Atticism

As you may already know, Greek is a language which is very old and unique in comparison to other languages like in western Europe. Important and famous persons like Plato or Heraklit expressed their own feelings and ideas with this language.

They thoughts still have a big impact on our society nowadays and how we see things from their point of view. But can you even imagine belonging to the language, which is also very difficult to learn for some people, there was even a dialect? It was the rhetorical language called Asianism. However, there was a countermovement against this kind of rhetoric. It was called Atticsm. You might haven’t heard about these terms before. Therefore, for our category “Culture” I will present and explain to you especially Atticsm now:

This term literally means; a preference for the Athenians or the one Attic language. But basically, it describes a rhetorical movement. It began in the middle of the 1st century in Greece. The root of this rhetoric leads back to the fields of grammar and philosophy. As I already mentioned, it was a countermovement to the other well-known rhetoric of Asianism and turned away from it. It was orientated towards the orators of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. in Athens. The rhetoric of Asianism is pretty expressively and pompous. Indeed, this one is to be considered very turgid as well as extravagant. Contrary to Atticsm; it was considered as very simple and pure. Therefore, you can either disparage one of these stills or highly esteem them. Goal of the rhetoric Atticsm was to create a simplicity and factual of texts. However, in the end, the form of Atticsm eventually managed to prevail over Asianism.

Accordingly, this style of speech can also be considered as an epoch style. It dominated until the early imperial period. Especially, inciter of the movement like Linie Brutus and Calvus Shente strove and still demanded the sole use of a plain in the word usage. However, mainly founders of this simplified form of speaking and writing were Hegesias of Magnesia.

Although, at some point, the originally simpler language of Atticism became as refined as speeches, it was used and universally understood throughout Greece. Therefore, the cultural ties of the Mediterranean and beyond could still be maintained.

The conflict between Atticsm and Asianism even continued for a long time. In early imperial Greece, this struggle of the language continued through succession battles by modern and archaic oratory.

I hope you could learn some new things from this episode of culture.