History

The origins of the canonical four-part speech, like the origins of rhetoric itself, are obscure. The ‘standard’ account synthesizes the evidence as follows:3 Corax, the reputed inventor of rhetoric, developed the first (and the simplest) division of speeches: prooimion, agon (argument), and epilogue. His successor Tisias added a narrative

Section. Their different schemes of arrangement correspond to both men’s apparently preferred genres of speaking: Corax, working immediately after the expulsion of the Syracusan tyrants in 467, invented a form of deliberative rhetoric designed to win influence in the newly democratic government, and Tisias then developed judicial rhetoric to address property disputes arising from the city’s recent political upheaval. Tisias is also reported to be the first to have composed a rhetorical handbook, or techne logon, which he organized around instructions for various parts of speech. Other fifth-century handbooks are believed to have been organized in the same way.

This narrative has recently become controversial, for a number of reasons noted by T. Cole and E. Schiappa. None of these early handbooks survive, and the testimonia surrounding Corax and Tisias are notoriously sketchy and in some cases contradictory, for ancient authors have Corax inventing three, four, five, or seven parts of the speech.4 What is more, available evidence suggests that the earliest handbooks consisted primarily of examples and that treatises focusing on analytical precepts (such as Aristotle’s Rhetoric and the Rhetoric to Alexander) developed only later. Cole and Schiappa have thus gone as far as to argue that neither rhetoric as a discipline nor ‘rhetorical consciousness’ existed prior to the fourth century.5 To be sure, they note, fifth-century writers work with elements of a theory of rhetoric, including forms of argumentation, such as arguments from eikota (probability) and appeals to pity, and they also composed model speeches and model parts of speeches.6 Yet, Cole and Schiappa maintain, the conception of a speech as an abstraction, wherein form was separable from content, appears no earlier than Plato.

Down-dating the four-part theory of arrangement is important to this revisionist account, for a self-conscious theory of composition is precisely what Cole and Schiappa claim fifth-century writers lacked.7 Apart from testimonia concerning Tisias and Corax, there are two main arguments for placing the canonical speech order in the fifth century. Let us consider both, as well as the revisionist counter-arguments, in turn.

First, there is perhaps evidence for fifth-century theories of quadripartite arrangement in a passage from Plato’s Phaedrus, where Socrates discusses the contents of technai logon. Socrates mentions prooimion, narrative, proof, and recapitulation (epa-nodos) in order, and some thus infer that he is reproducing the arrangement of rhetorical handbooks (Phaedrus 266d5-267d4):

On the one hand, this passage lists the four canonical parts of the speech in their canonical order, and this perhaps suggests that Plato is following the arrangement of handbooks that would have existed during the dialogue’s dramatic date. On the other, Plato does not stay with the division but introduces more elements that are not parts of the speech (such as indirect praise). Cole thus argues that it is unlikely that Socrates is reproducing an arrangement taught in the rhetorical handbooks. What is more, Socrates’ complaint (Phaedrus 264a4-e3) that the speech of Lysias he and Phaedrus are discussing has no order would be inconsistent with widely available handbooks offering instruction in taxis.8

A second argument for placing the canonical division in the fifth century is that early speeches appear to be informed by such rules.9 Early Attic oratory tends to blend narrative and proof (such as in Antiphon 5, On the Murder of Herodes), but commentators have often the found the traditional parts in fifth-century speeches in a variety of genres. Some typically cited examples include Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen (prooimion, 1-2; narrative, 3-6; proof, 7-19; epilogue, 20), Antiphon 1 (prooimion, 1-4; narrative, 14-20; proof, 21-30; epilogue, 31), and the speech Euripides has Medea address to Jason (prooimion, 465-74; narrative, 475-87; proof, 488-515; epilogue, 516-19).10

Revisionists on the contrary deny that any speech before the fourth century shows evidence of a four-part division. Their main argument against counting these speeches as examples of the canonical division in each instance concerns the narrative. In all, the section identified as a narrative is short and underdeveloped, or displaced. Gorgias proposes to free Helen from blame, but in the so-called narrative section of his speech he expatiates on the nobility of her lineage while saying little about the episode for which she is blamed. Rather than offering his own version of Helen’s voyage to Troy, he tersely alludes to the well-known tradition (Encomium of Helen 3). By contrast, in Antiphon 1, a young man’s speech in the prosecution of his stepmother for the murder of his father, the vivid and detailed account of the alleged poisoning is its most important part.11 But rather than appearing immediately after the prooimion, this narrative is postponed by a disproportionately long prokataskeue, or preliminary argument, which arguably makes the speech a poor example of the canonical order. The narrative in Medea’s speech to Jason, like that in Gorgias’ Helen, also arguably serves more a function of reminding than recounting.

Leaving aside the question of whether these speeches constitute inadequate or deficient examples, the appearance of a speech divided in four parts need not prove the presence of a theory of arrangement. It seems entirely possible that a four-part speech was spoken before rules for composing one were written down or consciously articulated. The beginning and end of a speech appear to have always been considered special, and in judicial speaking, one of the most important forums for early Greek oratory, a speaker was typically required to give a version of events and to prove that they occurred as he claimed. Given these tasks, the speaker had essentially two options for presenting material in between the beginning and the end: he could intersperse the telling of events with the arguments confirming his version of them, or he could recount the events continuously and then present the arguments en bloc. If he did the latter (and of course included an introduction and conclusion), he could easily have produced a canonically divided speech, without necessarily following any doctrine. It is possible that the four-part arrangement was created ‘by accident’ and only later codified in theoretical works.

Even in the fourth century, speeches that divide neatly into four parts are fewer than those that do not.12 Yet it is in the fourth century that we find speeches with more pronounced divisions. Lysias’ Against Simon (3), a speech written for the defendant in a trial for ‘intentional wounding’, dates to the mid-390s and is a virtually perfect example of the four-part arrangement.13 It also illustrates how the sections complement one another to advance the strongest possible case. The speaker (Lysias’ client) is a middle-aged man engaged in an erotic rivalry for a Plataean boy. His rival claims that the speaker and the boy came to his home wielding potsherds and attacked him. The speaker devotes the prooimion to dispelling prejudice, specifically by expressing embarrassment that at his age he should find himself in court over such a matter (1-4). His narrative is a detailed but clear version of the events leading up to the fight, which he claims Simon started (5-20). The transition from the narrative to the proof is marked: ‘You have heard what happened from me and from witnesses... Now, I will try to explain the matters concerning which my opponent is lying’ (21). The proofs then neatly subdivide into refutations of the opponent’s arguments (27-34) and confirmation of speaker’s narrative (35-39), especially through arguments from probability; for example, that if he had come to Simon’s house intending to fight, he would have brought friends to help. The epilogue restates the case, and makes a final appeal to pity (46-48): the stakes are not the same for accuser and the defendant, for the latter is in danger of exile. And so, he reasons, he deserves the judges’ sympathy. This speech, with its methodical and marked divisions, does indeed appear to be informed by a theory of arrangement.

If the four-part arrangement was not taught by the fifth-century technai, but appears only at the beginning of the fourth century, it is possible that Isocrates (436-388) was the first to teach it. Quintilian and Dionysius of Halicarnassus associate the four-part speech with Isocrates and his school and, on this basis, some modern writers refer to the four-part division as the ‘Isocratean’ arrangement.14 Isocrates’ judicial speeches do in fact tend to fall into four parts.15 Aristotle’s contemporary Theodectes, a student of Isocrates, apparently wrote a manual that taught the canonical order and connected each part with its traditional functions.16

Aristotle’s Rhetoric represents a departure from such earlier methods of organizing a handbook: rather than dividing the speech, he divides the art of rhetoric. Taxis is only one part of the discussion, not an organizing principle. He is critical of predecessors who had organized instruction around parts of the speech, especially for the tendency to make ever-finer subdivisions among the parts: ‘If one continues making divisions such as the followers of Theodorus make, there will be a second narrative, and a preliminary narrative, and a refutation, and supplementary refutation’ (3.13.5).

Aristotle’s own treatment of taxis contains advice similar to what we would expect to find in earlier handbooks, but it is framed by a concern with reducing the speech to its essential components and describing it as an organic whole. According to Aristotle, a speech may have as few as two parts: a prothesis (proposition) and a pistis (argument or proof). Similarly, no speech ‘needs’ to be divided into more than four parts: a prooimion, a prothesis (which may be a narrative), pistis, and an epilogue. These parts are naturally distinct because they perform different functions in the speech: the prooimion introduces, the prothesis asserts, the proof demonstrates, and the epilogue reminds.

The Rhetoric to Alexander contains a more extensive treatment of the parts of the speech. In fact, some have suggested that the last part of the treatise (29-37) is a separate work that, taken alone, can be considered the fourth-century version of the original handbook Tisias would have written.17 According to its author, the canonical speech divisions can apply to all three genres of speaking, deliberative, epideictic, and judicial; in judicial speaking, he also recognizes anticipation of the opposing arguments (procatalepsis) as a separate, fifth division. His discussion is organized primarily around the rhetorical genres, with subdivisions for the each of the parts of the speech, which would seem to imply that the instructions for the parts are different in each genre. This is true for deliberative and epideictic. However, when the author comes to the judicial genre, he abbreviates in several places by referring the reader back to the instructions on parts of deliberative speeches. These somewhat awkward crossreferences perhaps could have been avoided if the author had made the parts of the speech his major headings and then made subdivisions for the rhetorical genres, as Aristotle does in the Rhetoric. Nevertheless, the discussion of speech divisions in the Rhetoric to Alexander is generally more detailed and more extensive than that in the Rhetoric, and it was almost certainly intended to contain more practical advice.

Matching instructions to parts of the speech is generally thought to have been a practical method for organizing a handbook. Nevertheless, most of classical rhetoric would follow Aristotle's lead with regard to arrangement by treating it as one part of rhetoric rather than an organizing principle. Rhetorical manuals organized around the parts of the speech continue to appear into late antiquity.18 Yet the more common method in Hellenistic and Roman rhetoric was to organize manuals around the duties of the orator: invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and memory.19

2 The Prooimion

The traditional functions of the prooimion are to inform, to capture the listeners' attention, and to win their goodwill. Both Aristotle and the Rhetoric to Alexander recognize these functions, but Aristotle lays the most emphasis on informing the audience. According to him, winning goodwill, or dispelling hostility, are in fact remedies (iatreumata) for particular situations and so should not be viewed as inherent parts of the prooimion (3.14.6-7). By contrast, holding the audience’s attention is necessary throughout the speech, and phrases that speakers say at the beginning of speeches (I beg your attention, etc.) are often a waste, for they delay the speaker from addressing his main points, and thus can make him appear undignified. Slaves, according Aristotle, often dance around what they have to say by ‘prooimizing’ (3.14.8-10).

The prooimion is associated with the most colorful commonplaces in Greek rhetoric and oratory. We find speakers flattering audiences, proclaiming the enormity of the matter at hand, begging for a fair hearing, protesting their ignorance of rhetoric, and imputing the worst motives to their opponents.20 Speakers bewailing their oratorical disadvantages seem ubiquitous in judicial speeches. In the words of one scholar: ‘There are hardly exordia in the orators in which the pleader fails to lament his inexperience with the courts and speaking while insinuating that his opponent is a capable orator and an old hand at pettifogging’.21 This is somewhat of an exaggeration, for speakers who were active in public life could not plausibly claim inexperience, and in the existing speeches they do not try. Nevertheless, the humble, plainspoken private citizen who finds himself in court only because of his opponent’s intransigence (or greed) is a character speechwriters often gave to their clients.22

The prooimion of Lysias 32, a speech presented on behalf of two plaintiffs in an inheritance dispute, exemplifies the apologetic tone often assumed by Athenian litigants:

If the case were not of the greatest importance, gentlemen of the jury, I would never have brought these people before you, because I consider it most shameful to quarrel with relatives, and I know that you disapprove not only of wrongdoers, but also those who cannot tolerate some minor mistreatment on the part of their relatives. But, gentlemen, since the plaintiffs have been deprived of a great sum of money, and suffered terrible abuse at the hands of those who should least abuse them, they sought protection from me, their brother-in-law, and I have found myself obliged to speak on their behalf. I am married to their sister, the daughter of Diogeiton’s daughter. Initially, after having been beseeched by both of them, I persuaded them to submit the matter to the arbitration of friends, because I thought it was important that no one else know about this dispute. But Diogeiton dared to refuse all the friends’ advice, even though he was plainly shown to be holding the property, and decided to face a lawsuit and undergo the worst risks rather than doing the right thing and settling their case against him. So I beg you, ifI show that their grandfather mismanaged their guardianship more shamefully than anyone in this city ever has, even if the guardian was not a relative, come to their aid, give them justice.

If not, believe this man in everything he says, and think worse of us from now on. I will now try to inform you about these matters from the beginning.

The speaker assumes that the judges will frown upon plaintiffs suing a relative, so emphatically places responsibility for the lawsuit with the opponent (cf. Dem. 41.1-2). He notes that the suit is not for a trifling amount, the sisters offered arbitration, and the opponent’s behavior has been exceptionally unreasonable and unjust (a point underscored by hyperbolic promise to show that the grandfather’s guardianship was the worst of all time). These tactics for blaming a lawsuit on the opponent are not discussed in existing fourth-century rhetorical manuals, but Dionysisus of Halicarnassus knew of works in which they were offered as commonplaces ( Lysias 24).

The example cited above comes from a plaintiff’s speech in a private suit. Defendants and prosecutors in criminal cases needed somewhat different tactics, for prosecutors had to respond to hostility inherent in their role, and defendants, who spoke second, had to face the hostility prosecutors had stirred against them. Prosecutors in Athens were not public officials, but rather private volunteers, and Athenians could be suspicious of those who took such initiative. They could appear as polypragmones (‘busybodies’) or, since some charges involved monetary rewards, profiteers ([Dem.] 53.1, 59.1). Prosecution speakers thus often begin by seeking to dispel such suspicions. To this end, they could sometimes point to their personal involvement in the case (for example, as one of the defendant’s victims) or, employing a strategy that confounds our notion of impartial law enforcement, they could assert a preexisting personal enmity towards the defendant (e. g., Lys. 14.1, [Dem.] 58.1-2). It was however also possible for a prosecutor to assume the stance of the public servant (e. g., Lyc. 1.3-6), or to suggest that ‘private enmities often correct public wrongs’ (Aes. 1.2). As for the defendant, by the time he reached the podium, his character often would have been thoroughly maligned. Rhetoricians and orators thus agree that his first task is to respond to diabolai (prejudicial attacks).23 In oratory, typical responses are vigorous denials and counter accusations, especially of lying and syco-phantia (malicious, or profit-driven, prosecution).24

The prooimion in epideictic gets very brief treatment in the Rhetoric (3.14.2-3) and Rhetoric to Alexander (1440b5-23). As for the prooimion in deliberative oratory, Aristotle suggests it is often not necessary (as the audience is probably already informed, 3.14.12), while the Rhetoric to Alexander treats it in detail, generally emphasizing the ways a speaker can win goodwill or dispel prejudice by presenting a modest demeanor (1436b15-1437b32). Demosthenes, however, shows that deliberative speeches could begin with an arrogant tone, such as his opening of On the Peace (5.2), where he berates the Assembly for its shortsightedness. Demosthenes also wrote a collection of stock deliberative prooimia that are similarly bold, and this is perhaps surprising. While one might think that the point of a stock prooimion would be its adaptability or its usefulness for teaching, it is hard to imagine these prooimia being spoken by anyone but an established orator.25

A prooimion may seem like an essential speech component, yet there are examples where what the rhetoricians consider a proper prooimion is omitted. Hermogenes (On Types of Style 227-228) suggests that omission of the prooimion is a feature of the ‘pure’ style and cites Demosthenes 41 and 56 as examples. This is also true of several speeches of Isaeus (3, 5, 9 and 11), and Dionysius notes that Lysias sometimes proceeds directly to the narrative ( L ysias 17). The openings of such speeches are not devoid of the commonplaces associated with the prooimion, such as pleas for a favorable hearing, but all produce a feeling of the speaker beginning in medias res that is absent from speeches with developed prooimia.