ABSTRACT
This chapter looks beyond the explicit discussions of ekphrasis in the handbooks to consider just some of the questions raised by the practice of ekphrasis. It discusses some of the questions raised by the rhetoricians' own claims for ekphrasis in both epideictic and declamation. Philostratos' Eikones transcend in their sophistication the world of the rhetorical handbooks and hint at the inadequacies of the discussions of ekphrasis there. Ekphrasis in epideictic thus ran the risk of being superfluous when the audience actually had before their physical eyes the sight which the orator was supposed to bring before the eyes of the mind. Nikolaos' statues are all of figures or events familiar from literature, so that the role ascribed to the artist is that of preserving and transmitting this tradition. The closest ancient category to our notion of fiction that is to be found in the surviving sources is the rhetoricians' plasmata.
