P E R H A P S T H E S Y S T E M of invention most often associated with ancient rhetoric is that referred to by both ancient and modern rhetoricians as the topics (Greek topos, "place") or the commonplaces (Latin
communis). The word place was originally meant
quite literally. Lists of topics were first written on papyrus rolls, and students w h o were looking for a specific topic unrolled the papyrus until they came to the place on the roll where that topic was listed. Later, this graphic meaning of place was applied con- ceptually, to mean an intellectual source or region harboring a proof that could be inserted into any dis- course where appropriate. Even later, the terms topic and place referred to formal or structural inventive strategies, like definition, division, or classification (see Chapter 9, on sophistic topics, for more informa- tion about the formal topics).
Ancient rhetoricians often described the places as though they were hidden away somewhere. Quintilian, for example, defined the topics as "the secret places where arguments reside, and from which they must be drawn forth" (V x 20). Just as hunters and fishermen need to know where to look for specific kinds of prey, rhetoricians need to be skilled at tracking down suitable proofs. Quintilian's
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students must have used the topics much as hikers use trail
point them in the right direction to take through the wilderness of all pos- sible proofs. As Cicero wrote to his friend Trebatius, "It is easy to find things that are hidden if the hiding place is pointed out and marked; simi- larly if we wish to track down some argument we ought to know the places or topics" (Topics, I 7).
Some modern scholars treat the topics as representations of structures in the human mind, arguing that they describe the processes everybody uses to think with. But this interpretation gives the topics a modern color- ing, because it focuses invention on minds or brains rather than on lan- guage. The only ancient treatises that lend themselves to such a reading are Aristotle's Rhetoric and Topics. However, Aristotle also discussed topics drawn from the operations of the Greek language (as in Topics I vii, for example), and he drew as well from the ethical and political issues that con- fronted fourth-century Athenians (as in Rhetoric I iv).
There are two ancient terms for these features of ancient rhetorical the- ory because ancient rhetors spoke both Greek and Latin. We will take advan- tage of this duality by using the terms topic and commonplace to mean different things, even though the terms were used interchangeably in ancient thought. We adopt the term topic to refer to any specific procedure that gen- erates arguments, such as definition and division or comparison and con- trast. We use the term commonplace to refer to statements that circulate within ideologies. This should not be taken to imply that topics are not implicated with ideology, however, because the very processes we think
ence and similarity and the be ideologically constructed.
Nor should the ancient topics be confused with the modern use of the term topic. In modern thought, topics exist either in a body of knowledge that must be learned or in a thinker's review of her experiences. When modern teachers ask students to assemble a list of topics to write about, they mean that students are to select some piece of knowledge found in books, or in other research, or in some personal experience, as subjects that can be discussed in writing. For ancient rhetoricians, in contrast, topics existed in the structures of language or in the issues that concerned the community. That is why they were called were available to anyone who spoke or wrote the language in which they were couched and who was reasonably familiar with the ethical and political discussions tak- ing place in the community. Since the topics yield propositions and proofs drawn from daily discussion and common sense of a commu-
cannot easily be separated from consideration of political, ethi- cal, social, economic, and philosophical issues.
A N C I E N T T O P I C A L T R A D I T I O N S
Humans have used topics for a very long time. Some historians of rhetoric think they may be related to a memory device used during very ancient times by poets called rhapsodes, who traveled about the countryside recit-
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ing epic and lyric poetry and telling stories of the gods. Before the time when writing was readily available to most people, rhapsodes recited long poems from memory, and they accomplished this partly by relying on bits of lines or images that they could insert into any recitation wherever they needed a transition or a description or a way to fill out the meter of a line. The poets who are now known collectively as "Homer" probably repeated phrases like "rosy-fingered dawn" and "the wine-dark sea" to help them remember what came next while they recited poems (see Chapter 12, on memory).
By the sixth or fifth centuries BCE, rhetoricians might have used topics in the same way, memorizing a stock of arguments that were general enough to be inserted into any speech. Because they had this stock, rhetors were ready to speak on the spot whenever necessary simply by combining and expanding upon the appropriate topics. By examining several topics and amplifying each one, rhetors could lengthen any speech to fit the time them by a rhetorical situation. In the dialogue called Menexenus, Plato gives us a glimpse of how this might have been done:
Yesterday I heard Aspasia composing a funeral oration about these very dead. For she had been told, as you were saying, that the Athenians were going to choose a speaker, and she repeated to me the sort of speech which he should improvising and partly from previous thought, putting together fragments of the funeral oration which Pericles spoke, but which, as I believe, she composed. (236b)
In other words, Aspasia used parts of an earlier, similar speech she had composed in making up a new one. These fragments may have been what were later called topics or commonplaces. They would certainly include arguments that praised the dead, and there might be topics of blame used against people thought to have caused the death, as well. Praise and blame are epideictic topics, suitable for use on ceremonial occasions such as funerals. Ancient rhetors and rhetoricians also developed topics appropri- ate for use in the courtroom and in the assembly, where forensic and delib- erative discourse are practiced.
After writing became readily available, lists of topics that had previ- ously served as memory devices could more easily be preserved. Ancient rhetoricians produced at least three topical traditions. One of these is ordi- narily identified with sophistic teachers like Tisias and Corax, Theodorus, or Thrasymachus, who may have written the first rhetorical handbooks. No one knows for sure whether any of the Older Sophists wrote handbooks, but if they did, the sections on invention probably contained lists of stock arguments or topics that could be inserted into any discourse. Aristotle developed this sophistic tradition into a complete theory of topical inven- tion, as we shall see later in this chapter.
Two topical traditions were in use during the Hellenistic period and in Roman rhetoric, and both were based on Aristotelian texts. The first was drawn from the Rhetoric, the second from the Topics. The second tradition
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appeared prominently in Cicero, Quintilian, and minor rhetoricians and is the system most often referred to by modern rhetoricians when they dis- cuss classical invention. Some of the topics delineated in this
division, classification, and in modern
composition textbooks, where they are usually treated as means of arrange- ment rather than invention. We discuss these sophistic topics in a later chapter of this book because they can be used as means of arrangement as well as invention.
ARISTOTLE'S T O P I C A L SYSTEM
The topical system delineated in Aristotle's Rhetoric is tightly bound to the system of logical proofs that he erected in his treatises on logic, dialectic, and poetry as as those on rhetoric and the topics. These treatises taken together reveal in great detail his assumptions about how language can be put to work as a heuristic, a method of finding proofs to use when debat- ing any issue. Like the sophistic topics, Aristotle's topics comply with intel- assumptions that are far distant in time and space our own. Thus they display the foreignness of ancient rhetorical thought more graphically than many of its other features. Nevertheless, Aristotle's topi- cal system is still useful when updated to account for the commonplaces used in contemporary ideologies.
Aristotle probably did not invent the topics that appear in the Rhetoric. They had most likely been in circulation for many years among traveling sophists and teachers. His contribution was to devise a classification scheme for the topics. He divided rhetorical topics into two kinds: those that were suited to any argument at all (the koina or common topics) and those that belonged to some specific field of argument (the eide, or special topics) (Rhetoric I ii 21). The three common topics are
1. Whether a thing has (or has not) occurred or will (or will not) occur; 2. Whether a thing is greater or smaller than another thing, and 3. What is (and is not) possible.
Scholars call these common topics past/future fact; greater/lesser, or mag- nitude; and possible/impossible. For simplicity's sake we refer to them here as conjecture, degree, and You will note some conceptual overlap with the questions delineated in stasis theory. That is not surpris- ing, because ancient teachers of rhetoric were eclectic; they adopted any useful teaching tactic that came to hand without being careful to distin- guish sophistic traditions from each other or from Aristotelian thought. We thought it important to retain the term conjecture even at the risk of some confusion between systems of invention, because it best conveys the spe- cial meaning that ancient teachers conveyed when speaking about things or events perceived in the world.
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According to Aristotle, the common topics belonged exclusively to rhetoric because they do not discuss any particular class of things; rather, they are useful for discussing anything whatever. Aristotle apparently developed the category of common topics in order to support his argument that rhetoric was a universal art of investigation. Some authorities on the Rhetoric argue that the common topics represent all the kinds of rhetorical questions that can be debated. In other words, an issue has to fall into one of these three categories in order to be available for discussion at all. Other scholars argue that the common topics help people to invent proofs for propositions drawn from the specific arts, chiefly politics and ethics, to which the universal art of rhetoric is most closely related (I ii 1356a). Whatever Aristotle intended the common topics to do, they can still prove useful to people who are looking for good arguments.
The special topics, in contrast, dealt with specific arts and sciences. Aristotle delineated a great many special topics belonging to fields of dis- course such as politics, ethics, and law. The special topics of politics, for example, are "finances, war and peace, national defense, imports and exports, and the framing of laws" (Rhetoric I iv 7; Kennedy 53). He pointed out that rhetors need a good deal of specific knowledge to argue from spe- cial topics. One who would discuss war and peace, for example, must be able to assess the strength of his country's defenses and that of supposed enemies; must know the history of relations between the two countries; and must study the war-making capabilities of anyone "with whom there is the possibility of war" (I iv 9; Kennedy 54). We have departed from Aristotle, and from rhetorical tradition altogether, by treating Aristotle's special topics under the heading of "commonplaces."