A) Since the archaic period the literary production of the Greeks establishes precise laws of the genre. In this particular perspective the course aims to analyze the diachronic evolution of Greek literature by framing the individual authors in the various genres. To develop this analysis, during the course will be examined and commented on the exordia from which emerge programmatically the voices of the authors and their poetics.
B) Among the main genres of the literary production of the Greeks, political oratory has always aroused interest which, as is well known, has decisively influenced the subsequent rhetorical production until today. The main representative in Athens of this kind of oratory in the fourth century is Demosthenes, an antimacedone voice par excellence in a difficult historical phase in which the polis loses its primacy before the growing influence of Macedonia. Demosthenes' III Philippica offers a detailed picture of these problems, the object of the reading and commentary during the course, a lucid example of political oratory in its constant momentum between ethical exhortation and historical pragmatism.