TRADITIONAL FORMS OF RHETORICAL PERSUASION IN AESCHINE’S ORATORY

Abstract

The paper discusses the main elements of persuasion in Aeschines oratory. A particular aspect of the research is the comparison of Aeschines’s and Demosthenes’s oratory. It tries to give an answer how far Aeschines’s oratory, especially his art of persuasion, is the product of skill (techne), and how much it is the product of the rhetoric gift (physis)?

The study of the ancient Greek rhetorical heritage provides a better and clearer demonstration of the structure and importance of a persuasion skill, both in the ancient times and in the modern communication theory. This way of looking at the rhetorical theory and praxis includes an interdisciplinary approach to this problem, which becomes increasingly integrated into the systems of modern scientific research.