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Readers have always acknowledged the comparatively clear macrostructure ofDe rerum natura3. It begins with aprooemiumin which is described the terrifying impact which the fear of death has on human lives, as well as the fact that Epicurus has provided a cure against this fear, namely his physical doctrines (1–93). Particular attention is paid to fears of an afterlife in which we have to suffer pain and grief in the underworld; cf., for instance, the programmatic lines 3.37–40 (translation by Ferguson Smith, which will be used throughout):Thisprooemiumis followed by a long passage (94–829) in which Lucretius explains the basics of Epicurean psychology and tries to show that the soul is (like the body) material and hence mortal; this last point is driven home with particular force in II. 417–829 where Lucretius lists twenty-five proofs for the mortality of the soul.

Around 87b.c.during the turmoil of the first Mithridatic war, Philo of Larissa, head of the so-called Fourth Academy, fled from Athens to Rome. There he gave lectures on philosophical topics and taught rhetoric. His classes were attended by a young man called Cicero, who was inspired by him to include in a work on rhetorical theory, somewhat inappropriately, a fervent confession of scepticism to which he stuck for the rest of his life. Later Cicero claimed to be—as an orator—not a product of the workshops of the teachers of rhetoric, but of the spacious walks of the Academy. And he developed the ideal of the philosopher-orator. Scholars disagree whether the idea to bring philosophy and rhetoric together is Cicero's own invention or an adaptation from someone else, for instance Philo.

This chapter sheds some new light on the diverse array of argumentative devices which we find in Aristotle, Rhet. 2.23ff . and explains how these argumentative devices work. Further, since Aristotle explicitly mentions some earlier rhetoricians in connection with certain topoi discussed in the chapter, the question arises which format the source material which Aristotle used had and how exactly he transformed it. The author then argued for the view that the Rh. Al ., perhaps more clearly than is commonly thought, meets the standard of “accountability”. He turned then and identified two passages in 2.23 in which a method for finding rational arguments very similar to the one he retrieved from the Rh. Al . is assigned to two earlier rhetoricians in such a way that we can plausibly separate a pre-Aristotelian core of material and the element of Aristotelian analysis. Keywords: Aristotle; earlier rhetoricians; pre-Aristotelian core of material; Rhet. 2.23–24 ; topoi

This chapter suggests ways of looking at Propertius through the eyes of a student of rhetoric, highlighting in the process how the issue of rhetoric is bound up with aspects of Propertius that have received more attention. It sets out a few background considerations first, then explains the author's criteria, and later proceeds to the discussion of the evidence. Propertius does not seem as obviously a rhetorical poet as his fellow elegist Ovid. The evidence has been observed by Trankle (1960) 143-49 that the situations in which Propertius' elegies are spoken are often in some sense open and undecided, thus creating the scope for an attempt to influence a person addressed. Propertius 1.2 is the first sustained attempt at persuasion: the speaker addresses Cynthia and tries to prevent her from using cosmetic help to enhance her beauty, ostensibly because that would make her needlessly attractive for other men. Keywords: Cynthia; Ovid; Propertius; rhetoric; Trankle