To prognosticate about the interests of future scholarship is difficult, of course, but we thought readers might be interested in what scholars of Greek rhetoric believe to be the important questions that ought to be pursued in future research. To that end, we surveyed over fifty scholars with a self-declared interest in Greek rhetoric from several academic disciplines. Before embarking on our survey, we hypothesized that classicists and historians would be more interested in historical reconstruction and scholars in other disciplines would tend toward issues of contemporary appropriation. While generally supported by our responses, there were numerous exceptions that make it clear that the interests and purposes guiding scholars are not discipline-specific. Accordingly, our summary of the responses we received is organized thematically rather than by discipline.
Predictably, a number of the important questions identified by scholars are explicitly historical. For example, though such questions have been explored for many years, the authorship, compilation, and transmission of Aristotle’s Rhetoric continue to challenge scholars. The educational and historical role of the Rhetoric to Alexander (see Chapter 8 of the Companion) remains a puzzle to be solved. There are texts in the Rhetores Graeci collections, compiled by C. Walz, L. Spengel and H. Rabe, which have yet to be translated into modern languages and have not been fully mined for their historical value.7
Several scholars noted that Greek rhetoric scholars have not paid sufficient attention to the role of women in Greek culture. They ask: By what criteria may it be said that women taught or practiced rhetoric in the classical period? What role did women have in the education process informally? How closely do the rhetorical portrayals of women in Greek literature match other historical evidence? How do we interpret the evidence about women provided by Greek rhetoric and literature?
A number of historical questions offered by our respondents concerned the performance of rhetorical practices. For example: What is the relationship between writings devoted to rhetorical theory and actual rhetorical practices? What do we know about the verbal and nonverbal aspects of rhetorical delivery in the classical era? What was the role of the immediate audience for spoken rhetoric? Were the masses really wowed by Gorgias? Did public speeches truly persuade audiences or were there ‘inartistic’ factors, such as familial, tribal, or political relationships, that better account for decisions made in courts and the Assembly?
The majority of scholarship has focused on rhetorical theories and practices in or near Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries, but there are centuries oflater Greek rhetorical theory, pedagogy, and practice that remain under-explored. ‘Greek rhetoric’ need not be defined in such a limited fashion. Comparative work, not only between Greek and Latin but also between Greek rhetoric and conceptualizations of persuasive discourse in other cultures, has increased significantly in the last three decades but our respondents suggest that much more work remains to be done. Such work not only engages in cross-cultural comparisons, such as between Asian and Greek rhetoric, but also traces the influence of Greek contact with other cultures (Egyptian and Aramaic, for example).
Some respondents expressed speculative interest in origins. For example: How did the ancient Greeks discover the rhetoricity of language, and what does the rhetoricity of language consist of? Another respondent asked: What would classical rhetoric look like if we rejected Plato’s division of logos into the art of the mind (philosophia) and the art of speech (rhetorike)? What would have happened had the word ‘rhetoric’ never been coined?
Issues of methodology continue to challenge scholars. Though scholars obviously produce readings and interpretations of Greek texts explicitly and implicitly concerned with rhetorical theory, pedagogy, and practice, how such interpretations are produced and performed, why there are so many conflicting (even contradictory) readings of the ‘same’ text, and how we are to adjudicate competing interpretations, remain open questions.
Also predictably, many scholars are interested in the relevance of Greek rhetoric for contemporary theoretical, pedagogical, and political concerns. First and foremost, scholars are deeply concerned with the relationships between rhetoric and civic education in Greece and what those relationships might tell us about the present. As one respondent put it: What is the relationship between eloquence and citizenship, where ‘eloquence’ would signify fluency in critique and ‘citizenship’ would signify an active participation in public culture? Another respondent asked: What do rhetors such as Isocrates and Demosthenes offer as resources, inspirational or cautionary, for theorists and teachers interested in a broader view of public deliberation? Yet another respondent suggested that in Athens rhetorical education was primarily a ‘private good’, and wondered if we cast Athenian rhetorical theory in a way that reveals our own desire for a discipline that encourages civic participation.
In general, a number of scholars expressed interest in continuing exploration of how we interpret and integrate Greek rhetoric within our own thinking and teaching of classical and modern rhetoric. More specific questions were raised in terms of whether Greek rhetorical studies can offer insights into how to understand, develop, or theorize writing instruction and the phenomena of visual rhetorics. Not all such questions were based on the optimistic assumption that contemporary practices can be enhanced through the study of Greek rhetoric. One respondent asked: Why teach a model of persuasion and argument based on classical principles when what passes as effective argumentation in public discourse consistently subverts and mocks these principles? Another respondent left the question open: To what extent can classical texts provide exemplars or theory that can aid us in our efforts to transform the critical rhetorical vocabularies and attitudes that we attempt to foster in our students into a propensity for enriching, disrupting, and engaging contemporary democratic public culture?
It should be evident from this sampling of responses to our survey that the future of Greek rhetorical studies will be exciting and provocative. Regardless of one’s values, interests, and intellectual purposes (or, put differently, regardless of one’s tastes), there are ample important questions that will occupy those willing to engage them.
5 What is this Blackwell Companion to Greek Rhetoric about?
The aim of this book is to provide readers with a comprehensive introduction to the many ways in which rhetoric was conceptualized, practiced, and functioned in Greek culture. Quite deliberately, some chapters are necessarily introductory and are accessible to readers with little prior knowledge of Greek rhetoric, while others advance claims that will be of interest primarily to specialists. The reader will get a clear sense, we suspect, of those matters that historians consider mostly settled and matters that are still contested. Each chapter ends with a brief bibliographical essay that provides an orientation to key literature pertinent to the chapter’s subject. The volume can be read straight through or can be mined selectively to suit the reader’s individual needs and interests.
Part I includes this introductory chapter as well as Chapter 2, a useful overview by T. Poulakos of the competing interpretive approaches to Greek rhetoric, with a particular emphasis on the classical era. Poulakos provides a sophisticated charting of different modes of interpretation and their theoretical and ideological commitments that makes sense of an otherwise bewilderingly diverse body of literature.
Part II presents an excellent introductory overview to the history of Greek rhetoric - rhetoric understood here primarily in terms of traditional Greek oratory and the beginnings of Greek rhetorical theory. In Chapter 3, M. Gagarin begins his account of the origins of Greek rhetoric by insisting that we first try to understand what we mean when we use the word ‘rhetoric’. A review of early Greek literature suggests that while importance is placed upon ‘speaking well’ as a corollary of effective political action, there is no evidence to suggest that anything like a systematic analysis of public speaking occurred until the fifth century at the earliest. J. A.E. Bons assesses the contribution of Gorgias to speech theory in Chapter 4. According to Bons, Gorgias was developing in his Helen and Palamedes an awareness of the principles that will form the basis of what will come to be known as epideictic and forensic oratory. In a more philosophical strain, Bons points to Gorgias’ thoughts on deception (apatl); specifically, how the function of speech to deceive, best exemplified in the fiction of the theatre, is relevant to all speech acts. Gorgias’ possible student Alcidimas is the subject of M. Edwards’ Chapter 5. A survey of Alcidimas’ principal works, On Sophists and Odysseus, leads Edwards to conclude that the former is likely a prospectus for his teaching methods, while the latter is an example of an epideictic couched in the form of a forensic speech. Edwards also addresses the style of Alcidimas and what evidence this may or may not provide for current interpretive controversies involving his works.
In Chapter 6, T. L. Papillon divides Isocrates’ extant body of work into three major categories: educational, political, and epistolary. He emphasizes how Isocrates weds educational and political ideas, and how his interest in contemporary political affairs became extraordinarily influential in late antiquity and beyond. In Chapter 7, H. Yunis shows that a close inspection of the several Platonic dialogues upsets the traditional view of Plato as an inveterate opponent of rhetoric. While the Gorgias argues that the ‘rhetor’s art’ results in political flattery and not instruction, dialogues such as the Phaedrus and Republic attempt to establish the legitimacy, both in theory and practice, of an art of persuasion tied to philosophical education. P. Chiron, in Chapter 8, discusses the influence of classical Athenian sophists and philosophers on the Rhetoric to Alexander. While much of the substance of the Rhetoric to Alexander was crafted with the practicing fourth-century orator in mind, the philosophical aspects of the treatise, particularly its echoing of Plato and certain similarities to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, assure its importance for those interested in the intersection of rhetoric, sophistic, and philosophy. In Chapter 9, W. W. Fortenbaugh illustrates the ‘concise, yet comprehensive’ idea of rhetoric found in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. By focusing on key aspects of Aristotle’s rhetorical doctrine, such as the importance of rational argument, the arrangement of material within an oration, and a speaker’s delivery and style, Fortenbaugh reveals Aristotle’s individuated approach to deliberative, judicial, and epideictic rhetoric.
In Chapter 10, ‘Hellenistic Rhetoric in Theory and Practice’, J. Vanderspoel explains how the conquests of Alexander and his eastern Mediterranean successors led to an educational revolution. It was here, Vanderspoel suggests, that the study and practice of Greek rhetoric in the Hellenistic world came of age. As schools proliferated to accommodate the increasing demand among local elites for a Greek education, the numbers of those trained in the technical aspects of Greek rhetoric also rose. Vanderspoel shows how rhetorical scholarship proceeded apace in this period, its study and practice becoming ever more technical. In Chapter 11 on Greek rhetoric in Rome, J. Connolly argues that it was the political character of Greek rhetoric that captivated Roman culture. She illustrates that the evolution of the Roman state from Republic to Empire developed certain internal social and political pressures, creating a challenge for which rhetoric is offered as a means to ensure stable government. Rounding out Part II, E. Jeffreys in Chapter 12 examines the influence of the ancient Greek intellectual heritage on the Byzantine world. She centers much of her discussion on the application of various genres, such as ekphrasis, the epithalamios logos, and the epitaphios logos, to oral (such as speeches given in the imperial court) and literary (such as hagiography) contexts.
In Part III, the focus is on Greek oratory. Contributors take a closer look at the major components of formal oratory as well as Aristotle’s highly influential, threefold functional division of oratory. In Chapter 13, M. de Brauw describes the four traditional parts of Greek and Roman speech with the goal of determining whether fifth - and fourth-century oratorical practice vindicates the views set out in theoretical treatises such as the Rhetoric to Alexander and Aristotle’s Rhetoric. He suggests that while practice does on occasion confirm theory, in a majority of instances Attic oratory in fact strays from the traditional four-part arrangement. In Chapter 14, C. Cooper defends the practice of forensic oratory against Plato and Aristotle, who perceive it as an activity inferior to deliberative oratory. Cooper claims that the focus of most late fifth - and early fourth-century works written on oratory, whether theoretical discussion about speech structure or model speeches, was directed toward forensic oratory. This claim is illustrated with a discussion of Lysias’ famous defense of Euphiletus, whereby it is argued that Athenians of the classical period were quite justified in devoting much of their intellectual energy towards cultivating this particular oratorical practice. S. Usher addresses the topic of deliberative or symbouleutic oratory in Chapter 15. He discerns two phases of symbouleutic oratory in the classical period. The first takes place in the fifth century, when historians such as Thucydides describe speakers engaged in a deliberative context primarily to explain the reasoning behind their own (i. e., the speakers’) decisions. The second, newer phase can be seen best in the person of Demosthenes who, it is argued, solicited sympathy and aroused patriotism in the Athenian Boule to justify personal political initiatives. In Chapter 16, C. Carey discusses the various manifestations of speech-making traditionally categorized as epideictic, that is, speeches meant for ‘display’ (epideiktikos logos). Carey points out that far from being mere showpieces, epideictic speeches were often generated in highly competitive environments; for example, as ‘self-advertising’ for students of rhetoric, or for profit if they were demonstrations of a teacher’s method of argumentation. The funeral oration (epitaphios logos) and speeches of praise and blame are further examples of epideictic speech cultivated in the classical period to such a high level that they would become standard genres for imitation throughout the rest of antiquity.
Part IV is an ambitious overview of the role of rhetoric in key political, social, and intellectual contexts. In Chapter 17, Ian Worthington provides a succinct narrative of what he calls the ‘rise of the rhetored to argue that the rise of a class of identifiable and highly influential orators was due to changes in Athenian democracy, but notes that political and even physical constraints of public speaking situations arguably diminished the quality of discourse and decision-making. A. Erskine, in Chapter 18, notes that our study of Greek rhetoric too often begins and ends with the classical era and contends that rhetoric grew to become an essential element of Greek education and continued to be an important force in politics throughout the Hellenistic era, notably in diplomatic exchanges in settings where the polis still retained an important political identity. Chapter 19, by J. P. Sickinger, describes how Athenian law was but one of many potential resources drawn upon by rhetors in forensic settings to advance their case and describes the passages from Aristotle’s Rhetoric and the Rhetoric to Alexander that provide advice to rhetores on how to deal with the law in their speeches. The chapter provides a summary of the tactics utilized in a number of preserved forensic texts and is particularly useful in reminding us how different Greek legal rhetoric was from contemporary legal discourse. In Chapter 20, T. Morgan traces the history of place of rhetoric in Greek education. She provides what Schiappa has described (and critiqued) elsewhere as the standard account of early Greek rhetorical education, but such a narrative is valuable, particularly for students, since no complete counter narrative has yet been generated.8 Furthermore, Morgan’s narrative extends through the time of Quintilian.
Up to this point in Part IV, the term rhetoric is used by Companion chapter authors primarily to denote traditional oratory. In Chapter 21, K. Dowden describes public prayer as a fictional speech of persuasion to expand the scope of rhetoric to include religious ritual. His chapter demonstrates the applicability of the vocabulary of rhetorical criticism to Greek religious verbal and nonverbal religious practices. A. Ldpez Eire, in Chapter 22, mines the texts of a variety of early Greek thinkers to argue that ‘rhetoricity’ is an unavoidable characteristic of all language. Challenging the view that language is basically referential and representational, Eire defines rhetoricity as the quality or capacity of language that persuades listeners primarily with psychological and aesthetic strategies. In so doing, he provides a classical precursor to the twentieth century argument that all language use has an inescapable rhetorical function. In Chapter 23, J. Allen is less interested in rhetoric per se than he is in charting the origins of the discipline of Logic. His account illustrates that what we consider the study of logic has its origins in the practice of dialectic and becomes the formal analysis of propositional form in Aristotle and subsequent philosophers.
T. Reinhardt, in Chapter 24, provides an introduction to an important issue that came to occupy many rhetorical theorists in the late twentieth century; namely, what can be called rhetorical epistemology. To what extent is rhetoric, understood here as the art of the rhltOr, based on, or capable of producing, knowledge? Reinhardt provides a narrative of the debate over such issues that appear in the texts of the classical era that will be particularly of value to those unfamiliar with the classical antecedents to twentieth century texts devoted to such matters. J. M. Day in Chapter 25 offers an introductory overview to the relationship between rhetoric and ethics from the older sophists to Plato. Day makes the important point that oratory provides key historical evidence about the ethical norms and values advanced in the discourse of elites in Greek society. Moreover, such discourse can itself become the subject of critical ethical appraisal by other elites.
In Chapter 26, J. Roisman illustrates the ways in which Greek rhetorical theory and practice were gendered in a manner he describes as agonistic masculinity. Noting the close association between Greek military warfare (which was almost continuous throughout the classical era) and the war of words between speakers, Roisman shows how the discourse and performance of orators reflects, reinforces, and performs dominant Greek norms of masculine identity. D. Konstan, in Chapter 27, rounds out Part IV with an erudite discussion of rhetoric and emotion. His focus is on two kinds of evidence: The accounts of emotion in technical treatises devoted to rhetoric (with an appropriately strong emphasis on Aristotle’s Rhetoric) and an analysis of emotional appeals found in the texts of Attic orators. Noting that multiple disciplines still analyze the role of emotion in human cognition and behaviour, Konstan rightly points out that the classical antecedents to such studies are rightly located in the arena of rhetoric, where the importance of emotion first became the object of systematic analysis.
Part V contains a series of studies of rhetoric and Greek literature. ‘Rhetoric’ is used in these chapters to denote a particular function of literature (the rhetoricity of literature), a subject of discussion within such literature, a set of specific strategic techniques employed by authors to gain a desired effect, and in some cases, even to describe an implicit theory of discourse and persuasion that can be abduced from literary texts. In Chapter 28, H. M. Roisman observes that, given the centrality of speech-making in Homer’s Iliad, the text can be interpreted as a meditation on persuasion. Roisman provides a close reading of the opposing speeches by Theristes and Odysseus over whether the troops should leave the battle for home or stay on and fight until Troy is defeated. From her reading, Roisman constructs an interesting implicit Homeric theory of right rhetoric that is described primarily in Aristotelian terms. Similarly, in Chapter 29, J. Strauss Clay reconstructs an account of the power and efficacy of speech based on her interpretation of the poems of Hesiod. Like Roisman in the previous chapter, she draws from Aristotle’s vocabulary to explicate rhetorical concepts from Hesiod’s poems. The result is an account that demonstrates Hesiod’s use of rhetoric (in the sense of strategic devices) as well as reconstructs what could be called an implicit theory of rhetoric (understood broadly as persuasive discourse). A. Mori, in Chapter 30, does not attempt to reconstruct a coherent theory of rhetoric in Apollonius’ epic Argonatica, but instead provides a close reading to illustrate how important communicative practices are to the story and character development, in particular Jason’s demonstration of persuasive skill and various characters’ truthful and deceptive language use. Mori identifies interesting points of contrast with similar themes in Homer that suggest such texts can be mined to track changes over time in cultural assumptions and practices concerning persuasion and the use of force.
M. McDonald, in Chapter 31, provides a thorough account of the deployment of rhetoric in the tragedy of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and fourth-century tragedians. ‘Rhetoric’ is used by McDonald to describe a range of phenomena including rhetorical techniques of language use, speech-making, and oratorical training. Even if one disagrees with McDonald’s acceptance of the standard account of the emergence of rhetoric as a discipline in the fifth century, her cataloguing of rhetorical materials in Greek tragedy amply demonstrates how one characteristic of the Greek Enlightenment was growing reflexivity about the process of persuasion as manifested in all language arts. Aristophanes’ comedy is the focus of Chapter 32 by T. K. Hubbard. Aristophanes’ plays amply document speakers employing self-conscious linguistic strategies to persuade others, which Hubbard appropriate labels as ‘rhetoric’. Setting aside his disagreement with scholars he describes as ‘sceptics’ about the status of rhetorical theory and pedagogy in the fifth century, Hubbard provides compelling evidence that Aristophanes was an insightful observer and skilled critic ofeducational practices ofthe late fifth century that included argumentation, persuasion, and oratory.9
W. H. Race, in Chapter 33, accomplishes two useful goals. First, he provides an interesting history of the evolution of scholarship on the rhetorical aspects of the lyric poetry of Pindar. Second, through close analysis of a diverse sampling of verse, Race presses home the contention that poetry often uses rhetorical arguments; put another way, lyric poetry advances claims supported by forms of inference that would later be described and codified in treatises on rhetoric. In Chapter 34, R. Webb examines prose fiction in post-classical Greek literature to explicate the cultural significance of speeches and narratives within the world depicted by early novels. Such novels appeared at roughly the same time as the Second Sophistic, a fact that Webb believes has led some literary critics to judge the rhetorical passages of the novels harshly. Webb analyzes a series of interesting examples to argue that the practical techniques ofrhetoric are crucial to the success ofthe novels in general, and in particular provide the novelist with a ‘code’ with which to develop specific characters through the discourse those characters speak.
Last but far from least, M. Fox and N. Livingstone, in Chapter 35, point out the distinctly rhetorical tasks of Greek ‘historians’ by noting that they had to re-create important speeches as well as provide compelling narratives (narrative being an important component in forensic rhetoric). The authors analyze a variety of writers - from Homer to Isocrates to Lucian - to track the variations among historical writers’ attitudes towards, and use of, rhetoric in order to gain insight into how Greeks thought about their past and about the best way of writing about it. In more contemporary parlance we might say that a Greek author’s historiographical commitments necessarily entail at least an implicit rhetorical theory.
The last chapter is an appropriate one to conclude this Companion, for we have come full circle, given that all the authors of these texts have written as rhetores, necessarily committed to a host of theoretical beliefs about rhetoric and historiographical commitments.
World History
