Rhetorical inferences for divine authority: the case of classical Greek divination

In classical Greece, concomitantly with the democratisation of the society, one can also observe a democratisation of the divinatory process. Concretely speaking, it means that the classical seers and prophets must prove their value to acquire authority. Their reliability relies on different kinds of clues allowing to infer their divine inspiration. The aim of this paper is to show how rhetoric can be useful to describe this status change of divination.