?The third volume in Professor Kennedy?s continuing opus, ?A History of Rhetoric?, embraces a greater time span than either of its predecessors. On closer inspection however, it will be sent that of the book?s three hundred and twenty three pages two hundred and sixty-three are concerned with Late Antiquity, while t the Early, Middle and Late Byzantine Periods share between themselves the remaining sixty pages. Such a distribution of interest is entirely explicable in terms of the author?s own contention (p.50) that ?the subject matter of the rhetoric of later antiquity is the public exposition of the three greatest causes of the age: the preservation, transmission and survival of Hellenism; the reinforcement of the unity of the state around the person of the emperor and his loyal subordinated; the cause of Christianity, both against pagans and within Christian sects in their strife to establish orthodoxy. (?) K. Is always helpful in the way in which he chooses to place his ample store of knowledge at the reader?s disposal, one especially helpful feature of this practice being the full and frequent references in the footnotes to critical editions of texts and to translations into modern languages, the details of which are often hard to come by. (?) K.?s exposition is lucid and elegant, his enthusiasm for his subject infectious. Accordingly, the reader approaching that subject for the first time will be frequently enlightened, but never bored: indeed he will probably be stimulated to turn to the author?s earlier work for further enlightenment.? (J.D. FRENDO in The Classical Review (New Series), 1984, pp.204-205).