Auxesis: A concept of rhetorical amplification
This essay examines and analyzes the classical concept of auxesis, a device used for amplification in Greek and Roman rhetoric, and redefines it through association with contemporary principles and practicess
The Lives of the Sophists
In Lives of the SophistsPhilostratus (second to third century CE) depicts the widespread influence of Sophistic in the second and third centuries CE. Lives of Philosophers and Sophists by Eunapius (born 347 CE) is our only source concerning Neo-Platonism in the latter part of the fourth century CE.
Classical Rhetoric and the Mediaeval Theory of Preaching
AMONG the sculptures on the portail royal of Chartres Cathedral, that mediaeval summa of chiseled stone, one may see the seven liberal arts personified in female forms. And under these one may perceive the outstanding representatives of all the arts. There, symbolized in its place in mediaeval life is rhetoric, and at her feet is Cicero. From Carolingian times well into the Renaissance, rhetoric as one of the liberal arts was figured in church sculptures, murals, mosaics, manuscript miniatures, the ornamentation of library rooms, fountains, table-tops, bronze vessels, windows, tapestry, altars, and gravestones; in one form or another at Auxerre, Bourges, Clermont, Laon, Rheims, Rouen, St. Omer, Sens, Soissons, Freiburg Muinster, the Abbey of St. Gall, Rimini, Florence, Siena, the Vatican; the handiwork in the earlier period most often of unknown artists, but later also of Giotto, the brothers Pisani, Pollaiuolo, Botticelli, Melozzo da Forli, Pinturrichio, and Raphael.2 Cicero is almost always her attendant, and she appears with attributes that vary with the imagination of the artist. At times she holds a pose perhaps intended to be faithful to Capella's striking portrait3 of the omnipotent queen, a woman of sub1 Part of this paper was read before the Classical Association of England and Wales at Cardiff on April 9, 1929.