Introduction

The empire of Alexander and its Successor kingdoms spread the use of the Greek language far more widely through the eastern Mediterranean world than had been the case previously and engendered the development of a koine (literally ‘common’) Greek that became the lingua franca in these newly Greek-speaking areas and in some parts of Asia Minor where Greek had been in use for centuries. Largely for that reason, the period from Alexander’s death (323) to the incorporation of the last independent Greek-speaking kingdom into the Roman empire with the death of Cleopatra VII (30) is known as the Hellenistic period. The proliferation of the Greek language encouraged a simultaneous introduction of other aspects of Greek culture, including the study of rhetoric. In consequence, individuals and communities in the eastern Mediterranean world began to contribute to the development of rhetoric in the areas of both theory and practice. Naturally, the successors to the practitioners of rhetoric in Classical Greece, especially at Athens, continued to think and write about their field of study during the Hellenistic period, but these were no longer the sole proprietors of their craft, either in establishing the rules or in delivering the most important speeches. Of course, even in Classical Greece, some of the best orators had not been of Athenian origin (for example, Gorgias of Leontini).1 Nevertheless, Athens (to our knowledge) was the focal point for rhetorical theory and practice: most extant classical speeches (as well as most theory) are somehow connected to Athens.

That is not true of the Hellenistic world as is clear despite the lack of solid extant evidence for the rhetoric of this period. Unlike Greek oratory of Classical Greece and the Roman imperial period, not a single complete speech of the Hellenistic period survives, and the large number of Hellenistic works on theory and practice has similarly disappeared. Instead, modern scholars must rely on reports by later authors and fragments of theoretical works and speeches found in a wide variety of writings.

That makes the study of rhetoric in the Hellenistic period difficult; reports and fragments are found out of context or already interpreted, sometimes in a programmatic way, by the writers who cite them. To a considerable degree, the modern scholar must attempt to re-establish contexts, intents, and much else about Hellenistic rhetoric. Inevitably, this results in interpretations without sufficient evidence to prove their validity beyond doubt, and degrees of certainty are often the best that can be achieved. Nevertheless, the situation is not hopeless. The period was fertile in the development of rhetoric into the phenomenon that re-emerges in the Roman period of Greek rhetoric, and it is possible to treat some important writers and to outline the main threads and themes of the development of rhetoric in Hellenistic times. This chapter will treat the most important individuals, trends, and concepts in a survey of rhetoric’s development in this period; inescapably, some illustrative material is drawn from Greek rhetoric in the Roman period. For the most part, it will avoid detailed technical discussion of the intricacies of the composition of speeches and the like, but it will refer the reader to places where further information on these topics is available.