Chapter 16: Oaths
Here is the place where figures are arranged in order; you see, these if they are handled as they ought to be—would not (as I said) be a small part of greatness. But since to be thoroughly precise about all of them would be a big job at present—rather, a limitless one—for the sake of confirming what was laid down before, I shall actually go through a few-as many as contribute to greatness in address. 2. Demosthenes brings in a demonstration on behalf of his political positions. What would have been natural usage?
You have not made a mistake, you who have taken up the struggle on behalf of Greek freedom. You have examples that are at home with this, for those at Mara thon did not make a mistake, nor those at Salamis or Plataea.
But indeed, as if he had suddenly been inspired by a divinity and, as it were, had been taken over by Apollo, he gave voice to his oath, swearing by the most excellent men of Greece—
It is not possible that you were mistaken—by those who faced the danger at Marathon—
In this one figure the oath (which I call apostrophe) he made divinities of his ancestors, and stirred us lo swear as if they were divinities, and he put into the souls of the judges a sense of those who risked danger for Athens, and he changed the nature of a demonstrative argument into a surpassing sublimity and emotion and a proof worthy of those strange oaths that go beyond nature, and simultaneously he sent his speech into the souls of those hearing like some antidote and cure, so that his hearers, lightened by the encomia, are made to take their stand and think themselves no less in fighting against Philip than they were at their victory prizes at Marathon and Salamis; in all of this his point of departure is the figure, having caught up his audience with him. 3. And certainly, they say, the seed of the oath is found in Eupolis:
By the fight at Marathon,
No one will take joy in giving my heart an ache.
But it is no great thing for anyone to swear by anything at all; what is most important is where and how and al what critical moment and for what purpose. But though in Eupolis there is nothing except the oath-made when the Athenians still had good luck and did not need exhortatory address, the poet did not make men deathless in his oath so that he might implant in those who heard him a speech worthy of their excellence, but he wandered away from those who risked danger to something without a soul—a fight. In Demosthenes the oath is practical, made to those who had been worsted, so that Chaeronea should no longer seem to the Athenians a misfortune; and at the same time, as I said, the very same oath is a demonstration that they have not made a mistake—it is an example, a proof, an encomium, an encouragement. 4. And since someone might confront the speaker, saying—Do you talk of defeat when you have made the policy, and then do you swear an oath by victories?—because of this he consistently regulates and safely leads his words, teaching us that even in Dionysiac revels it is necessary to be sober: he says Those who risked danger at Marathon and who fought on the seas at Salamis and Artemisium, and who fought in the ranks at Plataea.Nowhere does he say “having been victorious;” but everywhere he has, like a thief, kept back the word “victorious” from the outcome, since indeed there the luck was good but was the opposite of that at Chaeronea. For this reason also, anticipating the audience, he directly adds:
… all of whom the city buried, Aeschines, not only those who kept things upright.
Commentary
figures: these are the “figures of speech”; see ch. 8, n. on figures for the formal definition. Longinus does not discuss all the various “figures” clas sified by the rhetoricians. He exercises upon the subject matter that power of selection which he discussed in ch. 10, and the principle of selection is con stant: does the figure enable the speaker to convey his emotion to the audience so that they have a kind of communion with him? Such communion, sympa thetic excitement, co-enthusiasm con stitute his steady criteria. The subject of “figures” is vexed: Russell’s note on ch. 16 summarizes the difficulties.
The rhetorical handbooks tend to agree that “figure” pertains to an inver sion of syntax or “the way things are put together,” “trope,” or “turn of mannerism” to inversions of individual words. The very idea of “inversion” as Russell points out-rests on the assumption that there is a “natural” way of saying things; and this assump tion in turn rests on the question of usage and evolution in language. Is an idiom, for example, a way of saying something which is congenital or his torical in a language?
There might not be just one right way to do or say something, but there were wrong ways. In ch. 5 of his book On Composition, Dionysius of Hali carnassus recounts his wrestlings with the problem. We quote from Rhys Roberts’ translation:
Well, my notion was that we ought to follow mother nature to the utmost, and to link together the parts of speech according to her promptings. For example, I thought I must place nouns be fore verbs: the former, you see, indicate the substance, the latter the accident, and in the nature of things the substance takes prece dence of its accidents [such was Hobbes’ view, and it controlled his style] … The principle is attractive but I came to the con clusion that it was not sound.
Dionysius got into difficulty, of course, because he took too narrow a concep tion of nature, one based solely on phys ics and metaphysics; and nature—even when “methodiz’d,” as Pope puts it—is more various and flexible than meta physics. It is still not without rules and theories, but these rules and theories must be in accordance with the subject matter.
Longinus, and the ancient critics in general, believed that “nature” was constant, although perhaps not immutable, a view embraced by all who are classical or neoclassical in their thinking. Pope’s doctrine (Essay on Criticism 1.68-69) is the locus classicus in English:
First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same.
The doctrine of nature’s constancy underlies all of western civilization, despite the temporary dislocation of, and consequent readjustment in, the history of science by such notable phenomena as Darwin’s theory of evo lution and Einstein’s theory of relativ ity. Even if change—whether progress or its obverse, degeneration—be the law of nature, it is change according to law. Such is the message of Spenser’s Mutability Cantos and Whitehead’s Process as Reality. When Hamlet wished to “hold the mirror up to nature,” he knew that there would be something for the mirror to reflect, and that man could see it. What Hamlet wanted art to do, Bacon wished for science. Tennyson’s line “The old order changeth, giving way to the new” is a recognition that the stuff of things is fluid, not that there is not order. All art and all science is based on the defacto and de jure assumption that nature is orderly even in its apparent randomness and chaos.
If, then, nature be a process of con stancy, language itself, whether it be a divine or human institution, is a part of nature. Longinus was not naive, and he saw as well as we can, that language had certain constant formulations against which variations could be played off. In English, for example, such a powerful mixture of barbarism and solecism as “Is you is or is you ain’t my baby” relies for its power on a norm which no amount of evolution can change: the concept of person and plurality, to say nothing of the emotional situation which underlies the syntax.
The Greek word for “figure” comes from the verb meaning “to have, to hold”; the English “figure” comes from the Latin Jingo, which means “to shape, to give form to”—it is the same word as “fiction.” Since the phrase “figure of speech” is now domesticated in English as a translation of the Greek word, we have chosen to retain it. The reader, however, should keep in mind that the Greek word for “figure” always suggests (a) the outward appearance in shape or form of something; (b) such a “some thing” could be the ancient atom which was immutable-or the ancient dancer, who was fluid as a whole but who, in his fluidity, adopted “figures” or “positions,” like a modern ballet dancer. The dancer’s “figure” was what he “held on to.” What the “stuff” underlying the fluidity of form be is a metaphysical question, embodied in antiquity in such diverse forms as the myth of Proteus and Aristotle’s Meta physics.
Language, then, had a natural norm, but could also, because of its fluid and plastic and fictive nature, take on shapes or figures. We should observe that Lon ginus employs the phrase (in 16.2, just below) “the natural usage”; and such a phrase implies the opposite, “the usage contrary to nature.” Just as in our mod ern notion of a fluid nature operating within certain analyi.able and hence fixed laws, the Greeks saw language as operating variously and yet within norms. Variations from the norm were called “figures” and “turns of manner isms”; excessive variations were called “barbarisms” and “solecisms”-what we call “malapropisms,” “illiteracies,” or (more generally) “not idiomatic” or “not English.”
(as I said): the reference is to ch. 7, where Longinus specifically outlines the topics which he is taking up in order.
a big job … limitless one: the phrase “a big job” recalls Aristotle’s quailing at the notion of having to write a complete history of the origin of tragedy (Poetics l 449a30), where he uses the same phrase; the phrase “a limitless one” resembles the one Alexander uses, in his book On Figures (Spengel III.9), when he remarks that some say the number of figures is “without limit.”
a few: Longinus selects, in chs. 16 through 29, from the numerous and often hair-splitting distinctions made by the later rhetoricians. He accepts-as not all did-the distinction between “figures of thought” and “figures of speech,” and deals with “figures of thought” first.
It will be easiest to grasp the distinc tion if we start with a “figure of speech”: “Only through time is time conquered” (T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton). The line achieves some degree of power from the repetition and juxta position of the word “time.” If we reverse the clauses, we lose this figure of speech, although the idea remains: Time is conquered only through time. Incidentally, we now have a new figure, that called the “cir cle,” in which a sentence begins and ends with the same word.
In a figure of thought, changes in word-order do not affect the rhetorical cast of the idea expressed. For example, in Frost’s distich Precaution, we find that a reversal of the lines does not affect the sense, although the impact is altered: “I never dared be radical when young/ For fear I should be conservative when old.” And as we can alter the word-order and the order of the lines, so, too, we can alter the words and retain the idea, as for example: In my youth I lacked the temerity to engage in ultra-liberal acti vities/Because of my apprehension that I might in later years be a reactionary. Or, to take an example of what the rhe toricians called “metastasis”: “It is He that hath made us, and not we our selves” (Psalms 100). Once again, change in the word-order or even the words can be made and the sense will remain.
Among the various figures of thought listed by the rhetorical handbooks are irony, paraleipsis (praeteritio), and al legory; but there was much argument about the whole question. Alexander, in On Figures, reviews the various the ories (Spengel IIl.11-14); he concludes that the natural speech of men often contains figures of thought, but these are only to be called so when they are deliberate.
Demosthenes brings in . . . natural usage: the passage from Demosthenes (I8.208) was a locus classicus even in classical times: Russell cites many of those who admired it. For the ethical and philosophical problem implied in the phrase “natural usage,” seen. on figures above. Longinus’ point requires that both this quotation and the one following be taken together, since the rhetorical device being analyzed is the “oath.” In a rhetorical maneuver of his own, Longinus splits the passage into two parts in order to emphasize the power of the oath.
Aristotle (Rhetoric 1375a22) classifies oaths as the last of five kinds of proof which are “without technique,” that is, the speaker does not invent them; the five are laws, witnesses, contracts, tor ture, and oaths. In 1377a8 ff., Aristotle lists four subdivisions of the category oaths; that used by Demosthenes would fall under the subdivision “taking an oath without asking the opponent to take one also.”
In the later rhetoricians, the oath was classified as a figure based on character rather than practical argument. Her mogenes, in his book On the Method for Powerful Effects (Spengel 11.442-43), brietty traces the development of this “idea” from Homer through Plato to Demosthenes.
Oaths in this sense are not a common part of English idiom. Henn (p. 39) cites an oath from King john (V.ii): “By all the blood that ever fury breathed.”
Macaulay, in his Lays of Ancient Rome and Kipling in some of his short stories have experimented with oaths, but they generally rely on pagan and foreign deities for their effects.
The problem is dramatized by Shake speare in Romeo and Juliet (II.ii):
Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I vow …
Juliet: Oh, swear not by the moon …
Romeo: What shall I swear by?
Juliet: Do not swear at all. Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gra cious self,
Which is the god of my idol atry,
And I’ll believe thee.
In King John (I.i), the Bastard tells his mother that he knows he is a bastard and asks her who his real father is; his mother, in horror, exclaims: “Hast thou denied thyself a Faulconbridge?” To this the Bastard replies with an oath more ingenious than powerful: “As faithfully as I deny the Devil.”
swearing by: the quotation is a contin uation of that just quoted. As usual, when Longinus wishes to speak of good inspiration, he gives credit to Apollo rather than to Dionysus.
apostrophe: the use of this word as a technical term in rhetoric is apparently very late; LSJ lists as its earliest source Philodemus, first century bce. The word appears frequently in Quintilian and in later rhetorical theorists, but none uses the word as Longinus does.
“Apostrophe” is a figure; it had a basic sense—a speech diverting attention from the persona of the judge, but also had many variations, all of which involve a “turning away” from the subject being discussed or from the person being addressed to something else. Some very late rhetoricians (e.g., the anonymous scholia on Hermogenes’ On Ideas, Walz VII.978) distinguish between “apostrophe” and “hypostrophe,” the first referring to persons, the second to things.
Examples of such “turning away” are generally found in sudden appeals made from the adversary to the judge, from the judge to the adversary, from the adversary to some piece of evidence or to some possession of his, from any one of these to the gods. Quintilian extends the figure Lo allow for diversion of attention or for simulated expectation. Yet despite this liberal interpretation, Longinus’s extension of the term is unique, as he himself is aware: “which very things I call ‘apostrophe.'” Longi n us is claiming to see a new extension or form of the figure: not simply shift ing from the person or subject LO the gods, but combining such a shift with apotheosis. Since no later rhetorician seems to discuss this classification, we may assume that it was not only original but also still-born—the fate of his work as a whole in antiquity.
in Eupolis: from a lost play by the comic poet Eupolis, entitled Demoi (fr.90, Kock), in which Eupolis brought back the ghosts of ancient Athenian heroes like Pericles, Solon, and Milti ades to speak; these lines were spoken by Miltiades. The words are a parody of the Medea 389 ff. by Euripides. In the comments which Longinus makes on the notion that Demosthenes “bor rowed” from Eupolis, he displays liter ary criticism at its highest. Not for him the kind of mechanical source-hunting clearly common in his day—which later led Tennyson to remark that if he used the phrase “blue sky,” the critics would accuse him of taking “blue” from Shelley and “sky” from Keats.
still had good luck: Eupolis’ play was produced in 412, after the disastrous Si cilian expedition. It is for this reason that Russell questions Longin us’ phrase “good luck.” Perhaps, though, in com parison with the situation after Chae ronea, even the disaster in Sicily was not overwhelming, for Athens was so strong she was not defeated until eight years after her defeat in Sicily.
a fight: since the rhetorical device of the oath is not a feature of modern oratory, the point which Longin us makes is not dramatically clear: the speaker in Eupo lis’ play swears by the battle—an inan imate thing; Demosthenes swears by the men who fought there and who achieved an immortal glory, which, in part, Demosthenes gives them by his oath.
an example, a proof, an encomium, an encouragement: all four words are tech nical terms in rhetoric. The “example” is defined in the handbooks as the inser tion of a similar action or event for the purpose of proof or encouragement; the locus classicus is the analogy drawn by Phoenix between Achilles and Meleager in Book 9 of the Iliad. For “proof” see ch. 12, n. on proof. For “encomium” see ch. 8, n. on encomia, ceremonial speeches, and “show” speeches. An “en couragement” refers toa speech designed to promote interest in a subject or way of life, to make a choice, whether moral or practical or both.
safely: the metaphor is either military (a “safe-conduct”) or rhetorical (a con vincing argument) or both.
to be sober: perhaps a submerged quo tation from Euripides’ Bacchae (3I 7); Euripides says that a prudent woman will not be corrupted even in Bacchic revels. Longinus is emphasizing again the Apollonian rather than Dionysiac character of Demosthenes’ inspired pas sion.
he says: a quasi-paraphrased quotation from the same passage in Demosthenes as the previous quotations (18.208). Einarson, in his translation, italicizes the verbs quoted to emphasize the point which Longinus is making, a clever device.
he directly adds: the quotation comes from the same passages as those cited previously (18.208); the vocative “Aeschines” is an example of apos trophe.
