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24
CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE
The first century of the Christian era has often been termed the' age of rhetoric'.
Such a designation, which has been used polemically, can be misleading. Nearly
all human communication involves 'rhetoric' to some degree: for it is nothing
other than the art of effective speaking and writing. It is only in relatively
recent times that the hypothesis that such a skill can be schematized and taught
has passed out of fashion. Among the Greeks and Romans it was the pivot of
a whole educational system; they would have found it hard to understand a
critical terminology that equates the rhetorical with the artificial and insincere.
Just as they recognized medicine or astronomy as sciences (artes) with their
own rules and expertise, so the ancients believed that a man could acquire
specific techniques to aid him in public speaking and in literary composition.
The techniques alone might not suffice, but they were nonetheless indispensable
as prerequisites. A young Roman received the rudiments of his education from
a litterator; thereafter he studied literature under a grammaticus; a rhetor finally
instructed him in the practice of oratory itself. Disertus, eloquens, facundus: the
epithets express the aim and object of the whole process. An educated Roman
was expected to possess the power of speaking impressively and convincingly
in the senate, in the courts and elsewhere. The technicalities of the law could
be left to the jurisconsults: but eloquence was universally desirable. There was
nothing new in such an outlook. Nor was it any more revolutionary for the
precepts and principles of the schools to be adapted to creative writing. Poetry
and prose in the Republic and during the Augustan principate were deeply
affected by rhetoric. Yet there is a real and obvious disparity between the style
of Virgil and Lucan, Cicero and Seneca, Livy and Tacitus. To attribute the
change — frequently in tones of regret — solely or largely to the rise of a malign
'rhetoric' is fallacious. Other considerations too have to be given due weight.
The establishment of Augustus' restored Republic, however much a sham
it has appeared to later historians, gave birth to a truly classical or ' golden' age
of Roman letters. With hopes of the emergence of a peaceful and stable society
after long years of civil turmoil arose also a miraculous flowering of literature.
The pre-eminence of the early Augustan writers was quickly acknowledged.
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