The scholarly examination of the origins of rhetorical theory in ancient Greece continues to surge into the twenty-first century, as witnessed by the increasing presence of articles in academic journals, book-length manuscripts, and encyclopedias and dictionaries devoted to ancient rhetoric (Schiappa and Hamm, 2007). In addition to a series of modest historical interventions that will be of interest to classical rhetoric scholars, this book also makes what can be described as a methodological intervention by stressing and illustrating the importance of terms of art. Such a turn is “old school” in the sense that it marked a return to the methods of classical philology, and it is novel in the sense that old questions received fresh answers and are reframed, and, in some cases, we are led to ask entirely new questions. In each case, it is hoped that the focus on terms of art has been shown to have significant value. Although we find ourselves wanting to celebrate a variety of scholarly approaches to the study of ancient rhetoric, we believe that a focus on the evolving technical vocabulary in the texts themselves is an indispensable component of the scholarly project of understanding the origins of Greek rhetorical theory.

For example, one “old” question that we have answered in a new way concerns when the parts of a speech oration (e.g., introduction, conclusion, narration) became systematized.