or may not have learned his style from the ancient poets of Greece, but
the poets of the silver age learned from the tribe of Gorgias.

Not only did poetry and oratory suffer from the same bad taste in
straining for brilliance of style, but in practice, as Bornecque has
shown, both poetry and oratory suffered for lack of structure. The poets
paid so much attention to style that they neglected plot construction and
the vivid realization of character and situation. The orators paid so much
attention to style that they lost the art of composing sentences, and of
arranging sound arguments in such a way as to persuade an audience. In
effect there was a tendency for the late Latin writers to ignore those
elements of structure and movement wherein poetry and oratory most differ,
and stress unduly the elements of style wherein they have the most in
common. Indeed, so completely did any fundamental distinction between
poetic and rhetoric become blurred that in the second century Annaeus
Florus was able to offer as a debatable question, "Is Virgil an orator or
a poet?"[107]




Chapter V

The Middle Ages



1. The Decay of Classical Rhetorical Tradition