schools to take a wider range.1 They began on the one hand to be divorced from even a fictitious connection with the law-courts, and on the other to be directly imitative of the styles of ancient authors. From the older Rhetoric, the study of forensic logic and speech with a view to the actual practice in the law-courts, which necessarily still went on, there branched out the new Rhetoric, which was sometimes specially known as Sophistic.

Sophistic proceeded for the most part upon the old lines. Its literary compositions preserved the old name, "exercises" (ueλéra), as though they were still the rehearsals of actual pleadings. They were divided into two kinds, Theses and Hypotheses, according as a subject was argued in general terms or names were introduced.2 The latter were the more common. Their subjects were sometimes fictitious, sometimes taken from real history. Of the first of these there is a good example in Lucian's

1 There is a distinction between τὰ δικανικὰ and τὰ ἀμφὶ μελέτην, and both are distinguished from тà TоλɩTIKά in Philostratus, V. S. 2. 20, p. 103. Elsewhere Philostratus speaks of a sophist as being δικανικοῦ μὲν σοφιστικώτερος σοφιστοῦ δὲ δικανικώτερος, “ too much of a litterateur to be a good lawyer, and too much of a lawyer to be a good litterateur," 2. 23. 4, p. 108.

2 θέσις is defined by Hermogenes as ἀμφισβητημένου πράγματος ζήτησις, Progymn. 11, Walz, i. p. 50: ὑπόθεσις as τῶν ἐπὶ μέρους ζήτησις, Sext. Εmp. adv. Geom. 3. 4: so τὰς εἰς ὄνομα ὑποθέσεις, Philostr. V. S. prooem. The distinction is best formulated by Quintilian, 3. 5. 5, who gives the equivalent Latin terms, "infinitæ (quæstiones) sunt quæ remotis personis et temporibus et locis cæterisque similibus in utramque partem tractantur quod Græci féouv dicunt, Cicero propositum... finitæ autem sunt ex complexu rerum personarum temporum cæterorumque hæ voléveis a Græcis dicuntur, caussa a nostris, in his omnis quæstio videtur circa res personasque consistere."

Tyrannicide: the situation is, that a man goes into the citadel of a town for the purpose of killing a tyrant: not finding the tyrant, the man kills the tyrant's son: the tyrant coming in and seeing his son with the sword in his body, stabs himself: the man claims the reward as a tyrannicide. Of the second kind of subjects, there are such instances as "Demosthenes defending himself against the charge of having taken the bribe which Demades brought," and "The Athenians wounded at Syracuse beg their comrades who are returning to Athens to put them to death."2 The Homeric cycle was an unfailing mine of subjects: the Persian wars hardly less so. "Would you like to hear a sensible speech about Agamemnon, or are you sick of hearing speeches about Agamemnon, Atreus' son?" asks Dio Chrysostom in one of his Dialogues. "I should not take amiss even a speech about Adrastus or Tantalus or Pelops, if I were likely to get good from it," is the polite reply. In the treatment of both kinds of subjects, stress was laid on dramatic consistency. The character, whether real or supposed, was required to speak in an appropriate style. The "exercise" had to be recited with an appropriate into

1 Philostr. V. S. 1. 25. 7, 16.

2 Ib. 2. 5. 3.

3 Dio Chrysost. lvi. vol. ii. p. 176.

4 πроσшжожоuα, for which sce Theon. Progymnasmata, c. 10, ed. Spengel, vol. ii. 115: Quintil. 3. 8. 49; 9. 2. 29. The word Tокρíveolaι was sometimes applied, e.g. Philostr. V. S. 1. 21. 5, of Scopelianus, whose action in subjects taken from the Persian wars was so vehement that a partizan of one of his rivals accused him of beating a tambourine. "Yes, I do," he said; "but my tambourine is the shield of Ajax."

nation.

Sometimes the dramatic effect was heightened by the introduction of two or more characters: for example, one of the surviving pièces of Dio Chrysostom 2 consists of a wrangle in tragic style, and with tragic diction, between Odysseus and Philoctetes.

This kind of Sophistic has an interest in two respects, apart from its relation to contemporary life. It gave birth to the Greck romance, which is the progenitor of the mediæval romance and of the modern novel: 3 a notable example of such a sophistical romance in Christian literature is the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions; in non-Christian literature, Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana. It gave birth also to the writings in the style of ancient authors which, though commonly included in the collected works of those authors, betray their later origin by either the poverty of their thought or inadvertent neologisms of expression: for example, the Eryxias of Plato.4

But though Sophistic grew mainly out of Rhetoric, it had its roots also in Philosophy. It was sometimes

1 "They made their voice sweet with musical cadences, and modulations of tone, and echoed resonances:" Plut. de aud. 7, p. 41. So at Rome Favorinus is said to have "charmed even those who did not know Greek by the sound of his voice, and the significance of his look, and the cadence of his sentences:" Philostr. V. S. 1. 7, p. 208.

2 Orat. lix.

3 Rohde, pp. 336 sqq.

This trained habit of composing in different styles is of importance in relation to Christian as well as to non-Christian literature. A good study of the latter is afforded by Arrian, whose "chameleon-like style" (Kaibel, Dionysios von Halikarnass und die Sophistik, Hermes, Bd. xx. 1875, p. 508) imitates Thucydides, Herodotus, and Xenophon, by turns.

defined as Rhetoric philosophizing. It threw off altogether the fiction of a law-court or an assembly, and discussed in continuous speech the larger themes of morality or theology. Its utterances were not "exercises" but "discourses" (diaλéges).2 It preached sermons. It created not only a new literature, but also a new profession. The class of men against whom Plato had inveighed had become merged in the general class of educators: they were specialized partly as grammarians, partly as rhetoricians: the word "sophist," to which the invectives had failed to attach a permanent stigma, remained partly as a generic name, and partly as a special name for the new class of public talkers. They differed from philosophers in that they did not mark themselves off from the rest of the world, and profess their devotion to a higher standard of living, by wearing a special dress. They were a notable feature of their time. Some of them had a fixed residence and gave discourses regularly, like

1 Philostratus, V. S. 1. p. 202, τὴν ἀρχαίαν σοφιστικὴν ῥητορικὴν ἡγεῖσθαι χρὴ φιλοσοφοῦσαν. διαλέγεται μὲν γὰρ ὑπὲρ ὧν οἱ φιλοσοφοῦντες ἃ δὲ ἐκεῖνοι τὰς ἐρωτήσεις ὑποκαθήμενοι καὶ τὰ σμικρὰ τῶν ζητουμένων προβιβάζοντες οὔπω φασὶ γιγνώσκειν ταῦτα ὁ παλαιὸς σοφιστὴς ὡς εἰδὼς λέγει : ib. p. 4, σοφιστὰς δὲ οἱ παλαιοὶ ἐπωνόμαζον οὐ μόνον τῶν ῥητόρων τοὺς ὑπερφωνοῦντάς τε καὶ λαμπρούς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων τοὺς ξὺν εὐροίᾳ ἑρμηνεύοντας.

2 On the distinction, see Kayser's preface to his editions of Philostratus, p. vii.

3 Philostratus, V. S. 2. 3, p. 245, says that the famous sophist Aristocles lived the earlier part of his life as a Peripatetic philosopher, "squalid and unkempt and ill-clothed," but that when he passed into the ranks of the sophists he brushed off his squalor, and brought luxury and the pleasures of music into his life. On the philosopher's dress, see below, Lecture VI. P. 151.

the "stated minister" of a modern congregation: some of them travelled from place to place. The audience was usually gathered by invitation. There were no newspaper advertisements in those days, and no bells; consequently the invitations were personal. They were made sometimes by a "card" or "programme," sometimes by word of mouth: "Come and hear me lecture to-day." Sometimes a messenger was sent round; sometimes the sophist would go round himself and knock at people's doors and promise them a fine discourse.2

The audience of a travelling sophist was what might be expected among a people who lived very much out of doors. When a stranger appeared who was known by his professional dress, and whose reputation had preceded him, the people clustered round him-like iron filings sticking to a magnet, says Themistius. If there was a resident sophist, the two were pitted together; just as if, in modern times, a famous violinist from Paris or Vienna might be asked to play at the next concert with

1 Epictetus, Diss. 3. 21. 6; 3. 23. 6, 23, 28: so Pliny, Epist. 3. 18 (of invitations to recitations), "non per codicillos (cards of invitation), non per libellos (programmes, probably containing extracts), sed 'si commodum esset,' et 'si valde vacaret' admoniti." Cf. Lucian, Hermotimus, 11, where a sophist is represented as hanging up a noticeboard over his gateway, "No lecture to-day."

Philostratus, V. S. 2. 10. 5, says that the enthusiasm at Rome about the sophist Adrian was such that when his messenger (TOû Ts ἀκροάσεως ἀγγέλου) appeared on the scene with a notice of lecture, the people rose up, whether from the senate or the circus, and flocked to the Athenæum to hear him. Synesius, Dio (in Dio Chrys. ed. Dind, vol. ii. 342), speaks of θυροκοπήσαντα καὶ ἐπαγγείλαντα τοῖς ἐν ἄστει μειρακίοις ἀκρόαμα ἐπιδέξιον.

3 Orat. 23, p. 360, ed. Dind.