The Greek novels are rich in representations of rhetoric in action. Indeed they are particularly interesting for their depiction not just of speeches but of response to speeches. The vivid account (ekphrasis) of the death of Charicles at the beginning of Achilles Tatius’ novel (1.12), for example, has precisely the emotional effect on the listeners that is claimed for such speeches in rhetorical theory.42 In general, the population of the novels is avid for stories, a characteristic which we can interpret both as a reflection of the fundamentally oral culture which produced the novels and as a self-reflexive comment on the novels’ own reception.43 Calasiris’ long narration in the Aethiopica has a particularly enthusiastic audience in the shape of Cnemon (who has himself provided a long narration of his own novelistic misfortunes earlier in the book). While J. Winkler has treated Cnemon as the embodiment of a naive kind of reading, inadequate to the complexities of the text, he also serves to represent the pleasure of listening to a live rhetorical performance that was an accepted - and expected - part of audience response.44 Calasiris himself is portrayed as a consummate performer, as he shows when he describes to Cnemon how he behaved when he diagnosed Theagenes’ mysterious illness as lovesickness: ‘I paused a moment, performed some meaningless calculations on my fingers, tossed my hair around, and pretended that the spirit was on me’.45
Rather than explaining all the depictions of rhetoric in the novel simply as an unconscious reflection of the training received by their authors, we can ask what significance the presence of rhetoric within the novels might have. To take the example of Daphnis and Chloe first, the contrast between city and country, urbane paideia and the roughness of country ways, pervades and structures the novel. The balance is far from equal since the narrator’s urbane language places him, and his implied audience, firmly on the side of the city. However much we are invited to sympathise with the characters, they remain at a certain distance. This emerges most clearly when they attempt to make speeches of their own. In Chloe’s monologue describing the symptoms of love that she cannot yet recognise, the narrator’s elegant Attic Greek is at odds with the naive sentiments she expresses (e. g., ‘I wish I were his goat so I could be led to graze by him’!).46 As F. Zeitlin has emphasised, the novel sets in motion a complex interplay between the rhetorical paideia of the narrator and reader and the erotic development of the main characters, who are finally reintegrated into the urban setting to which they too unknowingly belonged.47
Control of speech can also function as a sign of Greekness within the world of the novel, as in the world of the sophists. Both Callirhoe and Charicleia are able to deceive non-Greek characters by their clever and persuasive use of language.48 In
Each case, they act to protect themselves from the advances of other men and thus their deception is positive in terms of the novel’s structure and plot. However, Hellenic deception is potentially ambiguous, introducing a negative aspect to ‘Greek-ness’. A similar complexity can be seen in Daphnis and Chloe where the contrast is between city and country, rather than Greek and Barbarian. The urban experts in oratory invariably introduce a discordant note into the pastoral world, embodied in the character of Astylus (‘townie’), the son of Daphnis’ master, and his hanger-on (parasitos), Gnathon. Here the reader’s response is further complicated by the distancing effect of the narrator’s style.
The gendered social role of rhetoric is also important to our understanding of the novels. Rhetorical paideia was, above all, a masculine domain so its use by characters is significant as a marker of masculinity or, in the case of female characters, of transgression. In Chariton’s novel it is noticeable that Chaereas is silent during the first Assembly in Syracuse where the people speak on his behalf (1.1). After Callir-hoe’s apparent death he appears in court charged with her murder where he presents a brief, emotional speech of self-accusation begging to suffer the worst punishments possible (1.5). In contrast, his final appearance at the Assembly at the end of the novel, after he has proved his military prowess and leadership and regained possession of his wife, is a tour deforce of coherent and carefully shaped narration (8.7-8). In this case, Chaereas’ entry into manhood is marked by his entry into logos, and his public speech is in contrast with Callirhoe’s decorous public silence at the end of the novel. Similarly, Daphnis’ improvised trial (2.16), where he defends himself successfully against the city-dwellers’ charges of theft, comes as his sexual awareness and experience grow. Though the alleged theft and the trial are described by the narrator as interrupting Daphnis and Chloe’s sexual experimentation (2.11), the comparison with Chaereas shows the thematic connection between eloquence and manhood.
In the novels of adventure, characters who find themselves in a position of weakness as they travel without protection through strange lands are obliged to twist the truth to survive and are all pupils of Odysseus. It is noticeable that it is the female characters, particularly Callirhoe and Charicleia, who make most use of Odyssean tale-telling. Callirhoe comes of age through her sophisticated use of speech well before Chaereas does and is a mistress of improvisation in her adaptation to kairos, the demands of the moment. Above all, it is Heliodorus’ heroine, Charicleia, who illustrates the rhetorical principles of female speech, as has been noted by Laurent Pernot.49 Charicleia constantly manipulates the truth for her own ends; it is she who decides that she and Theagenes should present themselves as brother and sister, not lovers (1.22), a ploy that does not just convince the internal audience but potentially deceives the reader too. As Pernot notes, this verbal sophistication was felt to be too close to technical sophistic (pros to sophistiketeron) by some Byzantine readers, according to the eleventh-century critic Michael Psellus, and Charicleia’s manner of speaking condemned for being unbecoming to a lady (me:gunaikeion metde tholu).50
Such rhetorical sophistication is shown in Achilles Tatius’ novel not by its heroine, Leucippe, but by the older woman, Melite. She uses persuasive and erotic language to seduce Cleitophon, knows what to omit and, as a forerunner of Yseult in mediaeval French romance, knows precisely how to phrase an oath so as not to be caught out.51 Leucippe’s relative reticence (which led the same Byzantine readers to approve of her over Charicleia, if Psellus is to be believed) is partly a result of the structure of the novel since Cleitophon, the narrator, is separated from Leucippe for a large part of the time and is the recipient of Melite’s persuasive speeches. But Melite’s amorous eloquence also points up the connection between sexual maturity and rhetorical sophistication that we have already seen.
Zeitlin’s analysis of Daphnis and Chloe brings out the close connection between logos and eras that is evident throughout the corpus of novels and expressed most clearly in Achilles Tatius. His hero, Cleitophon, tells how he used a display of paideia as a means of seduction when he first met Leucippe, giving a series of speeches on desire in the plant and animal worlds to convey his erotic interest in her (1.16-18). The ‘digressions’ on kisses in this novel are extremely significant for their treatment of the lips as the source both of kisses and of speech, emphasising the connection between the two, ‘for a kiss is a premier pleasure, love child of the mouth, and the mouth is the loveliest member of the body, for it is the organ of speech, and speech is a shadow of the soul’ (2.8).52 Both Achilles Tatius (5.27) and Longus (2.16) portray erotic desire as a spur to eloquence and Cleitophon, the narrator, describes ErOs himself as teacher of rhetoric (sophistos) and a consummate improviser ( autoschedios) who ‘teaches’ lovers how to adapt to circumstance as well as any rhetorical performer. This identification of erOs, logos and paideia shows how deeply woven rhetoric is into the fabric of the novels. Not only is speech a source of pleasure to the characters but also it inspires and is inspired by sexual desire.
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