(Re)discovering a Rhetorical Genre: Epideictic in Greek and Roman Antiquity

Abstract

Epideictic rhetoric has been traditionally stigmatized as fl attery or empty show without any practical goal. Where does such attitude towards epideictic come from? To answer this question, we explore the ancient debate about the nature and the function of the epideictic genre. In the second part of this paper, we discuss the recent reappraisal of the epideictic among classical scholars and fi nally focus the attention on a promising fi eld of research: epideictic speeches in honor of women.