VI. The Rhetorical Writings

Abstract

Ancient rhetoric was a big subject, though its main outlines became stereotyped enough to be easily grasped. More perhaps can be said in its defence as a means of education, if not as an influence on literature and criticism, than is commonly allowed, but it had two clear faults. As systematized in the Hellenistic period it became extremely technical and pedantic, and it concentrated excessively on the techniques of gaining victory in the law courts. Though Cicero regarded the great forensic battle, which of course often had political implications, as the outstanding challenge to the orator, he claimed for his ideal orator–statesman much more than a narrow forensic virtuosity, and he had little time for the technicalities and pedantries of the rhetoricians. The best example is his handling of the topic of ornatus (one of four ‘virtues of style’ which probably go back to Theophrastus) in the third book of De Oratore. Traditionally treated as providing scope for extensive classification and exemplifications of the rhetorical ‘figures’, ornatus is claimed by Cicero as the product of a well-stocked mind, and only after a long ‘digression’ on this theme does he provide, and then with deliberate perfunctoriness, a list of figures on the traditional pattern.