The fact that it took the rise of democracies and otherwise open societies at Athens and elsewhere to create the climate in which public eloquence became a political indispensability.
the Art Of Rhetoricby aristotle
Logographos, a writer of speeches for others to use.
The present work is, then, the masterpiece of one particular literary genre that flourished in the fourth century BC in Greece, that of the rhetorical manual, and it is a remarkable fact that it should have fallen to to write it.
There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited.
If there are two definitive features of ancient Greek civilization, they are loquacity and competition.
To say this, however, is not to claim that it was the object of theoretical study.
The peculiar circumstances arising out of the fall of the Syracusan tyranny seem to have produced the first practitioners of the art of rhetorical.
How can a man who, for a significant phase of his formation, shared his master’s opposition to rhetoric have in maturity composed a masterpiece of the formal study of rhetoric?
Rhetoric was to be surveyed from the standpoint of philosophy.
It was at this point that the transition was first made to the conception that rhetoric was a teachable skill, that it could, usually in return for a fee, be passed from one skilled performer on to others, who might thereby achieve successes in their practical life that would otherwise have eluded them.
