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The Asiatic style or Asianism (Latin : genus orationis Asiaticum, Cicero, Brutus 325) refers to an Ancient Greek rhetorical tendency (though not an organized school) that arose in the third century BC, which, although of minimal relevance at the time, briefly became an important point of reference in later debates about Roman oratory. [1] [2]
Hegesias of Magnesia was Asianism's first main representative and was considered its founder. Hegesias "developed and exaggerated stylistic effects harking back to the sophists and the Gorgianic style." [3]
Unlike the more austere, formal and traditional Attic style, Asiatic oratory was more bombastic, emotional, and coloured with wordplay. [2]
The Asiatic style was distinguished by the use of a prose rhythm, especially the end of clauses (clausulae). [4] This worked in much the same way as in Latin poetry, although poetic metres themselves were avoided. An effective rhythm could bring an audience to applaud the rhythm alone, [5] however Cicero criticised Asiatic orators for their overly repetitive endings. [4]
The first known use of the term is in Rome, by Cicero in the mid-first century BC. It came into general and pejorative use for a florid style contrasting with the formal, traditional rhetoric of Atticism, which it was said to have corrupted. The term reflects an association with writers in the Greek cities of Asia Minor. "Asianism had a significant impact on Roman rhetoric, since many of the Greek teachers of rhetoric who came to Rome beginning with the 2d cent. B.C.E. were Asiatic Greeks." [6] "Mildly Asianic tendencies" have been found in Gaius Gracchus' oratory, and "more marked" ones in Publius Sulpicius Rufus. [7] However we have almost no remnants of oratory that can properly be called Asiatic. [2]
Cicero (Orator ad Brutum 325) identifies two distinct modes of the Asiatic style: a more studied and symmetrical style (generally taken to mean "full of Gorgianic figures" [8] ) employed by the historian Timaeus and the orators Menecles and Hierocles of Alabanda, and the rapid flow and ornate diction of Aeschines of Miletus and Aeschylus of Cnidus. Hegesias' "jerky, short clauses" may be placed in the first class, and Antiochus I of Commagene's Mount Nemrut inscription in the second. [9] The conflation of the two styles under a single name has been taken to reflect the essentially polemical significance of the term: "The key similarity is that they are both extreme and therefore bad; otherwise they could not be more different." [8] According to Cicero, Quintus Hortensius combined these traditions and made them at home in Latin oratory.
Cicero himself, rejecting the extreme plainness and purism of the Atticists, was attacked by critics such as Licinius Macer Calvus for being on the side of the Asiani; in response he declared his position as the "Roman Demosthenes" (noting that the preeminent Attic orator would not have qualified as Attic by the strict standards of the oratores Attici of first-century Rome). [10] In this sense, although Cicero identified with an Attic orator, he never went so far as to completely criticise Asiatic oratory, [11] and professed a mixed or middle style (genus medium; Quintilian 12.10.18: genus Rhodium...velut medium...atque ex utroque mixtum) between the low or plain Attic style and the high Asiatic style, called the Rhodian style by association with Molo of Rhodes and Apollonius the Effeminate (Rhodii, Cicero, Brutus xiii 51).
In the Neronian period, the surviving portion of Petronius' Satyricon begins midway through a rant in which the unreliable narrator, Encolpius, denounces the corruption of Roman literary taste and the Asiatic style in particular: "that flatulent, inflated magniloquence later imported from Asia to Athens has infected every aspiring writer like a pestilential breeze" (trans. Branham and Kinney). Quintilian accepted Cicero's attitude towards Asianism and Atticism, [12] and adapted the earlier debate's polemical language, in which objectionable style is called effeminate, in his own De causis corruptae eloquentiae. [13]
In his Institutio Oratoria (XII.10), Quintilian diagnoses the roots of the two styles in terms of ethnic dispositions: "The Attici, refined and discriminating, tolerated nothing empty or gushing; but the Asiatic race somehow more swollen and boastful was inflated with a more vainglory of speaking" (trans. Amy Richlin). [14] Pliny the Younger continued to profess the mixed style. The debate remained topical for Tacitus (as seen in Pliny's correspondence with him on oratorical styles in Letter 1.20 Archived 2011-06-15 at the Wayback Machine ) and contributes to the atmosphere of his Dialogus de oratoribus .
Ultimately, there seems to have been a general preponderance or victory of the Asiatic over the Attic style in the imperial period. [2] [15]
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Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of formal Latin literature dates to 240 BC, when the first stage play in Latin was performed in Rome. Latin literature flourished for the next six centuries. The classical era of Latin literature can be roughly divided into several periods: Early Latin literature, The Golden Age, The Imperial Period and Late Antiquity.
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman educator and rhetorician born in Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing. In English translation, he is usually referred to as Quintilian, although the alternate spellings of Quintillian and Quinctilian are occasionally seen, the latter in older texts.
Hegesias of Magnesia, Greek rhetorician, and historian, flourished about 300 BC. Strabo, speaks of him as the founder of the florid Asiatic style of composition.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Elder, also known as Seneca the Rhetorician, was a Roman writer, born of a wealthy equestrian family of Corduba, Hispania. He wrote a collection of reminiscences about the Roman schools of rhetoric, six books of which are extant in a more or less complete state and five others in epitome only. His principal work, a history of Roman affairs from the beginning of the Civil Wars until the last years of his life, is almost entirely lost to posterity. Seneca lived through the reigns of three significant emperors; Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula. He was the father of Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, best known as a Proconsul of Achaia; his second son was the dramatist and Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (Lucius), who was tutor of Nero, and his third son, Marcus Annaeus Mela, became the father of the poet Lucan.
The ten Attic orators were considered the greatest Greek orators and logographers of the classical era. They are included in the "Canon of Ten", which probably originated in Alexandria. A.E. Douglas has argued, however, that it was not until the second century AD that the canon took on the form that is recognised today.
The Second Sophistic is a literary-historical term referring to the Greek writers who flourished from the reign of Nero until c. 230 AD and who were catalogued and celebrated by Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists. However, some recent research has indicated that this Second Sophistic, which was previously thought to have very suddenly and abruptly appeared in the late 1st century, actually had its roots in the early 1st century. It was followed in the 5th century by the philosophy of Byzantine rhetoric, sometimes referred to as the Third Sophistic.
Aelius Theon was an Alexandrian sophist and author of a collection of preliminary exercises (progymnasmata) for the training of orators. He probably lived and wrote in the mid to late 1st century AD and his treatise is the earliest treatment of these exercises.
Aufidius Bassus was a renowned Roman historian and orator who lived in the reign of Augustus and Tiberius.
Publius Pomponius Secundus was a distinguished statesman and poet in the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius. He was suffect consul for the nundinium of January to June 44, succeeding the ordinary consul Gaius Sallustius Crispus Passienus and as the colleague of the other ordinary consul, Titus Statilius Taurus. Publius was on intimate terms with the elder Pliny, who wrote a biography of him, now lost.
Hermagoras of Temnos was an Ancient Greek rhetorician of the Rhodian school and teacher of rhetoric in Rome, where the Suda states he died at an advanced age.
Dispositio is the system used for the organization of arguments in the context of Western classical rhetoric. The word is Latin, and can be translated as "organization" or "arrangement".
Cicero's Brutus is a history of Roman oratory. It is written in the form of a dialogue, in which Marcus Junius Brutus and Titus Pomponius Atticus ask Cicero to describe the qualities of all the leading Roman orators up to their time. Cicero then attempts to propose a reconstruction of Roman history. Although it is written in the form of a dialogue, the majority of the talking is done by Cicero with occasional intervention by Brutus and Atticus. The work was probably composed in 46 BC, with the purpose of defending Cicero's own oratory. He begins with an introductory section on Greek oratory of the Attic, Asiatic, and Rhodian schools, before discussing Roman orators, beginning with Lucius Junius Brutus, "The Liberator", though becoming more specific from the time of Marcus Cornelius Cethegus.
The Dialogus de oratoribus is a short work attributed to Tacitus, in dialogue form, on the art of rhetoric. Its date of composition is unknown, though its dedication to Lucius Fabius Justus places its publication around 102 AD.
Institutio Oratoria is a twelve-volume textbook on the theory and practice of rhetoric by Roman rhetorician Quintilian. It was published around year 95 AD. The work deals also with the foundational education and development of the orator himself.
Titus Cassius Severus was an ancient Roman rhetor from the gens Cassia. He was active during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. Cassius Severus, a fearless fighter for freedom of speech, was sharply eloquent against the new governmental order, which finally saw him exiled and his works banned after his death.
De Optimo Genere Oratorum, "On the Best Kind of Orators", is a work from Marcus Tullius Cicero written in 46 BCE between two of his other works, Brutus and the Orator ad M. Brutum. Cicero attempts to explain why his view of oratorical style reflects true Atticism and is better than that of the Roman Atticists "who would confine the orator to the simplicity and artlessness of the early Attic orators."
A Dialogue Concerning Oratorical Partitions is a rhetorical treatise, written by Cicero. According to the method of the Middle Academy, the treatise is sometimes described as a "catechism of rhetoric," for it is presented in the form of questions and answers. Cicero wrote it as a handbook for his young son, Marcus, and structured the text as a dialogue between the two of them.
Orator was written by Marcus Tullius Cicero in the latter part of the year 46 BC. It is his last work on rhetoric, three years before his death. Describing rhetoric, Cicero addresses previous comments on the five canons of rhetoric: Inventio, Dispositio, Elocutio, Memoria, and Pronuntiatio. In this text, Cicero attempts to describe the perfect orator, in response to Marcus Junius Brutus’ request. Orator is the continuation of a debate between Brutus and Cicero, which originated in his text Brutus, written earlier in the same year.
In Roman rhetoric, a clausula was a rhythmic figure used to add finality to the end of a sentence or phrase. There was a large range of popular clausulae. One of the most common rhythms was cretic + trochee, for example vīta trānscurrit or illa tempestās, and variations of this, such as the well-known Ciceronian esse videātur.
Julius Secundus was a Roman orator and a friend of Quintilian. He is one of the speakers in Tacitus's short dialogue, Dialogus de Oratoribus. In his Institutio Oratoria, Quintilian praises Secundus for the elegance of his oratory as well as the "lucidity, smoothness and beauty" of his speech. Though he died an untimely death, Quintilian states that he still holds a high place, and would "undoubtedly have attained a great and enduring reputation" as an orator had he lived longer.
