Definition:
A prolix or highly ornamented style. Contrast with Attic.
Etymology:
The term arose in the mid-first century BC to describe the rhetoric of Greek colonists from Asia Minor who had preserved Sophism.Observations:
- "The Asiatic style, that is, the style in which little else is required than high-sounding words and sonorous periods, made its appearance among the Greeks in the first century before Christ. It is represented by the declamations of Dion Chrysostomus, Aristides, Themistius, and Libanius; productions which conclusively show that it is possible to use language skillfully without conveying any important ideas."
(Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles and Joseph Henry Thayer, Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods, Harvard University Press, 1914) - "I can only tell you that the florid and Asiatic style is not the taste of the age. The strong, and even the rugged and abrupt, are far more successful. . . . The florid and Asiatic was never a good style either for an European or an American taste. We require that a man speak to the purpose and come to the point;--that he should instruct and convince."
(William Wirt, in Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt, Attorney-General of the United States, by John Pendleton Kennedy, Lippincott, 1860) - "Cicero presents the Asianist style of speaking as a mode that is more sanctioned in youth than in old age, since for senior speakers it lacks 'seriousness' (gravitas). Cicero divides the Asianist style into two major varieties--one that is epigrammatic and clever (argutum) and the other characterized by speed and incisiveness."
(John Dugan, Making a New Man: Ciceronian Self-Fashioning in the Rhetorical Works, Oxford University Press, 2005)
Pronunciation: A-zhee-AT-ik
Also Known As: Asianist style
