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C H A PT E R 2 Smith and Propriety in the ClassicalTradition T hough steeped in knowledge of classical literature, Smith rarely parades his learning,nor does he always explicitly draw upon it.When mentioning classical rhetoric in LRBL, he is often dismissive, as when he derides rhetorical works obsessed with categorizing schemes and tropes as“generally a very silly set of books,and not at all instructive”(1.59), and one might easily mistake this for his attitude toward of all of ancient rhetoric (in fact, he is referring to modern rhetorics as well here).We can pardon but also learn from the reaction of C. R. Fay, who, upon examining a catalogue of Smith’s library half a century ago found himself surprised to realize that Smith’s thought“issued from the womb of the classics”(1).Smith scholars today widely recognize that his deep knowledge of classical literature inevitably shaped his thought. GloriaVivenza’s work, showing Smith in some cases reproducing passages from classical texts nearly verbatim, should fully dispel any lingering surprise contemporary readers might have.Vivenza, however, makes little reference to the classical rhetorical tradition which Smith knew well. Smith’s contribution to the theory of rhetorical propriety came in the context of twenty centuries of development in the history of the idea, and there can be little doubt that he was aware of and drew upon that tradition in ways both conscious and unconscious.A survey of this history is doubly useful then, not only as suggesting possible influences on Smith, but as an opportunity to examine some of the philosophical issues that theorizing about propriety involves.Two of the perspectives that come under analysis in this chapter—sophistic skepticism and platonic idealism—have direct analogues in two thinkers influential in Smith’s time,Hume and Shaftesbury respectively.As we shall see, Smith’s deployment of propriety in rhetoric and ethics was fully in accord with philosophical issues already well framed in the classical rhetorical tradition. Pretechnical Hellenic Propriety In the earliest Greek literature Smith read,he would have found pervasive the idea of propriety in speech and action, and it is almost certain that the first rhetoricians drew on the concept as it had surfaced in early poetry. These earliest formulations are a possible influence on Smith given the close relationship he articulates between propriety in rhetoric and ethics. As Hermann Fränkel has noted,“In [the Homeric epics] factual report of what men do and say,everything that men are,is expressed,because they are no more than what they do and say and suffer” (79). What they do and say: in oral cultures, word, deed and identity are not so distinct as they have become for us.Not surprisingly , appropriateness in Homer has been linked to characters’ capacities for the discovery of both speech and action, in social settings as well as in internal dialogue (Enos, 5). Even centuries later, after the concept of propriety is artificially lodged under the canon of rhetorical style, it will retain heuristic overtones.Smith too,as we shall see,will reassign such functions to propriety. The disparate effects of Telemachos’s famous speech to Penelope in book one of the Odyssey are an instructive first example of archaic propriety. They are due as much to his youth as to any particular quality of his speech.Antino ös mocks him:“WhyTelemachos, you must have gone to school with the gods! They have taught you their fine rhetoric and bold style!” (1.384). Though the speech induces wonder in Penelope,Telemachos fails to dislodge the suitors, for he lacks the requisite ethos, and his grand style ill-suits his youth.The appropriate was thus apparent in the suitability of speech (or lack thereof ) to the age and character of the speaker, to the subject matter and to the audience—in short, to the speech situation as a whole. Eventually several Greek terms came to signify appropriateness,including to prosêkon (that which is fit, beseeming), harmozein (to fit, suit), to oikeion (that which belongs to, is suited to, one’s own), and, most commonly where stylistic propriety was intended, to prepon.The origins of to prepon extend to Homeric poetry, where the verb prepein means “to appear before the eyes,” or“to be seen conspicuously.”For example,in the Homeric Hymn To Demeter , Metaneira tells the goddess that “truly dignity and grace are conspicuous upon your eyes [prepei ommasin] as in the eyes of kings that...

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