This book argues that it is not fair to judge early Greek rhetoric by the standards of Plato and Aristotle... it should be seen, rather, as a series of largely unsystematic efforts to explore, more by example rather than by precept, all aspects of discourse. As artistic prose came to be disseminated in written texts and so available in a form that could be analyzed, evaluated and imitated, the forms of the early texts evolve into teatises such as Aristotle's Rhetoric .