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The Attitude of the Greek Fathers from the 2nd and 3rd Centuries Towards Oratory Tradition. The pagan oratorical art lost much of its practical importance during the second and third centuries by turning into a simple "art", and sometimes, into a superficial aesthetics. The main problem for the speaker in that period was drawing attention to listeners, to whom he did not impose only the speech content, but also the aesthetic approach of the topic itself. This fact meant not only elegance and finesse during the utterance of the speech, but also the separation from the common language and the semantic and morphological nearness to the Attic dialect, the literary language of the great classics. The oratorical style of this period was elevated, richly embellished with figures of speech, according to the tradition of classic epideictic discourse. Towards such kind of rhetoric, not only Greek and Latin Christian writers adopted a hostile attitude, but also many pagan thinkers of late Antiquity. Through this study I intend to highlight the attitude of the Greek Fathers of the Church during the second and third centuries towards the oratory tradition. They realized that, on one hand, the expressions and figures of speech of secular oratory were in contradiction with the simplicity of Christian truth, and on the other hand, the power of eloquence was used not to defend the truth, but to justify lies and deception. Therefore, admiring the style of the Old and New Testament writings, they supported the expression of the truth of faith in an elegant and simple form.

Key words: stylistic simplicity, truth, clarity, rhetorical art, Greek Fathers of the Church