The three-volume work by Kennedy on Classical rhetoric has long been regarded as an authoritative treatise on the subject. This new volume, a comprehensive revision and consolidation of the works The Art of Persuasion in Ancient Greece, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, and Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors, provides a comprehensive history of classical rhetoric that will surely serve as a standard for its time.

Kennedy begins by clarifying the rhetorical characteristics of early Greek literature that prefigured the formation of "meta-rhetoric," a theory of rhetoric, in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., and then traces the evolution of this theory during the Greco-Roman period.

He provides an overview of the teaching of written and oral composition in schools, as well as Greek and Latin rhetorical eloquence as a key rhetorical genre. The result is a broad and compelling history of classical rhetoric, which will be particularly useful for students and anyone else wishing to have a panoramic yet condensed view of classical rhetoric.