greek-rhetoricfeatured in 30 works

Rhetoric

The systematic art of persuasion: born as a teachable craft in 5th-century Greece and built into a discipline by Aristotle.

Rhetoric is the art of persuasive speaking and writing. It emerged as a self-conscious, teachable techne in 5th-c. BCE Sicily and Athens — tradition credits Corax and Tisias, and the sophists Gorgias and Protagoras spread it. Plato then attacked it as mere flattery, before Aristotle (4th c. BCE) rehabilitated it in his 'Rhetoric' as the faculty of finding the available means of persuasion, resting on three pillars: logical proof (logos), character (ethos), and emotion (pathos). The Roman masters Cicero and Quintilian made it the heart of elite education, and it stayed a core liberal art for two thousand years.

How it traveled

On the murder of Herodes
Athens · -411
applies
The First Tetralogy
Athens · -411
explains
Against Callimachus
Athens · -402
applies
History of the Peloponnesian War
Athens · -400
explains
Menexenus
Athens · -386
explains
Protagoras
Athens · -385
explains
Euthydemus
Athens · -384
explains
Panegyricus
Athens · -380
explains
Republic
Athens · -375
explains
Phaedrus
Athens · -370
explains
Helen
Athens · -370
explains
Evagoras
Athens · -370
explains
Against Aphobus III
Athens · -362
explains
On the Peace
Athens · -355
applies
Memorabilia
Athens · -354
explains
Against Androtion
Athens · -354
explains
Exordia
Athens · -349
explains
Gorgias
Athens · -348
redefines
Against Timarchus
Athens · -346
explains
To Philip
Athens · -346
explains
On the False Embassy
Athens · -343
explains
On the Embassy
Athens · -343
explains
Panathenaicus
Athens · -339
explains
Antidosis
Athens · -338
explains
Against the Sophists
Athens · -338
explains
Nicocles or the Cyprians
Athens · -338
explains
To Alexander
Athens · -338
explains
Rhetoric
Chalcis · -335
explains
On the Crown
Athens · -330
explains
Against Ctesiphon
Athens · -330
explains

Key passages(20)

Origin Anchor — gr-rhetoric↗origin

Fragments & Testimonia · Aristotle