The expression the "Second Sophistic" is used to label what was happening with rhetoric from the end of the first to the end of the third century of our current era, with its height arriving in the later part of the second century. I will recount for you here the activities of the best known rhetoricians of this period, to give you a sense of what it was like to profess rhetoric in those days. It's worth pointing out up front, perhaps, that the Second Sophistic was nostalgic for ancient Greece and for Hellenistic paideia, and as such it was thoroughly pagan, which is why it was both eclipsed and maligned when Christianity came to power.
Much of what we know about what we call the Second Sophistic, including the fact we call that time frame the Second Sophistic comes from Philostratus', Lives of the Sophists, written between 231 and 237. As with most historical figures from this far back in time, just who Philostratus was and what he did is not entirely clear. Indeed the name Philostratus might be attached to several generations of men from the same family who had the same occupation, that of sophist (public intellectual) and biographer. What we do know of the Philostratus under whose name The Lives reside was that he was a member of Emperor Septimius Severus' court and that he remained after Severus died and the widow Julia became defacto Empress. It is Julia, apparently, who created the atmosphere in which sophistry thrived both before and after her husband's death.
It was Julia who, first as his consort, and later as virtual regent in the reign of her son Caracalla, gave the court that intellectual or pseudo-intellectual tone which has reminded all the commentators of the princely Italian courts of the Renaissance.
The Lives is an important source of information about the Second Sophistic, but it should be read skeptically and corroborated with other sources of information. Here is Wilmer Cave Right, editor and translated, introducing his subject:
Philostratus in writing the Lives evidently avoided the conventional style and alphabetical sequence used by grammarians for biographies ; for he had no desire to be classed with grammarians. He wrote like a well-bred sophist who wished to preserve for all time a picture of the triumphs of his tribe, when sophists were at the height of their glory. His Lives, therefore, are not in the strict sense biographies. They are not continuous or orderly in any respect, but rather a collection of anecdotes and personal characteristics. He seldom gives a list of the works of a sophist, and when he does, it is incomplete, so far as we are able to check it, as we can for Dio or Aristeides. He was, like all his class, deeply interested in questions of style and the various types in vogue, but he must not be supposed to be writing a handbook, and hence his discussions of style are capricious and superficial. He had collected a mass of information as to the personal appearance, manners and dress, temperament and fortune of the more successful sophists and the great occasions when they triumphantly met some public test, and he shows us only the pleasures, not the misères of the profession. He has no pity for the failures, or for those who lost their power to hold an audience, like Hermogenes, who "moulted" too early, and from a youthful prodigy fell into such insignificance that his boyish successes were forgotten. But to those who attained a ripe old age and made great fortunes Philostratus applies every possible superlative. They are the darlings of the gods, they have the power of Orpheus to charm, they make the reputation of their native towns, or of those in which they condescend to dwell. In fact, he did not observe that he made out nearly every one of these gifted beings to be the greatest and most eloquent of them all. Polemo and Herodes are his favorites and for them he gives the most details, while for Favorinus he is unusually consecutive. But no two Lives show the same method of treatment, a variety that may have been designed. He succeeded in founding a type of sophistic biography, ...
Here is Philostratus explaining why he chose the label he did for the content he was about to provide:
Now ancient sophistic, even when it propounded philosophical themes, used to discuss them diffusely and at length; for it discoursed on courage, it discoursed on justice, on the heroes and gods, and how the universe has been fashioned into its present shape. But the sophistic that followed it, which we must not call “new,” for it is old, but rather “second,” sketched the types of the poor man and the rich, of princes and tyrants, and handled arguments that are concerned with definite and special themes Pullman's note: The old sophists spoke on suasoria or philosophical themes while the new sophists spoke on controversia or forensic themes. The progymnasmata tend to recommend practicing both. Perhaps the high drama available in the later made them more enticing for display purposes. for which history shows the way. Gorgias of Leontini founded the older type in Thessaly, and Aeschines, son of Atrometus, founded the second, after he had been exiled from political life at Athens and had taken up his abode in Caria and Rhodes; and the followers of Aeschines handled their themes with a view to elaborating the methods of their art, while the followers of Gorgias handled theirs with a view to proving their case.
The fountains of extempore eloquence flowed, some say, from Pericles their source, and hence Pericles has won his great reputation as an orator; but others say that it arose with a Python of Byzantium, of whom Demosthenes says that he alone of the Athenians was able to check Python's insolent and overpowering flow of words; while yet others say that extempore speaking was an invention of Aeschines ; for after he sailed from Rhodes to the court of Mausolus of Caria, he delighted the king by an improvised speech. But my opinion is that Aeschines did indeed improvise more often than any other speaker, when he went on embassies and gave reports of these missions, and when he defended clients in the courts and delivered political harangues; but I think that he left behind him only such speeches as he had composed with care, for fear that he might fall far short of the elaborate speeches of Demosthenes, and that it was Gorgias who founded the art of extempore oratory. For when he appeared in the theatre at Athens he had the courage to say, "Do you propose a theme" ; and he was the first to risk this bold announcement, whereby he as good as advertised that he was omniscient and would speak on any subject whatever, trusting to the inspiration of the moment ; and I think that this idea occurred to Gorgias for the following reason. Prodicus of Ceos had composed a certain pleasant fable in which Virtue and Vice came to Heracles in the shape of women, one of them dressed in seductive and many-coloured attire, the other with no care for effect; and to Heracles, who was still young, Vice offered idleness and sensuous pleasures while virtue offered squalor and toil on toil. Pullman's note: echoed facetiously by Lucian with "The Rhetor's Way of Life" For this story Prodicus wrote a rather long epilogue, and then he toured the cities and gave recitations of the story in public, for hire, and charmed them after the manner of Orpheus and Thamyris. For these recitations he won a great reputation at Thebes and a still greater at Sparta, as one who benefited the young by making this fable widely known. Thereupon Gorgias ridiculed Prodicus for handling a theme that was stale and hackneyed, and he abandoned himself to the inspiration of the moment. Yet he did not fail to arouse envy.
The Athenians when they observed the too great cleverness of the sophists, shut them out of the lawcourts on the ground that they could defeat a just argument by an unjust, and that they used their power to warp men's judgement. That is the reason wily Aeschines and Demosthenes branded each other with the title of sophist, not because it was a disgrace, but because the very word was suspect in the eyes of the jury. [emphasis added]
Using this backdrop of the first sophistic to legitimate rhetorical practices of his own day, Philostratus goes on to talk about his more immediate predecessors and his profession as he understands it. He is concerned with differentiating sophistry from philosophy while maintaining the superiority of the former, though for many later readers, he fails to establish the hierarchy he prefers. I think the more interesting fact is that these sophists were civically engaged and important people, going on embassies on behalf of their city, securing Imperial grants, tax breaks, and other forms of largess, educating the (elite) youth, providing ceremonial speeches on grand occasions, and public lectures, not unlike TEDTalks today. The rhetoricians of the Second Sophistic were what today we call public intellectuals, not "merely" academics. They lived and worked at the center of their city. But they accomplished this importance by giving speeches that drifted into literature, artistic displays designed to be more admired than used for daily purposes. And today these orations sound stilted and to many later scholars indicated the decline of rhetoric. Indeed, Lucian, who is numbered among them, is sometimes identified as the earliest extant novelist, although the genre is disputed.
The image that emerges is that of a collection of highly successful public intellectuals who taught rhetoric to the wealthy youth of a city -- largely through example but also through precept -- and were politically and socially significant to the city they lived in.
Dio Chrysostom Dion of Prusa or Dio Cocceianus (c. 40 – c. 115 AD), was a Greek orator, writer, philosopher and historian of the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD. Eighty of his Discourses (or Orations; Λόγοι) are extant, as well as a few Letters and a funny mock essay "In Praise of Hair", as well as a few other fragments. His surname Chrysostom comes from the Greek chrysostomos (χρυσόστομος), which literally means "golden-mouthed". link
There is an English translation of his literary remains as well as a biographical introduction here and another, perhaps superior one here. Although he was born into a wealthy family, he and his brother inherited a large debt when their father died and it took him years to pay his share off.
No doubt Dio received a good education in the subjects then taught, and one of these would be the art of public speaking. In this he showed great ability, and no doubt delivered some of his lighter speeches such as the Praise of a Gnat to his admiring townsmen. Occasionally he appeared in court in behalf of his friends. Then later he began to travel, and in the reign of Vespasian he reached Rome. link
It seems that in the year 82 he offended the Emperor Domitian and was exiled from Italy and his native home of Bithynia and so became a wandering philosopher, converting as it were to the sect of the Cynics.
Wearing but a threadbare cloak he wandered penniless from place to place, as a rule avoiding the large cities. To procure sustenance he was forced at times to do the humblest manual labour, and the hardships then endured injured his health. In the course of these wanderings he reached Borysthenes, a flourishing colony of Miletus north of the Black Sea and not far from the modern Odessa. He penetrated also to Viminacium, a Roman permanent camp on the Danube, and lived among the savage Getae, whose history he wrote.
When Domitian died (94 ad), Dio returned to Rome.
His writing can be found in translation here
Synesius' Encomium on Baldness
A Roman historian who is best known for biographies of the first 12 emperors. His book About Rhetoricians gives us a vivid account of just how ambivalent Rome was about Greek rhetoric.
The study of rhetoric was introduced into our country in about the same way as that of grammar, but with somewhat greater difficulty, since, as is well known, its practice was at times actually prohibited. To remove any doubt on this point, I shall append an ancient decree of the senate, as well as an edict of the censors:
In the consulship of Gaius Fannius Strabo and Marcus Valerius Messala the praetor Marcus Pomponius laid a proposition before the senate. As the result of a discussion about philosophers and rhetoricians, the senate decreed that Marcus Pomponius, the praetor, should take heed and provide, in whatever way seemed in accord with the interests of the State and his oath of office, that they be not allowed to live in Rome." Some time afterwards the censors Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Lucius Licinius Crassus issued the following edict about the same class of men: "It has been reported to us that there be men who have introduced a new kind of training, and that our young men frequent their schools; that these men have assumed the title of Latin rhetoricians, and that young men spend whole days with them in idleness. Our forefathers p437 determined what they wished their children to learn and what schools they desired them to attend. These innovations in the customs and principles of our forefathers do not please us nor seem proper. Therefore it appears necessary to make our opinion known, both to those who have such schools and to those who are in the habit of attending them, that they are displeasing to us.
About Rhetoricians is brief and worth a quick read.
Favorinus the philosopher, no less than Dio, was proclaimed a sophist by the charm and beauty of his eloquence. He came from Western Gaul, from the city of Arelatum which is situated on the river Rhone. He was born double-sexed, a hermaphrodite, and this was plainly shown in his appearance ; for even when he grew old he had no beard ; it was evident too from his voice which sounded thin, shrill, and high-pitched, with the modulations that nature bestows on eunuchs also. Yet he was so ardent in love that he was actually charged with adultery by a man of consular rank. Though he quarreled with the Emperor Hadrian, he suffered no ill consequences. Hence he used to say in the ambiguous style of an oracle, that there were in the story of his life these three paradoxes: Though he was a Gaul he led the life of a Hellene; a eunuch, he had been tried for adultery; he had quarreled with an Emperor and was still alive. But this must rather be set down to the credit of Hadrian, seeing that, though he was Emperor, he disagreed on terms of equality with one whom it was in his power to put to death. (Lives, p 22)
Like Dio, Favorinus was exiled for a time and restored when the offended Emperor died. He wrote a prodigious amount, apparently, but we have only fragments left. He considered himself a Skeptic Philosopher, not a sophist per se, but his style was "asiatic" and more like singing that speaking, according to some. It was, at any rate, so pleasing that even people who didn't speak Greek enjoyed listening to him. (Lives, 29)
"Favorinus for some time resided in Asia Minor; and as he was highly honoured by the Ephesians, he excited the envy and hostility of Polemon, then the most famous sophist at Smyrna. The two sophists attacked each other in their declamations with great bitterness and animosity." A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, William Smith, Ed. link
There are 2 complete orations, both preserved in the Dio Chrysostom corpus: Oration 37: The Corinthian Oration and Oration 64: On Fortune (II)
Grandson of Polemo II, the last king of Pontus (38-63 ce) who traced his lineage back to Marc Antony, of the Battle of Actium. Polemo was an advisor to Hadrian, granted free travel by the Emperor. "Polemo devoted himself to advancing the interests of Smyrna, his home of choice. His efforts, which did not go unrewarded, were, of course, not all selfless; Smyrna's advance brought advantages for him too. Polemo played an important political role in Smyrna. He brought about "a harmonious and faction- free government " (όμονοούσαν και άστασίαστον TodITeúElv) arbitrating long-standing differences between the hill and shore residents. When suits arose between citizens about money, Polemo saw to it that they were settled within the city jurisdiction. (Philostratus, V. S. 531-532)."
The theme for a declamation was often determined on short notice or right on the spot. The teacher could assign it to the student and allow some time for preparation, but often audiences proposed the topic and this, of course, allowed little time for organizing one's thoughts. This procedure sharpened one's skill at speaking extemporaneously but it was no business for the faint hearted. On occasion the teacher would declaim before the students to provide for them a model to emulate. As teachers became more recognized their declamations could be presented not just before their students, but also in front of a larger public. In cases of accomplished performances this practice brought fame, even stardom to the rhetorician. Polemo certainly became a celebrity through his impressive and polished declaiming. This whole development led to the declamation becoming a recognized literary form, and in the second century and thereafter a number of distinguished authors (e.g., Polemo, Aristides, Lucian, Libanius, Himerius) ended up publishing selected declamations. 28-9The Severed Hand and the Upright Corpse: The Declamations Of Marcus Antonius Polemo, William W. Reader In Collaboration With Anthony J. Chvala-Smith. Scholar Press, Atlanta, 1996.
Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists
A child prodigy whose declamations won him fame as a teenager, Hermogenes suffered some kind of neurological disorder and by 25 he had to leave the stage. Nevertheless he left behind books that became prominent textbooks. A book on style, a book on stasis, a book on the progymnasmata have come down to us, as well as one incorrectly attributed to him on invention. There was also a book called on "On the art of speaking effectively" (delivery, perhaps), though I can't find it. Below is the introduction to the progymnasmata and two excerpts, one on Fable and the other on Chreia.
Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric
edited by George Alexander Kennedy
Chapter II The Preliminary Exercises Attributed to Hermogenes
Hermogenes of Tarsus was a boy wonder as a declaimer in the time of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 161-18o) (see Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.7) and has traditionally been identified as the author of treatises on stasis and on ideas of style which became part of an author-itative collection of rhetorical texts, used from late antiquity to the Re-naissance. This short work on progymnasmata is also attributed to him but it has a different manuscript tradition from the other works and is of doubtful authenticity. John of Sardis, writing about A.D. 800, refers to it as by Hermogenes, but a scholiast (Rhetores Graeci VII p. 511, ed. Walz ) attributes it to the fourth-century sophist Libanius, and Priscian describes it as by Hermogenes or Libanius. It was not unusual for scribes to attribute works of unknown authorship to famous authorities in the field: other instances include attributions to Dionysius of Halicarnas-sus, Aelius Aristeides, and Cassius Longinus. Syrianus, an early com-mentator on Hermogenes, seems not to have known this work, and who-ever created the Hermogenic corpus prefixed Aphthonius' account of progymnasmata to Hermogenes' genuine works, ignoring the treatise at-tributed to Hermogenes. This is the simplest of the accounts of prelimi-nary exercises, little more than an abstract of previous handbooks. Its date of composition is uncertain, possibly in the third or fourth century. The author refers (p. 84, below) to Aelius Aristeides, the great orator of the second century, and Nicolaus, writing in the late fifth century, knew the work. Similarities to Aphthonius' work, dating from the late fourth century, probably derive from use of common sources.
About A.U. 500 the Roman grammarian Priscian wrote a Latin handbook of progymnasmata largely based on this work. He called the exercises praeexercitamina, made minor changes in content and added brief Latin illustrations from Terence, Sallust, Virgil, and Cicero. Priscian's work implies that the exercises were being taught in his time to Latin-speaking students; his handbook was preserved in manuscripts with his other works and had some use in the Middle Ages and later.'
An English translation of Priscian's version can be found in Miller, Prosser, and Benson's Readings in Medieval Rhetoric, pp. 52-68. The following translation is based on the edition of Hermogenes' works by Hugo Rabe, pp. 1-27. There is a less literal translation by Charles Sears Baldwin in his Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (New York: Macmillan, 1928), pp. 23-38. The text begins without any in-troduction, but subsequently the author refers to an unidentified ad-dressee in the second person singular, apparently a young man who is undertaking a program of instruction in composition.
ON FABLE
Fable (mythos) is regarded as the first exercise to be assigned to the young because it can bring their minds into harmony for the better. In this way they (i.e., teachers of grammar) think to form students while still tender. The ancients seem also to have used it, Hesiod telling the fable of the nightingale (Works and Days 203) and Archilochus that of the fox.' Fables are named after their inventors, some being called Cyprian, some Libyan, some Sybaritic, but all collectively [2] are called Aesopic because Aesop used fables in his teaching.3 They give some such sketch of it as follows. They think it right for it to be fictitious, but in all cases to be useful for some aspect of life. In addition, they want it to be plausible. How would it become plausible? If we attribute appropriate things to the char-acters. For example, someone is arguing about beauty; let him be represented as a peacock. Cleverness needs to be attributed to someone; here a fox is appropriate. For imitators of the actions of human beings, choose apes. Sometimes fables need to be expanded, sometimes to be com-pressed. How would this be done? If we sometimes recount the fable in a bare narrative, at other times invent speeches for the given characters; thus, to make it clear to you by an example, "The apes gathered [3] to deliberate about the need to found a city. Since it seemed best to do so, they were about to begin work. An old ape re-strained them, saying that they will be more easily caught if hemmed in by walls." This is how you would tell the fable concisely, but if you wanted to expand it, proceed as follows: "The apes gath-ered to deliberate about building a city. One stepped forward and delivered a speech to the effect that they had need of a city: 'For you see,' he says, 'how happy men are by living in a city. Each of them has his house, and by coming together to an assembly and a theater all collectively delight their minds with all sorts of sights and sounds,' " and continue in this way, dwelling on each point and say-ing that the decree was passed; then fashion a speech also for the old ape." So much for this. They want the expression to avoid the use of periods and to be close to sweetness.' [4] The statement explaining the moral will sometimes be put before the fable, sometimes after it. Orators too seem (sometimes) to have used a fable in place of an example."
3. ON CHREIA
A chreia (khreia) is a recollection (apomnemoneidma) of a saying or action or both, with a pointed meaning, usually for the sake of something useful. Some chreias are verbal, some actional, some are mixed. Verbal (logikai) are those in which there is only a saying; for example, "Plato said that the muses dwell in the souls of those naturally clever." An example of the actional ones (plaktikai) is, "Diogenes, on seeing an undisciplined youth, beat his pedagogue." Mixed are those having a combination of a saying and an action; for example, "Diogenes, on seeing an undisciplined youth, beat his pedagogue and said, 'Why did you teach him such things?"'
A chreia differs from a recollection (apomnemoneuma)'3 most in length, for recollections may be rather long and a chreia must be short. It differs from a maxim (gnome) in that the latter is a bald statement [A while the chreia often takes the form of a question and answer, and again in that the chreia may describe an action while the maxim consists only of words, and again in that the chreia identifies a person who has acted or spoken while the maxim does not identify a speaker. Much is said by the ancients about different kinds of chreia, (for example,) that some of them are declarative, some interrogative, some investigative.'• But now let us come to the point, and this is the elaboration (exergasia). Let the elaboration be as follows: first, a brief encomion of the speaker or doer; then a paraphrase of the chreia; then the cause; for example, "Isocrates said that the root of education is bitter but its fruit is sweet." Praise: "Isocrates was wise," and you will slightly develop the topic (khorion). Then the chreia, "He said this," and you will not state it in bare form but ex-pand the statement. Then the cause, "For the greatest things are wont to succeed through toil, and when successful bring pleasure." Then by contrast, "Ordinary things need no toil and in the end [8] give no pleasure, but things of importance are the opposite." Then from a comparison, "For just as farmers need to reap fruits by working the soil, so also with speeches." Then from an example, "Demosthenes, by shutting himself up at home and working hard, later reaped the fruit in the form of crowns and testimonials." It is also possible to bring in a judgment; for example, "Hesiod said (Works and Days 289), 'The gods put sweat before virtue,' and an-other poet says," 'The gods sell all good things to us for toils.' " At the end you will put an exhortation to the effect that one must be persuaded by the person who has said or done this. So much for now; you will get more complete teaching later.
If you are interested in the chreia, Ronald F Hock has a two volume set on the exercise (vol 1 vol 2) as well as a commentary on Apthonius' Progymnasmata.
Lucian of Samosata (c. 125 – after 180 AD) was an Assyrian satirist and rhetorician who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridiculed superstition, religious practices, and belief in the paranormal. Although his native language was probably Syriac, all of his extant works are written entirely in Ancient Greek (mostly in the Atticized dialect popular during the Second Sophistic period)....Lucian's works were wildly popular in antiquity, and more than eighty writings attributed to him have survived to the present day, a considerably higher quantity than for most other classical writers. ... Lucian was one of the earliest novelists in Western civilization. In A True Story (Ἀληθῶν Διηγημάτων), a fictional narrative work written in prose, he parodies some of the fantastic tales told by Homer in the Odyssey and also the not-so-fantastic tales from the historian Thucydides.[52][53] He anticipated modern science fiction themes including voyages to the moon and Venus, extraterrestrial life, interplanetary warfare, and artificial life, nearly two millennia before Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. (link)The Rhetoric Teacher's Way of Life.
Bring then above all ignorance, to which add confidence, audacity, and effrontery; as for diffidence, equity, moderation, and shame, you will please leave them at home; they are not merely needless, they are encumbrances. The loudest voice you can come by, please, a ready falsetto, and a gait modelled on my own. That exhausts the real necessaries; very often there would be no occasion for anything further. But I recommend bright colours or white for your clothes; the Tarentine stuff that lets the body show through is best; for shoes, wear either the Attic woman's shape with the open network, or else the Sicyonians that show white lining. Always have a train of attendants, and a book in your hand.The Double Indictment The Parasite
Famous for obtaining funds from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius to rebuild Smyrna after it was destroyed by an earth quake. Glen Bowersock Greek sophists in the Roman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.) calls him a "pivotal figure in the transmission of Hellenism."
From Wiki:
Aristides was probably born at Hadriani in rural area of Mysia. His father, a wealthy landowner, arranged for Aristides to have the finest education available. Aristides first studied under Alexander of Cotiaeum (later a tutor of Marcus Aurelius) at Smyrna, then traveled to various cities to learn from the foremost sophists of the day, including studies in Athens and Alexandria.
The capstone of his education was a trip to Egypt in 141 AD. Along the way he began his career as an orator, declaiming at Cos, Cnidos, Rhodes, and Alexandria. His travels in Egypt included a journey upriver in hopes of finding the source of the Nile, as he later recounted in "The Egyptian Discourse". Becoming ill, he returned home to Smyrna, and sought to cure himself by turning to the Egyptian god Serapis (as recounted in his earliest preserved speech, "Regarding Serapis").
I quoted this to underscore the fact that despite being associated with a specific city, many of the sophists of the this period travelled extensively and often those travels informed their writing.
Google Books offers excerpts from the complete works. You might find "To Plato: In Defense of Oratory" interesting, although to be perfectly frank it is tedious: excerpts here.
Libanius of Antioch is arguably the most important rhetorician of his time if for no other reason than we still have a phenomenally large corpus of his work, 1,600 letters, 64 speeches and 96 progymnasmata. Libanius himself boasted that he "has written more than any man alive." The School of Libanius in Late Antiquity, Raffaella Cribiore (p 3). Among the work he left us is an autobiography (pdf) which is fascinating as a historical record of what it was like to profess rhetoric all those years ago, although the passage that stays with me is a complaint about how people in his neighborhood were tearing down small houses and replacing them with one's so large they left his own in their shadow.
Here is the opening paragraph from Libanius's Autobiography, the whole of which is worth reading because it gives an insight into what life as an academic was like in the third century ce.
Introduction to the Autobiography
Some people labour under a misapprehension in the opinions they entertain about my career. There are some who, as a remilt of this applause which greets my oratory, assert that I am the happiest of men : there are, on the other hand, those who, considering my incessant toils and pains, would have it that I am the wretchedest man alive. Now each of these verdicts is far removed from the truth, and I must endeavour to correct them by a narration of my past and present circumstances, so that all may know that heaven has granted me a mixture of fortune, and that I am neither the happiest nor the unhappiest of men. And I pray that the bolt of Nemesis may not light upon me.
I am quoting this opening because it is evocative of sophistic rhetoric and subsequent rhetoric and indeed even prior rhetoric in an important way. The Greeks never thought that public speaking was inherently dignified and the opening move was almost always to say, in some way, that one spoke out of obligation, often in someone else's defense, and even then only under extreme need. The simplest formula of this opening feint is "unaccustomed as I am..." The rhetors and rhetoricians of the Second Sophistic prized performance over originality. One was to speak using Attic Greek, that is Greek as Demosthenes would have spoken it half a millennia prior. One was also expected to treat each of the prescribed subjects associated with each occasion for public speaking. What one said wasn't interesting because everyone always said the same things. What was interesting was how the expected was said.
So Libanius begins his autobiography by saying that a controversy surrounding the nature of his existence exists and that he must therefore speak up to set the record straight. Isocrates begins his Antidosis, as you may recall, in the same way. We know Isocrates had a vocal rival in Alcidamas because he wrote "Against those Who Write Speeches" as a poke at him. I am unaware of a direct rivalry with Libanius, but it is clear from his letters that he was constantly engaged in a PR campaign to get and maintain his position and it's also seems evident that he must have had enemies because he was an adherent of the old gods, and his fortunes greatly improved when Julian the Apostate became Emperor and declined after Julian's death.
That the life of rhetorician in the second sophistic was performed in public is nicely illustrated by the following passage from The School of Libanius.
A practicing rhetor needed to prove his ability throughout the course of his career. Here, I focus on a crucial test that awaited students on their return home, the dokimasia, in which they had to exhibit their learning and ability. This test, which marked a youth's admission into society and was of foremost importance for an aspiring sophist, has so far escaped scholarly attention in spite of its great significance in assessing the societal value of the acquisition of paideia (literary culture, and here rhetoric espe-cially). Interest in a youth's education was not limited to his family; rather, sending a young man to study rhetoric, Latin, or Roman law concerned to some degree all of the educated people (the pepaideumenoi) of the community. In a revealing passage in Or. 49, the city's notables accompany the young men ready to embark for Rome or Phoenicia: "They congratulate them, wish them well, and send them off" (27-28). The principales were proud to send one of their own to a distant place of learning to represent their city.' But, upon returning, a youth had to earn his city's approval and render an account of what he had received. In the words of Odysseus, "It was shameful to stay for so long and come back empty" (Iliad 2.298). A student had to prove he had assimilated instruction by standing brilliantly on his own in learned encounters with his fellow citi-zens, by giving dazzling rhetorical displays—in sum, by submitting to a full examination, which Libanius calls a dokimasia (Or. 55.32). Raffaella Cribiore, The School of Libanius in Late Antiquity, 85.
Below is the introduction to Libanius's Oration 31. Notice how he spends most of the first paragraph justifying speaking at all. He would rather remain silent, so much so in fact that he would even pay his teaching assistants from his own money if he could, rather than intercede on their behalf. This is the standard opening move, as we have seen repeatedly and it's reappearance here underscores both the cultural standard of reticence and the fact that a sophist's performance was gauged not by what he said but how he said it: originality of treatment over originality of thought. This seems tedious to us and was also thought so by later generations, but given a finite store of material out of which to build a speech and a finite set of occasions for speaking, originality of matter is counter-productive. You can't write a great sonnet by breaking the formal conventions. At best you would be writing something other than a sonnet and it's more likely your audience will consider you ill-tutored or just mad.
And yet, Libanius needs this oration to perform some real work for real people. Unless a school produces graduates who go on to make big money and contribute to the endowment or it produces valuable patents, a school will always have to beg the local government for funds. State-funded education has always been a tenuous business.
ORATION 31
TO THE ANTIOCHENES FOR THE TEACHERS
(1) Men of Antioch, you would all agree that I am not one of those persons who have gone about stirring up trouble for the city, and that up to this day you have never incurred any expenditure, whether great or small, upon the teachers as a result of any words of mine. My attitude in this has been dictated not by any thought that I might fail in my request, however much it might involve, but because I felt it incumbent upon me to show a restraint proportionate to the enthusiasm I knew you would show in your decree. But I can now maintain silence no longer, however much I might wish to do so, and therefore I have come to tell you of facts which it would be improper for me to leave untold, and on which it would be right for you to accept advice, for the consequence will be that, although you appear to be granting a concession, you will gain a name for extreme generosity with no loss to yourselves. (2) Now, if I had quantities of money enough both to satisfy my own needs and to provide for my assistants, I would have addressed to myself the considerations I now put before you, and I would gladly have relieved my colleagues in their distress. . .
Here is the paragraph in which he presents the issue and forecasts the argument he will present as well as the feelings (shame, responsibility) he would have his audience feel in order to move them to open the city purse.
The sole matter you should consider is this - whether it is more advantageous for our great, fine city of Antioch to maintain its teachers of eloquence in their present plight or to alter the situation. You must concern yourselves with everything that makes a city famous and prosperous, and especially with what has advanced our city to its present station. And this – unless I am talking utter nonsense - is rhetoric and the ability to overcome the irrational impulses of governors by dint of rational argument. If peoples who win power from arms and victory in battle ignore any decline in the manufacture of arms, they would injure themselves as regards what they have won and they would encompass their own destruction: similarly, those who have made the greatest contribution to the art of eloquence would be held to blame if they did not maintain the profession of rhetoric. A.F.Norman, Antioch as a Center of Hellenic Culture as Observed by Libanius (p 71 -2)Funeral oration for Emperor Julian.
Provides an example of the Progymnasmata as they were understood at the beginning of the second sophistic.
A radically skeptical philosopher and a physician, we came across Sextus when we were reading about Gorgias because among his remaining work is his summary of On Being, which is emblematic of his way of thinking, which is radical critique. Against the Rhetoricians