Recipient of the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Philological Association in 1975. The Goodwin Award is the only honor for scholarly achievement given by the Association. It is presented at the Annual Meeting for an outstanding contribution to classical scholarship published by a member of the association within a period of three years before the ending of the preceding calendar year. ""A remarkable and valuable achievement, balanced in judgment and attractively presented."" Journal of Roman Studies, ""This book is a reissue of the important 1972 work on the development of Greek and Latin oratory and rhetorical theory... Many students of the classics, and people interested in later European literatures as well, will find themselves turning to it again and again."" The Times Literary Supplement George A. Kennedy is Paddison Professor of Classics, Emeritus, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an elected Member of the American Philosophical Society, and Fellow of the Rhetoric Society of America. Under Presidents Carter and Reagan Dr. Kennedy served as member of the National Humanities Council. He was earlier President of the American Philological Association and of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric. He is author of 15 books, including Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism, Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction, Aristotle On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, and Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition, as well as numerous articles and translations into English from Greek, Latin, and French.

Rhetoric was fundamental to education and to cultural aspiration in the Greek and Roman worlds. It was one of the key aspects of antiquity that slipped under the line between the ancient world and Christianity erected by the early Church in late antiquity. Ancient rhetorical theory is obsessed with examples and discussions drawn from visual material. This book mines this rich seam of theoretical analysis from within Roman culture to present an internalist model for some aspects of how the Romans understood, made and appreciated their art. The understanding of public monuments like the Arch of Titus or Trajan's Column or of imperial statuary, domestic wall painting, funerary altars and sarcophagi, as well as of intimate items like children's dolls, is greatly enriched by being placed in relevant rhetorical contexts created by the Roman world.

A revised Greek Text (the first in a century) and English translation (the first in any modern language) of the Art of Political Speech by a writer known as the Anonymous Seguerianus (ca. A.D. 200) and the Art of Rhetoric of Apsines of Gadara (ca. A.D. 230), with introduction, notes, and indices. These works provide evidence of how rhetoric was taught in Greek in the early centuries of the Roman Empire and show the continued development of an Aristotelian tradition before acceptance of the reorganization of the subject by Hermogenes. They complement each other in that the Anonymous was especially interested in debates about rhetorical theory, while Apsines' primary interest was in analysis of speeches of Demosthenes and other orators and in teaching declamation.

Recipient of the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Philological Association in 1975. The Goodwin Award is the only honor for scholarly achievement given by the Association. It is presented at the Annual Meeting for an outstanding contribution to classical scholarship published by a member of the association within a period of three years before the ending of the preceding calendar year. "A remarkable and valuable achievement, balanced in judgment and attractively presented." Journal of Roman Studies, "This book is a reissue of the important 1972 work on the development of Greek and Latin oratory and rhetorical theory... Many students of the classics, and people interested in later European literatures as well, will find themselves turning to it again and again." The Times Literary Supplement

How rhetorical training influenced deeds as well as words in the Roman Empire The assassins of Julius Caesar cried out that they had killed a tyrant, and days later their colleagues in the Senate proposed rewards for this act of tyrannicide. The killers and their supporters spoke as if they were following a well-known script. They were. Their education was chiefly in rhetoric and as boys they would all have heard and given speeches on a ubiquitous set of themes—including one asserting that “he who kills a tyrant shall receive a reward from the city.” In That Tyrant, Persuasion, J. E. Lendon explores how rhetorical education in the Roman world influenced not only the words of literature but also momentous deeds: the killing of Julius Caesar, what civic buildings and monuments were built, what laws were made, and, ultimately, how the empire itself should be run. Presenting a new account of Roman rhetorical education and its surprising practical consequences, That Tyrant, Persuasion shows how rhetoric created a grandiose imaginary world for the Roman ruling elite—and how they struggled to force the real world to conform to it. Without rhetorical education, the Roman world would have been unimaginably different.