the Cornell School of Rhetoric had made to the revival of rhetoric" (289) and went on to state his belief that that essay was "the best article I've ever written in my professional career." Corbett hoped that his statement would make others aware of not only our classical tradition "but who brought it back" (289). For many, including I am sure Edward P. J. Corbett, Harry Caplan is the em- bodiment of that classical tradition. In keeping with the sentiments of Corbett, we wish to heighten sensitivity to our tradition by "bringing back" a lost address of Harry Caplan's that ranks among his most important statements about rhetoric and oratory.




Harry Caplan is best known for his 1964 Loeb Classical Library edition of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, which is significant in two respects. First, his translation gave readers of English access to one of the most important documents in the history of rhetoric. Second, and of shared importance, his accompanying "Introduction" and "Bibliography" to the Rhetorica ad Herennium provided readers with an historical context for the treatise by presenting a lucid account of Roman rhetoric and a list of sources for continued reading. In one volume, Caplan gave readers a primary source, a model for historical research and a body of scholarship for continued reading. There is little wonder that Caplan's scholarly effort became a paradigm that would influence historians of rhetoric for the remaining decades of this century.

Harry Caplan's contributions to historical rhetoric preceded and followed his publication of the Rhetorica ad Herennium. His publications began in 1921 and continued into 1967. More important than the remarkable achievement of maintaining an active research agenda that spanned five decades is the quality and inclusiveness of his scholarship. Caplan's research in ancient and medieval rhetoric found eager and appreciative readers in the disciplines of Classical Studies, Medieval Studies, Speech Communication and English. Each claimed him as their own. Caplan was President of the American Philological Association, a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and an assistant editor of The Quar- terly Journal of Speech.

Caplan's achievements in historical rhetoric were well recognized by such pres- tigious organizations as the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Ameri- can Council of Learned Societies. This public recognition was more than matched by decades of appreciative students. Twice Caplan was acknowledged by volumes that came from the desire of students, colleagues and friends to honor his achievements: The Classical Tradition: Literary and Historical Studies in Honor of Harry Caplan (ed. Luitpold Wallach, 1965), a collection of thirty-eight essays; and Of Eloquence: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Rhetoric by Harry Caplan (eds. Anne King and Helen North, 1970), a collection of Caplan's own essays ranging from articles in the 1920's to a public address presented in 1964.

In one respect, Caplan's students far outnumber those who were physically present in his classrooms at Cornell from 1919 to 1967. Caplan was a visiting professor at eleven universities and lectured at over thirty-eight institutions. Caplan gave many of these public addresses after his retirement, thereby presenting much of his accumulated wisdom directly to a wide range of "students" through his oral presentations and subsequent, informal conversations. As brilliant as his scholarly achievements were, former colleagues and students maintain that their source of inspiration came from knowing Caplan directly.

The address presented here is one very important illustration of Harry Caplan's post-retirement lectures. In 1968, Harold Barrett, one of the editors of this project, was director of the California State University Conference in Rhetorical Criti- cism at Hayward. Harry Caplan was a Visiting Professor at nearby Stanford University at the time and was invited to present the Keynote Address for this conference, "The Classical Tradition: Rhetoric and Oratory." Those who were



CLASSICAL TRADITIONS/RHETORIC AND ORATORY 11

present to hear the address hailed it as a scholarly tour-de-force, the sort of statement that offers insights that come only after a lifetime of scholarship.

Barrett tape-recorded Caplan's presentation on that day and afterwards asked Caplan for permission to publish the address. At the time, Caplan wished to have a better version of the paper and declined. Caplan, ever the perfectionist, was constantly trying to "improve" his work; in fact, his editors for Of Elo- quence, Anne King and Helen North, cited Caplan's desire to revise "completely" some of his earlier essays that appeared in that volume (ix). King and North, while noting (and appreciating) Caplan's wishes, nonetheless decided to present his works in their original form. In much the same respect, Caplan remained unsatisfied with the text of this oral presentation delivered at California State University, Hayward on that spring evening in May 1968. As a result, after his death, the manuscript remained unrevised and fallow, buried among the volumes of his other papers at Cornell University.

For several years, Harold Barrett spoke of the excellent address Caplan gave on that night and lamented that its impact would only be momentary, a shadowy and fading memory for the relatively few who gathered on that night. Even though it has been almost thirty years since I was an undergraduate in Barrett's rhetoric classes, I can still recall his concern over the loss of such a scholarly treasure. For the last three years, Barrett and I planned for a way to reconstruct this important document. The literary executor of Harry Caplan's estate, Sophie Caplan, was kind enough to grant us permission to publish the text of the address and, to that end, Barrett searched through Harry Caplan's papers at the Rare and Manuscript Collec- tions at the Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell University.

Barrett was able to secure and reproduce the original text of Caplan's address. It became immediately clear why Caplan had wished to do further work on the manuscript. Caplan had made numerous hand-written changes and modifications on the typed manuscript. Fortunately, two technological aids gave us an advantage in reconstructing the manuscript. Barrett's audio tape of Caplan's address provided a way to check modifications both orally and visually. Second, Radford Research Assistant, Mark E. James, helped in having the manuscript scanned by computer at Texas Christian University so that we could have a document constructed in a way to make changes clearly and efficiently. After James had "cleaned" the text for the computer, he and Lois Agnew were able to compare and contrast the original document with the tape and use that recording as a way of verifying textual changes. At that stage I was working independently on another computer, making my own reconstruction of the text while doing background research for commentary and bibliography that would provide a context for Caplan's address. These versions then were prepared in a manner that en- abled us to compare and contrast our autonomous efforts and create a final synthesis for reconstructing the address.

As indicated above, this text is complemented by notes, as well as suggested background reading, that provide readers with information helpful to understanding the context of Harry Caplan's remarks. Certainly, in the thirty years since his address, there has been a significant amount of revisionary research on the his-




tory of rhetoric, a greater awareness of women's contributions to that history, and a greater sensitivity to gender references. To this end, appended to Caplan's address are suggested readings for works alluded to by Caplan as well current scholarship that provides a more recent perspective on the topics raised.

The document that you see here is the product of a collaborative effort in many respects. The creation of this published text literally involved efforts from coast (California) to coast (New York). The expertise necessary for the reconstruction of this manuscript required proficiency both in computer technologies and in rhetorical theory and history. The "knowledge" necessary to edit this work required both interpersonal experiences acquired over several years of contact with Harry Caplan and years of study of his scholarship. The end product is a consequence of how our technologies can move a piece of discourse from orality to literacy. What Harry Caplan had to say to his audience back in 1968 will reso- nate today for its continued relevance to our histories of both ancient and modern rhetoric. What is also fascinating about this effort is how various technologies can assist us in not only transforming oral discourse to literate form but, as a consequence, can stabilize that act of momentary communication so that Harry Caplan will continue to "speak" to generations of students yet to come. Despite our efforts and the advantages of current technologies, however, what we cannot capture in print is the lucidity of Caplan's oral delivery. The Cornell School of Rhetoric maintained that classical rhetoric facilitated public speaking which, in turn, helped students to realize the best of a liberal arts education. As a practiced lecturer and former instructor of speech, Caplan's seventy-minute address illus- trates the classical value of uniting wisdom with eloquence.

A Note on the Commentary As mentioned earlier, the manuscript of Professor Caplan's address contained

no explanatory notes or citation references. Without supporting material readers would have little context within which to understand the salience of the remarks and observations made by Professor Caplan on that day almost thirty years ago. In addition, the audience for this reconstructed text is different in other ways. While many readers will have extensive background in the history of rhetoric, others may not. To this end, works are cited that will familiarize the latter group of readers with the information and topics that Professor Caplan alluded to in his address. Whenever possible, the actual citation of a mentioned work is given; in some instances, this was not possible. In other cases, general background works are referenced; every effort has been made to cite works that would have been available at the time of Professor Caplan's address. In some instances, however, later works actually provide a more thorough background for the points that are being discussed. Last, a list of suggested readings is provided at the end of the address. Some of the works are collections of Harry Caplan's scholarship, others are by his colleagues and former students from Cornell and still others are recommended scholarship about Caplan and his era in rhetorical scholarship. All such material is presented with the intent to enrich an understanding and appreciation of the remarks offered by Harry Caplan in this rare document.

Richard Leo Enos



THE CLASSICAL TRADITION: RHETORIC AND ORATORY

A Public Address Given By Harry Caplan (Cornell University) at California State University at Hayward May 11, 1968

icero and other ancient rhetoricians repeat a commonplace that oratory is one of the earliest needs of society. And indeed natural speakers are promi-

nent already in Homer: Nestor, "from whose mouth flowed speech sweeter than honey," Odysseus "fertile in counsel," and Achilles "a speaker of words as well as doer of deeds."' The Greek was a zoon politik6n, "a political animal," pos- sessed of a strong civic feeling.2 He believed that the only kind of agreement desirable among rational men is that achieved by free discussion; and parrhesia, the right of the citizen to speak his mind, was staunchly prized. It is fitting and proper that an eloquent expression of this pride should appear in a speech-the funeral oration which Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles: "We Athe- nians decide, or reflect rightly upon, public questions for ourselves, believing that discussion does not constitute a stumbling-block to action, but rather that it is a mistake not to be instructed by discussion before entering upon action."3

After a history of natural eloquence-for Thucydides and other writers tell us about early Greek orators of power and persuasiveness-the art of rhetoric emerged with the emergence of democracy, in the year 465 B.C., in the Greek cities of Sicily.4 Despots were there overthrown and popular governments established. When disputes arose over confiscated property, a class of trained speakers was found useful, and so the art of advocacy was methodically studied. The earliest treatises were those of Corax and Tisias, who first saw the uses of argumentation from probabilities.

From Sicily rhetoric passed to Greece, and there underwent a rich development. Let me indicate some of the main contributions. In the 5th Century [B. C.]:

* Empedocles invented literary devices such as metaphor; * Thrasymachus studied appeal to the emotions; * Theodorus of Byzantium classified the divisions of a discourse.

The sophist Gorgias (5th-4th Century B.C.), dazzling the Athenians with a new type of artistic prose, initiated epideictic (the oratory of praise and censure), and those figures of speech which produce balance and rhythm. And Prodicus (5th Century B.C) emphasized the correct choice of words. The Sophists traveled from city to city collecting huge sums from pupils who wished to learn argumentation.

These sophists Plato, in the 4th Century B.C., in the dialogue entitled Gorgias, scathingly indicted for their unscrupulous oratory, for making the worse appear the better reason.5 In the Republic he exiles both poetry and rhetoric from the

RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly 13 Volume 27, Number 2 Spring 1997




ideal State, but in the Phaedrus gives the blueprint of a rhetoric which should lead men to justice, which should not merely delight them but should improve them morally. And in that same dialogue he sets down the invaluable principle that a speech should be a living organism, all members being adapted to the whole.

To Isocrates (5th-4th Century B.C.) rhetoric is the noblest of the sciences.6 He believed that it provides a general education, and that by its means he could form statesmen. "Nothing," he said, "contributes so much to the practice of virtue as does the study of political wisdom and eloquence." On the technical side, by developing rhythmic prose, he gave the Attic language grace and dignity.

Aristotle converted the practical approach of his predecessors into a philosophical system. Rhetoric is now a counterpart of dialectic, is the art of critical examination into the truth of an opinion.7 Though different from the special sciences, rhetoric is a discipline by itself. Its matter is largely ethics and politics, but it has relations also with psychology, jurisprudence, and literary criticism. The kinds of oratory are three: legal-whose end is justice; deliberative- whose end is expediency (he favors this branch); and epideictic-whose end is virtue, commemorating persons, places, and days, and taking the form of the funeral oration, the invective, the address of welcome, or the after-dinner speech. With scientific skill Aristotle develops the three kinds of proof-the logical, the emotional, and the ethical, ethical persuasion being that achieved through the speaker's character as artistically evinced in his discourse. The treatment of the emotions in Book II of his Rhetoric displays an extraordinarily shrewd knowledge of human nature, and Book III, on Style, sets clarity and propriety in the foreground, and considers the distinctions between prose and poetic diction, and between oral and written style. Of the kinds of competence speakers must master, the Invention of ideas holds first place, for rhetoric is the art of discovering all the possible means of persuasion.

Aristotle's disciple, Theophrastus (4th-3rd century B.C.), developed a theory of delivery-a function of the art which was not philosophical enough to interest his master-and exerted a strong influence through his treatment of the four chief qualities of Style-purity, clarity, appropriateness, and ornamentation.

A new phase began in the third century B.C., when, chiefly because of political conditions, great speaking had ceased. Only Hermagoras, in the second century, deserves special mention here. He made rhetoric once again prominent by building the doctrine of Issues which determine the kinds of case; this doctrine became a staple of theory in most of the subsequent treatises.

The Second Sophistic,8 which began in the first Christian century, represents the last, and scholastic, phase, and we can take as representative Hermogenes (Second Century), whose art, though it has many virtues, is featured also by subtleties, obscure terminology, and excessive refinements.9

Rhetoric is of course interwoven with criticism. At about 50 B.C. Dionysius of Halicarnassus wrote systematic studies of the great Greek orators, seeing re-



CLASSICAL TRADITIONs/RETORIC AND ORATORY 15

rations among them, and tracing the historical progress.10 At times he is mechanical and fails to contemplate the orator as a whole, but in general his judgment and taste are excellent, and his treatment is often enlivened by personal reactions. His criticism wrought a salutary check on the florid and bombastic style of the Asianic orators, for Asianism flourished in both East and West after the death of Demosthenes.

A century later (as some of us still think), Longinus, in his golden book On the Sublime, observes the human spirit-elevated thought and inspired passion-at work in great speaking and writing.

So much for the theory. The high period of Attic oratory was the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., with their ten speakers, canonized as a group in the second or third century B.C."1

Near the beginning of artistic argumentation, Antiphon, relying on a priori probabilities, and with a crude but vigorous style.

The unconventional Andocides, good in narrative, but loose in style. Lysias, model of the simple style, of good taste, moderateness, precision, and

skill in character-delineation. The intellectual Isaeus, interesting for his lucidity. Isocrates, exemplar of the Middle Style, most elaborate of all in his attention

to expression. Demosthenes, who best blended all three types of style, the grand, the simple,

and the intermediate, perfect in his control of language, and spokesman of the highest sincerity for the ideals of democracy.'2

Aeschines, powerful in his effect on audiences, clever in his wit. The honest and patriotic Lycurgus, a less careful Isocrates. Hyperides, highly regarded in antiquity for his smoothness and persuasive-

ness, and Dinarchus, with his exaggerated invectives; by the ancients termed the "Gingerbread," or "Small-Beer Demosthenes," and representing the beginnings of decline.

Here you have a splendid, perhaps as a body, unequalled oratorical literature. It is safe to say that the Philippics and Olynthiac speeches of Demosthenes, and the exciting debate between Demosthenes and Aeschines on the award of the crown to Demosthenes, rank with the great speeches of all time. Lysias, Isocrates, and Isaeus broke new paths; Aeschines, Demosthenes, and Hyperides have been called the perfectors. These last came at a time when theory had also developed, and manuals of the art had multiplied.

At this juncture I should remind you that in a legal trial in Greece the accused conducted his own case. Many who were not equal to this task therefore hired speech-writers.'3 Of the orators I have named, six especially-Antiphon, Isaeus, Hyperides, Demosthenes, Dinarchus, and with greatest skill Lysias-often wrote speeches for their clients to deliver. I mention this logography because in other forms it often recurs in history. That the philosopher Seneca wrote speeches for the emperor Nero was a scandal; but we have very much with us today the ghost- writers of campaign and other kinds of speeches.




Finally, a word on the last ancient revival of eloquence- the Second Sophis- tic-which, as I have said, began in the first Christian century. These later sophists were professional speakers who would appear with eclat before large and enthusiastic audiences, and display great feats of improvisation and verbal memory. But their aim was often only virtuosity, and tremendous talent was spent on achieving what was at times indeed witty and graceful, but frequently also empty and puerile. Dio Chrysostom wrote a eulogy of hair, and Synesius, in answer, an encomium of baldness. In the declamatory kind of talk the speaker might represent some figure of history-Philip of Macedon might well take another verbal beating from a feigned Demosthenes. I recommend to you the witty satire on this kind of oratory entitled The Professor of Public Speaking, written by Lucian in the second Christian century-himself a rhetorician and pleader. Yet some of the moral, political, and even sophistical speeches make interesting reading. The speakers did return to Classical models, but their art was of the schools, practiced for its own sake, in large part removed from life, the product of a time of leisure and wealth, but also of a time when free speech was restricted. Epideictic is the main occupation, and the scholastic treatises, with their often sterile methods, now come into use. These treatises-by Menander, Theon, Hermogenes, Apsines, Aphthonius-are to be entrenched for many centuries, both in the East and in the West. In the East indeed they ruled throughout all of Byzantine history; tracts reworking their principles, but without substantial al- terations, proliferated.14 The chief addition was in the form of Christian mo- tives. Byzantine oratory, too, was largely epideictic, Photius in the ninth century standing out as the most successful in returning to old models.

But the decline of Greek oratory really dates from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C., after which, under absolute monarchy, oratory was divorced from practical affairs. It remained now for expanding Rome to enjoy a career of splendor in oratory and fruitful activity in rhetoric.

The Greek art of rhetoric was first naturalized at Rome in the middle of the second century B.C., and Latin treatises on the subject were soon in circulation. Cato Major and the elder Marcus Antonius wrote such texts-we don't have them-and the two oldest extant, belonging to the second decade of the first century B.C., though Greek in substance, yet show signs, too, of a tradition of Latin teaching behind them.

We had from Aristotle and Theophrastus four divisions of rhetoric-the invention of ideas, their arrangement, style, and delivery. Memory came in as a fifth division, in the time after Alexander. The Roman treatise addressed to Herennius, which preserves Greek doctrine, gives an elaborate treatment of natural and artificial memory, the memory of facts and of words, based on a visual scheme of backgrounds."5 This kind of mnemonic training was to bear fruit in extraordinary feats during the Second Sophistic, and a history of the method, which persists to the present day (even in the paper the night before last, which



CLASSICAL TRADITIONS/RHETORIC AND ORATORY 17

I read on the plane) would require several volumes. Let a speaker of the 4th Christian century, Prohaeresius, serve as an example of sophistic virtuosity:

When his enemies-these were students of another teacher---challenged Prohaeresius to speak, unprepared, on a difficult theme, he not only ex- temporized with a flood of eloquence, but then also delivered the speech verbatim a second time. His faithful pupil Eunapius tells us that some of the audience kissed his feet and hands, declaring him to be the very model of Hermes, God of Eloquence, while his enemies lay in the dust, eaten up with envy.'6

By Cicero's time the five-fold division of the rhetorical functions is fully developed.17 Cicero as theorist combines the doctrines of Aristotle and Isocrates, bringing to bear also the wisdom gained by his own rich practice as leader of the State and advocate in many trials. With large vision he sets up for the orator an ideal of human excellence-he wants much more than professional skill. The aim is humanitas-a wide and noble culture embracing a knowledge of history, jurisprudence, philosophy, and literature.

At the end of the first Christian century, during the Empire, Quintilian aimed to revive the Ciceronian principles in his twelve books on the training of an orator-rhetoric is the center of a broad literary education, and its ideal is one of moral virtue." With sanity and judicious practicality this experienced school- master summarizes virtually all of the ancient art.

Roman oratory existed long before the elder Cato, but as a literary art it may be said to have begun with him, at the beginning of the 2nd century before Christ. In one of our oldest extant Roman treatises on rhetoric-86 B.C.-orators of the preceding century, in a long list, already serve as models for style.'9 Cicero indeed thought that Crassus and Antonius rivaled the best speakers of Greece.20 Of their speeches we have only fragments,21 but we have also Cicero's observation that in the previous history of Roman oratory there was a progressive development from untaught speaking to a polished style which was the product of the conscious study of the art.

Most public men at Rome spoke effectively, but for the height of excellence we must read the speeches of Cicero, great theorist and great orator both. We have 57 of his orations, and for the inspiration of lofty ideas, the Second Philippic, the Verrines, the Defense ofArchias, the Defense of Milo, of Caelius, and of the Manilian Law in my opinion stand out from most of the rest. Here is noble language handled with such vivacity, clearness, and music that it became the model for centuries-lucid, ornate, with perfect periods and rhythms. Cicero opposed both the affectation and bombast of Asianism, and the coldness and stiffness of extreme Attic simplicity.22

With the death of Cicero and of the Roman Republic the great tradition came to an end.23 Political oratory was now restricted virtually to the emperor, who




wielded absolute authority, and when he addressed the Senate his aim was rather to impose his will than to persuade; the Senate's duties were largely administra- tive, and speech was not really free-especially when Caligula, Nero, and Domitian occupied the throne; the popular assemblies had no power; legal oratory was confined to the petty courts; and epideictic speaking started on a course of progressive degeneration that reached bottom in the panegyrics of the 3rd and 4th centuries-these have been termed, perhaps too harshly, one of the most worthless bequests of antiquity, for their servile flattery of the emperors to whom they were addressed.

Oratory is for the most part now confined to the schools, where declamation predominated. Unreal, melodramatic, trivial fare (too often)-tyrants, pirates, disinherited children, poisonings, and seduction were the themes too often treated, and emphasis was placed on ingenuity, abundance, bizarre extravagance, man- nerism, and dazzling ornament. The aims of this oratory were entertainment and display, the pleasures of the ear. It was an activity shunted away from life. And a contemporary, Cassius Severus, cries: "These declaimers are like hot- house plants that cannot stand up in the open air."

We can profitably compare the decline of Athens after the death of Alexander, when the city lost its importance, with the decline at Rome. The Greek Second Sophistic and the decline in the West merge, and the manifestations are not dis- similar.

During the first Christian century at Rome, the decadence was a subject of lively consideration, and I present the chief theories then advanced to explain it. Some attributed the decline to the growth of wealth and luxury-"wealth accu- mulates and men decay"-some to the bad elements I have described in education; some, like Seneca the Elder and Velleius Paterculus, believed in the opera- tion of a natural law of reaction-that which has reached its acme must perforce recede; but Pliny and Tacitus and Longinus were sure that the chief cause was the loss of freedom. Says Longinus: "Must we really believe that oft-repeated observation that democracy is the kind foster-mother of greatness, and that literary excellence may be said to flourish only with democracy, and with democracy to die? For freedom has the power to nourish the imagination of the high- minded and to kindle hope, and where it prevails there spreads abroad the zeal of mutual rivalry and the ambitious struggle for pre-eminence."24

With respect to Greece, Professor Jebb accepts the political explanation for the decay of deliberative and legal oratory, but for the decline in epideictic he assigns another cause.25 The decay of citizen-life in the Greek republics brought about a change in the nature of Greek art. That art had been popular, fixing its attention on the essential and typical, and suppressing the accidental, trivial, and transient. When the moral unity of the city-state was broken, and men lived apart from the city, the artist worked for a few, and caste and coterie make capricious judges. There is no lasting security for truth in artistic creation except an intelli- gent public. Cicero said that he accepted the Roman public as the final judge of



CLASSICAL TRADITIONS/RETORIC AND ORATORY 19

his speaking, while Pliny, under the Empire, was indifferent to public approval and was satisfied if only his friend Tacitus thought his speeches good. Recall that when in 411 B.C. Antiphon was convicted of treason upon the failure of the revolution of the antidemocratic 400, he delivered what Thucydides called the best speech of defense he had ever known.26 When after Antiphon's condemna- tion, Agathon praised his speech, Antiphon said he "would rather have satisfied one man of virtue through guile than any number of ordinary people." In the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle takes this principle as a means index of megalopsykhia, greatness of soul.

The tradition of rhetorical teaching was in the main constant during the Greek and Roman periods. Grammar and rhetoric dominated education, maintaining also a connection with linguistic and literary studies.27 Much time was given to narrative, essay-writings, paraphrases, ethical themes, commonplaces, character studies, the analysis of model speeches, and speech-making of all the three kinds.

The Greeks and Romans did not study prose apart from poetry. As Quintilian says, Homer is the supreme model not only for poetic power but also for oratorical. Poetry, as in the speeches delivered in tragedies, supplied the student of rhetoric with illustrative matter; and the two arts shared in common the field of style, character-delineation, and emotion-poetry portraying the emotions, rhetoric arousing them. The study of poetry was considered essential in the training of the speaker, and conversely, rhetorical principles were carried over to the study of poetry, even as Horace adopted character-sketching and other elements of the art of rhetoric in his Art of Poetry. We later find many recurrences of this close interrelationship.

The study of rhetoric had an effect also on historiography. The narratio, the statement of facts, is one of the divisions of a speech, and theorizing upon it was in the period after Alexander bound up with the theory of writing history, even as epideictic theory was linked with the theory of biography.28 We go to the period of Silver Latin, however-in the first and second centuries of the Chris- tian era-to observe how the contemporary training in rhetoric was a formative factor in various branches of literature. In Tacitus and Suetonius we see the search for epigram; in the work of Velleius Paterculus an altogether rhetorical kind of history; in Valerius Maximus and Silius Italicus sententious reflections; the speeches, and the stock characters, in Seneca's tragedies; or in Lucan the passion for point.

I come now to the struggle between rhetoric and philosophy for supremacy in education: there have always, so it seems, been those who distrust rhetoric. The opposition-whether philosophical, religious, educational, or political-has at one time or other mostly taken these forms:

Rhetoric-public speaking-has no regard for instruction or truth, but seeks only deception; it is devoid of sincerity, and so corrupts the young;




it is immoral, teaching that the only morality is that established by public opinion-truth becomes that which the audience believes.

It is unphilosophical, dealing not with universals but with particulars; it aims at appearances-its sphere is that of opinion and conjecture.

It is an art of flattery, pleasing the crowd and conforming to its standards-the harlot of the arts.

It is not an art but a knack, like selling merchandise, or like thievery; it needs only experience and practice-but many successful speakers never studied rules. (Here I have-in effect, though not in his own words- given you arguments of the early Plato.)29 Other critics continue: unlike philosophy, rhetoric does not conduce to a happy life.

Though it worships success, it does not produce statesmen or confer power; ingloriously did Cicero pay for his fame in oratory by the kind of death he died-sacrificed by Octavian to the animosity of Marc Antony, and his head and severed hands exposed at the Rostra.30

Further, it is a waste of time, futile and trivial; every care centers on the apparatus of words and the nimbleness of tongue.

In the ancient period the fight between rhetoric and philosophy continued from the time of Plato up to the second Christian century. The Stoics distrusted ornamental language and appeals to the emotions, but made contributions to the art in the field of composition; the Epicureans admitted that rhetoric was useful for political activity (to which they were indifferent) but did not accept the doctrine of Cato and Quintilian that the orator was necessarily a good man,3" argu- ing that many orators are able but in character depraved; the Peripatetics continued the Aristotelian and Theophrastian concern with rhetoric, but in the second, pre-Christian century Critolaus was opposed to the discipline; even the author of the treatise on rhetoric addressed to Herennius believed philosophy to be a better study than rhetoric.32 And by the fourth Christian century the Emperor Julian complains that talented men of the West delight only in rhetoric. The philosophical opinion never completely dies: the Renaissance Platonist [Francesco] Patrizi takes up the fight against rhetoric and once more contends that it is not an art. And also Melanchthon, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and Ermolao Barbaro, again debate the subject in a very lively way.33 And in the 19th century Renan alleged that rhetoric, along with poetics, was the sole error of the Greeks.

The political attack is especially enlightening: Cicero is wrong in saying that eloquence is an associate of peace, an ally of tranquillity, the foster-child of a well-regulated civic order.34 Rhetoric does not grow in such an order. States with



CLASSICAL TRADITIONs/RHETORIC AND ORATORY 21

a vigorous militaristic constitution like Crete banished rhetoricians; Sparta condemned a citizen who had studied rhetoric abroad; and rhetoric was unknown in totalitarian Macedonia and Persia.

It destroys commonwealths; by the death of Demosthenes Athens was de- stroyed.

It is a foster-child of license, which foolish men call liberty, an associate of sedition. Maternus in Tacitus' Dialogue on Orators exclaims: "What need of a long succession of speeches before the public assembly when now (under the Empire) it is not the ignorant multitude that deliberates on the public welfare, but one man-and he the all-wisest!"35

Much later, in 1548, John Jewel, Praelector in Humanities at Oxford: "Rheto- ric is devised for error, profit, and democratic heedlessness; it appeals not to the judicious, but to the scum of the populace."

And not so long ago (in my own memory), in 1916, the scholar Drerup, a very good student of Isocrates, with scorn for that provincial lawyer-talker Demosthenes, who had the effrontery to defend his mean little State against efficient Macedon and to resist the wave of the future, made an appeal to banish the Greek orator from the schools of Germany.

Finally, a few months ago, The New York limes reported that the present Greek government has condemned the reading of Pericles' funeral oration in Thucydides because of its democratic spokesmanship.36

The Christian opposition was different from the philosophical, for when sacred literature was set against secular, the conflict became one also of conflict- ing literary cultures. Take Paulus Albarus of the 9th century as typical: "In the beginning was the Word. This Plato knew not, Cicero knew not, Demosthenes knew not. The grammarians knew this not; the geometricians knew this not; the rhetoricians, wordy and redundant, have filled the air with empty wind." The point often made is that rhetoric is useless in man's endeavor to save his soul; on the Day of Judgment the sinner won't help himself with epideictic oratory. Fur- thermore, worldly success is no worthy aim of a Christian; and the praiseworthy, the laudabile, aim of deliberative oratory is unChristian, appertaining as it does to vainglory; the point is made that the books of the pagans never knew the humility which the New Testament preaches. St. Jerome undergoes a conversion from Ciceronian to Christian. St. Augustine, former teacher of rhetoric, in the Confessions looks back with misgivings upon the days when he "sold the talk- ativeness that emphasizes victory." And the heading of this section in an Ameri- can edition reads (believe me): "When I taught rhetoric, and kept a mistress, I yet showed traces of faith in Thee, 0 Lord."37

But the rhetorical tradition was too strong to go under, and the only significant change was that in the Middle Ages rhetoric became subordinate to sacred studies. St. Augustine in his work, On Christian Doctrine, depends heavily on Cicero, joins eloquence to religion, and proclaims its value for Theology. In justification he writes, and others repeat after him, that "it is no sin to despoil pagan thought




of the gold of wisdom or the silver of eloquence, as by God's precept the He- brews despoiled the Egyptians." Cassiodorus sees himself as the ideal Christian orator, and Gregory of Nazianzus writes: "I have retained nothing for myself but eloquence, nor do I regret any of the labor I have expended on sea or land in search of it. After the duties of religion, it is the possession I have most cher- ished, and to which I cling the most. It is my guide on my heavenward path; it leads insensibly to God, and teaches us to know Him more clearly, and preserves and strengthens that knowledge in us."

Finally (and perhaps with too much justice to the other side), I cannot fore- bear to tell you of the debate that took place in the Cambridge University Union on March 11, 1924. The subject: "Resolved that this House has the highest regard for rhetoric." For the motion: 297; against the motion, believe it or not, 297! I hope you will be relieved to hear that the Chairman saved the day by his affirmative vote. The chief speaker in opposition? Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who began: "I am no speaker as Brutus is, but a plain, blunt man"- thus using the oldest trick in the trade. But you are not to take the charming flippancy of the British University Unions seriously.

The defenders of rhetoric have also based their arguments on a variety of grounds. Aristotle in his Rhetoric and Quintilian amply vindicated the art against Plato's charges. Rhetoric is useful because truth and justice have a natural ten- dency to prevail over their opposites; the true and the just are by their nature easier to prove and to believe in. Rhetoric is the art of making truth effective- not the speaker, as with the Sophists. We present two sides of a case in order to see what the facts are. All good things except virtue itself can be abused. Rheto- ric is a good, given the imperfections of human nature and the requirements of popular government. The persuasion of the multitude is not a vulgar task, but a necessary part of education and government in a stable society. [It continues to be a useful study so long as men discuss statements and maintain them, defend themselves, and attack others.]38

So also the French preacher and scholar Fenelon, in the year 1679, taught that the aim of eloquence was to persuade men to truth and virtue.39

In 1815, the poet Goethe, conscious of the innate German distrust of rhetoric, and seeing that Germany lacked the conditions which made the Romance peoples the heirs of Rome, declared that rhetoric was one of humanity's greatest needs.

Paul Shorey maintained that a knowledge of rhetoric renders the citizen proof against tricky logic, false emotions, and empty style.

But John Morley dealt with the subject in one short sentence: "To disparage eloquence is to depreciate mankind."

As we leave the ancients we may ask: why the exceptional favor accorded to rhetoric in Greece and Rome? The underlying idea which persisted throughout the ancient period, in times even when political conditions provided no urgency for great speaking, was that to learn to speak well was at the same time to learn to think well and to live well. Eloquence had a truly human value transcending



CLASSICAL TRADITIONsIRmETORIC AND ORATORY 23

the practical applications which historical circumstances could confer upon it. It was the conveyor of the cultural patrimony which distinguished man from sav- age and made him truly man. To the ancients, rhetoric was bound up intimately with their life of order and beauty, their poetry and their art. It developed a concern for form and artistic ability, held the interest of their best men of action, and deeply influenced their literature.

From Carolingian times-the 8th and 9th centuries-well into the Renais- sance, rhetoric as one of the liberal arts was figured in church sculptures, mu- rals, manuscripts, miniatures, the ornamentation of library rooms, fountains, table- tops, bronze vessels, windows, tapestry, altars, and gravestones; in many places of Europe, and the handiwork often of famous artists. Rhetoric appears usually in female form,40 and Cicero is almost always her attendant. At times she holds a pose perhaps intended to be faithful to Martianus Capella's (5th century) strik- ing portrait of her as omnipotent queen, sublime and radiant beauty and regal poise, helmeted, her robe embroidered with a multitude of figures.41

Consistently throughout the Middle Ages rhetoric played a cardinal role in education. In the first place, manuscripts of some of the chief classical authors themselves were plentiful in the libraries. Secondly, there were the works of the minor rhetoricians of later date who, following the compendious fashion of an encyclopedia, preserved the principles of ancient rhetoric. Thirdly, there were commentaries on several of the classical works. And finally, there were special tracts on rhetorical colors, as the figures of speech were called.

Rhetoric was in close kinship with grammar and dialectic, these three disciplines forming the trivium of the liberal arts. The rhetorical use of the topics of dialectic, developed by Aristotle, and for the Middle Ages by Boethius in the early sixth century, became of special importance with the increased interest in dialectic that after the year 1100 attended the growth of scholasticism.42 Dialec- tic infiltrated both grammar and rhetoric, and all three became branches of logic. The rhetorical education, as I have said, flourished in the schools of Europe, and by the twelfth century in the cathedral schools, monasteries, city schools, and later in the universities. And it was included in the curriculum of the religious orders. An anonymous rhetorician of the fifteenth century can boast that "rhetoric is the science which refreshes the hungry, renders the mute articulate, makes the blind to see, and teaches one to avoid every lingual ineptitude." Furthermore, in the tradition that rhetoric is fundamentally the art of speaking well on civil questions, there arose a group of works like the Ecclesiastical Rhetoric of the twelfth century, virtually a forensic rhetoric of canon law. Also in this tradition, and maintaining the alliance of rhetoric and law in the schools, there grew up from Carolingian times well into the later period a huge and tremendously important mass of treatises, artes dictaminis, devoted to letter-writing and legal administration.43 These were designed to prepare students for positions in the ecclesiastical and state chanceries; the art assumed the name of rhetoric, and the teachers called themselves rhetors. Almost universally these tracts borrowed the




parts of the discourse from rhetoric, adding from epistolography the Salutation and the Appeal, frequently used the principles of Invention, Arrangement, and the capturing of good will, and discussed rhythmical cadences, the colors (or figures of speech), and the modes of expanding the material. One can gain some notion of the esteem in which these handbooks were held from the bar- gain made by the usurious wardrobe clerk of the 14th century, John of Ockham, who lent the manuscripts of two arts of dictamen to a friend at a charge of a goose per week.

But the great field of persuasion in the Middle Ages was in preaching, the winning of souls to God."4 In its origin, as Israel Bethan put it uniquely, "the creation of the Jewish spirit.""4 With the spread of scholasticism and the rise of the great preaching orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans, Christian preaching flowered in practice and theory. We know of perhaps 200 manuals that were composed from the twelfth century on. The manuscripts were scattered plenti- fully over the libraries of Europe. For example, a catalogue of the year 1500 of the library of Tegernsee Abbey lists over 50 manuscripts on rhetoric and twelve on preaching. Now the art of preaching grew out of its own functions and in its development benefited also from the doctrine of logic; we cannot say that in it classical rhetoric bloomed in full again. But we find evidence of considerable influence. Several authors, for example, set the thematic form of preaching, the unique contribution of medieval theory, squarely upon the basis of Ciceronian rhetoric; its divisions fulfill the aim of teaching (docere), its distinctions the aim of delighting (delectare), and its expansions the aim of moving to action (flectere).46 Amplification is again a primary method, and rhetorical colors and rhythms again receive special attention. Some authors would say, with William of Auvergne, that the more simple and unadorned a sermon is, the more it moves and edifies. The question indeed still comes up today: do we want Ciceros in our pulpits? But the others favored "coloration," as embellishment was sometimes called. Thomas Waleys in 1300 sees no harm in food thus delicately served, but these rhythmical colors should not be used to excess, as by those preachers who fill the entire sermon with words ending in -ilis and -trilis and -osus and -bosus. The modulation of the voice, and gestures, are often treated in these handbooks, and Cicero is quoted on the virtue of timely humor-to be used when the hear- ers begin to sleep. Some of these tracts obviously substitute mechanical opera- tions in the place of individual invention-in these instances one sees the third stage in the natural history of an art: first we have a period of inspiration; secondly, theory arises, and is followed by a period of artistic composition; and finally may come over-elaborate theory resulting in automatic processes.

The theological environment is significant. Roger Bacon saw the value of rhetoric in moral philosophy. Nor is it surprising that William of Auvergne, in the 13th century, should write a Divine Rhetoric, Rhetorica Divina, a rhetoric of prayer. The introductory poem reads as follows: "Your wisdom, Cicero and Quintilian, was hopeless, vain, and treacherous. You taught only how to move



CLASSICAL TRADITIONS/RHmTORIC AND ORATORY 25

the heart of a human judge, whereas our lofty art teaches us to mollify the wrath of that Great Judge, even God. Ah, how much better with words to placate the puissant and eternal Father!" The passage from the Hebrew Midrashic commentary, Sifre, comes to mind: "Nothing is more beautiful than prayer; it is more beautiful even than good works." In William's Divine Rhetoric, the parts of a prayer, like those of a speech, include the Introduction, Statement of Facts, and Conclusion, and like those of dictamen, an Appeal, and a corroboration of the Appeal. One chapter is devoted to the gestures of prayer, like prostration of the body, genuflection, spreading and elevating the hands, and raising the eyes to heaven; while another considers seven vocal aids to prayer-wailing, sighing, sobbing, and the like. And I have here something from The New York limes that appeared last month. The Archbishop of York is criticizing the presence of-the way prayers are taken in his church-the gestures of the audience. He told members of the congregation that their heads should not be buried in their arms during prayers. He added that such sloppiness induces sleep that leads to a muttered "Amen." Even Memoria has a place in this prayer in the Rhetorica Divina-the memory of divine benefits; and prayer has its own kind of pleading-the Plea for Mercy, the deprecatio, subhead of the concessio, if you remember the old Latin rhetoric, the acknowledgment of the child, adapted from the ancient theory of the juridical issue.47 But Ekkehard of St. Gall had two centuries earlier said that the plea of the confessional transcended that of the law-courts: In the courts of law confession is the weakest plea, in prayer it is the strongest.

Lastly, there was in the Middle Ages the usual interaction between rhetoric and poetics-I might say a virtual identification of the two. In the arts of poetry of the 12th and 13th centuries poetics is narrowed to Style, and amplification and ornamentation through the figures of speech are the chief concern. The main sources of doctrine, apart from Horace's Art of Poetry, are the anonymous Rhetoric addressed to Herennius and Cicero's book On Invention.48

These two ancient books dominated the tradition of the Middle Ages.49 They appear with great frequency in extant catalogues of medieval libraries, and our claims to a continuity of tradition are best illustrated by the career of Cicero's treatise of Invention.50 One of my students, Miss Dorothy Grosser, has demon- strated that this book enjoyed an influence uninterrupted for well over ten centuries, and not only in the fields of rhetoric, poetics, and dictamen, but also in chronicles, letters, biographies, philosophical and religious works, and even treatises on music.

Thus the Middle Ages received, adapted, and transmitted the classical art of rhetoric. The ancient art contributed to the medieval arts of speaking and writing, to the composition of letters and legal documents, to preaching, prayers, and poetry. And Professor McKeon has shown how it contributed also to the canons of scriptural interpretation-Cassiodorus wrote on the eloquence of the whole divine law-and to the development of the Scholastic method; how its function came to be to state the truths certified by theology.51 Classical rhetoric takes us deep into the culture of the Middle Ages.




The Renaissance welcomed ancient rhetoric with enthusiasm.52 The revival of learning brought back the major rhetorical treatises-think now of the works of Cicero's maturity, of Aristotle's Rhetoric, Longinus On the Sublime, the speeches of Cicero, and the Greek orators. Cicero's book On Invention and the Rhetorica ad Herennium were, however, still important, and were translated into the vernacular tongues, as were the speeches of Cicero and Demosthenes. The best and full tradition was now available, and was used in the new text-books-by [Bartolomeo] Cavalcanti, [Cyprian] Soarez, George of Trebizond-and after the invention of printing enjoyed unheard-of popularity.

The revival began as a revival of Cicero, with Petrarch, attracted by perfection of form, as its leader. "I do not fear being thought a bad Christian by avowing myself so much a Ciceronian. Of all the writers of all the ages and of all the races the one author I most admire is Cicero." Several recent scholars have taught us how the ideal of the Renaissance humanist was the educated man free in thought and action, how the instrument of this freedom was found in the ancient literatures, how the Renaissance saw in Cicero the great exemplar of virtue and civic consciousness, and in his eloquentia the union of good letters with virtue. We now meet that interesting movement, Ciceronianism, which spread over Western Europe and flourished for over a century. For its followers there was only one model, Cicero. An extreme Ciceronian like Longeuil was proud that he read nothing but Cicero for five years. Politian attacked the slavish imitation of a single model, and Erasmus' satire dealt the movement its coup-de-grace. But it is significant that even the rebels shared the enthusiasm for Cicero, who continued "to hold the crown, diadem, sceptre, and throne of eloquence." He was still "to be imitated with utmost zeal, above all the rest, but now not exclusively, nor totally, nor always." And even Erasmus expressed "veneration for that divine soul." Rhetoric penetrated the literatures of Europe, not only the Latin but also the vernacular literatures, for the writers in these tongues-Bembo with greater zeal-strove to give their prose the power, ease, and beauty of Latin style. John Lyly makes the Gorgianic figures-antithesis and isocolon-and rhetorical expansion the chief features of his curious euphuism. The principle of amplification was of course emphasized in treatises like Erasmus' De Copia, a widely known treasure-house of aids for speakers and writers. History, as with Machiavelli, has persuasion as its aim, and his work is full of rhetorical maxims. Rhetorical exempla abound in Jean Bodin's treatise on historical method. The Courtier of Castiglione is in part based on Cicero's De Oratore. In the arts of poetry the fusion of rhetoric and poetics is almost everywhere accepted-see Minturno's De Poeta, but also Fracastoro, Peletier, Partenio, and even Tasso in his Discourses on the Art of Poetry. We find that Cicero's De Oratore contains instructions useful for poetry, and, as with Bembo, that the three styles of the Rhetorica ad Herennium-the grand, the simple, and the intermediate-are a serviceable classification. Sir Philip Sydney employs for poetics the three-fold function of a Ciceronian speech-to teach, delight, and move to action. Francois



CLASSICAL TRADITIONs/RiETORIC AND ORATORY 27

Rabelais consciously reproduces Ciceronian periods, climaxes, antitheses, and rhetorical questions.53 On the other hand, the Grands Rhetoriqueurs of the 15th and 16th centuries in spirit belong rather to the rhetoric of the late Middle Ages; their verses, full of tricks of rhyme and wordy trifling, were court entertainment by poets who thought of themselves at the same time as orators, and were proud of their title as the "Great Rhetoricians."

In England, drama was, as one critic has put it, a rhetorical academy. Read T.W. Baldwin's Small Latin and Less Greek to learn how the persistent devices of ancient rhetoric provided Shakespeare with patterns.54 And as for the writers in prose, their most distinctive trait was a delight in language for its own sake- puns, neologisms, balance, and rhythm, betraying the influence of the current training in rhetoric and its absorption in style. Here the Greek scholastic rhetoric played a part.

It was natural that Cicero should cast a spell on this age of splendor and richness of art. Symonds calls the 15th century the golden age of speechification, for this was also an active period for oratory. But it was mostly epideictic oratory, lacking high purpose-declamatory, full of quotations, emphasizing verbal cleverness-and in the form of panegyrics, public addresses to popes and am- bassadors, and marriage and funeral orations.

The Renaissance also achieved a complete synthesis of homiletics and classical rhetoric. The classical authors were fully searched and carefully excerpted for the specific use of preachers. Chytraeus studies Cicero, Pericles, and Demosthenes together with St. Basil and St. Paul; Reuchlin converts Cato's dic- tum that an orator is a good man skilled in speaking into a definition of the preacher as a religious man skilled in speaking. Melanchthon devises a system of sacred rhetoric firmly based on classical rules; and Surgant already in 1502 draws on Aristotle's Rhetoric. But we must wait until the 18th century for the view expressed by Morhof that there is no distinction between civil and sacred oratory, except for subject-matter, that the precepts and methods are the same in both, and that all inspiration is to be drawn from Aristotle. And it is only in recent theory, I believe, that preaching has been treated as a fourth kind of oratory, conjoined with deliberative, judicial, and epideictic.

The continuity of the rhetorical tradition in England from the time of Bede in the 7th and 8th centuries to the 19th century is fascinating to study, especially for the variations in emphasis, restatements, and reformations. The full classical system, with its five parts, invention enjoying primacy, had representatives in Alcuin and Geoffrey of Vinsauf in the Middle Ages, and a successive group through Hawes, Cox, and Wilson up to the 17th century.55 The rhetoric which dealt only with style, deeming this the most important of the departments, also had a continuous history through Sherry, Peacham, Hoskins, and Day up to the same century. At the end of the sixteenth century and lasting for a hundred years, there took place an interesting reformation in the philosophy of education that spread throughout Europe, to England, and even to the American colonies. Peter Ramus and Omer Talon-their system growing out of ideas developed in the




Middle Ages-taught that invention and arrangement were not the province of rhetoric, but of dialectic, and rhetoric must properly be confined to style, which included the tropes and figures, and to delivery, embracing voice and gesture.56 Ramism indeed had a certain kinship with stylistic rhetoric, but this last had not come to its specialization on the basis of philosophical inquiry. The Ramists- like Fraunce, Butler, and Barton-believed that rhetoric was the least important of the trivium, merely providing ornamentation for the ideas supplied by logic, and correctly expressed by grammar. Professor Howell of Princeton explains the popularity of Ramism in England in political terms-here again a rhetoric of style flourished during a period in which persuasive oratory was not a vital part of political life, and even pulpit oratory was largely ornamental.57 RogerAscham criticized Ramism; Francis Bacon, and the influential French Port-Royal School of Speaking, which was Ciceronian in nature, helped bring its vogue to an end.58 Bacon added to Ciceronian rhetoric the principles of Aristotle-now restored to power. I should add here that the ancient Greek scholastic rhetoric also had its representatives, as in Richard Rainolde.

Consistently to the end of the nineteenth century the influential books were classical in inspiration-for example, Campbell, Blair, Whately, and Ward.59 The first professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard, John Quincy Adams, in his lectures in 1805 drew heavily on Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, and all through our country the university instruction was classical-naturally in the courses given in the original tongues, but also in the special courses in rhetoric.0 In the first quarter of the century,Yale students, for example, studied Cicero's De Oratore in the freshman year.

As the seventeenth century cultivated style, so the nineteenth favored delivery. This development began in the previous century. English clergymen wanted training in delivery-in what came to be called elocution, although the word elocutio is of course best rendered in English by the word "style." This art of elocution, in which rules of acting played a formative role, was very popular in America; it developed some great speakers like Wendell Phillips, and a whole class of professional readers.61 By 1828 it was a special discipline, divorced from rhetoric proper-which now joined in partnership with Belles-lettres or with Composition. In the third quarter of the century departments of English took over instruction in Rhetoric and Belles-lettres; but in the last decade of the century special departments of Public Speaking broke off from the departments of English, leaving to these the province of written composition.

The story of the influence of the rhetorical texts-even the lesser ones-upon literature (in its widest sense) would take long to set forth: for one instance, how the Ramist John Hoskins' Directions for Speech and Style shaped the prose of Ben Jonson and Sir Walter Raleigh, and throws light upon Arcadianism, Sydney, euphuism, and the new movement towards a sententious style; or how the Greek scholastic treatises influenced La Bruyere, and so a great deal of modern writing.

Virtually all of the critical language in the English neo-classical period had its origins in Cicero, Quintilian, and Horace's Art of Poetry enlarged through additions from Aristotle's Poetics and Rhetoric, and from Longinus' On the Sublime.



CLASSICAL TRADITIONs/RFETORIC AND ORATORY 29

Literary criticism in England since the Renaissance has moved away from the emphasis upon the reader-the audience, as it were-upon the literary types, and upon the kinds of style, products of Horatian-Ciceronian rhetoric (I am think- ing of Dryden and Pope) to an emphasis upon the poet and his expression of himself, with the lyric form esteemed as representative of this idea in its purest form (one thinks of Wordsworth and Coleridge). So John Stuart Mill: "A speech is meant to be heard, a poem overheard." Since Longinus was, among others, a factor in bringing this change about, we can fairly say that ancient rhetoric has continued as a pervading influence in English criticism.

And today, the preoccupation of the new critics with verbal structure and the figures, and their cult of Elizabethan and 18th century poetry, with its background of rhetorical ideas, presents us with a reminder that the tradition is still alive.

Well, I have talked more about rhetoric than about oratory.62 It is a pity that I haven't time to deal with famous speakers of modern times-Savonarola, Luther, John Knox, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, Mirabeau, Burke, Sheridan, Fox, O'Connell, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Wendell Phillips, or any other of the great spokesmen against despotism or ecclesiastical corruption or the oppression of kings, or in defense of equal rights and liberty under the law, or of the good life. I can only remind you that Chatham read Demosthenes to acquire a forcible style, and Burke, Cicero (whom he resembled in magnificence and copiousness); that Fox read Demosthenes with the same ease as he read English; that the Elder Pitt made the Younger Pitt read the ancient orators; that Gladstone used not only Blair, Whately, and Campbell, but also Cicero's De Oratore, Aristotle's Rhetoric, Quintilian, and St. Augustine, and for practice had recourse to the speeches of Cicero and Demosthenes; that Edward Everett was a trained rhetorician in the classical tradition; that Charles Sumner's speeches are full of echoes of Cicero and Demosthenes; and that if Lactantius was proud to be called the Christian Cicero, the French preacher Massillon is now being studied as a modern Demosthenes.

Nor can I more than mention the orators of the French Revolution, who in that day of the cult of antiquity modeled their speeches and pamphlets on Cicero and Demosthenes. Again and again were these ancient orators cited and historical parallels drawn-by Brissot, Gnadet, Louvet, Vergniaud, Manuel, Condorcet. And Desmoulins, their best stylist, imitated the periods of Cicero and Demosthenes with special care and great success. Again and again is Cicero invoked against Catiline, even as in 1570 Thomas Wilson, the English Quintilian, and a statesman, too, had translated, in collaboration with Sir John Cheke, the speeches of Demosthenes-because, as he wrote, "it is necessary in these peril- ous times to recall defenders of liberty to mind, and set the example to others as a warning." For Philip of Spain was another Philip of Macedon.

The golden age of British oratory was the latter half of the eighteenth century, Burke the most brilliant example, and nearest to the classical in type.63 It was a time when society was aristocratic, the education was classical, and the classical




grand style ruled the day. And the oratory was inspired by great events-wars on the Continent, the American Revolution, India, and the French Revolution. In our present, more democratic society there is yet no reason why, with great issues confronting us, too, speaking should not flourish on a high plane-more business-like though our speaking generally is, and though we live in a period of taste in which highly adorned language seems to be suspect. Certainly great issues uniting with great spokesmanship brought us Winston Churchill, whose style was sometimes touched with grandeur.64 Lord Curzon, surveying the proud record of British Parliamentary eloquence, yet gives the palm to an American- to Abraham Lincoln, for the "Gettysburg Address" and the "Second Inaugu- ral."65 Churchill's debt to classical theory and practice cannot be traced directly, but can indirectly in a substantial way, through the influence wrought upon him by eighteenth-century English speakers who were in the direct line of the tradition. And several recent studies have made clear how Lincoln used stylistic devices which preceding orators had taken over from ancient models.

How does the present day orator compare with the ancient? Of the many points made by different scholars, I consider these sound and

suggestive:

1) As Jebb says, we are less solicitous for total symmetry.66 To the ancients oratory was more of a fine art, requiring disciplined attention to form, composition, diction, arrangement, and delivery, and evincing an exceptional concern for beauty. To us it is more of a practical art.

2) While the ancients compared the speaker with the poet, we compare him, so to speak, with the prophet, and emphasize inspiration rather than method and careful preparation. That is one reason, perhaps, why we like extempore speaking.

3) A lesser point, on delivery: Max Eastman argues that the use of the microphone narrows the effectiveness of action. It will be interesting in the next years to see how speaking into a microphone will affect the conversational quality which in the past the speaker before large audiences strove to attain despite his need to increase the volume of voice. And the student of ancient oratory, which developed in a society in which oral communication so much exceeded the written, will watch for changes that may ensue in our speaking as a result of radio, and perhaps also of television.

A brief word on the criticism of oratory. This is no longer a day in which speeches-other than the greatest-are regarded as literature. We have personal, biographical, and so-called "literary" criticism of speeches, but not very much first-rate rhetorical criticism, partly because the political, social, and psycho- logical conditions in which a speech was delivered are so hard to reconstruct. As



CLASSICAL TRADITIONs/fRETORIC AND ORATORY 31

Professor WicheIns has written, the rhetorical critic must study not only the speaker, his message, the technical management of the ideas, and the structure, but also the adaptation of form and style to audience, the events that called the speech forth, and the public opinion and attitudes of the time, and of the actual audience.67

In England, oratory ceased in the 18th century to be formally taught and studied as an art, in France and in Scotland in the nineteenth. The title "Professor of Rhetoric" which still persists at the University of Edinburgh is a vestigial survi- vor. But the practice is kept up in a most lively fashion in the debating clubs, and a visit to the Oxford or Cambridge Union would convince you that the British will never lose their love, and gift, for public speaking. Remember, too, that a goodly number of these young men have doubtless read the classical orators and theorists in the original tongues. But Lord Curzon a generation ago said: "Never was the power of moving men by speech more potent than now, though never less studied than now. We have gone far from the days when rhetoric was first of the arts, the supreme accomplishment of the educated man. We English never dream of teaching students how to make a speech-on such an iron time has the art fallen."

With the exception of four of the greater German universities where the discipline of Vortragskunst (Delivery) yet does not enjoy complete dignity, for a lec- tor and not a professor directs the course, America alone gives instruction in special departments of (what I call) public speaking. The tradition is now a very old one with us, and the subject is taught in most of the colleges and universities. The announcement of the opening of Columbia (I should say King's) College on June 3, 1754 read as follows: "It is further the design of the College to instruct and perfect the youth in the learned languages, and in the arts of reasoning ex- actly, of writing correctly, and speaking eloquently." Here you have the ancient trivium-dialectic, grammar, and rhetoric. Elocution died out during the 19th century; Harvard dropped the subject from its curriculum as long ago as 1873. The chair (at Cornell University) of Oratory, thereafter Public Speaking, and later Speech and Drama, goes back to 1891.68

The discipline of public speaking as now taught is on a very sound basis, and some new contributions have been made to the art. For one example, modem psychology has taught us something about attention, about conversational quality in delivery; some good studies have been made in the field of mass-opinion; psychology of persuasion; philosophy of rhetoric, the criticism of oratory-especially on the side of theory, the history of rhetoric and its role in education. And delivery is, with the best teachers, I would venture to say, on a sounder basis, where theory is concerned, than in some of the rules we have from the ancient authors. In the last half-century there has been a praiseworthy increase in the study of classical rhetoric, and courses are offered in most of the graduate schools, though to be sure not as often as I would wish by teachers who know the classical authors in the original tongues. One effect of this revival has been a commendable interest in modernizing the ancient theory of invention.69




Has instruction in public speaking improved the quality of our oratory? That is hard to assess. Though I cannot maintain that it has consistently engendered brilliant oratory, I have no doubt that it has raised substantially the general level of speaking.

Now what can I say in conclusion? That rhetoric was a valuable creation of the ancients; and that the principles of

classical rhetoric, although often undergoing restatements and adaptations, have enjoyed a continuous influence down to our day, and formed a living connection; have provided the Western world with a permanent basis for the judgment of taste; and are still of primary worth.

That though some of the over-elaborate rules have not proved of universal application, the more brilliant insights of the ancient theorists and critics have; and that even in times where the best of the tradition was unavailable, the lesser books yet exerted a good influence. The pedantry, slavish imitation, and preoccupation with externals that sometimes characterized inferior speakers and writers who followed the classical rules, are more than counterbalanced by the standards of rationality, good form, and beauty learned from the tradition and achieved by the writers and speakers of greater insight and power.

That the writers on style like Aristotle, Cicero, and Longinus are still excellent guides for modern literary composition, for we still need what they taught about purity, appropriateness, rhythm, elegance, metaphor, and euphony. Edu- cational practice has again and again found that it cannot do without such guides. Teachers of Greek and Latin rightly remind us that the fluency with which we write today is the product of the rich tradition of classical style. Professor Laughton sees echoes of Ciceronian style in the speeches of Edmund Burke and Winston Churchill. But Cicero is after all the chief creator of modern prose style, and all of us who write in English are his heirs.

That oratory is a natural growth from free political institutions and flourishes best in free states and under popular government; and that when, under despotism, it has no reality, it tends to limit itself to epideictic and occupy itself merely with style.70

That in our present world of journalists, publicists, advertisers, politicians, propagandists, reformers, editorial writers, educators, salesmen, preachers, lec- turers, popularizers, students of the techniques of forming public opinion through mass media, public relations, and promotion--also the students of what the philosophers and sociologists call the "arts of communication," whose function is to establish relations of understanding among men-in this present world, I say, rhetoric is a major force and public speaking a major activity, and we shall continue to study the unsurpassed contributions which the ancients made to the art. No one has so enriched the subject as did Aristotle, in my opinion, and no modern theorist, perhaps, as did Cicero, Quintilian, or Longinus. Here certainly, if I may use the words uttered by Saintsbury in another connection, "the modern without the ancient is foolishness utter and irremediable."



CLASSICAL TRADITIONS/RHIETORIC AND ORATORY 33

It has been said that "what distinguishes Western man is his uninterrupted assimilation to the ancient world." Rhetoric and oratory, central in ancient culture, have been an important part of this heritage.

Notes ' Epithets used in Homer's Iliad. 'In the opening passage of his Politics. I For the full text of Pericles' funeral oration see Thucydides 2. 40-46. 4For an historical accounting of this period see Richard Leo Enos, Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle (Prospect Heights IL: Waveland Press, 1993), 41-90. 'For a thorough explanation of this issue see Everett Lee Hunt, "Plato and Aristotle on Rhetoric and Rhetoricians," Historical Studies of Rhetoric and Rhetoricians, ed. Raymond F. Howes (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1961), 19-70. 6 The most popular statement on Isocrates' view of rhetoric is Werner Jaeger, "The Rhetoric of Isocrates and Its Cultural Ideal" Essays on the Rhetoric of the Western World, eds. Edward P. J. Corbett, James L. Golden, and Goodwin F. Berquist (Dubuque IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1990), 110-128. Kathleen E. Welch provides a very thorough overview of Isocrates in the Ency- clopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, ed. Theresa Enos (New York and Lon- don: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996), 358-63. 'This is a paraphrase of the famous statement made by Aristotle in the opening lines of his Rhetoric. 8For good background reading on the Second Sophistic see Thomas Conley, Rheto- ric in the European Tradition (New York and London: Longman, 1990), 53-71. 9For a thorough study of Hermogenes see Hermogenes' On Types of Style, trans. Cecil W. Wooten (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987). "OA collection of the writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassus is available in the Loeb Classical Library Series of Harvard University Press. "I The classic study of the ten Attic Orators is R.C. Jebb, Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos, two volumes (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962). "2Edward M. Harris offers a less sympathetic view of Demosthenes in his work Aeschines and Athenian Politics (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1995). 1' In ancient Greece speechwriters were called "logographers" and were often hired to compose forensic arguments for clients. An informative discussion of the background of this process is provided in Richard Garner, Law & Society in Classical Athens (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987). 14 Most historians of rhetoric agree that much more scholarship needs to be done on this important period. Two good sources available now are: George Kennedy, Greek Rhetoric Under Christian Emperors (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983); George L. Kustas, Studies in Byzantine Rhetoric (Thessalonike: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1973).




15Caplan provides a detailed explanation in the "Introduction" to his Loeb Clas- sical Library edition of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, pp. viii-xl. This introduction also appears in Caplan, "Introduction to the Rhetorica ad Herennium, " Of Eloquence: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Rhetoric by Harry Caplan, eds. Anne King and Helen North (Ithaca NY:Cornell University Press, 1970), 1-25. 16Caplan provides a detailed discussion of memory in "Memoria: Treasure-House of Eloquence," Of Eloquence: Studies of Ancient and Medieval Rhetoric, 196- 246. 17Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers 488-90. 18 That is, the canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery. 19Quintilian's Institutio oratoria. 20Caplan is referring here to the Rhetorica ad Herennium. 21 Cicero's discussion of the merits of Crassus and Antonius is the main topic of his De Oratore. 22 Fragments of Roman orations are collected in: Oratorvm Romanorvm Fragmenta: Liberae Rei Pvblicae, ed. Henrica Malcovati (Torino: G. B. Paravia, 1967). 23 Cicero engaged in a debate among his contemporaries over the issue of style. The Attic style was noted for its directness and simplicity. Asianism, on the other hand, was characterized as grand and excessive by traditionally reserved Romans. Many of Cicero's later works, especially the Orator and Brutus, are efforts to argue for a range of style beyond the Attic simplicity that was popular in Cicero's day. 24For background reading on this tumultuous period see: Richard Leo Enos, Roman Rhetoric: Revolution and the Greek Influence (Prospect Heights IL: Waveland Press, 1995). 25 See S. F. Bonner, Roman Declamation in the Late Republic and Early Empire (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1969). 26Longinus, On the Sublime 44. 27Jebb, The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos, vol. 2, ch. 24, 433-37. 28Thucydides 8. 68. 29For excellent overviews of the study of grammar and rhetoric see H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (Madision WI: The University of Wisconsin Press) reprint, originally published in English by Sheed and Ward, Inc., 1956; Stanley F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977). 30Enos, Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle, 23-40. 31 Plato makes this argument in his Gorgias. 32This is the famous closing passage of Plutarch's account of the life of Cicero: Vitae Parallelae: Cicero. 33 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 12. 1. 1. 34Rhetorica ad Herennium 4. 69.



CLASSICAL TRADITIONs/RETORIC AND ORATORY 35

"For an insightful discussion of this topic see Brian Vickers, "Territorial Dis- putes: Philosophy versus Rhetoric," In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), esp. 184-96. 36Cicero, De Inventione 1. 3. 4-4.5; Richard Leo Enos, The Literate Mode of Cicero's Legal Rhetoric (Carbondale IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 33-45. 37 Caplan leaves the text and utters a Latin phrase that cannot be understood on the recording but seems to reinforce his point about one person being the "all- wisest." 38 At the time that Professor Caplan was giving this address Greece was under military dictatorship; democracy was reinstated in Greece in the summer of 1974. 39For a well-respected accounting of St. Augustine and the place of rhetoric in a Christian culture see James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from St. Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley, Los An- geles, London: University of California Press, 1974), 43-88. 4"This sentence appears in Caplan's text but was not spoken in the address. 41 For elaborations of this theme see Wilbur Samuel Howell, "Oratory and Poetry in Fenelon's Literary Theory," Readings in Rhetoric, eds. Lionel Crocker and Paul A. Carmack (Springfield IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1965), 242-256; Barbara Warnick, The Sixth Canon: Belletristic Rhetorical Theory and Its French Ante- cedents (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993). 42 On the theme, and implications, of rhetoric as a feminine gender see Reclaim- ing Rhetorica, eds. Andrea Lunsford et al. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994). 43 See the fifth book of Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. Excerpts of Capella's work are translated in Readings in Medieval Rhetoric, eds. Joseph Miller, Michael H. Prosser, Thomas W. Benson (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1973), 1-5. "4Michael C. Leff, "The Logician's Rhetoric: Boethius' De differentiis topicis, Book IV," Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric, ed. James J. Murphy (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1978), 3-24. 45For an illustration of ars dictaminis see Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts, ed. James J. Murphy (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1971), 1-25. 46 Caplan, "Classical Rhetoric and the Medieval Theory of Preaching," Of Elo- quence, 105-34. 47For a related discussion on interpretation of sacred texts see Caplan, "The Four Senses of Scriptural Interpretation and the Medieval Theory of Preaching," Of Eloquence, 93-104. 41 Cicero, Orator 69. 49For a more detailed statement on memory see Caplan, "Memoria: Treasure- House of Eloquence," Of Eloquence, 196-246. Readers may also wish to con- sult: Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago IL: The University of Chi- cago Press, 1966).




50Rhetorica ad Herennium and Cicero's De Inventione. 5IReaders may also wish to see James J. Murphy, "The Four Ancient Traditions," Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, 3-42. 52Caplan is referring to Cicero's De Inventione. (c. 86 B.C.). De Inventione was Cicero's first rhetorical treatise and in his later De Oratore (55 B.C.) Cicero asked readers to ignore his earlier work. Despite his request, De Inventione became one of the most important rhetorical treatises of the Latin West and the foundation for much of medieval rhetoric. 53 Richard McKeon, "Rhetoric in the Middle Ages," The Province of Rhetoric, eds. Joseph Schwartz and John A. Rycenga (New York: The Ronald Press, 1965), 172-212. 54For a very good overview of this period see Brian Vickers, "Renaissance Rein- tegration," In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 254-93. "Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric, 274. 56T. W. Baldwin, William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke. Two volumes (Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 1944). Caplan mistakenly refers to the author as "T. S. Baldwin" in the manuscript. 57 See the respective contributions of Wilbur Samuel Howell: The Rhetoric of Alcuin & Charlemagne: A Translation with an Introduction, the Latin Text, and Notes (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965); Logic & Rhetoric in England: 1500- 1700 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1961). 58 See Walter J. Ong, "Ramistic Rhetoric," The Province of Rhetoric, 226-55. 59Howell, "The English Ramists," Logic & Rhetoric in England: 1500-1700, 146-281. 60Howell, "New Horizons in Logic and Rhetoric," Logic & Rhetoric in England: 1500-1700, 342-397. 61 James A. Berlin provides a fine statement of the impact of Campbell, Blair, and Whately, especially on American rhetoric in the nineteenth century: Writing Instruction in Nineteen-Century American Colleges (Carbondale and Edwardsville IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), 19-34. 62For very helpful insights to Adams' contributions see J. Jeffery Auer and Jerald L. Banninga, "The Genesis of John Quincy Adams' Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 44 (April 1963), 119-32. 63 For background on the teaching of elocution in the United States see Ota Tho- mas, "The Teaching of Rhetoric in the United States During the Classical Period of Education," A History and Criticism ofAmerican PublicAddress, ed. William Norwood Brigance, vol. one (New York: Russell & Russell, 1960), 202-07. 64Well-known collections of famous orators, British and American, were available at the time of Caplan's address: Select British Eloquence, ed. Chauncey Allen Goodrich (Indianapolis IN: Bobbs-Merrill, rept. 1963); A History and Criticism of American Public Address, eds. William Norwood Brigance, vols. one and two; and Marie Kathryn Hochmuth [Nichols], vol. three (New York: Russell & Russell, 1960). 65 See Goodrich's rhetorical criticism of Edmund Burke, along with examples of his orations, in "Edmund Burke," Select British Eloquence, 206-381.



CLASSICAL TRADITIONs/RHEToRIc AND ORATORY 37

66An excellent discussion of the relationship among rhetoric, oratory, literature, and politics, with treatment of Winston Churchill as an illustration, is found in Donald Cross Bryant, " Literature and Politics," Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Lit- erature: An Exploration, ed. Don M. Burks (West Lafayette IN: Purdue Univer- sity Press, 1978), 95-107. 67 See also Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America. (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1992). 68Jebb provides his views on ancient and "modem" (Victorian) oratory in his "Introduction" to Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos, vol. 1, esp. lxxix. 69ee Herbert Wichelns, "The Literary Criticism of Oratory" Speech Criticism: Methods and Materials, ed. William A. Linsley (Dubuque IA: Wm. C. Brown: 1968), 7-38. This essay has been widely reprinted. See also, for example, Tho- mas Benson, ed., Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Criticism (Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1993). 70For background information on the tradition of rhetorical studies at Cornell University see Edward P. J. Corbett, "The Cornell School of Rhetoric," Selected Essays of Edward P. J. Corbett, ed. Robert J. Connors (Dallas TX: Southern Methodist University Press, 1989), 289-304. 71 Current examples of this modernization trend are: Essays on Classical Rheto- ric and Modern Discourse, eds. Robert J. Connors, Lisa S. Ede, and Andrea A. Lunsford (Carbondale and Edwardsville IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984); Rhetoric and Praxis: The Contributions of Classical Rhetoric to Practi- cal Reasoning, ed. Jean Dietz Moss (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1986); Rhetorical Memory and Delivery: Classical Concepts for Contemporary Composition and Communication, ed. John Frederick Reynolds (Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1993); Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory, eds. James S. Baumlin and Tita French Baumlin (Dallas TX: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994). 72Caplan's thoughts on this topic are presented in more detail in his essay, "The Decay of Eloquence at Rome in the First Century," in Of Eloquence: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Rhetoric by Harry Caplan.

Suggested Readings Arnold, Carroll. "Rhetoric in America since 1900." Re-Establishing the Speech

Profession: The First Fifty Years. Eds. Robert T. Oliver and Marvin G. Bauer. The Speech Association of the Eastern States, September 1959.

[Cicero]. Rhetorica ad Herennium. Trans. Harry Caplan. Loeb Classical Li- brary Series. London and Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1964.

Corbett, Edward P. J. "The Cornell School of Rhetoric." Selected Essays of Ed- ward P J. Corbett. Ed. Robert J. Connors. Dallas TX: Southern Meth- odist University Press, 1989.

Enos, Richard Leo. "The History of Rhetoric: The Reconstruction of Progress." Speech Communication in the 20th Century. Ed. Thomas W. Benson. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985.




Enos, Theresa, ed. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age. New York and London: Garland Publishers, Inc., 1996.

Homer, Winifred Bryan, ed. The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric. Revised edition. Columbia and London: The University of Missouri Press, 1990.

Howell, Wilbur Samuel. Poetics, Rhetoric and Logic. Studies in the Basic Disci- plines of Criticism. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1975.

Howes, Raymond, ed. Historical Studies of Rhetoric and Rhetoricians. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1961.

Howes, Raymond, ed. Notes on the Cornell School of Rhetoric. Riverside CA: privately printed, 1976.

Hudson, Hoyt H. "The Field of Rhetoric." Quarterly Journal of Speech 9: April 1923, 167-80.

Hunt, Everett Lee. "An Introduction to Classical Rhetoric." Quarterly Journal of Speech 12: June 1926, 201-04.

. "Herbert A. WicheIns and the Cornell Tradition of Rhetoric as a Humane Subject." The Rhetorical Idiom: Essays in Rhetoric, Oratory, Language and Drama Presented to Herbert August Wichlens. Ed. Donald Cross Bryant. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1958.

-. "Rhetoric and General Education." Quarterly Journal of Speech 35: October 1949, 275-79.

King, Anne and North, Helen, ed. Of Eloquence: Studies in Ancient and Medi- eval Rhetoric. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1970.

Lunsford, Andrea A., ed. Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradi- tion. Pittsburgh and London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995.

Parrish, Wayland Maxfield. "The Tradition of Rhetoric." Quarterly Journal of Speech 33: December 1947,464-67.

Vickers, Brian. In Defence of Rhetoric. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Wallach, Luitpold, ed. The Classical Tradition: Literary and Historical Studies

in Honor of Harry Caplan. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1966. Windt, Theodore Otto, Jr. "Everett Lee Hunt on Rhetoric." The Speech Teacher

[now Communication Education] 21: September 1972, 177-92. -. "Hoyt H. Hudson: Spokesman for the Cornell School of Rhetoric. Quarterly

Journal of Speech 68: May 1982, 186-200. Welch, Kathleen E. The Contemporary Reception of Classical Rhetoric: Appro-

priations ofAncient Discourse. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Asso- ciates, Publishers, 1990.



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The Classical Tradition. Rhetoric and Oratory

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