Clarke - 1953;1996;

THE AGE of Rhetoric, wrote Thomas de Quincey over a century ago, like that of chivalry, has passed amongst forgotten things. In a sense he was wrong. The art of persuasion is always with us, though it assumes new forms and is called by new names, such as advertising and propaganda. The spoken word is still a power, especially since broadcasting made us once more a listening rather than a reading people. But rhetoric as the ancients knew it, the systematic study of the art of argument and expression, has certainly passed away. The last substantial treatise on the subject published in this country, that of Archbishop Whately, appeared in 1828. Today we have only breezy little handbooks on after-dinner speakingworks which would have made Quintilian stare and gasp. In France rhetoric was banished from the secondary school curriculum in 1885. Only in America, with her professors of Rhetoric and University Departments of Speech, does something of the old tradition survive.

Yet anyone who studies the civilisation of Rome cannot fail to come up against rhetoric. The schoolboy reads speeches of Cicero in the Latin class while he reads plays or novels in the French class. The more advanced student comes upon the massive works of Cicero and Quintilian devoted to rhetoric, and discovers how large a part the subject played in Roman education. He observes too, perhaps with distaste, how the rhetorical manner spreads from oratory to other forms of literature. Some understanding of rhetoric is necessary for anyone who wishes to understand ancient Rome. To assist such an understanding this book has been written. In it I have tried to show what rhetoric meant to the Roman world from its first introduction to the end of classical civilisation. I have not gone deeply into the technicalities of ancient rhetorical theory, knowing how few there are who can summon up any interest in them and remembering the scorn which one of the earliest Latin writers on rhetoric expressed for those who ne parum multa scisseviderentur, ea conquisierunt quae nihil attinebant ut ars difficiliorcognitu putaretur.

I should like to acknowledge a particular debt to two works, Krolls authoritative survey in Pauly-Wissowas Realencyclopdie, Supplementband VII (cited in the notes as Kroll, Rhetorik) and Aubrey Gwynns Roman Education from Cicero to Quintilian, which first aroused my interest in the subject. I am grateful to Dr. J.F.Lockwood, Master of Birkbeck College, London, for lending me an offprint of Krolls article when the volume in which it has since appeared was not yet available in this country, and for reading and criticising my work in typescript. I have also profited by the criticisms of my colleague Dr. R.A.Browne. Finally I must thank the Board of the University of Wales Press for their generosity in making a grant towards the cost of publication.

1953

I HAVE taken the opportunity of a new impression to alter a few passages where the original text seemed to me to be misleading and to add to the notes some references to recent work on the subject.

M.L.C.

1965