Rhetorical Practice

This chapter surveys key aspects of rhetorical practice in Byzantium, with a focus on the middle and late periods. The first section maps out the generic landscape of Byzantine rhetoric, which, in addition to oratory in the narrow sense, can be argued to comprise virtually all of (highbrow) literature, including poetry. While it is true that Byzantine rhetoric is particularly rich in texts of the demonstrative type such as encomia, the essay asserts against claims to the contrary, that forms of deliberative and judicial rhetoric continued to exist in Byzantium and appear in fact ubiquitously once one broadens the scope beyond secular oratory. After a brief sketch of the place of rhetoric in higher education, the chapter proceeds to discuss the various steps involved in composing and performing a rhetorical text. In this, it follows ancient and medieval precepts for the so-called tasks of the rhetorician—invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery—and shows their relevance for the practice of writing and reciting texts belonging to various rhetorical genres. Throughout, this chapter argues that scholarship on Byzantine rhetoric has focused too narrowly on panegyric and on matters of style, and that attention should turn to long-neglected aspects of argumentative technique that were at the heart of Byzantine rhetorical theory and education and that can be found in a wide array of textual genres, particularly in religious literature.