The Second Sophsitic

1. Second Sophistic-Literature Review
a) background:
According to an introduction to Classical Rhetoric edited by Williams, the cultural shift toward reflection and contemplation was accompanied by increased interest in literature, philosophy, and declamation as the Empire matured. Roman’s long-standing ambivalence toward everything Greek tempered significantly. Many rhetoricians, such as Aristides and Lucian, began viewing the ascendancy of Asianism as a perversion of the art’s original goals, for the practitioners of this artificial style had increased the scope of their gyrations to such a degree that their oratory was as much about posturing as it was about speech. The focus was on sheer performance with little substance(Anderson, 1993). The study of theory and practice from Athen’s Golden Age expanded as these rhetoricians sought to develop a more authentic, purer style and to season their work with philosophy. They found a ready model in the Greek Sophists, and widespread imitation of the Attic style followed, with Demosthenes frequently identified as the premier model. To locate the roots of Atticism, Philostratus (c.170-247 AD) recounted the lives of various orators, beginning with Gorgias, who was successful in merging philosophy and rhetoric and concluded that history as witnessing a new wave of sophistry, which he dubbed in his Lives of the Sophists as a “Second Sophistic”.

b). introduction
In A Companion to Greek Rhetoric edited by Worthington, in scenes like “Lives of the Sophists”, composed in the late 2nd century AD? the typical “Greek” orator may hail from Asia Minor, Gaul, or Egypt, delivering epideictic orations in Greek to a mixed audience of Latin and Greek speakers. Much has changed in the 4C since the teaching of rhetoric was banned in Rome, and Cato warned his son to beware of things Greek: what has emerged may be called a Greco-Gallo-Hispano-Africo-Roman culture united, in its upper echelons, by the common experience of rhetorical training. Philostratus called the period the “Second Sophist”, after the first, which he located in the philosophical activity in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries.

c). Features of Second Sophists
In the earlier era, a sophist was a rhetorician who took pay for this teaching; in other words, a man like Gorgias. Most of the stars of Philostratus’ Second Sophistic, born into wealthy families, played prominent roles in local politics (although their aims were not to educate people in politics) and gained fame through speaking, though not necessarily in that order. They were defined by their primary activity, epideictic speechmaking, a practice they transformed into an agonistic competition that entertained as much as it advertised and transmitted cultural literacy.

Sophistic rhetoric is best understood by the limit it set for itself: no diction that does not appear in approved Attic authors. The research of Aristophanes of Byzantium and his colleagues was being put to new use. These men used public spaces in cities throughout the empire (especially in the Greek-speaking east) to re-create and re-enact classical Athens in the content of their speeches and their own comportment. The
Sophistic thought-world was all at once eclectic (this is the age of the great encyclopedic collections of Aulus Gellius and Athenaeus), in love with the trivial (the sophist philosopher Dio Chrysostom devotes an encomium to a full head of hair, which in the 5C AD, Synesius rebutted in an oration “In Praise of Baldness”), and intently cultivated a small library of literary quotes, artfully deployed, form Homer, the 9 lyric poets, Herodotus, Thucydides, Euripides, Plato, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Aeschines, and the New Comedians. Writers returned repeatedly to selected textual topoi- Lucian and Athenaeus to Plato’s Symposium. Fronto to the Phaedrus, while Aelius Aristides dreamt of Plato and Demosthenes. They replaced the double -ss- if the Ionic common dialect with the Attic -tt-, and revived the optative mood, the dual case, and -mi verbs (sometimes overcompensating).

Historians in this period pursued events beyond the death of Alexander the Great only when they were concerned specifically to write about Rome —— a choice shared by sophists and teachers of rhetoric in their declamations. With these tools of diction and theme, the sophist not only presented his audience with a set of ideals, political, social, cultural, and aesthetic, but also he re-enacted them through his carefully cultivated image of manliness, courage, and refinement, functioning as a living physical transmitter of classical Greek ethics and cultural history. Yet he moved comfortably in a Roman setting, an embodiment of elite educational culture – the ideal Greco-Roman man.

d). Goal, effect, and evaluation of Second Sophistic
According to an introduction to Classical Rhetoric edited by Williams, Bowersock (1969) and Swain (1996) affirmed that an explicit goal of the new Sophists was the purification of language and a reduction of Asiatic extremes, but they also recognized that it entailed a revival of philosophical rhetoric. Equally important, they linked the Second Sophistic to a renaissance of Greek culture, which the emperors may have encouraged so as to promote a common cultural history.

Anderson(1993), on the other hand, argued that there was no real break in the sophistic tradition from Gorgias onward but that the Second Sophistic, largely limited to the Greek-speaking East, was a nostalgic response to Roman domination. Through their declamations, sophistic orators gave audiences the opportunity to relive the glory days of Athens. Brunt(1994) insisted that the idea of a Greek renaissance lacks foundation and that the term “Sophist” was just as pejorative during the first three centuries of the Empire as it had been in the days of Plato and Isocrates. On this account, he suggested that the Second Sophistic, at least if it is conceptualized as a revival of the rhetorical and intellectual climate of classical Greece, was largely a creation of Philostratus’ imagination. What is clear is that the Older Sophists existed in a democratic environment that was absent in the Empire, and over time, the Empire became more rigidly authoritarian, not less. On this basis alone, the term “Second Sophistic” is misleading in that it contains a false connotation. Whether the Second Sophistic was real or imaginary, however, may not be as important as how attempting to recapture the past – or revisioning their present- led intellectuals to perceive themselves and their replace in society.

Rhetoric and oratory were inextricably linked to the Greek intellectual tradition, and the Second Sophistic emphasized this connection by stressing its location in the context of paideia, which as Brown(1992) suggested, was as much about politics as education: “Only a young man who had ‘installed Demosthenes in his soul’ at an early age could be trusted to behave correctly when governing a province”; “paideia united potentially conflicting segments of the governing class. It jointed imperial administrators and provincial notables in a shared sense of common excellence”. From this perspective, immersion in and dedication to Greek literature and philosophy served to enhance already existing social distinctions. In addition, their education gave these notables a shared language and set of values that facilitated government. If a provincial governor needed a new aqueduct for his capital, for example, he could appeal to Rome using the commonplaces of arete, civic virtue.

A knowledge of literature, therefore, was deemed a fundamental requirement among the elite. Rhetoricians played an important role in providing the “shared sense of common excellence,” and literature was a significant part of the curriculum in schools of rhetoric. Public orations were delivered to large audiences from all classes, so orators nurtured a shared culture in entire communities, not just among the elite. Whitmarsh (2001) went a step further and proposed that the Second Sophistic involved creating a social identity through “the politics of imitation”:

Paideia, then, was not simply a form of social practice… at a more abstract level, it was also a means of constructing and reifying idealized identities for Greeks and Romans, a privileged space of complex cultural interaction…between Roman ideology and Greek identity, a foundation upon which both peoples constructed their own sense of their place in the world.

Orators during the Second Sophistic imitated historical speeches so convincingly that many declamations were indistinguishable from real speeches, leading Russell(1983) to conclude that the Pseudo- Herodes’ Peri Politeias was, contrary to most scholarly opinion, written in the third or fourth century AD, not the fifth century BC. The difficulty in distinguishing between the real speeches of the ancient Greeks and the contemporary imitations seems to support Whitmarsh’s (2001) perspective, and the conclusion that declamation may have served the purpose of historical revisionism is tempting. We know from the extant works that rhetoricians and orators celebrated long-extinct political virtues and linked them to the existing authoritarian government, creating the illusion of freedom, political participation, and truly deliberative oratory. Their encomia- commonly produced as commissions – regularly compared emperors, provincial governors, and even city prefects to the great leaders of ancient Athens – men like Solon, Pericles, and Demosthenes- who floated like ghosts in the cultural memory and lent themselves easily to the creation of an artificial identity, an artificial reality. These comparisons were expressed with particular enthusiasm (although often with little sincerity) in the East, no doubt with the objective of locating Roman rulers in the narrative of Greek history and traditions so as to relieve the burden of political domination.

2. Second Sophistic- Dr. Pullman's notes/facts/ Summary of some key concepts:

a) Fable
A fable is a false discourse which gives an image of the truth. Aesop was the greatest expert in composing fables. A fable may be rational, ethical, or mixed. It may be ethical, which imitates the character of irrational creatures.

(My perspective of reasons why it is crucial:
I think fables are useful and appropriate tools for children’s education.
Children have vivid imaginations and the fables can satisfy their needs of reading as they are based on the imagined events of human beings or other creatures. Therefore, kids love to read this intriguing literature. At the same time, fables are very instructive. For example, Aesop’s fables are instructive. They’re stories of moral lessons. They can teach children values like the importance of choosing the right friend. Besides, they are light-hearted generally, and fun to read. Thus, they are perfect learning tools for children. )

b) Aphtonius Progymanasmata
This is a 4th-century AD Greek rhetoric textbook translated by Malcolm Heath. It contains 14 types of rhetoric. Each type has a clear and thoughtful definition, classification, outline, and example.
According to Claudeai, the summary of each type is as follows.
1) Fable: fictional story used to convey advice
2) Narration: description and explanation of an event
3) Anecdote: brief reminiscence referring to a person
4) Maxim: concise statement in declarative form for exhortation or dissuasion
5) Refutation: speech overturning a given fact
6) Confirmation: speech securing a given fact
7) Common topic: speech amplifying evil attributes
8) Encomium: speech expounding good attributes
9) Invective: speech expounding bad attributes
10) Comparison: speech expressing contrast through juxtaposition
11) Characterization: speech imitating the character of a person
12) Description: expository speech bringing an object vividly into view
13) Thesis: a logical investigation into a matter under consideration
14) Proposal of law: debate concerning legislation
This book is a very crucial ancient rhetoric textbook because it systematically introduces the basic concepts, training methods, and content of Greek rhetoric.

c) Declamation
According to Claudeai, Declamation was a common rhetorical exercise and public entertainment in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. It is a speech delivered for entertainment before an audience of admirers, rivals, or friends. The content is fictional and the goal is to gain applause and admiration.
Declamation descends from epideictic rhetoric but is more self-promotional than communal. However, a good declamation could bring reflected glory to the host city.
Schools taught declamation as the culmination of rhetorical training. Extant examples of declamation come from Seneca the Elder, Psuedo-Quintilian, and Calpurnius Flaccus. These show contrived, melodramatic situations meant to showcase rhetorical skills. Declamation allowed practice speaking in different voices and exploring perspectives. But over time it became exaggerated from reality.
Therefore, declamation was a fictional public speaking exercise in Roman education used to train rhetoric and perform verbal skills before an audience.