ABSTRACT
So far we have viewed the sophists as they would have appeared to the outside world of Graeco-Roman society at large. We must now take a closer look at the techniques by which they were expected to demonstrate their virtuosity within the context of public or private performance.1 A system culminating in dazzling displays of extempore rhetoric on anything and everything demanded a great deal of systematic and perhaps overmechanised preliminary training. Philostratus not infrequently draws attention to the immense efforts sophists had to expend behind the scenes in order to acquire and maintain a seemingly effortless technique,2 while Lucian could complain about the short-cuts open to the unscrupulous careerist too anxious to get to the top.3 The following discussion does not set out to offer a history of late Greek rhetoric, but rather to draw attention to aspects of it which are particularly characteristic of sophistic practice.
