Few details of the life of Alcidamas survive, and those that do are found in much later sources.1 Alcidamas, son of Diocles, was born in Elaea in Asia Minor and studied under Gorgias. He became a sophist himself and will have been active in this capacity in the late fifth and early fourth centuries, perhaps down until c. 369 (the apparent date of his Messenian Speech). His works indicate an intense rivalry with another of Gorgias’ pupils, Isocrates, and this, together with the questionable report that he taught Aeschines,2 suggests that he was no different from the many other sophists who found themselves a lucrative source of income in Athens. But if the man himself had little impact on the historical record of ancient Greece, his writings and teachings certainly did.
Two works survive under the name of Alcidamas, On Those who Write Written Speeches, or On Sophists and Odysseus, Against the Treachery of Palamedes. Of these On Sophists is by far the more important - and controversial. Written in c. 390, it is difficult to categorise, but seems to be a kind of prospectus for his teaching methods.3 The basic argument is that speeches, whether in the Assembly or the law-court, are far more effective if delivered extemporaneously rather than from a prepared text (On Sophists 9):
I also think that in human life speaking is always useful in every matter, whereas only occasionally does the ability to write prove opportune. For who does not know that public speakers and litigants in court and those engaged in private discussions must necessarily speak extemporaneously? Often events unexpectedly present opportunities, and at these times those who are silent will appear contemptible, whereas we observe that those who speak are held in honor by others for having a god-like intelligence.4
This passage and the work as a whole need to be read with various contextual factors in mind. Athens in the early fourth century remained predominantly an oral society, and the ability to read and write was generally far less valued than the ability to speak:
Plato famously criticises writing in the Phaedrus (274b-277a). Alcidamas’ teacher Gorgias was renowned for never being at a loss for something to say (Arist. Rhet. 3.17.11), and various facets of Gorgias’ teaching are evident in Alcidamas: the doctrines of the ‘opportune’ (kairos; cf. in the passage above ‘often events unexpectedly present opportunities’) and the ‘fitting’ (prepon; cf. On Sophists 3, ‘using appropriate language’6), and techniques of speaking at length (makrologia) or briefly (brachylogia; cf. On Sophists 23). The reference to ‘god-like intelligence’ further recalls Gorgias’ ‘speech achieves the most divine feats’ (Helen 8). But Gorgias, who takes balanced antithesis to its extremes in his writing, also therein reflects another development in public speaking from the second half of the fifth century, the use of written speeches, often composed by a professional logographer. Usually, it seems, these were memorised, and to what extent (and in what form) written texts would have been taken into a courtroom or the Assembly as an aide-memoire is very unclear.7 Alcidamas naturally makes fun of the whole idea (On Sophists 11):
And surely it would be ridiculous if, when the herald calls out, ‘what citizen wishes to address the meeting?’ or when the water-clock is running in court, the speaker should turn to his writing tablet (grammateion), intending to compose and then memorize his speech!
Either way, it is the mere fact of close preparation in advance that Alcidamas rejects, because men with the ability of a Gorgias both to prepare carefully and to speak extemporaneously were rare ( On Sophists 16):
For when someone is accustomed to crafting every detail of his speeches, and composing every phrase with precision and attention to rhythm, and perfecting his expression with slow and deliberate thought, it is inevitable that, when he turns to extemporaneous speeches and does the opposite of what he is accustomed to do, his mind will be filled with uncertainty and confusion, he will be annoyed at everything, he will speak like someone with an impairment, and will never regain the easy use of his native wit or speak with fluent and engaging speeches.
While the first part of this sentence, itself quite long and carefully crafted, might be taken to refer to the highly intricate and artificial style of Gorgias,8 there is another candidate that Alcidamas may have in mind and on whom the second half equally seems to be an oblique attack. Alcidamas’ rival Isocrates repeatedly admits to having neither the voice nor the self-confidence to make a career from public speaking himself,9 and it is Isocrates in particular that Alcidamas seems to be attacking in On Sophists, right from the start ( On Sophists 1):
Some of those who are called sophists are not concerned with inquiry (historia) or general education (paideia), and they are just as inexperienced in the practice of speaking as ordinary men; but they are proud and boastful about their practice of writing speeches and displaying their own intelligence through their books. Though they possess only a small degree of rhetorical ability, they lay claim to the whole profession itechn'e).
It should be noted at once that Alcidamas does not name Isocrates, and the same is true in reverse of Isocrates in his Against the Sophists. Nevertheless, there are too many overlaps between the two works for there to be any real doubt that they are rival manifestos. Whether one is an answer to the other, or whether there was a sequence of Isocrates’ works (the Helen and Panegyricus in addition to the Against the Sophists) into which Alcidamas’ pamphlet can be fitted, has been the subject of much inconclusive scholarship.10
There is, of course, a certain amount of irony in the fact that Alcidamas promotes extemporaneous speaking in a written pamphlet. He was well aware of this (On Sophists 29-32) and in Thucydidean fashion candidly admits to writing speeches ‘because I am eager to leave behind a memorial of myself and wish to gratify this ambition’ (On Sophists 32; cf. Thuc. 1.22.4). By the end of the pamphlet his position on writing seems to have softened a little, partly because he must have known (or at least feared) that the trend towards written composition was irreversible, partly because he needed to advertise his skills, and partly because he wrote epideictic speeches himself (On Sophists 31).11 The one that survives (though it is couched in the form of a forensic speech) is the Odysseus. Alcidamas’ teacher Gorgias had demonstrated his skills at argument by writing imaginary defences of two notorious figures from Greek mythology, Helen of Troy and Palamedes. Palamedes was renowned for his intelligence and like other clever figures in myth (notably Odysseus himself) brought trouble on himself, in his case by seeing through Odysseus’ ruse of feigning insanity to avoid joining the Trojan expedition. In revenge Odysseus planted a sum of gold in Palamedes’ tent and accused him of treason, and Palamedes was tried and executed. Alcidamas’ imaginary prosecution speech for Odysseus will doubtless have been written as a response to his master’s defence of Palamedes, and he perhaps demonstrates his own ingenuity by changing the story: the main evidence against the alleged traitor is now a Trojan arrow bearing a message from Paris with the promise of Cassandra as his wife (Odysseus 7).12 The argumentation of the two speeches is also very different.
Gorgias’ method in both the Helen and the Palamedes is to test a series of hypotheses from every angle, thereby demonstrating that they are unsustainable. He makes extensive use of rhetorical questions and probability ( eikos) argument, and the style is heavily antithetical. Alcidamas concentrates on character assassination (diabole). This reflects a trend in the oratory of the fourth century which becomes far more noticeable in the speeches of Isaeus, and which reached its peak (or trough) in the hands of orators such as Demosthenes and Dinarchus. In the absence of the non-technical proof (atechnos pistis) that would clinch his case, i. e., the arrow, Odysseus is first made to produce witnesses to the suspiciously long message that the arrow was alleged to bear (Odysseus 7-8):
I was astounded at this development, and calling Sthenelus and Diomedes I showed them the contents. The writing read as follows: ‘Alexander to Palamedes. You shall have everything you and Telephus agreed on, and my father will give you Cassandra for your wife, just as you asked. But see to it that you fulfill your part of the bargain quickly.’ That is what was written. Now those who handled the bow should come forth and testify. [WITNESSES]
I would have also shown you the arrow itself, just as it really was, but in the confusion Teucer unknowingly shot it.
But most of his speech is devoted to an attack on Palamedes’ family background (which explains his connection with Telephus mentioned in the passage above) and his own treacherous nature ( Odysseus 20-21):
Palamedes persuaded Cinyras not to join our expedition, and sailed off with the many gifts Cinyras had given him. He gave Agamemnon only a bronze breastplate, worth nothing, but kept the rest of the money himself. In his report he said Cinyras would send a hundred ships, but you yourselves have seen that not a single ship has arrived from him. I think this too would be sufficient justification for putting him to death - if it is right to punish this sophist, who has clearly been plotting the most disgraceful acts against his friends.
Odysseus goes on to demolish Palamedes’ claims to have invented military strategy, the letters of the alphabet, music, numbers and coinage; but at Odysseus 27 he allows him credit for inventing
Weights and measures, which let store-keepers and traders cheat and swear false oaths, and draughts so that idle men could quarrel and bicker; and he showed people how to play dice, the greatest evil, which results in pain and punishment for those who lose and ridicule and criticism for those who win; for the winnings from dice games bring no benefit, since most of the proceeds are spent immediately. And he also contrived fire-beacons, but these worked to our detriment (as he intended) and to the advantage of the enemy.13
The attack reaches a climax with the clever reversal of a standard expectation of Greek social behaviour ( Odysseus 28):
Now, for a man to have areti; he must pay attention to his leaders, follow orders, serve the whole community, conduct himself as a good man in every respect, and help his friends and harm his enemies. This man’s abilities are the opposite of all these: he helps the enemy and harms his friends.14
Alcidamas, it has been suggested, will have written the Odysseus, like On Sophists, at least in part to advertise his skills. But, with reference to the later five-part division of rhetoric, whereas On Sophists is concerned primarily with delivery (hypokrisis) and presupposes the importance of memory ( mnlml), the Odysseus, being modelled on a forensic speech, demonstrates a much greater awareness in its author of the need for proper arrangement (taxis). Alcidamas does not, however, adhere to a simple four-part structure, but displays the versatility in his arrangement that is also a feature in the first half of the fourth century of the speeches of Isaeus.15 The Odysseus may be schematised as follows:
With regard to a fourth part of rhetoric, invention (heuresis), Alcidamas also displays his acquaintance with what was expected in each of these major sections of the speech. Commonplace elements of proems visible here include the claim to be acting for the common good rather than from private enmity (a vital declaration for a prosecutor in order to avoid the accusation of sykophancy); a statement of the charge; a preliminary warning to the jurors of the opponent’s cleverness, in contrast to the speaker’s being ‘a good and just man’ ( Odysseus 3); and a request for the jurors to listen attentively and without prejudice. The narrative is told in a clear, straightforward manner and is followed in regular fashion by witnesses, leading into a first section of proofs. Odysseus’ evidence is, in truth, largely circumstantial, and he covers over its weaknesses by making bold, unsubstantiated claims (‘before... no one noticed any sign on Palamedes’ shield; but when we had sailed to this place, he inscribed a trident on it’; ‘my claim is that it [his spear] too had writing on it, stating the precise time when he would betray us’; ‘everyone else abided by this decision, but...’). These are backed up (as in Gorgias) by probability argument (‘a likely explanation’, Odysseus 10) and rhetorical questions. His main weapon, as noted above, is an attack on Palamedes’ character, and a standard method of impugning a man’s reputation in oratory was to attack him indirectly over his parentage, hence the second narrative begins with the story of Palamedes’ unreliable father Nauplius (Odysseus 12-16). This explains Palamedes’ connection with his Trojan contact Telephus, but Odysseus, true to form, is perhaps starting to wander off course, and he brings himself back to the point with an aside to the jurors in the form of a question, ‘All right, so what happens then?’ ( Odysseus 18). The allegation of Palamedes’ treachery on his mission to Cinyras is the starting-point for Odysseus’ direct character-assassination, and it leads immediately in the second set of proofs to the accusation that Palamedes’ reputation for cleverness was based on false claims about both the number and the benefits of his inventions. The epilogue, finally, is a standard one in its brevity and content - the plea that the jurors not be swayed by pity for the defendant, and that it was in their own best interests to condemn Palamedes because an acquittal would encourage others to act in the same way.
The Odysseus is a reasonably competent example of how to make the best out of what (at least in the version of the story selected or invented by Alcidamas) seems a weak case. It has not, however, found many admirers, and one of the reasons for this is doubtless connected with that other very important part of rhetoric, its style (lexis). It is also the style of the piece that has led many scholars to conclude that the Odysseus was not written by Alcidamas, and it is certainly the case that the style of the Odysseus is very different from that of the On Sophists. We shall return to this presently, but for now, on the question of authenticity, it is worth noting the point made by Muir that the two works do not belong to the same genre and have very different characters.16 In addition, as Muir observes, the Odysseus was apparently accepted as being genuine by Quintilian when he writes (even though in error) ‘Alcidamas of Elaea, whom Plato calls Palamedes’ (Quint. 3.1.10);17 the extended description of Palamedes’ family background includes stories that would have been familiar to inhabitants ofElaea, and the inclusion of Menestheus at Odysseus23, who is not elsewhere mentioned in connection with military tactics, may be significant, because he was the legendary founder of Elaea;18 and, perhaps more tenuously, the author’s technical knowledge of minting coins (Odysseus 26) may be reflected in the use of the metaphor antitypos (‘the other side of the coin’) in On Sophists 6,19 while there are musical metaphors in both pieces.20
On Sophists and Odysseus clearly reflect only a small proportion of Alcidamas’ output. Much of this, one would expect, will have been concerned with rhetoric: Dionysius of Halicarnassus names Alcidamas among a list of contemporary writers of rhetorical handbooks (First Letter to Ammaeus 2), and Quintilian (3.1.10) likewise claims that Alcidamas composed such a work. If they are correct, it may be that the handbook was the source of Alcidamas’ fourfold classification of language into assertion, denial, question and address,21 and also of his definition of dialectic as ‘the capacity for persuasion’.22 Speeches will have featured prominently among his works, mostly we may presume (given Alcidamas’ promotion of extemporaneous speaking in the Assembly and law-courts) display pieces along the lines of the Odysseus. In late antiquity John Tzetzes had speeches written by him ( Chiliades 11.740-742), and we know the titles of some. The Messenian Speech has already been mentioned, of which we have two notices in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. At Rhetoric 1.13.2 Aristotle merely mentions the speech, and the relevant quotation is supplied by the Scholiast (‘God has left all men free; nature has made no one a slave’);23 but at Rhetoric 2.23.1 Aristotle himself gives the quotation, ‘for if war is the cause of the present troubles, with peace they must be righted’. The speech may have been a real one, delivered after the liberation of Messenia from the Spartans in 369, but it could just as well be an exercise composed some time later. Alcidamas likewise exhibited his talents for virtuoso display in four other known speeches: there was an Encomium of Death (Cic. Tusculan Disputations 1.48.116), as well as encomia On Proteus the Dog and On Poverty (Menander Rhetor, Division of Epideictic Speeches 3.346.9-18), and On Nais, a well-known courtesan (Athenaeus 13.592c).24
Speeches on paradoxical topics such as these were the forerunners oflater rhetorical exercises. But the Mouseion, from its title,25 shows that Alcidamas had other strings to his bow. The precise nature of the book remains controversial,26 and scholars have split into two camps since Nietzsche advanced the proposition that another work, the Contest between Homer and Hesiod, was originally by Alcidamas and part of the Mouseion.27 The version of the Contest that we have dates to the second century AD,28 but support for Nietzsche’s thesis came when a papyrus fragment of the work dating to the third century BC was published in 1891, which contains two lines that are in the Hadrianic version and were quoted by Stobaeus (4.52.22):
To begin, it is best not to be born with those upon the earth,
But, being born, to pass the gates of Hades as swiftly as you may (trans. Muir).
It also has lines 70-101, but these are not identical to those in the later version. A second papyrus from the second or early third century AD and published in 1925 offers further support.29 This contains lines that are similar (but again not identical) to the end of the Hadrianic Contest (lines 1-14 of this Michigan papyrus correspond to Contest 327-338 Allen), and it ends with an adscript and a subscription with most of Alcidamas’ name preserved:30
On this subject, then, we shall try to make our reputation,31 especially since we see the admiration given to writers of history. Homer, at least, because of this, both in life and death has been honoured by all men. So, publishing this to thank him for his entertainment, let us with precise recollection hand down the story of his birth and the rest of his poetry to those Greeks who aspire to cultivated taste. Alcidamas, On Homer (trans. Muir).
A further argument is that the Hadrianic text quotes Alcidamas as the source for a version of the death of Hesiod’s murderers ( Contest 239-240 Allen). But, as Muir observes,32 the lines quoted by Stobaeus are found in Theognis and the same sentiments occur in other texts, therefore Alcidamas’ authorship is uncertain and the fact that they are found in the Contest does not prove that the Contest was part of the Mouseion. Again with Muir, the very citation of Alcidamas as the source of one version of the death of Hesiod’s murderers may in fact suggest that he was not the author of the Contest; and (as with the differences in the wording of the endings of the second papyrus and the Hadrianic Contest) the linking sections in the earlier papyrus between the quotations from Homer and Hesiod are by no means identical with those in the Hadrianic Contest. It is therefore possible, with Muir, that the compiler/re-writer of the Hadrianic Contest did use Alcidamas as a source, found in the Mouseion the couplet quoted by Stobaeus, and also found either in the Mouseion or in another work the material on Homer - and that that is as far as we can go. But adherents to the principle of Occam’s razor will doubtless wish to go much farther.
Whether or not the Contest formed part of the Mouseion, the question remains open as to the overall character of the work. If, as is likely from its title, it was a collection of some kind, the Mouseion may have contained biographies of literary giants such as Homer and Hesiod. Alcidamas also wrote a treatise on Physics, and this too may have contained biographies of eminent pre-Socratic philosophers (Diogenes Laertius 8.56, where Zeno and Empedocles are named).33 His later followers supposedly debated Stoic philosophy.34 The Mouseion and the Physics are indicators of Alcidamas’ versatility, such as we might expect of a sophist, and the fact that Aristotle in the third book of the Rhetoric repeatedly criticises Alcidamas’ style is an indicator of his influence as a writer (see below). Later readers of Alcidamas included Cicero and Quintilian (see above),35 and the image of prisoners being released from chains ( On Sophists 17), which may in part have been inspired by the allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic (514a-517a), was adopted by the author of the pseudo-Plutarchan On the Education of Children ([Plut.], Moralia 6c-f).
At Rhetoric 3.3 Aristotle quotes some nineteen phrases of Alcidamas to illustrate his ‘frigidity’ of style, which was caused by the use of compound words, such as ‘fire-coloured’; strange or foreign words, such as ‘whetted with the unmitigated rage of his intellect’; epithets, such as ‘the laws, the kings of states’; and inappropriate metaphor, such as the Odyssey being ‘a beautiful mirror of human life’. Aristotle’s criticisms essentially concern the use of overly poetic and artificial language; a more thorough survey of Alcidamas’ style in On Sophists was undertaken by O’Sullivan.36 He rightly emphasises the striking use of abstract nouns, which appear at every turn. These are employed in periphrastic expressions, such as in the very first section of the piece: ‘make a criticism of’ (kategorian poiesasthai) written speeches, rather than simply ‘criticise’ (kategoresai) them. Such substantival periphrases are characteristic of early Greek prose (they are common in Herodotus, Antiphon and Thucydides), but they are far more concentrated in On Sophists and contribute to the ‘poetic’ effect of the writing. Frequently the abstract noun is the subject of a verb of action, and this further feature of poetry and early prose writing is especially common in Gorgias. Again, the abstract noun is often used in conjunction with a word denoting mental activity of some kind, as in the quotation above from the Rhetoric (‘whetted with the unmitigated rage of his intellect’). All these features contribute to the feeling of redundancy that Aristotle criticised, a trait which Alcidamas shares with Gorgias.37 The use of double and rare words is also a Gorgianic feature, but it is noticeable that there are fewer of these in On Sophists than Aristotle’s criticism would lead us to expect.38 There are, on the other hand, plenty of metaphorical expressions, another Gorgianic feature: for example, the mirror imagery noted above in Aristotle recurs in On Sophists 32.39 Finally, O’Sullivan detects ‘a pervasive sententiousness’ in the speech, which its abstract style helps to highlight, but which is a feature of sophistic literature, including Gorgias. It is unfortunate that O’Sullivan largely ignores the Odysseus,40 since the stylistic differences between the two works might be given other explanations than different authorship: possibly the generic difference between the two pieces noted above might serve as a basis for a comparison along the lines of ‘written’ and ‘spoken’ styles that O’Sullivan himself discusses at length.41 But briefly, Muir points out that there are certain stylistic features that are far more frequent in On Sophists than the Odysseus, such as unusual words, clumsy sentence construction, double-negatived adjectives and adverbs, and a tendency to avoid hiatus and asyndeton.42 This last tendency, Muir observes, ‘actually seems to go against the general tendency for the Odysseus to appear more carefully composed’ than On Sophists. Yet it may just be another reflection of the Alcidamas-Isocrates rivalry. There was no more careful composer of speeches than Demosthenes, but the finest of all the orators does not go to the extremes of avoiding hiatus that Isocrates does: perhaps Alcidamas’ Odysseus was, after all, a model not to be sneered at by the practising orator.
World History
