The Advanced Study of Rhetoric Between the Seventh and the Ninth Century

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At the end of the iconoclastic era, we find two distinct approaches to rhetorical argumentation in the commentarieson Hermogenes’ On Staseis. They indicate a high level of learning and suggest there was no radical break in the continuity ofrhetorical education. However, rhetorical argumentation itself came to be viewed with suspicion during the Byzantine “DarkAge” and may have been subsumed into the study of dialectic. It re-emerged after the second phase of iconoclasm; at the sametime, rhetoric changed its self-definition and began to identify with the practice of philosophy.