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ONE LESSON OF ELOQUENCE IN THE IMAGINES OF THE ELDER PHILOSTRATUS

Eugene A. Makovetsky, A. S. Drikker, M. V. Makovetskaya

Abstract

The Second Sophistic played extremely important role in the history of the Byzantine education. Rhetorical education was based mainly on those textbooks on rhetoric which were created at the time of the Second Sophistic. Works by sophists were used as examples of the Attic style. The fact that the Greek educational tradition was continuous throughout centuries allows us to assume that educational techniques did not undergo essential change during so long time too. On this background the absence of the special section devoted to the Art of Memory in Medieval Greek manuals on rhetoric looks like a riddle. Our hypothesis is that students received all necessary skills in the Art of Memory not from special sections of textbooks on rhetoric but thanks to those educational techniques which authors of the Second Sophistic and medieval teachers of rhetoric used. Our purpose consists in trying to reconstruct one of these techniques. In the work we use the textual analysis of The Imagines of the Elder Philostratus. We use the comparative analysis for comparison of educational techniques which authors of other manuals on rhetoric used. We managed to find out that the Elder Philostratus applies in The Imagines (II.8-12) the certain educational technology directed on training in the Art of Memory. Existence of this example is not capable to confirm completely our hypothesis but is the sufficient basis for continuation of search in this direction.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2018H/21/S05.010

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