My dissertation seeks to explain why Greek art looks so different in the Hellenistic period (ca. 323-31 B.C.E.). This period followed the death of Alexander the Great and saw the rise of his successors' kingdoms in the Mediterranean world. Hellenistic art experienced dramatic changes in narrative, characterization, and description. Explanations for these innovations often look to such external factors as Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East in the 330-320s B.C.E. or the cosmopolitanism of Hellenistic cities. But these traditional explanations are problematic. Changes in Greek art began in the fourth century, before Alexander's push East or the advent of the Hellenistic kingdoms. And although Greek elements can be found in Near Eastern art, Hellenistic art rarely – if ever – borrowed elements from other cultures for works done in the Greek style. Recent historical scholarship has stressed the continuity of Greek religion and civic administration during the Hellenistic period. My research similarly focuses on internal developments in Greek cultural production – specifically, advances in rhetoric and rhetorical education that, I argue, transformed both art and literature in the Hellenistic age.

I begin with an introductory chapter (Chapter 1) that contextualizes art and rhetoric within the world of the Hellenistic courts explores the educational background of the Greek artist. In Chapters 2-4, I study the impact of rhetorical education on the structure and the appearance of Hellenistic art. I trace the impact of diegema on the narrative techniques of the Telephos Frieze from the second-century Great Altar at Pergamon; of prosopopoiia on the personifications of the Archelaos Relief from late third-century Alexandria; and of ekphrasis on the hyperrealism of Sosos's Unwept Room mosaic in a palace in second-century Pergamon. Finally, in the conclusion (Chapter 5), I find that the use of rhetorical techniques provided an underlying uniformity and Hellenism to the seemingly disparate art of the Hellenistic period. I observe that rhetorically-informed artists are apt to challenge their patrons' views. And I suggest an avenue for future research: the association of rhetoric and the birth of a new Hellenistic literary genre, the history of art and art-criticism.