Corax and Anticorax: To the Origins of Judicial Rhetoric Córax y anticórax

This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on corax, the first judicial argument that tradition attributes to two rhetoricians, Tisias and Corax. First, the paper addresses the historiographical questions about the identity of Tisias and Corax, accepting the interpretation of the existence of only one rhetorician, Tisias, called Corax. Subsequently, the study focuses on the argument ‘corax’ that Tisias developed which is based on verisimilitude, within the context of the birth and development of rhetoric. Although, in the critical literature, only one example of corax has been found in Antiphon’s Tetralogy A, this article argues that the same tetralogy also contains the answer to corax. This response called ‘anticorax’ provides the argumentative model by which a speaker can attempt to counter a corax. Argument and counterargument are inserted in the antilogical construction on which judicial debates are developed. This study proposes to deepen the origin of rhetoric, adding to its history the formulation of the ‘anticorax’.