"PERSW ASIVE RHETORIC": THE TECHNIQUES OF MILTON'S ARCHETYPAL SOPHIST DOUGLAS WURTELE Carleton University L o n g before the poet Milton undertook the task of recounting how and why it happened that Satan, the "Author of evil," was able to seduce "our Grand Parents" into "foul revolt,"1 he had exposed in the series of prose treatises extending from the early academic exercises to the three great Defensiones of the 1650s the intimate ties linking the "Adversary of God and Man" (11.269) with the latter-day practitioners of hypocrisy, fraud, malice, and deceit. By numerous verbal resonances and allusive overtones, Milton forges a subtly woven chain between the sophistical rhetoricians excoriated in the treatises and the Father of Lies to be described in the epics. It is as no mere embellishment on the fabric of his "great Argument" (1.24), then, that Milton devotes the resources of his poetic artistry to an extensive display of Satan's skilful rhetoric and fallacious logic. By exposing the original sophistries that led to the loss of Eden he gives dramatic illustration of the rhetorical snares that, as he earlier declared in the polemics, continue to entrap mankind. Hence a deeper under standing not only of Paradise Lost itself but, as well, of Milton's sense of the peril facing the "true warfaring Christian"2 in any age emerges from an analysis of the sophistical rhetoric and logic exhibited in Satan's public utter ances.3 When Satan first addresses his legions in Heaven, it can be seen at once how craftily he employs the rhetorical techniques later to serve sophistic orators trained in the use, or rather misuse, of a manual such as Rhetorica ad Herennium .4 Milton presents Satan as an expert manipulator of the Exornationes verborum et sententiarum illustrated in this manual by, as a rule, forensic examples. Of particular interest, moreover, is the close concurrence between this antique manual and that compiled by Milton's contemporary, Isaac Vossius . Considered in his day as the "preeminent spokesman for Aristotle, and by his partisans called the greatest of modern rhetoricians," Vossius belonged to the anti-Ramist, anti-Arminian school, and on this account the Estates of Holland, "identifying Ramist doctrines with Arminian heresies, ordered his rhetoric to be taught in all schools of the country."5 To Milton and his sympathizers, the prescriptions laid down by Vossius for rhetorical effective ness would not recommend themselves, not only because this rhetorician was English Studies in Can ad a, h i, 1, Spring 1977 *9 opposed to Ramus and Arminius, both of whom Milton held in esteem, but also, one might say damningly, because Vossius had been a good friend of Salmasius, Milton's chief antagonist in the Defensiones controversy.6 Not surprisingly, Vossius's treatment of rhetoric is found to bear close resemblances to the advice in Ad Herennium. Like the Ad Herennium compiler, Vossius is convinced that rhetoric appeals ultimately to the emotions and accordingly devotes much attention to methods of influencing them. "'Finis Oratoris ultimus est persuadere','' he writes, a view emphasized also in Ad Herennium, which also is characteristically Hermagorean,7 and one for which Satan fur nishes, in Milton's treatment, the archetypal model. Viewing Satan, then, as the progenitor of those false orators whose training and designs Milton's polemics have already coupled with lies and deceit, one might well begin with Satan's speech in Heaven that opens with the cel ebrated invocation, "Thrones, Dominations, Princedomes, Vertues, Powers" (v.772-802). The speech is, of course, prefaced by Milton's own judgment of Satan's "calumnious Art / Of counterfeted truth" (v.771), terms of disparage ment used more than once to describe the arguments of More and Salmasius. The high sounding apostrophatio, in mimicry of the Father's announcement (v.601), develops into a convoluted and question-begging interrogado. Cleared of knotted syntax and elaborate rhetoric, the question comes down to, "How can we endure to accord honour to the Anointed Son when it has become already irksome to accord it even to the Father?" Milton makes Satan play on the emotions of his audience by qualifying his apostrophatio in a sly significado, defined in...