It is customary to measure the literature of an age by its highest products, and to measure the literary excellence of one age as compared with that of another by the highest products of each of them. We look, for example, upon the Periclean age at Athens, or the Augustan age at Rome, or the Elizabethan age in our own country, as higher than the ages respectively of the Ptolemies, the Cæsars, or the early Georges. The former are “golden;” the latter, “silver.” Nor can it be doubted that from the point of view of literature in itself, as distinguished from literature in its relation to history or to social life, such a standard of measurement is correct. But the result of its application has been the doing of a certain kind of injustice to periods of history in which, though the high-water mark has been lower, there has been a wide diffusion of literary culture. This is the case with the period with which we are dealing. It produced no writer of the first rank. It was artificial rather than spontaneous. It was imitative more than original. It was appreciative rather than constructive. Its literature was born, not of the enthusiasm of free activity, but rather of the passivity which comes when there is no hope. But as to a student of science the after-glow is an object of study no less than the noon-day, so to a student of the historical development of the world the silver age of a nation’s literature is an object of study no less than its golden age.
Its most characteristic feature was one for which it is difficult to find any more exact description than the paradoxical phrase, “a viva-voce literature.” It had its birth and chief development in that part of the Empire in which Christianity and Greek life came into closest and most frequent contact. It was the product of the rhetorical schools which have been already described. In those schools the professor had been in the habit of illustrating his rules and instructing his students by model compositions of his own.[144] Such compositions were in the first instance exercises in the pleading of actual causes, and accusations or defences of real persons. The cases were necessarily supposed rather than actual, but they had a practical object in view, and came as close as possible to real life. The large growth of the habit of studying Rhetoric as a part of the education of a gentleman, and the increased devotion to the literature of the past, which came partly from the felt loss of spontaneity and partly from national pride,[145] caused these compositions in the rhetorical schools to take a wider range.[146] They began on the one hand to be divorced from even a fictitious connection with the law-courts, and on the other to be directly imitative of the styles of ancient authors. From the older Rhetoric, the study of forensic logic and speech with a view to the actual practice in the law-courts, which necessarily still went on, there branched out the new Rhetoric, which was sometimes specially known as Sophistic.
Sophistic proceeded for the most part upon the old lines. Its literary compositions preserved the old name, “exercises” (μελέται), as though they were still the rehearsals of actual pleadings. They were divided into two kinds, Theses and Hypotheses, according as a subject was argued in general terms or names were introduced.[147] The latter were the more common. Their subjects were sometimes fictitious, sometimes taken from real history. Of the first of these there is a good example in Lucian’s Tyrannicide: the situation is, that a man goes into the citadel of a town for the purpose of killing a tyrant: not finding the tyrant, the man kills the tyrant’s son: the tyrant coming in and seeing his son with the sword in his body, stabs himself: the man claims the reward as a tyrannicide. Of the second kind of subjects, there are such instances as “Demosthenes defending himself against the charge of having taken the bribe which Demades brought,”[148] and “The Athenians wounded at Syracuse beg their comrades who are returning to Athens to put them to death.”[149] The Homeric cycle was an unfailing mine of subjects: the Persian wars hardly less so. “Would you like to hear a sensible speech about Agamemnon, or are you sick of hearing speeches about Agamemnon, Atreus’ son?” asks Dio Chrysostom in one of his Dialogues.[150] “I should not take amiss even a speech about Adrastus or Tantalus or Pelops, if I were likely to get good from it,” is the polite reply. In the treatment of both kinds of subjects, stress was laid on dramatic consistency. The character, whether real or supposed, was required to speak in an appropriate style.[151] The “exercise” had to be recited with an appropriate intonation.[152] Sometimes the dramatic effect was heightened by the introduction of two or more characters: for example, one of the surviving pièces of Dio Chrysostom[153] consists of a wrangle in tragic style, and with tragic diction, between Odysseus and Philoctetes.
This kind of Sophistic has an interest in two respects, apart from its relation to contemporary life. It gave birth to the Greek romance, which is the progenitor of the mediæval romance and of the modern novel:[154] a notable example of such a sophistical romance in Christian literature is the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions; in non-Christian literature, Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana. It gave birth also to the writings in the style of ancient authors which, though commonly included in the collected works of those authors, betray their later origin by either the poverty of their thought or inadvertent neologisms of expression: for example, the Eryxias of Plato.[155]
But though Sophistic grew mainly out of Rhetoric, it had its roots also in Philosophy. It was sometimes defined as Rhetoric philosophizing.[156] It threw off altogether the fiction of a law-court or an assembly, and discussed in continuous speech the larger themes of morality or theology. Its utterances were not “exercises” but “discourses” (διαλέξεις).[157] It preached sermons. It created not only a new literature, but also a new profession. The class of men against whom Plato had inveighed had become merged in the general class of educators: they were specialized partly as grammarians, partly as rhetoricians: the word “sophist,” to which the invectives had failed to attach a permanent stigma, remained partly as a generic name, and partly as a special name for the new class of public talkers. They differed from philosophers in that they did not mark themselves off from the rest of the world, and profess their devotion to a higher standard of living, by wearing a special dress.[158] They were a notable feature of their time. Some of them had a fixed residence and gave discourses regularly, like the “stated minister” of a modern congregation: some of them travelled from place to place. The audience was usually gathered by invitation. There were no newspaper advertisements in those days, and no bells; consequently the invitations were personal. They were made sometimes by a “card” or “programme,” sometimes by word of mouth: “Come and hear me lecture to-day.”[159] Sometimes a messenger was sent round; sometimes the sophist would go round himself and knock at people’s doors and promise them a fine discourse.[160]
The audience of a travelling sophist was what might be expected among a people who lived very much out of doors. When a stranger appeared who was known by his professional dress, and whose reputation had preceded him, the people clustered round him—like iron filings sticking to a magnet, says Themistius.[161] If there was a resident sophist, the two were pitted together; just as if, in modern times, a famous violinist from Paris or Vienna might be asked to play at the next concert with the leading violinist in London. It was a matter not only of professional honour, but also of obligation. A man could not refuse. There is a story in Plutarch[162] about a sophist named Niger who found himself in a town in Galatia which had a resident professor. The resident made a discourse. Niger had, unfortunately, a fish-bone in his throat and could not easily speak; but he had either to speak or to lose his reputation: he spoke, and an inflammation set in which killed him. There is a much longer story in Philostratus[163] of Alexander Peloplato going to Athens to discourse in a friendly contest with Herodes Atticus. The audience gathered together in a theatre in the Ceramicus, and waited a long time for Herodes to appear: when he did not come, they grew angry and thought that it was a trick, and insisted on Alexander coming forward to discourse before Herodes arrived. And when Herodes did arrive, Alexander suddenly changed his style—sang tenor, so to speak, instead of bass—and Herodes followed him, and there was a charming interchange of compliments: “We sophists,” said Alexander, “are all of us only slices of you, Herodes.”
Sometimes they went to show their skill at one of the great festivals, such as that of Olympia. Lucian[164] tells a story of one who had plucked feathers from many orators to make a wonderful discourse about Pythagoras. His object was to gain the glory of delivering it as an extempore oration, and he arranged with a confederate that its subject should be the subject selected for him by the audience. But the imposture was too barefaced: some of the hearers amused themselves by assigning the different passages to their several authors; and the sophist himself at last joined in the universal laughter. And Dio Chrysostom[165] draws a picture of a public place at Corinth during the Isthmian games, which he alleges to be as true of the time of Diogenes as of his own: “You might hear many poor wretches of sophists shouting and abusing one another, and their disciples, as they call them, squabbling, and many writers of books reading their stupid compositions, and many poets singing their poems, and many jugglers exhibiting their marvels, and many soothsayers giving the meaning of prodigies, and ten thousand rhetoricians twisting law-suits, and no small number of traders driving their several trades.”
Of the manner of the ordinary discourse there are many indications. It was given sometimes in a private house, sometimes in a theatre, sometimes in a regular lecture-room. The professor sometimes entered already robed in his “pulpit-gown,” and sometimes put it on in the presence of his audience. He mounted the steps to his professorial chair, and took his seat upon its ample cushion.[166] He sometimes began with a preface, sometimes he proceeded at once to his discourse. He often gave the choice of a subject to his audience.[167] He was ready to discourse on any theme; and it was part of his art either to force the choice of a subject, or so to turn the subject as to bring in something which he had already prepared. “His memory is incredible,” says Pliny of Isæus; “he repeats by heart what he appears to say extempore; but he does not falter even in a single word.”[168] “When your audience have chosen a subject for you,” says Lucian,[169] in effect, in his satirical advice to rhetoricians, “go straight at it and say without hesitation whatever words come to your tongue, never minding about the first point coming first and the second second: the great thing is to go right on and not have any pauses. If you have to talk at Athens about adultery, bring in the customs of the Hindoos and Persians: above all, have passages about Marathon and Cynægirus—that is indispensable. And Athos must always be turned into sea, and the Hellespont into dry land, and the sun must be darkened by the clouds of Median arrows ... and Salamis and Artemisium and Platæa, and so forth, must come in pretty frequently; and, above all, those little Attic words I told you about must blossom on the surface of your speech—ἅττα (atta) and δήπουθεν (depouthen)—must be sprinkled about freely, whether they are wanted or not: for they are pretty words, even when they do not mean anything.”
It was a disappointment if he was not interrupted by applause. “A sophist is put out in an extempore speech,” says Philostratus,[170] “by a serious-looking audience and tardy praise and no clapping.” “They are all agape,” says Dio Chrysostom,[171] “for the murmur of the crowd ... like men walking in the dark, they move always in the direction of the clapping and the shouting.” “I want your praise,” said one of them to Epictetus.[172] “What do you mean by my praise?” asked the philosopher. “Oh, I want you to say Bravo! and Wonderful!” replied the sophist. These were the common cries; others were not infrequent—“Divine!” “Inspired!” “Unapproachable!”[173] They were accompanied by clapping of the hands and stamping of the feet and waving of the arms. “If your friends see you breaking down,” says Lucian in his satirical advice to a rhetorician,[174] “let them pay the price of the suppers you give them by stretching out their arms and giving you a chance of thinking of something to say in the interval between the rounds of applause.” Sometimes, of course, there were signs of disapproval. “It is the mark of a good hearer,” says Plutarch,[175] “that he does not howl out like a dog at everything of which he disapproves, but at any rate waits until the end of the discourse.”