Ῥητορική. Rhetoric, the art of the rhetor, or public speaker. In the latter part of the Phaedrus there is a very interesting summary of the “Art of Rhetoric” as it was taught at the end of the 5th century BCE. Socrates mentions as teachers of rhetoric Gorgias of Leontini and his student Polus, Thrasymachus, Theodorus of Byzantium, Evenus of Paros, Tisias of Syracusa, Prodicus of Ceos, Hippias of Elis, Licymnius of Chios, Protagoras, and (prospectively) Isocrates. Some but not all of these people are counted as Sophists as well. Protagoras and Hippias, for example, were quite proud of being Sophists, which meant for them that they were teaching more than just the skill of public speaking. As represented by Plato, Gorgias presented himself as a teacher of rhetoric as distinguished from a Sophist in that he claimed to be teaching a skill and no particular content. Thus the Gorgias might be understood as, in the first instance at least, a critique of content-free skill instruction. Similarly the latter part of the Phaedrus argues that a truly successful rhetoric would require knowledge of the subject, understanding of the beliefs of the audience and of psychology, and an understanding of what one was attempting to accomplish.