Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle

Recent archaeological discoveries, coupled with long-lost but now available epigraphical evidence, and a more expansive view of literary sources, provide new and dramatic evidence of the emergence of rhetoric in ancient Greece. Many of these artifacts, gathered through onsite fieldwork in Greece, are analyzed in this revised and expanded edition of GREEK RHETORIC BEFORE ARISTOTLE. This new evidence, along with recent developments in research methods and analysis, reveal clearly that long before Aristotle"s Rhetoric, long before rhetoric was even stabilized into formal systems of study in Classical Athens, nascent, pre-disciplinary "rhetorics" were emerging throughout Greece. These newly acquired resources and research procedures demonstrate that oral and literate rhetoric emerged not only because of intellectual developments and the refinement of technologies that facilitated communication but also because of social, political and cultural forces that nurtured rhetoric"s growth and...