ABSTRACT
The Antiochene orator Libanius is famous for his complaints about the decreasing significance of the art of rhetoric in his time, the fourth century AD. This precious type of knowledge, so Libanius claimed, was going to lose the public reputation it actually deserved, owing to shorthand writing and law. In a letter to his brother Zacharias, Procopius, half amused and half annoyed, mentions a disturbing phenomenon: his brother’s mockery of his commitment to his profession as rhetor, for Procopius at once job and vocation. Zacharias was going to scoff mercilessly at Procopius’ cultural haughtiness, his stiff eyebrows and his zeal for public applause, nicknaming him a sophistes. To be a rhetor was, for Procopius, more than a profession or the longing for public applause. Of course, the rhetor was very keen on his job and its opportunities to influence people: ‘a good rhetor’, he once noted, ‘is able to induce passion in whomever he wants’.
