Rhetoric and Law
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23429006 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Gagarin (Classics, University of Texas at Austin, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Pages | 43-52 |
| Publication date | 2014-02-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199731596.013.002 |
| OpenAlex | W2190277979 |
| ISBN | 9780199731596 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 1 |
This chapter reviews the mutual influence of rhetoric and law on one another from our earliest evidence in the Homeric poems through the Hellenistic period. Law influenced rhetoric in that a forensic context was crucial for the “invention” of rhetoric in Sicily, for the rhetorical advances made by the sophists, especially Gorgias, and for the assessments of rhetoric by Plato and Aristotle. On the other hand, rhetoric played a large role in litigation in the earliest “trial scene” on Achilles’s shield in Homer’s Iliad, as well as in the forensic speeches of the fourth-century logographers. A case study, Lysias 1, “On the Murder of Eratosthenes,” shows how rhetoric was crucial to the determination of both the facts of the case and the meaning of the relevant laws.
Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Poetry · Political science · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |