Appendix F: The Conflict between Asianism and Atticism

Although the rhetorical conflict which existed between the Attic and Asian styles of oratory goes at least as far back as Hellenistic times, we know very little of its stages and phases during the early period. Fortunately, however, its history from Cicero to Dio Chrysos­ tom—from about 50 βce to the end of the first century ce—is clear in at least broad outline.

The name “Asianism” appears first in extant literature in Cicero (Brutus 325); as with most human affairs, the thing existed before the name. Cicero used the term to characterize two styles of speaking:

1. one marked by epigrammatic, sharp, neat and charming expression,
2. the other marked by torrid and florid excess of language and de­ livery. In the first century ce the two styles often blended. Op­ posed to Asianism was Atticism, a style deliberately spare, economical, and matter-of-fact. Antony was Asian in style, Augustus, Attic (Plu­ tarch, Antony 2.5; Suet., Augustus 86.2-3. With the death of Antony, Atticism seems to have triumphed. After the death of Augustus, Asian­ ism appears to have had a revival (Seneca, Preface to Controversiae I.7-8; for a detailed elaboration of this point, see Lewis A. Sussman,

“The Elder Seneca’s Discussion of the Decline of Roman Eloquence,” California Studies in Classical Antiquity V [University of California Press: Berkeley, 1972] pp. 195-210; also, Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, p. 328). Atticism began, slowly, to decline; its epitaph Quintilian wrote around the end of the century, when he spoke of it as a cult, some of whose members were still around, “dry, juiceless, and bloodless” (Quintilian 12.10.14). Seneca the Elder stresses the features of the new Asianism: offensive zeal (obscena studia) for “singing and dancing,” together with effeminate coiffures, blandish­ ments, and high-pitched voices (Cicero, Orator 27; Quintilian, 1.8.2, 2.5.10-12): These features are scored by critics throughout the cen­ tury in mounting objection; even in the second century we find censure (e.g., Lucian’s “The Teacher of Rhetoric”). In the middle of the first century, under Nero, Petronius has his narrator attack the new style as it had infected the schools (Satiricon 1). He distinguishes between great orations (grandis oratio) and those which are “stained and turgid” (maculosa, turgida) and adds that the corrupt style—”windy and beyond the norm” (ventosa et enormis)—had “recently immigrated from Asia.” Pliny the Younger, writing at the end of the century, is even more pre­ cise than Petronius, for he dates the rise of Asianism to 59 ce under Nero (Epp. 2.15.9 ff.). In the second century, the historians of rhetoric also traced the revival to the period of Nero, especially to such rhetoricians as Nicetes and his pupil Scopelian (Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 511, 516 ff.). See also Appendix J.