La référence aux arts dans la rhétorique. Nam et oratio efficitur arte sicut statua (Quint., II, 21, 1)

Abstract

References to art in texts about eloquence are a major source of information for historians of art in Antiquity, but they also inform us about rhetoric. This paper aims to reflect on references to art in latin texts on rhetoric, questioning what the artistic topic brings to rhetoric and what this says about the links between rhetoric, art and philosophy. These comparisons will be studied in Cicero and Quintilian: artes remain classified in a hierarchy -with rhetoric at the top-, but the comparison with artists, and especially with Phidias, contributes to a philosophical thought on creativity, which is related to Platonism, Aristotelianism and Stoicism.