  Now, Philodemus thinks that, unlike political and forensic oratory, ‘sophistic’ is a true technê, recognized as such by the early Epicureans (e.g., Rhet. 2a, PHerc. 1674 xxxvii.10–16 Longo [cf. Blank 2003: 73]), “an expertise of composing discourses and making displays”, but he does not think that the Epicurean should give speeches at public assemblies or waste his time in the schools of the sophists learning tricks that could only engender distrust in juries or assemblies. The ‘sophistic’ rhetoric he grants technical status has method enough to qualify it as such, “but not much of it, just as poetics does not either” (Rhet. 2b, PHerc. 1672 xxii.29–39 Longo): since there is one naturally beautiful kind of discourse, one should ignore the kind of discourse composed according to arbitrary themata (Rhet. 4, PHerc. 1007/1673 vii.6–14, p. I 151 Sudhaus). Further, a good speech of praise, the goal of the sophistic display speaker, must praise qualities that are truly praiseworthy and actually possessed by the subject of praise, but knowledge of such things is common property, not something learnt in the rhetorical schools (xla.1–24, p. I 220–1 Sudhaus). Sophistic rhetoric, the only kind worth considering a technê, should thus be added to the arts that rely on the kind of understanding available to rational persons in common, rather than on rules invented by its practitioners (cf. Blank 1995 and 2009a).