Rhetoric: the Power of Identification Caesar Augustus after the turmoil of the fall of the Republic and the establishment of the Empire found many Roman citizens and subjects spread throughout the Empire had become remote from original Roman ideals and values of the Republic. They no longer held the same level of identification. Augustus, […]
History of Classical Rhetoric – An overview of its early development (1)
Pre-Socratic philosophers to the emergence of the sophists Every epoch experiences its changes and upheavals, and 5th Century Greece was no different to this general trend inhistory. The reasons for such changes are complex but, perhaps in the case of Ancient Greece, a new sense of national identity caused by such dramatic events as Greece’s […]
Cicero: A successful use Ethos and Pathos
Why, a colleague asked me, should anyone be interested in a legal case that took place over two thousand and ninety years ago? My answer was simple. The case of Sextus Roscius shows how an efficient and successful use of pathos and ethos can turn a potentially hopeless case into one of triumph. Cicero’s client […]
