The rhetorical treatises of Aristotle and Anaximenes, in discussing the introduction of a speech, recognize that a speaker may encounter prejudice on the part of his audience for some reason or other; perhaps because of his own character or reputation, or because of the nature of the case he is pleading, or because his opponent has already won their approval. Anaximenes describes a speaker in this situation as and he and Aristotle give advice on countering such if they have arisen (...) . Rather more than two centuries later we find the early Latin rhetoricians expounding the doctrine of insinuatio for dealing with such a situation; they distinguish between principium, the ordinary direct introduction, and insinuatio, the ‘subtle approach’. (shrink)