Aristotle developed the Rhetoric during two periods when he was in Athens, the first, from 367-347 BCE (when he was second to Plato in the academy); and the second, from 335-322 BCE (when he was running his own school, the Lyceum). The study of rhetoric was contested in classical Greece: on one side were the sophists, and on the other were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The trio saw rhetoric a…