A Legal Semiotics Framework for Exploring the Origins of Hermagorean Stasis

Abstract

Stasis is a process of classical rhetoric that identifies the core issue in a trial or a similar debate. Hermagoras of Temnos included the first comprehensive analysis of stasis in his second-century BCE treatise on rhetoric, now lost. Modern scholars tend to echo George Kennedy, who maintains that Hermagoras' inspiration for the hierarchical structure of stasis is indeterminate. This article, however, employs scholarship in legal semiotics, including the work of Miklós Könczöl and Bernard S. Jackson, to argue that Hermagoras based stasiastic structure on Aristotle's first-figure syllogism. Ideally, knowledge of that structure can enhance modern applications of stasis.