ABSTRACT
As a descriptive term, Ciceronianism does not apply to the reception of Cicero’s writings as a whole but is restricted to the imitation of his style. The basic axiom of this style is copiose et ornate dicere which entails the dominance of manner (verba) over matter (res). This aim is realized by the amplification of words and ideas and their variation by means of tropes and figures. The result of such procedures is carefully balanced syntactic periods with symmetrical arrangements (parallelism, antithesis, progression) of sound and sense. The striving for regularity and musicality of diction is furthermore supported by the use of clausulae or rhythmical cadences at the ends of sentences. Quintilian was the first to profess himself a disciple of Cicero, and he was not to remain the only one. In the Renaissance, the rediscovery of Ciceronian orations and rhetorical treatises that had been neglected in the Middle Ages restored their author’s reputation as a master of style. Henceforth Cicero’s language served as the guideline for purging medieval Latin of its barbarisms and solecisms. In the course of this pursuit, an ardent controversy arose over the degree and extent of imitatio. The purists (Bembo, Longueil) contended that Cicero was the only possible model for imitation and therefore endeavored to convert their own works into pastiches of his rhetorical art. Their idolatry of him even went so far that they admitted only such constructions, phrases, and cadences as could be found in the Ciceronian canon. The opponents of these ‘apes of Cicero,’ as they were derisively termed, advocated in their turn a concept of selective imitation that was adaptable (aptum) to both the respective subjects and the participants in the act of communication. Erasmus’ satirical dialogue, Ciceronianus (1528), that marked a turning point in the appreciation of Cicero, Roger Ascham’s educational treatise, The Scholemaster (1570), and Gabriel Harvey’s Cambridge oration, Ciceronianus (1577), maintained that only a revival of Cicero’s ideal union of wisdom and eloquence could rescue Ciceronianism from degenerating into an empty aesthetic formalism. Such censures and warnings did not, however, restrain Elizabethan writers from copying Ciceronian sentence patterns in their vernacular compositions. Spenser’s prose style makes no exception to this rule, displaying a predilection for long sentence periods, variety of expression, and symmetry of lexical units, as the Letter to Raleigh clearly shows. At the turn of the century, the antiCiceronian movement gained in strength. Bacon’s Advancement of Learning (1605) demanded an adequate proportion of ‘words’ and ‘matter.’ Cicero was succeeded by Seneca in the role of a classical authority, and the new style which now became the fashion was characterized by brevity, parataxis, discontinuity, and sententiousness.
