IN the second book the subject of inquiry was the nature and the end of rhetoric, and I proved to the best of my ability that it was an art, that it was useful, that it was a virtue and that its material was all and every subject that might come up for treatment. I shall now discuss its origin, its component parts, and the method to be adopted in handling and forming our conception of each. For most authors of text-books have stopped short of this, indeed Apollodorus confines himself solely to forensic oratory.

I know that those who asked me to write this work were specially interested in that portion on which I am now entering, and which, owing to the necessity of examining a great diversity of opinions, at once forms by far the most difficult section of this work, and also, I fear, may be the least attractive to my readers, since it necessitates a dry exposition of rules.

In other portions of this work I have attempted to introduce a certain amount of ornateness, not, I may say, to advertise my style (if I had wished to do that, I could have chosen a more fertile theme), but in order that I might thus do something to lure our young men to make themselves acquainted with those principles which I regarded as necessary to the study of rhetoric: for I hoped that by giving them something which was not unpleasant to read I might induce a greater readiness to learn those rules which I feared might, by the dryness and aridity which must necessarily characterise their exposition, revolt their minds and offend their ears which are nowadays grown somewhat over-sensitive.

Lucretilus has the same object in mind when he states that he has set forth his philosophical system in verse; for you will remember the well known simile which he uses iv. 11. See also i. 936. :— And as physicians when they seek to giveA draught of bitter wormwood to a child,First smear along the edge that rims the cupThe liquid sweets of honey, golden-hued, and the rest.

But I fear that this book will have too little honey and too much wormwood, and that though the student may find it a healthy draught, it will be far from agreeable. I am also haunted by the further fear that it will be all the less attractive from the fact that most of the precepts which it contains are not original, but derived from others, and because it is likely to rouse the opposition of certain persons who do not share my views. For there are a large number of writers, who though they are all moving toward the same goal, have constructed different roads to it and each drawn their followers into their own.

The latter, however, approve of the path on which they have been launched whatever its nature, and it is difficult to change the convictions implantted in boyhood, for the excellent reason that everybody prefers to have learned rather than to be in process of learning.

But, as will appear in the course of this book, there is an infinite diversity of opinions among writers on [his subject, since some have added their own discoveries to those portions of the art which were still shapeless and unformed, and subsequently have altered even what was perfectly sound in order to establish a claim to originality.

The first writer after those recorded by the poets who is said to have taken any steps in the direction of rhetoric is Empedocles. But the earliest writers of text-books are the Sicilians, Corax and Tisias, who were followed by another from the same island, namely Gorgias of Leontini, whom tradition asserts to have been the pupil of Empedocles.

He, thanks to his length of days, for he lived to a hundred and nine, flourished as the contemporary of many rhetoricians, was consequently the rival of those whom I have just mentioned, and lived on to survive Socrates.

In the same period flourished Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, Prodicus of Ceos, Protagoras of Abdera, for whose instructions, which he afterwards published in a text-book, Euathlus is said to have paid 10,000 About £312. denarii, Hippias of Elis and Alcidamas of Elaea whom Plato Phaedr. 261 D. calls Palamedes.

There was Antiphon also, who was the first to write speeches and who also wrote a text-book and is said to have spoken most eloquently in his own defence; Polycrates, who, as have already said, wrote a speech against Socrates, and Theodorus of Byzantium, who was one of those called word-artificers by Plato. Phaedr. 266 E.

Of these Protagoras and Gorgias are said to have been the first to treat commonplaces, Prodicus, Hippias, Protagoras and Thrasymachus the first to handle emotional themes. Cicero in the Brutus vii. 27. states that nothing in the ornate rhetorical style was ever committed to writing before Pericles, and that certain of his speeches are still extant. For my part I have been unable to discover anything in the least worthy of his great reputation for eloquence, cp. XII, ii. 22: x. 49, where Quintilian asserts that all the writings of Pericles have been lost. and am consequently the less surprised that there should be some who hold that he never committed anything to writing, and that the writings circulating under his name are the works of others.

These rhetoricias had many successors, but the most famous of (Gorgias' pupils was Isocrates, although our authorities are not agreed as to who was his teacher: I however accept the statement of Aristotle on the subject.

From this point the roads begin to part. The pupils of Isocrates were eminent in every branch of study, and when he was already advanced in years (and he lived to the age of ninety-eight), Aristotle began to teach the art of rhetoric in his afternoon lectures, Aristotle gave his esoteric lectures in the morning, reserving the afternoon for those of more general interest: see Aul. Gell. xx. v. in which he frequently quoted the wel-known line from the Philoctetes Probably the Philoctetes of Euripides. The original line was αἰσχρὸν σιωπᾶν, βαρβάρους δ᾽ ἐᾶν λέγειν, which Aristotle travestied by substituting Ἰσοκράτην for βαρβάρους. in the form Isocrates still speaks. 'Twere shame should I Sit silent. Both Aristotle and Isocrates left text-books on rhetoric, but that by Aristotle is the larger and contains more books. Theodectes, whose work I mentioned above,

also lived about the same period: while Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, produced some careful work on rhetoric. After him we may note that the philosophers, more especially the leaders of the Stoic and Peripatetic schools, surpassed even the rhetoricians in the zeal which they devoted to the subject.

Hermagoras next carved out a path of his own, which numbers have followed: of his rivals Athenaeus seems to have approached him most nearly. Later still much work was done by Apollonius Molon, Areus, Caecilius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.