The Latin stylistic rhetorics of antiquity

Abstract

While stylistic rhetorics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are relatively well‐known, the ancient Latin works on figures of speech and thought have not attracted much attention. This paper extends our knowledge of the stylistic movement by surveying the extant classical Latin texts exclusively devoted to rhetorical figures. The treatises of Rutilius Lupus, Aquila Romanus, Julius Rufinianus and of several anonymous authors are reviewed and the development of figurist doctrine from the first century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. is sketched. It is suggested that the classical manuals on figures of thought and speech were similar in both form and content to the stylistic rhetorics of later generations and that we should regard the stylistic pattern as a single tradition which persists from the Hellenistic era through the seventeenth century A.D.