Abstract

The early handbooks of rhetoric compiled by Tisias and Corax and their successors seem to have been directed entirely at successful speaking in courts of law. This was the art that Strepsiades set out to learn in the Philosopher's Thinking-shop; this, Isocrates complains, was the only object of technical writers on rhetoric before his time; and Aristotle, when he wrote the chapter that stands first in hisRhetoric, made just the same complaint: τς ατς oσμς μεθδoυ περι τ δημηγoρικτ και δικανικ και καλλιoνoς και πoλιτικωτραςτς δημηγoρικς πραγματειας oςηρ oσης τς περι τ ςυναλλγματα, πει μν κεινης oδν λγoυγι, περι δικξεσθαι πντες πειρνται τεχνoλoγειν. The art as the Sophists practised it was by no means so limited in its application: many of them were accustomed to playing the parts of statesmen and diplomats as well as of educators; and the most notorious field for their powers of oratory was of course the lecture or πιδειξις. But the systems of rhetoric that they devised and taught did not cover their own practice; and forensic oratory, as well as seeming the most commonly necessary kind at that time, was also, it must be said, the easiest to reduce to rule. Gorgias, it is true, professed to teach a rhetoric of more extended application, by means of which his pupils would be able to produce conviction in any public assembly;* but we must conclude that this wider field was at least very imperfectly treated in all the technical systems of the time. Plato shortly describes the position thus:μλιστα μν πως περι τς δικας λγεται τε και γρφεται τχν, λγεται δ και περι δημηγoριας π ι πλo≠ δ oκκoα.