previous next
[4] For my own part, and I have authority to support me, I hold that the material of rhetoric is composed of everything that may be placed before it as a subject for speech. Plato, if I read him aright, makes Socrates1 say to Gorgias that its material is to be [p. 359] found in things not words; while in the Phaedrus2 he clearly proves that rhetoric is concerned not merely with law-courts and public assemblies, but with private and domestic affairs as well: from which it is obvious that this was the view of Plato himself.

1 Gorg. 449 E.

2 Phaedr. 261 A.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Introduction (Harold Edgeworth Butler, 1920)
load focus Latin (Harold Edgeworth Butler, 1920)
hide References (1 total)
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: