Classical Rhetoric and Poetics

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Homer_British_Museum.jpg

The first and greatest of the Greek epic poets, Plato called him the "first teacher" of the tragedeans and the "hegemon paideias," or leader of Greek culture. Some scholars dispute whether an actual Homer existed, rather arguing that his name serves as a "historical context for the poems," which emerged from an oral tradition of rhapsodes between 750-650 BCE.

The written form of Hesiod's "Theogony" that we have today crystallized sometime during the 6th century BCE

The written versions of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey that we have today, according to scholars, crystallized sometime during the 6th century.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Empedocles_in_Thomas_Stanley_History_of_Philosophy.jpg
Empedocles was the first pre-Socratic philosopher to write about the self-conscious study of the power of language. He was reputedly the teacher of Gorgias.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Salvator_Rosa_-_Démocrite_et_Protagoras.jpg/1024px-Salvator_Rosa_-_Démocrite_et_Protagoras.jpg

Protagoras was a sophistic philosopher whose ideas were taken seriously (and, mostly, opposed) by Plato and Aristotle. He is credited with developing the technique of the dissoi logoi and with saying "opposing arguers should strive to make the weaker case appear the stronger" and that "of all things the measure is man, of things that are that they are, of things that are not that they are not."

http://www.philosophybasics.com/photos/gorgias.jpg
The most famous of the Sophists, Gorgias is known for his musical prose, use of poetic/stylistic devices (esp. antithesis and elaborate parallelism), and self-conscious emphasis on how such techniques can be used to manipulate listeners.

Corax & Tisias, often cited as the first sophistic teachers of rhetoric, worked in Syracuse. Some traditions say Corax was a forensic orator and Tisias a logographer (ghostwriter for speeches), but other traditions say they may have been the same person. Plato attributes to them the innovation of recognizing the greater power of arguments from probability

In this work, Gorgias argues that nothing exists, if it did it could not be apprehended, and if it could be apprehended, that apprehension could not be communicated.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Isocrates_pushkin.jpg
A contemporary of Plato and head of a rival academy, Isocrates is one of the major figures in the history of rhetoric for his view of rhetorical education as paideia (philosophical training in citizenship).

Gorgias was sent from Leontini to Athens (possibly with Tisias) on an embassy to ask for Athenian protection from the Syracusians. His speeches were a sensation and helped set off a furor for rhetoric.

This anonymous work explores how strong opposing arguments can be made on particular topics, an approach to rhetorical instruction associated with the sophists which many have noted seems to advocate for a sort of situational ethics/cultural relativism.

Isocrates opened his school when he was in his early 40's, featuring a pedagogy where students wrote on serious topics and regularly practiced performing them.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Socrates_Louvre.jpg
While he is not technically the first Western philosopher, it is difficult to argue that anyone other than (Plato's) Socrates is the father of Western philosophy. While he didn't leave any writings, records of his life survive in Plato's dialogues and other contemporary writings, which elaborate a picture of him as an itinernant "gadfly" intent on pestering the citizens of Athens into living more reflective, "examined lives."

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Plato_Silanion_Musei_Capitolini_MC1377.jpg
Plato was the greatest pupil of Socrates. He founded his Academy for educating the elite youth of Athens in 387 and wrote many dialogues featuring Socrates and elaborating Western culture's first systematic examination of philosophy, conceived as the use of method to engage in the disinterested study of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues.

This early work dramatizes Socrates's trial and his statements in his "defense," which really function as an indictment of Athenian culture and an elaboration of the foundational principles of the examined, philosophical life. At the beginning of the work, Socrates says that a rhetor is skilled in speaking, and he is not that, unless you call those who speak truth rhetors. He also often mentions the difficulty of the philosopher persuading the many, noting that he is not willing to stoop to crying or bringing forth his children to persuade the dikasteria to prevent his execution.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Athens_-_Ancient_road_to_Academy_1.jpg/1920px-Athens_-_Ancient_road_to_Academy_1.jpg
Plato founded The Academy in 387, and it persisted as an important educational institution throughout the Hellenistic period promoting a generally skeptical approach to philosophical thought and rhetoric. Plato's pupil, Speusippus, succeeded Plato as head of the Academy when he died in 347, while Aristotle went on to found his rival Peripatetic school.

One of Plato's earliest dialogues, the Gorgias offers a direct critique of Sophistic rhetoric as a false art (or, a knack similar to cookery) that is, furthermore, ethically suspect and intellectually disingenuous. In the dialogue, Socrates converses with, questions, and debates Gorgias of Leontini and his proteges and proposes (and some would argue exemplifies) an alternative form of wholly ethical rhetoric based in knowledge of and absolute respect for the truth, openness to refutation, and the intellectual and moral superiority of "philosophy" to rhetoric.

At the home of Callias, Socrates engages in dialetical debate with Protagoras and twenty-one other people including Hippias of Elis and Producs of Ceos, as well as Alcibiades. Protagoras admits being a sophist and to making his students into good citizens. Socrates does not believe virtue can be taught. Protagoras says it can be by myth rather than by reason. Socrates badgers him on whether virtue is one or many things and gets Protagoras to agree with him that it is one, while convincing himself in the process that it can indeed be taught, laying the groundwork for his implicit concession to Socrates's argument for philosophy being superior to rhetoric.

In Plato's most systematic work, "The Republic," the rhetorician Thrasymachus’s debunking of rhetoric is what prompts Socrates to defend justice. Socrates, perhaps unexpectedly, says midway through the long dialogue that he and Thrasymachus have become friends, because in speaking he has become convinced rhetoric is necessary to soothe the crowd and “sell” philosophy to the city.

In this late dialogue which returns to the question of the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy, Phaedrus is enchanted with a speech by Lysias defending the non-lover as superior to the lover. He reads it aloud, then Plato offers a more logical, well-organized speech on the same theme. Then, Socrates's demon makes him return and give a longer, more literary/analogical speech in which love is compared to a chariot with winged horses. Socrates ultimately argues that true persuasion is a universal art of psychagogia, the leading of souls, which would need to be developed by a person skilled in dialectic who studied human souls and their passions and made all the correct definitions and analytical divisions to develop a true rhetorical science fully consonant with philosophy.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Aristotle_Altemps_Inv8575.jpg
Aristotle was born in the Macedonian town of Stagira in 384 BCE. Aristotle's father was court physician to King Philip, who would eventually go on to conquer and unite Greece and father Alexander the Great. Aristotle became a student at Plato's academy at the age of 17 and distinguished himself while there especially with his thinking on Logic and Argument. Aristotle left the Academy in 347 when Plato died because, as a non-Athenian, he could not take over. In 342, he became tutor to Alexander the Great, a position he held for two years before returning to Stagira for a time. In 336, he returned to Athens and opened his Peripatetic school, creating many of his greatest works as lectures. He taught there until 323, when Alexander's death forced him to leave Athens. He died shortly after in 322.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Teofrasto_Orto_botanico_detail.jpg
Aristotle's heir, Theophrastus assumed leadership of the Peripatetic school from the time that Aristotle left Athens. He wrote many treatises on rhetoric, all of which are now lost, but which helped to ensure the survival of a Peripatetic (Aristotelian) view of rhetoric. He sometimes credited with having developed the doctrine of the "three styles" (grand, middle, low) from concepts implicit in Aristotle's theory.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Spangenberg_-_Schule_des_Aristoteles.jpg
Around 335 BCE, after Philip of Macedon died and Alexander ascended (and thus no longer needed a tutor), Aristotle founded his school, which met in the colonnades of the Athenian lyceum (and from which location it took its name). The "school" was less formal than the academy, mainly consisting of Aristotle's lectures and some cooperative scientific research and philosophical inquiry among the school's junior and senior members. Aristotle left the school in 323, around the time of Alexander's death, in order to avoid anti-Macedonian persecution. His former pupil, Theophrastus, took over as head of the school.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Zeno_of_Citium_pushkin.jpg/400px-Zeno_of_Citium_pushkin.jpg
Zeno founded the Stoic school of philosophy, which laid great emphasis on goodness and peace of mind gained from living a life of Virtue in accordance with Nature. It proved very successful, and flourished as the dominant philosophy from the Hellenistic period through to the Roman era. With regard to rhetoric, the Stoics valued simplicity, brevity, and correctness in discourse, and under their influence, rhetoricians greatly extended the classification of tropes and figures.

Hermagoras was an important and influential Hellenistic rhetorical theorist. While none of his writings survive, he is noted by Cicero, Quintilian, and others for having developed "stasis theory," an inventional technique that guides forensic orators in defining the key questions in any case. According to Hermagoras, these are: 1.) What are the signs that X committed an act?; 2.) If X committed an act, was it criminal?; 3.) If X committed a crime, were there extenuating circumstances; and 4.) If X does deserve to be tried for committing the crime, is the trial being conducted properly?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Cicero_-_Musei_Capitolini.JPG/1024px-Cicero_-_Musei_Capitolini.JPG
Generally regarded as the next great rhetorician in the classical tradition after Aristotle, his reputation as a thinker on rhetoric was established with his De Inventione (c. 86 BCE) and consolidated with later, more complex works such as De Oratore (c. 55 BCE). Cicero was not only a theorist but was (and is) widely regarded as the most accomplished forensic (courtroom) orator of his time period and also was a major political force and deliberative (political) orator, advocating to protect the republic from demagoguery and tyranny.

Cicero's youthful work on rhetoric summarizes the categories for rhetorical study that were operative in the standard education of his time period, including the types of rhetoric and the five canons of rhetoric. The work contains detailed discussion only of the canon of invention, however.

Once thought to have been written by Cicero, the Rhetorica ad Herennium (now attributed to an anonymous Hellenistic teacher of rhetoric) is the oldest surviving rhetorical manual in Latin. It offers a highly useful window into the standard content of a Greek-influenced rhetorical education in first century Rome. The Rhetorica ad Herennium remained influential as one of the most widely read texts on classical rhetoric up until the Renaissance. Books I & II discuss invention, especially as it pertains to forensic oratory; Book III begins by discussing invention as it pertains to deliberative and ceremonial oratory and moves on to discuss arrangement, delivery, and memory; and Book IV is focused entirely on style.

De Oratore (Of Oratory) is Cicero's most important work elaborating his theory of rhetoric. In this dialogue, Crassus, Antonius, and other minor characters converse and debate various Aristotelian, Isocratean, and Hellenistic conceptions of rhetoric, how it should be taught and practiced, its ethical status, and its value in public life.