Roman Rhetoric Research Articles

Public Relations Ethics: Contrasting Models from the Rhetorics of Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates

As a relatively young profession, public relations seeks a realistic ethics foundation. A continuing debate in public relations has pitted journalistic/objectivity ethics against the advocacy ethics that may be more appropriate in an adversarial society. As the journalistic/objectivity influence has waned, the debate has evolved, pitting the advocacy/adversarial foundation against the two-way symmetrical model of public relations, which seeks to build consensus and holds that an organization itself, not an opposing public, sometimes may need to change to build a productive relationship. A similar battle between adversarial advocacy and symmetry occurred during the emergence of rhetoric in the Athens of the 4th century B.C. Plato and Aristotle favored adversarial/advocacy rhetoric, whereas Isocrates favored a symmetrical rhetoric. Four criteria of comparison of those rhetorics are examined: success of the respective schools, success of the respective graduates, the evaluation of later Roman rhetoricians, and the impact on the future of education. History shows that Isocrates's symmetrical rhetoric clearly was more effective than its adversarial/advocacy rivals. Recent studies of the two-way symmetrical model concur, indicating that it may well be the most effective foundation for public relations ethics.

Law Out of Context

Law is out of context much of the time, even perhaps most of the time. A society makes law: the society changes, politically or economically, hut the law remains the same or little changed. Often this has astonishing consequences. This paper takes a number of striking examples that have been generally unremarked or underemphasised to indicate some of the dimensions of the problem of the relationship between law and society. Justinian's Digest and Institutes provide numerous instances, while classical Roman jurists never present law as it was in reality and Roman rhetoricians present legal arguments without law. Modern South African cases on delict often proceed on arguments drawn from the Roman lex Aquilia of 287 BC, though it is accepted on all sides that the basic principles of that law had been rejected very much earlier. German law professors in the nineteenth century present German law for a modernised industrial state on the basis of an interpretation of misinterpreted Roman law. Today's American law professors present American law as it never was, is not, and never will be. What is startling about these arguments and conclusions is that the legislators, judges, legal writers and law professors had, and have, no intention to deceive or mislead.

Roman Rhetoric: Revolution and the Greek Influence

Roman Rhetoric: Revolution and the Greek Influence

Roman Rhetoric: Revolution and the Greek Influence by Richard L. Enos

Roman Rhetoric: Revolution and the Greek Influence by Richard L. Enos

Towards a Theory of Vivid Description as Practiced in Cicero's Verrine Oration

Abstract: Ancient Roman rhetoricians do not offer a systematic theory of vivid description in their rhetorical treatises, perhaps because it was treated at the early stages of a student's education and because it may be produced in various ways to achieve various purposes. After examining the references to vivid description scattered throughout ancient rhetorical treatises in discussions of style, amplification, narration, and proof, as well as Cicero's use of the tectinique in the Verrine orations, I suggest precepts which may have guided the means by and ends for which vivid descriptions are produced.

Amplification Techniques in 1 John: the Interaction of Rhetorical Style and Invention

This study demonstrates that the repetitive and emphatic nature of 1 John is explained by the author's use of recognized techniques of amplification common to Graeco- Roman rhetoric as a major part of his inventional strategy. Part 1 defines ampli fication and describes specific techniques used in 1 John. Among others, these include strong words, augmentation, comparison, accumulation, expolitio, reflexio, regressio, conduplicatio and distributio. Part 2 explains the author's use of ampli fication in the context of the rhetorical species of the letter. The repetitive and amplified nature of 1 John is an integral part of the author's use of epideictic rhetoric to increase his audience's adherence to the traditional truths of the Johannine Community in the face of secessionist challenges. Amplification clarifies the author's themes and topics, as well as the distinctions between Johannine tradition and its aberrant forms.

Petrarch's Defense of Secular Letters, the Latin Fathers, and Ancient Roman Rhetoric

Abstract: Like the Church Fathers before him, Petrarch was forced to defend secular learning against its detractors, and his defenses draw on many of the same arguments that Augustine and Jerome had used. In these defenses he blends classical rhetoric and Christian values, and his procedures also follow the traditions of classical rhetoric, relying on the epistolary form and utilizing the Ciceronian manner of debating all topics from opposite standpoints. Perhaps, however, because his indecisiveness complemented the classical rhetorical premise that many issues present many possible resolutions, Petrarch also rejects secular learning in some of his writings. His arguments are therefore conclusive only within their unique rhetorical situations.

St. Paul's Epistles and Ancient Greek and Roman Rhetoric

St. Paul's Epistles and Ancient Greek and Roman Rhetoric

The Rhetorical Case: Its Roman Precedent and the Current Debate

Because of the recent emphasis on rhetorical context in business and technical writing (BTW) instruction, the problem-solving case has become a staple in BTW classrooms. However, a number of critics have voiced concerns about the use of the rhetorical case. These concerns recall an ancient debate among Roman rhetoricians over an early case-study method called declamation. For contemporary theorists, the debate over case study revolves around its value as a stimulant to problem-solving skills, its ability to imitate the realistic circumstances of professional BTW, and its emphasis on persona and audience along with its deemphasis of the teacher. A full spectrum of arguments on these and other issues in the case-study debate indicates that the discipline is entering a new phase in its deliberations over the role of problem-solving and pragmatics in the BTW classroom.

Some Influences of Greek and Roman Rhetoric on Early Letter Writing1

Letter writing, known as dictamen in the Medieval and Renaissance periods, was formatively dependent upon the theory of oral rhetoric of the ancient world, some reflections of which are still apparent today. Three oral rhetoric precepts were applied by letter writers: inventio, locating material for three kinds of letters; dispositio, organizing letters into an introduction, body, and conclusion; and style, applying ornateness along with clarity and correctness to prose. Representative English, Italian, and German letter writing practi tioners carried the oral tradition along.

The Platonic Paradox

This article surveys and analyzes the contemporary reception of Plato's rhetorical theory in contemporary rhetoric and composition studies by examining the response from three current perspectives: (1) presenting Plato as completely against rhetoric; (2) leaving Plato out of rhetoric altogether; and (3) interpreting Plato's work as raising issues central to classical and contemporary rhetoric. The discussion of the first two responses to Plato's relationship to rhetoric reveals a reductive, or formulaic, presentation of classical rhetoric. The discussion of the third perspective shows that it is the most accurate interpretation. Plato's rhetoric is related to the traditional five canons that were prominent in Greek rhetoric and explicitly systematized in Roman rhetoric, beginning with the Rhetorica Ad Herennium. If Plato's extensive contribution to the last two of the classical canons of rhetoric, memory and delivery, were more commonly included in the historicizing of rhetoric, then the five canons would work in the fullness of their interaction, rather than as the three-part system (invention, arrangement, and style) that dominates much current interpretation of classical rhetoric. Examples of reintegration of Plato into classical rhetoric (the third perspective) leads to a conclusion that Plato's rhetoric is central to contemporary interpretations of classical rhetoric.

Bede and Cicero

A great weight of authority supports the view that Bede was averse to pagan rhetoric and had never read anything of its formative literature. I have briefly questioned this opinion elsewhere, and should like now to investigate it more fully. The evidence, of Bede's biblical commentaries in particular, suggests first, that his attitude toward Roman rhetoric was ambivalent, as was that of Augustine and Cicero; secondly, that his knowledge of it reached into the theory of invention; and finally, that he had access to Cicero's De inventione.

Aristotelian and Rogerian Rhetoric

One of our most influential composition texts is Rhetoric: Discovery and Change. In it, Young, Becker, and Pike distinguish between classical and contemporary domains of rhetoric; in accordance with this distinction they differentiate Aristotle from Carl Rogers. In her article, Aristotelian vs. Rogerian Argument: A Reassessment (CCC, May 1979), Andrea Lunsford disputed the validity of the distinction, virtually baptizing Aristotle as a Rogers of his time. However, upon closer examination, Young, Becker, and Pike's perception of differences between Aristotle and Rogers can be confirmed. Furthermore, there is justifiable reason for maintaining Young, Becker, and Pike's distinction as a service to our students who need help in sensing when it is appropriate to confront opponents and when it is more advantageous to strive for change through mutual acceptance and understanding by each party of the other's views. The classical tradition in rhetoric, developed by Aristotle and modified by the Roman rhetoricians Cicero and Quintilian, was designed for use chiefly in law courts, political meetings, and religious ceremonies. The underlying principle of Aristotle's Rhetoric is that man is a rational animal, capable of using logical reasoning as the basis for argument.2 The strategy Artistotle uses to analyze rhetorical transactions is focussed, therefore, on the processes of logical reasoning-rational men using reasonable means (enthymemes) in exhorting or dissuading (deliberative oratory), in praising or blaming (epideictic oratory), and in accusing or defending (forensic oratory). The Rogerian strategy is based upon a different set of conditions and assumptions. Since Rogers is writing primarily from the context of patientclient therapy, his communication theory is applicable especially to rhetorical transactions outside of the advocacy situation. Young, Becker, and Pike, the principal proponents of a Rogerian-based rhetoric, point out that the Rogerian strategy rests on the assumption that a man holds to his beliefs about who he is and what the world is like because other beliefs threaten his iden-

Pliny, a neglected roman rhetorician

The most important rhetorician between Quintilian and Fronto, Pliny the Younger helped to perpetuate the classicism of his teacher, Quintilian. Nevertheless, Pliny's ideas on rhetoric, as expressed in his Letters, show the influence of the Modernist controversy, the oratory of his own times, and his own individuality.

Parasites and Strange Bedfellows: A Study in Catullus' Political Imagery

For almost all present-day readers, Catullus is a compelling love poet; for Quintilian, he was a master of the savage political lampoon. These two views of the same author are not mutually exclusive. Yet a natural wish to establish Catullus as a great ‘lyric poet’, as twentieth-century scholars understand the term, has sometimes trapped his admirers into a false dichotomy: his invectives are denied any claim to artistic merit, and the Roman rhetorician's preference for them is dismissed as an odd lapse of taste. Such a pronouncement hardly does justice to Quintilian's aesthetic judgment. Nor does it give due recognition to Catullus' noteworthy achievements in the iambic mode. Even in the harshest of his lampoons, modern techniques of literary analysis reveal a level of sophistication as high as in any of the famous love lyrics, together with an equivalent degree of emotional complexity. In this paper I intend to support that thesis through an exploration of one significant characteristic of certain pasquinades: the use of standard invective topoi as condensed metaphors of political corruption.

Canonic Books and Prohibited Books: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Religion and Culture

The history of freedom of thought and expression, the freedom of unrestricted spontaneity and the freedom of purposive accomplishment, may be traced in the fate of books as well as in the ideas expressed in them. The structure of that history in the culture of the West is determined by the interaction of Greek books and Christian books. Greek literature and culture, as we know them, are the result of three stages of production, preservation, and organization. The classics of Greek literature owe their origin to Hellenic authors, their form and interpretation to Hellenistic editors, librarians, and historians, and their adaptation to uses in other cultures to Roman rhetoricians and philosophers. Greek literature did not present itself in one guise or perspective for adjustment to the books of the Old and New Testaments. The early Councils of the Church formed canons of the authentic books of Scripture, of the beliefs or doctrines set forth in them, and of the orthodox and heretical interpretations of those doctrines. The Roman Church sought in Greek literature doctrines that might lead to heresy or might reinforce orthodoxy. The Jews in framing their canon of the Old Testament sought in Greek literature philological methods of establishing texts and critical methods of interpreting them. The Muslims sought sciences and scientific laws that were in accord or disaccord with the law of the Koran.

When rhetoric was outlawed in Rome: A translation and commentary of Suetonius's treatise on early Roman rhetoricians

Gains Suetonius Tranquillus, Roman historian and biographer of the first and second centuries A.D., wrote De Rhetoribus,the only Latin treatise concerned directly with pre‐Ciceronian rhetoricians and providing information on the strong opposition to rhetoric, the radical changes in the educational system of Rome, and the influence of otherwise unknown rhetoricians. After placing Suetonius in the rhetorical tradition of the early Roman Empire, a translation of De Rhetoribus and an extensive commentary on the major points are presented. The major significance of Suetonius's De Rhetoribus in the history of rhetoric was its demonstration that transplanted Greek rhetoric survived the dark ages of the early Roman Republic because rhetoric was a source of political power.

Auxesis: A concept of rhetorical amplification

This essay examines and analyzes the classical concept of auxesis, a device used for amplification in Greek and Roman rhetoric, and redefines it through association with contemporary principles and practicess

The Thesis in the Roman Rhetorical Schools of the Republic

Ancient rhetoric divided the questions which concerned the orator into the definite and the indefinite, quaestiones finitae and quaestiones infinitae, the former concerned with particular persons and occasions, the latter without any such reference. To take a simple example from Quintilian, ‘Should one marry?’ is a quaestio infinita, ‘Should Cato marry?’ a quaestio finita. The distinction was introduced, or at any rate first clearly formulated, by Hermagoras in the second century B.C., and became an established part of rhetorical theory. The Greek term for the indefinite, or general, question was none of the various Latin equivalents used by Cicero attained general currency, and the Greek term prevailed.

Imitation: Theory and practice in Roman rhetoric

(1951). Imitation: Theory and practice in Roman rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 11-22.