ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a detailed consideration of how the Sophistic approach to language was one based upon a consideration of the magical power of speech. This chapter argues that the deep roots of early rhetoric in ritual and magical performative language constituted a significant part of the threat seen by Plato and Aristotle in the Sophists’ teachings and public demonstrations. Consequently, much of the systematisation of rhetoric, its bureaucratisation, can be seen as a series of attempts to expunge magic (as conveyed in ritual patternings, highly figurative language, vivid imagery) from public disputation. Although the ‘magical’ aspect of rhetoric never truly disappeared, authorities concerned with managing political, legal, and ceremonial disputation and declamation have often tended to take serious measures to keep it on the outside of the establishment. I argue that the practice of marketing can be seen as the last refuge of the magical roots of magic, and it marks, ironically, a (qualified) triumph after many millennia of marginalisation of this tradition.
