Attitudes to rhetoric in the Old and New Academy

Abstract

The current work is an attempt to reconstruct the history of rhetoric in the Academy formed by Plato in the centuries following his death, up to and including the years of Cameades and his successors. The main texts under examination are Quintilian’s Institutio Oratorio, Sextus Empiricus’ Against the Mathematicians, Cicero’s De Oratore, Philodemus’ Rhetorica as well as Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers. In the course of these texts, the issues under discussion are the following: 1. The attitude of Plato’s successors in the Academy towards the Platonic past, especially the criticism of rhetoric. 2. The formulation of a single position towards the Platonic legacy, especially the criteria for accepting or rejecting views as compatible or not, efficient or not, plausible or implausible. 3. The preservation of the Academy as an influential educational institution in Athens and Greece, with further intellectual, political and social implications. The ongoing criticism and debate of the discipline depends on its status and influence at any given time. Since every scientific or even social debate had its highs and lows, depending on the parallel intellectual movements as well as the needs of the society, the intensity of the criticism coincides with the level of the influence of the rhetoricians and rhetoric as such. I argue that despite what is widely believed we can trace continuity in the interest in the theory, criticism and morality of rhetoric, even the practice of rhetoric following Plato’s death or even during his later years in the Academy, although we do not have a considerable production of either rhetorical theory or criticism. Furthermore, I argue that the rivalry with the school of Isocrates determines the Old Academy’s attitude towards rhetoric, while the model of rhetoric offered by the Stoa proves to be a defining factor on the sceptical Academy’s criticism of the discipline.