Abstract
In this article I shall concentrate on ten lines in Plato’s Gorgias (449c9–d9) dealing with what has come to be known as “rhetoric’s materia question.” By taking Gorgias as a representative of the first stages of rhetoric in ancient Greek thought, and by a close analysis of Socrates’ move in the above section, I shall pinpoint exactly where Plato located rhetoric in the consciousness of Gorgias, and by this offer a new perspective on one of the hot questions in secondary literature nowadays—the origin of ή τέχνη ρητορική.