Though not in the Burke we read, he does make a point that between Cicero and Augustine, there's a meaningful shift in Rhetoric from "to move" (movere) to "to bend" (flectere). Muckelbauer adding the Presocratic "to turn" makes for an interesting track between the three. Turning and bending both leave the subject in the same "place," but a bent subject is changed while a turned one pivots. Although, I am also open to the possibility that translation from Ancient Greek and Latin to English might be leading me down a less-than-useful path.

Continuing the noble tradition allegedly started by Corax and Tisias of rhetorical arguments being proved by making them.

Very relevant for the 1900 class, explaining to students that you can't just drop a study or a pile of numbers on an opponent--logos is an artistic appeal, you have to go to what seems rational.

Clément's making a move similar to St. Augustine and the Spoils of Egypt, which allows Christians to make use of Pagan rhetorical traditions, because there's no reason not to take them, but more importantly, Rhetoric doesn't belong to them.

Connection from my very first micro-response, this notion of absence and distance is interesting with writing that is intended to reflect back at you, as with Athanasius' journals or the shaman walls of Rickert

This makes me think of figures like Väinämöinen, the epic hero of the Finnish Kalevala, who defeats his enemies via song and sings castles into being. We can do that today, only more in the way of "I speak today on behalf of H.R. 1070, the 'Seriously, Let's Build a Castle Act'" instead of commanding the rocks through song. But the concept is one and the same.

The sophists were accused of making small things seem great and vice versa, which seems particularly relevant for this. Hearing great language for small things might be trickery, or it might be that the speaker has a perspective that sees the subject as itself a great thing

Point raised by Fr. Ong in The Presence of the Word "With the appearance of what we have called the sound-sight split in Latin, that stream of the language which developed into the modern romance vernaculars remained in use in the home, but the other stream known as Learned Latin, which moved only in artificially controlled channels through the male world of the schools was no longer anyone's mother tongue, in a quite literal sense." There was an active language-world for women in ancient Rome, but its one that was not recorded, and is now lost to time.

This is coming from memories of High School Latin, but I recall that Cicero used to use this sort of rhetoric all the time. Since Latin puts the verb at the end of the sentence, he'd have long sentences with extensive clauses that built intensity while keeping you guessing as to what he's calling for. It was really annoying to translate.

Surely, Gorgias or one of the other Sophists has metaphorically identified Rhetoric and alcohol.

Reminiscent of Aristotle's classification of constitutions by their ends. Though I note he grants Monarch's "pomp and splendor" while Aristotle gave them "self-preservation."

A surviving fragment of Protagoras, specifically.