SECOND SOPHISTIC

"New, or Second Sophistic" is a term used in the third century a.d. by Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists in reference to Greek rhetoric and oratory after Isocrates (436–338). Today the first century is used as the boundary between the "New Sophistic" and the "Old," and with a modern sense of the unity of Greco-Roman civilization, "Second (New) Sophistic" now includes both late-Greek models and derivative Latin rhetoric, pagan writings and their Christian counterparts. Philostratus finds the essentials of the New Sophistic already elaborated in the Old; but the Old had, in its earlier stages, a far more comprehensive aim than the production of oratory. Even in its oratorical achievements the Old Rhetoric was far superior in style and content to the theatrics of its successor. For in the turbulent decades from Pericles to Alexander, as in the last century of the Roman Republic, the Old Sophistic was self-transcendent. Moreover, it constantly competed with philosophy after Socrates. The Second Sophistic, as oratory, had no rival until Christianity adopted its devices. Apart from its chronological function, the term also denotes the aesthetic decline and pervasive extravagances in oratory and other literary genres, both pagan and Christian, from a.d. 100 to 500.

Rhetoric as Precursor. The Old Sophistic began in the fifth century b.c. as a method of educating men capable of solving the complex political problems of the new democratic city-state after the Persian Wars. In the sixth century poetry had still been the educational medium of leadership, instilling a sense of hereditary nobility in a simple, aristocratic society. In the fourth century, Plato, carrying on the polemic for reform initiated by Socrates, sought to replace poetry by philosophy in this office. Instead, the Sophistic prevailed in education from the fifth century onward, despite the poverty in theory of which the philosophers justly accused it. It lasted not only because it served to awaken the intellectual powers required for leadership, as did poetry and philosophy, but also because it invented an instrument for quickly mastering the growing individualism of the citizens by winning votes, and later, for furnishing this individualism with opportunities for identification, escape and entertainment to fill the void left by the failure of democracy. This instrument, rhetoric, is comparable in many respects to modern liberal education in its aims, prerequisites and curriculums. Although it was the pioneer for Western prose of ordered discourse and those stylistic adornments hitherto the monopoly of poetry, it was at the same time the precursor of the aesthetic excess that later characterized the absurdities of the Second Sophistic. Gorgias, who brought the Sicilian rhetoric into Athens in 427 b.c., called rhetoric "the artificer of persuasion." In other words, it was the key to power (and to ultimate self-corruption) not only in the legislature and courtroom but also in public assembly where suffrage was limited to applauding or jeering the performer and his performance.

Dominance of Epideixis. The obscure beginnings of rhetoric in fifth-century Athens are embodied in the remains of the deliberative oratory used in legislative gatherings and in the forensic oratory of the courts, and are preserved in Greek from Antiphon through Aeschines. However, a third type, epideixis or display oratory, anticipating the essentials of the Second Sophistic, is found in remnants of Gorgias. The subject matter for Gorgias was incidental to oratorical and histrionic technique. Gorgias' mindless confection in praise of Helen of Troy, for example, is a euphonious, calculated outpouring of strange words, audacious metaphors, parallelisms of structure and sound, sense and no-sense substituted for substance. It is a demonstration of what the orator could effect without conveying a message. Isocrates in the fourth century, reacting to the anti-oratical polemic of Plato, tried to give solidity to the epideixis by introducing Panhellenic and patriotic ideals, but failed. The reliance of Sicilian rhetoric on probability rather than proof, as well as the philosophical relativism of leading sophists, hindered the Isocratic reform. The decline of integrity resulting from the Peloponnesian War, the cloistral character of the schools even in politically active periods, and the tendency of oratory to pervert values led to further decline in rhetorical responsibility. With the collapse of Isocrates' Panhellenism and the last illusions about Greek liberty, unabashed epideixis prevailed as a symbol of the general contemporary flight from reality, and in its long reign over rhetoric and oratory left its impress on other literary forms until the end of antiquity.

Fusion of Asianism and Atticism. In Athens, after the death of Alexander, epideixis was confined mostly to the schools, but it found a public outlet in the cities of Asia Minor where departures from the best Attic standards paralleled the soft ways of the people. There the short, choppy sentences of Gorgias with their heavy cadences, meaningless metaphors, elaborate circumlocutions, outlandish themes and specious loftiness could flourish uninhibited by recollections of Isocrates and his Attic predecessors. These new extravagances spread over the Mediterranean basin, to win the pejorative shibboleth "Asianism" as early as 300 b.c. About a century later, in reaction to the excesses of Asianism, "Atticism" arose, with its equally excessive adherence to classic Attic style. Out of the commingling of these two archaistic escapes from the present came, c. a.d. 100, the Second Sophistic. This may be described as the epideictic oratory of Asia Minor tempered by the influence of Alexandrian scholarship.

Influence of the Second Sophistic. Despite the dominance of the Second Sophistic from c. the second to sixth century many writers by intention, taste, or indifference refrained from its extravagances. Among these were Epictetus and Plutarch, as well as Lucian, Arrian, Appian, Ptolemy and Cassius Dio. Marcus Aurelius also was impervious to it, as were most of the earliest Christian writers. The Christian apologists retained traces of their sophistic training despite themselves. But the Neoplatonist Plotinus was concerned with thought, not style, while Clement of Alexandria purposely did not "write well," and origen was allergic to false rhetoric. Only with St. gregory thaumaturgus among Christians does preoccupation with style become conspicuous. Christianity in its final struggles with paganism, in the fourth century, helped to save orators from the worst of the standard sophistic excesses. Such pagans as Libanius and Himerius and the great Christian orators, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen and John Chrysostom—although excessive at times, even in the denouncing of sophistic devices—nevertheless rose above their training. With the settling of the Trinitarian controversies, the banning of public pagan worship, Augustine's adapting of the best pagan techniques to Christian rhetoric (Doctr. christ. ) and the spread of asceticism and mysticism, the Second Sophistic had almost disappeared by the early sixth century. It had been the most conspicuous surviving symptom of the malaise of the age and a classic example of the failure of an art form to transcend itself.

Bibliography: g. lehnert, "Griechisch-römische Rhetorik 1915–1925," Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 285 (1944–55) 5–11; for a digest of literature from 1874 to 1914 and complete coverage of the literature from 1915 to 1925. j. m. campbell, The Influence of the Second Sophistic on the Style of the Sermons of St. Basil the Great (Catholic University of America Patristic Stud. 2; Washington 1922). c. s. baldwin, Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic to 1400 (New York 1928). w. kroll, Paulys Realenzyklopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed. g. wissowa et al., (Stuttgart 1893–) Suppl. 7:1039–1138. k. gerth, ibid., Suppl. 8:719–782.

[j. m. campbell]