03/07/2024
BOOK II
ON RHETORIC
INTRODUCTION
[105] RHETORIC held a position in the ancient world that the modern reader has
difficulty in understanding. Democratic government, including the popular
administration of justice, at a time when all discussion was necessarily oral, created an
ideal condition in Athens and the other Greek states for the development of oratory. In
the life of the Roman republic, too, there was enough of the popular element to make
public speaking of the greatest importance. The art of rhetoric was therefore in close
touch with the real interests of life. It was not merely a school discipline, but a
preparation for a definite activity that held a high place in the esteem of the people, and
it embodied a set of sensible ideas on public speaking in which the tendency to overelaboration and artificiality characteristic of scholastic disciplines was kept in check by
the wholesome influences that came from practical application.
With the establishment of the Roman Empire public discussion of political matters
quickly disappeared, and forensic oratory for the sane reason ten-led to decline. Thus
the chief element which had given vitality to ancient rhetoric was eliminated. Roman
oratory, however, died hard. It nursed itself on various pretences and shows. Much of
the old interest in oratory turned back on rhetoric, which was thus exposed to a double
danger, as an educational discipline that had lost connection with practical life [106] and
as a subject that had become too fashionable. When once the new influence had gained
headway a strong tendency to artificiality was revealed. Rhetoric became scholastic and
ridiculously overburdened with classification and terminology; it grew more lifeless as
it grew more systematic. Interest then gradually subsided. Treatises grew shorter and
drier, and consisted largely of long lists of terms defined without critical understanding
of their meaning. The subject now held its place by the mere force of authority.
This was the state of rhetoric in Isidore’s time,
