Introduction 31
had to present their ideas, and the audio-visual means (writing facilities,
diagrams, opportunities for live demonstration) they had at their disposal;
the interests and the expectations of their audiences, and the ways in which
these influenced the actual form of their writings; and the respects in which
‘scientific’, or ‘technical’, or ‘expert’ language or ‘discourse’ differed from
‘ordinary’ and ‘literary’ language and ‘discourse’.
After many years of considerable neglect, the last two decades have thus
seen a significant increase in attention being given to the forms of ancient
scientific writing, especially among students of the Hippocratic Corpus, but
also, for example, on Latin medical literature, with some studies focusing on
‘strictly’ linguistic and textual characteristics, while others have attempted
to relate such characteristics to the wider context in which the texts were
produced.^34
Again, it is important to view these developments in their wider con-
text. First, general trends in the study of rhetoric and discourse analysis,
in particular the study of ‘non-literary’ texts such as advertisements, legal
proceedings, minutes of meetings, political pamphlets and medical reports,
the study of rhetoric and persuasive strategies in apparently ‘neutral’ scien-
tific writings, and the development of genre categories based on function
rather than form have led to a growing awareness among classicists that
even such seemingly ‘unartistic’, non-presumptuous prose writings as the
extant works of Aristotle, theElementsof Euclid and the ‘notebook-like’
HippocraticEpidemicsdo have a structure which deserves to be studied
in its own right, if only because they have set certain standards for the
emergence and the subsequent development of the genre of the scientific
treatise (‘tractatus’) in Western literature. It is clear, for example, to any
student of Aristotle that, however impersonal the tone of his works may be
and however careless the structure of his argument may appear, his writings
nonetheless contain a hidden but undeniable rhetoric aimed at making the
reader agree with his conclusions, for example in the subtle balance be-
tween confident explanation and seemingly genuine uncertainty, resulting
in a careful alternation of dogmatic statements and exploratory suggestions.
The study of these formal characteristics has further been enriched by
a growing appreciation of the role of non-literal, or even non-verbal as-
pects of communication (and conversely, the non-communicative aspects
of language). Aesthetics of reception, ethnography of literature and studies
in orality and literacy have enhanced our awareness of the importance of
(^34) For more detailed discussion and bibliographical references see van der Eijk ( 1997 ), from which the
following paragraphs are excerpted.