" When a clever man has an honest case to make, it is no great task for him to speak well. You possess a fluent tongue, as if you were a man of senses, but your words lack all judgement. The good speaker whose influence rests on self-assurance proves to be a bad citizen; for he lacks intelligence."
(Bacchae, line 267-272)
Teiresias the same prophet that tried to stop Oedipus from finding out his terrible fate, appeares in The Bacchae to do the same for Pentheus. He not only knows that Pentheus is in big trouble with the gods because of the way he talks blasphemy of them, but he also knows that Pentheus although he knows how to talk, all he talks is wrong, so he is trying to make him see that. Teiresias therefore is attaking rhetoric because he basically is saying that because someone speaks well, does not mean he is correct and it does not matter if he is the ruler of Thebes.
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