The Rhetoric of Athens

Rhetoric was considered a kind of speech act in ancient times. By the late fifth century, it was widely accepted by people who were involved in civic life. In athens and certain other places, one of the biggest indicators of this is just the enormous amounts of money that teachers of rhetoric were making. Even plato, who is very critical of the pretences of sophists, of teachers of some of this stuff, even he at least represents to us some of the arguments that they or their students often sort of make to socrates.