Asiatic style
Encyclopedia
The Asiatic style or Asianism ' onMouseout='HidePop("88464")' href="/topics/Cicero">Cicero
, Brutus
325) refers to an Ancient Greek
rhetoric
al tendency (though not an organized school) that arose in the third century BC, which later became an important point of reference in debates about Roman oratory.
was Asianism's first main representative and was considered its founder. Hegesias "developed and exaggerated stylistic effects harking back to the sophists and the Gorgianic
style."
, which it was held to have corrupted. The term reflects an association with writers in the Greek cities of Asia Minor
. "Asianism had a significant impact on Roman rhetoric, since many of the Greek teachers of rhetoric who came to Rome beginning with the 2d cent. B.C.E. were Asiatic Greeks." "Mildly Asianic tendencies" have been found in Gaius Gracchus
' oratory, and "more marked" ones in Publius Sulpicius Rufus
.
Cicero (Brutus 325) identifies two distinct modes of the Asiatic style: a more studied and symmetrical style (generally taken to mean "full of Gorgianic figures") employed by the historian Timaeus
and the orators Menecles and Hierocles of Alabanda, and the rapid flow and ornate diction of Aeschines of Miletus
and Aeschylus of Cnidus. Hegesias' "jerky, short clauses" may be placed in the first class, and Antiochus I of Commagene's Mount Nemrut
inscription in the second. The conflation of the two styles under a single name has been taken to reflect the essentially polemical significance of the term: "The key similarity is that they are both extreme and therefore bad; otherwise they could not be more different." According to Cicero, Quintus Hortensius
combined these traditions and made them at home in Latin oratory.
Cicero himself, rejecting the extreme plainness and purism of the Atticists, was attacked by critics such as Licinius Macer Calvus
for being on the side of the Asiani; in response he declared his position as the "Roman Demosthenes
" (noting that the preeminent Attic orator would not have qualified as Attic by the strict standards of the oratores Attici of first-century Rome). Thus Cicero professed a mixed or middle style (genus medium; Quintilian 12.10.18: genus Rhodium...velut medium...atque ex utroque mixtum) between the low or plain Attic style and the high Asiatic style, called the Rhodian style by association with Molo of Rhodes and Apollonius the Effeminate
(Rhodii, Cicero, Brutus xiii 51).
nian period, the surviving portion of Petronius
' Satyricon
begins midway through a rant in which the unreliable narrator, Encolpius, denounces the corruption of Roman literary taste and the Asiatic style in particular: "that flatulent, inflated magniloquence later imported from Asia to Athens has infected every aspiring writer like a pestilential breeze" (trans. Branham and Kinney). Quintilian
accepted Cicero's attitude towards Asianism and Atticism, and adapted the earlier debate's polemical language, in which objectionable style is called effeminate, in his own De causis corruptae eloquentiae. In his Institutio Oratoria (XII.10), Quintilian diagnoses the roots of the two styles in terms of ethnic dispositions: "The Attici, refined and discriminating, tolerated nothing empty or gushing; but the Asiatic race somehow more swollen and boastful was inflated with a more vainglory of speaking" (trans. Amy Richlin). Pliny the Younger
continued to profess the mixed style. The debate remained topical for Tacitus
(as seen in Pliny's correspondence with him on oratorical styles in Letter 1.20) and contributes to the atmosphere of his Dialogus de oratoribus
.
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
, Brutus
Brutus (Cicero)
Cicero's Brutus is a history of Roman oratory. It is written in the form of a dialogue, in which Brutus and Atticus ask Cicero to describe the qualities of all the leading Roman orators up to their time. It was composed in 46 B.C.-Further reading:*G. V...
325) refers to an Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
al tendency (though not an organized school) that arose in the third century BC, which later became an important point of reference in debates about Roman oratory.
Third-century origins
Hegesias of MagnesiaHegesias of Magnesia
Hegesias of Magnesia , Greek rhetorician, and historian, flourished about 300 BC. Strabo , speaks of him as the founder of the florid Asiatic style of composition....
was Asianism's first main representative and was considered its founder. Hegesias "developed and exaggerated stylistic effects harking back to the sophists and the Gorgianic
Gorgias
Gorgias ,Greek sophist, pre-socratic philosopher and rhetorician, was a native of Leontini in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years younger...
style."
The Roman perspective: Up to Cicero
The first known use of the term is in Rome, by Cicero in the mid-first century BC. It came into general and pejorative use for a florid style contrasting with AtticismAtticism
Atticism was a rhetorical movement that began in the first quarter of the 1st century BC; it may also refer to the wordings and phrasings typical of this movement, in contrast with spoken Greek, which continued to evolve in directions guided by the common usages of Hellenistic Greek.Atticism was...
, which it was held to have corrupted. The term reflects an association with writers in the Greek cities of Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
. "Asianism had a significant impact on Roman rhetoric, since many of the Greek teachers of rhetoric who came to Rome beginning with the 2d cent. B.C.E. were Asiatic Greeks." "Mildly Asianic tendencies" have been found in Gaius Gracchus
Gaius Gracchus
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus was a Roman Populari politician in the 2nd century BC and brother of the ill-fated reformer Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus...
' oratory, and "more marked" ones in Publius Sulpicius Rufus
Publius Sulpicius Rufus
Publius Sulpicius Rufus was an orator and statesman of the Roman Republic, legate in 89 to Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo in the Social War, and in 88 tribune of the plebs....
.
Cicero (Brutus 325) identifies two distinct modes of the Asiatic style: a more studied and symmetrical style (generally taken to mean "full of Gorgianic figures") employed by the historian Timaeus
Timaeus (historian)
Timaeus , ancient Greek historian, was born at Tauromenium in Sicily. Driven out of Sicily by Agathocles, he migrated to Athens, where he studied rhetoric under a pupil of Isocrates and lived for fifty years...
and the orators Menecles and Hierocles of Alabanda, and the rapid flow and ornate diction of Aeschines of Miletus
Aeschines of Miletus
Aeschines of Miletus was a contemporary of Cicero, and a distinguished orator in the Asiatic style of eloquence, which, according to Cicero, "rushes with an impetuous stream. But it is not merely fluent; its language is ornate and polished."...
and Aeschylus of Cnidus. Hegesias' "jerky, short clauses" may be placed in the first class, and Antiochus I of Commagene's Mount Nemrut
Mount Nemrut
Nemrut or Nemrud is a high mountain in southeastern Turkey, notable for the summit where a number of large statues is erected around what is assumed to be a royal tomb from the 1st century BCE.-Location and description:...
inscription in the second. The conflation of the two styles under a single name has been taken to reflect the essentially polemical significance of the term: "The key similarity is that they are both extreme and therefore bad; otherwise they could not be more different." According to Cicero, Quintus Hortensius
Quintus Hortensius
Quintus Hortensius Hortalus was a Roman orator and advocate.At the age of nineteen he made his first speech at the bar, and shortly afterwards successfully defended Nicomedes IV of Bithynia, one of Rome's dependants in the East, who had been deprived of his throne by his brother. From that time...
combined these traditions and made them at home in Latin oratory.
Cicero himself, rejecting the extreme plainness and purism of the Atticists, was attacked by critics such as Licinius Macer Calvus
Licinius Macer Calvus
Gaius Licinius Macer Calvus was an orator and poet of ancient Rome.Son of Licinius Macer and thus a member of the gens Licinia, he was a friend of the poet Catullus, whose style and subject matter he shared. Calvus' oratical style opposed the "Asian" school in favor of a simpler Attic model: he...
for being on the side of the Asiani; in response he declared his position as the "Roman Demosthenes
Demosthenes
Demosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...
" (noting that the preeminent Attic orator would not have qualified as Attic by the strict standards of the oratores Attici of first-century Rome). Thus Cicero professed a mixed or middle style (genus medium; Quintilian 12.10.18: genus Rhodium...velut medium...atque ex utroque mixtum) between the low or plain Attic style and the high Asiatic style, called the Rhodian style by association with Molo of Rhodes and Apollonius the Effeminate
Apollonius the Effeminate
Apollonius, surnamed ὁ μαλακος , a Greek rhetorician of Alabanda in Caria, who flourished about 120 BC. After studying under Menecles, chief of the Asiatic school of oratory, he settled in Rhodes, where he taught rhetoric. Among his pupils were Q...
(Rhodii, Cicero, Brutus xiii 51).
The Roman perspective: After Cicero
In the NeroNero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
nian period, the surviving portion of Petronius
Petronius
Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.-Life:...
' Satyricon
Satyricon
Satyricon is a Latin work of fiction in a mixture of prose and poetry. It is believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as a certain Titus Petronius...
begins midway through a rant in which the unreliable narrator, Encolpius, denounces the corruption of Roman literary taste and the Asiatic style in particular: "that flatulent, inflated magniloquence later imported from Asia to Athens has infected every aspiring writer like a pestilential breeze" (trans. Branham and Kinney). Quintilian
Quintilian
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...
accepted Cicero's attitude towards Asianism and Atticism, and adapted the earlier debate's polemical language, in which objectionable style is called effeminate, in his own De causis corruptae eloquentiae. In his Institutio Oratoria (XII.10), Quintilian diagnoses the roots of the two styles in terms of ethnic dispositions: "The Attici, refined and discriminating, tolerated nothing empty or gushing; but the Asiatic race somehow more swollen and boastful was inflated with a more vainglory of speaking" (trans. Amy Richlin). Pliny the Younger
Pliny the Younger
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo , better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him...
continued to profess the mixed style. The debate remained topical for Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
(as seen in Pliny's correspondence with him on oratorical styles in Letter 1.20) and contributes to the atmosphere of his Dialogus de oratoribus
Dialogus de oratoribus
The Dialogus de oratoribus is a short work attributed to Tacitus, in dialogue form, on the art of rhetoric. Its date of composition is unknown, though its dedication to Fabius Iustus places its publication around 102 AD....
.
Further reading
- Gualtiero Calboli, "Asiani (Oratori)," in Francesco Della Corte (ed.), Dizionario degli scrittori greci e latini, vol. 1, Milan: Marzorati, 1988, pp. 215-232
- Jakob Wisse, "Greeks, Romans, and the Rise of Atticism," in J. G. J. Abbenes et al. (eds.), Greek Literary Theory after Aristotle: A Collection of Papers in Honour of D. M. Schenkeveld, Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit Press, 1995, pp. 65-82