Form and function in Prorrhetic 2.

Abstract

This essay elucidates the socio-cultural context in which the Hippocratic work Prorrhetic 2 was produced. It focuses on the interaction of epideictic, didactic, and polemic modes discernible in the text, reading these as effects of its primary social function. The text draws the reader's attention to the subject-position its author occupies within the practice of medical prognosis and tries to persuade the reader, imagined as a potential pupil, to adopt this same position. The text was produced amid the intense competition waged by teachers for students that attended the increasing specialization of knowledge in the first half of the fourth century BCE. Prorrhetic 2 is a protreptic essay, defining the proper parameters of a given technê and its author's place within it in order to persuade the reader of the superiority of his approach to the object of study.