Asianism versus Atticism.
As early as 90 B.C., then, the Greek conception of oratory was established at Rome. Roman oratory was to be, in some way, artistic. The question remained, Was this way to be the ‘Asiatic’ or the ‘Attic’?
Hortensius and Asianism
About 95 B.C. Hortensius began to be the Latin representative of Asianism. It was his
distinction that he combined its two manners, sententious point and florid declamation. His vivacity was probably his best quality: it is characteristic of the man that he studied all aids to theatrical effect, and also that, when he had reached the consulship, his oratorical ambitions were fulfilled.
Cicero the eclectic
Cicero now comes forward as the representative of the Rhodian eclecticism. His success, though not exactly a victory for the Attic school, was, at least, a sure sign that the Atticists would finally prevail. Cicero, like his Rhodian masters, is by no means emancipated from Asianism; and, in a comparison with Demosthenes, his faults of form are made more conspicuous by the usual absence of great thoughts and of really noble feeling. The force of the recent and surely extravagant reaction against Cicero comes from the habit of regarding him as the great Roman orator, not as the great Roman master of literary rhetorical prose. His proper Greek analogue is not Demosthenes but Isokrates. As a practical orator, Cicero can scarcely be placed in the second rank by those who know the Attic models. As a stylist in the epideictic kind, though he has not consummate art, he joins versatile strength to brilliancy and abundance in a degree which has never been equalled.
Calvus and Messalla Corvinus: pure Atticism
The pure Atticism of Rome may be dated from about 60 B.C. Its best representative was the poet and forensic orator, Gaius Licinius Calvus (82—48 B.C.), who imitated Lysias in a field of work as limited as the Greek writer's own, but who, like Lysias, was not untouched by a generous sympathy
with the great political interests of his day. Next to Calvus probably came Messalla Corvinus, who
translated the defence of Phryne by Hypereides, and who is said to have been not unsuccessful in reproducing something of the master's eloquence. Atticism was the return, not to a school, but to a phase of the Greek mind: and, as the men who represented this phase were most various, it was inevitable that the revival should have factions. One sect of the earlier Roman Atticists worshipped
The sects of Roman Atticism; |
Xenophon; another, Thucydides; another, Lysias and Hypereides. To adopt Xenophon as an
oratorical standard was a mere mistake: in style, he is an unpractical Andokides: and for the advocate, at least, no model could be less suitable
1.
Thucydides, again, is at once transitional and unique: to imitate him in another language was therefore a twofold error. The Lysians and Hypereideans
Lysians and Hypereideans. |
could have shown far better reason for their choice, if only the distinctive excellence of Lysias and Hypereides, their
χάρις or grace, had not been the very thing which no Greek had succeeded in reproducing, and which manifestly could not be translated into an idiom which was not its own. At last Dionysios came forward to maintain that
the excellences of Thucydides, of Isokrates, of Lysias, and if these, then the excellences of Xenophon and Hypereides too, meet in Demosthenes.
