Ioannes Sikeliotes on Rhetoric, Harshness, and the Cosmic Order

Throughout the Byzantine millennium, Hermogenes of Tarsos’ (2nd c.) treatise On forms of speech provided a framework to conceptualize not only speech but also the wide array of social relationships that speech creates and mediates. In doing so, it also provided a conceptual toolbox through which to pinpoint the individually specific mixture of stylistic forms that defines the style of single authors. While Hermogenes’ On forms was intensely commented on throughout the Byzantine centuries, the rhetor Ioannes Sikeliotes (early 11th c.) devoted a very extensive and still little-understood commentary to it. By idiosyncratically engaging with Late Antique Neoplatonic thought, he outlined the project of a Christian rhetorical theory in which a metaphysically grounded rhetoric is presented as the highest part of philosophy and the founding principle of social order. In this paper, I will present soundings from his treatment of different stylistic forms (e.g., trachytes, ‘harshness’, the Hermogenian stylistic form describing interactions between social superiors and social inferiors) and broach the question of how rhetorical theory—and Sikeliotes in particular—can contribute to our understanding of authorial individuality (and selfhood) in Byzantium.