Oratorical style, ancient and modern

A story in today's BBC News Magazine points out successful techniques used in modern rhetoric. As any scholar of antiquity knows, the ancients had a lock on masterful oratory and its principles. BBC readers commenting on the website note the connections:

Ah yes. We like a good bit of "tricolon" and "tricolon crescendo". Popular trick in the works of Virgil, Juvenal, Martial et al. Good to see the occasional bit of classical rhetoric still appearing in the increasingly sound-bitten fluff that passes as oratory amongst our illustrious leaders.

And now a word on the eternal antagonism between rhetoric and philosophy:

As an ex-student of philosophy, I have to say speechwriting is not truly persuasion, as in all forms of oratory, the orator has to make concessions to the crowd to make them think what he says is what they are thinking already. The best way to change someone's mind is through discussion and debate, where ideas can be analysed and demolished to show the other person that your method is the "true way". See the Phaedo by Plato for more.