ABSTRACT
Historians usually locate the classical period in rhetoric from the 5th century BCE to around the 5th century CE, the period that saw the flowering of rhetorical scholarship in Athens and Rome. The idea of community was inextricably linked to invention in the ancient world because knowledge was located in communal learning. In fact, according to rhetorical theorist Sharon Crowley, ancient rhetoricians defined knowledge as the collected wisdom of those who are knowledgeable. Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric, composed between 360 and 334 BCE, is an important source of information about how invention was conceived of in the ancient world. Aristotle’s idea of the credible rhetor has been affirmed in a 21st century study of academic writing in multiple disciplines by Chris Thaiss and Terri Zawacki, which they reported on in Engaged Writers, Dynamic Disciplines (2006).
