Boris the rhetorician is in full voice at the moment, delighting his followers and infuriating his enemies. But is this the purpose of rhetoric?
It was the ancients who invented, or rather deduced, the rules. As the Roman professor of rhetoric Quintilian said: ‘Just as men discovered the art of medicine by observing that some things were healthy and some the reverse, so they observed that, when it came to speaking, some things were advantageous and others not. These they therefore noted for imitation or avoidance, while adding personal hints that logically followed. Experience then confirmed these observations, as a result of which people knew how to teach the subject.’
Rhetoric was developed during the 5th-4th c bc in Greece, when direct democracy flourished and citizens meeting in assembly took all the decisions.
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