Hermogenes' On Style

Hermogenes' On Style

Hermogenes' On Style (Peri Ideon), considered the most influential treatise on style in later antiquity and Byzantine times and the standard textbook in rhetorical schools, was also considered centrally important to Renaissance issues of style.

Hermogenes wrote in a tradition of clarifying the virtues of style that began with Theophrastus and went up through Cicero, Quintilian, and Dionysus of Halicarnassus. His work was instrumental in the classification and schematization of style. This work considers pure types (ideai) of style in the abstract:

English Greek Latin

1. Clarity sapheneia claritas

2. Grandeur megethos magnitudo

3. Beauty kallos pulchritudo (or venustas)

4. Rapidity gorgotes velocitas

5. Character ethos affectio

6. Sincerity aletheia veritas

7. Force deinotes gravitas

Each of these types of style included subdivisions, as well.

Sources: See also Trebizond 65v