Tisias and Corax and the Invention of Rhetoric

1940 ◽  
Vol 34 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 61-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. G. Hinks

A Lasting tradition among the ancients marked Sicily as the birthplace and Tisias and Corax as inventors of the art of rhetoric: and in this tradition, legendary though it became, there is a stricter truth than in most of the stories related about the foundation of invented arts. We, with more elaborate historical views, shall still say of rhetoric that it was created at a certain epoch; and can still point to the Sicilians Tisias and Corax as its authors. Oratory, to be sure, has existed almost as long as speech. Its beginnings are prehistoric, and must in any case be imperceptible; and if by rhetorician we meant no more than one who uses speech with more than common effect, we might set the origin of rhetoric as far back as we chose, and could hardly bring it lower than the beginning of recorded literature. Indeed we are told that under the Antonine Emperors the eminent scholar Telephus of Pergamum wrote a book on Rhetoric in Homer, in which he illustrated from the Poet the whole contemporary system of the art down to the thirteen constitutions of Minucian; and in the same spirit the Venerable Bede, resenting the claim of the Greeks to have invented tropes and figures of speech, wrote a short work to show that they could all be found in Holy Scripture. But such inquiries, even when conducted less foolishly than by Telephus and less incompetently than by Bede, are irrelevant to the proper history of rhetoric. Let the practice of oratory have begun when it may, the first attempts known to us in Classical Antiquity to formulate a series of principles for the art of speech were made in the fifth century before Christ. These earliest systems were naturally very imperfect: they could not immediately be either comprehensive or well organized. But they were something that had not existed at all before: methodical principles for speaking. At the moment when these were first set out the art of rhetoric began.

1975 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 62-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas M. MacDowell

It is now twenty years since A. R. W. Harrison remarked in this Journal ‘For students of Athenian private and public law it is a painful, but undeniable fact that there is still grave uncertainty as to the precise methods by which statutes, one of the most important sources of law, were made at the most formative period of the history of the system from the middle of the fifth century B.C. onwards.’ His own article is entitled ‘Law-making at Athens at the end of the fifth century B.C.’ and is concerned primarily with establishing that an important change was made in or soon after the year 403/2. That was the date at which a new procedure for making laws (nomoi) was introduced, which Harrison calls ‘the fourth-century procedure of nomothesia’, involving officials called νομοθέται. Before then there was no procedural difference between making a nomos and making a psephisma. References to nomothetai in texts before 403 are irrelevant. In 403 the decree of Teisamenos laid down a procedure for review and amendment of laws, involving two distinct bodies of nomothetai; but that was a procedure for one particular occasion. The regular procedure was instituted shortly afterwards, and was to some extent modelled on the procedure of the Teisamenos decree.


1972 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 219-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. J. Brown ◽  
C. D. Verey

It is a century and a half since the Book of Kells began to be revered as the supreme work of Irish calligraphy and art in the Early Christian period, and a quarter of a century since Monsieur François Masai challenged that traditional opinion, arguing that the Book was in fact made in Northumbria, apparently at Lindisfarne, or at least in some centre influenced both by Lindisfarne and Wearmouth–Jarrow – a definition which, he thought, could well apply to Iona. Masai's Essai sur les Origines de la Miniature dite irlandaise, completed in Brussels in 1944, makes no pretence to be based on research at first hand; it was written as a critique of traditional beliefs about the origins of Hiberno-Saxon illumination, with particular reference to works by Mlle Françoise Henry and Mrs Geneviève Marsh-Micheli. As such, it strikes me as a brilliant success, although some of its conclusions are false and some are not as well founded as they could have been, if Masai had revised his war-time text on the basis of a post-war examination of the manuscripts themselves. It was as a follower of Masai – his was the first book I read on Hiberno-Saxon art – that I persuaded Dr E. A. Lowe to consider, shortly before his death in August 1969, the attribution of the Book of Kells which will appear in the second edition of Codices Latini Antiquiores, part 11; and since Dr Lowe cited me as ‘an expert in this field’, I am under an obligation to publish the arguments that I advanced in 1968 and 1969, partly in letters and partly through reports which he received from his successive assistants Dr Braxton Ross and Dr Virginia Brown. The core of what I have to say is a reconsideration of a group of manuscripts, described in CLA, in the history of which Wearmouth–Jarrow had an important part to play. Lowe's devotion to the Venerable Bede and to the manuscripts produced at Wearmouth–Jarrow is well known, and I should like my lecture to count as a tribute not only to Bede's memory but to the memory of the palaeographer whose work has thrown such a bright light on the intellectual history of Bede's monastery.


1978 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 203-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. N. Černych

As a result of surveys carried out by the Bulgarian-Soviet archaeological expedition, Eneolithic copper mines were discovered in southern Bulgaria in October 1971. The most interesting of these mines, Aibunar, constitutes, without doubt, one of the rarest discoveries in the history of mining not only of Europe, but also of other parts of the Old World. In the same year, Jovanović published news of finds, unique for the Balkan peninsula, of characteristic Vinač pottery found together with a zoomorphic figurine at the Rudna Glava mine in north-eastern Serbia. On the basis of these finds, he suggested an Eneolithic date for the mine. However, the remains of ancient shafts at Rudna Glava were very small, and extensive and historically well-documented mining activities of the Classical Antiquity and the Medieval period made the dating of the extant areas of ancient mining very problematic.In contrast to this, from the moment of its discovery, the large amounts of Eneolithic pottery of Karanovo VI—Gumelnitsa type and antler tools, which were found in the mine at Aibunar, and in particular the well-dated shafts were startling. Interest in Aibunar was further increased by the discovery of seven settlement sites in an area of 15 km around the mine, with Eneolithic layers containing more than 100 pieces of oxidic copper ore. Spectral analysis showed that these pieces of ore came from Aibunar.


1988 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. Snyman

The long history of research on Paul's style has neglected to a large extent the question of the functions of the various stylistic techniques used in his letters. This statement, however, needs some clarification. By ‘style’ here is not meant the traditional figures of speech and figures of thought, but all the linguistic choices an author has made in the light of restrictions imposed on him by the rhetorical situation. These choices include such things as vocabulary, grammatical forms, sentence patterns, sentence length, coherence devices, rhetorical figures, paragraphing, etc. ‘Function’ again does not refer to the familiar efforts of linking these linguistic choices with Greek and Roman textbooks on rhetoric and style; nor does it refer to the general remarks in grammars and other works on the Greek NT, when they speak of the emotional or emphatic or forceful function of certain stylistic figures. By ‘function’ here is meant what Kennedy calls ‘function in context’.


2019 ◽  
Vol 90 (4) ◽  
pp. 342-356
Author(s):  
Aaron D. Matherly

Writing from his monastery in the seventh and eighth centuries, the Venerable Bede (ca. 672–735) was one of the foremost scholars of his era. Primarily known for his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede’s vast corpus also included theological works, sermons, and biblical commentaries. Although most scholarly attention focuses on his historiography, this article explores Bede’s views on the notorious fifth-century monk, Pelagius. After surveying the works of both authors and commenting on the spread of Pelagianism in Britain, the article concludes that Bede saw Pelagianism as a persistent threat to orthodoxy, some three hundred years removed from the Pelagian controversies in the fifth century.


Author(s):  
Е. Уханова ◽  
М. Жижин ◽  
А. Андреев ◽  
А. Пойда ◽  
В. Ильин

The collections of the State Historical Museum keep a single offering copy of the first-printed Apostle 1564 by Ivan Fedorov with the image of the tsar Ivan the Terrible. This portrait was made in the embossing technique on the cover of the binding and is now almost completely extinct. This extinguished image was investigated using multispectral macro photography and subsequent computer processing. It has allowed visualizing the tsar portrait. This image is the only lifetime portrait of the most famous ruler of Russia, which survived to our time. Embossing specifics on the cover of the binding suggests the use of engraving on metal for the manufacture of this image. This is one of the first example of this technique in Russia. The features of the portrait and the embossing of both covers of the binding corresponded to the Western European standards for the design of an elite book, which came to Russia along with typography. The portrait of the king on the chest of a heraldic eagle accompanied by his titles served as a representation of the royal status of Ivan IV, that had been recognized by the Oriental patriarchs for three years before. A review of the existing portraits of Ivan the Terrible led to the conclusion that the resulting image was the only lifetime portrait of the king, which has close correspondences with the reconstruction of his face on the skull, made by M. M. Gerasimov. The history of the existence of a royal copy of Apostol of 1564 from the moment of its creation to the present day is reconstructed in the article.


Classics ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Feddern

Though Seneca the Elder (c. 50 bce–c. 40 ce) is a person almost unknown to us, his extant work, the Oratorum et rhetorum sententiae divisiones colores (excerpts of the two kinds of declamation, controversiae and suasoriae), is exceedingly rich in information about the early imperial declamation and about the literary culture of that period in general. While his historiographical work, the Historiae, has not survived (apart from a few fragments), his declamation excerpts document not only the declamation as such; they also offer us an insight into the whole process of declamation and the declamation schools. This insight is highly important for the history of declamation because it is the first one we possess, despite the fact that declamation itself is a phenomenon that originated in Greece and has a centuries-long tradition. It is important also for the history of rhetoric and for Roman education and culture in general because declamation formed an integral part of the curriculum of higher education. In its original state, Seneca the Elder’s declamatory work consisted of ten books of excerpts from controversiae (fictitious court cases), and there may have been perhaps at least a second book of excerpts from suasoriae (fictitious speeches of advice to historical or mythical personages). It is not known whether each book was introduced by a preface addressed to his sons, but it is likely that more prefaces existed than we have today. Unfortunately, only parts of the original work survive. In the process of transmission, probably in Late Antiquity, excerpts were drafted of Seneca the Elder’s declamatory work. These excerpts are shortened versions of the excerpts from the controversiae (not from the suasoriae), and they contain some prefaces that otherwise would have been lost. What we possess today is the sum of both of the traditions: the controversiae books 1, 2, 7, 9, and 10 and one book of suasoriae in the form that Seneca the Elder gave to them (the mentioned books of controversiae additionally exist in the form of the excerpts made in Late Antiquity). The controversiae books 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 have survived only in the shortened form that they received in Late Antiquity. Finally, we possess the prefaces to books 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, and 10 of the controversiae.


1916 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Leaf
Keyword(s):  

A year ago I had the honour of speaking to you on the need of a History of Greek Commerce, and of proposing to you a way in which this Society might make an important contribution to that history, in the shape of a commentary on the three books of Strabo which deal with Asia Minor. That proposal, I am happy to think, has been warmly taken up by the Council; a Strabo Committee has been appointed, and has settled the main outlines of the work, which will consist of a Greek text, a translation, and a commentary laid out on broad lines. Large portions of the work have been assigned to the men who are best fitted to deal with them, and even under the shadow of the great preoccupation some progress has actually been made in putting on paper materials already in hand. The war must of necessity delay the completion of the task; in some cases it will be desirable that contributors should make special journeys to their districts, and Asia Minor is at the moment a sealed land to us. But there is much which can be dealt with already, and we can make progress not merely with spade-work, but with actual construction.


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