Eloquenza di Gorgia, eloquenza di Lisia: il Gorgia e il Fedro nel De audiendo plutarcheo

Abstract

In competitive dialogue with the emerging Second Sophistic, Plutarch rewrites in a strongly allusive way Platonic images that highlighted the rivalry between rhetoric and philosophy and the seduction of the rhetorical ἐπίδειξις. Plutarch intends to refer subtly to two Plato’s works frequented by the schools of eloquence, the Gorgias and the Phaedrus. When he warns young people of the risks of Atticism, which obscures the content of the message by giving prominence to its form, Plutarch leaves the readers themselves to recognize images of known Platonic ancestry thanks to the common rhetorical παιδεία.