Meta Description: Join Dr. Jeff Winkle and Dr. David Noe in Ad Navseam Episode 204 as they explore Henri-Irénée Marrou’s history of ancient education. Discover the rigid rules of the ancient encomium, the triumph of Isocrates over Plato, the danger of formulaic rhetoric, and resources to master the Latin language.
Introduction: Blue Books, Winter Thaws, and the Art of the Boutade
Welcome back, classical gourmands, to Episode 204 of the Ad Navseam Podcast! Broadcasting directly from the subterranean depths of Vomitorium Central, your hosts, Dr. Jeff Winkle and Dr. David Noe, are back at the microphones to explore the fascinating, highly structured world of Greco-Roman education.
Jeff opens the episode feeling incredibly relieved. He has just finished successfully digging himself out of a massive snowbank of academic blue books, having finally submitted all of his fall semester grades. He notes that it is always a highly satisfying, liberating feeling to click that final submission button, jokingly adding that if his students have a problem with their grades now, it is entirely too late for them to complain. Dave is also in exceptionally high spirits as West Michigan experiences a brief, much-needed winter thaw, with temperatures cresting at a delightfully tropical twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Dave shares his personal, highly effective strategy for facilitating the melting snow: shoveling it, aggressively throwing salt on it, and fiercely glowering at the slush from his living room window.
In the midst of a good, intense glower, Dave loves to suddenly unleash a boutade. He recently discovered this wonderful French word while reading Paul Shorey’s book, Platonism Ancient and Modern, and defines it as a sudden outburst, a whim, or a playful sally. It is conceptually similar to a caprice, a flash of wit, or the spoken equivalent of a canard (an onomatopoetic term referencing the senseless quacking of a duck).
Isocrates vs. Plato: The True Victor of Antiquity
For this episode, the hosts are specifically tackling Part II, Chapter 10 of Henri-Irénée Marrou’s massive 1956 historical tome, A History of Education in Antiquity. This chapter focuses squarely on the esteemed role of rhetoric in higher education.
Marrou begins the chapter by noting a strong cultural division in antiquity between pure technical specialists and cultured men. While highly ambitious ancient physicians like Galen and Hippocrates sincerely believed that studying medicine to its absolute philosophical depths could elevate a physician to the lofty status of a demigod, this was decidedly not the generally accepted view of the Hellenistic era. The true, undisputed mark of the highest Greek culture was the study of rhetoric.
Surprisingly, the ultimate victor in the historical battle for establishing educational ideals was not the legendary philosopher Plato, but rather his contemporary, Isocrates. While Plato was deeply suspicious of the sophists and the corrupting, manipulative power of rhetorical glibness, Isocrates fully embraced rhetoric and essentially became the primary educator of Greece and the wider ancient world. Over time, Plato’s philosophical school eventually turned deeply interior and contemplative, but Isocrates promised his students a highly practical, profitable skill set that the public eagerly desired and readily consumed.
The rhetorical rules carefully developed by Isocrates represented a massive conservative force in the ancient world, remaining rigidly standardized and heavily resistant to change for hundreds of years. Just as the playwright Euripides was frequently punished in the tragic competitions for being too avant-garde, ancient rhetorical audiences overwhelmingly preferred established, predictable formulaE over wild innovation.
The Rise of the Epideictic
Since the foundational time of Aristotle, rhetorical theory officially recognized three primary categories of speech: the deliberative (political persuasion in an assembly), the judicial (legal arguments presented in a courtroom), and the epideictic (speeches of pure praise or blame).
As the Hellenistic and Imperial ages steadily progressed, the free, autonomous democratic city-states faded away, completely replaced by absolute monarchies and emperors. Consequently, deliberative and judicial oratory were forcefully pushed into the background. After all, the Roman Senate under the Caesars frequently operated as a powerless, ceremonial body functioning merely to maintain the pleasing illusion of a Republic for the aristocratic families. Because the average citizen no longer possessed genuine political power to sway national events, the only branch of rhetoric that truly flourished and dominated the culture was the epideictic.
Instead of using public speaking to govern a city or debate war, ambitious individuals utilized rhetoric for personal advancement, lucrative business ventures, and highly competitive, entertaining public lectures.
Building the Perfect Encomium
To truly master the Latin language and ancient Greek, a dedicated student eventually had to leave the basic instruction of the grammarian and study under a highly specialized rhetor. The absolute primary introductory exercise for these advanced students was crafting an encomium, or a formal, structured speech of praise.
The hosts marvel at the highly rigid, exhaustive checklist that ancient students had to perfectly follow when constructing an encomium. Marrou breaks the strict requirements into three specific, non-negotiable categories:
- Exterior Excellences: An orator had to praise the subject’s noble birth, their native city, the excellence of their political regime, and their flawless family background. Next came personal advantages, such as immense wealth, fame, public service, and even the physical beauty of their children. Finally, the speech required an uplifting account of their happy, dignified death (euthanasia).
- Bodily Excellence: The speech must passionately detail the subject’s perfect health, sheer physical strength, and undeniable beauty. According to Marrou’s English translator, George Lamb, the subject should also possess a “bubbling vitality and capacity for deep feeling”.
- Spiritual Excellences: The orator must specifically list the four classical virtues (wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice), alongside piety, nobility, and an innate sense of greatness. Finally, the speech had to meticulously cover the resultant actions born from these virtues, proving the subject acted altruistically, took extreme risks, and performed great deeds entirely alone without any outside help.
If that monumental list was not demanding enough, students were highly encouraged to invent striking deeds the subject would have accomplished had they not unfortunately died. They were also expected to seamlessly include cunning puns based on the subject’s name. Demosthenes, for example, was perfectly named for a pun, as his moniker directly translates to “the strength of the people”.
Choreography and Declaiming from the Grave
The actual physical delivery of the speech was just as rigidly codified as the written outline.
Ancient Mediterranean audiences absolutely expected highly expressive, almost theatrical physical movements from their public speakers. A speaker’s hand play (chironomia) functioned as an absolute, heavily scrutinized language in itself. Quoting the Roman educator Quintilian, Marrou notes that admiration was specifically expressed by turning the hand slightly toward the sky, closing the fingers one after another beginning with the little finger, and then smoothly reversing the exact movement to open the hand. The hosts astutely compare this excessive, supposedly infallible formula to heavily over-produced 1980s rock music, which eventually became so completely artificial that it required the raw, stripped-down arrival of punk and grunge to reset the culture.
The cultural dedication to this specific rhetorical craft was utterly lifelong. Famous Hellenistic orators continued practicing basic school exercises until their dying days, competing to write complex eulogies on absurd, trivial topics like a fly, a parrot, or quartan fever. The ultimate, highly morbid example of this absolute obsession was the dying sophist Polemon. Knowing his tragic end was near, he aggressively ordered his household to physically carry him into his tomb before he had drawn his final breath. As the heavy doors closed on him, he loudly cried out from the darkness, “Give me back a body, and I will declaim again!”
Sponsors: Fueling the Classical Renaissance
Before Dave and Jeff resort to writing an unprompted encomium about the slowly melting snow in the Vomitorium, they sincerely thank their exceptionally generous sponsors.
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- MossMethod & LatinPerDiem: Take your ancient Greek from neophyte to erudite at, complete with highly interactive weekly office hours. Or, if you want to jump into the Latin language, use Hans Ørberg’s famous Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata curriculum, both at latinperdiem.com.
The Gustatory Parting Shot
To officially close out Episode 204, Dave delivers a highly entertaining Gustatory Parting Shot pulled directly from Matt de la Peña’s collection, My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories.
“I stayed there on the floor like that for a long, long time, eating and crying, crying and eating.”
Jeff jokingly wonders if the author secretly followed him to a local Taco Bell to write that specific line. Keep your hand gestures strictly codified, prepare your daily boutades, and keep taking in the classics. Valete!
