Volume 26, Issue 2, Spring 2022
Scott Aikin
, Lucy Alsip Vollbrecht
Pages 273-286
On Diogenes and Olympic Victors
Cynic Rhetoric and the Problem of Audience
Diogenes’s exchange with Cicermos the Olympic pankratist is unusual in that it is both a dialectical exchange and is successful in changing Cicermos’s mind. Most Cynic rhetoric is physical or gestural and more often alienates than convinces. The puzzling difference is explained by the rhetorical choices Diogenes makes with his uniquely receptive audience.