Rhetoric: Did you mean...?

Hermes was the ancient Greek god of trade, wealth, luck, fertility, animal husbandry, sleep, language, thieves, and travel. One of the cleverest and most mischievous of the 12 Olympian gods, Hermes was their herald and messenger. In that...

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman orator, statesman, and writer. He was born on 3 January 106 BCE at either Arpinum or Sora, 70 miles south-east of Rome, in the Volscian mountains. His father was an affluent eques, and the family was distantly...

The Florentine Codex is an encyclopedic accounting of life in 16th-century Mexico and an invaluable resource for understanding the exchange between European and Indigenous cultures during the Spanish conquest. Emerging from a time of societal...

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger, l. 4 BCE - 65 CE) was a Roman author, playwright, orator, and most importantly a tutor and advisor to the Roman emperor Nero (r. 54-68 CE). Influenced by Stoic philosophy, he wrote several philosophical...

Gorgias (l. c. 427 BCE) was a Greek Sophist and philosopher, considered the greatest Rhetorician of his day. He is said to have created several aspects of public speaking still in use and to have mastered the art of persuasion, commanding...

Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville (1754-1793) was a French journalist, abolitionist, and politician who played a prominent role in the French Revolution (1789-1799). A leader of the Girondins, a moderate political faction, Brissot was instrumental...

The federalist revolts were a series of rebellions that erupted in several parts of France in the summer of 1793, in response to the concentration of power in Paris during the French Revolution (1789-99). Most of the revolts were crushed...

The Whiskey Rebellion was a violent uprising that occurred in western Pennsylvania in 1794, in opposition to an excise tax on liquor. After anti-tax protestors assaulted federal tax collectors and threatened to march on Pittsburgh, President...

Protagoras of Abdera (l. c. 485-415 BCE) is considered the greatest of the Sophists of ancient Greece and the first philosopher in the West to promote Subjectivism, arguing that interpretation of any given experience, or anything whatsoever...

Philip Melanchthon (l. 1497-1560) was a German scholar and theologian who provided the intellectual rationale and systematized theology for the reformed vision of Christianity of his friend Martin Luther (l. 1483-1546). He was always overshadowed...