Author Description

The articles collected in this volume look at the relationship between Homer and ancient rhetoric. Ancient reception cast Homer as a master of an ideal rhetoric, "the first sophist." Homer's authority was exerted or discussed both in the context of education in rhetoric and in the discourse of sophists and orators. By referencing Homer, speakers could identify themselves as men of culture, but they could also solidify that culture by borrowing, from Homeric exempla and citations, a language shared by the Greeks from classical Athens to the Byzantine era.