I. Emerging Notions of Rhetoric
The Homeric Mentality and the Invention of Discourse
According to the eighth century BCE epic poet Hesiod (Erga 90–105), man lost his divine inspiration for eloquence when Pandora lifted the lid of the jar containing the gods’ gifts to men. The righteousness of this act was justified as retribution for Prometheus’s hubris in giving man the “technical” knowledge of fire. More importantly, the result of Zeus’s revenge was that man had to rely on the creation of his own “techne” or art and replace eloquence with a rationally construed imitation of the divine act of effective expression. For Pietro Pucci, author of Hesiod and the Language of Poetry, “Pandora introduces the exclusivity of human language. She speaks only human language and, therefore is the first human who can no longer speak the language of the gods, of which Homer knows some words and to which Hesiod alludes in Th. 837” (91). Pucci’s phrase, “of which Homer knows some words,” is provocative for it hints at both the relationship and distinctions between god-breathed and human-created discourse.
To say that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are paradigms in the history of literature is to utter a commonplace, but their contributions to the history and development of writing and rhetorical theory have received far less attention. Although preceding the canonization of rhetoric as a formal discipline by centuries, the composing techniques of Homer were admired by such famous rhetoricians as Quintilian (10.1.46). However, they were pointedly contested by other ancient rhetoricians as appropriate for the study of rhetoric (Kennedy, “Ancient” 23–35), principally because Homer predated rhetoric as a discipline and because Homeric discourse was thought to be a nonrational approach to expression. That is, those ancient rhetoricians who opposed using Homer as a model did so because Homeric compositions were thought to have been produced by the impulse of intuitive genius rather than the systematic study of the composition of discourse. This opposition to viewing Homer in relation to rhetoric in any way other than anecdotal is also shared by some contemporary rhetoricians. D.A.G. Hinks, in his essay “Tisias and Corax and the Invention of Rhetoric,” claims that not only did the art or techne of rhetoric emerge in fifth century BCE Greece, but also any examination prior to this period is “irrelevant to the proper history of rhetoric” (61). Yet, the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey has much to reveal about the epistemic development of rhetoric.
When the Iliad and Odyssey were composed in the latter half of the eighth century BCE, Greece was in a twilight period of true oral literature. Although early Greeks rarely read silently—in fact it is virtually unheard of in Antiquity—the techniques of composing discourse exclusively for an oral medium were beginning to be replaced by developing scripts by the end of the seventh century BCE (see Kirk, Songs 314; Kirk, Epic 1–32; Stanford 1n4ff.; Kennedy, Art 4; Kirk, Oral 19–39). I. J. Gelb claims, “the development of a full Greek alphabet, expressing single sounds of language by means of consonant and vowel signs, is the last important step in the history of writing” (Study 184). Gelb’s emphasis, however, is on the development of sign-systems and in that sense, not much new has evolved in “the inner structural” development of writing (Study 184). Yet, if we consider the notions of discourse evidenced in Homer’s work and if we examine what the characters in the Iliad and Odyssey say and think about discourse, we may consider the Iliad and Odyssey the first important steps in the history of writing and rhetoric. This is a point which Otto Jespersen immediately establishes in his classic treatise, Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin (7) and one which has prompted other scholars of rhetoric’s history to recognize the possibility of such early beginnings (see Kennedy, “Ancient;” Kennedy, “Review;” and Murphy, “Corax”).
In brief, even the earliest Greek writing indicates an emerging awareness of the relationship between human thought and the processes by which such thoughts and sentiments can be symbolically expressed. Three terms help to express the relationship between thought and expression: heuristic, eristic and protreptic discourse. Heuristic discourse is seen as a generative (helping to discover or learn) capacity to construe and apply some structuring of language. Heuristics has been a major concern not only of Aristotle’s Rhetoric (see Enos and Lauer, “Meaning”) but also throughout the history of Greek rhetoric, as even a cursory reading of George Kennedy’s The Art of Persuasion in Greece will reveal (e.g., 10). The importance of this notion was clearly apparent to Latin rhetoricians, such as the unknown Roman author of the Rhetorica Ad Herennium (1.3ff.) and Cicero (De Inventione ff.), both of whom labeled it “inventio” and gave it primacy among the canons of rhetoric. In fact, Kennedy’s 1980 article in Philosophy and Rhetoric (185–89) demonstrates that the concept of heuristics was a central component to the Byzantine canons of rhetoric with Hermogenes’s On Invention receiving great attention (see also Kustas 42, note). Eristic discourse is the advocacy for a particular point of view. The term “eristic” came to be synonymous with argumentative discourse and received commentary from both Plato (Euthydemus 272C; Lysis 211B) and Aristotle (Rhetoric 1371a, 1402a). Eristics was not only considered the “art of disputation” but was used to label philosophers of the Megarian school who were noted for their argumentative mode of discussion (Diogenes Laertius 2.134). Plato eventually labeled the techne of eristic discourse as Sophistry (Sophista 231E, 225C). Protreptic discourse is both directive and didactic but also associated with rational inquiry. Contrary to the notion of wrangling associated with eristics, protreptic discourse is seen as a didactic process whereby minds are “directed” for some instructive purpose (Skousgaard 379–80; Kustas 49, note). Protreptic discourse was strongly encouraged for philosophy by Plato (Euthydemus 278C, D; 288D, E; 282D) because it provides direction for thought leading to knowledge.
Plato characterized the instruction of Sophists as misdirection. He believed that they taught eristic methods to subvert the truth in order to succeed at any cost, and thus had nothing to do with the more noble ends of protreptic discourse. Plato mercilessly lampooned Sophists in his Euthydemus as not caring if they “talk nonsense” (288B, see also 277D–E, 278 B–C) and was very clear in his belief that speechwriters who do not know the distinct technai (techniques or skills) of generating and employing philosophical argument, or dialectic, will be severely constrained in their knowledge of the composing processes of discourse (Euthydemus 289 D–E). Their Sophistic “art,” Plato went on to say, is like a “wizard’s art”; that is, sorcery “involves a wizard’s charming venomous spiders and scorpions and other wild beasts and evil things,” while Sophistry “involves charming and persuading the ears of juries, assemblies and other mobs” (Euthydemus 289E, 290A). Plato’s point clearly drives a wedge between the charm—and almost sensual enrapturement—of Sophistic discourse and the philosophical inquiry toward knowledge characteristic of protreptic discourse. In brief, rhetoricians who engage in bantering eristic argument only provide a “ridiculous display of their particular effort” and should be overlooked when seeking didactic discourse associated with protreptic procedures (Euthydemus 307B, see also 307A–C).
This chapter examines the dominant modes of Homeric discourse—heuristic, eristic and protreptic—and relates them to the notion of the divine “gift” of eloquence. This examination will show that conceptual processes of discourse synonymous with the formalization of rhetoric in the fifth century BCE were already emerging three hundred years earlier. Awareness of the evolution of these conceptual processes will provide a more accurate understanding of both the history of rhetoric and an enriched understanding of the foundation of our discipline.
The concept of “heuristic” is present throughout the Iliad and Odyssey and is used to express some process of discovery. Homer freely uses the concept to indicate the discovery of persons, places, and gods (Iliad 5.169; Odyssey 10.252; Iliad 24.98). Frequently this is done by an individual such as Athena “discovering” the proud suitors, or Odysseus “discovering” the house of Circe, or Hector “finding” Archeptolemus (Odyssey 10.210; Iliad 8.127). In this sense, a heuristic capacity
