Though the division of oratory into three types (eidei) according to function is first attested in Aristotle and Anaximenes in the fourth century, both the division1 and the labels are derived from existing trends in oratorical practice. Fourth century rhetoric codified but did not create the categories.2 The recognition that different modes of argument suit different spheres is already visible in Thucydides’ account of the debate about the fate of the rebel city of Mytilene, where Diodotus complains that his opponent Cleon is treating a policy debate as though it were a trial (3.44).3 His protest is itself a rhetorical ploy to change the terms of the debate, but for its effect it draws on a shared recognition of the goals and methods appropriate to different contexts. Similarly, in our earliest encounters with the funeral oration (the most prominent of the forms of epideictic oratory) we detect inherent principles of form and overt trends in content which are clearly understood by speaker and audience, if nowhere articulated - or perceived - as a set of objective rules.
These categories were serviceable enough to stand for centuries after Aristotle. As a general approach to Greek oratory the division is useful, but it has limitations. Like any attempt at taxonomy in literary genres, by imposing firm boundaries it ignores the flexibility of and fluidity between literary forms in living traditions. It is particularly misleading if we try to apply Aristotelian categories to earlier oratory. Aristotle distinguishes the types as follows:
The concern of counsel/advice (symboule) is partly exhortation, partly dissuasion. For in every case people who offer private advice and people who speak in public on civic issues do one or the other of these. The concern of the lawsuit is partly accusation, partly defence. For inevitably people in dispute do either of these. The concern of display is partly praise and partly blame.4
This emphasis on praise and blame as the focus of epideictic oratory excludes fake forensic speeches from this class, except for speeches located in mythical trials. This means that works written for fictitious trials such as Antiphon’s Tetralogies (speeches addressing a series of invented cases from the opposing standpoint of prosecution and defence), which are in a real sense epideictic, must be shoe-horned into the judicial class. In defining the genre the fourth century rhetoricians narrowed it. Moreover, as we shall see below, the categories are not watertight; there is movement between them.
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