374 Harry M. Huhhell, Ph.D., 



ments had been put into his mouth in the dialogue. It is possible, 

 also, that the quotations from Diogenes in the second book of 

 Philodemus come from the same work of Charmadas. The two 

 detailed accounts of the embassy are in Cicero, De Oratore II, 

 37, 15s ff., and Gellius VI, 14. Both deal with the rhetorical 

 aspect of the embassy, and discuss the three styles as exemplified 

 by the three philosophers. Cicero and Gellius evidently draw 

 from a common source, and a source which contained technical 

 discussions of style. This fits in with our hypothesis that 

 Charmadas used the philosophical embassy as a setting for the 

 presentation and discussion of current views on rhetoric. 



After proceeding to a certain length in his discussion of this 

 question Quintilian attempts to confine himself to the most general 

 forms of argument ; the opponents of rhetoric, he says, are many, 

 Critolaus, Athenodorus, Agnon, Epicurus ; their arguments are 

 numerous, but reducible to a few general lines of thought. At 

 the head of these arguments he puts the question of the sub- 

 ject matter, or "raw material" of rhetoric. In brief this is that 

 every art has some definite material with which it works ; the 

 carpenter works in wood, the smith in metals ; the orator, say 

 the critics, has nothing which is peculiarly his own; if he dis- 

 cusses medicine he is invading the field already occupied by 

 another art ; if he discusses either politics or ethics he is met by 

 the claim that these belong to the philosopher. Quintilian dis- 

 misses the subject with a curt "quod esse falsum in sequcntihns 

 prohaho," a promise which he fulfills in the twenty first chapter. 

 He follows Cicero in holding that the field of rhetoric is all 

 subjects which at any time arise for discussion; not that the 

 orator is by virtue of his rhetorical training acquainted with the 

 subject matter of all arts, but that if he has to speak about music, 

 for example, he can acquire the necessary facts from the musician, 

 and present them in a form which will be more persuasive than 

 the crude statements of the unlettered musician. So much for 

 the main outlines of the thought. It is, as Quintilian says, a 

 commonplace of the rhetorical controversy; we have seen it 

 ill Cicero from whom Quintilian derives his main arguments ; 

 it appears in Philodemus, quoted from an unnamed philosopher; 

 II, 123, fr. VI. r}^twcr£ 7ra<rav iTna-Trjfirjv tx^iv iStav vXrjv, nepl rjv 

 (TTp€<f)(.TaL, Tr/v Se prjTopLKjjv iireipaTO StLKVvuv ov8tp.iav f)(ovaav vXrjv- 



In Sextus it is given one of those queer twists which were the 



