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Atticist-Asia nist controversy
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o Classicalrhetoric
o Stvle
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Atticist-Asianist controversy. The termsAtticist andAsiamsl were
employedover a period of severalcenturies(startingprobably in the
third century bce) in a debatethat was concernedas much with
ideologr and literary identity as it was with style and language.
Developedin the Greek world, the terminolory was taken up by the
Romansat a critical point in their literary history. It would be a
mistaketo look for unity in a debatethat spannedso many centuries
and two different literary cultures.
In the secondhalf of the first century bce, we find at Rome a
bad-temperedargUmentamongwriters and oratorsover how the
appellationAttic was to be employed.This purely Roman debate,
like much of the literary and intellectualrevolution at Rome, was
conductedin terminolory taken over from Greek. Insofar asAttic
had any meaning it denoteda plain and unadornedstyle of
composition;but its more irnportantfunction was evaluative.It was
usedby the self-proclaimedAtticists as a term of approbationfor the
Roman heirs of the greatfiguresof the classicalGreek tradition
(particularly Lysias, Demosthenes,Xenophon,and Isocrates):Attica
is the reglon of Greecein which Athens is located.The antonym of
Attic, on this view, wasAsianist, aterm best defined negatively; it
. denotedall the bad qualitiesthat a dedicatedAtticist should avoid.
The principalobject of this needlingwas Cicero (10643 bce),the
most famousorator of his day. RomanAtticism was thus in part a
normal literary reactionto a familiar and prestigiousstyle, described
"full" (Cicero'ssentencesare often long and
by Quintilian as
complexocharacterizndbyattentionto balance,rhythm, and
rhetorical effect). Much of our insight into this ephemeraldispute
comesfrom Cicero'sBrutus andOrator (both composedin 46 bce),
in which he discussesstyle and repliesto his opponents.He argues'
with somejustification, that it is absurdto restrict the term Attic to a
singlestyle (it was identified with the simpleand unaffected style of
Lysias by the Atticists), sincea whole rangeof stylesand registers
are found in the Athenian orators.Part of Cicero'sirritation seemsto
stem from the implicit threat by the Atticists to deny him the title of
the RomanDemosthenes.SinceDemostheneswas generallyheld to
representthe acmeof Athenian rhetoric, Cicero would become
ineligible for this position if he were proven to be un-Attic. The name
most associatedwith the Atticists is G. Licinius Calvus (8247 bce),
and it is unlikely to be a coincidencethat Calvus was a friend of the
neoteric poet Catullus:both men championedthe Callimachean
literary aesthetic,which rejectedthe swollen and the large-scalein
favor of the "slender \{sss"-in other words, a smaller-scaleand
restrainedstyle of composition.
The debatein Rome seernsto presupposean argumentusingthe
sameterms in the Hellenistic schoolsof rhetoric. There is,
unfortunately,a gap in our Greek sourcesbetweenthe end of the
fourth century bce and the time of Cicero, which makesit diffrcult to
understandwhat exactly the debatewas and what force the terms
..
Atticist andAsianisl may have had. After the end of the fourth
century, the Greeksseemincreasinglyto have looked back to the
"classical" period as a literary and linguistic high point, deviation
from which could only meandecline.The establishmentof a
classicalcanon led to a conceptionof stylistic and linguistic norms,
which affected almostthe entire subsequenthistory of the Greek
language(this linguistic insecuritycoincidedwith the collapseof
Greek political autonomyfollowingthe Macedonianconquest).It is
likely, then, that Atticism had its roots in a Hellenistic tradition of
declamationthat looked back to the greatmastersof classical
rhetoric and insistedon rigid adherenceto the lexicon, syntax, and
style of a period of the languagethat was increasinglyremote.The
requirementfor "correct Greek" (Hell1nizefn) is laid down in
Aristotle'sRhetoric, and was reiteratedby Stoic writers. At this
early stage,the emphasisseemsto have beenon clarity, for which
correct diction (grammarand syntax) was necessary:the choice of
vocabulary is, of course,a gray area betweendiction and style. The
Attic movementduringthe Hellenistic period was probably marked
by an increasingemphasison stylistic conformity.
The antonymAsianismis more diffrcult to unravel. There is some
evidencethat at the end of the fourth century, a separatetradition
of rhetoric evolved in the easternMeditenanean.This tradition to
someextent loosenedthe strangleholdof classicismand encouraged
a greaterdegee of creativity and innovation in composition.To this
extent, the term had a geographicalcontent, and its most famous
exponentwas Hegesiasof Magnesiain Lydia. By the first century
bce, however,the termsAttic andAsianic denotedthe style that a
speakeradoptedrather than his geographicalprovenance,and even
from a stylistic perspectivewere often devoid of useful descriptive
content about a particular orator'stechnique.Cicero mentionstwo
different rhetoricaltechniques,which he calls Asianic (he is talking
of Greek, but then moveswithout a break to talking of Latin): one
was "pointed and epigrammatic,"and the other was'opassionate
and rapid." Cicero'sattitude toward Asianic style is ambiguous:
while he doesnot condemnit outright (ust as he refusesto endorse
a simplisticview of Atticism), most of the oratorsto whom he
appliesthe designationare criticized for their excesses.Much of the
point of the oppositionwas in fact ideological,stemmingfrom a
long tradition of viewing Asia Minor and the East as a repository of
anticlassicalvalues:comrpt, barbarian,and effeminate.This
favored the eventualdisappearanceof the term Asianic (since there
was reluctanceto apply it to one'sown side); but it doesnot mean
that the Asianic sryle (as defined,and perhapsoccasionally
exemplified,by Cicero) was uninfluential in the subsequent
developmentof prosestyle in Rome.
In the Greek world, the aspirationto Atticize enjoyeda new vogue
in the period known as the SecondSophistic(c.60-230 ce), in
which the ability to reproducethe Greek of the Athenian masters
was a hallmark of educationthat was indispensablefor civic
prestigeand political power.
[Seealso Classicalrhetoric; and Stvle.]
Bibliography
Tullius.BrutusandOrator.Textandtranslation
Cicero,tutaicus
Library.
Loebclassical
andH. M. Hubbell.
byG.L. Hendrickson
Mass.,lg3g.ffi
Carrbridgs,
Fairweather,Janet.Senecathe Elder. Cambridge,U.K., 1981.
Containsa useful review of the Roman sourcesin section IV. I'
"Asianism, Atticisnr, and the Style of the Declaimers,"pp.PP.
243-303.irnffitfitl
Flashar,H. Le Classicismed Romeaux lers sidclesavant et aprds
J.-C. Geneva(EntretiensHardt 25),1979. A collectionof nine
essaysin English,French,and Germanby leadingscholarsin the
field.ffil
Kennedy,GeorgeA., ed. TheCambridgeHistoryof Literary
U.K., 1989.
Cambridge,
Criticism,vol. l, ClassicalCriticisim.
"The
ffil
Growthof Literature
SeeespeciallyE. Fantham,
andCriticismat Rome,"pp.pp.22W244,andD. C. Innes,
"AugustanCritics,"pp.pp.245'-273.
undAtticismus."
U. von." Asianismus
Wilamowitz-Moellendod
in hisKleineschriften,vol. 3,
Hermes35 (1900),l-52.Reprinted
thatreviews
pp.pp.223-273,Berlin,1969.A classicdiscussion
f,#giffi
(andcorrects)previousscholarlyinterpretations.
-Stephen C. Colvin
How to cite this entry:
C. Colvin" Atticist-Asianistcontroversy"Encyclopedia
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of Rhetoric.Ed. ThomasO. Sloane
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UniversityPress.UniversityCollegeLondon.3 July2010
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