58

highest ideal of composition was a style "in harmony with na ture," that "to speak well was to speak the truth," that the supreme function of an orator was to teach, and not to deligh: his hearers, and not to play upon their emotions?

Seneca has much to say about living "secundum naturam", but in only one place does he make this phrase a standard for the judgment of style. In defending the composition of Fabianus against the strictures of Lucilius, he says that the words of Fabianus are "nec huius seculi more contra naturam posita. "23

There is almost unlimited evidence that in theory Seneca placed thought above words, content above form, truth above style. In reading some of the passages that I shall cite, one is strongly reminded of Zeno's comparison of the Alexandrine

and Attic coins.

Ep. 75, 6: Circa verba occupatus es, iamdudum gaude, si sufficis rebus.

Ep. 115, 1 and 2: Nimis anxium esse te circa verba et compositionem, mi Lucili, nolo, habeo maiora quae cures; quaere quid scribas, non quemadmodum. . . . Cuiuscumque orationem videris sollicitam et politam, scito animum quoque non minus esse pusillis occupatum: magnus ille remissius loquitur et securius. Quaecumque dicit, plus habent fiduciae

quam curae.

De Tranq. 1, 13: In studiis puto mehercules melius esse res ipsas intueri et harum causa loqui, ceterum verba rebus permittere, ut qua duxerint, hac inelaborata sequatur oratio.

His ideal stylist will seek not to delight but to improve his hearers.

Ep. 75, 5: Non delectent verba nostra, sed prosint.

Ep. 100, 2: Mores ille (Fabianus) non verba composuit, et animis scripsit ista non auribus.

Ep. 108, 6: Seneca has attended the school of Attalus the Stoic where quidam veniunt ut audiant non ut discant aurium perfruantur . . . non ut res excipiantur, sed ut verba. There . . ut oblectamento seems to have been a certain charm about the style of Attalus, even if that was not the main thing.

Ep. 108, 7: At the lectures of Attalus rapit ille pulchritudo, non verborum inanium sonitus.

Ep. 104, 22: Seneca bids Lucilius to live with donius who command their disciples not so much"

" Seneca Ep. 100, 4.

tionem audientium verba iactare, sed animum indurare et adversus minas erigere." And yet in Ep. 90, 20 Seneca shows that Posidonius did not always attain this ideal. "Incredibile est, mi Lucili, quam facile etiam magnos viros dulcedo orationis abducat a vero." The next sentence names Posidonius as one of the "magnos viros."

In a passage already cited it has appeared that Posidonius like Chrysippus was not always content merely "docere," that he sometimes aimed not only at "praceptio" but also at "suasio," "consolatio," "exhortatio," and that to this end he uses for vivid presentation the figure known as characterismos. Seneca approves of this.25 In the De Ira 2, 17, 1, he goes a step farther beyond the pale of Stoic doctrine, in saying that an orator, really free from emotion himself, by playing the actor and feigning emotion, may arouse in his audience "ira," "metus," "misericordia," ubique alieni animi ad nostrum arbitrium agendi sunt.

From the preceding quotations it is clear that Seneca professed to care more for content than for literary form, more for truth than for diction. But Seneca knew, as we all know, that truth is dependent upon precision of speech, that the Stoic πρέπον and κυριολογία have a legitimate place in any adequate presentation of the truth. Seneca's statement,26 multum tamen operae impendi verbis non oportet, needs to be expanded and qualified from other utterances of Seneca on the same subject. Concerning the style of Fabianus, whose "compositio" had been criticized, he says:27 Fabianus non erat neglegens in oratione, sed securus. itaque nihil invenies sordidum; electa verba sunt, non captata nec huius seculi more contra naturam suam posita et inversa, splendida tamen, quamvis sumantur e medio. In Ep. 89, 9 Seneca declares that the third division of philosophy (pars rationalis) "proprietates verborum exigit ... ne pro vero falsa subrepant. In Ep. 81, 9 he says: mira in quibusdam rebus verborum proprietas est. In all of his writings he frequently shows his interest in precision of speech by making

24 Ep. 95, 65.

25 Zeno uses this figure in his celebrated comparison, where he likens rhetoric to the hand with palm extended and dialectic to the clenched fist. Sext. Empir. Math. 2, 7; Cic. Fin. 2, 17; Orat. 32, 113; and Quint. Inst. Or. 2, 20. Pearson, 32.

26 Ep. 75, 6.

27 Ep. 100, 4.

nice distinctions between synonyms e.g. Ep. 102, 15 laus and laudatio, Ep. 102, 17 claritas and gloria, Ep. 110, 3 contingere and accidere, De Ira 1, 4, 1 ira and iracundia, timens and timidus, N. Q. 2, 12, 1 fulguratio and fulmen.

Concerning σaphveia and évápyeta Seneca has little to say, but there is hardly a page in his moral letters that does not illustrate his success in attaining these virtues. There is a similar silence concerning σvvTouía. Almost any page of his writings, however, might be used as an example of ovvτoμía. Concise is the first word that ought to be used in describing the paratactic style of Seneca. It would be easy to show again from Seneca's syllogisms how the syllogism results in σvvToμía.28

Seneca has little to say about λnviouós or Latinitas, and yet his final word in defending the diction of Fabianus is to say that it is "pura." Seneca allows himself to use the transliterated Greek word "etymologia" because the "grammatici, sermonis Latini custodes" use the word.29 He says that a grammaticus does not blush if he makes a solecism knowingly, but that he does blush if he makes one through ignorance.30 There is in this statement the implication that Seneca knew the one hundred different forms of solecism which Lucilius, the friend of Panaetius, enumerated and illustrated. In one other place, Seneca mentions solecism and barbarism.31

At first thought it may seem a more difficult matter to make the embellishment of Seneca's style harmonize with the Stoic conception of KaтασKEVÝ. But a careful study of the matter (anyone may find the materials assembled for such a study in Summer's excellent introduction to his Select Letters of Seneca) reveals the fact that Seneca not only censured "dulcedo orationis" but in practice did not seek it. He wrote, as he professed to write, not for the ears but for the minds of men. It was titillation of the intelligence rather than titillation of the auditory nerve that he sought. The Gorgian figures reappear in his writings as the inevitable by-products of the syllogistic style, and no one would think of confusing the parisosis and paronomasia of Seneca with that form of ornamen28 Ep. 82, 9; 83, 9; 83, 10; 85, 24; 107, 7.

29 Ep. 95, 65.

30 Ep 95, 9.

31 Ep. 113, 26.

tation as it appears in Isocrates. Such ornamentation is essential in the style of Isocrates, with Seneca it is incidental. His use of simile, metaphor, and personification is not more frequent than Homer's use of the same figures. Cicero states that Zeno was in the habit of rounding off his argument with a simile, and the four similes and three metaphors found in Zeno's fragments give us some reason to believe that Seneca may not have used these figures more often than the founder of his school.

We can hardly call Seneca an Atticist. His literary form is obviously more closely related to the Asianism of Hierocles of Alabanda, whose style Cicero characterizes as "genus sententiosum et argutum. One cannot help wondering whether Stoicism on its way from Pergamum to Tarsus made converts at Alabanda.

THE PLAIN STYLE IN THE SCIPIONIC CIRCLE

GEORGE CONVERSE FISKE

My purpose in this paper is to show, (1) that the satires of Lucilius and of Horace were written in essential harmony with those rhetorical theories of the plain style which were first popularized at Rome in the Scipionic circle in the period between 155 and 129 B.C. by the two Stoic philosophers, Diogenes of Babylon and Panaetius; (2) that this Stoic rhetoric, domiciled in the Scipionic circle, had evolved a body of principles governing the subject matter, tone, diction, and humor, of the sermo or conversation, whether oral or written, as we may see by studying the aesthetic theories of Panaetius which are reproduced for us in the first book of Cicero's de officiis; (3) that the fundamental stylistic differences which distinguish the satires of Horace from those of Lucilius are largely due to the fact that Horace was in general accord with a later and more refined definition of the diction and humor appropriate to the sermo or discourse in the plain style of conversation; that this later definition was probably developed by the rhetorical works of the Roman Atticists and Cicero; (4) finally, that Lucilius modified the stricter theories of his rhetorical masters under the influence of the popular impromptu dialogues of the Greek Cynics and Stoics, and in consequence laid himself open to the criticisms levelled against him by Horace in satires I: 4; I: 10; and II: 1.

To us moderns, born to the romantic belief in the imaginative autocry of the man of creative genius over his works, it is difficult to accept the truth that from the Hellenistic period on, and throughout the Roman world of letters, the study of rhetoric was a prerequisite for literary composition in every field. We are prone to resent such an assumption and to hold that it places fetters upon the human spirit. We must remember, however, that the art of rhetoric-and ancient rhetoric was an art, not a science-was itself the result of the sympathetic and critical study of the masterpieces of Greek prose and verse by the most discriminating Hellenic minds from Gorgias to Aristotle and the rhetoricians of the Academy and the Porch.