Jeroen A. E. Bons

In antiquity the name Gorgias has specific connotations: it refers to an important representative of rhetoric who played a crucial role in the earliest development of that cultural phenomenon so fundamental to public life and literature. In many cases he is portrayed as the eminencegrise of Greek rhetoric, responsible for the first attempts at theorizing about eloquence. Regularly notions from later rhetorical theory are ascribed to him. Already during his lifetime Gorgias is a figure of authority, and it is reported that he made a fortune by teaching his students to speak persuasively. At national gatherings like the Games at Olympia he is invited as the main speaker to address the audience with a panegyric on Hellas and the Hellenes. His notions on the practice and theory of rhetoric were developed further by students such as Isocrates and Alcidamas.1

Gorgias’ reputation as a pivotal figure in the history of rhetoric is confirmed when Plato directs his criticisms on judicial and political rhetoric in a dialogue named after him: the Gorgias. Plato portrays him as an eminent rhetOr, one of those men who with their art of eloquence claim to be able to provide a competence of speaking persuasively crucial to the life of a citizen, active in public life. Plato seems to direct his attack especially against those rhetoricians who in the practice of their art ignore the criteria of truth and justice. To make Gorgias one of the main interlocuters of the dialogue indicates that his name was associated with this kind of rhetoric.

Only two complete speeches of Gorgias survive: the Helen and the Palamedes. Most probably these are model speeches of defense; with their subject-matter derived from mythology they seem to be applications of Gorgias’ views on persuasive speech and argumentation to a fictional case (see below, 3). Furthermore, there exist two paraphrases of what seems to be a more philosophical work entitled On Not-Being, or On Nature. Here, Gorgias seems to have argued that ‘nothing exists’; further, that if something would ‘exist’, it is not knowable, and finally that if it would be knowable, it

Could not be communicated. Finally there are fragments from other works by him, and collections of opinions and tenets attributed to him.2

Gorgias is a figure not only relevant to the history of rhetoric and philosophy. His speeches belong to the earliest examples of a new literary form that arises in the fifth century: prose. Even if his style shows a strong influence from poetry, Gorgias is laying the groundwork for the genre of artistic or rhetorical prose, which will prove to be a decisive factor in the development of Greek prose in general.

In the following I will concentrate on the significance of Gorgias for the history of rhetoric. I will place him in the general context of the sophistic movement (4.2), discuss his contribution to the development of reflection on argumentation (4.3), and suggest the relevance of his notion of apate (deceit/seduction) for the process of persuasion (4.4).