Public speaking was a vital component of political life throughout the Hellenistic period and into the Roman empire. The Rhetoric for Alexander, a handbook dating from the latter part of the fourth century, may have come down to us addressed to a king but its instruction was directed towards those seeking success and influence within the polis.10 Some four or five hundred years later when Plutarch wrote his Precepts of Statecraft, a volume of advice to a young man embarking on a political career, the polis was still fundamental, although by this time Hellenistic kings had given way to the Roman empire. Plutarch lamented the restrictions that Roman rule placed on the civic elites of his own day but he still considered eloquence to be a very necessary attribute for an aspiring politician and it features prominently in his advice. In some ways it was more important than it had been. Now that war was no longer the responsibility of the polis, the ambitious needed to make their mark elsewhere, for instance in the lawcourts or on an embassy to Rome ([Plut.], Moralia 805a-b, 814e-f).
The Hellenistic world does not offer the wealth of evidence for rhetorical practice that classical Athens does. What it offers instead is sketchier but as a result of epigraphic discoveries broader-based. Rhetoric and oratory emerge not only as central to the internal working of Greek cities and federations through their role in public debate but also as crucial to a city’s self-presentation in its interaction with other cities and with kings.
The centrality of oratory in the public life of the polis is reflected in the important role given to speeches in ancient historiography. Polybius, the second-century Achaean historian who himself had considerable political experience, identified three types of speeches to be found in the writing of history. These can be roughly grouped as addresses to assemblies and councils, exhortations such as might be given by a general to his soldiers, and the speeches of ambassadors.11 Polybius’ own history conforms to this pattern; Philopoemen speaks before the Achaean Assembly (24.13), Ptolemy IV and Antiochus III both encourage their troops before the battle of Raphia (5.83), and Callicrates on an embassy to Rome addresses the Senate (24.9). A history such as that of Polybius will tend to have more to say about war than other aspects of civic life but his text does nonetheless give a valuable insight into the wide-ranging importance of oratory at this time. A significant omission in Polybius’ categories is that of forensic oratory, but that is an omission that reflects the demands of history-writing rather than the Hellenistic polis. What follows in this section will focus on civic and diplomatic speeches, though due to the limitations of the evidence forensic oratory will again be omitted.
The numerous decrees that survive on stone today are a testament to the energy of the assemblies and councils of the Hellenistic cities; their inscription is an assertion of civic pride and unity. They present an image of consensus but they are a product of debate and often no doubt disagreement. Advocates of a moribund polis might see the assemblies as redundant institutions but where evidence exists for attendance or voting, as it does from cities in Asia Minor, it suggests on the contrary that the assemblies were well-attended and played a vital part in the running of the city.12 Here the leading citizens would put their rhetorical education to use and lay claim to primacy within the community, but what they said is largely lost. That there was at times considerable public debate behind the outward consensus is evident from writers such as Polybius who reports the varying points of view of speakers in meetings of the Achaean League. This was a forum he knew well and on occasion it is the arguments of his own father and his father’s opponents that he recounts. Thus his father Lycortas argued in the late 180s that the laws and constitution of the Achaean League should take precedence over any Roman requests, whereas Callicrates and Hyperbatus favoured obedience to the requests regardless, a theme that recurs in Polybius’ history (24.8; cf. 24.11-13 on Philopoemen and Aristaenus). Polybius also gives a vivid picture of the rabble-rousing oratory of Critolaus, whose misguided anti-Roman stance led to the Achaean War and the destruction of Corinth in 146 (38.12.7-9):
[Critolaus] attacked the authorities and inveighed against his political opponents, and used the utmost freedom of language regarding the Roman legates, saying that he wished to be friends with Rome, but that he was not at all minded to make himself subject to despots. The general tenor of his advice was that if they behaved like men they would be in no want of allies, but if they behaved no better than women they would have plenty of lords and masters (trans. W. R. Paton).
Of course the assemblies and councils would have been more active at some times and in some places than others, a difference that might reflect political circumstance. Striking, for instance, is the huge rise in epigraphic evidence for activity in the Athenian Assembly in the years immediately following the overthrow of the tyranny of Demetrius of Phalerum.13
Polybius attached considerable importance to the speeches of ambassadors; not only did he put them in a category of their own, but also he reported a fair number. That some owe their survival to a Byzantine anthology, ‘On Embassies’, should not detract from this conclusion.14 The evidence of epigraphy confirms this impression of extensive diplomatic activity. Ambassadors are honoured as civic benefactors, panhellenic festivals are established, visiting embassies are received, conflict between cities is arbitrated upon by others, disputes between citizens are resolved by foreign judges, assistance is given at times of crisis, and kings are approached. The need to take account of the great powers, whether they be kings or Rome, is a feature of this activity but it does not explain it. What the inscriptions reveal is a world in which cities are interacting with other cities, often interactions that are as much about international partnership and community as about the more familiar goals of war and aggression. This sense of community among Greek cities may be a peculiarly Hellenistic phenomenon, brought about as Alexander’s conquests fractured the traditional insularity of the Greek city, but it is important to remember that our image of earlier centuries may be distorted by the shortage of epigraphic material, comparable or
Otherwise.15
It is epigraphy that tells of a major diplomatic campaign undertaken in the late third century by the city of Magnesia on the Maeander. Its purpose was to establish a panhellenic festival in honour of Artemis Leucophryene and to have the city recognised as sacred and inviolable. Some twenty groups of Magnesian ambassadors were sent around the Greek world as far afield as Sicily and Iran. At each city and court the ambassadors spoke in favour of the proposal and sought to persuade their audience to
Support it. None of this was a formality. This was their second attempt to establish the festival; their first, little more than a decade earlier, had been not been a success. Many of the replies to this second campaign were inscribed in the Magnesian Agora. Few give us much indication of what the ambassadors may have said to persuade their listeners but there is an occasional glimpse. It is the reply of the Epidamnians that reveals most, because it summarises what the Magnesian ambassadors said, although, as often in such documents, it is not clear whether this reports a single speaker or a group of speakers:
[the ambassadors] spoke at length themselves, relating the appearance of Artemis and the previous help given by their ancestors to the sanctuary at Delphi, when they defeated in battle the barbarians who attacked with the intention of plundering the wealth of the god, and the benefit they accomplished for the koinon of the Cretans, when they settled their civil war; and they related also their previous benefactions to the rest of the Greeks, by reference to the oracles of the gods and the poets and the writers of history and those who have compiled the deeds of the Magnesians; and they read out the decrees applying to them in the various cities in which are inscribed both honours and crowns relating to the glory of the city; ... and they call upon us, being kinsmen and friends, to accept the sacrifice and the sacred truce and the contest, crowned and of Pythian rank in its honours.16
As befits the establishment of a panhellenic festival they stress what they have done on behalf of the Greeks. Their contribution to the defence of Delphi against the barbarian Celts not only serves to remind the Epidamnians of Magnesian piety but also emphasises the community of Greeks to which both cities belong. The claims of the ambassadors are given a secure basis with the production of evidence, both literary and documentary. Contact between the two cities, one on the Adriatic coast of the Balkans, the other in Asia Minor, must have been negligible. Nonetheless the Magnesian ambassadors conclude with an appeal to kinship and friendship, a point that would probably have been made more fully at the beginning of the speech.
Appeals to kinship and friendship occur frequently in the epigraphic records of diplomatic exchanges, but for the most part the nature of these relationships is left undefined and little space is devoted to explicit reporting of the speeches of the visiting ambassadors. An exception comes from Xanthus in Lycia, which around the same time as the Magnesians were sending out their embassies received an embassy from Cytinium in Doris in mainland Greece. The people of this city were visiting kindred cities to raise funds for the rebuilding of their city walls. The Xanthian decree in response was not content to allude to the speeches of the ambassadors, instead it reports them at length:
[The ambassadors] asked us to remember the kinship that we have with them through gods and heroes and not to be indifferent to the destruction of the walls of their native city. For Leto, the founder of our city, gave birth to Artemis and Apollo here among us. Asclepius, son of Apollo and of Coronis, who was daughter of Phlegyas, descendant of Dorus, was born in Doris. In addition to the kinship that they have with us through these gods they recounted their intricate descent from the heroes, tracing their ancestry to Aeolus and Dorus. They further pointed out that Aletes, one of the Heraclids, took care of the colonists from our city who were sent by Chrysaor, son of Glaucus, son of
Hippolochus. For Aletes, setting out from Doris, helped them when they were under attack, and when he had freed them from the danger that surrounded them, he married the daughter of Aor, son of Chrysaor. After demonstrating with additional examples the goodwill based on kinship which has joined them to us from ancient times, they asked us not to remain indifferent to the obliteration of the greatest city in the Metropolis but to give as much help as we can to the building of the walls, and make clear to the Greeks the goodwill that we have towards the koinon of the Dorians and the city of the Cytinians, giving assistance worthy of our ancestors and ourselves; in agreeing to this we will be doing a favour not only to them but also to the Aetolians and all the rest of the Dorians, and especially to King Ptolemy who is a kinsman of the Dorians by way of the Argead kings descended from Heracles.17
Here the ambassadors draw attention to the relationship that has existed between the two states since heroic times. Such an invocation of a shared mythical past was not unusual in ancient diplomacy and helped to establish a bond that made the approach that much more acceptable.18 But it appears to be more than a straightforward diplomatic manoeuvre. The Xanthians are not merely listening to the request of a visiting embassy but are appreciating a performance. The mythological complexity of the account makes this as much a display of genealogical learning as a diplomatic appeal. A few years later the Xanthians would honour a certain Themistocles of Ilium for an impressive display of rhetorical skills, which may have taken as one of its subjects the kinship between Xanthus and Ilium.19 But the Cytinian speech is not only about the mythical past. Their embassy is also concerned to remind the Xanthians to live up to the reputation of their ancestors and to think about the consequences of any response in the present.
These two documents give us a listener’s perspective on the speeches of the visiting ambassadors, shaping the report according to their own priorities. Unfortunately no full text of an ambassador’s speech is extant from either the classical or the Hellenistic period but one ambassador has left us a summary of his speech. In 343 Aeschines was defending his role in the embassy to Philip II that led to the Peace of Philocrates of 346. In his defence speech, On the Embassy, he outlines the speech he says he gave before Philip (2.25-34). First he reminded Philip of the longstanding friendship between the two states, then he began a historical review of Athens’ relationship with Macedon and produced documents to confirm this. Later he focussed on the specific question of the Athenian claim to Amphipolis that he traced back to the sons of Theseus and argued for the justice of that claim, again producing documentary evidence. The summary, of course, is concerned to bolster Aeschines’ own defence, but it nevertheless offers a valuable complement to the epigraphic material considered above. Several factors emerge from these examples: the need to establish some basis for a relationship, whether friendship in the past or kinship, an emphasis on the justice of the appeal, the use of supporting evidence, the use of myth if necessary, all combined in what could be a tightly constructed and complex argument.20
The speeches of the ruling elite of the Greek cities of the Hellenistic age may not survive but there is significant indirect evidence for political debate and for diplomatic activity. Taken together this shows a widespread and sophisticated rhetorical culture that grew out of the needs of the cities themselves, both in terms of self-government and in their relations with other cities. This, however, was a world not only of cities but also of powerful kings whose kingdoms could encompass a multitude of cities.
World History
