A note on sources: this course separates two periods. Classical material comes from Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE: the Sophists, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle and the orators. Later material comes from Greek teachers of the Hellenistic and Roman eras, whose school handbooks preserve the exercises students actually practiced. Each level says which is which.

Imagine you are an Athenian citizen in 400 BCE. A neighbor sues you over the boundary of your olive grove. There are no lawyers to hire. On the day of the trial you must stand before a jury of several hundred fellow citizens and argue your case yourself, while a water clock drains away your time. Next month, the Assembly will vote on whether to go to war, and any citizen may rise and speak. In a world like that, the ability to speak persuasively was not a luxury. It could decide whether you kept your land, your rights or your life. The Greeks called this art rhetorikē, the art of the speaker. This course teaches it as Greek students learned it, through theory and, above all, through practice.

Speech in the democracy

Classical. Athenian democracy ran on speech. The Assembly of citizens debated and decided laws, war and peace, often after hearing rival speakers. The herald opened debate with the question, “Who wishes to speak?” The law courts were run by large citizen juries with no professional judges. Each side spoke for itself, within strict time limits, and the jurors voted at once, without discussion. Citizens also spoke at public funerals, festivals and council meetings. A man who could not speak well was at a real disadvantage in nearly every part of public life.

Speechwriters

Because litigants had to speak for themselves, a profession grew up to help them: the logographers, or speechwriters, who wrote speeches for clients to memorize and deliver as their own. The most admired was Lysias, a resident foreigner in Athens whose speeches were praised for their plain, natural style. He had a gift for making each client sound like the kind of person he was, a farmer, an old soldier, a disabled man claiming a pension. That skill, writing in character, was one of the first lessons of Greek rhetoric.

The legendary founders

Greek tradition held that the art began in Syracuse, in Sicily, around 467 BCE, when the city overthrew its tyrants and citizens flooded the courts to reclaim property that had been seized. Two teachers, Corax and his student Tisias, were said to have written the first handbooks, teaching how to argue when there were no witnesses. Much of this story is legend, but one technique attributed to them is well attested, because Plato and Aristotle both discuss it: the argument from probability, in Greek eikos, “what is likely.”

The classic example: a weak man is accused of beating a strong man. He argues, “Is it likely that someone as weak as I am would attack someone so strong?” The strong man cannot simply say the reverse, since it is unlikely he would be beaten. So he argues instead that the weak man, knowing he would never be suspected, felt safe to attack. Both sides argue from likelihood. Greek rhetoric was born, in part, from learning to argue when the facts were unknown.

Gorgias arrives

In 427 BCE, the city of Leontini in Sicily sent an embassy to Athens to seek help. Its leader was Gorgias, a famous teacher of speech. His speeches dazzled the Athenians with their rhythm and balance: clauses of equal length, contrasts set against each other, endings that rhymed. These became known as Gorgianic figures. Gorgias stayed in Greece for many years, teaching for high fees, and became one of the most famous of the Sophists, the traveling teachers who offered to make young men skilled in speech and public life.

Two arguments on every matter

Another Sophist, Protagoras of Abdera, is reported to have taught that on every matter there are two arguments opposed to each other, and to have promised to teach how to make the weaker argument the stronger. To his admirers, this meant a skill in seeing every side of a question. To his critics, it meant making bad causes look good. That double reputation would follow rhetoric throughout its history.

How students learned

Classical students learned by listening, imitating and practicing. They heard their teacher's model speeches, copied and memorized them, and composed their own on set subjects. Some surviving texts were written for exactly this purpose. The Athenian orator Antiphon left three Tetralogies, each a set of four speeches on an imaginary murder case: an accusation, a defense, a second accusation and a second defense. Students could study how the same facts were argued from both sides.

Worked example: argue from likelihood

This is the first exercise, in the spirit of Tisias. A jar of oil has gone missing from a shared storeroom. No one saw who took it. Two men had keys: Nikias, a wealthy merchant, and Damon, a poor laborer.

• For Nikias: “Is it likely that a man who owns a hundred jars would risk his name for one? I had no need of it. Need is what drives men to steal.”
• For Damon: “Is it likely that I, the man everyone would suspect first, would take it? Only a fool steals when suspicion falls on him at once. The rich man knew he would never be suspected. That is why he felt safe.”

Notice the method: each speaker argues not from evidence but from what is likely given the kind of person involved. Practice writing both sides yourself. Then notice the danger: an argument from likelihood can persuade even when it is false. Greek teachers knew this. The rest of the course explores both the power of rhetoric and the arguments about how it should be used.