Abstract

Reviews 315 In the long and important chapter on Bossuet's sermons, for instance, Lockwood shows convincingly how the preacher's metadiscursive reflections on the difficulty, or indeed impossibility, of giving expression to the word of God and on the possibility of true knowledge which the listener creates by listening to his/her inner voice, forces the listener into active participation. As he puts it, "metadiscursive analysis through a figure such as the Inner Master [the preacher within us] becomes a response not to a philosophical problem, but to the pragmatic problems of authorizing the speaker and giving him the power to determine the audience's reaction to the speech" (p. 276). One of the engaging features of Lockwood's book is the way in which from time to time it too becomes self-reflexive, discussing the author's rhetorical problems and strategies and the reader's likely response: will he/she keep reading? What will be the relation between the reader at the outset and the reader at the end? As I read, I found myself wondering whether I was in fact embodying the reader figure laid down for me by the text, whether I was Pascal's good reader with his "esprit de discemement" who sees enough to be aware of what he/she doesn't see. Lockwood's text, as some of the passages quoted suggest, it not always easy reading, and sometimes a tell-tale "of course" suggests that the connections between one thing and another are clearer in the author's mind that in the (this) reader's. This is therefore a book to reread and reflect on. Peter France Richard L. Enos, Roman Rhetoric: Revolution and the Greek Influence (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press 1995) xiv+135pp. This book is not an analysis of the internal structure of ancient rhetoric in the manner of George Kennedy's several handbooks or M L Clarke's recently re-released Rhetoric at Rome: A Historical Survey. Instead, Enos offers an account of the interaction of Greek and Latin rhetoric as cultural phenomena and in the context of other cultural developments. The seven chapters (plus brief RHETORICA 316 preface and conclusion) are somewhat loosely connected studies of key moments in the history of roman rhetoric and (insofar as it is part of the Roman story) of Greek rhetoric. The goal is, to my mind, an admirable one; the execution is therefore all the more disappointing. The first chapter explores the political importance of sophistic rhetoric in the Western Greek colonies. It suggests that a similar politics (i.e. "democratic" imperialism) encouraged Roman absorption of rhetoric from south Italian sources. The second chapter traces the opportunities for and role of rhetoric in the changing political scene of the late Republic. This history is highlighted by a case study—chapter three—of state suppression of rhetoric at Rome in the second and early first centuries B.c. Chapter four traces the eventual acceptance of Greek rhetoric at Rome and particularly the role of declamation in Roman education. The next two chapters examine the influence of Roman patronage on the fortunes of rhetoric in Greece; this patronage was both of individual rhetors and of institutions and even entire cities (Athens) as educational centers. Enos considers first the Second sophistic in Athens, then the history of literary competitions at a relatively obscure festival at Oropos. The nonliterary (particularly epigraphic) evidence deployed in the latter chapter is probably the most novel and most substantive contribution of the book. Finally, an "epilogue" tries to account for the survival of rhetoric in various areas of the sometimes hostile Christian middle ages. The first important problem in this attempt to contextualize rhetoric is a sometimes dated and sometimes simply mistaken view of Roman history. For instance Enos uses the term "patrician" variously to mean the senate, the nobiles, political conservatives, or simply the economic upper-class. Not only does this mistake the technical sense of what was a largely unimportant caste term by the late republic, but it also means Enos has trouble explaining distinctions within the Roman elite: Catiline's opponents are non-aristocrats" (27)" and equestrian jurors are represented as the ' voice of the...