This section consists of four selections from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian that serve as an introduction to the classical understanding of rhetoric. What is rhetoric? Is it an art or a mode of knowledge? What is its value? What are its elements or parts?

Timon of Athens shows how basing one’s behavior on a shame ethic ultimately motivates killing everyone, even at the cost of one’s own life. Timon, whose self-esteem and pride were dependent on giving lavish dinner parties and gifts to his friends, feels overwhelmingly shamed and unloved when those same friends refuse to offer him the slightest help when he is unable to pay his bills – in response to which he declares war on all of Athens, enlisting Alcibiades to carry out this mass slaughter. This is a pattern demonstrated by the most violent prison inmates, who say they have “declared war on the whole world,” as well as by the “suicide bombers” of modern-day terrorism, mass murderers who commit “suicide by cop,” and so on.

In an analysis that brings together literary, historical, and linguistic perspectives, this chapter examines similarities and differences in the ways that Plutarch and Pliny discuss (or avoid discussing) patronage among elites, asking what the divergences can tell us about the limits of cultural sharing between Greeks and Romans during the early empire. This chapter puts Plutarch’s and Pliny’s silences about elite dependency and interdependency into dialogue with one another by comparing their treatments of closely related topics such as inequality, hierarchy, and obligation. While both authors write openly about inequality and are aware of its social effects, Plutarch is far more concerned than his Roman counterpart about its potentially disruptive results. Likewise, Pliny is markedly more open than Plutarch about ties of obligation among elites. Many factors contribute to these differences, but the most important for this study are the greater reification of obligation in the Latin language and self-conscious cultural differentiation on the part of Greeks within the Roman empire. The chapter’s final section delves deeper into these issues, examining how each author reinforces his larger cultural priorities in respect of unequal friendship and reciprocity through his use of Homeric exempla.