The Threshold of Attention: Captatio Benevolentiae and the Rhetoric of Beginnings

From the grand oratory of Cicero to the volatile threads of modern social media, the "opening" remains the most critical—and dangerous—threshold of communication. In this groundbreaking study, Pietro Cioni explores the ancient art of captatio benevolentiae (the winning of goodwill) and its paradoxical counterpart, the so-called captatio malevolentiae.

While traditional rhetoric suggests we must always begin with kindness, Cioni argues that the modern world has mastered a more complex game: t...