The Origins of Enargeia in Rhetorical and Poetic Theory

summary: The publication of Philodemus' On Poems: Book Two in 2020 has changed our understanding of enargeia (the "vivid" quality of writing that puts the subject "before the eyes"). We now can see that enargeia was already an important term of literary theory in the fourth century b.c.e., but also that Heraclides, Heracleodorus, Pausimachus, and Demetrius did not connect enargeia to the "before the eyes" formulation. This connection was made in the first century b.c.e. during the Aristotelian revival when enargeia was confused with Aristotle's word energeia ("activity"). Before the first century b.c.e., rhetorical enargeia meant what it meant more generally: not "vividness" but "clarity/obviousness."