Creating the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition, by Laura Viidebaum

In recent years, there has been a very healthy reappraisal of the Greco-Latin rhetorical tradition and, in particular, the account that has dominated disciplinary thinking, one best exemplified by the work of the late George Kennedy. Kennedy's great contribution to the history of rhetoric was to order it around the continuities and discontinuities to be found in Greek technai and Roman artes and to center the rhetorical treatise as the gold standard for understanding the art. Over the last several years, the Journal for the History of Rhetoric has reviewed any number of books and published many articles that have challenged this account of the historical development and reception of classical rhetoric. It is greatly encouraging that scholarship has begun to examine a broader range of materials—rhetorical discourse, oratory, literary texts—and also a much larger number of contributors to the tradition. Excellent work has been done in extending the chronological and cultural boundaries of the tradition and recognizing contributions from less often-considered sources, putting rhetoric into conversation with such other disciplines as medicine, politics, and philosophy, and locating the presence of rhetorical theory in people and populations beyond the usual suspects. The volume under review is a most welcome contribution to this reimagining.Laura Viidebaum attempts to concretize the earliest tradition of rhetorical theorizing around the responses by Plato and Dionysius of Halicarnassus to Lysias and Isocrates. Creating the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition is divided into three substantial sections: a very useful and clear introduction; part 1, five chapters covering the receptions of the two rhetors in classical Athens; and part 2, three chapters covering their reception in Rome.The introduction lays out what Viidebaum describes as an "ancient rhetorical tradition" (4) and the establishment of a "unity" (5) within that tradition. This unity, in turn, depends on an examination of what she sees as "critical moments that were crucial for establishing the overarching framework of the ancient rhetorical tradition" (5) in Plato's accounts of Lysias and Isocrates in the Phaedrus and, later, in Dionysius's On the Attic Orators. Three notions emerge from the introduction that should help guide the reader through the rest of the volume: that the critical distinctions made between the orators are based primarily on their level of style, that the responses of Plato and Dionysius were deeply influential in establishing the ancient rhetorical tradition, and that Dionysius should be reappraised as a central and even determinate voice in the creation of that tradition.Turning to part 1, chapters 1 and 2 lead the reader through a very capable accounting of the scanty resources by which we have come to know the historical Lysias, including a rich discussion of the controversies engendered by Kenneth Dover's arguments about the corpus Lysiacum. When Viidebaum deals with Plato's criticism of Lysias's paradoxical epideixis, the first "erotic speech" in the Phaedrus, she can step with confidence as it is clear that Plato is referring to the historical Lysias, that the paradoxical argument that a nonlover is to be preferred to a lover is an example of the sophistic composition that Plato deplores, and that the weaknesses of that discourse are baked into fundamental theoretical deficiencies Plato discerns in sophistic approaches to communication. She stands on somewhat less certain ground when she extends the Platonic critique to include the mention of Lysias in the Cleitophon, the authorship of which is hotly contested, and to the meaning of his silent presence in the Republic. The net effect of these passages is to locate Lysias as a paradigmatic sophist for Plato.Chapter 3 synthesizes the rhetorical program of Isocrates and places it within the intellectual milieus of his era. Isocrates's position, according to Viidebaum, is deeply complicated by his description of his practice as being philosophical. Viidebaum premises her analysis of Plato's assessment of Isocrates by strenuously arguing that the famous description of Isocrates as having "something of philosophy" in his nature—that ever-confounding ἔνεστί τις ϕιλοσοϕία (Plato Phaedrus 279b)—offers neither irony, nor comedy, nor a backhanded compliment. She takes its meaning as it reads and, by this process, places Isocrates in a polar position to Lysias in Plato's critical vista. She argues this position as well as can be done, but many who work on these texts may continue to disagree.Chapters 4 and 5 round out the first part of the volume by examining Isocrates's judgments of Socrates and offering descriptions of Isocrates's status in Athens' fourth-century intellectual ferment, as evidenced by the critiques of Isocrates by Alcidamas, Plato, and Aristotle. Of course, Isocrates and Plato are found to have greatly different notions of epistemology, and Isocrates quite clearly finds some of the foci of the Academy risible, but Viidebaum "regards the portrayal of Isocrates in Plato to be rather positive though with important caveats" (125) and, hence, complex. Aristotle's relationship with Isocrates features a similar complexity. Though Isocrates never mentions Aristotle by name, Aristotle cites him in the Rhetoric more often than he does any other contemporary orators or rhetoricians. In Viidebaum's argument, this contributes, in combination with Plato's praise of him, to Isocrates being received in the ancient rhetorical tradition as "an alternative teacher of philosophy, who was oriented towards the practical and who emphasized the responsibility of elite members of society to maintain the well-being of the political community" (135).Part 2 of the book attempts to anchor the positions of Lysias and Isocrates to their reception by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the essays in On the AncientOrators. Before she can get to this, however, Viidebaum takes the reader through the three centuries of intellectual history that separate Aristotle from Dionysius in chapter 6. Little can be said of the reception of Lysias as there is almost no textual evidence that has survived. Isocrates's career, however, is marked by robust evidence that he was widely read and appreciated in the intervening years. This, Viidebaum would argue, is due in large part to the prestige of Plato's discussions of these authors in the Phaedrus, which she sees as having risen to the level of a "crucial and authoritative text for conceptualizing ancient Greek rhetoric." Indeed: "By the time we come to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the larger framework of the rhetorical tradition is heavily drawing on that Platonic dialogue the Phaedrus" (175).In chapters 7 and 8, Lysias and Isocrates emerge as important figures in Dionysius. By Viidebaum's account, Dionysius's essay on Lysias—the first in the collection—provides a "critical tool kit" (210) with which the reader can unlock the styles of the subjects of the following essays. His account of Lysias rests entirely on his perceived stylistic excellences—clarity, charm, propriety, and so on—rather than on what we could imagine to be philosophical matters, where his treatment of Isocrates must accommodate that author's liminal condition between philosophy and rhetoric. Despite this, Viidebaum holds that Plato's Phaedrus supplies the impulse behind the establishment of these two sophists in the rhetorical canon to which Dionysius offers a moderating counterbalance: "Lysias as a legitimate model for style and Isocrates as the pathbreaking visionary in education and philosophy" (244).Viidebaum's book is an important sally into the scholarship of the deeply vexed relationship between rhetoric and philosophy in antiquity. It will provide many readers who are new to these areas with a fine overview of the controversies surrounding our quartet of discordant voices (Lysias, Isocrates, Plato, and Dionysius). For many readers, the book will be the first time they have encountered any part of Philodemus's On Rhetoric, much less the extended treatment Viidebaum gives of that text. Many will be greatly interested in her construction of an ancient rhetorical tradition and challenged by her placement of Plato's Phaedrus in the creation of that tradition. All will be pleased by her diligent historiography and grasp of the stakes in scholarly disputes in this area. As firm as the positions at which she arrives are, she is scrupulously fair in displaying the many scholarly controversies that buzz around her subjects, and readers seeking entry into those disputes will be well served by her voluminous notes and comprehensive bibliography. The central claims that she advances are important. She makes a strong claim regarding the historical centrality of the Phaedrus to the constitution of an ancient rhetorical tradition. Indeed, her position that there is such a unitary tradition is a large and important claim in and of itself. For these reasons, Creating the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition should be read with care by all interested in classical rhetorical theory.However, good books raise important questions, and Viidebaum's is a very good book. Careful readers will finish it with many questions for the author. Some of these questions go to the inherent limitations of the available evidence. Simply put, there is far more evidence of Isocrates's contributions to the rhetorical tradition than there is for Lysias's. For Isocrates, we have robust papyrus remains and critical discussions by virtually every classical contributor to disputes regarding the status of rhetoric. For Lysias, we have basically Plato in the Phaedrus and Dionysius, which makes establishing his place in the tradition more difficult to explain fully and causes many of the claims as to his centrality to remain speculative.More importantly, some readers may be discomforted by the somewhat loose distinctions Viidebaum makes between the disciplines of rhetoric and philosophy and particularly Isocrates's relationship to the latter. Though Viidebaum sees Isocrates as occupying an important place as a bridge between these domains, we never get a clear idea of what his "philosophy" is, beyond his commitment to stochastic and prudential political practice. On the rhetorical side, if it is granted that Isocrates was an extremely important figure in the field of education, very little is made of what he may have taught in his school, beyond the well-known generalities that he focused on the extensive use of writing, eschewed the excesses of sophistic epideixis, and flexibly adjusted his pedagogy to meet the nature of his students.Turning to Plato, Viidebaum gives us a good account of his reactions to the rhetoric of Lysias, of which he is dismissive, and that of Isocrates, toward which she finds him positively disposed. It is difficult to see, however, why he would have found Isocrates's approach to rhetoric acceptable without outlining how he would conceive a philosophically respectable art of effective discourse. Viidebaum does not supply this, though there are full, if differing, accounts in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus. Displaying these would help develop a fuller understanding of Plato's attitudes toward Isocrates's fraught position as a "quasi philosopher."One might ask further why Isocrates's works are so fully present in the papyrological and critical record. Viidebaum never fully examines the use of his discourses in rhetorical education, which might well account for the frequency with which his texts and discussions of his program appear in the period between the fourth and the first centuries BCE. One suspects that most rhetoricians in antiquity cared less about the opinions of philosophers, who by the time of the coming of rhetoric to Rome were ensconced in mutually combative schools, than they did about how best to teach young people how to speak with grace and effectiveness.Similarly, we might inquire why Roman intellectuals would read Lysias at all. One would assume that it would be not for the content alone, or for any latent traces of philosophical interest, but because of his status as an exemplar of Atticist stylistics, a plain style based on conventional usage, crackling narratives, and transparent argumentation. It seems more likely that advanced students of rhetoric had his speeches put before them as examples of Attic simplicity. On that basis, school philosophers would have had no more interest in him than they would have had in any other classical Greek forensic orator, and that would be very little, indeed.Hovering over much of this is a larger struggle for disciplinary primacy. Viidebaum sometimes risks conflating rhetoric and philosophy to the detriment of both. Plato believed that the sophists of his day were amoral grifters, and philosophy has felt pretty much the same ever since. But rhetoric is not philosophy. Philosophy is concerned with abstraction and close definition for the purpose of creating knowledge. Rhetoric is about using the resources of language to accomplish concrete political tasks. Arguing that Isocrates holds a strong position in the ancient rhetorical tradition on the basis of a single and only arguably positive assessment of his status as a philosopher does little to explain why he was so manifestly important to rhetoricians. A closer accounting of how Lysias and Isocrates might have been used in rhetorical education in antiquity would go a long way toward clarifying the continuities in that fully rhetorical tradition.These questions do not diminish the strengths of this book. Indeed, the many questions speak more to the book's manifest qualities than they do to any perceived deficiencies. Viidebaum has made an important contribution to scholarship that should be read by anyone interested in the classical rhetorical tradition.