Some Recent Controversies in the Study of Later Greek Rhetoric

Abstract

����� �� THE GREEKS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE produced no equal to Cicero or Quintilian: among their extensive writings there is no profound philosophical examination of political rhetoric and no comprehensive account of rhetorical education based on a lifetime of teaching. But the numerous later Greek rhetorical treatises, dry reading as they may seem, sometimes even poorly written, have considerable significance for the intellectual history of the early centuries of the Christian era. They are a major source for our understanding of education, its materials, goals, and values, as experienced by most important thinkers of the times, pagan and Christian; the training they describe directly influenced the form and style of composition of much of the writing that has survived; they are evidence for cultural change and for the perception of Greek language and literature of the classical period more than five hundred years later; and they provide linguists and philologists with useful concepts and terminology to describe the workings of texts, pagan and Christian, ancient and modern. From 1931, when Hugo Rabe published the last of his editions of later Greek rhetorical texts, to 1974, when Josef Martin published Antike Rhetorik: Technik und Methode (1974), making extensive use of later Greek rhetorical treatises, study of later Greek rhetoric was at a low point. There was of course continued interest in On the Sublime, traditionally attributed to Longinus and surely the finest Greek work on rhetoric of the imperial period. Other important exceptions include Guilelmo Ballaira’s edition of Tiberius’ handbook of Demosthenic figures and Dieter Hagedorn’s monograph, Zur Ideenlehre des Hermogenes (1964). Since the 1970s, with the expansion of research opportunities and younger scholars’ search for opportunities in original work, there has been a modest renaissance that has produced new insight and new controversy. In some ways we now know more about the authors and their works; in some ways we are now uncertain about what we thought we