Rhetoric

Abstract

Abstract Rhetoric in the widest sense is the study and control of the power of words in human society. The classical Greeks were the first to conceive of rhetoric as an art and to make it a part of the formal education of a citizen, but through most of the history of Western civilization the basic rhetorical texts have been Latin treatises, handbooks, and speeches by, or attributed to, Cicero (106-43 BC), Quintilian (c.AD 40-95), and other Roman writers. Quintilian recognized Cicero as his greatest inspiration, and it is not too much to regard the Western rhetorical tradition as essentially Ciceronian: in its concept of the statesman as orator, in its theoretical categories and terminology, and in its artistic and stylistic values. But from later Antiquity until the Renaissance the authoritative texts were not what we might think of as Cicero’s major writings on rhetoric: the urbane dialogue On the Orator and the elegant treatises called Brutus and Orator.