CHAPTER XLVIII. CULTIVATION OF THE THEORY OF RHETORIC.

§ Ι. RAPID DECLINE OF GREEK ORATORY. DEMETRIUS THE PHALERIAN, AND CINEAS. §2. ORATORY BECOMES SCHOLASTIC. § 3. RHODIAN AND ASIATIC SCHOOLS. § 4. RHETORICAL THEORIES.

§ ι. TΗΕ rhetorical tendencies of the last school of philosophy JL lead us, by a natural transition, to consider the special and theoretical cultivation of the art of speaking during the period to which we have more especially referred in the last three chapters.

From’ the time when Aristotle published his excellent treatise on the philosophy of rhetoric, oratory, or public speaking, in the proper sense of the term, declined rapidly among the Greeks. The last of the great orators were contemporaries of the head of the Lyceum, and the Peripatetic Demetrius of Phalerum, who under the Macedonian influence, ruled Athens from 0l. 115, 4. b.c. 317, to 0l. 118, 2. b.c. 307, no longer, represented the elevated character, the simple diction, the noble sentiments, the straightforward argumentation, which distinguished those who spoke in the ecclesia or law courts, while Athens was still free. ‘ He was,’ says Cicero, ‘ the most learned and polished of his class, but he was trained rather in the school of exercises than on the battle-field; he pleased rather than excited the men of Athens; for he had come forth to the bustle of the forum, not as from a military camp, but as from the study of Theophrastus ; he was the first to give a weaker form to oratory, and preferred his own sweetness to the weight and dignity of his predecessors.’ His style was sedate and placid, but florid and full of ornaments, and, like the stars in the canopy of heaven, metaphors and allegories(translata verba), and above all metonyms, or the substitution of allusive words(immutata verba), glittered in his diction, and at once embellished and illustrated his meaning. But he still retained the genuine characteristics of the Attic diction, and while, as Quintilian says, he wa