This element of overt skill is also marked in the other categories of epideictic oratory practised in classical Athens. One way both of offering instruction and (in written form) of advertising one’s teaching was to produce model speeches or sections of speeches. This could take the form of speeches for fictive cases or overt exercises in praise or denigration without a fictive mis-en-scene. Fictive speeches generally took one of two forms, either speeches ostensibly for trials in contemporary courts or speeches for trials for celebrated mythical figures. How many examples of the former survive is uncertain, since modern arguments for the fictive status of certain speeches are both subjective and contested.31 The only unambiguous examples we have are Antiphon’s Tetralogies, which betray their function as demonstration pieces by their condensation and brevity, their neat balance of contradictory arguments, their overt ingenuity and the absence of names or other personal details. They straddle the boundary between epideictic and judicial. They adopt the issues and mode of argumentation of the forensic speech, but like the funeral oration they have no immediate practical purpose.
Fictive speeches relating to notorious historical figures occupy the same ambiguous terrain. Isocrates certainly regards Polycrates’ celebrated speech for the prosecution of Socrates32 as being in the same category of speech as his defence of Busiris (11.11). This and the Tetralogies of Antiphon are if anything more display pieces than the funeral oration, since their main purpose is to demonstrate the writer’s skill, where the funeral oration had a larger social function. In these and the fictive speeches written for mythic situations and in the speeches of praise and blame for which we have evidence, the nature of the task of persuasion is different not only from forensic and deliberative oratory but from the funeral oration, all of which are seeking to impose or validate a particular view. In this category however the aim is not to convince the audience of the truth of the specific case but to prove the skill of the writer and to demonstrate techniques of persuasion.
This aspect of the writer’s task is very visible in the choice of themes. In the case of Antiphon’s Tetralogies the skill is visible in the ability (so typical of its age) to argue a case from opposing sides. The speeches for mythical trials meet the demand for cleverness in a different way. The choice of high profile figure like Palamedes who notoriously lost to a man known for his speaking skill offered an excellent opportunity to showjust what could be done. This demonstration ofwhat might have been aims at plausibility, credibility, not a decision from the hearer that Palamedes was innocent or guilty. Likewise, a speech for the prosecution by Odysseus features a notoriously bad (though successful) prosecution, an opportunity to present a poor case plausibly.
The search for a challenging theme is often visible also in a related category of epideictic speech, and one that firmly fits Aristotle’s epideictic category, the encomium. The prose encomium is another area in which oratory is the successor to lyric poetry. The great panhellenic lyric poets composed both specific songs of praise for athletic victories and more general songs either directly in praise of or composed in honour of kings and aristocrats. It was natural for oratory to seek to occupy this space. We know that Gorgias composed an encomium in praise of Elis (Arist. Rhet. 1416a). The lyric precedents suggest that this was a commissioned work. The permeability of the boundary between defence (as with Palamedes) and praise is seen in Gorgias’ Helen, characterized at the outset as a defence of Helen ( Helen 1-2) and at the close as both defence and encomium (Helen 21). Isocrates’ Helen is more straightforwardly encomiastic. Helen had enormous appeal for someone looking for a challenge. Not only was she for many the archetypal bad woman but also the poetic tradition about her was so varied that a praise of her offered an opportunity for deft selection from the stories available. The encomia to Busiris by Polycrates and Isocrates in very different ways attempt to rehabilitate a notorious mythic criminal.33 This tendency in this category of display oratory to invert common evaluations in an overt way is noted by Cleon at Thucydides 3.38, where he stresses the argument of a paradox as one of the defining features of sophistic performance.34 The search for a seemingly unpromising subject, one that presents a very obvious challenge for skill in argument, is as marked in some of the encomia we know to have been written in the fourth century.35 Polycrates wrote a speech in praise of mice, which among other things argued the paradox that a species regarded as destructive was actually beneficial. It included (as we know from Arist. Rhet. 1401b, who singles it out for comment) the incident of the gnawed bowstrings that Herodotus mentions (2.141.5). Isocrates speaks slightingly of a treatise that argued that the life of a beggar or exile was superior (10.8). In the same vein, Alcidamas wrote a praise of poverty, another of death, yet another in praise of a dog.36 A praise of salt is mentioned by Plato (Symposium 177b) and Isocrates (10.12). Another such calculated choice of a trivial subject, praise of bumble bees, is noted by Isocrates (10.12). Other more obvious themes for praise occur. Plato, Symposium 177b notes that Heracles was a popular theme (singling out Prodicus’ account of Heracles’ choice, preserved in Xenophon (Memorabilia 2.1.2134). Here the challenge consisted (like the epitaphios logos) in finding new things to say on an established theme.
From the Symposium of Plato we get the impression that encomia could be delivered for fun by amateurs (though in this case the encomia are an elaborately staged introduction to the serious philosophical arguments of Socrates). A term sometimes used in modern discussions for exercises such as the praise of salt is paignion, ‘toy’, ‘game’, ‘sport’. As a term for a speech as intellectual exercise the label goes back to Gorgias, who uses it to describe his praise of Helen (Helen 12). Certainly amusement is one of the effects sought by (at least some of) these exercises. We have to remember always that most people probably encountered these texts in performance. Entertainment value must have been an important factor in performance for an audience. But since Gorgias uses his praise of Helen to make some important (and programmatic) statements about the art of the logos that he professed, this should not be taken as indicating lack of seriousness. The self-deprecating term paignion draws attention to the wit employed and suggests that the writer has not brought all his ability to bear. Some pieces of this sort were susceptible to the charge of trivialization lodged by Isocrates at 12.7-12. But since (as Isocrates insists), the writers of the published (both by performance and in writing) exercises in praise of trivial subjects are generally rhetoricians drumming up custom, like Gorgias they are not just having fun. The logic is given by Isocrates (10.8): ‘if they can say something on base subjects, they will easily have much to say about noble themes’.
Closely related to the kind of encomia we have been discussing is the speech attributed to Lysias in Plato’s Phaedrus. Few regard this as the genuine work of Lysias, but it can reasonably be taken to represent another use of epideictic oratory. The speech (which Phaedrus has in written form) is addressed to a boy and purports to be delivered by a man who wants to enjoy him but claims not to be in love with him. His argument - that it is better to choose a suitor who is not in love with you in preference to one who is in love - is among other things an exercise in paradox of a sort we have seen in the encomia. An Erotic Essay survives as Speech 61 in the modern editions of Demosthenes, almost certainly not his work. Again the authenticity is highly questionable, at best. This text, which seems to be heavily dependent on Plato, combines an encomium of Epicrates (at whose house Phaedrus claims to have read the speech of Lysias in Plato) with an encomium addressed to a boy.
Thus far I have treated epideictic oratory largely in Aristotelian terms as a distinct category. But literary genres are never hermetically sealed entities. Internally they shift and evolve in the hands of different exponents, while at they same time they interact with each other. We often find the themes of the epitaphios logos in other oratorical forms. Though Aristotle (Rhet. 1358b) divides up the oratorical kinds according to time-reference (past for judicial, future for deliberative, present for epideictic), he also notes that these references are not exclusive. The past is useful in both deliberative and judicial oratory not merely (as Aristotle suggests) for the sake of precedent but also for its ethical and emotional value. The sense of communal pride and shared purpose engendered by the funeral oration made its themes an ideal means in other contexts for creating division and isolating opponents, as well as allowing the speaker to strike a statesmanlike and patriotic pose. The most extensive use of such motifs in a forensic context is in Lycurgus’ speech Against Leocrates (1), which because of its themes (the alleged desertion of the city after the Battle of Chaeronea) has an obvious excuse to expatiate on patriotic themes. Such themes were also used in political debate, especially at moments perceived as critical, as we can see from Aeschines 2.74 and Demosthenes 19.16.
A further qualification is needed. One context for epideictic oratory identified above was the panhellenic festivals. Isocrates (4.3) remarks that a stock theme in such contexts was Greek homonoia - concord - and Plutarch confirms this for Gorgias ( Advice on Marriage 144b). Isocrates in a tract written for a reading rather than a listening audience which utilizes the form of a festival speech ( Panegyricus) enlivens this tradition by calling for a panhellenic campaign against Persia. The effect is to exploit the context and themes of epideictic oratory for essentially deliberative ends. A similar appropriation takes place in Lysias 33. In his essay on Lysias, Dionysius of Halicarnassus introduces this speech with an explanation that it was delivered at Olympia and was designed (as it actually did) to stir up hostility against Dionysius of Syracuse and to urge the liberation of Sicily. The story is also told by Diodorus Siculus 14.109 and [Plut.], Moralia 836d. Though Lysias as a Syracusan had every reason to embroil himself in the city’s politics, we cannot be sure of the authenticity of the speech and therefore of the historicity of the incident. But if our sources are accurate, we have another example of the exploitation for practical political ends (however unrealistic) of an occasion meant for oratory as display.
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