The Period from Alexander to Augustus.—Aristotle's method lived on in the Peripatetic school. Meanwhile the fashion of florid declamation or strained conceits prevailed in the rhetori cal schools of Asia, where, amid mixed populations, the pure tra ditions of the best Greek taste had been dissociated from the use of the Greek language. The "Asianism" of style which thus came to be contrasted with "Atticism" found imitators at Rome. Her magoras of Temnos in Aeolis (c. II° B.C.) did much to revive a higher conception. Using both the practical rhetoric of the time before Aristotle and Aristotle's philosophical rhetoric, he worked up the results of both in a new system—following the philosophers so far as to give the chief prominence to "invention." He thus became the founder of a rhetoric which may be distinguished as the scholastic. Through the influence of his school, Hermagoras did for Roman eloquence very much what Isocrates had done for Athens. Above all, he counteracted the view of "Asianism," that oratory is a mere knack founded on practice, and recalled atten tion to the study of it as an art.
Cicero's rhetorical works are to some extent based on the technical system to which he had been introduced by Molon at Rhodes. But Cicero further made an independent use of the best among the earlier Greek writers, and he could draw, at least in the later of his treatises, on a vast fund of reflection and experi ence. The result is certainly to suggest how much less he owed to his studies than to his genius. Some consciousness of this is per haps implied in the idea which pervades much of his writing on oratory, that the perfect orator is the perfect man. The same thought is present to Quintilian, in whose great work, De Insti tutione Oratoria, the scholastic rhetoric receives its most complete expression (c. A.D. 90). He treats oratory as the end to which the entire mental and moral development of the student is to be directed. Thus he devotes his first book to an early discipline which should precede the orator's first studies, and his last book to a discipline of the whole man which lies beyond them. After Quintilian, the next important name is that of Hermogenes of Tarsus, who under Marcus Aurelius made a complete digest of the scholastic rhetoric from the time of Hermagoras of Temnos (1Io B.c.) in five extant treatises, remarkable for clearness and acuteness. Hermogenes continued for nearly a century and a half to be one of the chief authorities in the schools. Longinus (q.v.) (c. A.D. 260) published an Art of Rhetoric which is still extant ; and the more celebrated treatise On Sublimity (rEpt 6tkovs), if not his work, is at least of the same period. In the later half of the 4th century Aphthonius (q.v.) composed the "exercises" (rpo-yvy vleatLara) which superseded the work of Hermogenes. At the re vival of letters the treatise of Aphthonius once more became a standard text-book. Much popularity was enjoyed also by the ex ercises of Aelius Theon (of uncertain date; see THEON). (See further the editions of the Rhetores Graeci by L. Spengel and by Ch. 'Walz.)
Rhetoric Under the Empire.—During the first four centuries of the empire the practice of the art was in greater vogue than ever before or since. First, there was a general dearth of the higher intellectual interests : politics gave no scope to energy; philosophy was stagnant, and literature, as a rule, either arid or frivolous. Then the Greek schools had poured their rhetoricians into Rome, where the same tastes which revelled in coarse luxury welcomed tawdry declamation. The law-courts of the Roman provinces further created a continual demand for forensic speak ing. The public teacher of rhetoric was called "sophist," which was now an academic title, similar to "professor" or "doctor." In the 4th century B.C. Isocrates had taken pride in the name of apOta-riis, which, indeed, had at no time wholly lost the good, or neutral, sense which originally belonged to it.
Vespasian (A.D. 70-79), according to Suetonius, was the first emperor who gave a public endowment to the teaching of rhetoric. Under Hadrian and the Antonines (A.D. 117-180) the public chairs of rhetoric became objects of the highest ambition. The Rhetorical school (Opovot) had two chairs, one for "sophistic," the other for "political" rhetoric. By "sophistic" was meant the academic teaching of rhetoric as an art, in distinction from its "political" application to the law-courts. The "sophistical" chair was superior to the "political" in dignity as in emolument, and its occupant was invested with a jurisdiction over the youth of Athens similar to that of the vice-chancellor in a modern univer sity. The Antonines further encouraged rhetoric by granting im munities to its teachers. Three "sophists" in each of the smaller towns, and five in the larger, were exempted from taxation (Dig. xxvii. I, 6, §2). The wealthier sophists affected much personal splendour. The aim of the sophist was to impress the multitude. His whole stock-in-trade was style, and this was directed to aston ishing by tours de force. The scholastic declamations were chiefly of two classes. (I) The suasoriae were usually on historical or legendary subjects, in which some course of action was com mended or censured (cf. Juv. Sat.). These suasoriae belonged to deliberative rhetoric (the 14vos, deliberativum genus). (2) The controversiae turned especially on legal issues, and represented the forensic rhetoric (oticavticov yivos iudiciale genus). But it was the general characteristic of this period that all subjects were treated alike in the style and spirit of that third branch which Aristotle distinguished, the rhetoric of brioectts or "display." This academic oratory is shown under various aspects, and presumably at its best, by such writers as Dio Chrysostom at the end of the ist century, Aelius Aristeides (see ARISTEIDES, AELIUS) in the 2nd (the chief rhetorician under the Antonines) Themistius, Himerius and Libanius in the 4th. Amid much which is tawdry or vapid, these writings occasionally present passages of true literary beauty, while they constantly offer matter of the highest interest to the student.