Invention And Method: Two Rhetorical Treatises from the Hermogenic Corpus (Writings from the Greco-Roman World)

This volume contains the Greek text, textual apparatus, and first published English translation of two treatises on rhetoric, with introductory material and notes. Once attributed to Hermogenes of Tarsus, these treatises are now believed to be by unknown authors writing in the second or third century C.E. or later. The first treatise, entitled On Invention, is a handbook for students providing formulas to aid them in the composition of declamations on assigned themes. The second treatise, On the Method of Forcefulness, discusses prose style with special attention to figures of speech. Extensive notes interpret the often-difficult content and relate it to other writing on rhetoric. The Greek text is that of Hugo Rabe (1913).

George A. Kennedy is Paddison Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Adjunct Professor of Speech Communication at Colorado State University. He served as President of both the American Philological Association and the International Society for the History of Rhetoric and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of The Art of Persuasion in Greece, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, Greek Rhetoric Under Christian Emperors, and A New History of Classical Rhetoric (all from Princeton University Press); Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (University of North Carolina Press); Aristotle “On Rhetoric” and Comparative Rhetoric (Oxford University Press); and Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric (Society of Biblical Literature).