ABSTRACT
This chapter situates Hobbes and Leviathan within the history of rhetorical action. It argues that there are many reasons to believe Hobbes was not just aware of this line of rhetorical practice and theory, but he deeply engaged with it. It shows how Hobbes is absorbed in this tradition both biographically and contextually and that it is manifest in the rudiments of his political theory, from his theory of personation, to the staging of statecraft, to enacting sovereignty, and beyond. That is, the broadly understood idea of rhetorical action, the specific notion of constitutive rhetoric, and the virtues that are the medium through which they are practiced are all central to Leviathan.
