RHETORIC, PHILOSOPHY, AND POETRY IN GORGIAS' ENCOMIUM OF HELEN

The Encomium of Helen is the most famous and enigmatic work by Gorgias, a quintessential master rhetorician and one of the founding fathers of rhetoric. This article suggests approaching the meaning and purpose of the Encomium within the context of philosophical views that Gorgias shared with certain poets of the classical period. While, as some have already observed. Gorgias may not have been an original philosopher, the surviving evidence presents him as the first person who applied the idea that reality was incomprehensible to advocate the moral neutrality of rhetoric, which he understood as the art of constructing an effective means of persuasion.