Plato's "Phaedrus" is a dialogue between Phaedrus and the great Greek philosopher Socrates. Phaedrus has been spending the morning with Lysias, the celebrated rhetorician, and is going to refresh himself by taking a walk outside the wall, when he is met by Socrates, who professes that he will not leave him until he has delivered up the speech with which Lysias has regaled him, and which he is carrying about in his mind, or more probably in a book...

An anthology of primary texts in translation, An Introduction to Classical Rhetoric offers an overview of the social, cultural, and intellectual factors that influenced the development and growth of rhetoric during the classical period. Featuring classical rhetoric from the Sophists through St. Augustine, Williams provides an in-depth introduction to the period, as well as introductions to each author and each selection. Examples of rhetoric are interspersed...

Alessandro Barchiesi is the Gesue and Helen Spogli Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of Classics at Stanford University and professor of Latin literature at the University of Siena, Italy. He is the author of several books and the coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies. The study of Homeric imitations in Vergil has one of the longest traditions in Western culture, starting from the very moment the Aeneid was circulated. Homeric...