Abstract

Reviews 217 signposting and recapitulating his argument as it unfolds. In this and other ways he mirrors the qualities he values in Hume's own writing. Christopher Reid University ofLondon Hock, Ronald F., trans., The Chreia and Ancient Rhetoric: Commentaries on Aphthonins's Progymnasmata, (Society of Biblical Literature, Writ­ ings from the Greco-Roman World 31), Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012. xii + 345 pp. ISBN 978-1-58983-644-0 This is the third and last volume of a trilogv, all three volumes of which present ancient and Byzantine texts and facing translations, equipped with extensive introductions and commentary, on the chrein, the third of the canon­ ical fourteen progymnasmata, the compositional exercises that began at the intermediate level of the Roman imperial literary-rhetorical education and extended into the advanced level. All three volumes have been published by the Society of Biblical Literature. The first two were co-authored by the late Edward N. O'Neil. O'Neill's scholarly partner Ronald F. Hock has brought the project to its conclusion and benefited from materials pertinent to the third volume that O'Neil left behind. The first volume (1986) presented mainly Roman imperial Greek and Latin discussions of the chreia from an­ cient theoretical works. The second volume (2002) offered ancient and Byzan­ tine classroom exercises in which chreiai were read, copied, declined, and, when the student was ready, elaborated. And now in this final volume Hock gives us the sections of six Byzantine texts that comment on the discussion of the chreia in the Progymnasmata of the late ancient rhetorical theorist Aphthonius , whose work, admitted to the so-called Hermogenic Corpus, became the authority par excellence on these compositional exercises. Hock's Byzantine commentaries on Aphthonius, intended for teachers or students, are by John of Sardis (ninth century), the so-called P-Scholia (ca. 1000), John Doxapatres (eleventh century), the Rhetorica Marciana (twelfth century), Maximus Planudes (thirteenth century), and Matthew Camariotes (fifteenth century). These commentators on Aphthonius, like Aphthonius himself, discussed all fourteen progymnasmata. Hock has excerpted from them only the sections on the chreia. Aphthonius's discussion of the chreia—a saying, an action, or a com­ bination of action and saying, ascribed to a person of note—is only a few pages long. It begins with some brief theoretical remarks. Aphthonius gives a definition and an etymology of the term. He explains the three kinds of chreia. And he lists the eight headings to be used for elaborating a chreia. But the greater part of his discussion is dedicated to the presentation of an elabo­ ration of the chreia "Isocrates said that the root of education is bitter, but the fruits are sweet." Aphthonius's short discussion of the chreia (as well as the 218 RHETORICA rest of his Progymnasmata) generated pages and pages of sequential Byzan­ tine commentaries. One thinks of the similar fate of better known canonized texts: Plato and Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen. It is something of a déjà lu experience to read commentator after commentator on Aphthonius s spare treatment; indeed, Hock's introductions to each of the commentators, too, inevitably have some repetitiveness to them. Still, one does find peculiarities and idiosyncrasies in the various Byzantine texts, even "some independent analysis" (p. 28). Yet to expect to find much originality in this kind of material is to set oneself up for disappointment; to complain about its pedantry and triviality is to expect a pre-modern scholastic tradition not to be itself (cf. pp. 3, 6). Hock does well in his introductions to keep an eye on the whole work from which the particular chreia section is being excerpted, although his full discussion of Maximus Planudes on the progymnasma speaking-incharacter (pp. 285-92) in his introduction to Planudes on the chreia was perhaps unnecessary there. The commentators clarify, supplement, and illustrate Aphthonius. They have a "penchant... to build on one another" (p. 134). (Matthew Camariotes, though, is in a skimpy class of his own, briefer on the chreia even than Aphthonius.) They bring in material both from the ancient progymnasmatic theoreticians ps.-Hermogenes, Nicolaus of Myra, and Theon (a large portion of the P-Scholia, for example, is simply...