At least three epigrams of a different sort rather make us regret that there are not more of the same kind, instead of the iteration of stock phrases. The first,[[114]] by Herodicus of Babylon, is a smart onslaught on the “fry of Aristarchus,” the “mono-syllabists” who care for nothing but ΣΦΙΝ and ΣΦΩιΝ and ΜΙΝ and ΝΙΝ. The second,[[115]] by Antiphanes, hails the “busybody race” of grammarians who “dig up the roots of other people’s muses,” with a great many more abusive but not quite inappropriate epithets and comparisons. The third,[[116]] by Philippus, is perhaps the best of the three, girding at the “whelps of Zenodotus” with a kind of combination of the other two, which is very likely actual and intentional. Philip (v. infra) was a careful student of the elders of his craft. Antipater of Thessalonica[[117]] has quite a group of literary epigrams. He celebrates the Nine Poetesses, takes part in the Antimachus-Homer debate, refusing the Colophonian primacy, but granting him second rank and the praise of rough vigour (“the Hammer on the anvil of the Pierides”), &c., and honours Aristophanes. Homer once more occupies Alpheus of Mitylene[[118]] and Antiphilus of Byzantium,[[119]] while Philippus of Thessalonica[[120]] devotes a “pretty but slim” comparison with flowers to the principal bards of the Anthology itself.
This same Philippus has also a not unhappy conceit[[121]] about Hipponax bidding the usual passer-by at his tomb “not wake the sleeping wasp, Whose shafts fly straight although his metres limp.” A pale addition to the garland of Sophocles comes from the doubtless alien hand of Stratyllius Flaccus,[[122]] and Hesiod supplies only a play on words to the better artistry of Marcus Argentarius,[[123]] while the accident of our order of reading—a genuine accident—finishes a volume, and the tale, with the marvellously lame and only epigram of a certain Pinytus[[124]] on no less a person than Sappho.
A very thankless wretch would he be who was not grateful for any legitimate excuse to wander once more through the length and breadth of the enchanted gardens of the Anthology. But the reperusal can only strengthen the opinion already formed that on the actual “evaluation of π” in criticism the Greek mind, whether wisely or unwisely, was not strongly set. Nothing can be clearer than that the forms, the range, the etiquette, so to speak, of the compositions which are here grouped, invited criticism in the graver way as thorough as that which Ben Jonson gives to Shakespeare, Camden, and a dozen others; in the lighter as sharp, and at the same time as piercing, as that of Piron on La Chaussée. But it was not the mode, and they were not in the vein. With rare exceptions they obeyed the classical principle of taking the accepted, the obvious, the orthodox, and dressing it up in their best way. It by no means follows that they were not right; but it does follow that they leave us a little unsatisfied. To tell us that Homer is great, Sappho lofty, Sophocles perfect, Aristophanes witty, is (to use the old comparison of George Gascoigne) to praise the “crystal eye” and the “cherry lip” of any gentle-woman. And so we may turn to the division of Greek literature most opposite to the Anthology itself.
Before considering in some, at least, representative detail the vast and arid province of the technical Greek Rhetoric, it may be |The Rhetoric of the Schools.| well, or rather is absolutely necessary, to resume the consideration of what Rhetoric really meant. As we have seen, it was at the beginning a strictly practical Art of Persuasion by Oratory; and if it tended to embrace and absorb all or most other arts and sciences, this was partly because the orator would certainly have to deal with many, and might have to deal with all, of these, partly because it was always more or less a political art, an art of public business. For the Greek politician, like others, was expected to be a Jack-of-all-trades.
But even while this practical object continued, the Greek passion for abstracting and refining tended to turn practice into theory, while the Greek love of sport, competition, public display, tended further to turn this theory into the code of a very elaborate game. Obviously enough, as the practical importance of oratory declined, the technical and “sporting” interest of Rhetoric got more and more the upper hand. Rhetoricians specialised their terminology, multiplied their classifications, and drew their rules ever finer and finer, just as croquet-players narrow their hoops and bulge out their balls, just as whist-players split and wire-draw the broad general principles of the play of Deschapelles and Clay into “American leads,” and an endless reverberation of “calls” and “echoes.” We possess a very large, and a more curious than interesting, collection of the technical writings of this half craft, half sport, and a collection, rather less in proportion, but a little more interesting, of examples of the finished handiwork or game. To both of these we must now turn, premising that the technical part has not very much, and the finished examples surprisingly little, to furnish to the stricter literature of our subject. Why, then, do we deal with it? Because even abused Rhetoric is always Literary Criticism in a more or less degraded and disguised condition. The degradation can be remedied, the disguise thrown off, whenever the hour and the man arrive. Rhetoric, in her worst moods, keeps the tools ready, keeps them almost too sharply ground, if she does not put them to the right use.
As Rhetoric preserved her authority not merely to the latest classical times but right through the Middle Ages, and even at |Its documents.| the close of the latter escaped, at the cost only of some minor changes and additions, the decay which fell upon the rest of Scholastic learning, it is not surprising that the Rhetores Græci received early attention from the young art of Printing. Had not Aldus, in 1508-1509, collected them in two folio volumes, it is perhaps rather unlikely that we should have had any more modern collections at all. For technical Rhetoric fell into even more disfavour than Logic with the rise of physical science and materialist philosophy in the seventeenth century; and though, in some applied senses of the word, it has never fallen into complete disuse, it has never, as Logic has, recovered position in its stricter and more formal forms. It was therefore no small feat, even of German industry, when, some seventy years ago, Christian Walz of Tübingen undertook a new edition,[[125]] which, though some additions and improvements have since been made by Spengel[[126]] and others, remains the main standard and thesaurus. Its ten stout volumes, of some seven thousand closely printed pages, have probably been read through, and line by line, by hardly a single person for each decade of the seven during which it has been before the world. For not only is the bulk enormous, but the matter is extremely technical; there is endless repetition, commentaries on commentaries on commentaries forming no small part of the whole, while the minute definition and special terminology[[127]] require extremely careful reading. I shall not pretend to have read every word of it myself; but I have read a very great deal of it, and everything that follows can be guaranteed as drawn at first hand.
The original treatises of the collection form its smallest part, and none of them is very early; indeed, of the earlier formal Rhetoric, as has been said, Aristotle is almost our only representative, though, luckily, he is worth all the others. If the περὶ ἑρμηνείας, or De Interpretatione, which goes by the name of Demetrius, had been rightly referred (in accordance with nearly all the MSS., as far as the name goes, and with the assent of so distinguished and acute a scholar as Petrus Victorius in regard to the person) to Demetrius of Phalerus,—the Athenian statesman and orator of the latter half of the fourth century B.C., the antagonist of his namesake the City-Taker and lover of Lamia, the scholar of Theophrastus, the schoolfellow of Menander, the probable consulting founder of the Alexandrian library—its interest of authorship would be only inferior to that of the work of the greatest writers. But the allusions and citations in the treatise itself (unless we suppose it to have been edited and interpolated to an extent such as to make it useless as a document) are such as to put this attribution out of the question. And while Dionysius and others have been put forward as possible claimants, there seems no reason to doubt that the most probable author is to be found in some Alexandrian grammarian or sophist of the name of Demetrius (perhaps the one actually named by Diogenes Laertius as having written rhetorical treatises), who may have lived under the Antonines. There is, therefore, no reason for disturbing Walz’s actual order.[[128]]
His first volume is composed of divers more or less original treatises, which are of the kind called προγυμνάσματα, “Preliminary Exercises,” and which in most cases actually bear that title. The first is by the famous Hermogenes (ob. c. 170 A.D.), the Phœnix of rhetoricians pure and simple, who became a master at fifteen and an idiot at five-and-twenty, whose “heart was covered with hair,” and whose works not only followed him, but were followed by libraries-full of scholiasts and commentators. The next, itself a sort of adaptation of Hermogenes, is by Aphthonius of Antioch, a teacher of the beginning of the fourth century A.D., who had the rather curious good fortune not merely to secure a long vogue in the late classical ages, but to be current in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Theon, an Alexandrian, but not the father of Hypatia, follows, with the less-known names of Nicolas, Nicephorus, Adrian, Severus, and the better known George Pachymeres, as well as another collection by an anonym. Of these, the works attributed to Adrian and Severus are not called προγυμνάσματα, but in the first case μελέται, in the second διηγήματα καὶ ἠθοποΐαι.[[129]] The most famous and popular of the sets, those of Hermogenes and Aphthonius, are very short, and, like that of Georgius Pachymeres, do not exceed fifty pages. The others are longer, and in the case of the work of Nicolas, some three times as long.
The opening of the Progymnasmata of Hermogenes is a curious and slightly bewildering mixture of definition, literary |The Progymnasmata of Hermogenes.| history, and the kind of “Manual for Young Writers” (lege orators), which, after long disuse, has recently begun to be prepared for the aspiring journalist. The first chapter is on Fables. They are supposed to be good things for the young. They have various authors and titles, but there is a tendency to give the name of Æsop to all of them. They are not true to fact; but should be plausible, and can be made so by suiting the action to the characters and making the peacock stand for beauty and vanity, the fox for wisdom, the ape for mimicry. Sometimes you should give them shortly, sometimes spin them out. (Example given.) You may put them in different places of your speech, and they will do instead of an actual example.
The second chapter is of Narration (διήγημα), which is distinguished from Fable as being the story of something which has either actually happened or is told as if it had. Homer and Herodotus are both “narrators.” There are five kinds of it (one thinks of Polonius)—the directly declaratory, the indirectly ditto, the elenchtic, the loose, the periodic—with examples of each kind.[[130]] The first is good for story, the second for debate, “the elenchtic [confuting] is rather for elenchs,” and the loose for epilogues, as being pathetic.