Since humans have lived in larger groups, their behavior has been influenced by those who can speak to them most effectively. Political rhetoric is therefore as old as politics and is closely correlated with the epochal ways of thinking, social formations, and the media available for the dissemination of spoken words. The speeches of the great political rhetoricians of ancient Greece and Rome—such as Demosthenes and Cicero—have been preserved, and like the works of the great rhetoricians—from Aristotle to Quintilian, Vossius, Hallbauer, and Walter Jens—they have become models, prerequisites, and benchmarks for later speakers and theorists of eloquence. The handbook begins with 13 overview articles on history. A second group of a total of 23 articles is dedicated to various types of political speeches.