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Updated: June 24, 2025
Vergil was one of the very few; he kept his candle lit at the shrine of Catullus still, but this was hardly to be expected of the rest. In prose also the Augustans upheld the refined and chaste work of classical Atticism, an ideal which they derived from the Romans of the preceding generation rather than from teachers like Apollodorus. Pollio and Messalla are now the foremost orators.
If to speak, therefore, in a dry and lifeless manner, is the true criterion of Atticism, they are heartily welcome to enjoy the credit of it: but if they wish to put their abilities to the trial, let them attend the Comitia, or a judicial process of real importance.
And even in Athens the burden of Atticism, if we may say so, seems to have become too great to bear. We see a desire to emancipate both thought and expression from the exquisite but confining proportions within which they had as yet moved.
Be it allowed, then, that Lysias, that graceful and most polite of Speakers, was truly Attic: for who can deny it? But let it also be remembered that Lysias claims the merit of Atticism, not so much for his simplicity and want of ornament, as because he has nothing which is either faulty or impertinent.
I must, therefore, caution those whose ignorant discourse is become so common, and who wish to pass for Attic Speakers, or at least to express themselves in the Attic taste, I must caution them to take him for their pattern, than whom it is impossible that Athens herself should be more completely Attic: and, as to genuine Atticism, that them learn what it means, and measure the force of Eloquence, not by their own weakness and incapacity, but by his wonderful energy and strength.
This last has especially charmed me; it is remarkable for grace, delicacy, atticism, and precision. The chapters on metaphysics and philosophy are the most insignificant. All that has to do with large views with the whole of things, is very little at Joubert's command; he has no philosophy of history, no speculative intuition.
If only one, this will be a tacit implication, that none of the rest were true masters of Atticism: if all, how can you possibly succeed, when their characters are so opposite? Let me further ask you, whether Demetrius Phalereus spoke in the Attic style? In my opinion, his Orations have the very smell of Athens.
But should the former have begun his whining sing-song, after the manner of the Asiatics, who would have endured it? or rather, who would not have ordered him to be instantly torn from the Rostrum? Those, therefore, who can accommodate themselves to the nice and critical ears of an Athenian audience, are the only persons who should pretend to Atticism.
But Calvus did not threaten to become a political force, Calidius was too even-tempered, and Caesar was now in the north, fighting with other weapons. Cicero's prestige still seemed unbroken. It was not till Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49, after Hortensius had died, and Cicero had been pushed aside as a futile statesman, that Atticism gained predominance in the schools.
Thomas de Keyser, who understood better than any one else the kind of quaint new Atticism which had found its way into the world over those waste salt marshes, wondering whether quite its finest type as he understood it could ever actually be seen there, saw it at last, in lively motion, in the person of Sebastian van Storck, and desired to paint his portrait.
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