Abstract: This article offers an overview of the reception of Aristotle's Rhetoric and its audiences in and since its own time until the present day. It defines the three types of audience under consideration: Who was listening to or reading the treatise? What implied audiences did their versions of it envisage and construct responsively (or not) to Aristotle's implied audiences, internal and external? And who were the people in the audiences who did ultimately hear the speeches of those who had consulted Aristotle? It then summarises the major stages in the reception of the treatise from later antiquity through the Byzantine, Arabic and western Middle Ages, to its first Latin translations and printed editions in the Renaissance. Aristotle's Rhetoric is currently enjoying an efflorescence both in and beyond the Academy, especially in education, despite some challenges from postcolonial legal thinkers to its continuing relevance.

Abstract: Thomas Hobbes' 1637 adaptation of Aristotle's Rhetoric, A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique , was the first English-language version of the ancient Greek treatise. It de-democratised it, rendering it useful to a leader who, in Hobbes' ideal polity, would have no need to contend with articulate subordinates. But it was hugely influential, being republished in various editions for practical use, rather than antiquarian interest, right through to the 20th century. This article sets the Briefe both in the political context in which it appeared, and against the background of Hobbes' earlier rhetoric-focused translation of Thucydides, motivated by his despair at the current political scene in the early 17th century. The intensity of Hobbes' engagement with Thucydides' accounts of Athenian orators illuminates his decision to study Aristotle's Rhetoric , the earliest extant handbook on persuasive speech and one produced in the context of the Athenian democracy so vividly portrayed in Thucydides.