On Ancient Medicine, On the Art, On Breaths, On the Nature of Human Beings and On the Sacred Disease are among the most well-known and sophisticated works of the Hippocratic Collection. The authors of these treatises were seeking to find means to express their arguments that built on authoritative models of their predecessors. By examining the range of expressive resources used in their expository prose, James Cross demonstrates how oral tradition and written techniques were deployed to help the writers develop a case. The book offers fresh insights into the oral debating culture and experiments in persuasion which characterise the ancient Greek world of the late fifth-century BCE.

1. Hippocratic expository prose 2. Models of logos and medical oratory 3. Hippocratic epideixis and the orality of medical oratory 4. Gorgias, Heraclitus and the persuasive functions of sound in On Breaths 5. In the agon: the persuasive functions of antithesis in Hippocratic oratory Conclusion

James R. Cross is a Tutor in Classical Civilisation at University College London. He completed his PhD in Classics at King's College London. His research focuses on connections between ancient medicine and literature.