Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/54

36 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. great numbers of such panegyrics were composed, delivered, and immensely admired. They gave Sym- machus his reputation ; and Sidonius Apollinaris was made prcefectus urbi as a reward for one addressed to the shadow emperor Anthemius.^ In the antique world a large part of education was education in literary taste. This was so even in the times of the great Greek lyric and dramatic poetry, when form corresponded perfectly to substance. In the Augustan period, and previously, the Latins sedu- lously studied the form and metres of approved Greek compositions. Their best writers — Catullus, Lucre- tius, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid — are learned. Nevertheless, in the good literary periods there was noble substance to express, and the study of form 1 468 A.D. A like emptiness had before this characterized Greek rhetoric, or sophistic, as it came to be called. It, likewise, had no practical purpose to subserve; it ceased, even in form, to be foren- sic ; it became a matter of glittering discourse on any literary sub- ject likely to interest an audience. Then it drew from ethics and philosophy, and its discourses became beautiful pagan sermons. Some sophists had great reputations, and their discourses brought them riches and honor. See C. Martha, ** La predication morale populaire," in Les moralistes sous I'empire romain; Hatch, i?i6- hert Lectures, 1888, pp. 86-104; Croiset, Hist, de la litt^rature Grecque, Vol. V, 466 et seq. The best of them was Dio, a native of Prusa in Bithynia (H. von Arnim, Leben und Werke des Dio von Prusd) . Throughout the Hellenic East, as well as the Latin West, people delighted in such setting together of brilliant phrases in beautiful form. They were thought admirable literary creations, though there were not lacking sincere protests (Epictetus, Dis- courses, III, 23) against the vain and mercenary character of the men and the shallowness of their discourses. Rhetoric also Infected the Greek romances, and produced such a rhetorician's biographical romance as the Life of Apolloniua of Tyana, by Philostratus.