Lawson-Tancred On Epideixis

"To illustrate his point Isocrates effectively invented a whole new genre of rhetoric. This was the so-called ‘epideictic’ or ‘display’ rhetoric, which now took its place in the canons of the art alongside the established branches of ‘forensic’ and ‘deliberative’. It is true that this was not quiet such a new thing, as there are earlier examples, such as Gorgias’ partly extant encomium on Helen, but there had certainly been nothing before to compare with such full-length masterpieces of rhetorical elaboration as the Panegyricus, Panathenaicus and Phillippus of Isocrates’ maturity. In epideictic oratory we see a unique blend of the theoretical and the practical, for the speeches are virtuoso pieces designed not for a specific occasion but to serve as models to be variously copied by those engaged in actual persuasion, as well, no doubt, as to stand in their own right as autonomous works of art." - Hugh Lawson-Tancred. 'Introduction' in Aristotle The Art Of Rhetoric (London: Penguin,1991), p. 14.