Department of the Classics, Harvard University

The Concept of Periodicity in the Ad Herennium

Author(s): H. C. Gotoff
Source: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 77 (1973), pp. 217-223
Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard University
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THE CONCEPT OF PERIODICITY IN THE

AD HERENNIUM
H. C. GOTOFF
scholars and critics seem to have a clear and fairly
consistent notion of what periodic style entails.' It is a complex
sentence in which both sense and syntax are held in suspension until
the end of the construction when they are simultaneously resolved. The
idea that the period is complete in itself and at every point anticipates

MODERN

its own conclusion

goes back to Aristotle, Rhet. 3.9.3-4:

AE'etw
cPX7p)
.
Sct SE'
EVUOrVVO'7TT...V
EJXOvUaT'

Kal

-rEAEUcvV aa'77rV

7r'v 7TEoSOV Ka%

Kat

KaO'

'

(Lco

S' 7rrEpd'ov
Kat

5r7')i

1dEyaJos

coa

He makes his case for this very strongly by his criticism of the articulation of the opening lines of Euripides' Meleager.2 His point is that
1 See
J. E. Sandys, M. Tulli Ciceronis ad M. Brutum Orator (Cambridge
I885) 217, n. to 204, and G. M. Z. Grube, "Thrasymachus, Theophrastus,
and Dionysius" AJP 73 (I952) 253f n. 4, among others for the articulation
of the general view. The difficulties created by Aristotle are discussed by E. M.
Cope, Introduction to the Rhetoric of Aristotle (London 1867) 3o6f; J. Zehetmeier,
"Die Periodenlehre des Aristoteles," Philologus 85 (I930) 192-208, 255-284,
414-436; W. Schmid, "Ueber die Klassische Theorie und Praxis des Antiken
Prosarhythmus," Hermes (Einzelschrift i2) 1959, I12-I 30; and L. P. Wilkinson,
Golden Latin Artistry (Cambridge I963) 167-170, among others. No one study
has been definitive; various scholars have made suggestive contributions, such
as Zehetmeier's relating periodicity to prose-rhythm under Aristotle's aesthetic
heading of "limit," or Schmid's understanding, however imperfect (see
Wilkinson, ibid., I69n), of the racetrack metaphor. E. Norden, Antike Kunstprosa (Leipzig; 5th ed., Darmstadt 1958) I 42, and n., dealing particularly with
the ancient concept, maintained that periodicity is indivisible from proserhythm. In this he is followed by W. Schmid (ibid.), among others, and opposed
by Grube (ibid.) 254 and n. There is need for a study of how and when the
concept of periodicity developed from the more restricted ancient technique
to what scholars from the Renaissance on picture it to be.
I wish to thank Professor G. Kennedy for his reference to H. Lausberg,
Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik (Munich 1962) vol. I, where Ad Herennium
4.27 is discussed in sections 943 and 945. It seems to me that in returning
"periodos" to a purely bipartite, Aristotelian sense, Lausberg, in section 924f,
ignores another meaning of the word and another kind of rhetorical sentence
structure.
2 Aristotle
quotes the first line only and attributes it to Sophocles. The scholiast
to Ar. Frogs 1269, assigns it to the opening of the Meleager of Euripides. The

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H. C. Gotoff

218

there is enough grammatical material in the first trimeter to be rendered

as a complete unit, although the meaning would be distorted because
the thought in fact continues grammatically into the next line. This is
not the only somewhat surprising limitation of Aristotle's idea of a
period. In his further remarks, he makes it quite clear, although scholars
have not always acknowledged it, that by periodos he conceived of a
unit of sentence structure far more restricted than the modern notion
envisions. The definition he proposes can never have included the
sophisticated architectonics of his contemporary Demosthenes, much
less the writer whose name is most closely associated with the periodic
style, Cicero.
G. Kennedy maintained that, in considering periodos, Aristotle had
in mind first and foremost the balanced, antithetical, essentially bipartite
sentences that mark the style of Gorgias and later of Isocrates.3 Aristotle
is not consistent even in insisting that a period be bipartite, for he
allows for a simple period - presumably, a sentence without subordination in which sense and simple grammar are not resolved until the
last word.4 Nevertheless, there can be little doubt, pace Grube,5 that
when talking about complex periods, Aristotle understood the structure
8' a7rt
to be bipartite, i.e. composed of two cola (Rhet. 3.9.5): KWAhov
Td

T'rEpovtd0PLov ra7;r.

This is not the place to try to reach a

definition of colon that would satisfy every use of it by Greek and

Latin writers; for, like many of the words we are pleased to think of
second verse is found in several sources, among them Dem. De Eloc. 58.

Aristotle's objection is too severe; the standard applied here would render

much of classical composition open to the charge of poor and confusing construction. Demetrius cites the lines to how actors' interjectionscan miscast
the emphasis of a statement. The lines as they appear in Demetrius, with
the added, artificial pause created by the expletives, argue Aristotle's point
ratherbetter than the single line he himself cites:
SE yaYac
HEAo7TELcX
KaAVL)sv
t~Lev
XOoVdo'
EP

aVT7TrdpO~Lot

7TrES"'

E4ova'

4Et?VLova

at, at3 George Kennedy, "Aristotleon the Period," HSCP 63 (1958) 283ff.
4 Presumably any sentence without subordinationthat suspends the verb
until the end would come under the heading of &#eA*reptloSos.Attempts to
reconcilethe simple period with the statementthat the period consists of two
cola have not, unsurprisingly,been successful.
' Grube, A Greek Critic: Demetrius(Toronto
1961) 35 n. 41, suggests the
does not referback to replo8o0s,
but ratherto the trimeter
possibility that
7ra-vldh
quoted from the Meleager. Demetrius 34 did not so understand Aristotle, nor
would this renderingmake sense.

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Periodicity in the Ad Herennium

219

as technical terms in Classical treatises, its use by the ancient authorities

was not consistent.6 It seems to me that we can extract more out of
Aristotle's definition without doing violence to his intent or to the
Greek, if we allow colon to refer to a unit larger than a clause in the
modern sense of the word. We think of a clause as a single verbal
notion containing a finite verb, an accusative-and-infinitive construction, or the like. What Aristotle was referring to, I think, was a sentence
the structure of which could be reduced to a pair of discrete units,
e.g. protasis-apodosis, relative clause-main clause (with an explicit
antecedent if the main clause should precede), " when "-clause-" then "clause, etc., whether or not either or both units contained a subordinate element. Each of these discrete units was to Aristotle a colon.
This view, perhaps, makes sense of the metaphor of the race track
in which the runner would start out, say, on a dorcEp-clause, round
the post, and return with the 0'vrwos-clause. Thus, even a highly
complex sentence like Dem. Aristocr. 99, quoted by Demetr. De Eloc.
31:
WUor7T yyap EZ E-KEWCWV
7L6

E(XAW,

OvTows(X cr vfv acogS,

'AAosog0

YPwEL...

or the several examples of antithesis quoted by Aristotle himself at

3.9,7, from Isoc., Panegyr. 35f come under his definition of a period.
On the other hand, sentences like Thuc. 2.102, cited by Dem. 45:
yAEpAXEAPOsroc PA
V EKH'I
vov opovs &(X JoAo
nXasK11 Aoypt.cwv

EV XEtItLWV Ur-pa7-Er;E at; or even Demosth.

Lept. init. (Dem. Io):
W
/tl0g EWVEKC
701) V0OLVEK(TU7LV/pEY
177OStEL
ELT(
CtaA&yra
' AEOUO7'LV VOXLOV
tv
" 70Uo70Vro'
'e
KaM701 7TAtL0'0
Too
ELVEK(
XTplov
0p1)oXdy
ao
E
,

are not. The fact is that in Aristotle's mind the period is closely
vrvEpetv
related to the enthymeme, and the enthymeme is constructed as a two6 I have not seen A.
DuMesnil, Begriff der drei Kunstformen des Rede: Komma,
Kolon, Periode, nach der Lehre der Alten in Zum zweihundertjahrigenJubildum
des k6nigl. Friedrichs-Gymnas (Frankfort 1894) 32-I21, cited by Caplan, Ad
Herennium Libri IV de Ratione Dicendi (Harvard University Press 1954) 294
n. b. I am not, however, hopeful that order can have been created from a situation in which a prepositional phrase can be called a colon (Demetr. io on
Dem. Lept. init.) or an independent predicate be called a comma (ibid. 9,
et al.). Similarly, the opening sentence of Herodotus can be cited
yviot oaTEvL-rv,
as an example of unperiodicity by Aristotle (Rhet. 3.9.2) and of periodicity
by Demetrius (I7).

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H. C. Gotoff

220

part parallelism or antithesis.' Thus, each of the two basic units of the
period is a colon, as Aristotle insists; within this framework the structure
may be strictly antithetical or otherwise divided.8
Thus, while agreeing basically with Kennedy, I find that Aristotle's
analysis can accommodate a larger number of periods in our sense than
Kennedy suggests. Not, unfortunately, that complete consistency can
be derived from Aristotle's account; the notion of the simple period
cannot be incorporated into this system. But, leaving that aside, the
present explanation is supported by the ease with which Aristotle
moves to his discussion of the Gorgianic figures at Rhet. 3.9.9. Gorgias
is identified with antithesis and other figures that arise from and support
two-part balance. In this treatment, Aristotle seems to be following
Theodectes, who, we are told, listed, in the context of antithesis,
parison, and homoeoteleuton most of the beginnings of periods.9 He
was thus considering in close conjunction periodicity and the Gorgianic
figures.
It cannot be said that later writers on the subject of prose composition
were prevented entirely by the Aristotelian view from proceeding to a
more complex definition of the period - a definition that could embrace
the constructions of Demosthenes and Cicero. Nevertheless, the
limitation was a pervasive one. Dionysius of Halicarnassus uses the
word periodos without definition, sometimes to mean little more than
we do by "sentence."10o When he speaks of periodic style, moreover,
he gives no indication of whether he has in mind the bipartite constructions predicated on Gorgianic parallelism and antithesis, or the
freer-flowing, more complex periods of Demosthenes or Cicero. In
In the first cited passage Aristotle states his
7 Aristotle, Rhet. 3.9.8, cf. 2.9.
preference for antithetical periods of the Isocratean sort.
8 Arist., Rhet.
there
3.9-7. Although Aristotle favors the AEe'S&aV7TKELLEVrq,
is nothing about the AELSe8tqpv-qtt7
7 intrinsically incompatible with a bipartite
framework as defined in our discussion.
9 In 3.9.9, Aristotle moves from the antithetical period to a discussion of
parisosis, isocolon, and paromoiosis (homoeoteleuton). At the end of the section
he says at 8' pcXal
7'V 7rEpLOdSWV
If my
UXE8Ov v 70~S OEO8EK7ELOL9~
p
E'OjIPrqV7.raL.
interpretation of Aristotle's meaning is correct, this list may have included
elements both syntactic (relative pronouns, conjunctions, etc.) and rhetorical
that anticipate a second unit to resolve them. aperar for apxalc
(i.e. tdv, o ~dto'vov)
is, therefore, an unnecessary change.
10 For example, Dionysius usually introduces a sentence with the word
AEl7 rqe v .'8 8 17 Coam-VLK7.V AExLV bu-aV-7VtTiVi 7ThOeEasAAOKOL07EF(aV
p OuTCS fo4LCthLa7LK7eV
i-iv
q &TtVv...
(De Comp.xviii), but in ix he uses 7rEpIo8oS purely for the sake of

IV EV
variety:KCUo~'it
EL
HAcV7-WVLK77V
d0v-Vp
-r'7v
EKE7qV TEpLOSOV, TrO rrO
OUKV O(Xal7MparrA7IpO~irTL
OVK
7rpoUrqpavLurOL...

AEeES~J

cwVytKXCq0,

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bpdEL,749

Periodicity in the Ad Herennium

221

Lys. 8, he appears to judge periodicity to be a highly artificial technique

that militates against verisimilitude, perhaps suggesting the very
formal and artificial Gorgianic figures.
Demetrius, on the other hand, is quite specific both in acknowledging
his debt to Aristotle's discussion in Rhet. 3.9, and in his determination
to expand the compass of the period to include suitable constructions
of three or four members.11 His first example of a period, that from
Demosth. Lept. init., cited above, is of a type not included by Aristotle,
since it cannot be reduced to two units. Further, his subdivision into
rhetorical, narrative, and conversational periods reveals an inclusiveness
that practically makes the word periodos useless as a critical term.12
Nevertheless, in 22f, he singles out for special notice the kind of period
that is constructed from antithetical and parallel members. There
follows a discussion of antithesis, isocolon, and homoeoteleuton, the
Gorgianic figures. After this nod to Aristotle, it cannot be coincidental
that he next distinguishes between the enthymeme and syllogism (32).
He may be correcting Aristotle, but he is certainly at that point involved
in the Aristotelian conception of the period as a basically bipartite
structure.
The relationship of the concept of periodicity to the Gorgianic
figures in the rhetorical works of Cicero deserves full treatment elsewhere. It may suffice here to say that nowhere in his discussion of
composition does Cicero reveal an awareness of that complex periodicity
that distinguishes his style and that of Demosthenes from the bipartite,
often antithetical, and frequently redundant structure associated with
Gorgias and Isocrates.13
What may, I think, be established fairly succinctly is the strong
Aristotelian flavor of the discussion of periodicity in the ad Herennium.
In 4.27, we are told: continuatio est densa et continens frequentatio
verborum cum absolutione sententiarum, translated by H. Caplan as, "A
Period is a close-packed and uninterrupted group of words embracing
a complete thought."14 This definition is compatible with the modern
11 Demetr. De Eloc. I6. It is indicative of the problems involved with treating
the ancient critical treatises as technical works that, after setting two to four
cola as the limits of a period, Demetrius introduces the monocolon in the next
paragraph.
12 Demetrius all but
acknowledges this in De Eloc. 21.
13 See, for example, the discussions in Orator 38-38 and 219-220.
Quint,
9.3.74, credits Cicero's restraint in the use of Isocratean periods. See, also,
n. 18 below.
14 H. Caplan, Ad Herennium ...
297. The textual problem in the first line
is of no consequence to this discussion.

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222

H. C. Gotoff

notion of periodicity, while also echoing Aristotle's least exclusive

characterization of the period: E rE4v 2
Kal 7V8_tVOLt
SoTEpISOV
When he goes on to suggest
the kinds of sentence to
ErEAEL~eaLOat.
which continuatio is appropriate, however, we see underlying the
conception the same limitation imposed by Aristotle. The examples
he gives of Maxim, Contrast, and Conclusion are all basically bipartite:
sententia:

ei non multum potest obesse fortuna,

qui sibi firmius in virtute quam in casu praesidium
conlocavit.
contrarium: nam si qui spei non multum conlocarit in casu,
quid est quod ei magnopere casus obesse potest?
conclusio: quodsi in eos plurimum fortuna potest,
qui suas rationes omnes in casum contulerunt,
non sunt omnia committenda fortunae
ne magnam nimis in nos habeat dominationem.
All three examples, I maintain, are basically of bipartite construction.
If colon or membrum is to be defined in the modern sense, the first
example has two members, the second has three, and the last has four.
In fact, Caplan (above, n. 14) comments on the example of conclusio
that it conforms to the upper limit of Demetrius' definition, i.e. a
four-membered period. But the first example is composed simply of a
main clause containing the antecedent that anticipates the following
relative clause. The second and third examples are in the form of
conditions, protasis-apodosis, and are therefore naturally bipartite. In
the last example, eos in the quodsi-clause anticipates the relative clause
syntactically, while, rhetorically, non omnia paves the way for the neclause that follows. This is all substructure; the sentence can be
analyzed as composed of two units. Like Demosth. Aristocr. 99, quoted
above, this is a highly complex sentence in a bipartite framework, and
therefore conforms to Aristotle's definition of a period. The Aristotelian
overtones of this passage in the Ad Herennium are further confirmed
by the fact that the author then goes on to discuss the Gorgianic
figures of isocolon, homoeoptoton, homoeoteleuton, and paronomasia.15
It would not, indeed, be out of place to compare ad Her. 4.27 with
Demetr. De Eloc. 30, where the latter, in distinguishing between
enthymeme and syllogism, says that the enthymeme is a thought
=
(sententia?), expressed either controversially (E'K
AEYOtLEV7
taXIS

Antithesis (contentio) is discussed in Ad. Her. 4.21, but the stress is no

more on structural than on verbal antithesis
15

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Periodicity in the Ad Herennium

223

contrarium?) or in the form of a consequence (Ev &KoAovOL'a

GcrxWatr=
conclusio?).16
It would seem, then, that the author of the Ad Herennium was
following in his discussion of continuatio a view of periodicity as old
as Theodectes and one enunciated by Aristotle - a view that pervaded
the works or influenced the attitudes of rhetorical writers down to
Cicero and Quintilian on the Latin side. Cicero may have accepted this
view uncritically from tradition, or he may have limited himself
intentionally by tradition to make a point about his style that was only
partially literary.1 The fact is that, following the account that is found
in Aristotle, Cicero, in treating periodicity, describes a structure that
is more readily found in Isocrates than in Demosthenes or himself.
This is part of the explanation of why posterity has identified him
with Isocrates far more closely than an analysis of their styles would
justify.18
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

16 I am not suggesting that these are equivalent technical terms in the Ad. Her.,
or elsewhere. In fact, see Quint. 5.10.2, where enthymeme is defined as a conclusion from antithesis (or contrarium). The similarity of the discussion in Demetrius
and the Ad Her. is patent in general terms.
17 This requires full discussion. I plan to deal elsewhere, at greater length,
with the contradiction between theory and practice in Cicero's rhetorical
treatises. It may be suggested briefly here that in his treatment of periodicity,
no less than of rhythm - two areas in which his contribution to prose style
was most original - Cicero is at great pains to insist upon and identify himself
with a tradition, even when he does not - as with that of the Gorgianic figures
- in the main follow that tradition.
18 E. Laughton, "Cicero and the Greek Orators," AJP 82
(1961) 27-49,
shows masterfully that the periodic constructions of Isocrates and Demosthenes
are very different and that Cicero has a fondness for the latter type. The article
may suggest that Cicero eschewed two-part constructions and Isocratean
parallelism. This is not the case by any means; but the formal balance, thrice
repeated, of the first sentence of the pro Archia, often cited as an example of
Ciceronian periodity, is hard to parallel elsewhere in the corpus.

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