Tisias

Corax and Teisias whose exact survival data are not known, should, after the fall of the tyrant Thrasybulus of Syracuse in 466 BC, which caused a large number of property processes have begun for money to write legal speeches for other people. Korax is also, together with his students Teisias at this time the first rhetorical textbooks, have made ​​speeches pattern consisting written. In these speeches based in private hearings. Therefore, both are considered the inventor of the ornate court speech and rhetoric as a teachable and learnable art. This genesis suggests a practical origin of rhetoric instruction, which has nothing to do with the later philosophical ambitions of Gorgias or Thrasymachus (see Rapp and others, pp. 207f. ). According to some sources Korax is the real founder of this discipline and Teisias his student.

Teisias is known, inter alia, also because of his dispute with his teacher Corax on the refusal of the guilty teachers money. For this, the following anecdote is narrated:

It is reported that the judge found a pragmatic solution: He should have both driven out in disgrace.

Following the example of his teacher Teisias built a school speech, at first as it seems in Syracuse, then to Thurii, where the later famous orator Lysias enjoyed his lessons. He then came to pass in the wake of the embassy of Gorgias to Athens, but probably without political character, but merely to serve as a teacher of rhetoric in foreign parts to try. In Plato's dialogue Phaedrus Teisias is named along with Gorgias as a representative considers the probable is higher estimate than the true.

The duration of his stay in Athens is indeterminate. The later famous orator Isocrates heard him there and was one of his students.

Swell

• Cicero: Brutus ( 46-48 ).
• Plato: Phaedrus ( 266d - 267d ).