DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICISM—THEOPHRASTUS AND OTHERS—CRITICISM OF THE LATER PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS: THE STOICS—THE EPICUREANS: PHILODEMUS—THE PYRRHONISTS: SEXTUS EMPIRICUS—THE ACADEMICS—THE NEO-PLATONTSTS—PLOTINUS—PORPHYRY—RHETORICIANS AND GRAMMARIANS—RHETORIC EARLY STEREOTYPED—GRAMMATICAL AND SCHOLIASTIC CRITICISM—THE PERGAMENE AND ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOLS—THEIR FOUR MASTERS—THE SCHOLIASTS ON ARISTOPHANES—ON SOPHOCLES—ON HOMER—THE LITERARY EPIGRAMS OF THE ANTHOLOGY—THE RHETORIC OF THE SCHOOLS—ITS DOCUMENTS—THE ‘PROGYMNASMATA’ OF HERMOGENES—REMARKS ON THEM—APHTHONIUS—THEON—NICOLAUS—NICEPHORUS—MINORS—GENERAL REMARKS ON THE ‘PROGYMNASMATA’—THE COMMENTARIES ON THEM—THE “ART” OF HERMOGENES—OTHER “ARTS,” ETC.—TREATISES ON FIGURES—THE DEMETRIAN ‘DE INTERPRETATIONE’—MENANDER ON EPIDEICTIC—OTHERS—THE ‘RHETORIC’ OR ‘DE INVENTIONE’ OF LONGINUS—SURVEY OF SCHOOL RHETORIC—THE PRACTICAL RHETORICIANS OR MASTERS OF EPIDEICTIC—DION CHRYSOSTOM—ARISTIDES OF SMYRNA—MAXIMUS TYRIUS—PHILOSTRATUS—LIBANIUS, THEMISTIUS, AND JULIAN. The two remarkable books which have been discussed at length in the foregoing chapter represent, no doubt, the highest condition, [Sidenote: _Development of Criticism._] but certainly a condition, of Greek criticism in the second half of the fourth century before Christ. This criticism had not, indeed, yet assumed the position of a recognised art. It was at best a more or less dimly recognised function of Rhetoric, which on the one side was made to include a great deal which is not literary criticism at all, and on the other hand was made to exclude Poetics. But Rhetoric, from this time onwards, more and more tends to become the Art of Literary Criticism generally, and to absorb Poetics within itself. So that on the one hand we shall find, among the Latins, Quintilian, whose strict business is with the strictly oratorical side of prose rhetoric, dealing freely with poetry, and on the other, among the Greeks, Longinus (whose main subject is poetry), not hesitating to draw examples from prose. Nor may it be wrong to discern in this awkward separation of the two parts of criticism, and the yet more awkward adulteration of prose criticism with matters really foreign to it, an unconscious—nay, an unwilling—recognition of fact. For Poetry deals first of all with form, Prose with matter; though the matter can never be a matter of entire indifference to Poetry, and the form becomes of more and more importance as we ascend from the lower to the higher prose.