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Updated: June 1, 2025
As Bornecque has shown, the fact that the rhetoric of the declamation schools was so unreal, so preoccupied with imaginary cases, and so given over to attainment of stylistic brilliancy, in no small measure explains the loss in late Latin literature of the sense of structure.
"It is not surprising," says Bornecque, "that during the first three centuries of the Christian era the sense of composition seems to have disappeared from Latin literature." Thus Quintilian lamented that in his day the well constructed periods of Cicero appealed less to the perverted popular taste than the brilliant but disjointed epigrams of Seneca. The Contamination of Poetic by False Rhetoric
Bornecque has shown that the strife of the forum and the genuine debates of the senate no longer kept tough the sinews of public speech, and the orators sank back in lassitude on the remaining harmless but unreal occasional oratory and on the fictitious declamations of the schools.
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.
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