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Akroterion 2012
GORGIAS AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSUASIONDOI: 10.7445/56-0-1 Abstract: Although the stated objective of Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen may be doubted1— to free Helen from blame for leaving her home and husband to go to Troy withParis (2) — it surely contains a serious point. The speech seems more accurately anencomium of the logos, than Helen, leading Charles Segal to conjecture that it‘may even have served as a kind of formal profession of the aims and the methodsof his art’ (1962:102). Some regard it as one of our best insights into the state oflate fifth century rhetorical theory (Kerferd 1981:78).
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