ABSTRACT
The people of Athens made yearly sacrifices to the statue of the goddess Persuasion, whose worship was said to have been established in the city by Theseus. The power of words to move men’s minds and influence their actions had for the Greeks something of magical and divine about it. The heroes of Homer’s epics acknowledge and exploit the power of speech, treasuring eloquence as one of the greatest of human excellences. The Gorgias aims to demolish the conventions of rhetorical theory by exposing their shallowness and inconsistency. Gorgias clings to the received idea that the orator is morally good, and his art morally sound. Aristotle conducts the defence of rhetoric with great subtlety. Aristotle draws an analogy from medicine, no doubt with a knowing backward glance at Socrates’ unflattering argument about medicine and cookery.
