ABSTRACT
The Growth of Rhetorical Consciousness Persuasive speaking and writing were both historically and socially
grounded in Greek culture when Pericles ascended to power in Athens in 461 B.C.E. Oratory was a traditional part of Greek literature, and Homer’s Iliad contains numerous persuasive speeches. Early Greek drama is distinguished by the chorus, a group of singers or dancers who responded to the actors, usually antithetically, so that the audience could feel the tension of the moral dilemmas faced by the characters. This consciousness of antithesis, as it was played out on the Greek stage, is a significant prelude to the establishment of a rhetorical consciousness among the Greeks. In Athenian political life, since kingly omniscience had become an anachronism, citizens had learned to debate issues as a practical way to resolve them. “With the Greeks,” writes Dobson, “oratory was instinctive; in the earliest semi-historical records that we possess, eloquence is found to be a gift prized not less highly than valor in battle.”1
