When Marju Lepajõe, a famous cultural historian and literary critic in Estonia, was asked what she wished for the Estonian people for the country’s centennial anniversary, she said simply ‘I wish that everyone would have style.’Footnote ¹ Style, not in the sense of following the latest fashion outbreak, but as a cultivated surface reflection of one’s deeper (examined) self. In this sense, style is an intrinsic part of one’s self-manifestation and in order to have style, she suggested, one has to spend time trying to figure out who one really is and how to translate that deeper internal understanding of oneself to the outside world. Socrates had style and Marju Lepajõe herself, widely erudite and painstakingly careful about the words she used, certainly had lots of style. People with style, one might add in passing, often acquire cult status, and so did she (and of course, so did Socrates). Two important topics emerge from what appears to have been expressed as a very casual insight: first, style is undetachable from thought, and secondly, style is something that can be cultivated and learned, practised and improved upon.

One might say that connecting style with thought (and with a deeper reflection of oneself) is a commonplace.Footnote ² It is nevertheless true that many studies in rhetorical theory and practice from antiquity onwards have focused either on the one or the other side: Plato’s Phaedrus (266c–9d) reacts against an apparently established practice among textbook writers and teachers of rhetoric to conceive of good rhetoric primarily in terms of appropriating preconfigured models, tropes and arrangement. Aristotle is even more illuminating as an example. For all its polemic engagement with rival conceptualizations of rhetoric, his Rhetoric makes a sustained effort to bring together the content (i.e. the argument) with the presentation (i.e. style). And yet the third book dedicated to style has long been regarded as a dubious afterthought to his ‘real’ contribution to rhetoric – the enthymeme.Footnote ³ The idea that rhetoric is divided, or divisible, seems to go at least as far back as the aforementioned authors and the debates that their works contain. Hence, when contemplating studies that would exemplify this insight, it does not seem to me too far-fetched to suggest that Heinrich Lausberg’s Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik: eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschaften (München, 1960) could be conceived of as an example of rhetorical theory concerned strictly with style and ornamentation, developed to its fullest expression. Indeed, as an invaluable sourcebook for elements of style and rhetorical composition, it is a compulsory reading for everyone interested in concepts and applications of style and arrangement in classical authors. It has less to say about the philosophical, argumentative and educational aspects of rhetoric. And similarly, it may be argued that Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s Traité de l’argumentation – la nouvelle rhétorique (Paris, 1958), a fundamental contribution to argumentation and logic, goes in the other direction of regarding rhetoric as a theory of argumentation and logic (or logos), obliterating the aspect of style from this conversation. The list could easily be expanded (though there are surely exceptions to this broad generalization),Footnote ⁴ but the overall point is clear enough: even though style and thought seem so intricately connected in our conceptualization and use of rhetoric, they are not at all easy to combine in one work.

Scholars working on (the history of) rhetoric, from antiquity onwards, have recognized the difficulty of conceiving rhetoric as a unified comprehensive set of theories, authors and practices and have therefore often felt compelled to supply an overarching narrative for the art that would create a sense of continuity in thought and practice.Footnote ⁵ Even though such sweeping narratives have become very rare among Classicists, they are a central focus of study for rhetoric scholars working primarily in the English and Communication Studies departments in the US,Footnote ⁶ where the rhetorical tradition and their readings are often interpreted and viewed against the urgency of contemporary academia in their respective fields.Footnote ⁷ These studies tend to be highly ambitious and provocative in their outlook (e.g. to change existing narratives of rhetoric and de-gravitate the field away from canonized authors), though they seem to end up exercising little (if any) impact on mainstream Classics. This may be due to the fact that their interpretations sometimes exhibit lack of sophistication and understanding of the ancient rhetorical context which they claim to make contributions to.Footnote ⁸ Whatever the reasons for their mutual disregard, the concept of ‘rhetorical tradition’ is something that a good number of (American) rhetoric scholars are interested in and, much in line with the way in which Classicists have been prompted to rethink the use and influence of canons, traditions and classics in their broadest and narrowest senses,Footnote ⁹ so too the rhetorical tradition has become a widely questioned and challenged concept in studies on the history of rhetoric.Footnote ¹⁰ By now, there is no doubt that the ‘rhetorical tradition’ is a contentious topic and that even the assumption of the existence of some monolithic tradition of rhetoric itself requires an explanation.

The title of this book, Creating the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition, refers to a conscious and perhaps even somewhat polemical engagement with this discourse, primarily in two ways. First, when contemporary scholars of rhetoric dispute the continuity or existence of a single ‘rhetorical tradition’ they generally tend to assume that the ancient rhetorical tradition was one unified single entity and that the ‘tradition’ of rhetoric becomes questionable when traced as a discipline over time.Footnote ¹¹ By explicitly discussing the ‘ancient rhetorical tradition’, this study parts from those approaches that think of tradition as a continuity from the ancients to contemporary uses of rhetoric. This is not to say that an idea of continuity is implicitly in the background, but the explicit focus of this present book lies elsewhere and thus it claims no particular insight into the subsequent post-classical development of the rhetorical tradition. It is the unity of the ancient rhetorical tradition that is itself under investigation. Secondly, unlike many other rhetoric scholars, ancient and modern, who maintain that continuity and comprehensiveness in the field of ancient rhetoric emerge through a set of theories or practices of rhetoric, I will explore the possibility that the rhetorical tradition might have been more reliant on the perception and role of individual authors as guides to a particular way of approaching rhetoric. Hence, the following chapters will take a closer look at two critical moments that were crucial for establishing the overarching framework of the ancient rhetorical tradition, first as a sketch of Lysias and Isocrates in Plato (fourth-century bce Athens) and then further elaborated and fixed in the critical works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (first-century bce Rome).

The dissimilarity of all these four authors to one another is obvious: Lysias counts among the most obscure of the wildly prolific authors from the period and Isocrates, by contrast, is an author who puts himself on every page he writes.Footnote ¹² Plato is the most revered philosopher of all time, whereas Dionysius of Halicarnassus has only recently received appreciation as an author in his own right beyond being conceived simply as a valuable compendium for poetry and criticism.Footnote ¹³ Bringing together those four authors in one study will inevitably put pressure on the readers’ imagination, since dissimilarities between the authors are in turn reflected in the ensuing dissimilarities in the respective treatments of these authors. But embracing the perceived asymmetry between our writers will also help us comprehend the broad reach of rhetoric as a discipline in the making. All these four very different authors were contemplating the use and meaning of rhetoric as an object of study that could range from the technical and philosophical to the literary, from visual to aural, from poetic to the political. Hence, the breadth of authors represented in this project will hopefully result in a more wide-ranging and inclusive overview of the rhetorical tradition as it was first conceived of in antiquity.

1 From Plato to Dionysius of Halicarnassus …

Plato’s Phaedrus famously starts with a discussion of Lysias, the cleverest writer of the time (δεινότατος ὢν τῶν νῦν γράφειν, 228a2), and with an examination of his playful speech about love. Whether or not the speech is actually by Lysias or presents (more plausibly) a Platonic exercise in Lysianic style,Footnote ¹⁴ there is a suggestion running through the whole dialogue that Lysias’ speech is representative of a kind of rhetoric that was practised and presumably popular at the time.Footnote ¹⁵ Indeed, the dialogue ends with Socrates sending a message to Lysias about what ‘true’ rhetoric ought to be about, in the hope that the latter will reconsider his practice (καὶ σύ τε ἐλθὼν φράζε Λυσίᾳ […], 277b–8d).Footnote ¹⁶ It is also worth pointing out that in the course of the dialogue, many more rhetoricians and speechwriters are mentioned and discussed, giving the reader a sense of liveliness that may have surrounded the topic of rhetoric at the time. But not only that, Plato characterizes and categorizes the practitioners he mentions (266d–68a) and thus offers a more structured approach to this buzzing field. By the end of the dialogue, Phaedrus realizes that an important, perhaps even crucial, player of the contemporary rhetorical stage has been left out – Isocrates. The question about how to understand this sudden reference to Isocrates at the end of the dialogue, after Socrates has set out the conditions for ‘true’ rhetoric, has puzzled readers since antiquity.Footnote ¹⁷ Regardless of Plato’s own specific views about Isocrates and his art that are discussed at more length below, the mere fact that Isocrates is evoked at this point in the dialogue seems to suggest that Plato is making a statement about rhetoric more generally. In the midst of the seemingly disparate practitioners of rhetoric, Plato envisions the field as a dyad: rhetoric could either be conceived of in the vein of Lysias or in that of Isocrates.

Phaedrus, by calling Isocrates Socrates’ companion (ἑταῖρος, 278e4), certainly seems to associate Isocrates with the true (philosophical) art of rhetoric that Socrates had just outlined previously. The fundamentally opposing views regarding philosophy and its methods advocated by Plato and Isocrates make any easy link between Isocrates and ‘true’ Platonic rhetoric impossible. Hence, many have noticed that Socrates remains only half enthusiastic about his friend Isocrates, and thus interpret this entire paragraph as Plato’s ironical commentary on Isocrates’ career and contributions to philosophy.Footnote ¹⁸ Interpreting Socrates’ words as negative irony seems wholly dependent on later developments of philosophy and the retrospective assessment of Isocrates as firmly belonging outside the history of this discipline. While Isocrates was surely his rival in their competing claims to philosophy and education, Plato’s dialogues reveal, however, the broad extent of different views and educational context available for contemporary Athenians, and of those, Isocrates’ school does seem to be among the more benign forms of education and one that stands closer to Plato than to many other contemporaries. Hence, it may be well worth taking Socrates’ statement at the end of the Phaedrus at face value. He does express a sentiment of hope in Isocrates’ treatment of rhetoric and claims famously that ‘there is some philosophy in this man’s mind’.Footnote ¹⁹ Unlike the exaggerated evaluations of previous rhetoricians and speechwriters, the qualification (‘there is some philosophy’) in the statement suggests that this might be Plato’s first positive assessment of a contemporary writer and teacher. Isocrates is surely not perfect (i.e. he is not the consummate philosopher by any means), but there is something valuable in his teaching and work, something that sets him at a higher level than other practitioners of rhetoric. In other words, this final section of the dialogue shows Socrates comparing Isocrates’ work favorably with all other teaching available at the time in Athens. Most specifically, however, the comparison is drawn between the Lysianic and Isocratean conceptions of rhetoric, and in this sense Plato’s Socrates is not only creating competing notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ rhetoric, but he associates these conceptualizations with concrete figures – Lysias and Isocrates.

Plato’s Phaedrus was a widely read and influential contribution to the subsequent development of rhetorical and critical thought.Footnote ²⁰ His assessment of Lysias and Isocrates, but in particular of Lysianic style, in this dialogue paved the way for various critical engagements with Plato’s own style. Dionysius of Halicarnassus clearly had this last section of the dialogue in mind when he wrote his critical essays on Lysias and Isocrates as part of his study of the ancient orators. When he tries to explain the differences between Lysias and Isocrates, Dionysius proposes that the latter is more impressive with grand subjects, perhaps because ‘there is some grandeur in his nature’,Footnote ²¹ thus expressing a very similar assessment to that found in Plato’s Phaedrus (‘there is some philosophy’).Footnote ²²

Dionysius has, however, other plans with this material and his work on Lysias and Isocrates paved the way for expounding his educational program and practice in the Roman environment.Footnote ²³ His observations on both writers have exercised a long-lasting impact, first, on the way these two authors have been received and read in the subsequent rhetorical and critical tradition, and, second, on the way rhetorical criticism itself has been practised in antiquity and beyond.Footnote ²⁴ Even in most recent times, views on Lysias’ importance as the leading figure of simple Attic style and the breakdown of the particular characteristics of his writerly skills go back to Dionysius’ essay on the orator.Footnote ²⁵ His contribution to Isocratean scholarship has been, similarly to his impact on the reception of Lysias, crucial for subsequent perceptions of Isocrates as a prose author with significant claims to political philosophy.Footnote ²⁶ In fact, anyone planning to take a serious interest in philosophy amidst their rhetoric studies, ought to make Isocrates their frequent companion and source of philosophical education (Isocrates 4.4). Even though, as will be shown, Isocrates appears always to have had his loyal followers, Dionysius’ aim to raise him from mere stylistic study to (what might be called) philosophical rhetoric was instrumental to conceptualizing Isocrates’ position as central to the history of rhetoric and political thought. In Dionysius’ essays, then, Lysias and Isocrates have become the pillars of the rhetorical tradition.

But who were Lysias and Isocrates? And why would these two figures, of all important rhetoricians and orators of the ancient world, come to play such a central role in the development of the rhetorical tradition?

2 … and from Lysias to Isocrates

Lysias, the famous speechwriter and one of our major sources for the socio-cultural history of the fourth century bce,Footnote ²⁷ is nowadays relatively rarely talked about as an artist and rhetorician in his own right. Plato’s Phaedrus suggests that his contemporaries might have considered him not only a speechwriter for the law courts, but more like an intellectual whose entertaining skill in narrative and argumentation gained him many admirers.Footnote ²⁸ Indeed, the ancient reception of Lysias suggests that his works were particularly appreciated as models for rhetorical writings and he appears to have played an important role in the literary-critical tradition from ancient to modern times. However, since Dover’s provocative and groundbreaking work on Lysias (published in 1968), there has been very little work done on Lysias as a literary or rhetorical figure.Footnote ²⁹ The first two chapters of this book aim to pay closer attention to the influence of Lysias’ work on ancient notions of style and rhetoric, and to the perception and portrayal of Lysias amidst his contemporaries. By tracing the Lysianic tradition from the early fourth until the first century bce, we will follow the rise and fall of the appreciation of Lysias’ talent and explore the background to later Roman interest in his writing. A pervasive thread in the ancient reception of Lysias is to be found in the fascination for his effective and enchanting style of writing, so much so that he becomes the primary representative of the kind of rhetoric that is concerned with stylistic features and their alluring associations with persuasion.

Ever since Isocrates entered the canon of (ten) Attic orators,Footnote ³⁰ he has been granted a secure position in the history of rhetoric, accompanied, however, almost always by a certain unease about the ‘real’ place of his works in ancient literary and philosophical writing.Footnote ³¹ It seems that, at least partly, this unease stems from the dual character of Isocrates’ writing: his discourses are on the one hand deeply concerned with public life and rhetoric; on the other, however, they play down the importance of oral culture and propagate openly the idea of philosophy and institutionalized education, thus undermining the value of speechwriting as a means to achieve the latter.Footnote ³² Isocrates, who opened his school in Athens around the 390s bce and, as it appears, was probably the first to establish his own institutionalized school, called his teaching ‘philosophy’.Footnote ³³ The last three chapters of the first part of this book take a closer look at the construction of Isocratean rhetoric-philosophy, both as he conceived it in his own works and how his work and contributions were perceived by his contemporaries and in later reception. The main focus of this inquiry is to establish Isocrates’ own perspective on rhetoric and philosophy and, then, to contextualize his contributions to rhetorical thought.

Isocrates was undoubtedly an influential figure in fourth-century bce Athens and, as will emerge from this study, he was considered a respected rival by Plato and famous for promoting an all-round education in areas essential to the practical demands of human life. His emphasis on writing as the best way to cultivate education or paideia (παιδεία) explains the painstakingly polished style of his writings, and this aspect appears to have divided his followers into two groups: those who followed Isocrates’ stylistic/formalist practices in writing (a group about which we have very limited information), and those who were inspired by his insights into the workings of education and culture. It is this latter trend that became, in certain moments in history, a particularly dominant way to conceptualize the moral and political demands of rhetoric and practical philosophy.

But what about Demosthenes? By focusing on Lysias and Isocrates, are we not missing out the most influential orator of the ancient world, Demosthenes, the one who becomes conceived in later rhetorical theory as the consummate orator?Footnote ³⁴

Even though Demosthenes will prove a useful comparative figure for the following analyses on Lysias and Isocrates, there are two main reasons why his influence on the development of rhetorical tradition will be treated as secondary. First and foremost, Demosthenes was a famous Athenian politician and was not associated with rhetorical education, philosophers or the sophists. His rivalries with other contemporary politicians (especially with Aeschines) are well recorded and these constitute invaluable sources for the political circumstances of fourth-century bce Athens. In fact, he does not seem to be associated with the theoretical or educational side of rhetoric until somewhat later.Footnote ³⁵ Peripatetic philosophers after Aristotle may have played a part in the construction of the image of Demosthenes as a hard-working and cultivated (rather than naturally talented) orator,Footnote ³⁶ but neither Plato, nor Aristotle – those involved in sketching the outlines of the rhetorical tradition – mention Demosthenes or associate him with anything other than politics.Footnote ³⁷ Later, Demosthenes will be associated with the development of symbouleutic theory,Footnote ³⁸ but in the late fifth- and early fourth-century contexts – when thinking about rhetoric as a separate field first arises – distinctions between deliberative and judicial rhetoric were very difficult to draw.Footnote ³⁹ In other words, while Demosthenes receives an important place in the subsequent history of rhetoric, the central moments of conceptualizing the field seem to occur a generation earlier through the dyad of Lysias and Isocrates.

Secondly, the circumstances under which Demosthenes appears to be added to rhetorical theory in the first century bce, and indeed conceived as the paragon example of successful rhetoric, seem to be politically motivated. Even though he is already singled out in Ps. Demetrius as an example of ‘forceful’ style (245),Footnote ⁴⁰ his real recognition as a genius of rhetoric comes first with Cicero and, subsequently, in the essays of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.Footnote ⁴¹ Cicero’s admiration for Demosthenes is clearly tinged by his felt affinity with Demosthenes as a politician and orator. In Cicero’s conception, Demosthenes is not the man for the masses, but rather a sophisticated educator of the Athenian people, and Cicero finds close affinity with Demosthenes in his own mission in the Roman political scene of the time.Footnote ⁴² Furthermore, in Cicero’s Orator, Demosthenes is not associated with any particular innovation, but rather conceived as an orator-politician who excels in all three styles: the plain, the middle, the grand (69). Similarly to Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus views Demosthenes as the consummate orator who is not to be associated with any style in particular, but who vacillates between different existing styles like Proteus, who can assume any shape he wants (Demosthenes 8.2–3).Footnote ⁴³ In other words, Demosthenes is cast among the first-century bce critics as the perfect practitioner of rhetoric, moving between existing categories of style and modifying his speeches so as to surprise and arouse admiration for his rhetorical competence. However, he does not seem to be conceived as contributing to the development of the overarching structure of rhetoric. At least not primarily and, as such, a closer analysis of Demosthenes’ participation in the development of the ancient rhetorical tradition will have to await another study.

3 Creating the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition

The parallel lives of the two rhetorical traditions, the ‘Lysianic’ and the ‘Isocratean’ conceptualizations of rhetoric, that both gained impetus in the fourth century bce are, for the first time, brought together by the Augustan critic and historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Dionysius arrives in Rome at the end of the civil war (30/29 bce) and his prolific career overlaps with the first decades of Augustus’ reign.Footnote ⁴⁴ This means that the cultural and political revolutions of Rome have left an imprint on Dionysius’ writings, in history as well as in criticism and rhetoric.Footnote ⁴⁵ Dionysius considered himself primarily a historian,Footnote ⁴⁶ but his critical work has been an invaluable source for our understanding of ancient literary criticism (in theory and practice), theories of language and verse, contemporary debates in style, and so on. He plays such an important role in all these fields of inquiry that his actual arguments and positions are sometimes overlooked in search for the sources that he discusses.Footnote ⁴⁷ This has probably affected especially the fate of Dionysius’ critical work On Composition of Words, which has now received meticulous analysis and appreciation in its own right in the work of de Jonge (2008). Dionysius’ critical essays on ancient orators have, however, found fewer admirers in contemporary scholarship. With the exception of his Demosthenes,Footnote ⁴⁸ there is no recent extensive study dedicated to understanding Dionysius’ attitude to and treatment of ancient orators,Footnote ⁴⁹ or to the particular role of Lysias and Isocrates in his conception of rhetoric.

The second part of the book hopes to address this lacuna in the scholarship and explores the possibility of regarding Dionysius of Halicarnassus not only as another critic participating in the development of the rhetorical tradition, but indeed as someone with whom the ancient rhetorical tradition as a whole is conceived as a finished product, ready to be passed on to his contemporaries and future students. I will hence reject the generally accepted view of Bonner (Reference Bonner1939), who considered Dionysius’ essays on Lysias and Isocrates (the first two essays of the volume On the Ancient Orators) as his preliminary and somewhat inept attempts in rhetorical criticism that were to be surpassed in thought and technique by his later works. Instead, the last two chapters of the book (Chapters 7 and 8), in many ways the culmination of this current project, argue that these two essays, dedicated to Lysias and Isocrates respectively, actually manifest Dionysius’ fundamental commitments to rhetorical theory that were expanded and further developed in his later works. Moreover, it will be argued that Dionysius’ observations of the two writers, though influenced by the previous strand of thinkers (and Plato’s Phaedrus in particular), were innovative at the time when he wrote his essays (the first century bce) and have remained groundbreaking in the scholarship and practice of ancient rhetoric ever since. In other words, Dionysius of Halicarnassus emerges from this book as a teacher of rhetoric, whose associations of ancient rhetorical thinking with Lysias and Isocrates mark a crucial moment in the creation of the rhetorical tradition.