Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/527

Rh RHETORIC 509 rlioric irax T tc.c of las. Crgias. iti- on. overthrown, and a democracy was established. One of the immediate consequences was a mass of litigation on claims to property, urged by democratic exiles who had been dispossessed by Thrasybulus, Hiero, or Gelo. If. twenty years after the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland, an opportunity had been afforded to aggrieved persons for contesting every possession taken under that settlement in the ten counties, such persons being required to plead by their own mouths, the demand for an " art " of forensic rhetoric in Ireland would have been similar to that which existed in Sicily at the moment when Corax appeared. If we would understand the history of Greek rhetoric before Aristotle, we must always remember these circum- stances of its origin. The new " art " was primarily intended to help the plain citizen who had to speak before a court of law. "Ten years ago," a Syracusan might urge, " Hieron banished me from Syracuse because I was suspected of popular sympathies, and gave my house on the Epipoke to his favourite Agathocles, who still enjoys it. I now ask the people to restore it." Claims of this type would be frequent. Such a claim, going many years back, would often require that a complicated series of details should be stated and arranged. It would also, in many instances, lack documentary support, and rely chiefly on inferential reasoning. The facts known as to the " art " of Corax perfectly agree with these conditions. He gave rules for arrangement, dividing the speech into five parts, proem, narrative, arguments (dyoives), sub- sidiary remarks (7rape'/</3ao-is), and peroration. Next he illustrated the topic of general probability (CIKO?), showing its two-edged use : e.g., if a puny man is accused of assault- ing a stronger, he can say, "Is it likely that I should have attacked him?" If vice versa, the strong man can argue, " Is it likely that I should have committed an assault where the presumption was sure to be against me?" This topic of eiKos, in its manifold forms, was in fact the great weapon of the earliest Greek rhetoric. It was further developed by Tisias, the pupil of Corax, as we see from Plato's Phgedrus, in an " art " of rhetoric which antiquity possessed, but of which we know little else. Aristotle gives the ft/cos a place among the topics of the fallacious enthymeme which he enumerates in Rftet. ii. 24, remarking that it was the very essence of the treatise of Corax, and points out the fallacy of omitting to distin- guish between abstract and particular probability, quoting the verses of Agatho, " Perhaps one might call this very thing a probability, that many improbable things will happen to men." Gorgias of Leontini, who visited Athens as an envoy from his fellow-citizens in 427 B.C., captivated the Athenians by his oratory, which, so far as the only considerable fragment warrants a judgment, was characterized by florid antithesis. But he has no definite place in the development of rhetoric as a system. It is doubtful whether he left a written "art"; and his mode of teaching was based on learning prepared passages by heart, diction (A.e'is), not invention or arrangement, being his great object. The first extant Greek author who combined the theory with the practice of rhetoric is the Athenian Antiphon, the first on the list of the Attic orators. His works belong to the period from 421 to 411 B.C. Among them are the three " tetralogies." Each tetralogy is a group of four speeches, supposed to be spoken in a trial for homicide. Antiphon was the earliest repre- sentative at Athens of a new profession created by the new art of rhetoric that of the Aoyoypa<os or writer of forensic speeches for other men to speak in court. The plain man who had not mastered the newly invented weapons of speech was glad to have the aid of an expert. The tetralogies show us the art of rhetoric in its transi- tion from the technical to the practical stage, from the school to the law-court and the assembly. The four skeleton speeches of each tetralogy are ordered as follows : A, the accuser states his charge ; B, the accused makes his defence ; C, the accuser replies ; D, the accused rejoins to the reply. The imaginary case is in each instance sketched as slightly as possible; all details are omitted; only the framework for discussion is supplied. The organic lines of the- rhetorical pleader's thought stand out in bold relief, and we are enabled to form a clear notion of the logographer's method. We find a striking illustra- tion of the fact noticed above, that the topic of "pro- bability," so largely used by Corax and Tisias, is the staple of this early forensic rhetoric. Viewed generally, the works of Antiphon are of great interest for the history of Attic prose, as marking how far it had then been influ- enced by a theory of style. The movement of Antiphon's prose has a certain grave dignity, "impressing by its weight and grandeur," as a Greek critic in the Augustan age says, " not charming by its life and flow. " Verbal antithesis is used, not in a diffuse or florid way, but with a certain sledge-hammer force, as sometimes in the speeches of Thucydides. The imagery, too, though bold, is not florid. The structure of the periods is still crude ; and the general effect of the whole, though often powerful and impressive, is somewhat rigid. As Antiphon represents what was afterwards named the "austere" or "rugged" style (avcrrtjpa dp//,ovta), so Lysias was the model of an artistic and versatile sim- plicity. But the tetralogies give Antiphon a place in the history of rhetoric as an art, while Lysias, with all his more attractive gifts, belongs only to the history of oratory. Ancient writers quote an "art" of rhetoric by Isocrates, but its authenticity was questioned. It is certain, however, that Isocrates taught the art as such". Isocrate He is said to have defined rhetoric " as the science of persuasion " (eu-icm?/^ Tret^oOs, Sextus Empir., Adv. Mathem., ii. 62, p. 301 sq.). Many of his particular precepts, both on arrangement and on diction, are cited, but do not suffice to give us a complete view of his method. The tAocrocia, or "theory of culture," which Iso- crates expounds in his discourses " Against the Sophists " and on the "Antidosis," was in fact rhetoric applied to politics. First came technical expositions : the pupil was introduced to all the artificial resources which prose com- position employs (TOLS iSeas aTrao-a? ats 6 Aoyo9 Tvy^avei w/ievos, Antid., 183). The same term (tSeai) is also used by Isocrates in a narrower sense, with reference to the "figures" of rhetoric, properly called (r^fj.aTa (Panatk., 2) ; sometimes, again, in a sense still more general, to the several branches or styles of literary com- position (Antid., 11). When the technical elements of the subject had been learned, the pupil was required to apply abstract rules in actual composition, and his essay was revised by the master. Isocrates was unquestionably successful in forming speakers and writers. This is proved by the renown of his school during a period of some fifty years, from about 390 to 340 B.C. Among the states- men whom it could claim were Timotheus, Leodamas of Acharnae, Lycurgus, and Hyperides. Among the philosophers or rhetoricians were Speusippus, Plato's suc- cessor in the Academy, and Isseus ; among the historians, Ephorus and Theopompus. In the person of Isocrates the art of rhetoric is thus thoroughly established, not merely as a technical method, but also as a practical discipline of life. If Plato's mildly ironical reference in the EutJiydemus to a critic "on the borderland between philosophy and statesmanship " was meant, as is probable, for Isocrates, at least there was a wide difference between the measure of acceptance