Anonymous Rhetorical Treatises is a shelf of late-antique and Byzantine treatises on the art, not the work of one rhetor. One treatise, On the Eight Parts of the Rhetorical Speech, says every rhetorical writing, greater or lesser, is composed of eight parts: thought, diction, figure, method, colon, composition, pause, and rhythm. Thought is wise and lofty when it is about God or human nature, clear and low when it is about war or a festival; mix them. A mythos is a speech false by nature that images truth; it is logical, ethical, or mixed, as in Aesop: make the crow greedy and the fox wheedling or the myth is unpersuasive.
Diegema is the exposition of an action — dramatic (Daphne and Apollo, the rose dyed with Aphrodite's blood), historical (the rape of Helen), or political (the orator in court). Ethopoeia imitates the ēthos of a given person (what would Heracles say when Eurystheus commands). Ekphrasis sets the subject before the eyes, from Achilles' head down, or a war from the preparation to the plunder.
The other twenty-odd pieces in the corpus treat figures, the four and eight parts of speech, ideas, and excerpts. Together they are the record of a classroom tradition of rhetoric.
Available Works
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