Gorgias

Gorgias
of Leontini (c.485–c.380 BC), one of the most influential of the sophists, important both as a thinker and as a stylist. He is said to have been a pupil of Empedocles; his visit to Athens as an ambassador in 427 is traditionally seen as a landmark in the history of rhetoric, introducing Sicilian techniques into the Athenian tradition of oratory (see rhetoric, Greek). However this may be, his stylistic influence was enormous. The extant Encomium of Helen and Defence of Palamedes, as well as the fragment of his Epitaphius (H. Diels and W. Kranz, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker 82 B 6), illustrate clearly the seductions of his antithetical manner, with its balancing clauses, rhymes, and assonances: antithesis, homoeoteleuton, and parisosis became known as the ‘Gorgianic figures’. There is a wonderful parody of the style in Agathon's speech in [The entire page is 286 words long]

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