The Art of Rhetoric in Greece and Rome

Rhetoric was the underpinning of the political, literary and artistic cultures of ancient Greece and Rome: not only was a skilled performance the key to success in the public assembly and the courtroom, but rhetorical tropes, figures, patterns, modes of presentation and even ways of thinking, informed every play, poem and historiographical text, and even many works of art. This introduction to ancient rhetoric will present the major texts on rhetorical theory and practice, some masterpieces of political and judiciary rhetoric, and rhetorical manifestations in Greek and Latin poetry, historiography and art. Readings will include Gorgias, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Sallust, Livy, Pliny the younger, Seneca, Tacitus, and others.

Requirements: attendance 25%; midterm exam: 30%; final exam: 45%.