Rhetoric
in its broadest sense, the theory and practice of eloquence, whether spoken or written. It aims at expounding the rules which should govern all prose composition or speech designed to influence the judgments or the feelings of men, and therefore treats of everything that relates to beauty or force of style, such as accuracy of expression, the structure of periods, and figures of speech. But in a narrower sense rhetoric concerns itself with a consideration of the fundamental principles according to which particular discourses of an oratorical kind are composed. The first to reduce oratory to a system were the Sicilian Greeks; its actual founder is said to have been Corax of Syracuse (466 в. c.). He divided the speech into subsidiary remarks, and peroration; and five parts, proem, narrative, arguments, he laid great stress on the rhetorical capabilities of general probability. Later masters of rhetoric were Tisias; Gorgias of Leontini, whose style was burdened with two much ornament and antithesis; Antiphon, the earliest of the so-called "Ten Attic Orators," and the first writer of speeches for others to deliver in court.
The speeches given by his great pupil Thucydides throughout his history, and the orations of Andocides, second of the Ten, are severely free from the florid ornament of later days. Lysias was an orator rather than a rhetorician; Isocrates first thoroughly taught rhetoric, which he defined as the "science of persuasion," as a technical method and discipline. His most celebrated pupils were Hyperides, Speusippus, and Isæus. The great Demosthenes was a pupil of the last. His opponent, Æschines, and his contemporaries, Hyperides, Lycurgus, and Dinarchus complete the Ten. Anaximenes of Lampsacus composed the oldest extant manual of rhetoric, but the great classical work on this subject is the analytical masterpiece of Aristotle. According to him its function is not to persuade, but to discover the available means of persuasion in any subject. He regards it as the counterpart of logic.
He divides the three provinces of rhetoric thus: (1) Deliberative rhetoric, concerned with exhortation or dissuasion, and future time, its ends expediency and inexpediency; (2) forensic rhetoric, concerned with accusation or defense, and with time past, its ends justice and injustice; (3) epideictic rhetoric, concerned with eulogy or censure, and usually with time present, its ends being honor and disgrace, or nobleness and shamefulness.
Aristotle's method dominated the Peripatetic school, but later began to be modified by the florid influence of Asia, the originator of which was Hegesias of RHEUM Magnesia. The school of Rhodes followed more closely Attic models, and gained great fame through its conspicuous leaders Apollonius and Molon (100- 50 в. c.). Hermagoras of Temnos (120 B. C.) composed an elaborate system which long retained its influence. Later rhetoricians were Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Longinus, Hermogenes, Apsines, Menander, Theon, and Aphthonius.
Among the earliest Roman orators were Appius Claudius Cæcus (300 в. c.), Cato the Censor, Ser. Sulpicius Galba, Caius Gracchus, Marcus Antonius, and Lucius Licinius Crassus. The instructors in formal rhetoric were Greek, and the great masters of theoretical and practical rhetoric alike, Cicero and Quintilian, were both formed by Greek models.
Throughout the Middle Ages rhetoric formed one of the subjects of the trivium; its leading authorities were Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus, and Isidorus. The subject reawoke with the revival of learning, and was taught regularly in the universities, the prescribed public exercises and disputations keeping it long alive; but in later generations it has constantly languished. In the United States, however, considerable attention is paid to it as a branch of general education.