Abstract: Speeches are ubiquitous in ancient Greek literature, and Plato’s works are no exception. In this article, I focus on the Crito , analyzing what is plausibly the least studied part of this dialogue, namely the first three Stephanus pages. The Crito contains five speeches; three by Crito, one by Socrates, and finally one delivered by the Laws. While the last two speeches have attracted considerable scholarly attention, Crito’s have been largely overlooked, considered in most cases as mere background to the dialogue. I will argue that these speeches in fact represent one of the fulcrums around which the entire dialogue pivots.

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 ἡ τέχνηῥητοριϰή.

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.