A New History of Classical Rhetoric
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 069100059X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
George Kennedy's three volumes on classical rhetoric have long been regarded as authoritative treatments of the subject. This new volume, an extensive revision and abridgment of The Art of Persuasion in Greece, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, and Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors, provides a comprehensive history of classical rhetoric, one that is sure to become a standard for its time.
Kennedy begins by identifying the rhetorical features of early Greek literature that anticipated the formulation of "metarhetoric," or a theory of rhetoric, in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c.e. and then traces the development of that theory through the Greco-Roman period. He gives an account of the teaching of literary and oral composition in schools, and of Greek and Latin oratory as the primary rhetorical genre. He also discusses the overlapping disciplines of ancient philosophy and religion and their interaction with rhetoric. The result is a broad and engaging history of classical rhetoric that will prove especially useful for students and for others who want an overview of classical rhetoric in condensed form.
After Thermopylae: The Oath of Plataea and the End of the Graeco-Persian Wars (Emblems of Antiquity)
Grammar of Septuagint Greek: With Selected Readings, Vocabularies, and Updated Indexes
Greek Athletics in the Roman World: Victory and Virtue
Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek
by each emperor of the most respected candidate rather than by inheritance, and the last three had something like the training for the throne, the cultural values, and the eloquence that Quintilian desired. Quintilian describes his vision of the perfect orator in the preface to the first book of the Institutio (1.pr.9–20) and follows this with an outline of the treatise, which had already been completed: The first book will contain those things which are prior to the work of the rhetorician. [He
question at issue, which is called the stasis of the speech, and the available means of persuading the audience to accept the speaker’s position. The means of persuasion include, first, direct evidence, such as witnesses and contracts, which the speaker “uses” but does not “invent”; second, “artistic” means of persuasion, which include presentation of the 4 INTRODUCTION speaker’s character (xthos) as trustworthy, logical argument (logos) that may convince the audience, and the pathos or
linking rhetoric to dialectic: both are methods, not substantive disciplines, and unlike specialized studies “both are concerned with such things as are, to a certain extent, within the knowledge of all people.”40 He criticizes previous handbooks for their neglect of logical argument and of speeches other than those in courts of law and justifies serious consideration of rhetoric as useful on several grounds: if judgments are not reached in the right way, truth and justice will be defeated; a
reform to Roman influence. Modern attempts to identify a Greek source in the second or early first century have proved unsuccessful. Cicero had not heard of Atticism when he wrote On the Orator in 55 and never alludes to any Greek source for the movement. Thus it seems possible to regard Atticism as something developed first in Rome in the period around 50 B.C. with increased study of classical Greek models of prose in rhetorical schools. If so, it is one of the relatively few instances of Roman
Critias, and Zoilus among those who aim at exactness of word and practical oratory. The first Letter to Ammaeus is a refutation of the claim of an unnamed Peripatetic that Demosthenes owed his knowledge of rhetoric to Aristotle.8 Dionysius assumes that what is meant is that Demosthenes had read On Rhetoric, not that Demosthenes had attended lectures by Aristotle; thus he relies on the argument that historical references in On Rhetoric show it to have been written after most of Demosthenes’