The Greeks loved playing up the power of rhetoric. Its potential fascinated and terrified in equal measure. For them, the power to persuade through the use of words was part magic, part drug. The fifth-century BCE orator Cleon berated the Athenian assembly for their addiction to rhetoric. ‘You behave as if you are in the theatre. Applauding each novelty in argumentation, you are slaves to paradox,’ he supposedly complained. In order to escape the power of a skilled speaker, opponents often resorted to real magic. We possess a number of votive spells and voodoo-doll-like figures that command chthonic powers to counteract the speaking power of orators. ‘Bind their tongue, Hermes, and confuse their wits. Let me win the case,’ one curse-tablet implores.

The ancients told various stories about the origins of rhetoric. Sadly, these stories don’t get much attention in this collection. They are certainly fictional, but they give an insight into some of the hopes and fears surrounding rhetoric. In one version, rhetoric was invented by an odd couple of Sicilian Greeks, Corax and Tisias. We have a number of anecdotes about them. One of the most famous involves an argument over an unpaid bill. Corax claimed that Tisias owed him money for the rhetorical teaching that Tisias has received from him. To recover the money, he took his student to court. However, this strategy fell apart when Tisias argued that if the jury did not find him persuasive, then the rhetorical instruction he had received from Corax was worthless, and so he needn’t pay. Conversely, if they did believe him about the rightness of his case, he should win the case and not have to pay. In either scenario, the consequence was that Tisias avoided his debts. The story pushes a number of buttons. Anecdotes about insoluble paradoxes and students outstripping their masters always appealed. Moreover, the anecdote neatly captures the ambivalent attitude that attended the art of rhetoric in the ancient world. While it offered clear advantages for quick-witted individuals, one was never certain that this advantage wasn’t achieved at the expense of justice or the wider community. From its origins, rhetoric was something that needed to be watched.

The discussions of the origins of rhetoric in this volume are less fanciful than the stories that the Greeks told. There are no squabbling duos who accidentally invent a discipline here. As Nancy Worman makes clear in a very strong opening chapter, any narrative about the origins of rhetoric must engage with our earliest Greek poetry, especially the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Speeches abound in these works. The Iliad practically begins with a verbal tussle between Achilles and Agamemnon, and such wrangling continues throughout the epic; even the gods get into the act. About such speeches, the poet does not keep silent. Words are praised for being ‘fitting’ or ‘appropriate’, or denigrated as ‘ill-suited’ or ‘graceless’. It is in epic’s sophisticated discussion of wordplay, its ‘conflation of verbal style, visible performance, and moral content’, that we find the seeds of rhetorical theory. Others were prepared to pick up the baton and run with it. The philosophical and technical discussions of rhetoric that followed are arguably wrestling with this inheritance. It is striking that, even centuries later, when rhetoric was at its most developed, Odysseus was still invoked as the embodiment of a certain style of speaking. The Homeric models prove impossible to escape.

One of the major themes that runs through this book is the important role that rhetoric played in the formation of the élite male persona. Jon Hesk, in his chapter, lists the endless opportunities for rhetorical display that the citizen encountered. Even a bad case of ‘bed-hair’ could provide an excuse for speechmaking; so Dio Chrysostum’s famous Encomium on Hair praises the beauty that comes from keeping one’s hair untangled and the fortitude of those who are prepared to lose a good night’s sleep just to keep their hair perfect. Victoria Wohl shows how deep the notion of the importance of rhetoric penetrated into the Athenian psyche. The right to ‘frank speaking’ was the right of the citizen. It was what separated you from slaves and foreigners. To mess with it was to threaten democracy itself. It was through rhetoric that civic politics was played out. Disputes between orators were not just games of political point-scoring, but opportunities to revisit the social contract between speaker and audience. Thucydides may have gushed about Pericles’ ability to control the people through his speeches, so that ‘a democracy in name was, in fact, rule by the first man’. But such dreams turn out to be the fantasies of a bitter, rejected man. The reality of our surviving examples of political rhetoric shows speakers all too aware of the limits of democratic patience and of indulging in gambits that strengthen rather than inhibit democratic thinking.

Rome gobbled up Greek rhetorical writings. It compiled, dissected, reorganised, and expanded upon the Hellenic tradition. Greeks under Roman rule could make a handsome living feeding this appetite. Rome’s rhetorical handbooks and the writings of Cicero and Quintillian bequeathed a substantial legacy. Joy Connolly writes eloquently about the importance of rhetorical education. In the face of philosophic opposition, rhetoricians defended the principle that a training in speaking well inevitably led to the ability to judge right from wrong and to offer the best advice to the state. Plato may have scoffed, but there were no end of students ready to buy into the fantasy. The triumph of the rhetorician’s claim can be seen by the fact that it became practically impossible to be regarded as ‘a good man’ in Rome without some skill in speaking. ‘Eloquence is the highest virtue’, remarks Cicero. The comment is certainly self-serving, but it is remarkable how many others actually believed it.