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The ten Attic orators were considered the greatest orator
Orator

An orator, or oratist, is a speaker.An orator may also be called an oratarian - literally, "he who orates".Etymology...
s and logographer
Logographer (legal)

The title of logographer was applied to professional authors of judicial discourse in Ancient Greece. The modern term speechwriter is roughly equivalent....
s of the classical era
Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome....
 (5th century BCE–4th century BCE). They are included in the "Alexandrian Canon" (sometimes called the "Canon of Ten") compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium
Aristophanes of Byzantium

Aristophanes of Byzantium was a Greece scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod....
 and Aristarchus of Samothrace
Aristarchus of Samothrace

Aristarchus or Aristarch of Samothrace was a grammarian noted as the most influential of all scholars of Homeric poetry. He was the librarian of the Library of Alexandria Alexandria and seems to have succeeded his teacher Aristophanes of Byzantium Byzantium in that role....
.

The Alexandrian "Canon of Ten"


Going back at least as far as Homer
Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
 (8th or 9th century BCE), the art of effective speaking was of considerable value in Greece.






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The ten Attic orators were considered the greatest orator
Orator

An orator, or oratist, is a speaker.An orator may also be called an oratarian - literally, "he who orates".Etymology...
s and logographer
Logographer (legal)

The title of logographer was applied to professional authors of judicial discourse in Ancient Greece. The modern term speechwriter is roughly equivalent....
s of the classical era
Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome....
 (5th century BCE–4th century BCE). They are included in the "Alexandrian Canon" (sometimes called the "Canon of Ten") compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium
Aristophanes of Byzantium

Aristophanes of Byzantium was a Greece scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod....
 and Aristarchus of Samothrace
Aristarchus of Samothrace

Aristarchus or Aristarch of Samothrace was a grammarian noted as the most influential of all scholars of Homeric poetry. He was the librarian of the Library of Alexandria Alexandria and seems to have succeeded his teacher Aristophanes of Byzantium Byzantium in that role....
.

The Alexandrian "Canon of Ten"


  • Antiphon
    Antiphon (person)

    Antiphon the Sophist lived in Athens probably in the last two decades of the 5th century BC. There is an ongoing controversy over whether he is one and the same with Antiphon of the Athenian deme Rhamnus in Attica, Greece , the earliest of the ten Attic orators....
  • Andocides
    Andocides

    Andocides, or Andokides , one of the ten Attic orators.He was implicated during the Peloponnesian War in the mutilation of the Herms on the eve of the departure of the Sicilian expedition against Sicily in 415 BC....
  • Lysias
    Lysias

    Lysias was an Attic orators....
  • Isocrates
    Isocrates

    File:Isocrates pushkin.jpgIsocrates , an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. In his time, he was probably the most influential rhetorician in Greece and made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works....
  • Isaeus
    Isaeus

    Isaeus , fl. early 4th century BC. One of the ten Attic Orators according to the Alexandrian canon. He was a student of Isocrates in Athens, and later taught Demosthenes while working as a metic speechwriter for others....
  • Aeschines
    Aeschines

    Aeschines , Ancient Greece statesman and one of the ten Attic orators....
  • Lycurgus
    Lycurgus of Athens

    Lycurgus , an Attic orators, was born at Athens about 396 BC, and was the son of Lycophron, who belonged to the noble family of the Eteobutadae....
  • Demosthenes
    Demosthenes

    Demosthenes was a prominent Greeks statesman and orator of History of Athens. His oratorys constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC....
  • Hypereides
    Hypereides

    Hypereides was a logographer in Ancient Greece. He was one of the ten Attic orators included in the Alexandrian Canon compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace in the third century Before Christ....
  • Dinarchus
    Dinarchus

    Dinarchus or Dinarch was last of the ten Attic orators, son of Sostratus .He settled at Athens early in life, and when not more than twenty-five was already active as a logographer —a writer of speeches for the law courts....


Going back at least as far as Homer
Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
 (8th or 9th century BCE), the art of effective speaking was of considerable value in Greece. In Homer's epic, the Iliad, the warrior, Achilles, was described as "a speaker of words" and "a doer of deeds."

Until the 5th century BCE, however, oratory was not formally taught. In fact, it is not until the middle of that century that the Sicilian orator, Corax
Corax

The term Corax has several meanings:* Corax of Syracuse was one of the founders of Greek rhetoric.* Corax is the name of the wereravens in White Wolf's World of Darkness role-playing game system; see Corax ....
, along with his pupil, Tisias
Tisias

Tisias , along with Corax of Syracuse, was one of the founders of Ancient Greece rhetoric, or sophism. Tisias was reputed to have been the pupil of the lawyer Corax, who agreed to teach Tisias under the condition that he would give him payment for schooling if he won his first case....
, began a formal study of rhetoric
Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse....
. In 427 BCE, another Sicilian named Gorgias
Gorgias

Gorgias , "the Nihilist", Greece sophist, pre-socratic philosophy and rhetorician, was a native of Leontini in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophism....
 of Leontini visited Athens and gave a speech which apparently dazzled the citizens. Gorgias’s "intellectual" approach to oratory--which included new ideas, forms of expression, and methods of argument--was continued by Isocrates
Isocrates

File:Isocrates pushkin.jpgIsocrates , an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. In his time, he was probably the most influential rhetorician in Greece and made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works....
, a 4th century BCE educator and rhetorician. Oratory eventually became a central subject of study in the formalized Greek education system.

The work of the Attic orators inspired the later rhetorical movement of Atticism
Atticism

Atticism in Greece) was a rhetoric movement that began in the first quarter of the first century BC; it may also refer to the wordings and phrasings typical of this movement, in contrast with spoken Ancient Greek language, which continued to evolve in directions guided by the common usages of Hellenistic Greece Greek....
, an approach to speech composition emphasizing a simple rather than ornate style.

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