Attic Oratory and Performance (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies) [1 ed.] 9781138828353, 9781315738451, 1138828351

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Attic Oratory and Performance

In a society where public speech was integral to the decision-making process, and where all affairs pertaining to the community were the subject of democratic debate, the communication between the speaker and his audience in the public forum, whether the law-court or the Assembly, cannot be separated from the notion of performance. Attic Oratory and Performance seeks to make modern Performance Studies productive for, and so make a significant contribution to, the understanding of Greek oratory. Although quite a lot of ink has been spilt over the performance dimension of oratory, the focus of nearly all of the scholarship in this area has been relatively narrow, understanding performance as only encompassing ‘delivery’ – the use of gestures and vocal ploys – and the convergences and divergences between oratory and theatre. Serafim seeks to move beyond this relatively narrow focus to offer a holistic perspective on performance and oratory. Using examples from selected forensic speeches, in particular four interconnected speeches by Aeschines (2, 3) and Demosthenes (18, 19), he argues that oratorical performance encompassed subtle communication between the speaker and the audience beyond mere delivery, and that the surviving texts offer numerous glimpses of the performative dimension of these speeches, and their links to contemporary theatre. Andreas Serafim is Adjunct Lecturer at two Cypriot academic institutions: the University of Cyprus and the Open University of Cyprus. He has previously been Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at Trinity College Dublin (2015–2016), Honorary Research Fellow (2013–2015) and Assistant Lecturer in Ancient Greek (2012–2013) at University College London.

Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies

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Attic Oratory and Performance

Andreas Serafim

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Andreas Serafim The right of Andreas Serafim to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Serafim, Andreas, author. Title: Attic oratory and performance / Andreas Serafim. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge monographs in classical studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016031106| ISBN 9781138828353 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315738451 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Rhetoric, Ancient. | Oratory, Ancient. | Speeches, addresses, etc., Greek—History and criticism. Classification: LCC PA3265 .S45 2017 | DDC 885/.0109—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031106 ISBN: 978-1-138-82835-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-73845-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK

To my family

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Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations

ix xi

Introduction

1

Current perspectives and approaches 1 What this book is about 2 Performance Studies and Attic oratory 3 Audience and speaker in the law-court 5 Four case studies 6 The Embassy Case 7 The Crown Case 8 Outline 9

1

The hermeneutic framework: An analytical approach The notion of performance: Conceptual groundwork 15 Performance in the theatre and the law-court 17 Judicial oratory in/as performance: Aeschines 2, 3 and Demosthenes 18, 19 20 Constructed audience 20 Other strategies to influence the audience 21

Reconsidering ekphrasis through the lens of ancient theory 23 The depiction of litigants, ēthopoiia 25 Conceptual groundwork 25 The performative dimension of oratorical portraiture 26 Inter-generic portraiture 26

Hypocrisis – Delivery 28 Script, revision and extemporisation 32 A note on the use of ancient sources 33

15

2

Construction and manipulation

47

Addresses to the audience and civic community 47 Law-court ‘Big Brother’! 55 Emotional appeals 60 Direct/explicit appeals to emotions 61 Indirect/inexplicit appeals to emotions 64

Defence versus prosecution 66 The language of performance: Imperatives and questions 68

3

Aeschines and Demosthenes in the theatre of justice

81

Political thespians in the law-court 82 The use of quotations 83 ‘He is proud of his voice’: Oral excess in the law-court 84 ‘Drive him away and hiss him out’: Inviting the audience reaction 86

4

Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal of character

91

Comic or laughter-inducing ēthopoiia 92 Comic stereotyping 92 Inversion of tragedy into comedy 96 Ridiculing sexuality 97

Character portraiture: Tragedy and epic 99 Identification with tragic and epic characters 99 Cursed or unlucky? 103

5

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis!

113

Hypocrisis of emotions 114 Divine hypocrisis 117 Deixis 120 Figures of speech 121 Embassy speeches 121 Crown speeches 124

Direct speech, narrative and questions 128 Occasional aspects of hypocrisis 133

6

Conclusion

137

Index

141

Acknowledgements

A duck . . . Have you ever seen a duck swimming in a pond? She seems to swim smoothly, to enjoy quiescence, to have no troubles with life. Underneath, however, where you cannot see, the duck struggles to swim, moving her legs swiftly and dealing with obstacles. Despite what you may think, swimming for a duck is a laborious task. The duck knows that she needs to stand on her own two feet and try hard to succeed in swimming. She finally does succeed because she remains steadily adhered to principle. She returns home, she feels proud of her efforts, proud of her achievement and confident that she could cope with any such difficulties in the future. This is how I feel at the end of the long gestation of this book. Nothing was given to me without hard work and tremendous effort. There is of course a smile on my face in appreciation of the achievement of completing this laborious work and of being able to write the acknowledgments to express my indelible gratitude to all those who supported me warmly and unconditionally during these difficult but still wonderful years. As Saint Ambrose rightly held, ‘no duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks’. I owe much to respected colleagues, magnanimous teachers and precious friends, who believed in my research and supported it wholeheartedly. I am blessed with four extraordinary people in my life: Christopher Carey (University College London), Michael Edwards (University of Roehampton), Michael Gagarin (University of Texas at Austin) and Sophia Papaioannou (University of Athens) – inspiring teachers, dedicated mentors, influential scholars, good friends. They read and commented on multiple drafts of my book, they supported other research endeavours, they injected me with some of their immense knowledge and enthusiasm. Above all, they cemented my self-confidence and my determination to succeed when things were tough, when I seemed to be lost in theoretical meanderings. I can hardly imagine where I would have ended up academically without them. Words will never be enough to express gratitude to all of them for all they have done and still do for me. The greatest credit for the successful and timely completion of this book goes undeniably to Martine Cuypers, my advisor in the Department of Classics at Trinity College Dublin, which I joined as a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow in the academic year 2015–16. Her knowledge of Greek oratory, her fruitful philological mind, her high-calibre interdisciplinary scholarship and, above all,

x

Acknowledgements

her unparalleled enthusiasm and friendliness made the year at Trinity College Dublin the most fruitful and intellectually stimulating of my academic career. I want to apologise for having bombarded her with countless drafts throughout this year and to express my admiration and sincere gratitude for patiently coping with the amount of work that I, one of the most ‘workaholic’ postdocs she may have ever supervised, had produced. I also owe my sincere thanks and deep appreciation to Brenda Griffith-Williams (University College London), Konstantinos Kapparis (University of Florida), Ruth Webb (University of Lille), Edward M. Harris (University of Durham), Kostas Apostolakis (University of Crete), Eleni Volonaki (University of Peloponnese), Christos Kremmydas (Royal Holloway) and Roger Brock (University of Leeds) for reading and commenting on parts of my book. Nor will I forget the invaluable support of my colleagues at the University of Cyprus, especially Antonis Tsakmakis, and at the Open University of Cyprus, especially Antonis Petrides, for supporting me in my first steps as Adjunct Lecturer at these two institutions. Jonathan Richardson also deserves high praise for taking upon himself the task of proofreading the entire manuscript and providing much-needed advice. I would also like to thank the editorial team of Routledge, who saved me from errors. It would be a great omission if I did not thank the Irish Research Council for having generously funded the completion of my book; without its invaluable support, the successful and timely completion of this book would not have been possible. Sine quibus non, my family. The biggest and warmest gratitude goes undeniably to my mother, Paraskevi; my father, Sophocles; my sister, Maria; and my brothers, George, Rafael and Christos. I am forever grateful to all of them for their unpretending and wholehearted love, their unwavering emotional, moral and financial support, their insistent patience throughout my exciting, but arduous, first steps in the academic life, their positive attitude and a sense of self-sacrifice; all of which have alleviated the distress and tension when things have been tough. It is to them all that this book is dedicated. Dublin, July 2016

Abbreviations

The abbreviations of the names of ancient authors and their works follow those in LSJ9. Abbreviations of journals are cited after L’Année Philologique.

LSJ9

H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones. 1968. A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. Oxford.

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Introduction

This book examines aspects of performance in some of the extant speeches of Attic oratory that have come down to us in textual form. Its approach is part of what could be called the ‘performative turn’ in classical studies that has taken place over the last few decades. Performance is among the most talked-about topics in classical scholarship. Scholars have been debating, inter alia, the performance aspects of epic, drama, lyric and iambic poetry and of many other Greek verse genres. Although these genres, especially drama, are performative par excellence, Athenian society in general was, to use the words of Taplin, ‘extraordinarily performanceful’. Performance culture pervaded almost all aspects of Athenian life: public performances were held as part of religious festivals, athletic and musical contests, symposia and the celebration of victorious campaigns by the polis.1 In a society where public speech was integral to the decision-making process, and where all affairs pertaining to the community were the subject of democratic debate, the communication between the speaker and his audience in the public forum, whether the law-court or the Assembly, cannot be separated from the notion of performance.2 This book seeks to make modern Performance Studies productive for, and so make a significant contribution to, the understanding of Greek oratory. Although quite a lot of ink has been spilt over the performance dimension of oratory, the focus of nearly all of the scholarship in this area has been relatively narrow, understanding performance as only encompassing ‘delivery’ – the use of gestures and vocal ploys – and the convergences and divergences between oratory and theatre. This book seeks to move beyond this relatively narrow focus to offer a holistic perspective on performance and oratory. Using examples from selected forensic speeches, in particular four interconnected speeches by Aeschines (2, 3) and Demosthenes (18, 19), I argue that oratorical performance encompassed subtle communication between the speaker and the audience beyond mere delivery, and that the surviving texts (scripts) offer numerous glimpses of the performative dimension of these speeches, some, but not all, connected with contemporary theatre.

Current perspectives and approaches The majority of scholars within the domain of classics examine the association of performance with the theatre. In her contribution to an important survey of Athenian performance culture, Easterling, for example, examines the association between

2

Introduction

oratory and theatre by discussing references to actors and acting in Aeschines 2, 3 and Demosthenes 18, 19. Hall devotes the last chapter of her book, The Theatrical Cast of Athens, to a discussion of the links between drama and oratory, focusing her investigation on the construction of characters and on delivery. Slater, in the same vein, discusses various aspects of theatrical performance used in speeches, especially orators’ use of tragic and comic language and imagery.3 Another set of scholarly works revisit the transmitted speeches with the aim of reconstructing a view of the delivery, understood as being a matter of both gestures (hand and bodily gestures, posturing, facial expressions) and vocality (regulation of vocal pitch, timbre, pace). Boegehold, for example, discusses the use of gestural and vocal communication in his book When a Gesture Was Expected. He offers a very helpful overview of delivery techniques, exploring textual indicators of gesture, posture and facial movements. Other scholarly works have also discussed the textual indicators of gestural and vocal delivery: McDowell’s commentary on Demosthenes’ On the False Embassy and the commentaries of Yunis and Usher on On the Crown regularly touch upon matters, such as the use of figures of speech, which point to moments where one expects gestures to have been used. Only a few works, however, go beyond the occasional remarks that are offered by commentaries to discuss delivery and the other performance elements of speeches from the perspective of the whole context of a speech. Sonkowsky, for example, argues that delivery is deeply engrained in the extant written copies of oratorical speeches, being particularly associated with pathos and ēthos.4 Sonkowsky offers a perceptive analysis of how the relationship between delivery and pathos is theorised in ancient rhetorical treatises, especially in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Classen examines another important aspect of law-court performance: the portrayal of characters. He focuses on the exploration of the communicative relations that exist between the speaker and the audience in the law-court. He rightly argues that a speech is ‘a three-cornered dialogue’ between the two litigants and the audience. He discusses this triangle as revealed by the portrayal of characters in Aeschines 2 and Demosthenes 19: the two speakers accuse each other and introduce themselves to the audience in such a way as to estrange the other from the audience and insinuate themselves into its goodwill.5 More recently, the volume edited by Kremmydas and Tempest, Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity and Change (Oxford 2013), collecting fourteen interdisciplinary essays, offers a wide-ranging study of the different ways in which Hellenistic oratory can be approached. Three chapters – Hall’s on rhetorical actors and vocalism, Rubinstein’s on oral performance and written submission and Chaniotis’ on vivid imagery and emotions – shed welcome light on key aspects of oratorical performance.6

What this book is about Although my book is much indebted to the stimulating work that has already been done, it adopts a distinctive approach. First, I further explore the relationship

Introduction 3 between theatre (especially drama) and oratory, but this does not represent the limit of the argument: attention is also paid to aspects (ranging from figures of speech such as apostrophe to pragmatic features such as deixis) that have no inevitable association with theatre and whose performance potential in oratory remains under-researched. Second, by examining a few selected speeches in their entirety, this book offers a more systematic analysis of delivery in forensic oratory than is possible in the piecemeal examination of isolated passages. Although we cannot hope to recover all the delivery ploys used by orators, and analysis of techniques of delivery purely from texts inevitably involves a fair amount of speculation, it is nevertheless possible to identify a substantial number of opportunities for delivery by drawing together the insights provided by linguistics, Performance Studies and ancient scholarship (notably rhetorical treatises and handbooks). This book, therefore, examines oratorical performance from a holistic perspective. Just as we learn about a monument by walking around it and by examining every single corner of it, so we learn about speeches by examining them from multiple perspectives. To see the whole picture is to develop a better understanding of the objectives of public speaking, the mechanisms of persuasion, and the extent to which performance determined the outcome of judicial and political contests. A full appreciation of the performative dimensions of the speeches is as important to a complete understanding of these speeches as is an appreciation of the particular arguments of the speakers in their historical context, and such an understanding serves to advance our overall knowledge of the deliberative decision-making processes in Athenian democracy. The holistic approach to performance that this book offers involves the examination of both direct/sensory and cognitive/emotional techniques that are ingrained in, and can be extracted from, the extant written copies of speeches. Direct/sensory techniques include the gestural and vocal ploys of what ancient sources call hypocrisis, delivery, as well as information about the staging of the speech – in other words everything that has to do with sight and hearing. Cognitive/emotional stratagems refer to more subtle communication between the speaker and the audience, which is not directly sensory but which also contributes to the overall performance. This book takes a fresh look at specific aspects of oratory, which were already identified as important by ancient critics, through the lens of current linguistic, pragmatic, cognitive-theoretical and Performance-Studies insights. Two particular cognitive/emotional stratagems are discussed. The first of these are the various ways in which the speaker communicates with and influences the audience. Attention is paid to the notion of the constructed audience – the way the speaker invites the judges and onlookers to envisage themselves. Second, this book examines the portrayal of the litigants’ character – referred to by the Greek term ēthopoiia – and the way this serves the overall communicative goals of the speaker.

Performance Studies and Attic oratory This book takes the position that oratorical text makes better sense when consideration is given to the interaction of the speaker and the speech with the

4

Introduction

audience. The way the audience experiences a speech (audience response) explicates the notion of performance in the same way Performance Studies treat texts, visual arts, or anything else. As Schechner puts it, ‘texts are regarded as practices, events, and behaviours, not as “objects” or “things”. Performance Studies enquires about the “behaviour” of, for example, a painting: the ways it interacts with those who view it, thus evoking different reactions and meanings’.7 A painting is considered a ‘practice’, ‘event’ or ‘behaviour’ inasmuch as it invites a person to react to, or be moved by, it. This book, then, pays attention not only to the identification of cognitive/emotional strategies and to the discussion of their functioning in particular contexts in the oratorical script, but also to the ways in which the audience experiences the speech and its (cognitive/emotional) rhetorical strategies. The aim is to shed light on what these strategies would have done or have aimed to do in the minds and emotions of the audience and how this interaction might have affected the audience’s reaction in the law-court, what ancient sources refer to as thorubos,8 as well as voting behaviour. The theory of performativity, championed by Beauvoir and Butler, also sheds light on some aspects of the invited audience response in the law-court. Beauvoir rejects the ‘mute facticity’ of bodies: in The Second Sex, she argues that a woman (and, by extension, any gender) is the result of culturally enforced actions and not of biological status (‘one is not born, but, rather, becomes a woman’). Butler likewise rejects the idea that body pre-exists or is outside the gendered self. A central concept of Butler’s theory is that specific aspects of self, such as gender, are constructed through repetitive performance acts.9 Wittig and Foucault also argue for regarding gendered identity as a cultural construction that is signified through activity and conduct. To say that self is ‘performanceful’ is to argue that it is ‘real only to the extent that it is performed’: just as self/gender is not something one is, but something that one does through corporeal performance (action, dress and manner) and through language.10 This correlates Butler’s performativity with Austin’s speech-acts and Searle’s illocutionary speech-acts: language does something rather than merely represents something.11 In the law-court, this potency of language to signify and enact gender performativity has two dimensions: cognitive/mentally intelligible, and corporeal. The first dimension pertains to speakers’ attacks on each other’s (alleged) effeminate physique and their lack of martial bravery and manliness. Subversion of gender norms may incite a cognitive/mentally intelligible enactment of the opponent’s unmanliness. Such derisory descriptions of opponents, especially those drawing on comic figures – invoking the Athenians’ experience as theatregoers – served to bring before the audience’s eyes the image of effeminate and ridiculous personae. Given that manliness was considered a core Athenian value,12 it is safe to assume that the caricatured persona would be estranged from the audience. Derisory presentation can also be corporeal; this relates to direct/sensory techniques and to Austin’s and Searle’s speech acts. To describe, for example, how your opponent was standing, moving and gesticulating on the dicastic platform may also imply enacting his alleged movements before the law-court audience.13

Introduction 5 It becomes evident, therefore, that both the cognitive/mentally intelligible and the corporeal enactment of gender subversion have a direct bearing upon the lawcourt performance. As Butler puts it, we do things with language [corporeal performativity], produce effects with language [cognitive/mentally-intelligible performativity], and we do things to language, but language is also the thing that we do. Language is a name for our doing: both ‘what’ we do (the name for the action that we characteristically perform) and that which we effect, the act, and its consequences.14 Or, as restated by Revermann with specific reference to theatre, ‘playwrights, actors, and everyone else involved in a performance successfully “do things with words”: spellbind, entertain, alienate, persuade, provoke, entice, unify (through horror and laughter), and, last but not least in the Greek context, win’.15 This is also the function of performance in the law-court: to do things with words in order to win over the audience.

Audience and speaker in the law-court Were the audience able to perceive the cognitive stimuli that the speaker sent to it, however? Any law-court audience was socially, financially and educationally diverse.16 This diversity also included different levels of performance experience. To use a notion borrowed from literary theory, ancient court audiences incorporated various ‘interpretive communities’.17 These interpretive communities consist of groups of hearers/viewers, who interpret the speech in their own way according to their specific cultural, political, social, economic, moral, religious and other views. The audience’s plurality and the consequent lack of uniformity in its reactions make it difficult for us to examine the possible impact of the speaker’s cognitive/emotional and direct/sensory techniques upon its members. The diversity of the audience raises the question of competence: the ability of the audience to understand (mainly the cognitive/mentally intelligible) aspects of performance. Aristotle is sceptical about the ability of the majority of spectators in a theatre to recall even the most well-known material (Poetics 1451b23–6). Modern theorists, however, express different views. Revermann, for example, argues that Athenian audiences in the fifth and fourth centuries, despite the diversity in their perceptiveness, education and experience of performances, were competent enough to recognise and interpret rhetorical effects at least at a basic level.18 This is because the Athenians were not simply theatregoers, but also theatre-partakers: they took part in choruses or they worked behind the scenes, thus, gaining invaluable experience and ‘a bare minimum of skills (linguistic, visual, cultural) to make sense of and enjoy a play’.19 We should bear in mind, of course, that Revermann focuses his inquiry on the competence of theatrical audiences, without examining perceptiveness of people in other Attic performance contexts such as the law-court.

6

Introduction

In this regard, we can usefully distinguish two categories of stimuli in court: the first refers to shared conventions, such as gestures, vocal ploys, ritual formalities, etc., which audiences would most likely have been able to recognise because of their participation in the proceedings in courts and deliberative bodies at deme level and the Assembly. The second category consists of inter-generic stimuli: the use of patterns, language, quotations or descriptions that draw on dramatic genres or epic to invite the audience to feel, think or react in a specific way. These patterns rely on a good deal of lateral thinking on the part of the audience. The litigious nature of Athenian society, and the prevalence of rhetoric, seems to corroborate the view that people could recognise the performance devices used by speakers in court, especially those that are ubiquitous in speeches. Given that the law-court audience comprised theatregoers, I would also argue that a level of performance awareness would have been retained, despite some differences in the nature of theatrical and court performances. At any rate, one can confidently argue that the invited effect of patterns that draw on theatre, language register, pictorial descriptions, direct or implicit references to popular perceptions, etc., activate the experiences, attitudes and beliefs of the audience to induce them to think, feel, act and vote in a way that serves the speaker’s purpose. Whether or not the invited effect was achieved (consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously) remains hard to say. It should be mentioned at this point that consciousness on behalf of the speaker also remains controversial in scholarly circles: for Butler, for example, performativity is not a conscious action, but it is determined by social and cultural norms.20 One should bear in mind, however, that Butler narrowly focuses on gender performativity rather than discussing performance more broadly. These two terms, performativity and performance, cannot be used interchangeably. As she argues, in no sense can it be concluded that the part of gender that is performed is therefore the ‘truth’ of gender. Performance as bounded ‘act’ is distinguished from performativity insofar as the latter consists in a reiteration of norms which precede, constrain, and exceed the performer and in that sense cannot be taken as the fabrication of the performer’s ‘will’ or ‘choice’.21 To many in Performance Studies, this distinction between performance and performativity is problematic in that it allows the performer limited agency.22 Limited agency does not fully apply in law-court performance though. There are, of course, restrictions due to the court etiquette and practice: it was, for example, the right of the defendant only, not the prosecutor, to use children to arouse dicastic compassion, while both speakers have to bear in mind that the common knowledge of real events and the consequent refutability of narrative would prevent them from completely fabricating characters. Otherwise, speakers have freedom to develop and alter their strategy and to refer to their opponents’ conduct in ways that benefit their case.

Four case studies Aeschines’ past as an actor allied with the importance placed on delivery by Demosthenes make these two orators particularly appropriate for an inquiry into

Introduction 7 their law court performances. Four of Aeschines’ and Demosthenes’ (public) speeches are examined in this book: Aeschines’ On the False Embassy (speech 2) and Against Ctesiphon (speech 3); Demosthenes’ On the Crown (speech 18) and On the False Embassy (speech 19). There are several reasons why these particular four speeches are suitable for exploring performance: Aeschines 2 is the answer to Demosthenes 19 and Demosthenes 18 is the answer to Aeschines 3. They thus provide a unique opportunity to read texts comparatively and to discuss the ways the two orators wrote for performance to influence the same audience during the same trial. The different legal character of these speeches, prosecution and defence, also allows direct comparisons about their performance elements. A comprehensive examination of performance in these four speeches is also a desideratum because in Demosthenes 18 and 19 these aspects have only been analysed fragmentarily, and performance in Aeschines’ transmitted speeches is still terra incognita. Another benefit of examining these specific four speeches is their generic atypicality: despite being judicial, delivered in court and aimed to persuade the judges to cast their vote rejecting an indictment, these four speeches also have affinities with the other two genres of oratory, deliberative and epideictic.23 Aeschines 2, 3 and Demosthenes 18, 19, as the subsequent description of their historical background and their political foreground illustrates, mix legal and political pleas, considering past historical events and political processes, the actions of public figures and their intentions. The emphasis of both Aeschines and Demosthenes on the values that they share with the Athenian judges and onlookers also signifies a shift in the register and tone from forensic to epideictic oratory.

The Embassy Case In the summer of 343, Demosthenes accused Aeschines on a charge of ambassadorial misconduct for his actions during the first Athenian delegation, sent three years earlier to Philip, the King of Macedon, to negotiate a peace treaty. Philip conquered key locations and expanded his power base. After having failed to secure support from other cities for an anti-Macedonian coalition, Athens sued for peace with Macedon, aiming to gain time to prepare itself for the next stage of the conflict. This is known as the Peace of Philocrates (346). During the Embassy trial, Demosthenes and Aeschines delivered two speeches, each of which, in our medieval manuscripts and modern editions, have the same title, On the False Embassy. In his prosecution speech, Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of betrayal, claiming that he received bribes from Philip to propose to the Athenians the acceptance and ratification of a peace treaty. Demosthenes claims that during the debate Aeschines prevented a more general peace that would cover not only Athens but also its potential allies. Demosthenes also accuses Aeschines of collaborating with Philip by hoodwinking the Athenians regarding Philips’s intentions and the principles of the Peace of Philocrates and by delaying the second embassy that was sent by the Athenians to ratify the Peace.

8 Introduction In his response, Aeschines narrates all the events of the two embassies, although the official graphē refers only to the second. He also provides an account of the situation that led Athens to negotiate a peace treaty with Philip in the first place, and he emphasises the role of Demosthenes in that negotiation. He defends his positive stance towards Philip, arguing that he was also deceived, and that, if the hopes he gave to the people were not fulfilled, this was due to fortune. He also rejects the charge of Demosthenes that he was responsible for the dilatoriness of the Athenian delegates in the second embassy. A key element in Aeschines’ defence is that Demosthenes lacked any evidence to prove that Aeschines had received money from Philip to betray Athens. Although, in the end, Aeschines was acquitted by a narrow margin of votes, this was only a ‘technical victory’.24 Despite his defeat, Demosthenes attained his wider political objective: to exploit the suspicion of the Athenians towards the supporters of the Peace with Philip, harming the authority of, and thus weakening, his main political rivals in the city.

The Crown Case In 337 (or 336),25 Ctesiphon, a supporter of Demosthenes, proposed that the Athenians should crown the orator in the Theatre of Dionysus ‘because of his continuous devotion to the “higher good” of the Athenian dēmos’.26 This was a common procedure: the Athenians often publicly honoured prominent citizens for their patriotism and virtue. The Council accepted Ctesiphon’s decree, but Aeschines filed a graphē paranomōn to prevent the decree from being voted on in the Assembly. A graphē paranomōn was a legal device that gave the court the opportunity to decide if a decree (psēphisma) was compatible with existing laws by allowing a suit against the proposer of illegal legislation.27 In practice, the majority of such cases had little to do with safeguarding the laws but concerned, as in this case, the granting of honours or citizenship and were driven by personal and political objectives. Ctesiphon was no more than a pawn in hostilities between Demosthenes and Aeschines. Aeschines’ plea in Against Ctesiphon mixes legal and political arguments. Aeschines asserts that Ctesiphon’s decree was illegal (§§9–48) because when Ctesiphon proposed it, Demosthenes held the public office of wall-builder and according to law, he could not receive any public awards while in office (§§24–7). Aeschines also argues that the place for the proposed crowning was illegal; customarily, a crowning took place in the Assembly or in the Boule, not in the Theatre of Dionysus as Ctesiphon had proposed (§§32–48). In his political arguments, Aeschines tries to persuade the audience that Demosthenes does not deserve the crown. It is, he argues, highly inappropriate to bestow such a great public honour on a politician who had vigorously championed a policy that had harmed Athens. Demosthenes’ retort on Ctesiphon’s behalf in his speech On the Crown is likewise twofold. He answers Aeschines’ legal pleas by citing a law that allows crownings in the Theatre of Dionysus (§§120–1). He also tries to show that the arguments of his opponent about the time of crowning are assailable, claiming

Introduction 9 that Aeschines deliberately misreads the law that, according to him, forbids the crowning of a person to acknowledge his performance in public office (§§113, 117). Demosthenes claims that he was eligible to receive a crown while he held office because this was an award not for his services as teichopoios, but for his services to Athens. He also refers to examples of others who received a crown while they were in office (§§114–16). Demosthenes also, as in On the False Embassy, accuses Aeschines of being a Macedonian stooge, while he defends his own policies and loyalty to Athens, calling upon the Athenians, as represented by the court audience, to crown him for his patriotism (§§113, 266). On this occasion, Demosthenes defeated Aeschines by an overwhelming majority, ending his opponent’s career in Athenian politics.28

Outline The remainder of this book comprises six chapters, including a Conclusion. Chapter 1, ‘The Hermeneutic framework: An analytical approach’, is divided into eight main parts, each of which aims to put more flesh on the bones of the theory about the aspects of performance that are discussed in the following chapters. After surveying the most influential modern performance theories and defining the notion of performance used in this book, Chapter 1 introduces the particular aspects of cognitive/emotional and direct/sensory aspects of oratorical performance that Chapters 2 to 5 focus on, and deals with some methodological issues, such as posttrial revision, law-court extemporisation and the use of ancient sources. Chapters 2 to 5 aim to answer two questions: the ways in which Demosthenes and Aeschines wrote for performance and what their possible impact was on the audience. Each of these chapters focuses on a single aspect of performance, and draws on all four speeches that are under examination in this book. Chapter 2, ‘Construction and manipulation’, examines a wide range of techniques that aim to engage, win over or manipulate the audience. Chapter 3, ‘Aeschines and Demosthenes in the Theatre of Justice’, explores the use of theatrical language and imagery in oratorical speeches. Chapter 4, ‘Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal of character’, provides an investigation of the techniques of portraying the persona of the litigants and, finally, Chapter 5, titled ‘Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis!’, discusses gestures, vocal ploys, attire and bodily movements. Chapter 6, the Conclusion, pulls together various threads that run through the book. After referring briefly to the insights about performance provided by this book and underscoring the value of the holistic approach to fourth-century Attic oratory, it discusses areas for further exploration. This book does not aim to be the final word either on Greek oratory in performance in general, or on the four central speeches in particular, but seeks rather to establish a framework within which performance strategies in other orations and orators might be explored.

Notes 1 Taplin (1999) 33. For a comprehensive discussion of performance culture in Athens: Goldhill (1997) 54–68; (1999) 1–29.

10

Introduction

2 On trials as a mode of performance: Harbinger (1971) 122–4; Schechner (2006) 211–14. 3 Easterling (1999) 154–66. Hall (2006) 353–92; the last chapter of Hall’s book is a revised and expanded version of Hall (1995) 39–58. Slater (1995) 143–57. 4 Sonkowsky (1959) 256–74. 5 Classen (1991) 195–207. 6 Hall (2013) 109–38; Rubinstein (2013) 165–99; Chaniotis (2013) 201–18. 7 Schechner (2002) x. 8 Bers (1985) 1–15 describes thorubos as any vocal expression (for example, the shouts of praise or blame) directed from the judges (dicastic thorubos) or from the bystanders (coronal thorubos) to the speaker. Cf. Thomas (2011) 175–85. 9 Beauvoir (1973) 301; Butler (1986) 35–49; (1990) 129. 10 Butler (1988) 527; (1990) 145; Salih (2007) 55. For a comprehensive overview of the gender theories of Beauvoir, Wittig and Foucault: Butler (1986) 505–16; (1990) 1–35, 93–106. 11 Austin (1962) 6–12.: utterances (known as ‘performative utterances’, or ‘performative sentences’ or simply ‘performatives’) embody their own performance. For example, in saying something such as ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife’, one actually performs the ritual of marriage. 12 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1115a30–4; Thucydides 2.39.1–2; Lycurgus 1.105–6. 13 Demosthenes was accused, for example, of scratching his head (Aeschines 2.49) and of whirling on the dicastic platform (Aeschines 3.167). 14 Butler (1997) 7. 15 Revermann (2006) 36. 16 On the social and financial stratification of the law-court audience: Dover (1974) 34–5; Ober (1989) 142–5, 192–292 offers a detailed survey of the textual evidence on the social and financial status of the Athenians, paying particular attention to oratorical texts; Ober and Strauss (1990) 237–70; Todd (1990) 146–73; Pelling (2000) 13–5; Todd (2007) 312–58; Bers (2009) 8–24. 17 ‘Interpretive communities’, a ‘group of readers who share a set of conventions for understanding literary works in certain ways’, is a notion coined by Stanley Fish in his article ‘Interpreting the Variorum’; Fish (1980) 147–73, esp. 167ff; (2004) 217–21. Cf. Pelling (2000) 4–16. 18 Revermann (2006) 99–124. Cf. Hall (2006) 356. 19 Roselli (2011) 51. 20 Butler (1993) 15. 21 Butler (1993) 24. 22 Auslander (2008) 76–7; Boucher (2008) 127–62. 23 On the main features of epideictic oratory: Carey (2007) 236–52. On praise, persuasion and audience response in epideictic oratory: Webb (2003) 127–36. 24 Carey (2000) 89. 25 The trial took place in the summer of 330 BC. The reasons for the long delay of this trial are not clear. The unsettled political situation because of unexpected events such as the assassination of Philip is a possible explanation. 26 Although Ctesiphon’s decree is lost, some excerpts are included in 3.49–50 and 18.117–8. It is worth mentioning that this is only one of a number of battles fought over honours awarded to Demosthenes. The assembly voted thrice for Demosthenes’ crowning: in 340, after the proposal of Aristonicus; in early 338 after the proposal of Hypereides and Demosthenes’ cousin, Demomeles; and in 336 after Ctesiphon had suggested Demosthenes’ crowning. 27 On graphē paranomōn: Hansen (1974); Brauw (2002) 168. 28 Plutarch, Demosthenes 24.2.9–10. For a comprehensive description of the events before, during and after the Crown trial as well as a discussion of the legal and political

Introduction 11 arguments of Aeschines and Demosthenes: Harris (1995) 138–48. On the legal arguments of Demosthenes as being stronger than those of Aeschines: Harris (2000) 59–67.

Bibliography Auslander, P. (2008). Theory for Performance Studies: A Student’s Guide. New York and London: Routledge. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Beauvoir, S. (1973). The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books. Bers, V. (1985). Dikastic Thorubos. In: P. A. Cartledge and F. D. Harvey, Eds., Crux: Essays Presented to G. E. M. de ste Croix on his 75th birthday, 1st ed. Devon: Duckworth, pp. 1–15. Bers, V. (2009). Genos Dikanikon: Amateur and Professional Speech in the Courtrooms of Classical Athens. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Boegehold, Alan L. (1999). When a Gesture Was Expected: A Selection of Examples From Archaic and Classical Greek Literature. New Jersey, NJ: Princeton University Press. Boucher, G. (2008). The Charmed Circle of Ideology: A Critique of Laclau and Mouffe, Butler and Žižek. Melbourne: Re.Press. Brauw, M. (2002). Listen to the Laws Themselves: Citations of Laws and Portrayal of Character in Attic Oratory. Classical Journal, 97(2), pp. 161–76. Butler, J. (1986). Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex. Yale French Studies, 72, pp. 35–49. Butler, J. (1986). Variations on Sex and Gender: Beauvoir, Wittig, and Foucault. Praxis International, 4, pp. 505–16. Butler, J. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), pp. 519–31. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993). Critically Queer. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1(1), pp. 17–32. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York and London: Routledge. Butler, J. (1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York and London: Routledge. Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender. New York and London: Routledge. Carey, C. (2000). Aeschines. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Carey, C. (2007). Epideictic Oratory. In: I. Worthington, Ed., A Companion to Greek Rhetoric, 1st ed. London: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 236–52. Chaniotis, A. (2013). Paradoxon, Enargeia, Empathy: Hellenistic Decrees and Hellenistic Oratory. In: C. Kremmydas and K. Tempest, Eds., Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity and Change, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 201–18. Charteris-Black, J. (2014). Analysing Political Speeches: Rhetoric, Discourse and Metaphor. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Classen, C. J. (1991). The Speeches in the Courts of Law: A Three-cornered Dialogue. Rhetorica, 9(3), pp. 195–207. Dover, K. J. 1974. Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Easterling, P. E. (1999). Actors and Voices: Reading between the Lines in Aeschines and Demosthenes. In: S. Goldhill and R. Osborne, Eds., Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 154–66. Fish, S. (1980). Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fish, S. (2004). Interpreting Communities. In: J. Rivkin and M. Ryan, ed., Literary Theory: An Anthology, 2nd ed. London: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 217–21. Goldhill, S. (1997). The Audience of Athenian Tragedy. In: P. E. Easterling, Ed., The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 54–68. Goldhill, S. (1999). Programme Notes. In: S. Goldhill and R. Osborne, Eds., Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–29. Hall, E. (1995). Lawcourt Dramas: The Power of Performance in Greek Forensic Oratory. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 40, pp. 39–58. Hall, E. (2006). The Theatrical Cast of Athens. Interactions between Ancient Greek Drama and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hall, E. (2013). Rhetorical Actors and Other Versatile Hellenistic Vocalists. In: C. Kremmydas and K. Tempest, Eds., Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity and Change, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 109–38. Hansen, M. H. (1974). The Sovereignty of the People’s Court in Athens in the Fourth Century BC and the Public Action against the Unconstitutional Proposals. Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag. Hansen, M. H. (1984). Two Notes on Demosthenes’ Symbouleutic Speeches. Classica et Medievalia, 35, pp. 57–70. Harbinger, R. (1971). Trial by Drama. Judicature, 55, pp. 122–8. Harris, E. M. (1995). Aeschines and Athenian Politics. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harris, E. M. (2000). Open Texture in Athenian Law. Dike, 3, pp. 27–79. Harris, E. M. (2000). The Authenticity of Andokides’ De Pace. A subversive essay. In: P. Flensted-Jensen, T. H. Nielsen, and L. Rubinstein, Eds., Polis & Politics: Studies in Ancient Greek History, 1st ed. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, pp. 479–505. Lateiner, D. (1995). Sardonic Smile: Nonverbal Behaviour in Homeric Epic. Ann Arbour, MI: University of Michigan Press. Milns, R. D. (2000). The Public Speeches of Demosthenes. In: I. Worthington, Ed., Demosthenes: Statesman and Orator, 1st ed. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 205–23. Ober, J. (1989). Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. and Strauss, B. (1990). Drama, Political Rhetoric, and the Discourse of Athenian Democracy. In: J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin, Eds., Nothing to do With Dionysos? Athenian Drama and its Social Context, 1st ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 237–70. Pelling, C. (2000). Literary Texts and the Greek Historian. London and New York: Routledge. Revermann, M. (2006). Comic Business: Theatricality, Dramatic Technique, and Performance Contexts of Aristophanic Comedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Revermann, M. (2006). The Competence of Theatre Audiences in Fifth and Fourth Century Athens. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 126, pp. 99–124. Roselli, D. K. (2011). Theatre of the People: Spectators and Society in Ancient Athens. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Introduction 13 Rubinstein, L. (2013). Spoken Words, Written Submissions, and Diplomatic Conventions: The Importance and Impact of Oral Performance in Hellenistic Inter-polis Relations. In: C. Kremmydas and K. Tempest, Eds., Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity and Change, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 165–99. Salih, S. (2007). On Judith Butler and Performativity. In: K. Lovaas and M. M. Jenkins, Eds., Sexuality and Communication in Everyday Life: A Reader, 1st ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, pp. 55–67. Schechner, R. (2002). Foreword: fundamentals of Performance Studies. In: N. Stucky and C. Wimmer, Eds., Teaching Performance Studies, 1st ed. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, pp. ix–xii. Schechner, R. (2006). Performance Studies: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. Slater, W. J. (1995). The Theatricality of Justice. Classical Bulletin, 71(2), pp. 143–57. Sonkowsky, R. (1959). An Aspect of Delivery in Ancient Rhetorical Theory. Transactions of American Philological Association, 90, pp. 256–74. Taplin, O. (1985). Greek Tragedy in Action. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Taplin, O. (1999). Spreading the Word through Performance. In: S. Goldhill and R. Osborne, Eds., Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 33–57. Thomas, R. (2011). And You, the Dēmos, Made an Uproar: Performance, Mass Audiences, and Text in the Athenian democracy. In: A. P. M. H. Lardinois, J. H. Blok and M. G. M. van der Poel, Eds., Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy, and Religion. Vol. 8. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, pp. 161–87. Todd, S. C. (1990). Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the Attic Orators: The Social Composition of the Athenian Jury. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 110, pp. 146–73. Todd, S. C. (2007). Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the Attic Orators: The Social Composition of the Athenian Jury. In: E. Carawan, Ed., Oxford Reading in the Attic Orators, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 312–58. Yunis, H. (1996). Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Classical Athens. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Webb, R. (2003). Praise and persuasion: argumentation and audience response in epideictic oratory. In: E. Jeffreys, Ed., Rhetoric in Byzantium, 1st ed. Aldershot and Burlington: Routledge, pp. 127–36.

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1

The hermeneutic framework An analytical approach

The notion of performance: Conceptual groundwork Performance is a protean notion, elusive in meaning and with a wide range of applications. Indeed, if one were to ask any two scholars to define what performance is, one would probably receive three different answers. While some theorists still tend to restrict it to theatre, performance scholars argue that performance can exist independently of theatre.1 Schechner, who, together with Turner, is considered to be one of the two fathers of Performance Studies is surely right to argue for the divisibility of performance from theatre. He is also right to argue for the wide application of performance, which must be construed as a ‘broad spectrum’ or ‘continuum’ of actions ranging from ritual, play, sports, popular entertainments, the performing arts, to the enactment of social, professional, gender, race, and class roles, and to various representations and constructions of actions in the media and in the Internet.2 The wide application of the notion of performance is the main reason for the lack of a single comprehensive and overarching definition of the term. A comprehensive review of some of the most influential theories about performance, championed by Goffman, Schechner and Turner, is necessary to clarify how performance is examined in this book. The definitions of performance fall into two main categories: the first treats performance as anything done, an action, including the action of identity construction. Goffman is radically expansive in defining the scope of Performance Studies: in his eyes, everyday life bears dramatic structure. Everyone, consciously or not, is playing parts in front of an audience of other people and every dimension of human life and activity is performance created by repeated behaviours, actions and events.3 Goffman understands performance as ‘all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants’.4 In his influential work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956), Goffman offers a discussion of performance through the prism of interaction with the audience.5

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The hermeneutic framework

In the same vein, Schechner, Turner and Artaud argue that a text is not a static written record, but the animated language of human expression – movement, body posture, sound, voice, pace and activity. This argument underlines the importance of Performance Studies for the understanding of literary works. As Schechner puts it, ‘performances exist only as actions, interactions, and relationships’.6 Without the audience, there is no performance, since it is only generated from the interactive relationship between the performer and the audience.7 The performer ‘works’ and ‘activates’, but the audience is never simply a passive recipient. The interaction between the performer and the audience is also important in the performance contexts in classical Athens. The onlookers in the theatre and the law-court, for example, constantly express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the performers, their disposition towards them, and respond actively, whether by praising or booing them, clapping, laughing, heckling, shouting, murmuring or simply by remaining silent.8 This interactive aspect is especially important in the law-court, where the reaction of the audience was much more vociferous than in modern courts: indeed, much of our written evidence about the ancient court stresses the volubility of the audience.9 In Athenian performances, whether oratorical or dramatic, the audience was physically separated from the performers. Physical separation opens in turn the discussion about another defining feature of performance, occasion, a notion that comprises two dimensions: physical (setting and paraphernalia) and temporal. These two dimensions of occasion serve to demarcate performance from other forms of communication. Despite the widespread belief in modern Performance Studies that everyday activities can be seen as performance, I side with performance theorists and classical scholars who argue that (Athenian) performance can, and should, be separated from quotidian actions. As Kavoulaki rightly points out, ‘a major parameter for the definition of performance is a connection to a special context, a “frame” which in a way “sets” performance “apart” from other everyday activities’.10 Ancient performances were ritually demarcated from everyday life, both by the formalities that accompanied the proceedings and by the stylised means of creating context: theatre with its props, and the courts (at least in the fourth century) with their formalities regarding the composition of the dicastic panel.11 This, then, is what we might call occasion: a special context that serves to distinguish performance from other activities and that consists of linguistic, behavioural, kinetic, visual, ritual and other signs that are shaped by the time and place where performance happens and by the paraphernalia that are used. Bauman defines performance as ‘an aesthetically marked, heightened form of communication, framed in a special way, and put on display for an audience’,12 with the corollary that performers take responsibility for a display of skill and audiences for judgment of such displays.13 This definition is close to that of Taplin, who understands theatrical performance as ‘an occasion on which appropriate individuals enact events, in accordance with certain recognised conventions, in the sight and hearing of a larger social group, and in some sense for their benefit’.14 In line with this approach, performance is in this book defined as the communication between a performer and an audience, which is informed by the etiquette

The hermeneutic framework

17

of a specific occasion and is based on the interactive communication, explicit or otherwise, between the transmitter of a message and its receiver. Performance in the law-court, in particular, can be defined as a certain trial, on a certain day, with a certain purpose, with a certain audience and certain conventions and norms regulating the interaction between the speaker and the other participants in the communicative situation.

Performance in the theatre and the law-court Although we normally think of performance in the context of theatre, where A (the actor) impersonates B (a character) before C (the audience), speeches, while normally lacking the element of impersonation,15 also involve an interaction between performer and audience, and, therefore should be thought of as sharing common features with theatre.16 Aeschines and Demosthenes themselves often draw attention to the close linkage of, and the analogy between, the theatre and the law-court. Aeschines, for example, asks the audience to imagine that they are not in the court, but in the theatre (3.153). Demosthenes compares spectators’ assessment of a speaker’s performance in court with the judgment passed on dramatists and choruses (18.318–9). Indeed, in the Athenian context, the analogy between law-court and theatrical performances was highlighted by the fact that both involve mass Athenian, predominantly male, audiences. In 2.5, Aeschines, for example, claims that the majority of the civic body attended high-profile trials. It would be reasonable to assume that audiences between 14,000 and 17,000 spectators attended both theatrical and oratorical proceedings. The true figure might in fact be higher since some scholars argue that, although not able to participate in trials, women, metics, mercenaries and slaves were present in the theatre.17 The presence of thousands of spectators is important since it underlines the nature of performance as spectacle; as something seen, heard and enacted in real time, before real people, in a venue. The audience in both the theatre and the court consisted of voting (10 judges in the theatre; 200 to 1500 judges in the law-court) and non-voting members. They were physically separated by dryphaktoi (railing or a latticed partition) in the law-court, and by prohedriai (honorific seats at the front, that separated distinguished individuals from the kerkides for the spectators) in the theatre.18 The presence of judges, who had the responsibility to make the final decision about the winner, was therefore a persistent feature of both theatrical and law-court performances. The onlookers, although not formally part of the decision-making process, are also an important presence. This is obvious enough in the theatre, but it is also an important dimension to judicial oratory: orators and actors attempt to elicit the goodwill of both the judges and the onlookers. In both oratorical and theatrical performances, the triangulation, even if it is not explicit, is always there, as there are always three parties involved: a performer – actor or orator – talks about and intermittently to an interlocutor, his co-litigant, or coactor before the audience, offering stimuli to the target audience and aiming to win them over.

18

The hermeneutic framework

The fact that sources associate Aeschines and Demosthenes with acting and actors also underlines the relationship between theatre and oratory. Later sources, for example, refer to Demosthenes’ early vocal shortcomings that made him ask for the assistance of actors.19 Aeschines is presented in ancient sources as being a tragic actor by profession.20 Demosthenes frequently refers to his adversary’s oral excess, connecting it with the practice in the theatre.21 References to his loud voice point unambiguously to Aeschines’ acting profession, given the paramount importance of voice for actors.22 Demosthenes also never tires of referring to his adversary as being a tritagonist, a label that amounts to ‘third-rate actor’.23 Troupes in tragedy and comedy were highly hierarchical, comprising three actors (although there are, arguably, variations in the number of actors in comic plays): the protagonist, the ‘star’; deuteragonist ‘adjutant’, ‘second-fiddle’, ‘sidekick’; and tritagonist.24 What is distinctive about the use of the term tritagonist in Demosthenes’ speeches is that it gained indelible negative connotations as a reference to Aeschines’ poor acting skills, a thirdrate actor who is presented as performing unsuccessfully even the least important of roles.25 As well as convergences, there are inevitably some significant divergences between theatrical and law-court performances. First, the use of certain technical elements serves to demarcate the boundaries between theatre, oratory and other public performances. For example, a theatrical performance is facilitated by objects (such as masks), practices (such as dancing and singing) and other elements (such as scene and props) that are different from those used in law-court performances (such as water clocks, hoppers, urns, ballots).26 Furthermore, as Blanshard argues, although there was a defined physical setting where a theatrical performance took place, there were several places where a law-court performance could happen. Hence, only the law-court paraphernalia and formalities identified a place as the location of a trial.27 Second, a significant problem that arises when one seeks to compare theatrical and law-court performances is their differing levels of adherence to reality. Even in everyday parlance, expressions like ‘theatrical, stagey, put on a performance, make a scene, play to the gallery, make a spectacle of oneself’ and so forth, which tend to connote false appearance, masquerade, façade and impersonation, indicate that there is a gap between theatre and reality. A difference, then, between the orator and the dramatist is that the first needs to pay attention to historical circumstances in ways in which the second does not. A dramatist is free to create fictive characters, as in comic plays, where several stock characters, such as the braggart (alazōn), buffoon (bōmolochos), ironist (eirōn) and cuckolded husband, are frequently used. Hall is right to note that ‘what is most essential to theatre is the live-ness of the representation of fictive identities and the manner in which they are sustained’.28 A public speaker, however, is constrained by common knowledge, or at least the ascertainability of real events, and the consequent refutability of narrative, in such a way that it would be risky for him to fabricate completely the characteristics and actions of individuals.29

The hermeneutic framework

19

This is not to suggest, of course, that oratory always represents reality: there is ample space for imagination in oratorical speeches. In his highly influential book Aeschines and Athenian Politics, Harris points out that if lies, deception and innuendoes might improve chances for victory, these means would not be shunned. We should also keep in mind that the Athenian law code possessed no set of rules of evidence and that the magistrates who presided at trials in Athens never intervened to rule statements inadmissible or to exclude evidence.30 Carey argues that the portrait of Euphiletos in Lysias 1, On the murder of Eratosthenes, is largely a dramatic creation, even if the case may be real: Euphiletos appears to have affinities with stock personae, such as the comic character-type of the cuckolded husband.31 This argument holds, however, only if we assume that Eratosthenes was an unknown private citizen. In this case, Lysias may have been at liberty to develop the character of Eratosthenes as he wanted. Even where obscurity offers more room for imagination, however, the construction and presentation of Eratosthenes’ (and anyone else’s) portrait would have to be cautious in order not to alienate the audience with false information. These limitations in the register of reality inevitably affect the way a public speaker writes for performance. Aeschines and Demosthenes, in particular, manipulate the depiction of themselves and their opponents by deliberately choosing, altering and/or highlighting events of the past to project their characters in a specific way, overemphasising some of their traits and de-emphasising others, but never fully fabricating characters. A modern reader may argue that the degree of fabrication of characters in Aeschines 2, 3 and in Demosthenes 18, 19 is completely unacceptable and incredible. The two orators, however, were experienced and they knew to what extent they could distort and exaggerate characters and facts without losing the audience’s trust and goodwill. The relationship between theatre and oratory is rather more complicated than simply this issue of varying registers of reality, however. Even though theatre was an essential aspect of the Athenian performance culture, oratorical speeches contain denigrating references to theatre. In the four speeches that are under examination in this book, for example, Aeschines and Demosthenes frequently refer in denigrating terms to each other’s theatrical deportment. It should be noted, however, that such references do not lambast theatre, acting or actors per se,32 but rather the application of acting out of context, in the political arena. An actor onstage is expected to fabricate and simulate, but if one places acting techniques in front of an audience in the Athenian courts, who are expecting truth, then the same techniques become hazardous and a cause for blame and invective. Demosthenes, for example, criticises Aeschines for misusing his theatrical skills in order to deceive the Athenians in the court, building his defence on the public prejudice against employing acting outside the theatre space, eliding the fact that he himself also used theatrical skills to manipulate the audience. Hence, the

20

The hermeneutic framework

apparently negative attitude towards theatre and actors, in evidence throughout Aeschines 2, 3 and Demosthenes 18, 19, has to do with the boundaries between public life and the theatrical stage, not with acting per se.33

Judicial oratory in/as performance: Aeschines 2, 3 and Demosthenes 18, 19 In Rhetoric 1356a1–4, Aristotle discusses three means of persuasion: argument, the character of the speaker and the disposition created in the hearer. In what follows, I discuss two of these three means of persuasion through the lens of performance: the strategies that the speaker uses to put the audience in a specific frame of mind and the depiction of the litigants’ characters, each of which serves his purpose to win over the judges and onlookers.

Constructed audience The term ‘audience’ needs reconsideration: two audiences at least can be usefully distinguished, the historical and the constructed audience. The historical audience is a simple and non-negotiable fact: the speaker delivers his speech at a specific moment in time, before real people, of a specific age, nationality, social and economic status. The notion of the ‘constructed audience’ comprises all the strategies used by the speaker to alert the judges and onlookers to the role(s) that he wants them to play. He invites the audience to envisage themselves in specific ways that serve his goals at critical moments in his speech. The notion of the constructed audience approximates to that of the ‘implied reader’ in literary theory.34 It is useful to put more flesh on the bones of this theory in order to clarify the use and significance of techniques that generate a specific state of mind in the audience. One of these techniques is the use of addresses to the audience: civic (ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, ‘men of Athens’), judicial (ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, ‘judges’) and descriptive (ὦ ἄνδρες, ‘men’).35 When we read the speeches of the Attic orators, the insertion of addresses to the court reminds us that they were intended for oral delivery, and that oratorical performance is about the interaction between the speaker and the audience. Aeschines and Demosthenes in the whole corpus of their speeches use the civic address more than their contemporaries do, at least on the basis of the limited evidence available to us.36 This may be, to some extent, a matter of convention. It has rightly been argued that the nature of the case – public or private – affected, at least to some extent, the options available to the speakers in terms of the content of their speech, the arguments and the rhetorical strategies.37 Addresses to the audience are part of these strategies: the civic address, for example, is more appropriate in public than in private speeches.38 The choice of one of the three possible options for addressing the audience was not merely a matter of convention, however. It is argued in Chapter 2 that the form, frequency and position of addresses are artful, contextspecific, and that addresses have a cognitive/emotional performative dimension that enables the speaker to influence the judgment of the judges.

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The argument about the strategic use of addresses raises some questions: to what extent might the address to the audience be a result of revision? Did the audience notice that the speakers were addressing them in the way I argue? Whether these addresses were included into the script after revision or not is hard to say with absolute certainty given the state of our knowledge. It is generally true that the extant speeches do not (in every particular) include the ipsissima verba of what was said in the court. Common sense, however, would suggest that of all the things that one might include in a written script after the event, addresses to the audience are perhaps among the most unlikely additions. The nature of the addresses makes it most likely than not that they were included in the original speech. Addresses may have deliberately been retained from the oral version to give a sense of dramatic immediacy to the speech and to conjure up in the minds of the listeners/readers of the revised version of the setting of the speech. A direct address to the judges, a mention of bystanders listening to what was going on, the steps that speakers take to combat any hostile reactions of the audience (heckling and shouting) all bring the original performance to life and allow the readers to picture the original better. The second question, whether the audience really perceived the strategic use of the addresses, opens in turn the broader issue of the audience’s competence, which was discussed in the Introduction. As mentioned there, I would side with Revermann in arguing that the law-court audience would in general have been able to recognise the rhetorical use of addresses in a society in which rhetoric and all its tricks prevailed. There is, of course, a difference between recognising a technique and being swayed by it unconsciously. Given the prevalence of rhetoric and the rule of the law in the fourth century, however, and given also the fact that the Athenians were aware of the proceedings in courts and deliberative bodies at deme level and the Council, one can safely assume that they had the competence to recognise performative codes and signs sent to them by the speakers.39

Other strategies to influence the audience The orator also has at his disposal other stratagems to affect the audience and invite a response. One of these is the creation of a civic group: the speaker constantly highlights the patriotic and religious bonds that connect him with the judges and onlookers, while underscoring the gap that separates his adversary from them. For example, 19.96, 128, 142 and 267 each reveal how Demosthenes attempts to present himself as being closely aligned with his fellow Athenians, in contrast to Aeschines who is presented as being alien and inimical to the values that they share. Something similar is at work in Aeschines 2.22–3, 78, 87 and 180, where the orator attacks Demosthenes’ (alleged) barbaric roots, underscoring thereby the gap between the Athenians and his opponent. Aeschines and Demosthenes also employ a wide range of other techniques to win over the hearers/viewers. One of these is the use of appeals to the emotions of the audience. Unlike in a modern court, where appeals to emotions are not merely

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suspicious but also largely prohibited, the speakers in the ancient court actively sought to stir up the emotions of the judges. Konstan, in his monograph The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks, argues that ‘emotions are not static expressions resulting from impersonal stimuli’,40 but rather culturally conditioned responses. ‘Emotions [in Greek antiquity] were closely tied to communal interactions and manifested principally in a continuous and public negotiation of social roles’.41 Emotions, therefore, must be understood within the context of a highly competitive society, within which public speech was integral to the decision-making process in all civic contexts, including the courts. The synergy between emotional arousal and persuasion is well established in both ancient and modern theory. Among modern critics, Leighton has systematised the discussion of how judgment is affected by emotional arousal, arguing that changes of judgement may be the consequence of emotion or the constituent of emotion. The consequence of emotion has three dimensions: first, by allowing reasoning to be overruled, as, for example, when children are brought into court to arouse the compassion of the judges so that they will let the perpetrators off for a crime they committed; second, by favouring or disfavouring an individual, one would be better or worse disposed towards him; and third, through strong emotion causing the speaker to pay attention to specific issues and ignore some others. The effect upon judgement as a constituent of emotion is more complex: as Leighton puts it, ‘emotions are complexes involving judgments, each complex excluding certain other emotion complexes, their judgments and certain other judgments as well’.42 Envy, for example, ‘brings about a change of judgments such that one does not show or feel pity; rather, to be moved to envy involves being moved to a particular set of judgments that excludes those of pity’.43 Turning to the ancient scholars, Aristotle claims in Rhetoric 1377b25–1378a6 that the depiction of litigants’ ēthos is the primary duty of speakers in deliberative orations, while the deployment of emotional appeals is crucial for judicial speakers. ‘[There is persuasion] through the hearers when they are led to feel emotions by the speech; for we do not give the same judgment when grieved and rejoicing or when being friendly and hostile’ (1356a14–6). When Aristotle refers to the persuaded hearer as ‘being disposed in some way’ (Rhetoric 1356a1–4: τὸν ἀκροατὴν διαθεῖναί πως), therefore, he is referring to his emotional condition, the manipulation of which is central to judicial oratory. In the same vein, Aristotle defines the emotions as ‘all those affections which cause men to change their opinion in regard to their judgments’ (1378a19–20).44 Aristotle identifies and discusses three significant topics related to emotions: the disposition of the bearer of emotion, the target at which emotions are directed and what causes emotions (Rhetoric 1378a22–4). This tripartite discussion of emotions sheds light on the way the speakers use them to triangulate the relations in the law-court. Speaker A (the bearer of emotions) displays his mostly negative emotions towards speaker B (the target) and, by explaining their cause, he seeks to communicate these emotions to the judges and the onlookers so as to affect their verdict and to invite them to vote against his opponent. A good example of

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how emotions can be triangulated in the law-court is the use of insulting descriptions, nicknames and abusive language. Ancient critics point out that, by its very lack of restraint, the language of abuse displays the strong emotions that the speaker has towards his opponents and invites the audience to share the same emotions – thereby affecting the verdict of the judges and the attitude of the Athenian citizens in respect of the speaker’s opponent. Demosthenes, who notes in 19.228 that judicial verdicts can sometimes be affected by the judges’ feelings, such as pity, envy and anger, explicitly corroborates Aristotle’s view about the intention of emotional arousal in the law-court. The language of abuse, however, is not always overtly associated with emotions. In her influential paper ‘Stirring up Dicastic Anger’, Rubinstein argues that there are two ways of stirring up emotions: the direct/explicit way and the indirect/ inexplicit way.45 With the direct/explicit way, she refers to language that is explicitly associated with certain emotions, such as hatred (as, for example, μῖσος in Demosthenes 19.9, 87, 223, 238) and rage (as, for example, ὀργή in Demosthenes 19.7, 302). Rubinstein provides, in an appendix, a complete catalogue of such words that are explicitly laden with the hostile emotions of hatred and anger. A similar effect, however, can also be aroused by language that does not explicitly refer to specific emotions. An example of language carrying indirect, but no less forcible, emotive vibes is the sentence ‘the boy fell asleep and never woke up again’. The unpleasant emotion is not explicitly stated, but the sentence triggers negative, depressive feelings; the emotion is implied. Rubinstein’s discussion sheds welcome light on thorny issues of interpretation, such as the different ways in which emotions are employed in public and private cases. More can be said, however, about the performative dimension of the direct/explicit and the indirect/inexplicit ways of stirring up emotions in Aeschines 2, 3 and Demosthenes 18, 19. In Chapter 2, a number of passages are examined that explicitly deploy the language of hatred and rage, along with passages where rhetorical means, such as metaphors, more subtly appeal to emotions, with the aim of putting the audience into a certain frame of mind and affecting the judges’ verdict.

Reconsidering ekphrasis through the lens of ancient theory The vividly pictorial description in Demosthenes 19.337–8 is an example of what ancient critics termed ekphrasis: the power of narrative descriptions to activate the visual imagination of the audience. The performance dimension of ekphrastic passages in oratory as a means of eliciting a cognitive and emotive reaction from the audience, inviting them to hate, despise or laugh at the speaker’s adversary, deserves more critical attention. There have been a few limited discussions in commentaries, especially on Demosthenes’ ekphrastic scene of the capture of Elatea in 18.169–73,46 but, otherwise, the potential of vivid descriptions to conjure up images has been widely neglected. This book considers the use and purpose of several examples of ekphrasis, arguing that they are not decorative features of the oratorical script, but that they serve larger strategic purposes.

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Two caveats are necessary; the first concerns the use and application of the notion of ekphrasis, which is mostly confined in contemporary scholarship to descriptions of works of art.47 This, however, is not the way ancient critics use it. For the Greeks, ekphrasis refers to any descriptive account that has the ability to present the matter described before one’s eyes, creating the illusion that one ‘sees’ what is absent or abstract. The first-century BCE grammarian, Theon, defined ekphrasis as follows (Progymnasmata 118.6–7): A descriptive account (περιηγηματικὸς λόγος), which vividly brings the matter shown before the eyes. An ekphrasis may be of persons, and events, and places, and times. Of persons, as in the Homeric passage: ‘he was roundshouldered, dark-skinned, with curly hair’ [Odyssey 19.246] and the passage on Thersites ‘he has a pointed head and was lame in one leg’ [Iliad 2.219; whole description 2.217–19] and so on, and in Herodotus the appearance of the ibis, of hippopotami, and crocodiles in Egypt. Of events, such as the ekphraseis of war, peace, a storm, famine, plague, an earthquake. Of places, such as meadows, seashores, cities, islands, deserted places and the like. Of times, such as spring, summer, a festival and things of this sort.48 For Nikolaos (Progymnasmata 67), ekphrasis is an expository speech (ἀφηγηματικὸς λόγος), which vividly (ἐναργῶς) brings the subject before the eyes. ‘Vividly’ is added because it is in this respect that ekphrasis differs most from διήγησις (narrative). The latter sets out the events plainly, while the former tries to make the listeners into spectators. Although modern definitions tend to stipulate that a description should be of substantial length to be considered an ekphrasis (OCD s.v. ekphrasis: ‘an extended and detailed literary description of any object, real or imaginary’), ancient definitions focus not on the length of the ekphrasis, but on its effect. Even a few words can make absent things seem present before one’s eyes. According to Theon in the passage quoted above, an example of ekphrasis is the brief description of Thersites in Iliad 2.217–19. Ekphrasis, therefore, in the ancient conception ‘can be of any length, on any subject matter, composed in verse or prose, using any verbal techniques, as long as “it brings its subject before the eyes” ’.49 The second caveat concerns the diversity of terminology that refers to the potential of narrative descriptions to create vivid portrayals: in addition to ekphrasis, we find enargeia, diatypōsis and hypotypōsis, diagraphē and phantasia.50 The lack of any generally agreed definition of these terms, and explanation of their difference in meaning, use and application, amplifies the ambiguity of the ancient rhetorical terminology. The term ekphrasis is used throughout this book because it is commonly used in handbooks of rhetoric, which is the field most relevant to the phenomena that I am exploring, in contrast to other terms, which are rooted in fields such as philosophy,51 or, as in the case of enargeia, are discussed in sources as referential features of ekphrasis.52

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The depiction of litigants, ēthopoiia Conceptual groundwork In the Aristotelian corpus, ēthos, most commonly translated as ‘[moral] character’, has a twofold aspect referring to the goodness, or badness, of an individual’s character. In Rhetoric 1417a16–24, for example, Aristotle refers to the capacity of narrative to project both positive and negative character. Another reference to the twofold aspect of ēthos, albeit an implicit one, can be found in Poetics 1454a17–9: ‘characterisation appears when, as said earlier, speech or action reveals the nature of moral choice, and good character when choice is good’. This indicates that Aristotle also refers to the opposite situation: if a person’s choice were bad, then his ēthos would be bad. Although Aristotle does not expand his discussion about ēthos, nevertheless, these references indicate that this term could be applied to both positive and negative aspects of the character of an individual.53 Modern critics call the process of portraying the litigants’ characters ēthopoiia. This term, despite its wide use in contemporary scholarship, has limited ancient authority. It is used by later theorists, most notably Dionysius of Halicarnassus (in Lysias 8), but in a more restricted sense as a reference to the depiction of the speaker’s good moral character in the speeches of the Lysianic corpus.54 Modern scholars tend to use ēthopoiia in two senses: for Usher, the emphasis is firmly on ēthopoiia as moral character.55 For Carey, ēthopoiia designates the depiction of dramatic characters.56 This book draws on both of these positions: ēthopoiia is used here in its original sense of describing the process of portraying the moral character of the speaker and his opponent, regardless of whether the quality of their character is good or bad, and whether the portrayal is commensurate with the real-life character or is dramatic. Several ancient critics rightly underline the potential of actions, speech, reasoning and habits to betray a person’s character and moral choice. Aristotle and Plato, for example, each emphasise the use of these aspects of an individual’s life as projectors of his character.57 Dionysius of Halicarnassus argues that the good moral character of the speaker becomes manifest through his thoughts and words (Lysias 8). He also observes that Lysias frequently presents the character of his clients by describing their past actions and the principle governing them or by referring to their way of life and parentage (Lysias 19). We can also see this strategy in Aeschines 2, 3 and Demosthenes 18, 19, where references to the litigants’ actions, political and personal misconducts, childhood and upbringing, military performance, speeches, their family background, education, occupation, gender subversion and way of life are used to project their moral character. One should always bear in mind that Aeschines and Demosthenes are appearing in court as politicians and elite citizens, rather than just as litigants, and that their accounts of each other’s conduct and life histories are crucial to the outcome of the trial. Their participation in Athenian public life, therefore, becomes an occasion on which their performance of masculinity, civic loyalty and deviance in relation to social norms are scrutinised.

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The performative dimension of oratorical portraiture In the four forensic speeches that are under examination in this book, the portraiture of litigants serves a twofold purpose. On the one hand, it creates a persona of the speaker oriented to the expectations of the audience with the aim of inducing it to support and empathise with the speaker. This strategy has been astutely termed the ēthos of sympathy, or persuasive ēthopoiia, which aims, according to Bruss, ‘to create trustworthy speaker-centred ēthos through reasonable thoughts, standard style and artless composition’.58 The speaker has to depict his own character in such a way as to create a basis for plausible statements about his actions, thoughts and decisions and make the hearers/viewers believe his assertions and narratives, in order to gain their sympathy and win them over. The persuasiveness of positive portrayals of litigants’ characters is emphasised by Aristotle. ‘The orator persuades by moral character when his speech is delivered in such a manner as to render him worthy of confidence’ (1356a4–6); and ‘character has almost, so to speak, the greatest authority in winning belief ’ (1356a13; cf. 1377b20–4; 1378a6–15). On the other hand, oratorical portraiture also depicts the persona of the opponent as negatively as possible, by presenting him, for example, as a sycophant, a traitor, an enemy of the gods, a failed leader, etc., thereby inviting the judges and onlookers to foster negative emotions regarding him. The ability of ēthopoiia to affect the mind and emotions of the audience, and to invite (lively) interactions between the speaker, the judges and the onlookers, makes it an important aspect of oratorical performance. The audience plays a crucial part in this process: the hearers/viewers evaluate everything presented to them, from the verbal portrayal of litigants, to their argumentation, mien, gesticulation, attire, etc. This interactive aspect of ēthopoiia is a continuous and shifting process, which requires attention throughout the speech. The speaker can assume different tones, roles, attitudes, emotional states and relationships at different points in the speech.

Inter-generic portraiture The inter-generic portrayal of litigants – the use of quotations,59 language, imagery and patterns that draw on genres other than oratory, mostly drama, but also epic poetry – aims to present a positive portrait of the speaker and a negative one of his opponent. In their Embassy and Crown speeches, Aeschines and Demosthenes frequently accuse their opponents of inappropriately transferring behaviour appropriate in the theatre to the court, with the aim of manipulating and deceiving the audience. Demosthenes, for example, repeatedly describes Aeschines’ (allegedly) failed performances in the theatre to present him negatively – as a buffoon who makes himself ridiculous – inviting the law-court audience to imitate the (alleged) hostile reaction of the theatrical audience (18.262; 19.337–8) and express their disapproval by means of thorubos. Aeschines, in a similar vein, portrays Demosthenes in the role of a tragic villain (3.157), while also stressing his association with actors, who turned into dissembling politicians – thus allowing the audience to imply that Demosthenes is of the same stock (2.17, 19). The use

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of patterns and vivid imagery that draw on dramatic performances is designed to affect performance in the court by activating and, at the same time, manipulating the audience. The use of patterns from comedy as means of portraying litigants needs further discussion. It tends to take two forms: the first consists of the generic markers of comedy, such as the use of diction and language register, imagery, story and/or character patterns that have affinities with that genre. The second form consists of patterns that may have some comic connotations, but are not exclusively reminiscent of comedy as genre. Mockery and laughter, for example, persist in the comic manner, being associated with Old Comedy, especially Aristophanes,60 but they are not necessarily connected with comedy more than with iambic poetry. Laughter and mockery are clearly associated with comedy when collocated with features more specifically reminiscent of theatre (such as references to the failed theatrical activity of a litigant), or when they clearly exploit stock comic characters (such as the braggart, alazōn) or have affinities with other comic genres (such as comic mime). The features and purposes of mockery and laughter in a wide range of ancient genres were for a long time all but neglected in classical scholarship, although its importance is now increasingly being recognised as, for example, in Rosen’s 2007 book, Making Mockery: The Poetics of Ancient Satire, which was followed in 2008 by Halliwell’s Greek Laughter.61 These comprehensive works shed much light on how mockery operates in satire and other verse and prose genres. Occasional references in Halliwell’s book (with a specific focus on aischrology, ‘foul language’), and discussions in other works, such as Spatharas’ article, ‘Persuasive ΓΕΛΩΣ: Public speaking and the use of laughter’,62 provide stimulating starting points about how laughter-inducing mockery relates to, and enhances, the persuasive potential of oratorical techniques in a judicial context. There is, however, space and scope for further research regarding mockery in terms both of the speaker’s intention and of the interaction between the speaker and the audience. Ridicule is never frivolous, as ancient remarks on its aggressive character indicate.63 Also, as Horace rightly points out in Satires 1.10.14–5, ‘ridicule often decides matters of importance more effectually and in a better manner than severity’. Mockery is a linguistic act that produces a state of amusement in the listener so as to change or reinforce existing attitudes or beliefs. Philips-Anderson calls this ‘dispositional functioning’: the potential of laughter to get the attention of the audience, to influence its feelings about the speaker and the situation, and to relieve tensions, moving the audience into a state of receptivity.64 Dispositional strategies, as identified by Philips-Anderson, bring to mind a discussion in Rhetorica ad Herennium 1.6.10, where laughter is presented as a means of engaging the audience and increasing its receptivity to the argument.65 The dispositional functioning of laughter also aims, Philips-Anderson observes, to create identification of values and beliefs between the speaker and the audience. In ‘getting a joke’, the audience realises that they share assumptions

28 The hermeneutic framework and attitudes with the speaker. When a speaker makes a humorous utterance that the audience finds amusing, there is likely to be identification between speaker and audience, disposing them to listen further to the speech.66 Laughter serves to create a community, uniting one of the two parties involved in the trial, the prosecutor and the defendant, with the audience – against the opponent. Laughter, then, functions as a means for the speaker to construct the audience’s frame of mind, by binding the speaker with the audience, while simultaneously estranging his opponent from the group. It asserts the speaker’s superiority, showing him to be a man of polish, while also undermining the opponent’s argument and trivialising his cause. A few words of caution are necessary: Aeschines and Demosthenes exploit laughter-inducing mockery carefully because, if overused, it trivialises the speaker’s argument and gives the impression that it does not deserve closer examination. Excessive laughter would also alienate the audience by presenting the speaker as a bōmolochos or ‘buffoon’, who suffers from lack of restraint and perception.67 Buffoonish behaviour would be annoying in the court, where matters ought to be taken seriously. Aeschines and Demosthenes seek to minimise the risk of causing offence by using laughter-inducing patterns circumspectly. Nonetheless, mockery is deployed with considerable flexibility and diversity: scoffing descriptions of the opponent’s sexuality (Aeschines 3.167); inversion of tragedy into comedy strengthened by the inversion of gender expectations (Aeschines 3.209); caricatured presentations of past mishaps (Demosthenes 18.262). These and other examples of invective will be further explored in Chapter 4 of this book.

Hypocrisis – delivery Delivery is one of the five parts of rhetoric (invention, disposition, elocution, memory, delivery).68 Delivery was considered to be an important part of law-court etiquette. Aristotle, in Rhetoric 1404a1–5, notes that delivery cannot be ignored in the training of a good orator, since the major aim of a speaker is to win over the audience and this can only be achieved if the delivery of a speech is as persuasive as is composition. He also highlights the fact that the audience rewards the orators who excel in delivery (1404a12–9): Whenever delivery comes to be considered it will function in the same way as acting [. . .] Acting is a matter of natural talent and largely not reducible to artistic rule; but in so far as it involves how things are said, it has an artistic element. As a result, prizes go to those who are skilled at it, just as they do to orators on the basis of their delivery; for written speeches have greater effect through expression than through thought.69 Aristotle is keen to stress the paramount importance of the way of speaking (ὡς δεῖ εἰπεῖν) in contrast to the content of a speech (ἃ δεῖ λέγειν; 1403b16–22).

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There are also anecdotes that highlight the importance of oratorical delivery. The most telling one is recorded in Plutarch’s Lives of the Ten Orators 845b1–5: When someone asked him [Demosthenes] what the first most important skill in oratory is, he said ‘delivery’; and the second ‘delivery’; and the third ‘delivery’. In Demosthenes 11.2–3, Plutarch says that there is a story about Demosthenes, that he was approached by a man asking him to help him plead in court. When the man explained how he had been defeated by someone, Demosthenes said ‘but you have not at all suffered what you say you have suffered’. The man raised his voice and screamed ‘have I, Demosthenes, not at all suffered?’ and then Demosthenes said ‘Oh yes, now, I hear the voice of someone who has been wronged and suffered’. This shows how important for persuasion he considered the pitch of voice and delivery to be for speakers. The emotion, the anecdote implies, must appear authentic and not contrived if the speaker is not to alienate his audience. The association of emotions with delivery was well-documented in antiquity and has been widely acknowledged in modern scholarship.70 Among the former, Aristotle points out (Rhetoric 1403b26–31): Delivery is a matter of how the voice should be used in expressing each emotion, sometimes loud (μεγάλῃ) and sometimes soft (μικρᾷ) and intermediate (μέσῃ), and how the pitch accents (τόνοι) should be intoned, whether as acute (ὀξείᾳ), grave (βαρείᾳ), or circumflex (μέσῃ) and what rhythms should be used in each case. Delivery has great emotive power: all emotional appeals will fall flat without the persuasive force that voice, gestures and bodily movements give them. Aristotle’s definition of delivery indicates that he is chiefly interested in its vocal aspect: for him, delivery is a matter of voice. By mastering three important qualities of voice – volume, tone and rhythm – a speaker can achieve the technical virtues of an effective delivery, which are accuracy, clarity, elegance and propriety. Accuracy includes the speaker’s voice, pronunciation and breathing. Clarity includes enunciation and punctuation; elegance means the quality of sound and voice used. Finally, propriety means that delivery must be in accordance with the demands of each section of a speech. The significance of these three qualities of voice, distinguished by Aristotle, is also highlighted by Dionysus of Halicarnassus, who, commenting especially on rhythm, notes that ‘it [rhythm] is not a trivial element in prose. It is not to be classed as an inessential adjunct, but to tell the truth, I consider it the most potent device of all for bewitching and beguiling the ear’ (On Demosthenes’ Diction 39). This indicates that, for ancient critics, delivery is not something added, but is an integral part of style and text.

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It should be noted at this point that rhetorical sources after Aristotle give a broader definition of delivery, distinguishing two defining features: vocality, referring to pitch, volume, intensity, articulation, stress, quality, resonance, speed and rhythm; and posture, referring to gestures and bodily movements. This twofold nature of delivery is underlined in the following definition in the ancient anonymous treatise Introduction to the Art of Rhetoric: ‘delivery is to have, like the best actor, the best posture, to make the appropriate facial expressions, and to use appropriate vocal intonation to accompany his words’.71 This definition points implicitly to an important aspect of the nature of delivery, namely its connection with theatre. The word hypocrisis itself is used for acting, and the kinship of oratory with theatre is underlined not only in modern scholarship, but also in ancient theory.72 As mentioned in Aristotle’s Rhetoric 1413b30–1, for example, to deliver well ‘acting (hypocrinesthai) is necessary, and the speaker must not deliver passages as if he were saying one thing, in the same character and tone of voice’.73 Demosthenes repeatedly refers to the theatrical craft of Aeschines, especially his loud voice and delivery. Other sources, such as fr. 162 of Demetrius of Phalerum, point to the theatrical manner of Demosthenes’ delivery. Demetrius also chastises theatrical affectation in Demosthenes’ delivery elsewhere in fr. 163–4, where he cites examples from comedy (a metrical oath that Demosthenes allegedly sworn in the Assembly and which, as Photios claims in Library 493a41, appeared in comedies) that point to the influence of theatre on Demosthenes’ delivery.74 Although these stories are inevitably biased, they nonetheless ‘express a truth about the way in which ancient speakers learned both the art of delivery and mnemonic techniques’.75 There is also, therefore, evidently a paradoxical element in the ancient perspective on acting and oratory: orators need to display skills akin to those of actors if they are to deliver their argument effectively, but to exploit those skills too obviously leaves them open to criticism. This paradox, as well as the frequent references to the theatrical dimension of delivery in general, and the theatrical affectation of Aeschines’ and Demosthenes’ gestural and vocal conduct, pose a question about the treatment of delivery: should it be considered an aspect of law-court etiquette or of theatre? Just as it would be erroneous to argue for the absolute separation of oratorical delivery from theatre, it would be equally wrong to equate it with theatrical practices. There were significant differences between delivery in the theatre and in the court: for example, the range of characters and emotions that one can adopt in the theatre is much broader than in the court. Theatrical delivery probably allowed a significant degree of exaggeration, while law-court delivery would have been reasonably naturalistic for the most part. Throughout this book, the link between oratorical and theatrical delivery is made whenever the content of specific passages points to that connection. Another methodological issue should be discussed briefly: as becomes clear in Chapter 5, there are inevitable limitations and a fair amount of speculation in the enterprise of using text to reconstruct the moment of law-court hypocrisis. There are, however, still strong grounds for arguing that features of language, coupled with other sources, enable us to identify and discuss the speaker’s delivery

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techniques, and their intended or potential effect on the audience. One of the features of language that sheds light on hypocrisis, especially gesticulation, is deixis. Deixis means ‘display’; it is, as Lyons puts it, the location and identification of persons, objects, events, processes, and activities being talked about, or referred to in relation to the spatiotemporal context created and sustained by the act of utterance and the participation in it, typically of a single speaker and at least one addressee.76 Bakker more concisely and concretely defines deixis as ‘the “pointing” function of language, which involves the strategies by which the speakers place themselves in place and time as well as with respect to each other’.77 For example, I refers to whoever is speaking; now refers to the time at which that word is uttered; and here refers to the place of utterance. As suggested by Bühler, deixis can roughly be subdivided into three categories: ocular (Deixis ad Oculos), anaphoric or textual, and imagination-oriented (Deixis am Phantasma). Deixis ad Oculos involves the use of wording that points to something that stands before the eyes. Deixis am Phantasma points to something imagined that cannot be seen or heard but is only available to the mind’s eye or ear.78 Some deictic words, expressions and patterns – the ‘I versus You’ pattern or the ‘I and You versus He or They’ pattern – allow us to reconstruct a basic image of the way the speaker may have organised his communication with the audience. For example, the demonstrative pronouns and other deictics with emphatic iota almost certainly require the speaker to point to the addressee, with the aim of controlling the gaze of the audience and directing it against his opponent. Even in the cases where the pointed person (plaintiff, defendant, an onlooker, etc.) was not present, the speaker with a deft flick of his hand or finger pointing can conjure up the image in the minds of that audience. It seems highly unlikely, however, that the speakers were using gestures with every deictic word. Overacting and extravagant gesticulation can alienate the audience. Aristotle and later ancient theorists argue that generic boundaries should be respected and they place particular emphasis on the avoidance of overacting in the law-court.79 Aeschines, in 1.25–6, compares the restrained gestures of past speakers, which reflected their prudence and self-control, with Timarchus’ excessive gesticulation that reflected his unsavoury nature. There should, therefore, be norms of moderation and self-control. Unfortunately, ancient treatises do not go into detail about self-restraint in court. Yet it would be reasonable to think that Aeschines would have been at pains to avoid overusing gesticulation for the fear that Demosthenes would exploit it to stress his association with acting. Rhetorical effectiveness may often have lain in understatement, calm or stillness. Yet we may safely assume that gestures were used to reinforce specific, marked passages. A good example of a deictic expression that would have repaid reinforcement with gesture occurs in Aeschines 2.152, 179–80: there the judges are invited to behold the speaker’s children who were brought to the court, and that invitation was surely accompanied by a gesture.

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Script, revision and extemporisation To reconstruct a view about the way a speaker attempted to communicate with and win over the audience in the law-court from written accounts only is a daunting task, because oratory provides much space for extemporisation, and because the transmitted speeches may have been the object of revision. As Thomas rightly points out, the eventual published text is the result of a long gestation – preparation, perhaps written record, and memorisation before delivery, then performance accompanied by improvisation and all the accoutrement of a living spectacle, then finally, possible elaboration for the literary publication of a text.80 Extemporisation and the possibility of post-trial revision, in other words, indicate that the transmitted speeches are not verbatim copies of what was said in the lawcourt. In this regard, there is certainly evidence that Demosthenes wrote out his speeches in advance, at least in the form of notes. In 21.191, for example, he himself anticipates the charge that his opponent, Meidias, would level against him by admitting that he prepared his speeches in advance: ‘now maybe he will perhaps argue along these lines: everything that I am now saying has been thought out and prepared ahead. I admit that I have thought about and practised my speech to the best of my ability and would not deny it’ (cf. Plutarch, Demosthenes 8.4–6).81 Even if this information is fully reliable it is unlikely that Demosthenes was allowed to read his notes in court.82 Oral delivery from memory and extemporisation were important parts of the law-court etiquette: unlike an actor in a poet-scripted play, a speaker could go off-script to react to unanticipated reactions of the audience. To give the impression of improvisation, the speaker could also include formulaic phrases, such as ‘really, I cannot contain myself’ (Dinarchus 1.15) or ‘I nearly forgot to mention this’ (Demosthenes 21.110). Alcidamas is a major proponent of improvisation and spontaneity in speaking in his treatise entitled On Sophists, also known with the title On Those Who Compose Written Speeches.83 In addition to extemporisation, revision was also a widely used practice. If the case had been lost, it is not likely that logographers, who had full control of the text and the freedom to revise it for publication, would publish the speech as it was delivered. In fact, it has been argued that the speeches delivered at the trials were radically different from their post-trial revised version.84 The substantial rewriting of a speech that was actually delivered, however, would have been constrained by common knowledge, especially in high profile trials, such as the Embassy and the Crown trials, and the consequent refutability of narrative. For this reason, I would not follow Hubbard in arguing for a significant deviation between the orally delivered original and its post-trial revision. Rather, I side with Harris in arguing that the written versions of the speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes are close to the delivered versions, but changes may also have been made.85

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Aeschines and Demosthenes, for instance, may have dropped some passages that were not successful at the trial. A good example is Aeschines 2.6 where it is noted that Demosthenes mentioned the self-exile of Philocrates; but there is no reference to that event in Demosthenes 19. In the same vein, while Aeschines in 2.10 says that Demosthenes identifies him with Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, no such reference can be found in Demosthenes’ speech. It is reasonable, however, to conclude that Demosthenes 19 and Aeschines 2, as we have them, are relatively close to what was delivered in court, since otherwise it is unlikely that the prosecution and defence would match up to such a great extent. Paulsen provides a list of the parallel points Aeschines and Demosthenes made in their speeches 2 and 19 respectively, rightly mentioning that Aeschines responded to almost all the parts of Demosthenes prosecution.86 For this book, the question of how closely the transmitted speeches approach the speech that was delivered before the judges is not of fundamental importance, however. The aim is to examine the performative aspects of the transmitted text, regardless of whether this was drafted before or after the trial and thus regardless of whether it is a verbatim record of what was said in the law-court. Even in the case of after-trial revision and publication, we may assume that the speech would be recorded in a way that advertises the speaker’s skills and his ability to influence the audience. In this way, he would be able to advertise his work and to attract the interest of future clients whom he invites to relive the moment in the law-court and to get a sense of the effectiveness of the speech and its impact upon the audience.87 It can confidently be argued, therefore, that the oratorical script allows glimpses into the performance aspects the speech. Although we cannot reconstruct movement or spatial relationships beyond speculation, and even gesture presents difficulties, there is much in the oratorical text to point to tone, manner, pace, as well as pragmatic aspects, such as deixis.

A note on the use of ancient sources The discussion of performance in Chapters 2 to 5, while being supplemented by contemporary scholarly views, is primarily based on ancient theory. Aristotle’s Rhetoric, as the major extant ancient work discussing the theory and practice of oratory in the era of Aeschines and Demosthenes, sheds light on several issues explored in this book, from the depiction of characters and delivery to the use and importance of specific techniques employed by the orator, such as the use of comic language and laughter. The discussion also includes references to later sources, such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ On Demosthenes’ Diction, Demetrius’ On Style and Hermogenes’ On the Types of Style. Even though some of these sources were written centuries after the speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes were delivered, it is safe to assume that they still reflect the views of a culture familiar with oral composition and performance: indeed these works consciously hark back to ‘our’ period as a golden age for kinds of rhetorical skills they discuss.

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There are roughly two groups of later sources: the first group consists of information about the behaviour, life, physique and military record of Aeschines and Demosthenes. This group consists of later sources that convey mostly unreliable information, being possibly influenced by the accusations that Aeschines and Demosthenes levelled against each other and which we cannot fully trust.88 The second group of later sources, however, discusses aspects of rhetorical strategy, the semantics and pragmatics of the oratorical language, etc. These sources are more likely to offer valuable information, or at least to reflect information that remained valid at their time of writing accurately, especially given that there was general agreement in the way ancient theorists discuss rhetoric. Both Aristotle (Rhetoric 1413b30–1414a6) and Demetrius (On Style 194), for example, agree that asyndeton requires changes in the style of delivery. This agreement suggests that the information conveyed by the later source on this point is likely to be reliable.

Notes 1 Feral (2002) 5 suggests that theatricality and performativity are not to be understood as opposing terms, since the second is a part of the first. Davis and Postlewait (2003) 30: ‘the idea of performativity, instead of being folded within the idea of theatricality, as Feral proposes, is often put forward as a unifying concept’; cf. Auslander (2008) 1–4. 2 Schechner (2002) xi. Cf. Carlson (1996) esp. 1–9, 13–33 on anthropological and ethnographic approaches, 34–55 on sociological and psychological approaches, 56–75 on linguistic approaches; (2004) 68–73; Schechner (2002) ix-xii; (2004) 7–9; (2006) 1–39, 45–51, 244–55 for a comprehensive discussion of the history of Performance Studies; Goldhill (1999) 10–20; Davis and Postlewait (2003) 31; Davis (2008) 1–8 for a survey of the most influential theories. 3 Goffman (1956). 4 Goffman (1956) 8. 5 On audiences and their interaction with performers: Goffman (1956) 1–46. 6 Schechner (2006) 30. 7 Bauman (1975) 292–3, (1986) 3; Taplin (1985) 3; Fischer-Lichte (1992) 7; (2004) 334–6; (2010) 29–31; Pelling (2000) 2; Feral (2002) 5; Worthington (2004) 129–43; Revermann (2006) 159–75; Roselli (2011) 19–20. 8 In Turner’s words: each culture, each person within it, uses the entire sensory repertoire to convey messages: manual gesticulations, facial expressions, bodily postures, rapid, heavy or light breathing, tears, at the individual level [. . .] stylised gestures, dance, patterns, prescribed silences, synchronised movements such as marching, the moves and ‘plays’ of games, sports and rituals, at the cultural level. Turner (1982) 9 9 Demosthenes 5.15; Thucydides 4.28.1; Aristotle, Rhetoric 1400a9–11; Plato, Laws 659a, 700c–701a, 876b1–6, Republic 492b5–c2, Protagoras 319c, Apology of Socrates 17d1, 21a5, 27b1, 30c2–3; Lysias 12.73; Xenophon, Hellenika 1.12–3, 15. Cf. Bers (1985) 1–15; Hall (2006) 363–6; Roselli (2011) 47–51; Thomas (2011) 171–85; Bakker (2012) 396. 10 Kavoulaki (1999) 294. Cf. Schechner (2006) 35: ‘performances are marked, framed, or heightened behaviour separated out from just “living life”‘. 11 See the section that follows.

The hermeneutic framework 12 13 14 15

16

17

18 19

20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27

35

Bauman (1992) 41; cf. (1992) 45–8; (1975) 293; (1986) 132–3. Bauman (1992) 44. Taplin (1999) 33. There are some occasions where the orator does impersonate. A good example is Cicero who, in the Pro Caelio 33–8, memorably impersonates Clodia’s ancestors, bringing them back from the grave, so to speak, to disapprove of her morality (this technique is called prosopopoeia/eidolopoieia). See: Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 11.1.39. The intersection between theatrical and rhetorical performance culminates in the mock trials staged by Bdelycleon in the latter part of Aristophanes’ Wasps. The congruity between theatre and oratory involves mutual borrowing. An example is the use of agōnes logou in tragic plays. These contests do not just embody the idea of oratorical debate between two speakers, but they also include language that is suggestive of an oratorical debate. On the reciprocal relationship between oratory and theatre: XanthakisKaramanos (1979) 66–76; Scodel (1997) 489–504; Webb (1997) 339–69; Cooper (2004) 145–61; Hall (2006) 353–92; McDonald (2007) 473–89; Hubbard (2007) 490–508. Haigh (1907) 323–9; Goldhill (1997) 57–68; Roselli (2011) 118–57 on non-citizens and (2011) 158–94 on Athenian women being able to attend theatrical performances. Roselli, after examining copious information about the involvement of non-citizens and women in the life of the polis and in theatre-related rituals and other activities, draws the conclusion that both were present in the theatre. For a comprehensive discussion of the composition of the audience in theatrical and oratorical performances: Ober and Strauss (1990) 237–70; Slater (1995) 143; Goldhill (1997) 56–67; Cooper (2004) 145; MacDowell (2010) 147–8. Space arrangements in the theatre: Haigh (1907) 90–101; Goldhill (1997) 60; Wiles (1997) 1–62; Roselli (2011) 63–86; space arrangements in the law-court: Lanni (1997) 185. Plutarch, Demosthenes 7, 11.1, 3; Lives of the Ten Orators 845a-b: Demosthenes’ training with the actor Andronicus is mentioned; Photius, Library 493a41. A few words of caution are necessary: there is some justified skepticism about the reliability of biographical details. Some sources are very late – thus not the best sources of information about Aeschines and Demosthenes – and some others are likely to represent posthumous accretions. While we may be minded to doubt some particulars of the ancient tradition, the broad narrative that demonstrates a widely accepted perception about Aeschines and Demosthenes as being associated with acting and actors may well provide a valid insight into their lives and performance conducts in public forum. Hermogenes, On Invention 1.1.95.23–4; Photius, Library 243.354a; Scholia in Hermogenes’ On Staseis 421.22–30W4. Demosthenes 18.285; 19.126, 338: εὔφωνος; 18.313; 19.199: λαμπροφωνότατος; 19.206, 208, 216, 336. Plato, Republic 568c3; Laws 817c; Aristotle, Rhetoric 1403b26–33; 1413b14–28; [Aristotle] Problems 11.22; Demetrius, On Style 193–5; Diodorus Siculus 15.7, 16.42; Plutarch, Life of Ten Orators 848b. On the vocal ability of actors: Pickard-Cambridge (1968) 167–71; Csapo and Slater (1994) 256–8, 265–8; MacDowell (2000) 352; Hall (2002) 22–3; Cooper (2004) 145–6. For a catalogue of references to Aeschines’ career as an actor in later sources: Kindstrand (1982) 93. Demosthenes 19.337–8, 18.262 where Aeschines is presented as making a laughing stock of himself during a theatrical performance; cf. Plutarch, Life of the Ten Orators 840a. Haigh (1907) 230–4; Csapo and Slater (1994) 222–3; Hughes (2012) 12–4, 113. Pickard-Cambridge (1968) 134; MacDowell (2000) 289. Masks, props, scenery and material equipment in theatre: Harrison and Liapis (2013). Law-court formalities: Bers (2009) 553–62; Blanshard (2004) 13, 19–26. Blanshard (2004) 21–2:

36

The hermeneutic framework great emphasis was placed on the transformative power of court paraphernalia. They were the props that underpinned the performances that transformed the stoa, odeion, square peristyle or open-air bench into a law-court.

28 29 30 31 32

33 34

35

36

37 38

Hall (2006) 18–9; cf. Duncan (2006) 59–60. Rubinstein (2000) 144; (2003) 201–4; Duncan (2006) 88. Harris (1995) 8. Carey (1989) 10–1, 61–2; cf. Edwards (1999) 9; Usher (1999) 55–7; Porter (2007) 60–88; Hall (2010) 18. There is evidence that actors were highly esteemed in Athens. Officials or individuals in Athens erected memorials, including both private monuments (such as marble tablets) and public monuments (such as official archives, monuments of stone near or inside the theatre of Dionysus and so forth), to honour successful actors. Secondary sources about the role of actors in fourth-century Athens include: Haigh (1907) 40–8, 281–2; Csapo and Slater (1994) 223–4; Easterling (2002) 327–41. Cf. Chapter 3, pp. 1–2. Iser (1994) 142: ‘the real reader is always offered a particular role to play and it is this role that constitutes the concept of the implied reader’. A discussion of different categories of readers: Rabinowitz (1977) 121–41; Chatman (1978) 149–51; Iser (1994) 137–44. Dickey (1996) 180 classifies the ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι as an ‘ethnic’ mode of address, but I prefer Martin’s term ‘civic’; Martin (2006) 79. Dickey also calls the address ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί ‘occupational’, but I prefer the term ‘judicial’. I thank Brenda GriffithWilliams for help on this point. It should be noted that there are also variations in the use of these three ‘standard’ addresses, such as ὦ Ἀθηναῖοι instead of ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι and ὦ δικασταί instead of ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, especially in Hypereides’ papyrus. For Martin (2006) 76 n. 8, these variations are due to mistakes made by scribes. Dickey (1996) 181 argues that the descriptive address is less formal and it is, therefore, sparingly used. Indeed, there is no instance in Aeschines or Demosthenes’ speeches. There are, however, several occurrences in other orators: 52 instances in Andokides and Dinarchus, 30 in Antiphon, 54 in Lycurgus, 32 in Lysias, and a 141 in Isaeus. According to some calculations after a search through the online TLG database, there is no occurrence of the civic address in Antiphon, Hypereides, and Isaeus. It is used only twice in Isocrates; 7 times in Lycurgus; 24 in Andokides; 36 in Lysias; 59 in Dinarchus; 99 times in Aeschines; and 406 in Demosthenes’ public speeches. Rubinstein (2004) 187–203. The distribution of civic address in Demosthenes’ public speeches (the percentage given in the brackets is the quotient of the division of the number of instances and the total number of sections per speech): Speech

Civic addresses

Judicial addresses

59 22 20 23 24 21 19 25 18

9 (7.14%) 16 (28.20%) 56 (33.53%) 69 (31.36%) 19 (8.71%) 81 (35.68%) 65 (18.95%) 49 (48.51) 42 (12.96%)

6 (4.76%) 1 (1.28%) 12 (7.18%) 4 (1.8%) 32 (14.67%) 21 (9.25%) 12 (3.5%) 33 (32.67%) 1 (0.3%)

39 Introduction, pp. 8–10. 40 Konstan (2006) 28. 41 Konstan (2006) 27–8.

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42 Leighton (1996) 210. 43 Leighton (1996) 210; cf. Sanders (2014) 79–82. 44 The importance of emotions is also highlighted in several works before Aristotle, as he himself points out (Rhetoric 1354a11–24): from Gorgias’ Praise of Helen 9–10 and Homeric epics to Hesiod, Thucydides, the lost work of Thrasymachus, Eleoi, several tragic plays and of course, orators. Cf. Carey (1994) 26–34; Konstan (2006) 3–40, 125–33; (2007) 411–25; Rubinstein (2004) 189–90; Fortenbaugh (2007) 117–20. 45 Rubinstein (2004) 187–203. 46 Wankel (1976) 848; Usher (1993) 230–1; Yunis (2001) 204–5; Serafim (2015) 96–108. 47 Several definitions of ekphrasis: Bompaire (1958) 707: ‘mais le sens le plus intéressant est celui qui fait de l’ecphrasis d’oeuvre d’art, sculpture, tableau, éifice, l’ecphrasis par excellence’; Spitzer (1962) 89; Hefferman (1993) 3; Elsner (2002) 1–18; (2007) 20; Bartsch and Elsner (2007) where ekphrasis is defined as ‘words about an image’. 48 Pseudo-Hermogenes, Progymnasmata 22; Aphthonios, Progymnasmata 36. The potency of language to bring images before the eyes is also described in Aristotle, Rhetoric 1411b 24–5, 35: metaphor can bring its subject before the eyes. Although Aristotle does not expand the discussion, nevertheless, even this brief reference indicates that the power of language ‘to place X before the eyes’, which was discussed systematically later, was recognised in fifth and fourth century Athens. Translations of passages in this section come from Webb (2009). 49 Webb (2009) 8. 50 The nearest modern equivalent would be Deixis am Phantasma, a notion used for the first time by Bühler. Despite the convergences in meaning, use and application between ekphrasis and Deixis am Phantasma, there are some divergences. The first term refers to any account that brings the described matter before one’s eyes, whereas a prerequisite for Deixis am Phantasma, at least as generally understood, is usually the use of specific deictic wording, such as the use of demonstrative words and expressions. See: Bühler (1990) 141–2; Vamvouri-Ruffy (2004) 13; Felson (2004) 254. 51 For example, phantasia is discussed in philosophical treatises, such as Aristotle, On the Soul 427b14ff; on the Aristotelian phantasia, Polansky (2007) 410–33. As used by post-classical rhetoric, it arises from stoic philosophy with a broad sense: it is ‘not merely an act of imagination, but a way of looking at the world’. Bartsch (2007) 90. The definition of phantasia in Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime 15.1–2, elaborates not on its primary meaning as ‘anything that in any way suggests a thought productive of speech’ but on the colloquial, ‘fashionable’, meaning. ‘[Phantasia] has also come into fashion for the situation in which enthusiasm and emotion makes the speaker see what he is saying and bring it visually before his audience’. Translation: Goldhill (2007) 6–7. In the same vein, the semantic ambiguity of the notion of diatypōsis is the reason for using the term ekphrasis, instead. Tiberius (De Figuris Demosthenicis 43), for example, provides three different descriptions of its meaning and use. Scholia Demosthenica 157c (on speech 19) attempts to distinguish diatypōsis from ekphrasis, noting that the first term refers to the power of language to bring images before one’s eyes in order to stir up emotions, whereas the second ‘is like a narrative’ (ὥσπερ διήγημά τι εἶναι). Not only is this terminological distinction far from being clear, but also, as Webb (2009) 51 aptly notes, in several other sources ekphrasis and the other terms for vivid description are used interchangeably. 52 The only crystal-clear information we have on the quality of ekphrasis is about the virtues, clarity (saphēnia) and vividness (enargeia), with which the art of bringing the described object, person, or place before the eyes is achieved. See: Theon, Progymnasmata 118.7; Ps.-Hermogenes, Progymnasmata 23; Webb (2000) 221–2; (2009) 5, 107. 53 May (1988) 3; Trevett (1992) 85; Fortenbaugh (1996) 153.

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54 The notion of ēthopoiia is also used in a work that is generally attributed to Aristotle (Problēmata 30.1). On the use of that concept in Dionysius of Halicarnassus: Edwards (1999) 6–7; Todd (2007) 33; Bruss (2013) 34–57. 55 Usher (1965) 99, n. 2; cf. Sifakis (2002) 149–51. 56 Carey (1989) 10–1, 61–2. 57 Aristotle’s Poetics 1450b8; 1454a17–9: ‘characterisation appears when, as said earlier, speech or action reveals the nature of moral choice, and good character when choice is good’; Rhetoric 1417a20–2; Nicomachean Ethics 1103a17ff, 1112a16–7, 1163a22–3; Plato’s Laws 792e2; Republic 395d2. More readings: Halliwell (1990) 32–59; Fredal (2001) 253–4; Duncan (2006) 14–5. Translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: Rackham (1945); Plato Laws: Bury (1926); Republic: Shorey (1953). 58 On the ‘ēthos of sympathy’: Wisse (1989) 34, 58–9; Amossy (2001) 6–7; Riggsby (2004) 181. On ‘persuasive ēthopoiia’: Bruss (2013) 37. 59 Aeschines makes extensive use of poetic quotations from Homer, Euripides and Hesiod, sometimes to show his education and sometimes to substitute for legal proofs. Demosthenes’ use of quotations is not as frequent as Aeschines’; Demosthenes quotes Hesiod, Euripides, Sophocles, Solon and an epigram. On the use of quotations: Perlman (1964) 162–3, n. 41–3 for Aeschines; (1964) 162–3, n. 50 for Demosthenes. 60 Sommerstein (2009) 107–15 is right to note, for example, that ‘laughter of derision’, a situation when someone laughs or provokes laughter at his enemy, wishing to see him suffering, is used frequently in Aristophanes’ comic plays. Cf. Halliwell (2008) 243–63. On the elements that have affinities with comedy as genre: Harding (1994) 196–221. 61 Halliwell (1991) 279–96; (2008); Rosen (2007). 62 Spatharas (2006) 374–87. 63 Plato, Republic 452d-e; Philebus 48a–50b; Aristotle, Rhetoric 1419b3–9; Poetics 1449a–b. Mockery by enemies was a powerful fear in Greek culture, as attested in both verse and prose texts such as Euripides’ Medea 1049–50; Lysias 3.9. 64 Philips-Anderson (2007) 71–3. 65 Rhetorica ad Herennium 1.6.10: if the hearers have been fatigued by listening, we shall open with something that may provoke laughter – a fable, a plausible fiction, a caricature, an ironical inversion of the meaning of a word, an ambiguity, innuendo, a naivety, an exaggeration, a recapitulation, a pun, an unexpected turn, a comparison, a novel tale, a historical anecdote, a verse, or a challenge or a smile of approbation directed at someone. 66 Philips-Anderson (2007) 73. 67 Nicomachean Ethics 1128a34–1128b1; 1108a24–5. Cf. Wilkins (2000) 88–90; Halliwell (2008) 22–6, 40, 311, 314. 68 [Cicero] Rhetorica ad Herennium 1.3; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 3.3.1–3, 11–5. In Christian religion, hypocrisis has negative connotations: it is applied metaphorically to someone who is insincere. The lexicographer Hesychius in his Lexicon s.v. hypocrisis (§667) says: εἰρωνεία ‘irony’. ὑπουλότης ‘slyness’. Δόλος ‘deception’. Nevertheless, hypocrisis as a technical oratorical term is neutral in meaning. 69 Translation: Kennedy (1991) 219. 70 Cassius Longinus, Ars Rhetorica 567; Cicero, De Oratore 3.213–27; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 4.2.77, 11.3.1–14. Cf. Sonkowsky (1959) 256–74; Wisse (1989); Corbeill (2004); Hall (2007) 218–34. 71 The translation is mine. For the text of Anonymous: Waltz (1968) 35; Katsouris (1989) 36. Cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Demosthenes’ Diction 53; Rhetorica ad Herennium: voice quality (3.20–4) and physical movement (3.26–7); Longinus, Ars Rhetorica 567. On the significance of gestures and bodily movements in the law-court: Institutio Oratoria 11.3.66–136.

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72 On the theatrical dimension of delivery: Bistagne-Ghiron (1976) 115–9; Kindstrand (1982) 20; Sifakis (2002) 155–6; Hall (2006) 369–74. 73 Translation: Sifakis (2002) 158. 74 Cf. Plutarch, Demosthenes 9.4–5; Lives of the Ten Orators 845a-b. 75 Hall (2006) 370. Cf. Cooper (2000) 229–33. 76 Lyons (1977) 637. 77 Bakker (2010) 152. 78 Bühler (1990) 94–5, 141. 79 Aristotle’s Rhetoric 1404b; Rhetorica ad Herennium 3.15.26; Cicero, De Oratore 2.242, 3.220; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 1.11.3, 11.3.181–4. Cf. Corbeill (2004) 115–6; Hall and Bond (2002) 200; Hunter (2002) 189–91. 80 Thomas (1992) 125. Cf. Worthington (1996) 171; Hall (1999) 166; MacDowell (2000) 23; Hubbard (2008) 189–200. 81 Translation: Harris (2008) 156. Cf. Trevett (1996) 425–41 esp. 436–7; (2011) 19–20. 82 See, for example, Aristophanes, Knights 347–9 where the sausage seller is presented as having the chance to win his case only if he memorised his speech. 83 On composition and performance: Thomas (1992) 124–5; Thomas and Webb (1994) 10–6; Cooper (2004) 146–8. On Demosthenes 21: MacDowell (1990) 27–8; Milns (2000) 207; Fischer-Lichte (2010) 30. On delivery from memory and speaking spontaneously: Hall (2006) 358–9, 370–1. On Alcidamas: Edwards (2007) 47–57. 84 Hubbard (2007) 185–202. 85 Harris (1995) 9–16. 86 Paulsen (1999) 423–31. 87 Russell (1990) 199; Worthington (1996) 172, 175; Hubbard (2008) 186. Dionysius of Halicarnassus points out: ‘when I pick up a speech of Demosthenes, I feel like a person possessed, carried in this direction and that, as one emotion after another takes possession of me – distrust, agonised uncertainty, terror, contempt, hate, pity, admiration, anger, envy – all the different feelings to which the human heart is subject’ (Demosthenes 22). Since Dionysius did not hear Demosthenes performing his speech in the law-court, it is clear that he means that he is overwhelmed after reading a written copy of Demosthenes’ speeches or perhaps after listening someone else performing them. This points to the power that the written speeches have in influencing the audience. 88 On the use of ancient orators as sources of historical and political information: Harris (1995) 1–16.

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2

Construction and manipulation

This chapter examines a wide range of techniques that are used to win over the people present in the law-court: addresses to the audience and creation of a civic community; references to implied audiences of human and divine inspectors that evaluate the judges; emotional appeals; and the artful use of aspects of oratorical language, such as the imperative and questions.

Addresses to the audience and civic community Before exploring the techniques for addressing the audience in the Embassy and the Crown speeches, it is useful to examine the composition of the audience, since this will have determined how Aeschines and Demosthenes wrote for performance. The audience consisted of the judges, and ‘citizens standing outside the bar as observers’ (Aeschines 3.56). In these two high-profile public trials, which examined policies that affected both Athens and the whole of Greece, the bystanders were likely to have consisted of both Athenians and people from other Greek cities (Aeschines 3.56: ‘and all the Greeks who are anxious to hear this trial’). Although there is no reference to the civic identity of these outsiders in Aeschines 3, it is unlikely that the information was invented: evidence drawn from other sources points towards the presence of foreigners, such as Theban, Boeotian, Olynthian, and Phocian exiles. In Against Diondas 173v25–6 (a speech delivered a few years before the Crown trial, most probably in the period between 335–3 BC), Hypereides mentions the presence of Theban refugees in Athens in the wake of Alexander’s destruction of the city in 335 BC. There were also other groups of foreigners, who had been in Athens since the preceding decade. Aeschines (2.142–3) refers to the Boeotian and Phocian refugees who were in Athens at the time of the Embassy trial (around 343 BC). Olynthians, who had been granted refuge and Athenian citizenship, were also likely to have been present.1 Since the Crown trial took place in the summer of 330, the city would also have been full of merchants from other states and others who needed to be in Athens, many of whom could be expected to have taken an interest in a high-profile trial such as this one. The fact that both Aeschines and Demosthenes had to address this heterogeneous audience offers a partial explanation for the distinct frequency in the use of civic

48 Construction and manipulation address. The civic address is used sixty-five times in Demosthenes 19, a speech that consists of 343 sections (ratio: 18.95 percent). The judicial address is used twelve times (ratio: 3.5 percent).2 Twenty-five instances of addresses to the audience can be found in Aeschines 2, with the civic address being used on twentythree of those occasions (ratio: 11.95 percent): §§ 1, 4, 7, 55, 62, 69, 80–1, 87 twice, 88, 102 twice, 108, 119, 127, 129, 135, 145, 152 twice, 160, 183.3 In the Crown speeches, civic addresses are used forty times in Aeschines 3 and fortytwo times in Demosthenes 18. Unlike the variations in the use of addresses in Demosthenes 19 and Aeschines 2, where both the civic and the judicial addresses are used, no instance of judicial addresses can be found in Aeschines’ prosecution, whereas in Demosthenes’ defence speech the judicial address is only used once, in §196. It is worth noting that the civic address is used on more occasions in Aeschines 3 than in either of the other two speeches (forty times, compared to thirty-seven times in Aeschines 1 and twenty-three times in Aeschines 2). Although the civic address is generally used more times than the judicial address in public speeches, the fact that, as mentioned earlier in Chapter 1, there is nothing inevitable in the form, frequency and position of addresses, makes it valid for them to be taken as reflecting the specific purpose(s) of the two speakers.4 The civic addresses assist both speakers to identify the core audience, especially given that a proportion of the members of the viewing audience were foreigners. It was a sine qua non for both Aeschines and Demosthenes to win over the Athenian judges and citizens in order to achieve a twofold purpose: to win the case and a political victory over each other. In order to identify this vital Athenian audience, Aeschines attempts to remind the judges of their civic origins, and invites them to envisage themselves as representative Athenians, whose votes (will be felt to) reflect the opinion of the city. This merging of the role of the dicasts with their citizen role becomes clear in Aeschines 3.8: Κἂν ταύτην ἔχοντες τὴν διάνοιαν ἀκούητε τῶν μελλόντων ῥηθήσεσθαι λόγων, εὖ οἶδ’ ὅτι καὶ δίκαια καὶ εὔορκα καὶ συμφέροντα ὑμῖν αὐτοῖς ψηφιεῖσθε καὶ πάσῃ τῇ πόλει. And if this is your frame of mind as you listen to the speeches about to be made, I am confident that your verdict will be just and true to your oath and beneficial to you yourselves and to the whole city. Aeschines attempts here to impress upon the judges that they should act for the city. Earlier in §8 he asks the judges to realise that their fellow-Athenians had entrusted constitutional and political stability to them: Κἀκεῖνο δὲ χρὴ διαμνημονεύειν, ὅτι νυνὶ πάντες οἱ πολῖται παρακαταθέμενοι τὴν πόλιν ὑμῖν καὶ τὴν πολιτείαν διαπιστεύσαντες οἱ μὲν πάρεισι καὶ ἐπακούουσι τῆσδε τῆς κρίσεως, οἱ δὲ ἄπεισιν ἐπὶ τῶν ἰδίων ἔργων· οὓς αἰσχυνόμενοι καὶ τῶν ὅρκων οὓς ὠμόσατε μεμνημένοι καὶ τῶν νόμων, ἐὰν ἐξελέγξω Κτησιφῶντα καὶ παράνομα γεγραφότα καὶ ψευδῆ καὶ ἀσύμφορα

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τῇ πόλει, λύετε, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τὰς παρανόμους γνώμας, βεβαιοῦτε τῇ πόλει τὴν δημοκρατίαν, κολάζετε τοὺς ὑπεναντίως τοῖς νόμοις καὶ τῷ συμφέροντι τῷ ὑμετέρῳ πολιτευομένους. Another thing you should bear in mind is that just now the whole citizen body has placed the city in your care and entrusted the constitution to you; and some of them are here listening to this trial, while others are off dealing with their personal concerns. Show your respect for them and remember the oaths you have sworn and the laws, and if I prove that Ctesiphon has drafted a measure that both contravenes the laws and is dishonest and against the city’s interests, overturn the illegal proposals, men of Athens, confirm the democratic constitution for the city, and punish the men whose political activity is opposed to the laws and to your best interests. The emphasis placed on the judges’ role as protectors of the constitution is underlined by the participle παρακαταθέμενοι.5 This specific wording invites the judges to envisage the citizens as having handed them the most precious collective possession of Athens, the constitution, which they should protect in the way the speaker’s imperative illocutions in §8 indicate (λύετε, βεβαιοῦτε, κολάζετε). The civic address is used where one might expect an address to the judges, who, in formal terms, swore oaths and bore the absolute responsibility to punish the violators of the laws and the enemies of Athenian interests. By addressing the Athenians as a whole where he might have addressed the dicasts specifically, Aeschines seeks to merge the role of the judges with that of citizens, with the aim of instructing them to realise that both their duty and their status as judges is wholly intertwined with the best interests of Athens. The use of the second person plural as a means of assimilating the judges to the assembly is a technique common in Greek oratory.6 The identification of the vital Athenian audience is further accomplished by the creation of a group that shares civic identity, patriotism and common values. Demosthenes and Aeschines invite the audience to think that he himself, the sender of the civic message, and the Athenians present in the court, the receivers of it, are patriots and that they share a duty to protect Athens. Both speakers appeal, in effect, to the civic pride of the audience: thus, they attempt to insinuate themselves into the favour of the people but, more importantly perhaps, to estrange their opponent, presenting him as being alien and inimical to the values of the Athenian community. A good example, which shows how Demosthenes, for example, attempted to achieve this twofold purpose, is in 19.96: ἣν δέδοικα μέν, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, δέδοικα, μὴ λελήθαμεν ὥσπερ οἱ δανειζόμενοι ἐπὶ πολλῷ ἄγοντες· τὸ γὰρ ἀσφαλὲς αὐτῆς καὶ τὸ βέβαιον οὗτοι προὔδοσαν, Φωκέας καὶ Πύλας. As for peace, I am indeed afraid, men of Athens, afraid that, without realising, we have been enjoying it like men borrowing money at high interest; for these men have betrayed the security and confirmation of it – Phocis and Thermopylae.

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Particular attention should be paid here not so much to the explicit and direct accusation that Aeschines is a traitor – important as that is – but rather to specific features of language, such as the use of the first person plural after the civic address to the audience (μὴ λελήθαμεν). Demosthenes begins by addressing the group, but he then absorbs himself into the group. This shift is reinforced by syntax that is designed to create a sense of shared community: since the speaker could have used the second person plural, it could be argued that the use of the first person plural is a means of putting the ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι and himself on the same side. Aeschines, as would be expected, is placed on the opposite side, as the phrase οὗτοι προὔδοσαν indicates. This sharply contrasted imagery – patriots versus traitors – engrained in and reinforced by specific wording, gives a sense of putting two enemies face-to-face, especially inasmuch as the deictic pronoun (οὗτοι) requires the use of gestural ploys, with a view to turning the gaze of the audience towards Aeschines and his accomplices. The use of the civic address to the audience fits well in this context as a means of reminding the judges of their civic origins and inviting them to think that they are representatives of the Athenian dēmos and that their vote is important for Athens. The ‘We-They’ pattern that is accompanied by the use of a civic address to the audience is also at work in 19.142: τοῦτο δὲ καλόν, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, καὶ σεμνὸν εἰς ἀρετῆς λόγον καὶ δόξης, ἣν οὗτοι χρημάτων ἀπέδοντο. ἀντιθῶμεν δὴ τί τῇ τῶν Ἀθηναίων πόλει γέγονεν ἐκ τῆς εἰρήνης, καὶ τί τοῖς πρέσβεσι τοῖς τῶν Ἀθηναίων [. . .] Which is a fine thing, men of Athens, and a substantial asset to one’s merit and reputation – which these men sold for money. Let us compare, then, what the city of Athens has gained from the peace, and what the Athenian ambassadors have gained [. . .] This example indicates that Demosthenes’ purpose is to create a civic group with consciousness of the bonds that connect its members and exclude Aeschines. Something similar is at work in 19.267: καὶ οὔτε τὸν ἥλιον ᾐσχύνονθ’ οἱ ταῦτα ποιοῦντες οὔτε τὴν γῆν πατρίδ’ οὖσαν, ἐφ’ ἧς ἕστασαν, οὔθ’ ἱερὰ οὔτε τάφους οὔτε τὴν μετὰ ταῦτα γενησομένην αἰσχύνην ἐπὶ τοιούτοις ἔργοις· οὕτως ἔκφρονας, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, καὶ παραπλῆγας τὸ δωροδοκεῖν ποιεῖ. And the perpetrators were not ashamed to face the sun, or their native land on which they stood, or shrines, or tombs, or the disgrace that would be the consequence of actions of that sort; such, men of Athens, is the madness and insanity produced by corruption. The reference to the sun, earth, shrines and tombs of the ancestors is designed to make an appeal to the civic pride of the Athenians – in a sense to bring to mind the essence of Athens herself. The reference to τὴν γῆν points to the special

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relationship between the Athenians and their land: they claimed that they were ‘sprung from earth’ and that their ancestors had always lived in Attica from time immemorial. Autochthony is the Athenian myth par excellence: it is ‘a patriotic and civic myth embodying the unity of the Athenian community’,7 frequently connected with democracy and always demonstrating the claimed nobility of the Athenians as a civic community. The physical constituents of the city (i.e. the reference to sun and land), history and tradition (i.e. the reference to the tombs of those who fought for independence and freedom) and religion (i.e. the reference to the shrines) are three basic defining features of the shared community of the city. The emphasis placed here on the intersection of civic identity and religion creates a context where the civic address can be used most effectively. This particular mode of address, combined with the presentation of Aeschines and his associates as impious scoundrels distanced from the civic values that have just been foregrounded, aims to strengthen the sense of a civic in-group consciousness so as to bind Demosthenes with the Athenian audience and implicitly estrange Aeschines from them. It should be mentioned that, unlike Demosthenes, who strengthens the impact of the ‘We-They’ pattern by using addresses to the audience, Aeschines does not always reinforce this line of argument with addresses. An example of the omission of addresses can be found in 2.22–3: [A] Τοὺς γὰρ τῆς πόλεως ἅλας καὶ τὴν δημοσίας τράπεζαν περὶ πλείστου δή φησι ποιεῖσθαι, οὐκ ὢν ἐπιχώριος, εἰρήσεται γάρ, οὐδ’ ἐγγενής. [B] Ἡμεῖς δέ, οἷς ἱερὰ καὶ τάφοι προγόνων ὑπάρχουσιν ἐν τῇ πατρίδι, καὶ διατριβαὶ καὶ συνήθειαι μεθ’ ὑμῶν ἐλευθέριοι, καὶ γάμοι κατὰ τοὺς νόμους καὶ κηδεσταὶ καὶ τέκνα, Ἀθήνησι μὲν ἦμεν ἄξιοι τῆς ὑμετέρας πίστεως, οὐ γὰρ ἄν ποτε ἡμᾶς εἵλεσθε, ἐλθόντες δ’ εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἐξαίφνης ἐγενόμεθα προδόται. [A] For he claims that his main concern is the city’s salt and the public table, when he does not belong to our land – it must be said – or our blood. [B] And we who have shrines and ancestral tombs in our homeland and share with you the pastimes and dealings that befit free men and have legally valid marriages8 and in-laws and children, deserved your trust in Athens (or you would never have selected us), but on arriving in Macedonia we suddenly turned traitor. This passage is bipartite in focus: the first part (marked here as A) refers to Demosthenes as being a foreigner, whereas in the second (marked here as B), the speaker refutes the allegations of his opponent that he is a hireling of Philip and underlines the bonds that connect him inextricably with Athens and its people. The juxtaposition of these two cola further highlights the antithesis between the two speakers. The use of the first person plural (Ἡμεῖς δέ) at the beginning of the second part underscores the speaker’s kinship with the Athenians and, thus, the gap that separates them from Demosthenes. In other words, Aeschines

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seeks to put himself and the Athenians in the law-court on the one side (‘we’) and Demosthenes, the foreigner, on the other. The reference to the ancestral tombs here is also an allusion to Demosthenes’ (alleged) barbaric roots. Anyone who was elected to a public office was obliged to prove his citizenship on both sides during the dokimasia of the magistrates, a process designed ‘to protect the integrity of the citizen body from any intrusion by those who do not share the fullness of citizen privilege’.9 Family tombs matter for citizenship (Aristotle’s Ἀθηναίων Πολιτεία 55.3–5). This is presumably because Athenian citizens, unlike nonAthenians and slaves, could own land, where all the members of their family were buried.10 In addition to the ‘We-They’ pattern, the attempts by both Aeschines and Demosthenes to estrange each other from the civic community are also served by another pattern – what I call the ‘He-You’ pattern: ‘He’, the hireling of Philip in contrast to ‘You’, the Athenians. An example is in Aeschines 2.87: Οὐκ οὖν δεινόν, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, εἴ τις κατ’ ἀνδρὸς πολίτου, οὐχ ἑαυτοῦ, ἀλλ’ ὑμετέρου, τοῦτο γὰρ προσδιορθοῦμαι, τολμᾷ τηλικαῦτα καταψεύδεσθαι, κινδυνεύοντος ὑπὲρ τοῦ σώματος; Is it not monstrous, men of Athens, that someone should dare to tell such enormous lies against his fellow-citizen – I correct myself, yours not his –, when his life is in danger? Here we see the use of a rhetorical device called diorthōsis: ‘the correction of the speaker’s own utterance, which is recognised to be improper by the speaker himself, or might perhaps be regarded as improper by the audience’.11 The ‘mistake’ made by Aeschines here is purposeful: he replaces his first utterance by another in order to place more emphasis on his key argument specifically that he shares the same civic origin with the Athenian audience, whereas Demosthenes is a foreigner. Another good manifestation of the ‘He-You’ pattern is in Aeschines 3.34: Ἀκούετε, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, ὅτι ὁ μὲν νομοθέτης κελεύει ἐν τῷ δήμῳ ἐν Πυκνὶ τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ ἀνακηρύττειν τὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου στεφανούμενον, ἄλλοθι δὲ μηδαμοῦ, Κτησιφῶν δὲ ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ, οὐ τοὺς νόμους μόνον ὑπερβάς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν τόπον μετενεγκών. You hear, men of Athens, that the legislator instructs that the proclamation of the receipt of a crown from the people is to take place among the people at the Assembly on the Pnyx and nowhere else. But Ctesiphon proposed the proclamation in the theatre, not only breaching the laws, but actually changing the location. The language reinforces the speaker’s goal of creating an antithesis between two persons: the antithetical particles μέν and δέ indicate that the one (somewhat

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abstract) person represents law and order (ὁ μὲν νομοθέτης), while the other represents a breach of law (Κτησιφῶν δέ). In context, addressing the audience can be seen as a tacit means of inviting them to realise that, as ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, they have a responsibility to side with the representative of law and order, by voting against the representatives of lawlessness. Demosthenes, in turn, trying to accomplish the same goal, to estrange Aeschines from the civic group, apostrophises Aeschines in 18.52 and accuses him of being a Macedonian stooge. He then addresses the audience, asking them to decide whether his adversary is a ‘hireling’ or a ‘friend’ of Alexander. Finally, he apostrophises his opponent again, saying, ‘you hear what they say’. ἀλλὰ μισθωτὸν ἐγώ σε Φιλίππου πρότερον καὶ νῦν Ἀλεξάνδρου καλῶ, καὶ οὗτοι πάντες. εἰ δ’ ἀπιστεῖς, ἐρώτησον αὐτούς, μᾶλλον δ’ ἐγὼ τοῦθ’ ὑπὲρ σοῦ ποιήσω. πότερον ὑμῖν, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, δοκεῖ μισθωτὸς Αἰσχίνης ἢ ξένος εἶναι Ἀλεξάνδρου; ἀκούεις ἃ λέγουσιν. But do I call you a hireling, formerly of Philip, now of Alexander, and all these men call you the same? If you do not believe me, ask them yourself or, rather, I will do it for you. Do you think, Athenians, that Aeschines is Alexander’s hired hand or his guest? You hear what they say. Demosthenes changes the narrative into an interactive exchange between himself, his opponent and the audience. He seeks to estrange his adversary from the audience and the success of this strategy is indicated by the phrase ‘you hear what they say’, which makes sense if we assume that the audience shouted out one of the two words that Demosthenes levelled as accusations against Aeschines. In fact, the author of Scholia Demosthenica on speech 18 (104a–c) has made this same assumption.12 The profoundly performative, even theatrical, nature of the device is underscored by the references in some of the anecdotes to the involvement of the dramatist Menander. ‘Another story involves the poet Menander, who was said to have acted as a kind of cheer-leader of a small but vociferous body of supporters who shouted “Aeschines is a hireling”, and Demosthenes accepted this as the sentiment of the whole audience’ (source: Scholia 104b). Although neither of these anecdotal stories may be (at least, fully) reliable, nevertheless, they do show that ancient readers recognised that Demosthenes sought to elicit from the audience the responses he wanted, and had a variety of strategies to achieve this. As well as stimulating a hostile reaction to Aeschines, it is arguable that this interactive device served to create a self-conscious awareness of civic identity in the law-court. To instruct the members of the audience to call Aeschines a Macedonian stooge is, in fact, to invite them to perceive that there is a gap between themselves and the hireling of the Macedonians. In this context, the use of the civic address is not random: it aims to create a shared civic spirit between the Athenians in court, who are, in turn, invited to think of themselves as being members of a civic group from which Aeschines is excluded. The civic address

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is also an indication that Demosthenes seeks to be engaged in dialogue with the Athenians in court. The address, coupled with the question that follows and mispronunciation of the word μισθωτός, seeks to provoke a precise audience response that serves Demosthenes’ purpose to undermine Aeschines and estrange him from the audience. The example in §52, therefore, indicates how the civic addresses in Demosthenes 18 can be considered as strategic, while further highlighting the use of the judicial address in §196: Ἔστι δὲ ταυτὶ πάντα μοι, τὰ πολλά, πρὸς ὑμᾶς, ἄνδρες δικασταί, τοὺς περιεστηκότας ἔξωθεν καὶ ἀκροωμένους. Gentlemen of the jury, all this long story is intended for you, and for the people who stand outside the barrier and listen. Although it might be thought that this is merely a random variation, the particular context indicates, I argue, that there may have been a particular reason for the use of the judicial address. Demosthenes could have used the civic address, while also referring to the bystanders, as Dinarchus does in Against Demosthenes 66: τί γὰρ ἐροῦμεν ὦ Ἀθηναῖοι πρὸς τοὺς περιεστηκότας ἐξελθόντες ἐκ τοῦ δικαστηρίου ‘what shall we say to the bystanders, Athenians, when we come out of the court’. The judicial address in §196, one may argue, is optional, not required. It creates a ‘They-You’ pattern, which reminds the judges that they have a judicial function, which distinguishes them from mere bystanders. This distinction between the judges and the onlookers may serve to invite the first to think that the second watch and evaluate their law-court performance. The subtle reference to the presence of the bystanders that judge those bearing the responsibility to judge implicitly exploits the intrinsic similarities of the law-court with theatre. A vital part of both kinds of performance is spectacle: the judges are the object of incessant gaze, just as actors are gazed upon onstage, and both should meet the expectations of the audience. One can argue, in principle, that judicial addresses in the public speeches of Demosthenes have a twofold function: the first is described above concerning 18.196, but the judicial addresses also seek to invite the dicasts to take their duty to apply the law seriously and to carry it out in the most unbiased way.13 The examination of the use of addresses in the Embassy and the Crown speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes indicates that the form, frequency and position of civic addresses are not a matter of convention, but have a strategic purpose to serve. Addresses have a direct bearing upon the law-court performance. The potential of addresses to engage the audience and elicit a reaction in court, creates a certain disposition in them towards the litigants, and affects the dicastic verdict by creating a grouping to which both speaker and audience belong. This implicitly excludes the speaker’s opponent, and the technique as a whole sheds light on the use and purpose of cognitive/emotional performative stimuli and their impact upon the audience.

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Law-court ‘Big Brother’! In his speech 22.19, Lysias apostrophises the judges and points out that I conceive it is obvious to you all that suits of this kind are of the closest concern to the people of our city. And hence they will inquire what view you take of such matters, in the belief that, if you condemn these men to death, the rest will be brought to better order; while if you dismiss them unpunished, you will have voted them full licence to do just as they please.14 Although the ballot in the law-court was secret and, in practice, nobody could ever know how each of the judges voted, nevertheless, orators frequently aim to create anxiety that the individual would be tainted with the collective outcome (Dinarchus 2.19; Lysias 12.35, 91). ‘Private matters were bared to the public at large, both judges and bystanders, who then passed on all that was exciting, controversial, or important to their families and no doubt to their friends and acquaintances as well. Thus the court became a route to the whole city’15. This is what Aeschines (1.186–7) and Demosthenes (59.110–1) themselves also point out. Something similar is also at work in both pairs of Aeschines’ and Demosthenes’ speeches that are under examination in this book: the judges are frequently presented as being inspected and evaluated by the Athenians, and indeed by the whole of Greece, regarding the decision they are assigned to make. In Demosthenes 19.133, for example, we read: καὶ τίς οὐ δικαίως ἂν ὑμῖν ἐγκαλέσειε τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν, μᾶλλον δ’ ἁπάντων τῶν Ἑλλήνων [. . .]; Then will not every other citizen or rather every other Greek, be justified in criticising you [. . .]? Statements such as these are designed to impress a sense of responsibility on the judges by inviting them to envisage themselves as being the defenders of Athens and Greece, implying that if they fail in such a great duty, they would be personally accountable not just to the Athenians, but also to the other Hellenes. Demosthenes also creates a sense of the importance of the occasion. Everyone likes to feel that they are part of history: here the speaker makes the judges feel like their decisions are historic. Aeschines also refers to a human audience of inspectors who constantly monitor the judges. In 3.247, for example, we read: Ὡς οὖν μὴ μόνον κρίνοντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ θεωρούμενοι, οὕτω τὴν ψῆφον φέρετε, εἰς ἀπολογισμὸν τοῖς νῦν μὲν οὐ παροῦσι τῶν πολιτῶν ἐπερησομένοις δὲ ὑμᾶς τί ἐδικάζετε. And so you should cast your vote not just as men giving judgment, but as men under observation, with an eye to your defence before those citizens who are not here but will ask you about your verdict.

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Aeschines invites the judges to envisage themselves as being accountable to all the Athenians, who, although they are not present in court, would inquire about and evaluate the judges’ vote. In 2.5, Aeschines wildly exaggerates when he points out that the majority of the civic body is present in the court. According to some rough ancient and modern estimates, the population of Athens was approximately 29,000–30,000.16 Given the significance of the issues, it is highly likely that there was a large audience, but not by any stretch of the imagination the majority of such a large population. No court in Athens was large enough to accommodate the majority of the citizen body. This exaggerated statement is a subtle means of inviting the judges to think that their law-court performance is subject to inspection and assessment no less than that of the speakers. To appreciate the subtlety of this technique, it is important to bear in mind that the judges were not subject to the state process of examination of accounts (euthyna).17 The presence of bystanders and onlookers ‘may have served as an informal euthyna for judges, since it insured that the jurors could not make collective judgements without the immediate knowledge of a section of the community’.18 The implied reference to the gaze, therefore, offers a tacit surrogate for the audit process. The decisions of the judges were not just evaluated by their fellow men but also by the gods.19 As early as in the exordium of his speech 19, Demosthenes reminds the judges that they are accountable to the gods when he asks them not to put any individual above justice and above the oaths that they had sworn to protect the Athenians and the whole city (§1: ὅτι ταῦτα μέν ἐσθ’ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν καὶ ὅλης τῆς πόλεως). ‘In this way, the oath is attributed the role of a safeguard of the state and the dicasts are the ones who lend force to it’.20 Demosthenes reminds them that they should cast their votes in such a way as to respect the laws and oaths that they have sworn (§285: τοὺς ὀμωμοκότας καὶ δικάζοντας ‘sworn judges’; 132, 179, 297).21 These references invite the judges to envisage themselves not just as defenders of Athens, but also of the divine rule of law. They were compelled to make the right decision by the oath that they had sworn, which was considered a matter of legal and religious significance.22 In 19.239–40, there is an attempt by Demosthenes to warn the judges that, even though they may cast their votes secretly, the omnipresent and omniscient divine audience knows everything. In his words: ‘though the vote is secret, it will not escape the notice of the gods. The man who made the law perceived most excellently that, whereas none of these men will know which of you had done him a favour, the divine power of the gods will know who did not vote for a just verdict’. A similar reference is in §268, where the speaker addresses the audience to say that it is right to vote against those who were bribed to betray their fellows, κατ’ ἀνδρῶν προδοτῶν καὶ θεοῖς ἐχθρῶν ‘against traitors and enemies of the gods’. Lack of patriotism is inextricably connected with impiety. Bribery is not just a legal and political offence, but also an offence against the gods; thus, Aeschines and his accomplices are guilty both of treason and of impiety. By merging the divine law with the secular, Demosthenes seeks to create an in-group concord: if the members of the secular audience respect the gods and trust the law – as they should do – then they should punish the enemy of Athens,

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which is also the enemy of the gods. In Demosthenes’ words: ‘it really amazes me if you are going to let off unpunished the man who prevented even the traditional honouring of the gods’ (§86). In this context, there is also an indication of the speaker’s tacit attempt to instil fear in and intimidate the judges. He encourages the judges to think of themselves as being personally accountable to divine justice if their decision does not meet the expectations of the implied divine audience.23 In so doing, of course, he subtly correlates his position with that of both the interests of the city and of divine justice. This correlation becomes clearer in §299, where Demosthenes points out that Zeus, Dione, and all the gods, urge the law-court audience ‘with one accord to punish those who have done any service to the enemy. Without are the aggressors, within are the collaborators’. The way the speaker merges the military and political spaces with religion makes his opponent the target of the audience’s suspicion for the twin offences of lacking patriotism and of impiety. The combination of patriotism and piety comes with a strong exhortation to the audience to punish Aeschines in accordance with divine will. By putting that exhortation into the mouths of the gods, and by identifying civic law with divine justice, Demosthenes tries to underline that the gods request the punishment of Aeschines for the benefit of Athens. Something similar is also at work in Demosthenes 18, which begins rather unusually with a prayer: the gods are asked to help Demosthenes to carry on his speech, securing the benevolent hearing of his fellow Athenians.24 Πρῶτον μέν, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τοῖς θεοῖς εὔχομαι πᾶσι καὶ πάσαις, ὅσην εὔνοιαν ἔχων ἐγὼ διατελῶ τῇ τε πόλει καὶ πᾶσιν ὑμῖν, τοσαύτην ὑπάρξαι μοι παρ’ ὑμῶν εἰς τουτονὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα (§1) To begin, Athenians, I pray to all the gods and goddesses that during this trial you have as much concern for my welfare as I have always had for yours and the city’s. A similar reference to the gods is in §141: Καλῶ δ’ ἐναντίον ὑμῶν, ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τοὺς θεοὺς πάντας καὶ πάσας . . . ‘In your presence, Athenians, I summon all the gods and goddesses’. Prayers and invocations or references to the gods locate the current moment in a larger civic context, which is both secular and sacred and, among other effects, serve the speaker’s purpose to invite the voting members of the audience to envisage themselves as being constantly watched and evaluated by a divine audience. The unspoken purpose is to instil fear in the judges that they would be personally accountable to the omniscient gods if they were to vote in favour of Aeschines. Prayers, especially the one at the beginning of the speech, also create a mood of solemnity and stress the importance of the task in front of the judges, while also presenting the speaker as a pious man. Multiple references to a divine audience of inspectors can also be found in Aeschines’ speeches. In 2.1, a reference to an audience of divine inspectors is indicated by the reference to the dicastic oath, in which all the judges had to swear to abide by the law, give a fair hearing to both sides, and make a just decision.

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Construction and manipulation ὃς ἐτόλμησε παρακελεύσασθαι πρὸς ἄνδρας ὀμωμοκότας τῶν ἀντιδίκων ὁμοίως ἀμφοτέρων ἀκούσεσθαι τοῦ κινδυνεύοντος φωνὴν μὴ ὑπομένειν. This man dared to ask men who have sworn to give both litigants an equal hearing to refuse to listen to the party at risk.

The only obligation that bound the judges to give a just verdict was the dicastic oath, which was a matter of both legal and ritual significance. Another indication of Aeschines’ attempt to warn the judges that the gods are present in the court, and watch them, is served by invocations, as in §180: Παρακαλῶ δὲ καὶ ἱκετεύω σῶσαί με πρῶτον μὲν τοὺς θεούς, δεύτερον δ’ ὑμᾶς τοὺς τῆς ψήφου κυρίους οἷς ἐγὼ πρὸς ἕκαστον τῶν κατηγορημένων εἰς μνήμην εἶναι τὴν ἐμὴν ἀπολελόγημαι, καὶ δέομαι σῶσαί με καὶ μὴ τῷ λογογράφῳ καὶ Σκύθῃ παραδοῦναι. First of all, I urge and implore the gods to save my life, secondly, you who have the vote in your hands, to whom I have offered a defence against each of the charges to the best of my recollection; and I beg you to save me and not to hand me over to this speechwriter, this Scythian. In this section, Aeschines uses three verbs of praying to or invoking the gods – παρακαλῶ, ἱκετεύω, δέομαι – where he could equally well have used only one.25 In context, this striking way of reinforcing the reference to prayer may serve to create a sense of solemnity, underlining the significance and the urgency of the request of the speaker, and making the divine audience a perceptible, if invisible, presence. This serves to instil a sense of responsibility, and even fear, in the judges by inviting them to think that they are personally accountable to their divine evaluators. The link that the speaker strives to make between the emotions of the judges and their upcoming decision is important, since the verdict of the judges can be affected by their emotions. Subtle references to divine monitors can also be found in Aeschines 3, as in §260, for example, where there is an invocation to Earth, Sun, Virtue, Conscience and Education: Ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν, ὦ γῆ καὶ ἥλιε καὶ ἀρετὴ καὶ σύνεσις καὶ παιδεία, ᾗ διαγιγνώσκομεν τὰ καλὰ καὶ τὰ αἰσχρά, βεβοήθηκα καὶ εἴρηκα. O Earth and Sun, and Virtue and Conscience, and Education, through which we distinguish what is noble and shameful, for my part I have spoken and supported my cause. The Sun is personified and deified and, together with Earth, they are considered ‘all-seeing’ divine witnesses of past events, especially of wrongdoing.26 The judges, I argue, are subtly warned here to envisage themselves as being watched by these omniscient and omnipresent deities. A remarkable parallel to the idea

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that Earth and Sun inspect humans can be found in Euripides’, Medea: ‘O Earth, O you blazing light of the Sun, look upon this accused woman before she slays her own children’ (1251–4). Whether Aeschines has this line in mind is hard to say. What can be argued confidently, however, is that the invocation to Earth and Sun invites the audience to bear in mind that they too would be personally inspected by and accountable to the divine agents. In the passages we have examined, both Aeschines and Demosthenes strive to highlight that their opponents are not only traitors to Athens, but also enemies of the gods. There is, of course, a potential risk in stressing the impiety of one’s opponents: the hearer may conclude that such persons will fall victim to divine punishment without the intervention of the judges. To avoid this risk, in 19.71, Demosthenes tries to separate the legal rule of law from divine justice by urging the law-court audience to punish Aeschines and not to leave such a duty to the gods. πῶς οὖν οὐκ ἄτοπον καὶ ὑπερφυὲς ἂν πεποιηκότες ὑμεῖς εἴητε, εἰ ἃ προστάττετε, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀξιοῦτε ποιεῖν ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν τοὺς θεούς, ταῦτ’ αὐτοὶ κύριοι γεγενημένοι τήμερον μὴ ποιήσαιτε, ἀλλ’ ὃν ἐκείνοις εὔχεσθ’ ἐξώλη ποιεῖν αὐτὸν καὶ γένος καὶ οἰκίαν, τοῦτον ἀφείητ’ αὐτοί; μηδαμῶς· ὃς γὰρ ἂν ὑμᾶς λάθῃ, τοῦτον ἀφίετε τοῖς θεοῖς κολάζειν· ὃν δ’ ἂν αὐτοὶ λάβητε, μηκέτ’ ἐκείνοις περὶ τούτου προστάττετε. So would it not be a strange and monstrous action on your part if, when you yourselves have the power today, you were not to take the action which you instruct, or rather claim the gods should take on your behalf, but yourselves let off the man who you pray to them should be destroyed, himself and his family and house? Do not do it. Leave it to the gods to punish any offender whom you do not detect; but when you catch one yourselves, do not give any more instructions about him to them. Demosthenes forms his argument here carefully: he implies that while the divine volition is for Aeschines to be punished, the gods do not represent the inevitable punishing agents. Instead, he emphasises that it was the duty of the judges to cast their verdict in accordance with the will of the gods – that is to vote against Aeschines. In so doing, Demosthenes also emphasises the importance of human action, pointing out that divine intervention does not substitute for the duty of humans (in this case, the judges) to make decisions in order to protect and defend their city.27 He, therefore, makes the judges the agents of the will of the gods. This recalls the significance of self-initiative, which echoes a Greek perception expressed in several sources.28 The use of moods in 18.324 tells us a lot about the ways in which Demosthenes aims to highlight the duty of the judges to punish his opponent: Μὴ δῆτ’, ὦ πάντες θεοί, μηδεὶς ταῦθ’ ὑμῶν ἐπινεύσειεν, ἀλλὰ μάλιστα μὲν καὶ τούτοις βελτίω τινὰ νοῦν καὶ φρένας ἐνθείητε εἰ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔχουσιν ἀνιάτως,

60

Construction and manipulation τούτους μὲν αὐτοὺς καθ᾽ ἑαυτοὺς ἐξώλεις καὶ προώλεις ἐν γῇ καὶ θαλάττῃ ποιήσατε, ἡμῖν δὲ τοῖς λοιποῖς τὴν ταχίστην ἀπαλλαγὴν τῶν ἐπηρτημένων φόβων δότε καὶ σωτηρίαν ἀσφαλῆ No, all you gods, may none of you grant their wish. Best would be to inspire better thoughts and intentions even in them, but if they are indeed incurable, destroy every last one of them utterly and thoroughly on earth and sea. And grant the rest of us as soon as possible release from the fears that threaten and salvation that endures.

The optative is used when Demosthenes asks the gods not to allow Aeschines and his comrades to destroy the city (μὴ ἐπινεύσειεν) or to implant a better frame of mind in them (ἐνθείητε). When the speaker utters the second exhortation regarding the scoundrels’ destruction, however, the imperative (ποιήσατε) is used. The change in the mood here may indicate that there is a gap between the syntactical and the semantic addressee: the syntactical addressee is the gods, whereas the semantic is the Athenians, especially the judges. A human cannot command the gods to a course of action (hence the optative), but Demosthenes, when acting on behalf of the gods, can command human judges to a course of action. The use of imperatives tacitly invites the judges to understand that it is necessary to take immediate and severe action against Aeschines without procrastinating or waiting for any divine interference. The prayer to the gods has a potentially stronger effect upon the audience than any plain suggestion or appeal. It invites them to think that men like Aeschines are condemned by the gods and, therefore, should be damned by pious citizens for the twofold guilt of impiety and treason. Demosthenes is here able to exploit the close connection between piety and patriotism in Athens. All these references to the Athenians, the other Hellenes and the gods in both pairs of speeches that are under examination in this book aim to invite the judges to realise that they too are performers in the sense that they are inspected and evaluated no less than the speakers are. Demosthenes and Aeschines seek to cause anxiety and instil fear in the judges, inviting them to realise that they are constantly in the process of being judged and monitored both by a secular and by a divine audience. As well as inviting the judges to realise the solemnity of the moment and the significance of their verdict, the two orators attempt to direct them to think of the consequences of an unfair decision and to envisage themselves as personally accountable to the omnipotent and omniscient divine monitors.

Emotional appeals The references to implied human and divine monitors aim subtly to instil fear in judges, inviting them to think that they are personally accountable to their own human and divine judges if they cast a wrong and unfair verdict. These references are, therefore, an indirect/inexplicit way of stirring up the audience’s emotions, in the sense that the associative emotion does not come from explicitly laden

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terminology. As argued in Chapter 1, however, there are also direct/explicit ways of linking oratorical language with certain emotions, such as hatred and rage. In what follows, I examine instances of both direct and indirect ways of stirring up the emotions of the law-court audience and of controlling both the judges and the onlookers.

Direct/explicit appeals to emotions Emotionally overwrought statements can be found in all four speeches that are under examination in this book. Examples of language that explicitly refers to hatred (μῖσος) can be found in Demosthenes 19, for example: Πολλὰ δὲ καὶ δεινὰ κατηγορεῖν ἔχων ἔτι πρὸς τούτοις ἕτερ’, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, ἐξ ὧν οὐκ ἔσθ’ ὅστις ἂν οὐκ εἰκότως μισήσειεν αὐτόν (§9) I could add many other serious accusations to these [i.e. Aeschines and Philocrates who are named in what precedes], men of Athens, which would be likely to make everyone turn against him [i.e. Aeschines]. μισῶ δὲ τούτους ὅτι μοχθηροὺς καὶ θεοῖς ἐχθροὺς εἶδον ἐν τῇ πρεσβείᾳ, καὶ ἀπεστέρημαι καὶ τῶν ἰδίων φιλοτιμιῶν διὰ τὴν τούτων δωροδοκίαν πρὸς ὅλην δυσχερῶς ὑμῶν τὴν πρεσβείαν ἐσχηκότων (§223) I hate these men [Aeschines and his accomplices] because throughout the embassy I saw they were wicked and evil, and their corruption has deprived me of my own honours too because of your dissatisfaction with the whole embassy. Language of hatred is used in these sections as a means of audience manipulation: Demosthenes tries to create a collective hostility in the audience against Aeschines and his associates. In §223, for example, Demosthenes refers to their misconduct during the embassy to Philip that had incited the dissatisfaction of the Athenians and led them to deprive him of honours. The emotive use of language serves to construct the audience into a position in which they come to share the speaker’s feelings of personal injury because of the actions of Aeschines. Carey is right to note that the audience is made to feel that they have been wronged personally. In the case of political trials, this is easy enough, for by definition the defendant is accused of an offence against the city. [. . .] There is a consistent tendency to present the offence as an attack on values important to the city as a whole and to induce the judges to register the feelings they would have if they themselves were the victims.29 The link that Demosthenes makes between the emotions of the judges and their upcoming decision is important because, as he himself observes (§228), judicial

62 Construction and manipulation verdicts can sometimes be affected by the judges’ feelings, such as pity, envy and anger. It is precisely this kind of emotional reaction that Demosthenes attempts to create in seeking to arouse feelings of hatred against his opponent. Hatred is not the only kind of language that is used to affect the verdicts of the judges. Aeschines, in 2.3, claims that Demosthenes’ purpose is to excite the judges’ anger (ὀργή) in order to manipulate them.30 Some of the most notable examples of the use of language of anger in this speech can be found at 2.35, 46, 91, 133; 21.123, 127, 195. The attempt to stir up the negative feelings of the audience against opponent(s) is a continual process that begins in the exordium of the speech and ends in the peroration. ἀλλὰ μὴν ὑπέρ γε τοῦ προῖκ’ ἢ μή, τὸ μὲν ἐκ τούτων λαμβάνειν, ἐξ ὧν ἡ πόλις βλάπτεται, πάντες οἶδ’ ὅτι φήσαιτ’ ἂν εἶναι δεινὸν καὶ πολλῆς ὀργῆς ἄξιον (2.7) And as to being unbribed or not, I am sure you would all say that profiting from the injury to the city is a serious crime and rightly infuriates you. παντὶ μὲν γὰρ εἰκότως ἂν ὀργισθείητ’, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τοιαῦτα πεποιηκότι καὶ προδεδωκότι συμμάχους καὶ φίλους καὶ καιρούς, μεθ’ ὧν ἢ καλῶς ἢ κακῶς ἑκάστοις ἔχει τὰ πάντα, οὐ μὴν οὐδενὶ μᾶλλον οὐδὲ δικαιότερον ἢ τούτῳ. ὃς γὰρ ἑαυτὸν τάξας τῶν ἀπιστούντων εἶναι Φιλίππῳ, καὶ μόνος καὶ πρῶτος ἰδὼν ὅτι κοινὸς ἐχθρὸς ἐκεῖνός ἐστιν ἁπάντων τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ηὐτομόλησε καὶ προὔδωκε καὶ γέγονεν ἐξαίφνης ὑπὲρ Φιλίππου, πῶς οὐ πολλάκις οὗτος ἄξιός ἐστ’ ἀπολωλέναι; (2.302–3) For it is reasonable for you to be angry, men of Athens, with every man who by such conduct has betrayed allies, friends, and opportunities on which, for each of them, all their success or failure depends; and with no one should you be more justifiably angry than with that man or Aeschines. For a man who once ranged himself with those who distrusted Philip, and made unassisted the first discovery of Philip’s hostility to all Greece, and then became a deserter and a traitor and suddenly appeared as Philip’s champion – does he not deserve a hundred deaths? In the first passage, Demosthenes directs the anger of the hearers/viewers against those who harm the city to benefit themselves. Although Aeschines is not directly named (he is named in §8 that follows), the content of the passage points to him. The content of the second passage also foments an ambiguity: for it is not clear exactly whom Demosthenes is addressing. He may refer specifically to Aeschines, as the deictic pronoun τούτῳ may indicate, but he may also refer to anyone who committed traitorous acts against his city. This ambiguity does not minimise the force of Demosthenes’ attempt to stir up feelings of anger in the audience against traitors and, by extension, against Aeschines himself who is presented throughout speech 19 as being traitor. The effect of the language of anger is maximised in the peroration, where the speaker aims to consolidate the negative

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disposition in the judges and onlookers that he tried to create in the other parts of his speech. Direct/explicit emotional displays are also used in the Crown speeches. A good example is in Aeschines 3.99, where the speaker accuses Demosthenes of being a liar. Δημοσθένης δ’ ὅταν ἀλαζονεύηται πρῶτον μὲν μεθ’ ὅρκου ψεύδεται, ἐξώλειαν ἐπαρώμενος ἑαυτῷ, δεύτερον δέ, ἃ εὖ οἶδεν οὐδέποτε ἐσόμενα, τολμᾷ λέγειν ἀριθμῶν εἰς ὁπότ’ ἔσται, καὶ ὧν τὰ σώματα οὐχ ἑώρακε, τούτων τὰ ὀνόματα λέγει, κλέπτων τὴν ἀκρόασιν καὶ μιμούμενος τοὺς τἀληθῆ λέγοντας. ᾟ καὶ σφόδρα ἄξιός ἐστι μισεῖσθαι, ὅτι πονηρὸς ὢν καὶ τὰ τῶν χρηστῶν σημεῖα διαφθείρει. But Demosthenes, when making grandiose claims, firstly adds an oath to his lies, calling destruction down on himself, and secondly has the nerve to give a date for events he knows will never happen and provides the names of people he has not seen in person, deceiving his hearers and mimicking the manner of people telling the truth. And for this he deserves fierce hatred, because as well as being a criminal, he also obliterates the signs that distinguish honest men. In context, the language of hatred reinforces Aeschines’ attempt to elicit and direct the emotions of the audience against his opponent, whose inclination to fabricate stories and lie is presented as an important reason why he deserves to he hated by the audience. The direct reference to Demosthenes at the beginning of this passage, together with the indirect one at the beginning of the last clause that accompanies the wording of hatred (in bold letters), points towards the use of physical gestures as a means of more forcibly directing the audience’s hatred against the indicated person. Another appeal to the emotions of the audience is in Aeschines 3.144, where the speaker castigates the stoicism with which the audience puts up with the crimes attributed to Demosthenes: Ἐκεῖνο γὰρ πεπόνθατε πρὸς Δημοσθένην· συνείθισθε ἤδη τἀδικήματα τὰ τούτου ἀκούειν, ὥστε οὐ θαυμάζετε. Δεῖ δὲ οὐχ οὕτως, ἀλλ’ ἀγανακτεῖν καὶ τιμωρεῖσθαι, εἰ χρὴ τὰ λοιπὰ τῇ πόλει καλῶς ἔχειν. This is what Demosthenes has done to you; you are already habituated to hearing of his crimes, and as a result you feel no surprise. This is not the right way; you should be indignant and punish them, if the city is to prosper in the future. Interestingly, the audience is not only criticised, but also instructed as to what to feel, think and do. Aeschines, rather like Demosthenes in 18 and 19, associates the language of indignation with the language of punishment. Here, the aim is to direct the disposition of the judges towards the speaker’s adversary, to make

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them feel indignant (ἀγανακτεῖν) and to make them want to punish him (τιμωρεῖσθαι). Aeschines’ attempt to control the audience and affect their judgment is reinforced by his striking reference to the future of Athens, which is made in such a way as to link the present decision of the judges to the city’s future prosperity. In this way, Aeschines underlines the importance of the moment and puts more pressure on the judges to realise that their ‘verdict is invested with a political dimension that goes far beyond the current legal dispute itself’.31

Indirect/inexplicit appeals to emotions The emotional tenor is always accentuated when harsh criticism culminates in expletives: swear words and profane language often occur within a strong negativeemotional context. Psychological studies have shown that the use of the language of abuse is an effective way of conveying that one feels very strongly about an individual or a situation, as well as of evoking negative feelings in someone else. Besides literal or denotative uses, the primary use of swearing is for emotional connotation, which occurs in the forms of epithets or as insults directed toward others. Epithets are offensive emotional outbursts of single words or phrases used to express the speaker’s frustration, anger or surprise.32 Strong offensive words, insulting nicknames, sex-related insults and coarse, lowlife language are used in the speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes as emotionally arousing stimuli. The language of abuse, often reinforced by the immediate context in which it is deployed, seeks to exploit people’s negative emotional attitudes towards the target of insult, or to emphasise the hostile emotions (real or fabricated) of the speaker by its very lack of restraint, thereby inviting the target audiences to share the same emotions. Hermogenes, in his work On Types of Style, discusses two main styles of harsh language that provoke emotions: asperity, when the speaker addresses someone more important than himself (such as the judges or the members of the Assembly), and vehemence, when he addresses an inferior (such as an adversary). In §§356 and 359, Hermogenes, when examining how to convey an appearance of anger by means of word choice, refers to two abusive terms that are used in Demosthenes 18.139: ἰαμβειοφάγος ‘iamb-eater’ and 18.209: γραμματοκύφων ‘hunchbacked clerk’. For Hermogenes, ‘rough and vehement diction and coined words are indicative of anger, especially in sudden attacks on your opponent, where unusual words that seem to be coined on the spur of the moment are quite suitable, words such as “iamb-eater” or “hunchbacked clerk” ’ (§359). All such words are suitable since they seem to have been dictated by emotion. The context in which the abusive reference to Aeschines as being γραμματοκύφων is placed, §209, is worth closer examination because of the abrupt transition from the previous section. In §208, Demosthenes impassionedly praises the Athenian ancestors before moving suddenly to a harsh personal attack on Aeschines. The shift from a patriotic eulogy to a harsh diatribe is not ‘depressing’,

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as Goodwin claims.33 Rather, it seems to be a part of Demosthenes’ rhetorical strategy to create a negative emotional and cognitive disposition in the audience against Aeschines. Having their enjoyment of praise of themselves and of their ancestors explosively interrupted, they might more readily turn against the subject introduced by the interruption than against the orator who made it, and feel the contrast between them the more strongly because of their shock.34 Another example of vehemence is the emotionally loaded insulting term in 18.33: οὕτω δ᾽ ἦν ὁ Φίλιππος ἐν φόβῳ καὶ πολλῇ ἀγωνίᾳ, μὴ καὶ ταῦτα προειληφότος αὐτοῦ, εἰ πρὸ τοῦ τοὺς Φωκέας ἀπολέσθαι ψηφίσαισθε βοηθεῖν, ἐκφύγοι τὰ πράγματ᾽ αὐτόν, ὥστε μισθοῦται τὸν κατάπτυστον τουτονί, οὐκέτι κοινῇ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων πρέσβεων ἀλλ᾽ ἰδίᾳ καθ᾽ αὑτόν, τοιαῦτα πρὸς ὑμᾶς εἰπεῖν καὶ ἀπαγγεῖλαι δι᾽ ὧν ἅπαντ᾽ ἀπώλετο. He was so nervous and so much worried by the fear that, in spite of his Thracian success, his enterprise would slip from his fingers if you should intervene before the Phocians perished, that he hired this contemptible man – all by himself this time, not in common with his colleagues – to make that speech and to render that report to you, by which all was lost. The adjective κατάπτυστον, literally meaning ‘someone worth being spat at’, which, in context, is superfluous because the sentence makes sense without it, indicates Demosthenes’ contempt, disgust and hostility towards his adversary because he betrayed the polis and its people after becoming a hireling of Philip.35 The verbal display of the emotional state of Demosthenes is a means of inviting the audience to experience his anger, disgust and a feeling of hostility towards Aeschines. Laden language here aims to create a community by binding the speaker to the audience, while simultaneously estranging his opponent from the group. In Aeschines 2.5, 99, to mention another example, insults serve to create a community by capitalising on the negative emotions and attitudes of the Athenian law-court audience towards two marginalised characters, the kinaidos and the sycophant, qualities that are attributed to Demosthenes. Κἂν μὴ προϊούσης τῆς ἀπολογίας ἐλέγξω καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν οὖσαν ψευδῆ, καὶ τὸν τολμήσαντ’ εἰπεῖν ἀνόσιον καὶ συκοφάντην, κἂν τἆλλα πάντα μηδὲν ἀδικῶν φαίνωμαι, θανάτου τιμῶμαι. And if in the course of my defence I do not prove both that the accusation is false and that the man who had the nerve to make it is an impious sycophant, even if on every other charge I am patently innocent, I propose a penalty of death. ἐν παισὶ μὲν γὰρ ὢν ἐκλήθη δι’ αἰσχρουργίαν τινὰ καὶ κιναιδίαν Βάταλος, ἐκ παίδων δὲ ἀπαλλαττόμενος καὶ δεκαταλάντους δίκας ἑκάστῳ τῶν ἐπιτρόπων λαγχάνων Ἀργᾶς, ἀνὴρ δὲ γενόμενος προσείληφε τὴν τῶν πονηρῶν κοινὴν ἐπωνυμίαν, συκοφάντης.

66 Construction and manipulation As a child he was known as Batalus for a certain readiness for humiliation and perversion. When he left childhood behind, he brought suits for ten talents against each of his guardians and got the name Argas. As a man, he acquired the further name common to all unscrupulous men, sycophant. Aeschines attacks his adversary harshly by accumulating insulting references in a confined space, as in the second passage. Five abusive terms and insulting nicknames are used there with the aim of presenting Demosthenes’ morally debased and perverted life and character from childhood to adolescence and manhood: αἰσχρουργίαν, κιναιδίαν, Βάταλος, Ἀργᾶς,36 συκοφάντης. The nickname Βάταλος despite being of unknown origin seems to be associated with Demosthenes’ effeminate and defective physique and with his moral vices and cowardliness,37 while the reference to κίναιδος points to his failure to be part of the Athenian community.38 These sex-related abuses aim to capitalise on popular disapproval of the unmanly person, stirring up strong negative emotions – disgust and aversion – against the target of criticism. Oratory (as well as comedy), aiming at a popular audience, is the genre least delicate and respecting of sexuality, eager and willing to target sexual, physical and moral deviancy. The accusation of sycophancy is used many times throughout Aeschines 2 as another means of attacking Demosthenes.39 Unlike the modern English word sycophant, which carries the sense of a flatterer, this notion means malignant accuser in Greek. References to sycophancy aim to exploit the negative emotional attitudes of people, especially their fear, insecurity and prejudices. There is ample evidence about the enmity felt by Athenians towards sycophants. Aristotle, for example, notes that calumny is productive of hatred and anger (Rhetoric 1382a2–3). There is no wonder, therefore, that Aristophanes, as Christ points out, ‘brought sycophants on stage as figures of ridicule and universal disdain’.40 Aristophanes’ Acharnians 725–6, 517–9 and Demosthenes’ Against Aristogeiton 60–3 present sycophants as being marginalised in Athenian society.41

Defence versus prosecution Appeals to the emotions in the law-court are an area where the approach used was influenced by the nature of the case. As the prosecutor in the Embassy trial, for example, Demosthenes could not bring his children into the law-court and appeal to pity, whereas Aeschines, as the defendant, could use this powerful technique to stir up and manipulate the judges’ emotions – thus affecting their verdict. The prosecutors, on the one hand, adopt a chiefly aggressive focus in their speeches – they seek primarily to attack and undermine the defendant, if they are to win the case. As Carey rightly points out, the need to arouse hostility against an opponent ‘inevitably figures more prominently in the speech of the plaintiff who must move the jurors first to convict and then (where appropriate) to impose the desired penalty’.42 The defendants, on the other hand, can adopt a twofold, defensive and aggressive, focus, in that they are both self-promoters and assassins of their opponents. These differences in technique between prosecution and

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defence speeches, especially in respect of the use of emotions, may have had a significant impact upon the audience. Aeschines’ practice, for example, in the Embassy trial to bring children in the law-court to awaken the judges’ compassion was, according to ancient testimony, a powerful means of audience control. The most notable examples of this appeal are in §§152, 179, 180. These three sections share a significant common feature: in all of them, there are references to the impact of Aeschines’ conviction on his family, especially his children. There is ample evidence to show that to bring children into the law-court was a common practice that aimed to influence the verdict of the judges by appealing to their compassion. In Aristophanes, Wasps 568–72, for example, Philocleon describes how a litigant uses the presence of his children in the court to influence the judges. If none of this persuades us, he starts dragging his kids up there by the hand, daughters and sons, and I listen while they cringe and bleat in chorus and then their father implores me for their sake, trembling as if I were a god, to let him off in his audit: ‘if you enjoy the bleat of the lamb, please pity the cry of the kid’. In lines 977–8, the whining puppies of the dog Labes are called to mount the rostrum and awaken the pity and the compassion of Philocleon, who cries, as he himself admits (claiming, however, that it was because of a hot soup; 983–4). Oratorical sources themselves provide similar insights into the potential effect of this practice on the audience. In Lysias 20.34, for example, it is claimed that sometimes the judges are so much influenced by the whining of the speaker’s children that ‘they overlook the father’s transgressions on account of the children’. In Demosthenes 21.99, the speaker refers to the (alleged) tactic that Meidias was about to use in order to elicit the pity of the judges: pity, forsooth! He will group his children round him and weep and beg you to pardon him for their sakes. That is his last move. But I need not remind you that pity is the due of those who unjustly suffer more than they can endure, not of those who are paying the penalty for the misdeeds they have committed (19.310; 21.186, 188; 38.27).43 It should be noted at this point that primary non-forensic accounts (such as in comedy) as well as the prosecutors’ anticipatory descriptions of the way their opponents would appeal to pity are tendentious. Nevertheless, if used carefully, these accounts are helpful in reconstructing a basic view about oratorical performance. This use of pathetic appearances by a litigant’s children is a way of appealing to the judges’ sense of epieikeia. In Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1374b1ff.), epieikeia is defined as a means of tempering the strictness of the written legal statutes about the litigant’s transgressions (cf. 1374a27; Nicomachean Ethics 1143a21ff. where epieikeia is connected with forgiveness). It is worth bearing in mind that

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Aeschines never explicitly asks the judges to be lenient with, feel compassion for or pardon him, since such an overt demand would risk weakening his legal position by pointing to his guilt. The appeal has to be indirect. Aeschines rather cleverly strives to arouse the pity of the judges for his innocent children, who would suffer unfairly, if the judges apply the rigour and harshness of the law. To emphasise what is at stake ‘is a way of charging the jury to take seriously the power at their disposal, and be certain that they do not do grave harm, as they can, on the basis of insufficient evidence’,44 especially when the accusations involve bribery, as in this case.

The language of performance: Imperatives and questions In addition to the use of the language that aims to stir up the emotions of the audience, two more aspects of language serve the speaker’s purpose to communicate with and win over the judges and onlookers: imperatives and questions. The term ‘imperative’, in this book, applies to forms with imperative morphology.45 In Attic forensic speeches, the morphological imperative is one of the commonest ways of verbalising an imperative illocution. It is part of the law-court etiquette, for example, for the speaker to call the herald to read a decree (as in Demosthenes 19.32, 61, 62, 63, 69, 86, etc.). The imperative, even in this conventional use, operates as a speech act with directive illocutionary force, attempting to get the addressee to do what the speaker requests.46 As first proposed by Austin, and further explored and perfected by Searle, speech act theory indicates that (imperative) utterances are not used just to say things, but rather actively to do things. Some utterances embody their own performance (what Austin calls ‘performative sentence or performative utterance or performatives’): for example, in saying something such as ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife’, one actually performs the ritual of marriage, provided the circumstances and the participants are correct.47 In forensic speeches, imperatives act as performative utterances demanding an action from the addressee. This action is not always conventional, as it is in the action of getting the herald to read a decree. Imperatives, such as those in the passages that are discussed in what follows, are used to address the audience and to require them to think, listen and act. They are, in other words, an undisguised illocutionary act extending direct authority over the judges, who are invited to take a specific kind of action, including verbal or non-verbal reactions – thorubos, to change or reaffirm their disposition towards the two litigants. An example is in 19.75, where four present imperatives are used to make emphatic exhortations. The use of the negative particle μή (with some variations in its form), followed by the present imperative, indicates that Demosthenes asks the audience not to continue listening to Aeschines’ argument (μὴ . . . ἀκούετε), or putting up with it (μηδ’ ἀνέχεσθε), nor to allow him to accuse other Hellenes for the misfortunes that he brought to them (μηδὲ κατηγορεῖν ἐᾶτε).48 At the end of §75 there is a positive exhortation: Demosthenes urges the audience to ask Aeschines a question that he is unable to answer (τοῦτ’ ἐρωτᾶτε). By using this

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provocative language, in negative and positive form, the speaker invites the audience to take action straightaway,49 by ‘blocking the opponent simply by not letting him continue making a particular assertion’ and by ‘making such an assertion of their own or put some question to the opponent’.50 The progressive/repeated aspect of the present imperative maximises the effect that the speaker’s instruction would have upon the audience. Demosthenes is not asking the audience to obstruct Aeschines just once, but, by using any means allowed in court,51 to continue obstructing him throughout his speech whenever he makes arguments similar to those anticipated by Demosthenes. Durative present imperatives are also used in §97 to demand a similar action from the audience: εἴργετ’ οὖν, εἴργετ’ αὐτὸν τῶν ὑπὲρ τῆς εἰρήνης λόγων, εἰς δὲ τοὺς ὑπὲρ τῶν πεπραγμένων ἐμβιβάζετε. So stop him, stop him from speaking on the peace; steer him into speaking on his actions. The rhetorical construction of this clause amplifies the illocutionary force of the two imperatives: the first imperative is repeated in an emphatic position at the beginning of the clause (εἴργετ’ οὖν, εἴργετ’) and the second (ἐμβιβάζετε) is used in an equally emphatic position at the end of the clause. The fact that the sentence begins and ends with imperatives strengthens the effect of Demosthenes’ instruction to the audience to take action against Aeschines by interrupting his speech. Virtuoso passages that contain strategically used imperatives can also be found in Aeschines 2, as in §8: ἐὰν ἐξελέγξω Κτησιφῶντα καὶ παράνομα γεγραφότα καὶ ψευδῆ καὶ ἀσύμφορα τῇ πόλει, λύετε, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τὰς παρανόμους γνώμας, βεβαιοῦτε τῇ πόλει τὴν δημοκρατίαν, κολάζετε τοὺς ὑπεναντίως τοῖς νόμοις καὶ τῷ συμφέροντι τῷ ὑμετέρῳ πολιτευομένους. If I prove that Ctesiphon has drafted a measure that both contravenes the laws and is dishonest and against the city’s interests, overturn the illegal proposals, men of Athens, confirm the democratic constitution for the city, and punish the men whose political activity is opposed to the laws and to your best interests. The accumulation of key notions of the Athenian ideology (τῇ πόλει – used twice, τὴν δημοκρατίαν, τοῖς νόμοις, τῷ συμφέροντι τῷ ὑμετέρῳ) and imperatives (λύετε, βεβαιοῦτε, κολάζετε) reinforces the importance of the moment and the impact that the outcome of the trial would have on the city, the laws and the Athenians themselves. Imperatives are also strengthened by the use of a civic address (ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι), which, in this context, functions as an invitation to the audience to envisage themselves as representatives of the Athenian dēmos,

70 Construction and manipulation as protectors of their city and of the laws that are in danger because of Ctesiphon (who is named) and Demosthenes (who is implied). The imperatives in Demosthenes 19.262 are also worth closer examination because of the use of medical terminology: ταῦτα νὴ τὴν Δήμητρα, εἰ δεῖ μὴ ληρεῖν, εὐλαβείας οὐ μικρᾶς δεῖται, ὡς βαδίζον γε κύκλῳ καὶ δεῦρ’ ἐλήλυθεν, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τὸ νόσημα τοῦτο. ἕως οὖν ἔτ’ ἐν ἀσφαλεῖ, φυλάξασθε καὶ τοὺς πρώτους εἰσαγαγόντας ἀτιμώσατε. Not to mince matters, this really does need serious attention, men of Athens, as that disease, spreading around has reached here too. While you are safe, guard against it, and disfranchise those who are the first to have brought it in. The medical metaphor here aims to exploit the anxiety and fear associated with infectious diseases,52 thus creating a negative disposition among the law-court audience in respect of Aeschines, who is presented as a pernicious, infectious and dangerous agent operating unseen.53 Demosthenes not only underlines the seriousness of the disease, but he also invites his fellow Athenians to be vigilant and to take action against those who are spreading it. Demosthenes draws effectively on the analogy between the human body and the body politic: as doctors deal with an urgent medical situation, taking immediate action against disease, so the Athenians should hurry to provide the care necessary for the Athenian body politic (φυλάξασθε), by cutting off the afflicted from the rest of society (ἀτιμώσατε).54 The imperatives in this passage very neatly shift from metaphor to literal terminology, while also, rather cleverly, spelling out the nature of the excision needed to stop the disease. By urging the judges to disfranchise (ἀτιμώσατε) Aeschines, Demosthenes strengthens this shift from the metaphorical to the literal: disfranchisement (ἀτιμία) was a heavy legal penalty imposed on male Athenian citizens, being principally applied if they were debtors to the state or had neglected their civic duties. Relevant to the shift from metaphor to literal terminology is also the choice of the tense. The aorist imperatives are a sharper, more authoritative command than the present imperative, and their use in this context indicates that attention is paid to the urgency of specific and well-defined actions against Aeschines: φυλάξασθε the city by ἀτιμώσατε Aeschines – the second imperative denotes, as argued, a specific legal procedure.55 To underline the urgency of the actions that should be undertaken, Demosthenes asks the judges to punish Aeschines while they are still safe and still can (ἕως οὖν ἔτ’ ἐν ἀσφαλεῖ). The Athenians are invited here to think of themselves as bearing responsibility for any negative consequences for their city should they fail to deal decisively with Aeschines, the carrier and spreader of disease, at this juncture. In order to influence and convince the audience, Aeschines and Demosthenes also use rhetorical questions. Due to their ubiquity in forensic speeches, questions, like imperatives, seem to modern scholars to be used conventionally and to lack

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any strict rules to dictate their wide use in speeches. This is perhaps why they have been seriously under-researched in scholarship on the Greek orators. Their strategic purpose, however, is undoubted and well established in ancient rhetorical treatises. Longinus, for example, in his treatise On the Sublime 18.1–2, points out that, by using questions, the speaker ‘gives intensity to his language and makes it much more effective and vehement’. A good example of the strategic function of questions can be found in Aeschines 2.136–9: with no fewer than thirteen questions, this passage represents the highest concentration of questions in the Attic speeches.56 [1] Ἀλλ’ οὗτος μόνος τὸ συμβησόμενον ἠγνόει; [2] ὑμεῖς δὲ αὐτοὶ δημοσίᾳ πῶς διέκεισθε; [3] οὐ πάντες προσεδοκᾶτε Φίλιππον ταπεινώσειν Θηβαίους, ὁρῶντα αὐτῶν τὴν θρασύτητα, καὶ τῷ μὴ βούλεσθαι δύναμιν ἀνθρώπων ἀπίστων ἐπαυξῆσαι; [4] Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ οὐ μεθ’ ἡμῶν τἀναντία Θηβαίοις ἐπρέσβευον, καὶ τελευτῶντες προσέκρουον φανερῶς ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ καὶ διηπειλοῦντο τοῖς τῶν Θηβαίων πρέσβεσιν; [5] αὐτοὶ δὲ οὐκ ἠπόρουν καὶ ἐφοβοῦντο οἱ τῶν Θηβαίων πρέσβεις; [6] Θετταλοὶ δὲ οὐ κατεγέλων τῶν ἄλλων, ὑπὲρ αὑτῶν φάσκοντες τὴν στρατείαν εἶναι; (137) [7] τῶν δ’ ἑταίρων τινὲς τῶν Φιλίππου οὐ διαρρήδην πρός τινας ἡμῶν ἔλεγον ὅτι τὰς ἐν Βοιωτοῖς πόλεις κατοικιεῖ Φίλιππος; [8] Θηβαῖοι δ’ οὐκ ἐξεληλύθεσαν πανδημεί, ἀπιστοῦντες τοῖς πράγμασιν; [9] ὑμῖν δὲ ταῦθ’ ὁρῶν οὐκ ἔπεμψεν ἐπιστολὴν ὁ Φίλιππος, ἐξιέναι πάσῃ τῇ δυνάμει βοηθήσοντας τοῖς δικαίοις; [10] οἱ δὲ νῦν πολεμικοὶ καὶ τὴν εἰρήνην ἀνανδρίαν καλοῦντες, οὐ διεκώλυσαν ὑμᾶς ἐξελθεῖν εἰρήνης καὶ συμμαχίας ὑμῖν γεγενημένης, δεδιέναι φάσκοντες μὴ τοὺς στρατιώτας ὑμῶν ὁμήρους λάβῃ Φίλιππος; (138) [11] Πότερον οὖν ἐγὼ τοὺς προγόνους ἐκώλυσα τὸν δῆμον μιμεῖσθαι, ἢ σὺ καὶ οἱ μετὰ σοῦ συνεστηκότες ἐπὶ τὰ κοινά; [12] καὶ πότερον ἦν ἀσφαλεστέρα καὶ καλλίων Ἀθηναίοις ἡ ἔξοδος, ἡνίκα ἤκμαζον μὲν τῇ μανίᾳ Φωκεῖς, ἐπολέμουν δὲ Φιλίππῳ, εἶχον δὲ Ἀλπωνὸν καὶ Νίκαιαν, οὔπω παραδόντος Φαλαίκου Μακεδόσι, τὰς σπονδὰς δέ, οἷς ἐμέλλομεν βοηθεῖν, τὰς μυστηριώτιδας οὐκ ἐδέχοντο, Θηβαίους δ’ ὄπισθεν κατελείπομεν, ἢ μεταπεμπομένου μὲν Φιλίππου, ὅρκων δ’ ἡμῖν καὶ συμμαχίας γεγενημένης, Θετταλῶν δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἀμφικτυόνων στρατευόντων; (139) [13] Οὐ πολλῷ καλλίων οὗτος ἦν ὁ καιρὸς ἐκείνου, ἐν ᾧ διὰ τὴν σὴν ἀνανδρίαν καὶ ἅμα φθόνον ἐσκευαγώγησαν ἐκ τῶν ἀγρῶν Ἀθηναῖοι, πρεσβεύοντος ἐμοῦ τὴν τρίτην ἤδη πρεσβείαν τὴν ἐπὶ τὸ κοινὸν τῶν Ἀμφικτυόνων, ἐφ’ ἣν τολμᾷς με λέγειν ὡς οὐ χειροτονηθεὶς ᾠχόμην, ἐχθρὸς δ’ ὢν οὔπω καὶ τήμερον ἠθέληκάς με εἰσαγγεῖλαι παραπρεσβεύσασθαι; οὐ γὰρ δὴ φθονεῖς γέ μοι τῶν εἰς τὸ σῶμα τιμημάτων. But was Phalaecus the only one who failed to discern what the outcome was going to be? How stood public opinion here? Were you not yourselves all expecting that Philip was going to humble the Thebans, when he saw their audacity, and because he was unwilling to increase the power of men whom he could not trust? And did not the Lacedaemonians take part with us in the

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No fewer than four sections in a row consist of questions, some of which are directed to the audience and others (those in §§138–9) to Demosthenes. Demetrius, in his treatise On Style 279, discusses several instances of questions in Demosthenes’ speeches (particularly those in 18.71), which, like those in Aeschines 2, include references to history, criticism against people and refutation. He points out that questions of this kind are designed to put the hearer into a sort of corner, defeating his critical resistance and giving him no respite.57 This would definitely be true for a series of questions such as this in §§136–9. Unlike positive statements, which, according to Demetrius, aim only to convey information to the audience, questions are doubly effective. They are, first, a means of affecting the listeners with a relentless succession of blows, leaving no opportunity for them to come up with and vocalise a response. Second, the questions in §§136–9 serve

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as an attempt to shape the memory of the audience in such a way as to incriminate an adversary as responsible for the misfortunes experienced by the city. The incrimination of Demosthenes is clearly the purpose of the question in §139, for instance. Another example of a concentration of questions in limited space are the six questions in Demosthenes 19.303–4: [1] τίς γάρ ἐσθ’ ὁ τὸν Ἴσχανδρον προσάγων ὑμῖν τὸ κατ’ ἀρχάς, ὃν παρὰ τῶν ἐν Ἀρκαδίᾳ φίλων τῇ πόλει δεῦρ’ ἥκειν ἔφη; [2] τίς ὁ συσκευάζεσθαι τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ Πελοπόννησον Φίλιππον βοῶν, ὑμᾶς δὲ καθεύδειν; [3] τίς ὁ τοὺς μακροὺς καὶ καλοὺς λόγους ἐκείνους δημηγορῶν, καὶ τὸ Μιλτιάδου καὶ Θεμιστοκλέους ψήφισμ’ ἀναγιγνώσκων καὶ τὸν ἐν τῷ τῆς Ἀγλαύρου τῶν ἐφήβων ὅρκον; [4] οὐχ οὗτος; [5] τίς ὁ πείσας ὑμᾶς μόνον οὐκ ἐπὶ τὴν ἐρυθρὰν θάλατταν πρεσβείας πέμπειν, ὡς ἐπιβουλευομένης μὲν ὑπὸ Φιλίππου τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ὑμῖν δὲ προσῆκον προορᾶν ταῦτα καὶ μὴ προΐεσθαι τὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων; [6] οὐχ ὁ μὲν γράφων τὸ ψήφισμ’ Εὔβουλος ἦν, ὁ δὲ πρεσβεύων εἰς Πελοπόννησον Αἰσχίνης οὑτοσί; Who was it that at the beginning brought before you Iskhandros, who he said came here from Athens’ friends in Arkadia? Who was it cried that Philip was forming a coalition of Greece and the Peloponnese while you were fast asleep? Who made those fine long speeches, and read out Miltiades’ decree and Themistocles’ and the young men’s oath in the precinct of Aglauros? Was it not Aeschines? Who persuaded you to send embassies, all but to the Red Sea, on the grounds that Philip was plotting against Greece, and you ought to be aware of that and not abandon the interests of Greece? Was it not Eubulus who proposed the decree and this man Aeschines who went as ambassador to the Peloponnese? The interrogative pronoun τίς (who?) is repeated at the beginning of four cola; this repetition is an emphatic way to invite the audience to look for the person who is presented as having deceived the audience and who made them follow policies that had sorry consequences for each one of them. This repetition, coupled with the meticulous choice of personal pronouns – ὑμῖν, used twice in the first and fifth question, and ὑμᾶς, used twice in the second and fourth question – aims to create what I call the ‘He-You’ pattern: ‘He’, the hireling of Philip (the person is implied by the interrogative pronoun), deceived ‘You’, the Athenians. This pattern is a means for Demosthenes to artfully construct the audience’s frame of mind by estranging Aeschines from the Athenians present at the trial by presenting him as being inimical to the best interests of the Athenian community. The first three questions that are introduced by τίς are answered by another question that implicitly points to Aeschines (οὐχ οὗτος). The directional function of language is more emphatic in the interrogative part of the last clause, where Aeschines is directly named (Αἰσχίνης οὑτοσί). Both examples of interrogation that function as answers to previous questions have a demonstrative pronoun (οὗτος,

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οὑτοσί), which is an unambiguous indication of the use of gesticulation (Deixis ad Oculos). Even without gesticulation, however, the wording certainly invites the audience to look at Aeschines. In context, questions give the impression that the speaker is involved in a dialogue with the audience in order to provoke a response and to create a hostile disposition in the audience towards Aeschines.

Notes 1 Ellis (1976) 99. 2 The percentage given in the brackets is the quotient of the division of the number of instances and the total number of sections per speech. 3 Judicial address is used twice, in §§24 and in §54 (ratio: 1.1 percent). The first occurrence is well suited, since the speaker uses it when he praises the judges for having offered a fair hearing to both litigants, as they were obliged to do. By praising them for carrying their duties out with success, Aeschines aims to elicit their goodwill for himself. The second judicial address seems to be a random variation. 4 Chapter 1, pp. 9–10. 5 Cf. Aeschines 1.7, 187; Demosthenes 21.177. 6 Lysias, Against Eratosthenes 29: ὑμᾶς, 30: ὑμεῖς; 38, 40, 57: ὑμῖν; [Demosthenes] 59.27: ὑμεῖς. Cf. Carey and Reid (1985) 2; Carey (1992) 86; Wolpert (2003) 539, 543. 7 Loraux (2006) 210. Further on autochthony: Plato’s Menexenus 237b, 245d; Lysias’ Funeral Oration 17; Demosthenes’ Funeral Oration 4. Cf. Hall (1997) 54–5; Loraux (2006) 28–9, 210–4, 245–6. 8 From 451/450 BC, marriages of Athenian citizens with foreigners were invalid and punishable. Connor (1971) 170–1; MacDowell (1978) 87; Todd (1993) 178; Carey (2000) 102, n. 40. 9 Todd (1993) 288; cf. Harrison (1971) 200–3; MacDowell (1978) 168. 10 Todd (1993) 243. Demosthenes 57.28: ‘my father had four sons born of the same mother as myself, and when they died he buried them in our ancestral tomb, which belongs in common to all members of the families’. 11 For a survey of primary sources on diorthōsis: Lausberg (1998) 346–9, §§784–6. 12 Couch (1944) 173–4; Tacon (2001) 178–9; Yunis (2001) 140. Another anecdotal story about Demosthenes’ strategic mispronunciation of words is recorded in Plutarch, Lives of the Ten Orators 845b, where we are told that the speaker mispronounced the name of the god Asclepius to note that this god is benign (Ἀσκλήπιος instead of Ἀσκληπιός). 13 This is also the purpose of all twelve addresses to the judges in Demosthenes 19: §§4, 29, 78, 98, 148, 201, 214, 221 (twice), 268, 310, 311. 14 Translation: Lamb (1943) 501–3. 15 Hunter (1994) 101. On social control: Ober (1989) 148–51; Hunter (1994) 96–119; Lanni (1997) 189. 16 Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae 1131–3 and Herodotus 5.97.2 refer to 30,000 Athenians. Demosthenes 25.51, however, refers to 22,000 Athenians. Not all of these estimates are accurate, especially inasmuch as there were also metics, mercenaries and slaves in Athens who could not participate in the meetings of the Assembly and the law-court. Synthesising information from several primary sources, Hansen argues that the Athenian citizen body in the fourth century would have been ca 29,000. Hansen (1986) esp. 26–43, 65–9. 17 On euthyna: Todd (1993) 112–3, 302. 18 Lanni (1997) 189. 19 On gods in oratory: [Demosthenes] 59.109, 126; Demosthenes 19.239; Lysias 6.53. Cf. King (1955) 363–76; Edwards (2008) 107–15. 20 Martin (2009) 77.

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21 Harris (1994) n. 6–7 cites several references to the oath that the judges swear: Aeschines 1.170; 2.1; 3.6, 8, 198, 233, 257; Andokides 1.2, 9, 105; Demosthenes 18.1, 121; 20.118; 21.177, 212; 24.148, 175; 25.99, 149–51; 27.68; 39.41; 45.87; 55.35; Dinarchus 3.17; Lysias 14.22, 40; 15.8–11; 18.13; Isaeus 2.47; 4.31; 6.65; 8.46. Cf. King (1955) 367–8. 22 On the judicial oath: Plescia (1970); Zaidman and Pantel (1989) 100; Lanni (1997) 188; Mirhady (2007) 48–59. 23 The idea that the judges were personally accountable to the gods for their decisions is parodied in Aristophanes, Wasps 1001–2, 158–60 where Philocleon says that Apollo told him not to acquit anyone because he will dry up and blow away. 24 Prayers in the proem are used only in Lycurgus 1.1 and in some speeches of religious content. Yunis (2001) 105; Martin (2009) 93. 25 Pulleyn (1997) 56–69. 26 Wagener (1931) 87–8. 27 Several sources underline the idea that divine intervention does not substitute or undermine human determination. A key fact for the accomplishment of εὐδαιμονία (‘well-being’) is one’s actions; Plato, Republic 388a-b; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1099a31–1099b7, 1099b20–5, 1100b8–11. Cf. Nussbaum (1986) 318–23, 332, 380–1; Mogyorodi (1996) 359; Wallace (2007) 139. 28 Aeschylus fr. 395: φιλεῖ δὲ τῷ κάμνοντι συσπεύδειν θεός ‘god loves to aid the man who toils’; Sophocles fr. 407: οὐκ ἔστι τοῖς μὴ δρῶσι σύμμαχος τύχη ‘good luck never accompanies those who do not work’. Aesop (6th century BC): σὺν Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ χεῖρα κίνει ‘along with Athena, move also your hand’ (Fables 30: Shipwrecker; Proverbs 36). 29 Carey (1994) 29–30. 30 Cf. Rubinstein (2004) 191–2; Konstan (2006) 41–76. 31 Rubinstein (2005) 142. 32 Jay (2009) 155; cf. Pinker (2007); Fägersten (2012); Vingerhoets, Bylsma and Vlam (2013) 287–304. 33 Goodwin (1970) 129. 34 Usher (1993) 243. 35 Cf. Demosthenes 18.52, where Aeschines is also accused of being a μισθωτός, ‘a hireling’, of Alexander. The Scholia Demosthenica 104a-c report that Demosthenes mispronounced that word by putting the accent on the antepenult (μίσθωτος) so that the audience would correct him by uttering the right form of the word. 36 Plutarch’s Demosthenes 4.5: the name of Argas was given him either with reference to his manners, which were harsh and savage, the snake being called ‘argas’ by some of the poets; or with reference to his way of speaking, which was distressing to his hearers, Argas being the name of a composer of vile and disagreeable songs. 37 Cf. Plutarch, Demosthenes 4.3–4; Scholia in Aeschines 2, 218a. 38 In his speeches 1, Against Timarchus, and 2, On the False Embassy, Aeschines refers five times to Demosthenes as a κίναιδος because of his lack of restraint in wearing luxurious garments, which are indistinguishable from those of females (1.131, 181), and because of his effeminate physique and the lack of prowess (2.88, 99, 151). These five references to Demosthenes as a κίναιδος are the only attestations of that term in oratory; κίναιδος is only rarely used elsewhere: Plato’s Gorgias 494c–e; Aristotle’s Physiognomics 808a, 810a, 813a. This limited use makes it hard to pin down the traits of a κίναιδος. In the Physiognomics, κιναιδία is almost synonymous with a physical abnormality and bodily oddities, with gait, stature and movements, especially of neck, head and knees, and facial expressions (especially eyes) being characteristic aspects of the physicality of a κίναιδος. In Gorgias, a κίναιδος is defined by his moral failings, a lack of (sexual) restraint and rampant desires. Winkler (1990) 178–86; Davidson (2001) 23.

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39 Cf. §§5, 39, 66, 99, 124, 170, 177, 181, 183 and four times in §145. 40 Christ (online article) 3. 41 On the marginalised status of sycophants: Lofberg (1917) esp. 19–25; (1920) 61–72; MacDowell (1978) 62–6; Harvey (1990) 103–21; Yunis (1996) 253–4, n. 31; Christ (1998) 48–71, (online article) 1–19; Pernot (2005) 24–5. 42 Carey (1994) 29. 43 Cf. Dinarchus 1.110; Lycurgus 1.33; Hypereides 3.11, 41; Plato, Apology 34c. 44 Konstan (2000) 138. 45 Despite the fact that ‘a number of constructions [questions and assumptions and other moods, such as the subjunctive] that do not include morphologically imperative verbs, they are labeled imperative due to their pragmatic functions’. Medeiros (2013) 23. 46 Han (2000). 47 Austin (1962); Searle (1969), (1975) 59–82, (1976) 1–24. 48 This is the type of content attributed in Rijksbaron (1984) 43–4 to the use of the negative particle μή followed by the present imperative: the addressee is asked not to proceed with an action that he was carrying out already. 49 This is the type of content attributed in Mussies (1971) 272 to the present imperative: the addressee is asked to undertake immediate action. 50 Bers (1985) 9. 51 In contrast to the aorist imperative that, as mentioned on p. 36, refers to a specific and well-defined action, the present imperative is used in order for general instructions to be made. Demosthenes does not pay attention to the ways in which his exhortations could be carried out. What matters for him is their duration and that is why the present imperative is used. On the use of the aorist imperative to denote specific commands: Rijksbaron (1984) 45; (2002) 45; Fantin (2010) 98. 52 Aristotle, Rhetoric 1382a21–6: let fear be defined as a painful or troubled feeling caused by the impression of an imminent evil that causes destruction or pain. For men do not fear all evils, for instance, becoming unjust or slow-witted, but only such as involve great pain or destruction, and only if they appear to be not far off but near at hand and threatening; for men do not fear things that are very remote.

53 54 55 56

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On fear as a means of controlling the law-court audience: Rubinstein (2004) 188–9; Konstan (2006) 129–55. Medical imagery is based on popular Athenian perceptions and real anxieties. For example: Lysias 6.53; Plato, Laws 881e. Bibliography: Dodds (1957) 223; Brock (2000) 30. On the analogy between the human body and the body politic: Vegetti (1983) 459–69; Kallet (1999) 223–44; Brock (2000) 24–34; Kosak (2000) 35–54; Kalimtzis (2000). On the use of the aorist imperative when urgency is demanded: Fantin (2010) 96. Such a concentration of questions in limited space happens only infrequently in Aeschines’ speeches: four repetitions in 1.158 and seven in 3.130–2. Interestingly, a high concentration of questions in limited space is also infrequently used in Demosthenes 19.303–4. Edwards (2012) 98–100 notes that the extensive use of questions is a notable feature of Isaeus’ speeches, such as in 8.28 and 7.40 where seven and six questions respectively are used. Extensive use of questions is also attested in Hypereides, Against Diondas, especially in 137v–136r. Demetrius, On Style 279: the orator forces his hearer into a sort of corner, so that he seems to be brought to task and to have no answer. If the positive statement ‘he was wronging us and violating the peace’ were substituted, the effect would be that of precise information rather than of cross-examination. (Translation, Roberts (1902) 195)

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Bibliography Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things With Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bers, V. (1985). Dikastic Thorubos. In: P. A. Cartledge and F. D. Harvey, Eds., Crux: Essays Presented to G. E. M. de ste Croix on his 75th birthday, 1st ed. Devon, UK: Duckworth, pp. 1–15. Brock, R. (2000). Sickness in the Body Politic: Medical Imagery in the Greek Polis. In: V. M. Hope and E. Marshall, Eds., Death and Disease in the Ancient City, 1st ed. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 24–34. Carey, C. (1992). Apollodoros against Neaira: [Demosthenes] 59. Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips. Carey, C. (1994). Rhetorical Means of Persuasion. In: I. Worthington, Ed., Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action, 1st ed. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 26–45. Carey, C. (2000). Aeschines. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Carey, C. and Reid, R. A. (1985). Demosthenes: Selected Private Speeches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Christ, M. R. (1998). The Litigious Athenian. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Christ, M. R. (2003). Sycophancy and Attitudes Toward Litigation. In: A. Lanni, Ed., Athenian Law in its Democratic Context (Center for Hellenic Studies On-Line Discussion Series 2003). Available at: www.stoa.org/projects/demos/sycophancy.pdf. Connor, W. R. (1971). The New Politicians of Fifth-century Athens. Princeton, NJ: Hackett Publishing Company. Couch, H. N. (1944). Fooling the Audience. Classical Journal, 40(3), pp. 172–4. Davidson, J. (2001). Dover, Foucault and Greek Homosexuality: Penetration and the Truth of Sex. Past & Present, 170(1), pp. 3–51. Dodds, E. R. (1957). The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Edwards, M. (2008). The Gods in the Attic Orators. In: L. C. Montefusco, Ed., Papers on Rhetoric IX, 1st ed. Rome: Herder, pp. 107–15. Ellis, J. R. (1976). Philip II and Macedonian Imperialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fantin, J. D. (2010). The Greek Imperative Mood in the New Testament: A Cognitive and Communicative Approach. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Goodwin, W. W. (1970). Demosthenes, On the Crown. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, J. M. (1997). Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Han, C. H. (2000). The Structure and Interpretation of Imperatives: Mood and Force in Universal Grammar. PhD. University of Pennsylvania. Hansen, M. H. (1986). Demography and Democracy: The Number of Athenian Citizens in the Fourth Century BC. Herning. Harris, E. M. (1994). Law and Oratory. In: I. Worthington, Ed., Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action, 1st ed. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 130–50. Harrison, A. R. W. (1971). The Law of Athens: Procedure. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (1990). The Sycophant and Sycophancy: Vexatious Redefinition? In: P. Cartledge, P. Millett and S. Todd, Eds., Nomos: Essays in Athenian Law, Politics and Society, rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 103–21.

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Hunter, V. J. (1994). Policing Athens: Social Control in the Attic Lawsuits, 420–320 BC. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kalimtzis, Kostas. (2000). Aristotle on Political Enmity and Disease. An Inquiry into Stasis. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. King, D. B. (1955). The Appeal to Religion in Greek Rhetoric. Classical Journal, 50(8), pp. 363–76. Konstan, D. (2000). Pity and the Law in Greek Theory and Practice. Dike, 3, pp. 125–45. Konstan, D. (2006). The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press. Kosak, J. C. (2000). Polis Nosousa: Greek Ideas about the City and Disease in the Fifth Century BC. In: V. M. Hope and E. Marshall, Eds., Death and Disease in the Ancient City, 1st ed. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 35–54. Lamb, W. R. M. (1943). Lysias. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lanni, A. (1997). Spectator Sport or Serious Politics? Hoi Periestēkotes and the Athenian Lawcourts. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 117, pp. 183–9. Lausberg, H. (1998). Handbook of Literary Rhetoric. Leiden, Boston, MA and Köln: Brill. Lofberg, J. O. (1920). The Sycophant-Parasite. Classical Philology, 15(1), pp. 61–72. Lofberg, J. O. (1971). Sycophancy in Athens. Chicago, IL: BiblioBazaar. Loraux, N. (2006). The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City. Transl. A. Sheridan. New York: Zone Books. MacDowell, D. M. (1978). The Law in Classical Athens. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Martin, G. (2006). Forms of Address in Athenian Courts. Museum Helveticum, 63(2), pp. 75–88. Martin, G. (2009). Divine Talk: Religious Argumentation in Demosthenes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Medeiros, D. J. (2013). Formal Approaches to the Syntax and Semantics of Imperatives. PhD. University of Michigan. Mirhady, D. C. (2007). The Dikast’s Oath and the Question of Fact. In: A. H. Sommerstein and J. Fletcher, Eds., Horkos: The Oath in Greek Society, 1st ed. Bristol, UK: Liverpool University Press, pp. 48–59. Mogyorodi, E. (1996). Tragic Freedom and Fate in Sophocles’ Antigone: Notes on the Role of ‘Ancient Evils’ and ‘The Tragic’. In: M. S. Silk, Ed., Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 358–76. Mussies, G. (1971). The Morphology of Koine Greek: As Used in the Apocalypse of St. John. Leiden: Brill. Nussbaum, M. (1986). The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ober, J. (1989). Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology and the Power of the People. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pernot, L. (2005). Rhetoric in Antiquity. Trans. W. E. Higgins. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. Plescia, J. (1970). The Oath and Perjury in Ancient Greece. Tallahassee, FL: University Press of Florida. Pulleyn, S. (1997). Prayer in Greek Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rijksbaron, A. (1984). The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek: An Introduction. Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press. Rubinstein, L. (2004). Stirring up Dicastic Anger. In: D. L. Cairns and R. A. Knox, Eds., Law, Rhetoric, and Comedy in Classical Athens. Essays in honour of Douglas M. MacDowell, 1st ed. Wales, UK: Classical Press of Wales, pp. 187–203.

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Rubinstein, L. (2005). Differentiated Rhetorical Strategies in the Athenian Courts. In: M. Gagarin and D. Cohen, Eds., The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 129–45. Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. R. (1975). Indirect Speech Acts. In: P. Cole and J. L. Morgan, Eds., Speech Acts, 1st ed. New York: Academic Press, pp. 59–82. Searle, J. R. (1976). The Classification of Illocutionary Acts. Language in Society, 5(1), 1–24. Tacon, J. (2001). Ecclesiastic ‘Thorubos’: Interventions, Interruptions and Popular Involvement in the Athenian Assembly. Greece & Rome, 48(2), pp. 173–92. Thomas, R. (2011). And You, the Dēmos, Made an Uproar: Performance, Mass Audiences, and Text in the Athenian democracy. In: A. P. M. H. Lardinois, J. H. Blok and M. G. M. van der Poel, Eds., Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy, and Religion. Vol. 8. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, pp. 161–87. Todd, S. C. (1993). The Shape of Athenian Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Usher, S. (1993). Greek Orators–V: Demosthenes, On the Crown. Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips. Vatri, A. (Forthcoming). Asyndeton, Immersion and Hypokrisis in Ancient Greek Rhetoric. Rhetorica. Vegetti, M. (1983). Metafora Politica e Imagine del Corpo Negli Scritti Ippocratici. In L. Francois and P. Mudry, Eds., Formes de Pensée dans la Collection Hippocratique, 1st ed. Genéve: Fac Theo Lausan, pp. 459–69. Wagener, A. (1931). Stylistic Qualities of the Apostrophe to Nature as a Dramatic Device. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 62(1), pp. 78–100. Wallace, J. (2007). The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winkler, J. J. (1990) Laying down the Law: The Oversight of Men’s Sexual Behaviour in Classical Athens. In: D. M. Halperin, J. J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin, Eds., Before Sexuality, 1st ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 171–209. Wolpert, A. (2003). Addresses to the Jury in the Attic Orators. American Journal of Philology, 124(4), pp. 537–55. Yunis, H. (1996). Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Classical Athens. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Yunis, Harvey. (2001). Demosthenes, on the Crown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Zaidman, L. B. and Pantel, P. S. (1989). Religion in the Ancient Greek City. Trans. Paul Cartledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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3

Aeschines and Demosthenes in the theatre of justice

This chapter examines several dimensions of the relationship between oratory and theatre through a close reading of the four speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes that are under examination in this book. The first section discusses the association of Aeschines and Demosthenes with actors who turned into dissembling politicians. The second section revisits the arguments expressed in the scholarship about the use of theatrical quotations, while the third examines accusations of using theatrical techniques in public speaking. The fourth and final section identifies and discusses passages that reveal Aeschines’ and Demosthenes’ attempts to make the hostile reaction of the theatrical audience a model for inciting an equally hostile reaction from the law-court audience. A few words of caution about the status of actors in Athenian politics and the use of their skills to serve political ends are necessary at this point. Aeschines and Demosthenes alike make scornful references to each other’s, real or alleged, association with acting and actors, and the use of theatrical skills to deceive the audience. The problem with these references is that they appear to contradict a substantial body of evidence that actors were highly esteemed in Athens, as mentioned in Chapter 1,1 including in some political contexts. The image of actors being sent on political and diplomatic missions ‘because of [their] profession that naturally wins friends’,2 as Aeschines says in 2.15, would seem to imply that acting skills and talents were not thought of as being confined rigidly to the theatre. There is, therefore, an apparent paradox in the ancient sources regarding the interplay between acting and politics, as there is also about the interplay between acting and oratorical delivery.3 The silence of ancient sources about this paradox makes it hard to shed light on this thorny issue. It might be argued, however, that the use of acting skills in political spaces depends on the context, the purpose and the ways these are used. The references to actors taking part in diplomatic missions possibly suggests that where an actor’s skills are used to cajole, mislead or deceive foreigners, thereby securing the best interests of Athens, then these skills are acceptable. If, however, these same abilities are being used within the political decision-making process in Athens, to mislead the dēmos to the benefit of individuals, then acting skills may be the focus of attack and criticism (as, for example, in Demosthenes 5.6 and 19.315). As mentioned in Chapter 1, an actor

82 Aeschines and Demosthenes onstage is expected to fabricate and simulate, but if one places acting techniques in front of an audience in the courts, who are expecting truth, then the same techniques become hazardous and a cause for blame and invective.4

Political thespians in the law-court Both Demosthenes and Aeschines never tire of finding ways to present each other as thespians playing at politics in the law-court. One of these ways is by referring to each other as being associated with actors who became politicians and tried to deceive the Athenian public. In Demosthenes 19.94, for example, Aeschines and his cronies, the actors Ctesiphon and Aristodemus,5 are accused first of having raised false expectations (τὴν πρώτην ἔφερον τοῦ φενακισμοῦ), when they reported that Philip wanted peace, and then of assigning the completion of the deceptive part to Philocrates and Aeschines. Although the noun φέναξ and its cognates have no necessary connection with the theatre per se, nevertheless the term Demosthenes uses, φενακισμός, does have implications for imposture, which, in this context, given the identity of the agents, carry associations with theatre.6 This may be a tacit way of constructing the audience’s perspective and encouraging them to see an analogy between theatrical and political space: just as actors dissimulate onstage, so Ctesiphon and Aristodemus, two actors who turned into politicians, are portrayed as playing a part on the public stage, with the aim of deceiving the audience. Aeschines, having heard the accusation that he collaborated with dissembling actors who turned into politicians, attempts to turn the tables on his adversary, by accusing him of being himself associated with them. Despite Demosthenes’ claims that Aristodemus was an accomplice of Aeschines, the latter points out that it was Demosthenes who had several times and in many ways supported that actor. He maintains, in §17, that it was Demosthenes, who suggested the crowning of Aristodemus after he had been sent as an ambassador to Philip, in contrast to all the other Athenians, who demanded his punishment because he failed in his ambassadorial mission. In §19, Aeschines also claims that Demosthenes tried to help Aristodemus to deal with the financial burden of taking part in the first embassy to Philip. In §156 meanwhile, Aeschines claims that his opponent was closely associated with the comic actor Satyrus. In this particular contest, however, Demosthenes has the advantage, since Aeschines was an actor by profession and it was therefore easy to play on his association with the theatre. Aeschines, given that he cannot completely dissociate himself from theatre, seeks to underline his opponent’s association with actors, who turned into dissembling politicians – thus allowing the audience to imply that Demosthenes is of the same stock. Birds of a feather flock together. This might be a high-risk strategy, however: Aeschines would have been aware that to draw attention to actors in a negative way ran the risk of drawing attention to his own connection with them. His attempts to associate his adversary with theatre – skilful as these are – are, arguably, unlikely to have given him a significant advantage.

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The use of quotations This ambiguous relationship between acting and oratory is also evident in how Aeschines and Demosthenes deploy quotations from the theatre in their speeches. In 18.267, Demosthenes uses quotations to stress his opponent’s connection with theatre: ἥκω νεκρῶν κευθμῶνα καὶ σκότου πύλας I come from the den of corpses and the gates of darkness. κακαγγελεῖν μὲν ἴσθι μὴ θέλοντά με Know that I bring bad news, though unwillingly. It has been asserted that the first of these quotations – the words of the ghost of Polydorus in Euripides, Hecuba 1 – adds dramatic tension to the speech. Yunis, for example, claims that this quotation ‘was presumably familiar to the audience and put them in mind of tragedy and impending doom’.7 Although Yunis is, in principle, right to detect a doom-laden aspect to the first tragic verse, nevertheless, in this context, that verse does not only invite the audience to think in terms of tragedy but also to think particularly of Aeschines’ bad tragic acting. At the beginning of §267, before the two quotations above, we read: Φέρε δὴ καὶ τὰς τῶν λῃτουργιῶν μαρτυρίας ὧν λελῃτούργηκα ὑμῖν ἀναγνῶ. παρ’ ἃς παρανάγνωθι καὶ σύ μοι τὰς ῥήσεις ἃς ἐλυμαίνου. Let me read now the testimonies that affirm the liturgies I have performed. Contrast that, Aeschines, with the lines you were in the habit of mutilating on stage [quotations follow] It is evident here that Demosthenes seeks both to trivialise Aeschines’ acting and to compare himself with his adversary to argue that while he plays the role of a useful citizen by performing liturgies, Aeschines was a useless failed actor, as the verb ἐλυμαίνου indicates. Demosthenes here, in other words, promotes himself through a reference to his liturgies – ‘liturgists won prestige and gratitude, which were useful in court’8 – and simultaneously castigates his adversary. If we turn now to the quotations above, we can see that they have an impact on multiple levels. In a general sense they bring to mind the doom-laden aura of tragedy, concurrently, however, they poke fun at Aeschines’ bad acting and suggest that he has no useful role to play in Athens. More specifically still, the first line reinforces this message by tacitly identifying Aeschines with the ghost of Polydorus, thereby implying that he is a man of no substance, a shadow like a ghost. Demosthenes, through the references to death, may also imply that Aeschines’ policies have brought disaster. The second line presents him as an incompetent ambassador – a skilful allusion to his role in the first and second embassy to Philip about which he was harshly criticised by Demosthenes in the Embassy trial.

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Scathing references to Aeschines’ acting talent can also be found in the rest of §267. Another quotation points unambiguously towards the purpose of the speaker to remind the audience both of his opponent’s unsuccessful acting career (as the reference to τριταγωνιστής indicates) and his villainous citizenship9: καὶ ‘κακὸν κακῶς σε‘ μάλιστα μὲν οἱ θεοί, ἔπειθ’ οὗτοι πάντες ἀπολέσειαν, πονηρὸν ὄντα καὶ πολίτην καὶ τριταγωνιστήν. May you, you wretch, wretchedly be destroyed, first of all, by the gods but also by all these people, since you are a miserable citizen and a miserable bit-part actor. This twofold reference to the qualities of Aeschines as both an actor and a citizen presents him as being a villainous citizen and dissimulator by profession, whose political acting is rejected by both the gods and the Athenians in court (οὗτοι πάντες).10 Demosthenes refers repeatedly and scathingly to Aeschines as being an actor by profession in a way, which clearly seeks to undermine his law-court performance: Demosthenes is a sincere citizen, while his adversary is an actor by career and is merely playing a part in court using the power of drama deceptively (§15: ὑποκρίνεται ‘dissimulates’).

‘He is proud of his voice’: Oral excess in the law-court References to oral excess also aim to describe adversaries as political thespians. In what follows, several passages from Demosthenes 19 and 18 are discussed (the order here has to do with the chronological order in which these speeches were delivered; speech 19, being delivered in 343 BC, a decade earlier than speech 18, is discussed first). Several passages in Demosthenes 19 refer to Aeschines’ oral excess: τίνα δὲ φθέγγεσθαι μέγιστον ἁπάντων καὶ σαφέστατ’ ἂν εἰπεῖν ὅ τι βούλοιτο τῇ φωνῇ; Αἰσχίνην οἶδ’ ὅτι τουτονί. τίνα δ’ οὗτοι μὲν ἄτολμον καὶ δειλὸν πρὸς τοὺς ὄχλους φασὶν εἶναι, ἐγὼ δ’ εὐλαβῆ; ἐμέ· οὐδὲν γὰρ πώποτ’ οὔτ’ ἠνώχλησα οὔτε μὴ βουλομένους ὑμᾶς βεβίασμαι. (19.206) And who would you say has the loudest voice, and could say the most clearly whatever he wished? This man Aeschines, I am sure. And which man do they call timid and cowardly in the face of the crowds, but I call cautious? Me, because I have never annoyed you or browbeaten you against your will. τί ποτ’ οὖν ἐστι τὸ αἴτιον ὅτι οἱ βδελυρώτατοι τῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ μέγιστον φθεγγόμενοι τοῦ καὶ ἀτολμοτάτου πάντων ἐμοῦ καὶ οὐδενὸς μεῖζον φθεγγομένου τοσοῦτον ἡττῶνται; (19.208) So what is the reason why the most obnoxious and loudest-voiced men in Athens are so completely defeated by me, the most timid of all, with a voice as quiet as anyone’s?

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The accusation of oral excess is highly likely to allude to Aeschines’ association with theatre and acting, given the importance of voice for actors. ἂν οὕτω φυλάττητ’ αὐτόν, οὐχ ἕξει τί λέγῃ, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἄλλως ἐνταῦθ’ ἐπαρεῖ τὴν φωνὴν καὶ πεφωνασκηκὼς ἔσται (19.336) If you keep an eye on him in that way, he will not have anything to say; here his vociferation and his voice training will go for nothing. The participle πεφωνασκηκώς, which is also used in Demosthenes 18.308–9, refers specifically to theatrical training, as, for example, in Plutarch’s Lives of the Ten Orators 844ff., where it is mentioned that Demosthenes paid the actor Neoptolemus to train him to deliver periods without pausing for breath (τοῦ δὲ πνεύματος αὐτῷ ἐνδέοντος Νεοπτολέμῳ τῷ ὑποκριτῇ μυρίας δοῦναι, ἵν’ ὅλας περιόδους ἀπνεύστως λέγῃ).11 The reference to training and breath control alludes specifically to Aeschines’ theatrical training and invites the law-court audience to think of his speech as being like a play with no reality behind it and therefore to be cautious so as not to be deceived by his eloquence. Demosthenes’ self-presentation in §206 and §208 as a careful and cautious speaker, in sharp contrast to Aeschines’ oral excesses, merits closer examination. Although several ancient sources report that Demosthenes had experienced early problems with his voice,12 nevertheless, we can safely assume that he had long since corrected any vocal weaknesses with the precious assistance of actors and therefore, he was able to win over the large law-court and assembly audiences.13 The references to his own weak voice, therefore, are an attempt to draw attention to Aeschines’ ‘theatrical’ voice, with its associated implications of the creation of an illusion for the spectators. Demosthenes’ reference to his mediocre voice seems also to approximate to another persuasive technique frequently used in oratorical speeches: it is commonplace for a speaker to appeal to the sympathy of the judges, stressing his inexperience in court and his incapacity to deal with his opponent, who knows the art of talking eloquently and persuasively.14 Demosthenes cannot claim that he is inexperienced. What he can do, however, is to change the content of that topos in order to serve his purposes. He expresses his worries that Aeschines’ theatrical skills in speaking and his loud voice can charm the audience, whereas his own weak voice would not, despite the fact that he tells the truth. Demosthenes seeks to turn the weapons of Aeschines against him: the latter’s well-practised vocal eloquence, which potentially dignifies his law-court performance and charms his audience, gives the former the opportunity to turn the speech into an ‘I-You’ antithesis. Demosthenes’ (alleged) weakness in voice represents sincerity and trustworthiness, whereas the pompous verbal eloquence of his opponent represents insincerity, artfulness and deception. References to Aeschines’ verbal exhibitionism and speechifying can also be found in Demosthenes 18. In §127, for example, Demosthenes cites lines that Aeschines uses in the peroration of his speech, in 3.260:

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Aeschines and Demosthenes εἰ γὰρ Αἰακὸς ἢ Ῥαδάμανθυς ἢ Μίνως ἦν ὁ κατηγορῶν, ἀλλὰ μὴ σπερμολόγος, περίτριμμ’ ἀγορᾶς, ὄλεθρος γραμματεύς οὐκ ἂν αὐτὸν οἶμαι ταῦτ’ εἰπεῖν οὐδ’ ἂν οὕτως ἐπαχθεῖς λόγους πορίσασθαι, ὥσπερ ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ βοῶντα ‘ὦ γῆ καὶ ἥλιε καὶ ἀρετὴ‘ καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα. If the prosecutor was Aeacus, or Rhadamanthus, or Minos and not a sponger, a common scoundrel, a damned clerk, I do not believe he would have spoken that way or produced such repulsive expressions, bellowing as if on the tragic stage, ‘O earth and sun and virtue’ and such like.

Demosthenes claims that Aeschines uses a loud voice (βοῶντα), as if he was on the tragic stage (ὥσπερ ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ). This and similar references aim to underscore the theatrical origins of Aeschines’ law-court performance – thus stirring up the suspicion of the audience (cf. 18.13: ἐτραγῴδει; 19.189: τραγῳδεῖ). This reference, therefore, functions as a means of belittling the impressive vocal skills of Aeschines by associating them with acting and dissimulation. Carey is right to point out that the fact that Demosthenes feels the need to make the attack is revealing. The skills and qualities that had served Aeschines in the theatre were of equal value in the Assembly. There is abundant evidence that Aeschines had an impressive speaking voice (18.259; 19.126, 199, 206, 337), a fact that must have particularly unnerved Demosthenes.15 Sensibly, therefore, Demosthenes uses any possible means to belittle Aeschines, to put down his vocal skills and to estrange him from the audience by inviting the judges and the bystanders to envisage him as simply playing a theatrical part on the dicastic rostrum.

‘Drive him away and hiss him out’: Inviting the audience reaction The clearest example of the association of Aeschines’ voice with theatre is in 19.337–8, where Demosthenes claims that Aeschines played the role of Thyestes and the figures from the Trojan War in a failed performance that made the audience hiss him and almost stone him. [A] Καίτοι καὶ περὶ τῆς φωνῆς ἴσως εἰπεῖν ἀνάγκη· πάνυ γὰρ μέγα καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ φρονεῖν αὐτὸν ἀκούω, ὡς καθυποκρινούμενον ὑμᾶς. [B] ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκεῖτ’ ἀτοπώτατον ἁπάντων ἂν ποιῆσαι, εἰ, ὅτε μὲν τὰ Θυέστου καὶ τῶν ἐπὶ Τροίᾳ κάκ’ ἠγωνίζετο, ἐξεβάλλετ’ αὐτὸν καὶ ἐξεσυρίττετ’ ἐκ τῶν θεάτρων καὶ μόνον οὐ κατελεύεθ’ οὕτως ὥστε τελευτῶντα τοῦ τριταγωνιστεῖν ἀποστῆναι, ἐπειδὴ δ’ οὐκ ἐπὶ τῆς σκηνῆς, ἀλλ’ ἐν τοῖς κοινοῖς καὶ μεγίστοις τῆς πόλεως πράγμασι μυρί’ εἴργασται κακά, τηνικαῦθ’ ὡς καλὸν φθεγγομένῳ προσέχοιτε.

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[A] And in fact I perhaps need to say something about his voice; I hear he also prides himself very much on that, in the belief that he will overcome you by his acting. [B] But when he was performing the troubles of Thyestes and the men at Troy, you used to drive him away and hiss him out of the theatres and all but stone him to death, so that in the end he gave up being a tritagonist. And now, that he is brought about thousands of troubles, not on the stage but in the city’s most important public affairs, I think it would be a very strange thing indeed if you were to pay attention to him on this occasion as being a good speaker. This passage can be divided into two sections (marked here as A and B) with one common addressee, the law-court audience. The first section presents Aeschines’ law-court speech as a theatrical performance with no reality behind it. A remarkable feature of the first section is the use of the phrase ὡς καθυποκρινούμενον ὑμᾶς. Demosthenes would have coined the participle: although the formation (the κατά-compound) and syntax (ὡς followed by participle) are common,16 this compound form, unlike other (plain or compound) forms of the verb ὑποκρίνομαι, is transitive, meaning ‘he will overcome you by acting’.17 Language here underlines the emphasis that Demosthenes places on the potential effect of Aeschines’ political acting upon the audience. The second section consists of a vivid description of a theatrical performance by Aeschines. Particular attention is paid to the reaction of the theatrical audience. The verbs ἐξεβάλλετε ‘drive away’ and ἐξεσυρίττετε ‘hiss’ present regular aspects of the response of the audience within a theatrical context, and therefore invite the law-court audience to ‘see’ the viewers in the theatre reacting in an aggressive way against Aeschines: their normal response to poor acting. ‘The hissing of the spectators was understood to articulate their collective desire to expel a performer and reject a production’.18 Indeed, Aeschines is presented as an unsuccessful professional, a τριταγωνιστής, ‘a third-rate actor’.19 The description here, I argue, is not just about a past incident, but it is rather an attempt to create a manipulated version of the past in the present: Demosthenes tries to make the contemptuous response of the theatrical audience a model for the law-court audience. The invited alignment of the law-court with the theatrical audience aims to stir thorubos as an expression of the audience’s disapproval for Aeschines. Demosthenes’ attempt to stir up a reaction among the members of the audience serves his purpose to create a certain disposition in them towards his opponent, by instructing them to see him in a negative way, when he takes to the rostrum. Examples of the invited alignment of the law-court with the theatrical audience can also be found in Aeschines’ speeches. In 2.35, we read about Philip’s (alleged) exhortation to Demosthenes during the latter’s failed speech in Macedonia: Ἰδὼν δὲ αὐτὸν ὁ Φίλιππος ὡς διέκειτο, θαρρεῖν τε παρεκελεύετο καὶ μὴ νομίζειν, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις. Seeing the state he was in, Philip encouraged him to take heart and not to suppose that he had suffered a complete catastrophe, like an actor in the theatre.

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In §34, Aeschines uses a theatrical term to describe the failure of his opponent to speak: ἐκπίπτει τοῦ λόγου ‘finally, abandoned his speech’.20 A similar reference is used in §4, where Aeschines, rejecting the allegations of his opponent that he harassed an Olynthian woman, claims that the law-court audience shouted Demosthenes down when he had said that. The verb used there, ἐξεβάλετε, belongs to the language of theatre and describes the way the audience proclaims dissatisfaction for the poor acting of the performers. It should be noted, of course, that although we cannot fully trust Aeschines’ reference to his adversary, nevertheless, the evidentiary character of this information is of some use. For, assuming this is not a case of after-trial drafting, the speaker would run the risk of being shouted down by the audience if he had lied about their reaction against his adversary.

Notes 1 See Chapter 1, n. 32. 2 Aeschines 2.15: διὰ τὴν γνῶσιν καὶ φιλανθρωπίαν τῆς τέχνης. The precise meaning of the term φιλανθρωπία is uncertain. Efstathiou (1999) 87 points out that this term is likely to indicate ‘the popularity by which [the dramatic arts] enchant people’; cf. Paulsen (1999) 309. The translation in Carey (2000), ‘they sent Aristodemus the actor as an envoy to Philip because of Philip’s familiarity with and fondness for his skill (φιλανθρωπία)’, which implies that Aristodemus was a member of the Athenian delegation because Philip was likely to be receptive to a message brought by someone whose work he knew and enjoyed, is less convincing. It was not simply Aristodemus who participated in political missions abroad. Other actors were also sent on political delegations: Kleandros, for example, negotiated the repatriation of Theokritos after being captured during the Peloponnesian War, Ischandros was appeared before the Athenians having brought political proposal from Arcadia, Neoptolemus serves as an ambassador for Philip on a mission to Athens in 346 BCE, while Thettalos was a representative of Alexander to Caria; see Arnott (1991) 52–3; Harris (1995) 30–1. It is more possible, therefore, that the term φιλανθρωπία refers generally to the cachet attaching to successful actors, which allows them to move freely and makes them useful as intermediaries. The close association between theatre and politics and the use of the first as a means of political propaganda remains an interesting issue in the Hellenistic epoch; see Chaniotis (1997) 219–59; Kotlinska-Toma (2015) 23–8. The same skill in serving as intermediaries is, interestingly enough, also credited to poets in the early fifth century, such as Simonides in Sicily, who undertook the role of negotiator between Hieron and Theron (Scholia on Pindar’s Olynthiac 2.29d). 3 Chapter 1, pp. 25–6. 4 Chapter 1, pp. 6–8. 5 Ctesiphon is an obscure person. He does not seem to be the same Ctesiphon who had suggested the crowning of Demosthenes. Easterling (1999) 161–2; MacDowell (2000) 210–1. 6 A good parallel is provided by MacDowell (2000) 218: φέναξ and its cognates are used of ‘a tragedian who brings a character on stage, giving a false impression that she will speak’ (Aristophanes, Frogs 919–21). 7 Yunis (2001) 260. The second line is nondescript and can come from any tragedy. 8 Yunis (2001) 259. On performing liturgies: Johnstone (1999) 94 – ‘defendants recalled such “actions” both to erode the authority of the prosecutor’s story and to construct a relationship between themselves and the jurors that did not depend on the vagaries of rhetorical language’.

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9 On tritagonist see Chapter 1, pp. 5–6. 10 Usher (1993) 263: ‘perhaps Demosthenes is drawing a parallel between stage parts in which Aeschines specialised (and occasionally ruined) and his equally ruinous reallife political appearances in times of disaster (as described in 198 and 308)’. 11 Cf. Plato, Laws 665e: καὶ ταῦτά γ’ εἰ καθάπερ οἱ περὶ νίκης χοροὶ ἀγωνιζόμενοι πεφωνασκηκότες ἰσχνοί τε καὶ ἄσιτοι ἀναγκάζοιντο ᾄδειν οἱ τοιοῦτοι [. . .] ‘moreover, if old men like that were obliged to do as the choristers do, who go lean and fasting when training their voices for a competition [. . .]’; Aristotle, Problems 901b22. On the vocal training of actors, including information about breath control: PickardCambridge (1968) 167–71; Hall (2002) 23, 33–4; Lightfoot (2002) 213. 12 Plutarch, Demosthenes 7, 11.1, 3; Lives of the Ten Orators 845a–b: Demosthenes’ training with the actor Andronicus is mentioned; Photius, Library 493a41. 13 Goodwin (1970) 113; Usher (1993) 234–5; Fredal (2006) 164–5. 14 Demosthenes 7.2, 53.13, 58.3; Antiphon 1.1–3, 5.1.4, 5.2–3, 6.2–3; Lysias 1.2, 12.3, 17.1, 19.1–2, 31.4. Cf. Lateiner (1982) 5, 7–8; Ober (1989) 226–31; Carey (1992) 92; Gagarin (1997) 17, 106–7; Kapparis (1999) 194–5; Hesk (2007) 371–2. 15 Carey (2000) 10. 16 Smyth (1959) 473–4, §§2120–2. 17 The verb recurs only in later works such as Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Demosthenes 53; Lucian, Dialogues of the Sea-Gods 13.2; Philo Judeus 2.280, 2.520. 18 Roselli (2011) 49. 19 On Demosthenes 19.337–8: Easterling (1999) 157–9; Serafim (2015) 96–108. 20 On the theatrical connotations of ἐκπίπτω: Aristotle, Poetics 1456a18; 1459b31. Cf. Pickard-Cambridge (1968) 275; Efstathiou (1999) 114.

Bibliography Arnott, P. (1991). Public and Performance in the Greek Theatre. London and New York: Routledge. Carey, C. (1992). Apollodoros against Neaira: [Demosthenes] 59. Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips. Carey, C. (2000). Aeschines. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Chaniotis, A. (1997). Theatricality beyond the Theatre. Staging Public Life in the Hellenistic World. Pallas, 47(1), pp. 219–59. Easterling, P. E. (1999). Actors and Voices: Reading between the Lines in Aeschines and Demosthenes. In: S. Goldhill and R. Osborne, Eds., Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 154–66. Efstathiou, A. (1999). A Commentary on Aeschines’ De Falsa Legatione, Chapters 1–96. PhD. Royal Holloway, University of London. Fredal, J. (2006). Rhetorical Action in Ancient Athens: Persuasive Artistry from Solon to Demosthenes. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Gagarin, Michael. (1997). Antiphon: The Speeches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, W. W. (1970). Demosthenes, on the Crown. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, E. (2002). The Singing Actors of Antiquity. In: P. Easterling and E. Hall, Eds., Greek and Roman Actors. Aspects of an Ancient Profession, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–38. Harris, E. M. (1995). Aeschines and Athenian Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harris, E. M. (2000). Open Texture in Athenian Law. Dike, 3(1), pp. 27–79. Hesk, J. (2007). Despisers of the Commonplace: Meta-topoi and Para-topoi in Attic Oratory. Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 25(4), pp. 361–84.

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Johnstone, S. (1999). Disputes and Democracy: Litigation in Ancient Athens. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Kapparis, K. (1999). Apollodoros against Neaira [D. 59]. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Kotlinska-Toma, A. (2015). Hellenistic Tragedy: Texts, Translations and a Critical Survey. London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury. Lateiner, D. (1982). The Man Who Does not Meddle in Politics: A Topos in Lysias. Classical World, 76(1), pp. 1–12. Lightfoot, J. L. (2002). Nothing to Do with the Technitai of Dionysus? In: P. Easterling and E. Hall, Eds., Greek and Roman Actors. Aspects of an Ancient Profession, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 209–24. MacDowell, D. M. (2000). Demosthenes, on the False Embassy. Oration 19. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ober, J. (1989). Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology and the Power of the People. Princeton:, NJ Princeton University Press. Paulsen, T. (1999). Die Parapresbeia-Reden des Demosthenes und des Aischines. Kommentar und Interpretationem zu Demosthenes, or. XIX, und Aischines, or. II. Bochum: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag. Pickard–Cambridge, A. (1968). The Dramatic Festivals of Athens. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Renehan, R. (1976). Studies in Greek Texts. Hypomnemata 43. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. Roselli, D. K. (2011). Theatre of the People: Spectators and Society in Ancient Athens. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Serafim, A. (2015). Making the Audience: Ekphrasis and Rhetorical Strategy in Demosthenes 18 and 19. Classical Quarterly, 65(1), pp. 96–108. Smyth, H. W. (1959). Greek Grammar. Rev. by G. M. Messing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Usher, S. (1993). Greek Orators–V: Demosthenes, on the Crown. Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips. Yunis, Harvey. (2001). Demosthenes, on the Crown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4

Ēthopoiia An inter-generic portrayal of character

This chapter aims to take a fresh look at how inter-generic portrayal of character is employed in the four speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes that are under examination in this book. In this regard, it should be noted that the scope of this enquiry is not to attempt to arrive at an all-encompassing understanding of the interplay between genre and ēthopoiia. Rather, the Performance Studies approach adopted in this work is used to examine how ēthopoiia might have influenced the audience, eliciting emotion and both verbal and non-verbal reaction, and creating a certain disposition towards Aeschines and Demosthenes, which would be eventually reflected in voting behaviour. Both Aeschines and Demosthenes, relying on the experience of the law-court audience as theatregoers, use language, imagery and character patterns that draw on or connote those exploited in other genres (mainly drama and epic), to present characters positively or negatively. Inter-generic ēthopoiia has two main dimensions, the first of which relates to the use of patterns that have implications for comedy and/or aim to provoke laughter, while the second includes patterns that have affinities with tragedy and epic. Accordingly, the remainder of the chapter is divided into two parts so as to explore the ways in which this twofold dimension of ēthopoiia is presented in the Embassy and the Crown cases. The first section, ‘Comic or laughter-inducing ēthopoiia’, examines comic stereotyping, the inversion of comedy into tragedy and ridicule through references to one’s opponent’s sexual deviancy. The second section examines the use of tragic and epic character patterns such as the identification of the speaker’s opponents with tragic villains – thus the title ‘Character portraiture: tragedy and epic’. The use of patterns that draw on a variety of genres is not surprising: Aeschines and Demosthenes are free to exploit every possible means of attacking each other, with the tools varying depending on their purpose at critical moments in their speeches. If they intend to create a rhetorical community between themselves and the audience, mockery and laughter are useful. Laughter, as argued in Chapter 1, serves to create a community, uniting one of the two parties involved in the trial, the prosecutor and the defendant, with the audience – against the opponent.1 If, on the other hand, the speakers seek to underline the ability of their adversaries to harm the city, they would prefer to use patterns that connote those in tragedy and epic. The combination of techniques, patterns and language that draw on

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comedy with those that have affinities with tragedy and epic, strikes a balance between ridiculing opponents and presenting them as dangerous enemies of Athens.

Comic or laughter-inducing ēthopoiia The use of patterns that draw on comedy tends to take two forms, as argued in Chapter 1. The first comprises the language, imagery and character patterns that have affinities with comedy as genre. One of these patterns is the use of stock comic characters such as the flatterer (kolax), the braggart (alazōn) and the fruitseller/stealer, which I call comic stereotyping, as well as the inversion of tragedy into comedy. The second form of portraiture comprises examples of laughterinducing mockery, such as references to sexual misconduct or deviancy that, although not always connected with comedy as a genre, are used to achieve the same purpose of ridiculing the opponent and provoking laughter in the audience. A few words of caution about the use of fifth-century comedy to illustrate fourth-century oratory are necessary at this point. I am aware that at the time of Aeschines and Demosthenes, the Old Comedy of Aristophanes and Eupolis, which is often referred to in the ensuing discussion, had given way to Middle Comedy, with its rather different emphases. My argument, however, does not depend on the audience’s close engagement with – either – Middle or Old Comedy. Rather, it is to point out that Aeschines and Demosthenes use themes common in Old Comedy, such as political satire, sexual innuendo or low-life street language,2 precisely because these work best in the politically charged environment of the cases they were fighting. Old Comedy is generally recognised to be more politically engaged than Middle Comedy, and it is therefore the techniques of Old Comedy that are appropriate to the cut and thrust of the court (although it should also be noted that Middle Comedy is also relevant, such as in the use of stock characters like the braggart). In short, the audience in the court does not need to be familiar with the particular comic forms being used for that comedy to be effective (unlike, for example with the use of some tragic characters, as discussed later); and Old Comedy is effective here precisely because of its direct, confrontational and politically engaged nature.3

Comic stereotyping Good examples of comic stereotyping are in Demosthenes 19.113 and Aeschines 3.76. In both passages, the implied contrast between the accused person, who ingratiated himself with the Macedonians, and the Athenians, who reacted with hostility, is designed to portray him as a ‘flatterer’, kolax, a double-faced citizen who pretends to be a patriot but fawns on the city’s enemies. ἀλλὰ καὶ συνεῖπε μόνος τῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει πάντων ἀνθρώπων. καίτοι τοῦτό γ’ οὐδὲ Φιλοκράτης ἐτόλμησε ποιῆσαι ὁ μιαρός, ἀλλ’ Αἰσχίνης οὑτοσί. καὶ θορυβούντων ὑμῶν καὶ οὐκ ἐθελόντων ἀκούειν αὐτοῦ, καταβαίνων ἀπὸ τοῦ

Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal 93 βήματος, ἐνδεικνύμενος τοῖς πρέσβεσι τοῖς παρὰ τοῦ Φιλίππου παροῦσι, πολλοὺς ἔφη τοὺς θορυβοῦντας εἶναι, ὀλίγους δὲ τοὺς στρατευομένους ὅταν δέῃ (μέμνησθε γὰρ δήπου) αὐτὸς ὤν, οἶμαι, θαυμάσιος στρατιώτης, ὦ Ζεῦ. (19.113) But he was the only person in the whole of Athens to speak in support. Not even the scoundrel Philocrates dared to do that, but this man Aeschines did. As you heckled and refused to listen to him, he came down from the platform and, ingratiating himself with Philip’s ambassadors who were present, he said there were plenty of hecklers but not many soldiers when they were needed; you remember, I suppose. He himself, I suppose, is a marvellous soldier. Zeus! [. . .] καὶ προσκεφάλαια ἔθηκε, καὶ φοινικίδας περιεπέτασε, καὶ ἅμα τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἡγεῖτο τοῖς πρέσβεσιν εἰς τὸ θέατρον, ὥστε καὶ συρίττεσθαι διὰ τὴν ἀσχημοσύνην καὶ κολακείαν. (3.76) And he placed cushions there and spread out rugs and at daybreak led the ambassadors into the theatre, with the result that he was hissed for his undignified and fawning behaviour. The presentation of Aeschines in the first passage and Demosthenes in the second passage as flatterers aims to capitalise on real anxieties about social mobility that flatterers embodied in Athens. As Duncan rightly points out, ‘evidence from Old Comedy points to a widespread anxiety in Athens that some aspiring politicians were using kolakeia, flattery, as a means of upward social mobility and political achievement’.4 It can be argued, therefore, that Demosthenes and Aeschines, by presenting each other as flatterers, aim to exploit the resentment and anxiety of the Athenians towards flatterers in general. The description of the reaction of the Athenians in both passages is not just about a past incident. There is an interesting implied contrast between audiences here: Aeschines and Demosthenes are performing for the Macedonian envoys, like flatterers, but there is another audience, the Athenians, who react with hostility. In 19.113, the members of the law-court audience are reminded of their reaction when they saw Aeschines with the Macedonians in the Assembly, while in 3.76 the vivid description of Demosthenes’ attire and demeanour brings before the eyes of the audience the image of him entering the theatre with the Macedonians and being booed by the Athenians. In both passages, the Athenians in court are subtly invited to imitate the reportedly hostile reaction of the theatrical audience by interrupting the speaker, booing him and finally, voting against him. There is also another dimension to the presentation of Demosthenes and Aeschines as being hissed by past audiences: each orator invites the Athenians in the law-court to perceive the gap between his opponent’s words and deeds. Despite their claims that they always serve the best interests of the Athenians, they are vividly presented here as ignoring the Athenians and fawning on Philip’s representatives. In addition to the flatterer, another comic character is used for comic ēthopoiia: the ‘braggart’, alazōn. A good example of using this comic personage can be found in Aeschines 2.34–5:

94 Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal ῥηθέντων δὲ καὶ τούτων καὶ ἑτέρων λόγων, ἤδη καθῆκεν εἰς Δημοσθένην τὸ τῆς πρεσβείας μέρος, καὶ πάντες προσεῖχον ὡς ὑπερβολάς τινας δυνάμεως ἀκουσόμενοι λόγων: καὶ γὰρ πρὸς αὐτὸν τὸν Φίλιππον, ὡς ἦν ὕστερον ἀκούειν, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἑταίρους ἐξήγγελτο ἡ τῶν ἐπαγγελιῶν ὑπερβολή. οὕτω δὲ ἁπάντων διακειμένων πρὸς τὴν ἀκρόασιν, φθέγγεται τὸ θηρίον τοῦτο προοίμιον σκοτεινόν τι καὶ τεθνηκὸς δειλίᾳ, καὶ μικρὸν προαγαγὼν ἄνω τῶν πραγμάτων, ἐξαίφνης ἐσίγησε καὶ διηπορήθη, τελευτῶν δὲ ἐκπίπτει ἐκ τοῦ λόγου. ἰδὼν δὲ αὐτὸν ὁ Φίλιππος ὡς διέκειτο, θαρρεῖν τε παρεκελεύετο καὶ μὴ νομίζειν, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις, διὰ τοῦτό τι πεπονθέναι, ἀλλ᾽ ἡσυχῇ καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ἀναμιμνῄσκεσθαι, καὶ λέγειν ὡς προείλετο. ὁ δ᾽ ὡς ἅπαξ ἐταράχθη καὶ τῶν γεγραμμένων διεσφάλη, οὐδ᾽ ἀναλαβεῖν αὑτὸν ἐδυνήθη, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάλιν ἐπιχειρήσας ταὐτὸν ἔπαθεν. ὡς δ᾽ ἦν σιωπή, μεταστῆναι ἡμᾶς ὁ κῆρυξ ἐκέλευσεν. After these and other arguments, it was now Demosthenes’ turn to play his part in the mission, and all paid close attention, expecting to hear perfect examples of his verbal skill (for his extravagant claims had been reported to Philip himself and his associates, as we heard later). With all listening so intently, this creature uttered an obscure prologue in a voice dead with fright, and after a brief narration of earlier events, suddenly fell silent and was at a loss for words, and finally abandoned his speech. Seeing the state he was in, Philip encouraged him to take heart and not to suppose that he had suffered a complete catastrophe, like an actor in the theatre; he should calmly and patiently recollect his arguments and make the speech he had planned. But Demosthenes, once he had become confused and had lost his place in his notes, was now unable to recover. He tried once more to speak and the same thing happened. In the ensuing silence, the herald asked us to withdraw. Demosthenes’ alleged boasting that he could persuade Philip, set against his actual failure to speak before him, approximates to the behaviour of alazōn: the character who pretends to have qualities that he does not have.5 The image of Demosthenes as the braggart speaker who makes himself ridiculous by failing to deliver his speech, as brilliantly as he claimed, is also reinforced by Aeschines’ description of the reaction of the audience to his speech during the second embassy: ἵνα δὲ μὴ μακρολογῶ, τοιαῦτ᾽ ἦν ἃ ἔλεγε παρόντων τῶν πρέσβεων ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἐξ ἁπάσης τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἐφ᾽ οἷς γέλωτες οὐχ οἱ τυχόντες ἐγίγνοντο (2.112) To avoid a long story, this was what he said in the presence of representatives of the whole of Greece. The laughter it provoked was of a quite uncommon sort. A range of Greek sources refer to bragging as provoking laughter (to geloion): if others perceive a lack of self-awareness in boasts about qualities that one does

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not have, especially concerning physical characteristics and virtues, the result is laughter.6 ‘Incongruity has always been central to humour theory. Much humour works by constructing a set of expectations that are then juxtaposed with an unexpected conclusion, or by bringing together of anomalous components into the same event or image’.7 This description does not just refer to a past incident: it also invites the present audience to imitate the behaviour of the past audience and laugh at Demosthenes, expressing the same contempt. Examples of the presentation of the opponent as an alazōn can also be found in the speeches of Demosthenes. In 18.243, for example, Demosthenes argues that Aeschines’ claims post factum that he fights to protect Athens are rather like a doctor who, while the patient was alive refused to give him the remedy but, when the patient died, explained how he could have escaped death. For Demosthenes’ joke to work, the audience would have required a minimum level of knowledge of the alleged contradiction between Aeschines’ patriotic rhetoric and his actions. Given that Aeschines’ military record is the source of attempted ridicule many times in Demosthenes’ speeches, it seems safe to assume that the law-court audience would have been able to perceive the accusation of bragging and laugh at the perpetrator. Demosthenes’ attack against the military achievements of Aeschines is presented in a pictorial description in 18.262. Aeschines in this description is identified with the persona of the fruiterer: οὐ κατῄσχυνας μὰ Δί’ οὐδὲν τῶν προϋπηργμένων τῷ μετὰ ταῦτα βίῳ, ἀλλὰ μισθώσας σαυτὸν τοῖς βαρυστόνοις ἐπικαλουμένοις [ἐκείνοις] ὑποκριταῖς Σιμύκᾳ καὶ Σωκράτει, ἐτριταγωνίστεις, σῦκα καὶ βότρυς καὶ ἐλάας συλλέγων ὥσπερ ὀπωρώνης ἐκ τῶν ἀλλοτρίων χωρίων, πλείω λαμβάνων ἀπὸ τούτων ἢ τῶν ἀγώνων, οὓς ὑμεῖς περὶ τῆς ψυχῆς ἠγωνίζεσθε· ἦν γὰρ ἄσπονδος καὶ ἀκήρυκτος ὑμῖν πρὸς τοὺς θεατὰς πόλεμος, ὑφ’ ὧν πολλὰ τραύματ’ εἰληφὼς εἰκότως τοὺς ἀπείρους τῶν τοιούτων κινδύνων ὡς δειλοὺς σκώπτεις. Your subsequent conduct did no discredit to your earlier career, but you entered the service of those famous players Simmykas and Socrates, better known as the Growlers. You played small parts to their lead, picking up figs and grapes and olives, like an orchard-robbing costermonger, getting more profit from these than from the plays in which you acted at the peril of your lives.8 For there was no truce or armistice in the warfare between you and your audiences, and your casualties were so heavy, that no wonder you taunt with cowardice those of us who have no experience of such engagements. Emphasis is placed on the (alleged) hostility of the theatrical audience towards Aeschines. The hostility was so great that, according to Demosthenes, Aeschines was pelted with agrarian produce, which he collects like a fruit-seller. Derision is the invited effect of the use of the simile ὥσπερ ὀπωρώνης: the fruit-seller/stealer has affinities not with Aeschines’ trade as a tragic actor, but with primitive comic mime (Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters 14.621–e).9 It is also included by Pollux in his list of ‘lives by which one would be disgraced’ (6.128).

96 Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal The derision is also underscored by the ironic statement that Aeschines gets more from what the audience threw at him than he did from the prizes for the performances that he acted at the danger of his life.10 There is ‘a pun on the two meanings of ἀγών and ἀγωνίζομαι, fight and play’. The final period of §262 develops even further the subtle irony expressed in the pun. The hostile audience response, registered by throwing fruit, becomes a total war between Aeschines and the audience, resulting in wounds for the hapless actor. While Goodwin is right to note that figs, grapes and olives cannot have put Aeschines and his fellow actors in any real danger,11 this exaggeration, combined with a choice of words that draws subtly on the imagery of war – τῶν ἀγώνων . . . ἠγωνίζεσθε, ἄσπονδος καὶ ἀκήρυκτος πόλεμος, τραύματα – is designed to belittle and ridicule not only the acting career but also the military performance of Aeschines (which was impressive, according to what he himself claims in 2.167–9). Demosthenes relocates Aeschines’ martial bravery from the battlefield to the theatrical stage and degrades his campaigns against real enemies into a fight against spectators armed with fruit. This attempt by Demosthenes to deflate the military achievements of his adversary can also be seen as a means of distracting attention from his own, apparently, unimpressive military record, which was frequently and harshly criticised by Aeschines (as in 2.148 where Demosthenes is accused of being guilty of desertion). The implied analogy between the reaction of the two audiences, in the theatre and the law-court, aims to encourage the latter to relive and experience Aeschines’ onstage failure in the same way that the first (allegedly) did, sharing its hostile mood and expressing the same contempt for Aeschines, and thus nullifying the impact of his personal presence and delivery. The caricatured description of Aeschines is designed to provoke laughter: Demosthenes’ description brings before the eyes of the audience the image of Aeschines as a ridiculous stage buffoon and invites the audience to laugh at him and display the same contempt as the earlier audience (allegedly) had.12

Inversion of tragedy into comedy The inversion of tragedy into comedy is another aspect of comedy that finds analogies in Demosthenes 18.13 In §242, the speaker calls his opponent ‘an ape on the tragic stage’. Aristotle offers a parallel to this phrase, reporting that ‘Mynniscus used to call Callipides “the monkey”, because he overacted’ (Poetics 1461b34–5). In §242, Demosthenes similarly calls his opponent ‘a rustic Oenomaus’ and by putting Oenomaus, the tragic figure, into a comic context he seems to be making a subtle ironic reference to Aeschines’ low quality acting.14 Something similar seems to be at work in §180 where, in an innuendo about Aeschines’ bad acting, Demosthenes says that Aeschines ‘villainously murdered Oenomaus at Collytus’. ‘The Anonymous Life of Aeschines (7) gives a story that Aeschines fell on the stage in acting this part. As Oenomaus was finally killed, there is probably a double meaning in κακῶς ἐπέτριψας; it is an additional slur on the tragic performance of Aeschines’.15 Although there is a possibility that the

Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal 97 anecdotal story about Aeschines is not fully reliable, nonetheless, the fact that such references were remembered and embroidered shows the effectiveness of Demosthenes’ gibe.

Ridiculing sexuality In addition to the use of stock comic characters and the inversion of tragedy into comedy, the attribution of female characteristics to the opponent and the caricatured presentation of his sexuality also serves to ridicule him. It is notable that only Aeschines refers to Demosthenes’ (alleged) bodily obscenity and sexual misbehaviour or deviancy to present him in a devastating way. Derogatory references to Demosthenes point implicitly towards the case of Timarchus and facilitate Aeschines’ calculated association of his opponent with all that he attacked successfully in that trial. Aeschines is building on his success against Timarchus, in the knowledge that the previous victory was well known and that the audience of that trial, some of whom may have also been present in the current one, had previously validated the portrayal of Demosthenes as a pervert. In his speeches 1, Against Timarchus, and 2, On the False Embassy, Aeschines refers five times to Demosthenes as a kinaidos because of his lack of restraint in wearing luxurious garments, which are indistinguishable from those of females (1.131, 181), and because of his effeminate physique and lack of prowess (2.88, 99, 151).16 Another attempt to portray Demosthenes as morally corrupt by the standards of the time is in §127, where he is called androgynos, literally ‘manwoman’, a word reserved for hermaphrodites and other ambiguously gendered individuals. These references aim to capitalise on popular disapproval in respect of the unmanly person. We should bear in mind that deviance, especially deviancy with a sexual element, is a common motif in comedy, a genre whose effect often ‘consists in the comparison of some eccentricity with a norm’.17 It suffices here to mention that in comedy, and especially in Aristophanes, effeminate men, like Agathon in Thesmophoriazousae 249–60, are frequently targets of ridicule. A lack of martial manliness is also a target of scorn in comic contexts: Eupolis, a comic poet contemporary of Aristophanes, wrote a comedy entitled ‘The Womanly Men’ or ‘The Draft-Dodgers’.18 Theopompus wrote ‘The Lady Soldiers’. Examples of this kind of scorn can be found throughout Aeschines 2: in 2.151, for example, Aeschines accuses Demosthenes of lacking the bodily qualities of a male, as exemplified by a hoplite, Aeschines’ brother-in-law, Philon. Aeschines is not specific about what exactly makes Demosthenes’ body kinaidic, but the invective against Demosthenes suggests that he is not physically fit. Aeschines makes it clear that a kinaidos is the physical and moral opposite of the exemplary citizen male. The physical appearance of both men, Philon and Demosthenes, qualifies the first for a legitimate place in government, while undermining the second’s claim to this position.19 The association of kinaidia with military uselessness and cowardice alludes to 2.148, where Aeschines ridicules his opponent by comparing him to his own mother. Aeschines claims that his mother is braver than Demosthenes who calls himself ‘a man’, despite his actions being womanish:

98 Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal he was indicted for desertion (at least as Aeschines claims here) and, because he did not have the courage to face the accusation, tried to bribe his accuser in order to save himself. Ridicule based on a derisory description of Demosthenes can also be found in Aeschines 3, as, for example, in §167: Ταῦτα δὲ τί ἐστιν, ὦ κίναδος; ῥήματα ἢ θαύματα; καὶ πάλιν ὅτε κύκλῳ περιδινῶν σεαυτὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος ἔλεγες, ὡς ἀντιπράττων Ἀλεξάνδρῳ What are these, you sly fox, words or wonders? And again, when whirling yourself around on the platform, you said, as though you were manoeuvring against Alexander Aeschines apostrophises Demosthenes with the vocative kinados, ‘fox’ or ‘beast’, a word that is phonetically close to kinaidos, allowing the speaker to allude to the derogatory accusations that he successfully levelled against his adversary in the Embassy trial. The use of names of animals or descriptions of animal traits connotes the language used frequently in comic contexts.20 For example, the word kinados is used in comic invectives, such as in Aristophanes’ Clouds (448) and Birds (429). Another ridiculous vignette of Demosthenes, which includes an implicit sexual innuendo, occurs in Aeschines 3.209: Περὶ δὲ τῶν δακρύων καὶ τοῦ τόνου τῆς φωνῆς, ὅταν ὑμᾶς ἐπερωτᾷ· [Dem.] «ποῖ φύγω, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι; περιεγράψατέ με· οὐκ ἔστιν ὅποι ἀναπτήσομαι», ἀνθυποβάλλετε αὐτῷ· [Ath.] «ὁ δὲ δῆμος ὁ Ἀθηναίων ποῖ καταφύγῃ, Δημόσθενες; πρὸς ποίαν συμμάχων παρασκευήν; πρὸς ποῖα χρήματα; τί προβαλλόμενος ὑπὲρ τοῦ δήμου πεπολίτευσαι; As to his tears and his shrill voice, when he asks you: ‘where shall I find refuge, men of Athens? Shut me out of public life and there’s nowhere for me to fly’, you must answer him in turn: ‘and the Athenian people – where are they to find refuge, Demosthenes? With what allied support? With what financial resources? What protection have you created for the people by your policies?’ The fabrication of utterances that are here attributed to Demosthenes and to the Athenians is known as sermocinatio in ancient rhetorical theory: ‘the fabrication – serving to characterise natural (historical or invented) persons – of statements, conversations, and soliloquies or unexpressed mental reflections of the persons concerned’.21 The utterance attributed to Demosthenes, indicated especially by the verb anaptēsomai, is a remarkable hyperbole reminiscent of the ‘escape songs’ (or ‘escape odes’) used mostly in Greek tragedy and that express ‘a sentiment usually in lyrics of a wish to flee from a dire situation by, for example, growing wings and flying away’.22 These ‘escape songs’ are more frequently attributed to women than to men, as in Euripides’ Hippolytus, Andromache, and Hecuba, Aeschylus’ Supplices and Sophocles’ Women of Trachis. The inversion of tragedy

Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal 99 into comedy here is strengthened by the inversion of gender expectations. To put into the mouth of Demosthenes words that are appropriate for women may well serve to present him as a ridiculous and effeminate individual: someone who wants, like a woman, to escape from the dire situation that he himself had created for Athens. This also relates to the accusation of desertion, which is noted explicitly in 3.244 (and in 2.148, 179). A notable parallel to the description of Demosthenes’ escape can be found in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, where several escape plots included in Euripides’ plays are parodied.23 After the comic parabasis in Thesmophoriazusae (846ff.) a series of farcical scenes follow in which Euripides disguises in an attempt to free Mnesilochus who was arrested for participating illegally in a womenonly festival. In these farcical scenes, Mnesilochus plays the role of women. When Euripides was presented as Menelaus, a character from his own play Helen, Mnesilochus responds by playing out the role of Helen, and when Euripides was presented as Perseus, a character from Andromeda, Mnesilochus responds by acting out the role of Andromeda. The parody of tragedy is, as argued in the previous section, an aspect of comedy that finds analogies in the speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes.24 In both Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae and Aeschines 3.209, two males make a laughing stock of themselves after being presented as trying to escape from a dire situation like females.

Character portraiture: Tragedy and epic While comedy is invariably used in the speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes to attack each other, patterns that have affinities with tragedy and epic may be used to attack the character of an opponent while also presenting the ēthos of the speaker positively. A distinct difference in technique between Aeschines and Demosthenes should be underlined in this regard. Aeschines uses patterns only as a means of attack, identifying Demosthenes with tragic villains or using conceptions such as the cursed hero to accuse him of being responsible for the misfortunes that befell Athens. Demosthenes, however, while associating his opponent with petty characters or scoundrels, also draws selectively on tragic patterns in order to underline his own unyielding adherence to patriotic duty and thus to disclaim any responsibility for the outcome of his policies towards Philip.

Identification with tragic and epic characters Patterns in Aeschines 2 that have implications for tragedy are used sparingly and unclearly. Some references to Demosthenes as a source of pollution (§88: μὴ καθαρεύοντα τῷ σώματι ‘whose body is unclean’; §148: οὐ καθαρὸς ὢν τὰς χεῖρας, εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἐμβάλλεις ‘you dared to enter the agora, though you are unclean’) are not manifestly rooted in or connected with tragedy. Even the quotation from Hesiod’s Works and Days (240–1) cited in 2.158, where the poet talks about the sinister individual who spreads destruction upon his city, is not as manifest as to allow us to argue for Demosthenes’ identification with the persona of the cursed

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individual. These references are, of course, a means of denigrating Demosthenes’ character and undermining his personal and political authority, but they do not specifically evoke tragedy. If we bear in mind that Demosthenes constantly refers to Aeschines as a tragic actor, we might suppose that the lack of patterns clearly associated with tragedy reflects an attempt by the latter to distance himself from theatre. Aeschines’ references to theatrical genres are not strictly consistent throughout his speeches, but tailored to the expediency of the occasion. Although there are occasions when Aeschines uses his knowledge and experience of theatrical performances to present Demosthenes as a tragic villain, in other parts of his speech he avoids using any patterns that are clearly reminiscent of drama. This omission may also be due to the nature of a defence speech. In Demosthenes’ prosecution, the strategy is to portray Aeschines as a serious threat, whereas Aeschines’ strategy in response is consistently one of ridicule. This applies Gorgias’ advice, referenced by Aristotle, ‘to confound the opponents’ earnest with jest and their jest with earnest’ (Rhetoric 1419b7). Aeschines works meticulously to ridicule his opponent without overdoing the ridicule to the point that the judges no longer take the effect of the misbehaviour seriously. The careful combination of ridicule with references to Demosthenes’ cowardice stigmatises his high-flown rhetoric about patriotism and underlines his potential to harm Athens. In Demosthenes 19, on the other hand, there is a striking lack of patterns that draw on or have affinities with comedy. The emphasis in Demosthenes 19 is placed on the purpose of Aeschines to deceive the audience, and this ties in with the lack of comic patterns, since Demosthenes does not wish to suggest that Aeschines was ridiculous and, thus, a potentially negligible threat for Athens. By recalling Aeschines’ tragic role as Thyestes (§337), for example, Demosthenes aims to foster an underlying perception in the minds of the audience that Aeschines is a negative and destructive force like the tragic characters that he enacted onstage. Thyestes, along with his brother Atreus, according to some versions of the myth, killed his other brother Chrysippus. This disgusting action deprived a whole generation of good luck. Thyestes also committed several other corrupting actions such as adultery with Atreus’ wife, which in turn led Atreus to the obnoxious crime of killing Thyestes’ sons and serving them up to his brother.25 The reference in 19.247 to Aeschines as Creon from Sophocles’ Antigone (‘well in this play look what words these are that have been put by the poet into the mouth of Creon-Aeschines’) depicts him as a tyrant, with the aim of eliciting feelings of fear and odium towards him among the Athenians. Aeschines himself refers to Demosthenes’ attempt to liken him to Dionysius of Sicily (an identification that does not figure in the extant text of Demosthenes 19), ‘with loud cries he urged you to watch out for me’ (2.10). By identifying Aeschines with tyrants, Demosthenes ‘is appealing to a fear of subversion which persisted, albeit in an attenuated form long after the revolutions of the late fifth century’.26 The idea that tyranny was a significant threat also pervades Athenian literature. Dramatic and non-dramatic sources alike exploit the same recurrent negative stereotypical characteristics of the tyrant: violence, lust, impiety, imperiousness, high-handed

Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal 101 and self-centred policies, and greed for absolute power are some of the standard features of literary portrayals of tyrants.27 In this way, Demosthenes strives to create a negative disposition in the audience against Aeschines that would ultimately influence its voting behaviour in the law-court. Another aspect of this identification of Creon-Aeschines, I argue, is to remind the law-court audience of Aeschines’ propensity towards acting, even when the setting does not allow him to act. As argued in Chapter 3, Demosthenes is keen to remind the judges and the onlookers that Aeschines has the ability to use his acting skills and talents in the law-court to deceive them.28 The reference to CreonAeschines in 19.247 can be seen in the same light: as presenting his adversary as an actor out of context, a dissimulator able to take over roles and manipulate the facts, reproducing them in a false yet credible way and thereby relocating the fiction associated with the safe space of the theatre into the context of ordinary life where untruths can have a real impact. This insistent association of Aeschines with acting indicates that Demosthenes recognises and worries about the persuasive power of the acting talent of his opponent, which he attempts to counter through this series of relentless attacks. Aeschines’ own speech, however, shows that Demosthenes was right to be concerned about the influence of Aeschines’ theatrical training on the law-court audience, since the latter does indeed use his knowledge of drama to good effect against Demosthenes. In 3.157, for example, Aeschines attributes to Demosthenes the role of the villain, presenting him as being the perpetrator of the destruction of Thebes. ἀλλ’ ἐπειδὴ τοῖς σώμασιν οὐ παρεγένεσθε, ἀλλὰ ταῖς γε διανοίαις ἀποβλέψατ’ αὐτῶν εἰς τὰς συμφοράς, καὶ νομίσαθ’ ὁρᾶν ἁλισκομένην πόλιν, τειχῶν κατασκαφάς, ἐμπρήσεις οἰκιῶν, ἀγομένας γυναῖκας καὶ παῖδας εἰς δουλείαν, πρεσβύτας ἀνθρώπους, πeρεσβύτιδας γυναῖκας ὀψὲ μεταμανθάνοντας τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, κλαίοντας, ἱκετεύοντας ὑμᾶς, ὀργιζομένους οὐ τοῖς τιμωρουμένοις, ἀλλὰ τοῖς τούτων αἰτίοις, ἐπισκήπτοντας μηδενὶ τρόπῳ τὸν τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀλιτήριον στεφανοῦν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν δαίμονα καὶ τὴν τύχην τὴν συμπαρακολουθοῦσαν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ φυλάξασθαι. But since you were not there in person, witness their disasters with your mind’s eye and imagine that you can see their city being captured, the demolition of the walls, the burning of the houses, the women and the children being led away to slavery, old men, old women learning late in life to forget their freedom, weeping, begging you, angry not at the people who were taking revenge on them but at the men responsible for these events, solemnly instructing you under no circumstances to crown the curse of Greece but to be on your guard against the evil destiny and the bad luck that dogs the man’s footsteps. Aeschines recreates the past ‘tragedy’ of the Thebans in the present and exploits it to good effect. The wording and the colourful description are designed to draw

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on the experience of the Athenians as theatregoers and to conjure up the image of the capture of cities and the slaughter and subjugation of populaces. These themes were commonly staged in tragic plays, as, for example, in Euripides’ Trojan Women. The loaded and colourful description of the destroyed physical setting with the demolished walls and burned houses, together with the presentation of people weeping and crying out on account of the catastrophic reversal of their lives also stir up the emotions of the audience. The image of the Thebans begging the Athenian judges and onlookers (hiketeuontas hymas) as if they were present in their city during the turmoil, and instructing them (episkēptontas) not to crown the curse of Greece, purports to elicit the compassion of the hearers for the Thebans and their rage and hostility for Demosthenes, ‘the curse of Greece’. The emotions attributed by Aeschines to the Thebans, which are presented so vividly, offer a model for the incitement of similar emotions in the ‘here and now’ of the trial. The ethos of Demosthenes is also portrayed through identification with characters from epic poetry. In Aeschines 3.231, for example, Demosthenes is identified with Thersites. [A] καὶ εἰ μέν τις τῶν τραγικῶν ποιητῶν τῶν μετὰ ταῦτα ἐπεισαγόντων ποιήσειεν ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ τὸν Θερσίτην ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων στεφανούμενον, οὐδεὶς ἂν ὑμῶν ὑπομείνειεν, ὅτι φησὶν Ὅμηρος ἄνανδρον αὐτὸν εἶναι καὶ συκοφάντην· [B] αὐτοὶ δ’ ὅταν τὸν τοιοῦτον ἄνθρωπον στεφανῶτε, οὐκ οἴεσθε ἐν ταῖς τῶν Ἑλλήνων δόξαις συρίττεσθαι. [A] And if any of the tragic poets whose works are performed afterward were to present Thersites being crowned by the Greeks, none of you would tolerate it, because Homer describes him as a coward and slanderer. [B] But when you yourselves crown a man like this, do you not think you are being hissed in the minds of the Greeks? This identification looks back to the description of Thersites, which derives from two passages in the Iliad – the brief description of the physical appearance of Thersites (2.212–9) and Odysseus’ rebuke of him (2.246–64). In these passages, Thersites is presented as an evil-favoured, lowborn man and the ugliest in Troy, hated by everyone because he blames everyone.29 Aeschines uses two adjectives to describe Thersites: anandros (coward/unmanly) and sykophantēs. These adjectives give a new twist to the Homeric portrayal since, contrary to what Aeschines claims in §231, neither are used by Homer in the Iliad.30 The Homeric presentation of Thersites as being an abusive and malignant attacker of his leaders does, however, have a broad affinity with the sykophantēs as bogey figure of Greek popular imagination. Nonetheless, both the use of the adjective sykophantēs and the explicit accusation of cowardice are anachronistic: Aeschines updates the Homeric description of Thersites with the aim of capitalising on the disdain and hostility of the Athenians for sycophancy and sycophants, while lambasting Demosthenes as being a coward, an allegation that is used recurrently throughout the speech (3.152, 159, 175, 181, 187, 244, 253).

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Aeschines 3.231 can be divided into two parts (marked above as A and B): in the first part, Aeschines invites the audience to think about its reaction to an imaginary scenario in which a tragic playwright had portrayed Thersites as being crowned as if he was a hero. It should be remembered here that tragedy in democratic Athens was a forum for playing out moral dilemmas, particularly dilemmas regarding political decisions and the exercise of power: the tragic stage was a safe environment to explore the kinds of decisions that the dēmos regularly had to make. By imagining Thersites crowned, Aeschines presents to the audience a striking and shocking image that would have undoubtedly provoked a reaction from an audience member in the theatre. In so doing, in the second part of the passage (B), he shows how the lesson from such a tragedy would be that it should be inconceivable to crown someone such as Demosthenes. Indeed, if the Athenians were to crown him, the rest of the Greeks would hiss them. The term syrittesthai relates to the theatrical experience and refers specifically to the aggressive mood of the audience when they do not like the poor acting of performers.31 In this way, Aeschines attempts to put pressure on the judges, inviting them to think that their decisions are evaluated not only by their fellow Athenians but also by the Greeks as a whole, who, as claimed in 3.56, were represented in the court environs.

Cursed or unlucky? In Aeschines 3.157, Demosthenes is presented as being cursed by τύχη and δαίμων and as therefore having caused the misfortunes that had fallen upon the city.32 As Aeschines points out, divine resentment and misfortune befall humans or specific communities because of impiety. In 3.115–31, for example, he refers to the case of the residents of Amphissa, who, after having committed impiety by cultivating and charging tolls in relation to the sacred land at Cirrha, the port of Delphi, were punished by Philip and the members of the Amphictyonic League (339 B.C.). Aeschines recounts this past event in a way that undermines the character and public authority of Demosthenes, who is accused of being bribed by the residents of Amphissa, becoming polluted himself and entangling the whole city in misfortune. Characters who are cursed by the gods because of their impiety, with associated devastating effects for the community, are a common theme in tragedy. In Aeschylus’ Persians 808, 821, for example, where the ghost of Darius explains that Xerxes was tempted by a daemon because of his hybris and his impious thoughts, while in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, the king is a curse for the homeland and causes a plague. It is worth noting, of course, that the imagery of the cursed hero is prevalent in but not confined to tragedy. It is also rooted in epic poetry. The idea that a man can destroy a whole community appears, for example, in Hesiod’s Works and Days 240–1. What can be argued confidently is that this description of Demosthenes is designed to undermine him by creating an obnoxious portrait from which the audience is invited to detach themselves. Demosthenes, meanwhile, having heard Aeschines accusing him of being cursed and causing misfortunes for the city, turns the tables on his adversary. He pays constant attention throughout his speech 18 to the role of divinity and

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introduces a ‘divine apparatus’ to argue that disaster was caused not by impiety or offensive behaviour, as Aeschines argues, but by fate or luck. Throughout the speech, the plethora of references to divine forces, such as θεός (§§193, 290), δαίμων (§192),33 τύχη (§§207–8, 300), μοῖρα (§289), εἱμαρμένη (§195), point to Demosthenes’ purpose of attributing responsibility to the gods for the sorry outcome of his anti-Macedonian policy. This echoes the well-established belief that human life plays out according to the whims of the gods, fate or luck.34 Demosthenes’ distinct emphasis in speech 18 on this idea that man is an actor in the theatre of life and has to play whatever part is assigned to him by fate is interesting since it ignores a powerful strand in ancient patterns of thought on causation that assigns importance to human agency: even if divine forces instigate human actions and determine outcomes, humans can make decisions and take responsibility for them.35 This pattern of thought is notably presented in tragedy: the tragic plot in Aeschylus’ Eumenides, for example, is constructed around the punishment of Orestes for the murder of his mother, despite this crime being instigated by Apollo, while the Sophoclean Oedipus himself accepts that he bears responsibility for his actions (Oedipus Tyrannus 1329–33). The Athenian audience would have been used to understanding ideas such as τύχη within this more nuanced context, but by focusing only on the power of gods, fate and luck, Demosthenes clearly seeks to disclaim any responsibility for the outcome of his policy towards Macedon that led Athens into the catastrophic battle against Philip in Chaeronea, and to exonerate himself completely from any accusation that might be levelled against him in this regard. To this end, Demosthenes exploits the analogy between himself and a ship owner, who had taken every possible precaution for the eventuality of a storm and bears no responsibility for the shipwreck arising from a storm (§194). Demosthenes, just as Hypereides in Against Diondas 136v30–137v8,36 attempts to divert the audience’s attention from the outcome of his policies and focus it on his intentions and his determination to act by standing up to Philip. This combination of divine control and human determination has indelible affinities with tragedy and epic.37 Tragedy combines human determination, in that protagonists suffer the outcome of their actions, with a sense of inevitability, in that these actions are themselves controlled by the will and the plans of the gods, although there is ‘an aversion against reducing the persons to puppets moved by creatures of overwhelmingly superior force’.38 Tragic and epic scenarios were constructed around the crucial moment of choice. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, for example, the King has to make a difficult decision between two equally destructive choices, to sacrifice his daughter or to abandon the campaign and leave his soldiers to die. Similarly, the gods and fortune offer Achilles the right to make a decision that may lead to personal disaster either way: he could choose between his glorious death and a long life without κλέος. Careless of his death, Achilles defends his τιμή, shows his heroic nobility and remains the archetype of the heroic choice. Seen in this light, it is feasible to argue that Demosthenes borrows the persona of a tragic and epic hero in presenting himself as being in a dire situation, having to make a difficult decision either to stand up against Philip’s overwhelming military

Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal 105 power or to compromise. He finally made the nobler choice to stand up to the enemy. Demosthenes calculatedly presents himself in a way that invites the audience to associate his uncompromising adherence to principle with the tragic (possibly especially the model we meet in Sophocles) and epic figure’s unyielding determination that prevails over other considerations.39 The tragic/epic resonance of Demosthenes’ self-characterisation is also subtly instilled into the way he identifies himself with Athens in that both are presented as standing up against Philip: [. . .] οὐδ᾽ οὕτως ἀποστατέον τῇ πόλει τούτων ἦν, εἴπερ ἢ δόξης ἢ προγόνων ἢ τοῦ μέλλοντος αἰῶνος εἶχε λόγον. νῦν μέν γ᾽ ἀποτυχεῖν δοκεῖ τῶν πραγμάτων, ὃ πᾶσι κοινόν ἐστιν ἀνθρώποις ὅταν τῷ θεῷ ταῦτα δοκῇ: τότε δ᾽ ἀξιοῦσα προεστάναι τῶν ἄλλων, εἶτ᾽ ἀποστᾶσα τούτου Φιλίππῳ, προδεδωκέναι πάντας ἂν ἔσχεν αἰτίαν (18.199–200) [. . .] not even in those circumstances should the city have abandoned her policies, if she had any regard for her reputation, for her ancestors, or for the generations to come. Admittedly, as things turned out, she seems to have failed in her undertakings, which is a fate common to men when God so decides. But then if, after claiming to be superior to others she had later abandoned this claim, she would have incurred the charge of betraying them all to Philip. Demosthenes shifts the discussion from his own responsibility for the defeat to the heroic destiny and duty of Athens to resist. Referring to Athens as if she herself were the progenitor of a policy that he in fact devised and executed, he creates the impression that the policy followed was unavoidable for Athens because of her glorious past and heroic destiny. Rowe is right to argue that ‘though Athens was destined to lose the war and her liberty, it remained within her power to preserve her dignity and to assert her moral choice – it is in the expression of this view that the language of Demosthenes reaches the heights of tragic poetry’.40 Further evidence also strengthens the contention that the emphasis placed on Demosthenes’ decision evokes tragic models. People who were cowards when Athens was in danger accuse the person who actually fought for its safety. This approximates, mutatis mutandis, to the character and the position of the Sophoclean hero, whose determination and commitment is frequently opposed by and contrasted with weaker characters, who advise caution and prefer inaction (Ismene, for example, in Sophocles’ Antigone, advises Antigone not to pursue the decision she made to bury her dead brother in defiance of Creon’s orders). Demosthenes borrows selectively from tragic models, using only elements that help him to defend his choices without alienating the audience. Unlike the common tragic model, Demosthenes is not an isolated figure. The chorus in tragic plays, despite any sympathy it may express, frequently serves to highlight the isolation of the tragic figure. In 18.65, however, Demosthenes astutely attempts to change the audience into his supporting chorus, by presenting the Athenians as having agreed with his policy against Philip.

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Notes 1 Chapter 1, pp. 21–22. 2 Demosthenes 18.127: περίτριμμ’ ἀγορᾶς ‘man who loafs in the market-place’. Περίτριμμα literally means ‘anything worn smooth by rubbing’. The same word appears in Aristophanes, Clouds (447). Men who frequented market were called ἀγοραῖοι, an adjective that has positive and negative meaning. It may mean ‘common fellows’, but also ‘low sort of men’. LSJ s.v. περίτριμμα, ἀγοραῖος. In Demosthenes 57.32, there is an implicit indication that those who work in the marker were considered foreigners. 3 Carey (1994) 69–83; Harding (1994) 196–221 on the use of Old Comic political invective into fourth-century forensic oratory; Hughes (2012) 17–58; Sommerstein (2014) 291–305 on the political character of Greek comedy; Rosenbloom (2014) 297–320. 4 Duncan (2006) 105; cf. Fisher (2000) 355–78. 5 On alazōn: Whitman (1964) 26–8; Duncan (2006) 90–102. 6 Plato’s Philebus 48c–49c, Xenophon’s Memorabilia 1.7.2–3 and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 1127a21–3. 7 Halsall (2002) 89. 8 Translation: Vince and Vince (1953) 191–3. There is a slight modification here: the underlined clause (‘getting more#. . .#lives’) is taken from Usher (1993) 143. Usher’s translation captures Demosthenes’ subtle irony and his implicit attempt to ridicule the military record of his opponent. 9 Goodwin (1970) 162; Pickard–Cambridge (1962) 134–6; Wankel (1976) 1154–5; Yunis (2001) 257. 10 Yunis (2001) 257 suggests a less persuasive analysis of this sentence. For him, the simile ὥσπερ ὀπωρώνης ἐκ τῶν ἀλλοτρίων χωρίων is an indication that ‘Aeschines took the opportunity to steal fruit from the fields like a thieving small fruit-seller’ and the next clause πλείω λαμβάνων . . . ἠγωνίζεσθε that ‘Aeschines’ performances were so bad that he earned less from them than from his fruit-thieving’. If we accept Yunis’ approach, however, then the last clause (ἦν γὰρ ἄσπονδος . . . ὡς δειλοὺς σκώπτεις) does not make good sense. The use of γάρ at the beginning, which indicates that this clause clarifies what precedes it, makes clear that Aeschines acquires the fruits and other agrarian produce as a consequence of the audience’s hostility – that is, he was pelted. 11 Goodwin (1970) 162–3. 12 Serafim (2015) 96–108. 13 Dover (1972) esp. 72–7; Reckford (1987) 71; Silk (1993) 478–504 on paratragedy and parody; Silk (2000) esp. 297–300, 351–6. 14 Oenomaus was the king of Pisa and the father of Hippodamia. Hermogenes notes that his persona has heroic and tragic connotations (On Types of Style 365). Oenomaus was also the name of a tragic play of Euripides. 15 Goodwin (1970) 114; cf. Usher (1993) 235. 16 On kinaidos, see Chapter 2, p. 29. 17 Silk (2000) 83. 18 Eupolis was one of the rivals of Aristophanes and a major figure in Old comedy. No complete work by Eupolis has survived, but of his fourteen plays we have 500 fragments. Even in fragmentary form, Eupolis’ plays shed interesting light on the whole range of issues, political, poetic and dramatic. An annotated translation of the play, The Womanly Men or The Draft-Dodgers, can be found in Storey (2003) 74–81. 19 Military value was a key justification for political participation, as was stipulated by Theramenes in the oligarchic government of the Five Thousand in 411 BC, when he reserved full citizen rights for the men who could afford hoplite equipment. 20 Rowe (1966) 397–406.

Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal 21 22 23 24 25 26

27

28 29 30

31 32 33

34

35

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Lausberg (1998) 366. Garrison (1995) 80; cf. Loraux (1987) 18. Jendza (2015) 447–68. On paratragedy in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae: Jendza (2015) 447–68. Aeschylus’ Agamemnon 1590ff.; Apollodorus’ Epitome 2.10–12; Seneca’s Thyestes. Carey (2005) 75. The fear of tyranny persisted throughout the classical period and induced the Athenians to pass anti-tyrannical legislation such as the law of Eucrates (337/6 BC). On the Athenian laws against tyranny: Ostwald (1955) 103–28; Gagarin (1981) 71–7; Henderson (2003) 156; Ober (2003) 222–4. Euripides, Suppliant Women 429: ‘there is nothing more hostile to a city than a tyrant’. Plato, Republic: tyrants do not have scruples to kill (566a); they are isolated from and hated by the people (567b); they rely on the worst associates (567d). Cleon in Aristophanes, Knights 864–67; Wasps 664–712); Thucydides 3.36, 37–40; 4.21–2, 27–9; 5.16; Polycrates in Polyaenus, Stratēgēmata 1.23; Herodotus 3.39; Periander in Herodotus 3.49, 5.92; Zeus in Prometheus Bound (219–25, 305–6); Aegisthus and Clytemnestra tyrannical coup in Agamemnon 1615–6; Lycus in Heracles; Euripides Medea: Creon is presented as being blunt and violent (271ff). Violence is also a trait of Creon in Oedipus at Colonus, where he is presented as forcefully dragging away Antigone and Ismene in order to compel Oedipus to return to Thebes (818–47), and giving commands and then threatening the chorus (858–86). Chapter 3, pp. 7–12. On Thersites in the Homeric epics, drama and other genres: Rosen (2007) 67–116. The suggestion of Scott (1929) 235 that the description of Thersites in this context may show that Aeschines refers to a lost version of the Iliad rests on no solid evidence. The orators tend to rewrite myth and history, so it would be misleading to take them as transparent testimonies. Pickard–Cambridge (1968) 275; Roselli (2011) 49. Dinarchus’ prosecution of Demosthenes §77: τὸν τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀλιτήριον ἀποκτείναντας ἐξόριστον ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ποιῆσαι ‘put to death the curse of Greece and throw his corpse beyond the city’s boarders’. Mikalson (1991) 22: δαίμων may indicate ‘the abstract, undifferentiated collective of the gods, but it may also, like θεός, refer to a specific deity’. Mikalson also notes that in tragedy the word δαίμων (in singular and plural) refers to fortune, which frequently has a negative meaning. On δαίμων in popular Greek belief, Dietrich (1965) 14–58. On the role of τύχη in human life: Herodotus 1.32; Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus 263, 442, 1080–2; Pindar, Olympian 12.1–9; Demosthenes, The Second Olynthiac 22; On the Peace 11–2; Bion Phil. Fr. 16a; Teles, Peri autarkeias 5.2–7. Cf. Kokolakis (1960); Chaniotis (2009) 171–3; Martin (2009) 92–101. Plato (Republic 388a–b) and Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics 1099a31–1099b7, 1099b20–5, 1100b8–11) argue that human well-being is not totally affected by uncontrollable circumstances. Cf. Mikalson (1983) 59–60; Nussbaum (1986) 318–23, 332, 380–1; Mogyorodi (1996) 359; Wallace (2007) 139. If you failed to achieve your objectives in the battle, there is nothing remarkable in that; but it was in choosing the noble cause that you failed and in believing that you should set the Greeks free by the risks that you ran as in the past. Wherever there is risk one must credit the initiatives and the undertakings to the agents, but credit the outcomes to fortune. Translation: Carey et al. (2008) 12.

37 The intervention of the gods in history is also a recurrent thematic pattern in prose, especially in Herodotus and Xenophon (as in Anabasis 7.8.4). Specific markers in Demosthenes 18 that have been examined in what follows, however, indicate that the dense referencing to the gods is related to tragic and epic contexts too.

108 Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal 38 Lattimore (1964) 38. 39 Knox (1964) 28. 40 Rowe (1966) 405.

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Halliwell, S. (1997). Between Public and Private: Tragedy and Athenian Experience of Rhetoric. In: C. Pelling, Ed., Greek Tragedy and the Historian, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 121–41. Halsall, G. (2002). Funny Foreigners: Laughing with the Barbarians in Late Antiquity. In: G. Halsall, Ed., Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 89–113. Hammond, N. G. L. and Griffith, G. T. (1979). A History of Macedonia. Vol. II 550–336 BC. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harding, P. (1994). Comedy and Rhetoric. In: I. Worthington, Ed., Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action, 1st ed. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 196–221. Harris, E. M. (1986). The Names of Aeschines’ Brothers-in-law. American Journal of Philology, 107(1), pp. 99–102. Henderson, J. (2003). Demos, Demagogue, Tyrant in Attic Old Comedy. In: K. A. Morgan, Ed., Popular Tyranny: Sovereignty and its Discontents in Ancient Greece, 1st ed. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 155–80. Henderson, J. (2007). Drama and Democracy. In: L. J. Samons, Ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Pericles, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 179–95. Hubbard, T. K. (2003). Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents. Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press. Hughes, A. (2012). Performing Greek Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jendza, C. (2015). Bearing Razors and Swords: Paracomedy in Euripides’ Orestes. American Journal of Philology, 136(3), pp. 447–68. Kapparis, K. (1999). Apollodoros against Neaira [D. 59]. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Knox, B. M. W. (1983). The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy. Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press. Kokolakis, M. (1960). The Dramatic Simile of Life. Athens: Threu a Mpukure. Lattimore, R. (1964). Story Patterns in Greek Tragedy. London: University of Michigan Press. Lausberg, H. (1998). Handbook of Literary Rhetoric. Leiden, Boston, MA and Köln: Brill. Loraux, N. (1987). Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Luschnig, C. A. E. (2007). Granddaughter of the Sun: A Study of Euripides’ Medea. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. McGlew, J. F. (1993). Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Martin, G. (2009). Divine Talk: Religious Argumentation in Demosthenes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mikalson, J. D. (1983). Athenian Popular Religion. Chapel Hill, NC and London: The University of North Carolina Press. Mikalson, J. D. (1991). Honor Thy Gods: Popular Religion in Greek Tragedy. Chapel Hill, NC and London: The University of North Carolina Press. Mogyorodi, E. (1996). Tragic Freedom and Fate in Sophocles’ Antigone: Notes on the Role of ‘Ancient Evils’ and ‘The Tragic’. In: M. S. Silk, Ed., Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 358–76. Naiden, F. S. (2006). Ancient Supplication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. (1986). The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

110 Ēthopoiia: An inter-generic portrayal Ober, J. (2003). Tyrant Killing as Therapeutic Stasis: A Political Debate in Images and Texts. In: K. A. Morgan, Ed., Popular Tyranny: Sovereignty and its Discontents in Ancient Greece, 1st ed. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 215–50. Ostwald, M. (1955). The Athenian Legislation against Tyranny. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 86(1), pp. 103–28. Parker, R. (1997). Gods Cruel and Kind: Tragic and Civic Theology. In: C. Pelling, Ed., Greek Tragedy and the Historian, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 143–60. Pickard–Cambridge, A. (1962). Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pickard–Cambridge, A. (1968). The Dramatic Festivals of Athens. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pulleyn, S. (1997). Prayer in Greek Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Raaflaub, K. A. (2003). Stick and Glue: The Function of Tyranny in Fifth-century Athenian Democracy. In: K. A. Morgan, Ed., Popular Tyranny: Sovereignty and its Discontents in Ancient Greece, 1st ed. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 59–94. Reckford, K. J. (1987). Aristophanes’ Old-and-New Comedy: Six Essays in Perspective. Chapel Hill, NC and London: The University of North Carolina Press. Rhodes, P. J. (2003). Nothing to do with Democracy: Athenian Drama and the Polis. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 123(1), pp. 104–19. Roisman, J. (2006). The Rhetoric of Conspiracy in Ancient Athens. Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press. Roisman, J. (2006). Rhetoric, Manliness and Contest. In: I. Worthington, Ed., A Companion to Greek Rhetoric, 1st ed. London: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 393–410. Roselli, D. K. (2011). Theatre of the People: Spectators and Society in Ancient Athens. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Rosen, R. M. (2007). Making Mockery: The Poetics of Ancient Satire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosenbloom, D. (2014). The Politics of Comic Athens. In: M. Fontaine and A. Scafuro, Eds., The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 297–320. Rowe, G. O. (1966). The Portrait of Aeschines in the Oration on the Crown. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 97(1), pp. 397–406. Rutherford, R. B. (1982). Tragic Form and Feeling in the Iliad. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 102(1), pp. 145–60. Saïd, S. (1998). Tragedy and Politics. In: D. Boedeker and K. A. Raaflaub, Eds., Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in the Fifth-century Athens, 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 275–95. Scott, J. A. (1929). Aeschines and Two Homeric Quotations. Classical Journal, 25, pp. 234–5. Seaford, R. (2000). The Social Function of Attic Tragedy: A Response to Jasper Griffin. Classical Quarterly, 50(1), pp. 30–44. Seaford, R. (2003). Tragic Tyranny. In: K. A. Morgan, Ed., Popular Tyranny: Sovereignty and its Discontents in Ancient Greece, 1st ed. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 95–116. Serafim, A. (2015). Making the Audience: Ekphrasis and Rhetorical Strategy in Demosthenes 18 and 19. Classical Quarterly, 65(1), pp. 96–108. Silk, M. S. (1993). Aristophanic Paratragedy. In: A. Sommerstein, S. Halliwell, J. Henderson and B. Zimmermann, Eds., Tragedy, Comedy, and the Polis, 1st ed. Bari: Levante editori, pp. 477–504.

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Silk, M. S. (2000). Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Slater, W. J. (1995). The Theatricality of Justice. Classical Bulletin, 71(2), pp. 143–57. Sommerstein, A. (2014). The Politics of Greek Comedy. In: Martin Revermann, Ed., The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 291–305. Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (2003). Tragedy and Athenian Religion. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Storey, I. (2003). Eupolis: Poet of Old Comedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomas, R. (2011). And you, the Dēmos, Made an Uproar: Performance, Mass Audiences, and Text in the Athenian democracy. In: A. P. M. H. Lardinois, J. H. Blok and M. G. M. van der Poel, Eds., Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy, and Religion. Vol. 8. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, pp. 161–87. Usher, S. (1993). Greek Orators–V: Demosthenes, on the Crown. Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips. Vince, C. A. and Vince, J. H. (1953). Demosthenes: De Corona and De Falsa Legatione London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wallace, J. (2007). The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wankel, H. (1976). Demosthenes Rede für Ktesiphon über den Kranz. Heidelberg: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Whitman, C. (1964). Aristophanes and the Comic Hero. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Yunis, Harvey. (2001). Demosthenes, on the Crown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zeruneith, K. (2007). The Wooden Horse: The Liberation of the Western Mind from Odysseus to Socrates. Transl. R. L. Dees and W. G. Jones. New York, Woodstock and London: Duckworth.

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5

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis!

There is an anecdotal story that ‘when someone asked Demosthenes what the first most important skill in oratory is, he said “hypocrisis”; and the second “hypocrisis”; and the third “hypocrisis”’ (Plutarch’s Lives of the Ten Orators 845b1–5). This story, despite its uncertain historicity, indicates the importance of what ancient sources call hypocrisis: gesticulation, facial expressions and vocal ploys. This chapter aims to examine several features of the transmitted oratorical scripts of Aeschines 2, 3 and Demosthenes 18, 19 to explore the clues that they offer to hypocrisis: emotional appeals, deixis, figures of speech, shifts to and from narrative and some other techniques such as puns and mimetic passages. A few words about the method of discussing the gestural and vocal ploys of hypocrisis are necessary at this point. Taplin, referring to the extant scripts of dramatic genres, is right to note that the written quotation of any spoken sentence is a very incomplete transcript of what was conveyed by the utterance itself. On one level we miss the tone of voice, nuance, pace, stress; and we miss facial expression, gesture and the physical posture and the positioning of the speaker and addressee. 1 The same is also true in the case of oratorical scripts. In the absence of visual records of what happened in the law-court, any performance approach to the transmitted speeches is inevitably hampered by the need for a fair amount of speculation, and a complete reconstruction of the physical and vocal aspects of delivery will to this extent perpetually elude us. Such conjectures are also, of course, permeated by modern sensibilities. All of this is undeniable, yet it does not render the situation entirely desperate. The ancient rhetorical treatises give us invaluable information about the reconstruction of the speaker’s law-court hypocrisis. As an example, both Aristotle (Rhetoric 1413b30–1414a6) and Demetrius (On Style 194) agree that asyndeton, the lack of conjunctions, requires changes in the vocal ploys of delivery. 2 Aristotle also informs us that the combination of asyndeton with other figures of speech such as repetition presupposes ‘dramatic delivery’ (Rhetoric 1413b19–22). Although neither Aristotle nor Demetrius describe precisely what sort of ploys asyndeton requires, their unanimous references to the impact that asyndeton has upon vocal

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hypocrisis enable us to infer how the orator in specific contexts is likely to have delivered his speech. Ancient sources, as mentioned in what follows, also shed a welcome light on the delivery of prayers and invocations to the gods and the use of rhetorical questions, while the use of specific techniques such as deixis, and shifts from narrative or indirect speech to direct speech, allow us to infer the gestural and vocal ploys of hypocrisis with some confidence.

Hypocrisis of emotions A wide range of ancient rhetorical sources point out that emotional appeals will fall flat unless they are accompanied by the power that voice, gestures, bodily movements and posture give them. 3 There are numerous moments in the extant speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes that are under examination in this book where the language and style point to the speaker’s use of the gestural and vocal ploys of hypocrisis. One of the key indicators of hypocrisis is the emotionally laden language. Aristotle is keen to underline the power of language to express emotions: ‘to express emotion, you will employ the language of anger in speaking of outrage; the language of disgust and discreet reluctance to utter a word when speaking of impiety or foulness’ (Rhetoric 1408a9–32; also 1403b26–31). In an ancient oratorical context, we know that an emotional outburst would have been presented through delivery as authentic – regardless of whether the emotion was real or fabricated – with a view partly to make the speaker’s emotions a model for the hearers. As Aristotle puts it, ‘an emotional speaker always makes his audience feel with him, even when there is nothing in his arguments’ (Rhetoric 1408a9–32). In light of Aristotle’s observations, the verbal enactment of emotion in passages that include direct and explicit language of hatred is highly likely to have been accompanied and reinforced by techniques of hypocrisis, serving the speaker’s goal of creating a collective hostility against Aeschines and his associates in the audience. This is precisely the purpose of Demosthenes in 19.223: μισῶ δὲ τούτους ὅτι μοχθηροὺς καὶ θεοῖς ἐχθροὺς εἶδον ἐν τῇ πρεσβείᾳ, καὶ ἀπεστέρημαι καὶ τῶν ἰδίων φιλοτιμιῶν διὰ τὴν τούτων δωροδοκίαν πρὸς ὅλην δυσχερῶς ὑμῶν τὴν πρεσβείαν ἐσχηκότων. I hate these men [Aeschines and his accomplices] because throughout the embassy I saw they were wicked and evil, and their corruption has deprived me of my own honours too because of your dissatisfaction with the whole embassy. The first-person verbal collocation strengthens the expression of emotions and in context serves, as argued in Chapter 2, to manoeuvre the audience into a position in which they come to share the speaker’s feelings of personal injury on account of Aeschines’ actions.4 Hypocrisis, according to ancient sources, is an effective means of inviting the judges to register the feelings they would have if they themselves were the victims. For example, the anecdotal story recorded in Plutarch’s Lives of the Ten Orators 845b1–5, about Demosthenes’ conversation

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! 115 with a wronged man, discussed in Chapter 1,5 indicates that hypocrisis is central to ensuring that even fabricated emotions appear authentic. One can therefore reasonably surmise that Demosthenes would have delivered 19.223 in a way that enables him to infuse hatred in the audience towards Aeschines. Gestural visualisation sharpens the force of the language of hatred: the use of the deictic pronoun τούτους is an unambiguous indicator of the use of gestures that serve to direct the audience to behold Aeschines and put two enemies face-to-face. The rhetorical construction of sentences in orations – the word choice and order and the use of figures of speech – is another technique to trigger emotions, and one that is highly likely to be reinforced by hypocrisis. Examples can be found in the speeches of Demosthenes: Εἰς τοίνυν τοῦτ’ ἀναιδείας καὶ τόλμης αὐτὸν ἥξειν ἀκούω, ὥστε πάντων τῶν πεπραγμένων ἐκστάντα, ὧν ἀπήγγειλεν, ὧν ὑπέσχετο, ὧν πεφενάκικε τὴν πόλιν, ὥσπερ ἐν ἄλλοις τισὶ κρινόμενον καὶ οὐκ ἐν ὑμῖν τοῖς ἅπαντ’ εἰδόσι, πρῶτον μὲν Λακεδαιμονίων, εἶτα Φωκέων, εἶθ’ Ἡγησίππου κατηγορήσειν. I hear he is going to be so bold and shameless as to disclaim responsibility for all that was done, for his report, for his promises, for giving the city false hopes – as if he were on trial before some other jury, and not before you who know all the facts – and blame first the Spartans, and then the Phocians, and then Hegisippos. ἀλλ’ ὅμως, τούτων τοιούτων ὄντων καὶ ἐπ’ αὐτῆς τῆς ἀληθείας οὕτω δεικνυμένων, εἰς τοῦθ’ ἧκεν ἀναιδείας ὥστ’ ἐτόλμα λέγειν ὡς ἄρ’ ἐγὼ πρὸς τῷ τῆς εἰρήνης αἴτιος γεγενῆσθαι καὶ κεκωλυκὼς εἴην τὴν πόλιν μετὰ κοινοῦ συνεδρίου τῶν Ἑλλήνων ταύτην ποιήσασθαι (18.22) Nevertheless, in the face of these facts as established by the truth itself, Aeschines was so shameless as to dare to assert that not only was I responsible for the peace, but I am also supposed to have prevented the city from extending it at a general convention of the Greeks. Two pairs of terms – ἀναιδεία and τόλμη in the first passage and ἀναιδεία and ἐτόλμα in the second – are superfluous: neither, from a purely factual perspective, add anything to the meaning of their respective sentences, but much of their capacity to convey the speaker’s indignation about Aeschines’ allegations would have been lost without them. It is difficult to believe that Demosthenes would have left these laden words unexploited in terms of delivery, thus missing the opportunity to inculcate in the audience a negative disposition towards his opponent. In fact, not only word choice but also specific indicators of style such as the use of asyndeton in 19.72–3 offer strong clues to the use of vocal ploys of hypocrisis. Asyndeton, Ïaccording to ancient rhetorical treatises, has the potential to ‘produce extended pathos’ (Apsines, Ars Rhetorica 10.55) and makes certain demands in delivery, especially in respect of tonal variations (Aristotle, Rhetoric 1413b30–1414a6; Demetrius, On Style 194).6 Although these ancient sources are

116 Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! not specific about the kind of tonal variations asyndeton requires, we can nevertheless infer that sonorous delivery would here be a way of showing that Aeschines was indignant, even if he was not. Word order also offers clues to hypocrisis; an example can be found in Aeschines 2.86: τετόλμηκε δὲ πρὸς ὑμᾶς εἰπεῖν ὁ κατήγορος, ὡς ἀπὸ τῶν ἱερῶν ἐγὼ Κριτόβουλον ἀπήλασα τὸν πρεσβευτὴν τὸν παρὰ Κερσοβλέπτου. παρόντων μὲν τῶν συμμάχων, ἐψηφισμένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου, παρακαθημένων δὲ τῶν στρατηγῶν, πόθεν τοσαύτην ῥώμην λαβών; ἢ πῶς ἂν τὸ πρᾶγμα ἐσιγήθη; εἰ δ᾽ ἄρα ἐγὼ ἐτόλμων τοῦτο ποιεῖν, ἐπέτρεψας ἄν, ὦ Δημόσθενες, καὶ οὐκ ἐνέπλησας βοῆς καὶ κραυγῆς τὴν ἀγοράν, ὁρῶν με, ὡς ἔφησθ᾽ ἀρτίως, ὠθοῦντα ἀπὸ τῶν ἱερῶν τὸν πρεσβευτήν; My accuser has dared to tell you that it was I who drove Critobulus, Cersobleptes’ ambassador, from the ceremony, in the presence of the allies, under the eyes of the generals, after the people had voted as they did! Where did I get all that power? How could the thing have been hushed up? If I had really dared to undertake such a thing, would you have suffered it, Demosthenes? Would you not have filled the market-place with your shouts and screams, if you had seen me, as you just now said you did, thrusting the ambassador away from the ceremony? The use of the verb τετόλμηκε to refer to Demosthenes’ impudent readiness to lie at the beginning of the first sentence indicates the strong emotional state of Aeschines. Much of the emphasis placed on this state would have been lost if the sentence began, for example, with the subject (ὁ δὲ κατήγορος τετόλμηκε πρὸς ὑμᾶς εἰπεῖν).7 Given that emotional displays are used to communicate the speaker’s emotions to the audience, as the story about Demosthenes’ conversation with a wronged man and other ancient sources indicate,8 we may assume that the emphatic use of the verb at the beginning of the clause would have been reinforced by vocal ploys, at the very least, to express Aeschines’ indignation and rage for the falsehoods that Demosthenes is accused of having spoken. Other aspects of the rhetorical construction of this passage such as the use of rhetorical questions and the lively addressee shifts (i.e. audience-Demosthenes-clerk) that, according to ancient sources would have affected the delivery of the passage, are discussed below.9 Emotionally laden language also occurs in Aeschines 2.152, 179, 180 (quoted in this order below), where the speaker refers to the impact that his conviction would have on his family, especially his children. As argued in Chapter 2, ancient sources inform us that to bring children into the law-court was a common practice that aimed to influence the verdict of the judges by appealing to their compassion.10 Chapter 2 also discusses how the reference to the shrines and tombs of the ancestors that is designed to appeal to the civic pride of the Athenians,11 the hyperbole that the speaker’s brothers would not want to live should the judges convict him, and the statement that his children would be unable to protect themselves without their father (§179), are undoubtedly emotionally overwrought.

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! 117 I have three children, men of Athens, by Philodemus’ daughter, the sister of Philo and Epicrates, a daughter and two sons. I have brought them here with the rest for the sake of a single question as evidence that I shall now offer to the judges. I ask you, men of Athens: do you think I would have betrayed to Philip not just my country, the friends with whom I associate, and my right to share the temples and graves of our ancestors, but these, the ones I love most of all the people in the world (τουτουσὶ τοὺς πάντων ἀνθρώπων ἐμοὶ φιλτάτους); that I would have set more store by his friendship than their safety? There are people here to join me in imploring you: my father – do not deprive him of his hopes for his old age; my brothers, who would not want to live if I were taken from them; my in-laws; and these children (ταυτὶ τὰ μικρὰ μὲν παιδία) who do not yet recognise the danger but who will be pitiful if anything befalls me. I beg and implore you to give careful thought to them and not hand them over to their enemies or to this unmanly and effeminate man. First of all, I urge and implore the gods to save my life, secondly you who have the vote in your hands, to whom I have offered a defence against each of the charges to the best of my recollection; and I beg you to save me and not to hand me over this speechwriter, this Scythian. All of you who are fathers with sons or who care for your younger brothers, remember that I have issued a call for chastity that will never be forgotten through my prosecution of Timarchus. Specific features of these passages point to the Aeschines’ law-court hypocrisis. References to the speaker’s old father carry much emotional weight (§179; cf. §147: ‘this is my father Atrometus, almost the oldest of the citizens. He has already lived for ninety-four years’). As Bers rightly points out, ‘when an expert speaker like the ex-actor Aeschines presented his aged father and, perhaps, his mother, he had the means to excite pity by vocal inflections and posture, whether drawn from life or from stage conventions’.12 Emotion and the visualisation of the speaker’s plight, clearly indicated in §§152, 179 by the deictic wording, indicate that Aeschines would have pointed to his children, or, as other sources describe as being a common practice in the law-court (Aristophanes, Wasps 568–72; Demosthenes 21.99), would have called his children to mount the rostrum, reinforcing what he says about how his family members would suffer if the judges voted against him.

Divine hypocrisis Loaded utterances that may also point to delivery include prayers, oaths and invocations to the gods. These were not private acts in Greek culture but public rituals that embody their own performance, what Pernot calls the ‘actio of prayer’: loud voice, cries and shouts and the use of hand gestures and body movements.13 Prayers and invocations to the gods have a solemn tone that would not have been delivered deadpan: ancient sources provide information about the use of a loud

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Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis!

voice and shouts for the recital of ritual dicta (i.e. Demosthenes 18.259–60). The invocations also invite ritual gestures such as the raising of one’s hands to the heavens. Pseudo-Aristotle says that ‘we all, the humans, raise our hands to the sky when we pray’ (On the Universe 400a16). Plato says that whenever someone called the Olympian gods he raised his right hand, whereas when he prayed to chthonian gods, such as Earth, he raised his left hand (Laws 717a).14 There is no reason to assume that Aeschines and Demosthenes recited prayers and invocations to the gods without raising the volume of their voice and stretching out, at least, one of their hands. Examples of invocations that offer clues to the ‘actio of prayer’ can frequently be found in Aeschines 3: Μὴ πρὸς τοῦ Διὸς καὶ θεῶν ἱκετεύω ὑμᾶς, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, μὴ τρόπαιον ἵστατε ἀφ’ ὑμῶν αὐτῶν ἐν τῇ τοῦ Διονύσου ὀρχήστρᾳ (3.156) No, in the name of Zeus and the gods, I beg you, men of Athens, do not set up a trophy to your own defeat in the orchestra of the Theatre of Dionysus. Καὶ νὴ τοὺς θεοὺς τοὺς Ὀλυμπίους, ὧν ἐγὼ πυνθάνομαι Δημοσθένην λέξειν, ἐφ’ ᾧ νυνὶ μέλλω λέγειν ἀγανακτῶ μάλιστα And by the gods of Olympus, of all the things I hear Demosthenes will say, the one I am about to tell you enrages me the most. A combination of features in these passages allows us to draw conclusions about gestural and vocal ploys of hypocrisis. First, the use of invocation to the gods in both passages is superfluous, since the context makes sense without them. Second, the strengthening of the oath because of the imperatives makes an emphatic and emotionally dense utterance. The two imperatives in 3.156 (Μὴ . . . ἱκετεύω ὑμᾶς and μὴ . . . ἵστατε) – with which the speaker issues an emphatic plea to the audience not to decide to crown Demosthenes, and the use in 3.228 of the first person verb ἀγανακτῶ, reinforced by the superlative adverb μάλιστα, which points to the extreme annoyance of Aeschines – are, in context, indicative of the heightened emotional tone. Emotionally laden language and the emphasis placed on the exhortations of the speaker to the audience in 3.156 make it feasible for us to infer that the oaths and prayers may have been reinforced by vocal ploys of delivery that worked as a means of underlining Aeschines’ (real or fabricated) emotions towards his opponent. Emotionally charged utterances that include a reference to divine powers can also be found in Demosthenes 18, for example, in §119 and §120: Οὐκοῦν ἃ μὲν ἐπέδωκα, ταῦτ’ ἐστὶν ὧν οὐδὲν σὺ γέγραψαι· ἃ δέ φησιν ἡ βουλὴ δεῖν ἀντὶ τούτων γενέσθαι μοι, ταῦτ’ ἔσθ’ ἃ διώκεις. τὸ λαβεῖν οὖν τὰ διδόμεν’ ὁμολογῶν ἔννομον εἶναι, τὸ χάριν τούτων ἀποδοῦναι παρανόμων γράφει. ὁ δὲ παμπόνηρος ἄνθρωπος καὶ θεοῖς ἐχθρὸς καὶ βάσκανος ὄντως ποῖός τις ἂν εἴη πρὸς θεῶν; οὐχ ὁ τοιοῦτος;

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! 119 My private donations are precisely what you did not indict, Aeschines, while that which the Council decrees I am to get in return is precisely what you are prosecuting. So you concede that it is legal to accept the gifts, but you indict as illegal the expression of gratitude for them. What kind of person perfectly exemplifies an unscrupulous, loathsome, and truly malicious human being, by the gods? Is it not his kind? ἀλλὰ πρὸς θεῶν οὕτω σκαιὸς εἶ καὶ ἀναίσθητος, Αἰσχίνη, ὥστ’ οὐ δύνασαι λογίσασθαι ὅτι τῷ μὲν στεφανουμένῳ τὸν αὐτὸν ἔχει ζῆλον ὁ στέφανος, ὅπου ἂν ἀναρρηθῇ, τοῦ δὲ τῶν στεφανούντων εἵνεκα συμφέροντος ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ γίγνεται τὸ κήρυγμα; Yet, by the gods, Aeschines, are you so stupid and obtuse as to be unable to comprehend that the crown brings the recipient the same admiration wherever it is announced, but it is proclaimed in the theatre because that is to the advantage of those who bestow it? In both of these passages, Demosthenes refers scathingly to his adversary, and both feature the phrase πρὸς θεῶν. In §119, abusive terms and accusations against Aeschines (παμπόνηρος, θεοῖς ἐχθρός, βάσκανος) end climactically with an invocation to the gods. In §120, a couple of abusive terms (σκαιός, ἀναίσθητος) are introduced by the πρὸς θεῶν invocation. As Aristotle points out, epithets and strange words best suit an emotional speech (Rhetoric 1408b), thus affecting vocal hypocrisis with the aim of delivering a more powerful blow against Aeschines. As well as vocal ploys, gesticulation would also have been exploited in §120 because of the direct address to Aeschines.15 Like prayers or invocations to the gods, curses invite, even demand, a solemn tone: the techniques that Aeschines learned as an actor would be particularly useful for the delivery of curses included in his speech 3. Γέγραπται γὰρ οὕτως ἐν τῇ ἀρᾷ, «εἴ τις τάδε» φησὶ «παραβαίνοι ἢ πόλις ἢ ἰδιώτης ἢ ἔθνος, ἐναγής» φησὶν «ἔστω τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος καὶ Λητοῦς καὶ Ἀθηνᾶς Προνοίας» (§110) The curse contains the following clause: ‘If anyone’, it says, ‘city or individual or people, contravenes this, let them be cursed by Apollo and Artemis and Leto and Athena Pronaia’. «Καὶ μήποτέ» φησιν «ὁσίως θύσειαν τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι μηδὲ τῇ Ἀρτέμιδι μηδὲ τῇ Λητοῖ μηδ’ Ἀθηνᾷ Προνοίᾳ, μηδὲ δέξαιντο αὐτοῖς τὰ ἱερά» (§111) ‘And may they never’, it says, ‘offer pure sacrifice to Apollo or Artemis, or Leto, or to Athena Pronaia, and may the gods not accept their offerings’. «μηδ’ ὁσίως, φησί, θύσειαν οἱ μὴ τιμωροῦντες τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι μηδὲ τῇ Ἀρτέμιδι μηδὲ τῇ Λητοῖ μηδ’ Ἀθηνᾷ Προνοίᾳ, μηδὲ δέξαιντο αὐτῶν τὰ ἱερά» (§121)

120

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! ‘And may they never offer pure sacrifice to Apollo, or Artemis, or Leto, or Athena Pronaia, and may the gods not accept their offerings’.

The possibility that Demosthenes had recited curses by raising the volume of his voice and stretching out, at least, one of his hands cannot be ruled out. In context, vocal variations are also indicated by the dense repetition of the particle μηδ(έ) in a two-lined clause in the second and third excerpt. The use of direct speech also offers clues to delivery: the speaker quotes these curses, since anything read by the clerk is preceded by a formulaic request to him.16 Ritualistic cries attributed to Aeschines also point to special delivery techniques. In 18.259, Demosthenes says that Aeschines’ mother called her son to take part in ecstatic rites, most probably of a Dionysus-like god, during which he recited a dictum. This dictum is cited in direct speech: καὶ ἀνιστὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ καθαρμοῦ κελεύων λέγειν ‘ἔφυγον κακόν, εὗρον ἄμεινον,‘ ἐπὶ τῷ μηδένα πώποτε τηλικοῦτ’ ὀλολύξαι σεμνυνόμενος (καὶ ἔγωγε νομίζω· μὴ γὰρ οἴεσθ’ αὐτὸν φθέγγεσθαι μὲν οὕτω μέγα, ὀλολύζειν δ’ οὐχ ὑπέρλαμπρον). You raised them up after purification and bade them utter, ‘affliction removed, condition improved’, proud of yourself because no one ever shrieked so loud. I quite agree. Do not believe that one who talks so loud does not also shriek piercingly. There is evidence that the prayer-like shrill cry, called ὀλολυγμός or ὀλολυγή, was uttered almost exclusively by women.17 The fact that such a cry is attributed to Aeschines may indicate Demosthenes’ purpose to ridicule his opponent by identifying him with female practices. The repetition of the dictum, which Aeschines (allegedly) delivered loudly during those ecstatic rites, allows us to rule out the possibility of a deadpan delivery, even if we cannot confidently define the specifics of that delivery.

Deixis Deixis not only adds a lively dimension to the speeches, making the audience more attentive, but also works as a mode of attack. The speaker, by pointing to and thus turning the sight and mind of the audience towards his opponent, seeks to put pressure on him, giving the impression that he is in a corner, isolated from the audience. The form of deixis is similar in the four speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes that are under examination in this book: pronouns that end with deictic suffixes invite the use of gestures, allowing the speaker to point to his opponent and the audience to behold him. Despite the similarity in technique, the different contexts in which deixis is deployed make a difference to the impact that each instance would have had upon the audience. An example of deixis that is used in a distinctive context can be found in Aeschines 2. Aeschines, the defendant, in 2.152, 179 deploys deictic wording to

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! 121 point to his children. Phrases such as τουτουσὶ τοὺς πάντων ἀνθρώπων ἐμοὶ φιλτάτους προδοῦναι Φιλίππῳ in §152 and ταυτὶ τὰ μικρὰ μὲν παιδία in §179 that contain deictic pronouns indicate that Aeschines would have used physical gestures to point to his children who were in the court, strengthening thereby his appeal to the audience’s pity. Deictic gesticulation in this context, which, as argued in Chapter 2, is emotionally loaded,18 would have been more effective in engaging and winning over the audience than deictic gesticulation in Demosthenes 19 – however skilful the use of deictic wording in that speech may be. The use of deictic gesticulation in Demosthenes’ prosecution is indeed skilful as a means of maintaining the triangular dynamics of the trial as an event (§§1–3, 8, 19, 28, 35–6, 38, 46, 74, 121, 124, 198). A good example is in 19.206, where Demosthenes talks directly to the members of the audience, asking them a question, which he himself answers. In his answer, he uses a demonstrative pronoun, τουτονί (accusative of οὗτος, strengthened by the deictic -ι), pointing to Aeschines. τίνα δὲ φθέγγεσθαι μέγιστον ἁπάντων καὶ σαφέστατ’ ἂν εἰπεῖν ὅ τι βούλοιτο τῇ φωνῇ; Αἰσχίνην οἶδ’ ὅτι τουτονί. And who would you say has the loudest voice and could say the most clearly whatever he wished? This man Aeschines, I am sure. It can be persuasively argued that, in this context, the speaker’s hand or head would have been pointing to the man, who, according to him, was a great danger for the Athenians, and that this physical gesture would have reinforced the reference to Aeschines’ voice. Even if the speaker remained immobile, however, the change in intonation that the passage demands would have shifted the attention of the audience mentally, and almost certainly physically, towards the speaker’s opponent. Regardless of the similarities in the way in which deixis is used, therefore, its impact upon the audience is increased or decreased depending on the context in which it appears.

Figures of speech Demetrius highlights the significant use of figures of speech in forensic contexts, pointing out that ‘they help the speaker in delivery and in debate, lending especially the effect of energy’ (On Style 271). In what follows, a range of figures of speech that entail gestural and vocal techniques of delivery are examined.

Embassy speeches Hypophora, the technique of asking and then answering questions, is one of the few strategic variations between the two Embassy speeches: it is used 42 times throughout Demosthenes 19 (§§25, 27, 53, 92–3, 100, 104, 110, 111, 116, 130, 137, 139, 145–6, 148–9, 164–5, 167, 191, 205–6, 208, 210–1, 214–5, 218, 221–3,

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227, 229, 232, 250, 271, 278–9, 280, 323, 333, 343), but not at all in Aeschines 2. Aeschines uses hypophora sparingly in his other speeches: five times in Against Timarchus and eight times in Against Ctesiphon. According to Hermogenes, questions followed by answers are a method that Demosthenes uses to make a part of his speech distinct and to elicit the interest of the audience (On Types of Style 239). It is striking that Aeschines does not use this rhetorical device, however. It is impossible to know to what extent hypophora assisted Demosthenes to win over the audience in the Embassy trial. This rhetorical device, at its most basic level, contributes an element of variety: as Dionysus of Halicarnassus argues, ‘question, answer and exaggeration each have their own appropriate delivery, so that they cannot be delivered in the same pitch and tone of voice’ (Demosthenes 54).19 Such shifts of tone, pitch and/or volume of the speaker’s voice as well as alteration of his pace of delivery are especially important in a lengthy speech, where the speaker needs to retain the interest of the audience. The combination of hypophora with other figures of speech, such as apostrophē (‘turning aside to address someone or something other than the audience – usually one’s opponent in a hostile way’)20 and deictic wording strengthens the impact of this device. An example is Demosthenes 19.191: πότερ’ οὖν τοὺς ἅλας παρέβαινον καὶ τὰς σπονδάς, Αἰσχίνη, οἱ προδιδόντες καὶ οἱ παραπρεσβεύοντες καὶ οἱ δωροδοκοῦντες, ἢ οἱ κατηγοροῦντες; οἱ ἀδικοῦντες δηλονότι τὰς ὅλης γε τῆς πατρίδος σπονδάς, ὥσπερ σύ, οὐ μόνον τὰς ἰδίας. So which of them offended against the salt and the libations, Aeschines – the traitors and the false ambassadors and the bribe-takers, or the prosecutors? Obviously those who did wrong, especially against the libations of the whole nation, like you, and not just private ones. The speaker apostrophises Aeschines and asks him a tough question, which skilfully summarises the gist of his prosecution speech that the defendant was a traitor, a false ambassador and a bribe-taker. Apostrophē is also used in Aeschines 2 (sixteen times: §§59, 78, 79, 86, 93, 94, 123, 125, 127, 138, 141, 142, 145, 147, 151, 163). A difference is that, at least in §138, apostrophē is not reinforced by hypophora, as it is in Demosthenes 19, but by antithesis. Given the silence of ancient theory on this matter, it is impossible to know which of these two combinations – apostrophē and hypophora or apostrophē and antithesis – is more effective than the other, but we can still argue about the possible impact that these combinations may have had upon the audience. πότερον οὖν ἐγὼ τοὺς προγόνους ἐκώλυσα τὸν δῆμον μιμεῖσθαι, ἢ σὺ καὶ οἱ μετὰ σοῦ συνεστηκότες ἐπὶ τὰ κοινά (2.138) Was I the one who prevented the people from imitating their ancestors or you and your fellow conspirators against the public interest?

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! 123 In the context, the apostropheē is strengthened by antithesis – the contradiction of the pronouns σύ (referring to Demosthenes) and ἐγώ (referring to Aeschines). The antithesis here serves to create an ethnic group to enable Aeschines to insinuate himself into and estrange his opponent from the favour of the people. Another good example of the sharp antithesis between the two litigants that is further reinforced by a direct address is in 2.127: Σὺ μὲν γάρ, Δημόσθενες, ταῦτα ἐπλάσω ἐπ’ ἐμέ, ἐγὼ δ’ ὡς ἐπαιδεύθην καὶ δικαίως ἐξηγήσομαι. You, Demosthenes, made up all these things you said against me; but I shall tell my tale honestly, as I was taught. Aeschines repeats here one of his recurrent accusations against his opponent: that of fabricating stories and making false allegations. In §127 and §138 apostrophē and deixis, which is incorporated in and indicated by the personal pronouns, underscore the poisonous accusations that Aeschines levelled against his adversary. It is unreasonable to assume that the speaker did not raise his hand(s) to point to himself and his opponent, with a view to visualising, and thus highlighting further, the contrast between them that is expressed in words. Pointing to Demosthenes may have also been a lively means of drawing the attention of the audience and directing thousands of eyes to look at Demosthenes, who is presented here as being the opposite of Aeschines: a traitor and a bold fabricator. In addition to apostrophē, another figure of speech, which is deployed in both Demosthenes 19 and Aeschines 2 with some variations in its use, is kat’ arsin kai thesin, a ‘not A, but B’ type of argument. In Demosthenes 19, this figure is often combined with repetition. Repetition of the same word is the figure of speech called anaphora.21 Here is an interesting example: Εἰς τοίνυν τοῦτ’ ἀναιδείας καὶ τόλμης αὐτὸν ἥξειν ἀκούω, ὥστε πάντων τῶν πεπραγμένων ἐκστάντα, ὧν ἀπήγγειλεν, ὧν ὑπέσχετο, ὧν πεφενάκικε τὴν πόλιν, ὥσπερ ἐν ἄλλοις τισὶ κρινόμενον καὶ οὐκ ἐν ὑμῖν τοῖς ἅπαντ’ εἰδόσι, πρῶτον μὲν Λακεδαιμονίων, εἶτα Φωκέων, εἶθ’ Ἡγησίππου κατηγορήσειν ἔστι δὲ ταῦτα γέλως, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀναισχυντία δεινή. (§§72–3) I hear he is going to be so bold and shameless as to disclaim responsibility for all that was done, for his report, for his promises, for giving the city false hopes – as if he were on trial before some other jury, and not before you who know all the facts – and blame first the Spartans, and then the Phocians, and then Hegisippos. This is ridiculous – or rather it is disgraceful and shocking. This is an emotionally elevated passage, in which Aeschines is presented as an unscrupulous traitor who denies responsibility, looks for petty excuses and targets other people. In this context, the repetition of the word ὧν and the word εἶτα at

124 Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! the beginning of the subsequent cola, which are further reinforced by asyndeton, are likely to have made certain demands in delivery. Aristotle, for example, informs us that ‘asyndeta and frequent repetition of the same word are rightly disapproved of in written speech, but in public debate even rhetoricians make use of them, for they lend themselves to acting’ (Rhetoric 1413b19–22: ἔστι γὰρ ὑποκριτική). Although the meaning of ‘acting’ is not clear, Aristotle’s argument in Rhetoric 1413b30–1414a6 that the combination of asyndeton and repetition is a means of placing emphasis on specific events, persons and situations indicates that delivery techniques, including, perhaps, vocal ploys, are used to maximise the attention paid in 19.72–3.22

Crown speeches Apostrophē is also frequently used in the Crown speeches.23 An example is in Aeschines 3.131: Τίνος οὖν (1) εἶ σὺ ζημίας ἄξιος τυχεῖν, (2) ὦ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀλιτήριε; What punishment do you deserve, you curse of Greece? Aeschines apostrophises his opponent twice without using his name: the first time, he uses a second person verb and a redundant and thus, emphatic personal pronoun. The second time, he calls Demosthenes ‘curse of Greece’. Vocal ploys would have been a means of maximising the vehemence of Aeschines’ attempt to assign absolute responsibility to his opponent for the sorry consequences that his anti-Macedonian policy had brought upon Athens and the whole of Greece. In turn, an example of Demosthenes addressing his adversary in a way that was likely to have been accompanied and reinforced by gesticulation is in 18.21: Φιλοκράτης ὁ Ἁγνούσιος, ὁ σός, Αἰσχίνη, κοινωνός, οὐχ ὁ ἐμός [. . .] Philocrates of Hagnus, your partner, Aeschines, not mine Unless we suppose that Demosthenes was immobile in his delivery, which the evidence from Aeschines himself would tend to rule out (cf. Aeschines 3.167), it must be assumed that Demosthenes reinforced the verbal gesture at this point with a physical one. He could, for example, have raised his hand to point to Aeschines and direct the gaze of the audience towards him – thereby reinforcing his claim that Philocrates was a close friend of Aeschines, not of himself. Another example of this ‘I-You’ contrast between the two litigants is in 18.180: σὺ μέν γ’ οὐδὲν οὐδαμοῦ χρήσιμος ἦσθα· ἐγὼ δὲ πάνθ’ ὅσα προσῆκε τὸν ἀγαθὸν πολίτην ἔπραττον. But then you never did anything useful on any occasion, while I did everything that one would expect of a good citizen.

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! 125 The use of the pronouns σύ and ἐγώ here is directly connected with deixis, which in turn amounts to verbal gesticulation, irrespective of the presence of physical (head or hand) gestures, since they almost compel the audience to glance at the speaker’s opponent. To visualise the contrast between the two litigants is, however, to maximise the potential impact of Demosthenes’ arguments upon the audience, with the aim of delivering a more powerful blow against Aeschines, who is presented in this context as being a useless citizen, in contrast to Demosthenes. As well as apostropheē reinforced by deixis another figure of speech, the ‘not A but B’ type of argument is also used, as in Aeschines 3.78. Unlike in the Embassy speeches, however, where this figure of speech tends to be combined with repetition, a combination with paronomasia can be found in the Crown speeches: οὐ γὰρ τὸν τρόπον, ἀλλὰ τὸν τόπον μετήλλαξεν Because he changed his position, not his disposition. Paronomasia consists of expressions that combine similarity of form with dissimilarity of sense.24 For Hermogenes, this figure of speech is a means of increasing the subtlety (δριμύτης), sharpness (ὀξύτης) and vividness of a passage (On Types of Style 342–3). In context, the distinction between two similarly pronounced words, τρόπον and τόπον, would have been indicated by vocal elevation or mutations in pace, such as retardation or even a pause, at the end of the negative colon and at the beginning of the affirmative one. Vocal delivery techniques associated with the kat’ arsin kai thesin figure are also indicated in several passages of Demosthenes 18, as early as in the exordium – §1: [. . .] τοῦτο παραστῆσαι τοὺς θεοὺς ὑμῖν, μὴ τὸν ἀντίδικον σύμβουλον ποιήσασθαι περὶ τοῦ πῶς ἀκούειν ὑμᾶς ἐμοῦ δεῖ (σχέτλιον γὰρ ἂν εἴη τοῦτό γε), ἀλλὰ τοὺς νόμους καὶ τὸν ὅρκον ἐν ᾧ πρὸς ἅπασι τοῖς ἄλλοις δικαίοις καὶ τοῦτο γέγραπται, τὸ ὁμοίως ἀμφοῖν ἀκροάσασθαι. The gods inspire you not to accept my opponent’s advice on how you should listen to me, for that would be cruel, and instead to heed the laws and your oath, for beyond all your other obligations, you have specifically sworn to listen to both sides equally. This passage can be divided into two sections: the first refers to Aeschines (μὴ τὸν ἀντίδικον . . . ἂν εἴη τοῦτό γε) and the second underlines the duty of the audience (ἀλλὰ τοὺς νόμους καὶ τὸν ὅρκον . . . ἀκροάσασθαι). Demosthenes makes a suggestion to his audience: he calls on them not to listen more favourably to his opponent, but to remain faithful to the laws and their oath. Features of the context, such as the use of the key words νόμους and ὅρκον, indicate that delivery ploys such as the raising of the volume of the speaker’s voice are good means of underscoring the solemnity of the duty of the judges. Repetition is another oft-cited figure that is used in the Crown speeches, as in Demosthenes 18.265–6:

126

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! ἐδίδασκες γράμματα, ἐγὼ δ’ ἐφοίτων. ἐτέλεις, ἐγὼ δ’ ἐτελούμην. ἐγραμμάτευες, ἐγὼ δ’ ἠκκλησίαζον. ἐτριταγωνίστεις, ἐγὼ δ’ἐθεώρουν. ἐξέπιπτες, ἐγὼ δ’ ἐσύριττον. ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐχθρῶν πεπολίτευσαι πάντα, ἐγὼ δ’ ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος. You taught school, I was a student; you conducted initiation rites, I was initiated; you served as a public scribe, I attended the Assembly; you played bit parts on stage, I sat in the audience; you were hissed offstage, I was hissing. All your policies helped the enemy; mine helped our country.

In this section, there are six antithetical clauses: each composed of two parts. The first part describes Aeschines’ situation without using the second person of the personal pronoun (σύ), whereas in the second part, which describes Demosthenes’ situation, the first person of the pronoun (ἐγώ) is used at the beginning, despite the fact that it is grammatically unnecessary. This repetition is for emphasis and would have been reinforced by an increase in the speaker’s voice. As well as vocal ploys, Demosthenes is likely to have used gestural ploys. The personal pronouns in this context, though not formally deictic to the same extent as – ι forms, invite both mind and eye to follow the antithesis and look at the two litigants. Another example of emphatic repetition is in §208: ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστιν, οὐκ ἔστιν ὅπως ἡμάρτετ’, ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἁπάντων ἐλευθερίας καὶ σωτηρίας κίνδυνον ἀράμενοι. But you were not wrong, no, you were not, Athenians, to take on danger for the sake of the freedom and safety of all. The repetition of the phrase οὐκ ἔστιν gives a clue to Demosthenes’ raising of his voice. A similar example is in §13: οὐ γὰρ ἀφαιρεῖσθαι δεῖ τὸ προσελθεῖν τῷ δήμῳ καὶ λόγου τυχεῖν, οὐδ’ ἐν ἐπηρείας τάξει καὶ φθόνου τοῦτο ποιεῖν οὔτε μὰ τοὺς θεοὺς ὀρθῶς ἔχον οὔτε πολιτικὸν οὔτε δίκαιόν ἐστιν, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι. To be sure, it is not acceptable to try to rob someone of access to the people and the opportunity to address them, and especially to do that out of spite and malice. It is not right, by god, nor, Athenians, is it just or in accord with civic practice. The repetition of the particle οὔτε as a means of introducing three references to key notions (ὀρθόν, πολιτικόν, δίκαιον) may well have required a change in the tone and volume of Demosthenes’ voice. The speaker may have hoped to draw attention to what is implied here (and said manifestly elsewhere, as in 19.23–4) about Aeschines’ malpractice of shouting Demosthenes down when the assembled Athenians were about to make important decisions.

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! 127 Repetition can also be found in Aeschines 3, as, for example, in §198: Ὅστις μὲν οὖν ἐν τῇ τιμήσει τὴν ψῆφον αἰτεῖ, τὴν ὀργὴν τὴν ὑμετέραν παραιτεῖται· ὅστις δ’ ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ λόγῳ τὴν ψῆφον αἰτεῖ, ὅρκον αἰτεῖ, νόμον αἰτεῖ, δημοκρατίαν αἰτεῖ, ὧν οὔτε αἰτῆσαι οὐδὲν ὅσιον οὐδενί, οὔτ’ αἰτηθέντα ἑτέρῳ δοῦναι. Now anyone who asks for your vote at the assessment stage is seeking to placate your anger. But anyone who asks for your vote in the first speech is asking you to make a gift of your oath, of the law, of the democratic rule. None of these can rightly be asked by anyone, nor can they rightly be given to another when asked. The repetition of the same word at the end of the colon is known as antistropheē or epiphora. The cola of this section are constructed symmetrically: there is a noun in the accusative in each of them (τὴν ψῆφον, ὅρκον, νόμον, δημοκρατίαν) along with the same verb at the end (αἰτεῖ). It is noteworthy that the nouns used here are placed in an order of increasing importance – what is known in rhetorical theory as climax. The repetition of important values of the Athenian ideology and the repeated verb would not have been delivered deadpan. Vocal ploys, such as the elevation of the tone and volume of the speaker’s voice and, presumably, the retardation of his pace, could each be used to highlight the message that the speaker sought to communicate to the judges: specifically, to abide as they make their decision to the oaths they swore, to the law and to the democratic constitution. A combination of anaphora and antistropheē has a more powerful effect on the oratorical style and, presumably, also on delivery. In fact, this combination is another figure, known as symplokē, an example of which is in 3.202: Ἐπὶ σαυτὸν καλεῖς, ἐπὶ τοὺς νόμους καλεῖς, ἐπὶ τὴν δημοκρατίαν καλεῖς. You are calling him against yourself, against the laws, against the democratic constitution. Demetrius, commenting on this line, points out: Here the figure in question is threefold. It is, as has already been said, anaphora, because of the repetition of the same word at the commencement of each clause; asyndeton because of the absence of conjunctions; and homoeoteleuton because of the recurring termination ‘you summon him’. And the force is the cumulative result of the three figures. (On Style 268)25 The accumulation of figures of speech here is suggestive of a forceful passage, which has the potential to affect gestural and vocal hypocrisis. At the very least, asyndeton, as ancient sources inform us, has specific demands in delivery.26

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Direct speech, narrative and questions Clues to delivery techniques are also provided in shifts: from narrative to direct speech and vice versa and from narrative to questions and vice versa. Direct speech, for example, can be taken as a safe indication that the speaker may have varied his voice to signify the transition from narrative parts to those that are in direct speech and vice versa. Demosthenes uses direct speech frequently throughout his speech 19 (§§46, 48, 50–1, 89, 110, 117, 171, 188, 189–90, 229–30, 243, 245, 247, 275, 324). In some of these, he refers to the alleged or real words of his opponents (§§45–6, 50–1, 89, 171, 188, 189–90, 229–30). A good example is in §§45–6, where Demosthenes quotes himself, Aeschines and Philocrates. [D1] ‘καὶ ὅπως γ’, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι,‘ ἔφην, ‘ἄν τι τούτων γίγνηται, τούτους ἐπαινέσεσθε καὶ τιμήσετε καὶ στεφανώσετε, ἐμὲ δὲ μή· καὶ μέντοι κἄν τι τῶν ἐναντίων, ὅπως τούτοις ὀργιεῖσθε· ἐγὼ δ’ ἀφίσταμαι.‘ [A1] ‘μὴ νῦν,‘ ὑπολαβὼν Αἰσχίνης οὑτοσί, ‘μὴ νῦν ἀφίστασο,‘ ἔφη, ‘ἀλλ’ ὅπως τότε μὴ προσποιήσει.‘ [D2] ‘νὴ Δί’, ἢ ἀδικήσω γ’,‘ ἔφην. ἐπαναστὰς δ’ ὁ Φιλοκράτης μάλ’ ὑβριστικῶς [Ph.] ‘οὐδὲν,‘ ἔφη, ‘θαυμαστόν, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, μὴ ταὔτ’ ἐμοὶ καὶ Δημοσθένει δοκεῖν· οὗτος μὲν γὰρ ὕδωρ, ἐγὼ δ’ οἶνον πίνω‘. καὶ ὑμεῖς ἐγελᾶτε. I said, ‘if any of these things does not come about, men of Athens, make sure you give the praise and honour and crowns to these men, not to me; and on the other hand, if the opposite of any of them happens, make sure these men incur your anger. I disown it’. ‘Not now’, said this man Aeschines interrupting me, ‘do not disown it now; but make sure you do not claim the credit then’. ‘Certainly, or I shall be in the wrong’, I said. Then Philocrates stood up and said in a very insolent manner, ‘No wonder, men of Athens, Demosthenes and I do not agree: he drinks water, and I drink wine’. And you laughed. This passage can be divided into two parts where Demosthenes quotes his own words (marked here as D1 and D2), one part for Aeschines’ words and another for Philocrates’ (marked as A1 and Ph. respectively). The elaborate construction of this passage – interruption of direct speech by narrative and quotation of the words of three different people – requires a range of different vocal ploys, such as the alteration of the speaker’s vocal tone and volume, to signify the transition from the words of one person to those of the others. There are also several indications of a lively performance, such as the use of deictic wording (Αἰσχίνης οὑτοσί), repetition (μὴ νῦν) and the oath (νὴ Δί’) that are likely to have been reinforced by vocal ploys or gesticulation. Direct speech is also used in Aeschines 2 and it also offers strong indications of tonal and vocal variations (§§28–9, 33, 37, 43, 50, 51, 53, 103–4, 117,157–8). It is inconceivable, for example, to think that Aeschines would fail to modulate his tone, voice or pace in response to shifts from sections of narrative to sections where there are questions or quotations in direct speech. A good example of consecutive transitions from narrative to direct speech and vice versa is in 2.50:

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! 129 [D.S.] «Βούλομαι δ’ ὑμῖν», ἔφη, «καὶ ἐπιδεῖξαι ὡς δεῖ τὸ πρᾶγμα γίγνεσθαι.» [N.] Ἅμα δ’ ἐκέλευεν ἀναγνωσθῆναι τὸ ψήφισμα τοῦ δήμου. Ἀναγνωσθέντος δὲ εἶπεν ὅτι [D.S.] «κατὰ τοῦτο ἐξεπέμφθημεν, καὶ ταῦτα ἐπράττομεν ἃ ἐνταυθοῖ γέγραπται. Λαβὲ δή μοι καὶ τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἣν ἥκομεν παρὰ Φιλίππου φέροντες». [N.] Ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἀνεγνώσθη, [D.S.] «ἀπέχετε», ἔφη, «τὴν ἀπόκρισιν, καὶ λοιπὸν ὑμῖν ἐστι βουλεύσασθαι». [D.S.] ‘I want to show you how the thing should be done’. [N.] And he ordered the Assembly’s decree to be read out. After it was read, he said: [D.S.] ‘this is the motion on which we were sent, and we carried out the instructions written in it. Please take the letter we have brought back from Philip’. [N.] Once it had been read, he said: [D.S.] ‘you have your answer and all that remains is for you to decide’. Three sentences in direct speech (henceforth D.S.) are put either before or after narrative parts (henceforth N.). The shifts from narrative to direct speech and vice versa are highly suggestive of alterations in the speaker’s vocal delivery. Thus, the audience would have been able to distinguish the speaker’s words that are incorporated in narrative from those of his opponent that are expressed in direct speech. In some other instances where the past words of the speaker’s opponents are cited in direct speech, the text indicates not only the use of vocal ploys to denote the transition from direct speech to narrative or vice versa, but also teasing verbal mimicry. A good example is in Demosthenes 19.189: [N.] ὑμεῖς γὰρ ταὔτ’ ἐπράττετε, καὶ ταὐτὰ πᾶσιν ὑμῖν ἤρεσκεν. [D.S.] ‘ποῦ δ’ ἅλες; ποῦ τράπεζα; ποῦ σπονδαί;‘ [N.] ταῦτα γὰρ τραγῳδεῖ περιιών [. . .] You did the same things and were all in agreement. ‘What has become of the salt, the common table, the libations?’ That is the tragic stuff he goes around mouthing.27 My focus here is not so much on the use of vocal ploys that signify and underline the shifts from direct speech to narrative, but rather on the verbal mimicry that is indicated by the clause that follows the direct speech. Demosthenes describes Aeschines’ way of delivering the sentence cited in direct speech: τραγῳδεῖ refers to the latter’s profession as an actor in tragic performances, explicitly drawing the audience’s attention to the exaggeration in his delivery (cf. 18.13: ἐτραγῴδει; 127: ὥσπερ ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ). The judges and onlookers are invited to evaluate Aeschines’ performance in the law-court as yet another theatrical part. This fits well with Demosthenes’ relentless attacks on his opponent’s use of his vocal, verbal and other theatrical skills to deceive the audience. It is feasible, therefore, to argue that Demosthenes may have mimicked the pompous delivery of Aeschines, with the aim of ridiculing it – thus neutralising the effect that it may otherwise have had on the audience.

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Direct speech that is suggestive of verbal mimicry can also be found in Aeschines 2. The first sentence in direct speech in Aeschines 2.50 (‘I want to show you how the thing should be done’), for example, presents Demosthenes as talking arrogantly to the Assembly, dismissing both speakers and audience. Similarly, in §53 Demosthenes is presented as being overconfident when he addressed the Assembly: Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν λῆρός ἐστιν,» ἔφη, «ἐγὼ δὲ ψήφισμα γράψω καὶ τῷ κήρυκι σπείσασθαι τῷ παρὰ Φιλίππου ἥκοντι, καὶ τοῖς μέλλουσι παρ’ αὐτοῦ δεῦρο ἰέναι πρέσβεσι, καὶ τοὺς πρυτάνεις, ἐπειδὰν ἥκωσιν οἱ πρέσβεις, ἐκκλησίαν ἐπὶ δύο ἡμέρας ποιεῖν μὴ μόνον ὑπὲρ εἰρήνης, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ συμμαχίας, καὶ τοὺς πρέσβεις ἡμᾶς, εἰ δοκοῦμεν ἄξιοι εἶναι, ἐπαινέσαι καὶ καλέσαι ἐπὶ δεῖπνον εἰς τὸ πρυτανεῖον εἰς αὔριον». ‘This is just rubbish’, he said. ‘Myself, I shall draft a motion granting a truce both for the herald from Philip and for the envoys who will come here from him, and requiring the Presidents, when the envoys arrive, to hold a two-day meeting of the Assembly to deal not just with peace but also with an alliance, praising us who served on the embassy formally, if you think we deserve it, and inviting us to dine at the Prytaneum tomorrow’. Although the passage here does not offer such obvious clues to teasing verbal mimicry as does Demosthenes 19.189, nevertheless, it can still be argued that, as a former actor, Aeschines would have found effective ways of representing and targeting his opponent’s arrogant dismissal of the comments of his fellow ambassadors, before confidently offering to draft a motion granting a truce. Verbal mimicry may have been one of these ways of highlighting Demosthenes’ boastings, with the aim of grabbing the attention of the audience and stimulating their resentment of Demosthenes’ arrogance on that scale. Aeschines, in fact, points out in §51 that ‘there was an uproar at his conduct, some yelling that he was a clever and succinct character, the majority that he was devious and malicious’ (Θορυβησάντων δ’ ἐπ’ αὐτῷ τῶν μὲν ὡς δεινός τις εἴη καὶ σύντομος, τῶν δὲ πλειόνων, ὡς πονηρὸς καὶ φθονερός). In this context, I argue, the description of Demosthenes’ pomposity, possibly reinforced by means of delivery such as verbal mimicry is not just about a past incident. Mimicry is likely to have been a means of making the contemptuous response of the audience in the Assembly a model for the law-court audience, who are invited to re-experience and display the same contempt for Aeschines, as they (allegedly) did in the past. Direct utterances are also used in several parts of Demosthenes 18. In §127, for example, Demosthenes cites lines that Aeschines uses in 3.260. The fact that these utterances, attributed to Aeschines, are in direct speech indicates that the speaker used delivery techniques to signal the turning point from narrative to a directly quoted utterance. εἰ γὰρ Αἰακὸς ἢ Ῥαδάμανθυς ἢ Μίνως ἦν ὁ κατηγορῶν, ἀλλὰ μὴ σπερμολόγος, περίτριμμ’ ἀγορᾶς, ὄλεθρος γραμματεύς οὐκ ἂν αὐτὸν οἶμαι

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! 131 ταῦτ’ εἰπεῖν οὐδ’ ἂν οὕτως ἐπαχθεῖς λόγους πορίσασθαι, ὥσπερ ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ βοῶντα ‘ὦ γῆ καὶ ἥλιε καὶ ἀρετὴ‘ καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα. If the prosecutor was Aeacus, or Rhadamanthus, or Minos and not a sponger, a common scoundrel, a damned clerk, I do not believe he would have spoken that way or produced such repulsive expressions, bellowing as if on the tragic stage, ‘O earth and sun and virtue’ and such like. The last clause – ‘ὥσπερ ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ βοῶντα ‘ὦ γῆ καὶ ἥλιε καὶ ἀρετὴ’ – aims to underscore the theatrical origins of Aeschines’ law-court performance, thus stirring up suspicion in the audience regarding his performance by presenting it as being yet another part with no reality behind it. It is difficult to imagine how such clear-cut mimicry of Aeschines’ voluble vocal delivery could have been delivered deadpan. In 18.143, Demosthenes recalls what he said to Aeschines during the meeting in which the latter made a report of his actions in the Amphictyonic Council. Demosthenes says that he protested straightway at the time, and cried out in the Assembly: ‘you are bringing war into Attica, Aeschines, Amphictyonic war’. This loaded outburst was expressed in a loud voice, as Demosthenes says. He may have used a loud voice again to make the law-court audience attentive and invite them to relive the key moment of the meeting when he tried to prevent Aeschines’ hazardous policy from being implemented. The presumably sonorous delivery would have served to invite the audience to remember and re-experience Demosthenes’ past protest – thus creating hostility in them towards Aeschines and raising their indignation against the man who is presented as being responsible for yet another catastrophic war for Athens and for the whole of Greece. Another feature of oratorical style that works in a similar way to the shifts from direct speech to narrative is the use of rhetorical questions (henceforth Q.), which are placed in between two narrative parts. A good example is in Aeschines 2.86: [N. 1] Τετόλμηκε δὲ πρὸς ὑμᾶς εἰπεῖν ὁ κατήγορος ὡς ἀπὸ τῶν ἱερῶν ἐγὼ Κριτόβουλον ἀπήλασα τὸν πρεσβευτὴν τὸν παρὰ Κερσοβλέπτου, παρόντων μὲν τῶν συμμάχων, ἐψηφισμένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου, παρακαθημένων δὲ τῶν στρατηγῶν, [Q.] πόθεν τοσαύτην ῥώμην λαβών; [Q.] ἢ πῶς ἂν τὸ πρᾶγμα ἐσιγήθη; [Q.] εἰ δ’ ἄρα ἐγὼ ἐτόλμων τοῦτο ποιεῖν, ἐπέτρεψας ἄν, ὦ Δημόσθενες, καὶ οὐκ ἐνέπλησας βοῆς καὶ κραυγῆς τὴν ἀγοράν, ὁρῶν με, ὡς ἔφησθ’ ἀρτίως, ὠθοῦντα ἀπὸ τῶν ἱερῶν τὸν πρεσβευτήν; [N. 2]καλείτω δέ μοι τοὺς στρατηγοὺς ὁ κῆρυξ καὶ τοὺς συνέδρους τῶν συμμάχων, καὶ τὰς μαρτυρίας αὐτῶν ἀκούσατε. [N. 1] My accuser has had the nerve to tell you that I drove Cersobleptes’ emissary Critobulus from the rites, in the presence of the allies and despite the Assembly decree, when the generals were sitting there. [Q.] Where could I have gotten such power? [Q.] How could the incident have been suppressed? [Q.] And if I had dared to act this way, would you have let me, Demosthenes, without filling the Agora with shouting and yelling, if you saw me, as you

132 Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! claimed just now, driving the ambassador from the rites? [N. 2] Let the herald please call the generals and the allied representatives. Listen to their depositions. The shift here from narrative to questions and vice versa could not have been delivered deadpan, especially inasmuch as there are some stylistic details, such as the direct apostrophē to Demosthenes in the third question, which are regularly accompanied and reinforced by delivery techniques. The lively way the addressee shifts – audience-Demosthenes-clerk – is another indication of the use of delivery ploys. The speaker is likely to have accelerated his pace, inasmuch as the recurrent ‘shifting [of] one’s attention now to the judges, now to the opponent, or someone else, gives movement to the passage and makes it rapid’ (Hermogenes, On Types of Style 313–4). The speaker would have changed the volume and/or tone of his voice not simply to denote the shift from narrative to questions, but also to underline the content of some parts of his speech. Discussing the forcible rhetorical style, Demetrius (On Style 278) points out that the speaker may sometimes raise the tone of his voice in order to highlight key points that he makes, especially when he denounces his opponents, as Aeschines does here. In §86, therefore, vocal and tonal ploys can be seen as a means of underlining Demosthenes’ tendency to fabricate stories. A good example is in Aeschines 3.209 where a statement that recalls the escape songs sung by women in tragic plays is attributed to Demosthenes.28 Two quotations in direct speech describe an imaginary dialogue between Demosthenes and the Athenians. [N.] Περὶ δὲ τῶν δακρύων καὶ τοῦ τόνου τῆς φωνῆς, ὅταν ὑμᾶς ἐπερωτᾷ· [D.S.1] «ποῖ φύγω, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι; περιεγράψατέ με· οὐκ ἔστιν ὅποι ἀναπτήσομαι», ἀνθυποβάλλετε αὐτῷ· [D.S.2] «ὁ δὲ δῆμος ὁ Ἀθηναίων ποῖ καταφύγῃ, Δημόσθενες; πρὸς ποίαν συμμάχων παρασκευήν; πρὸς ποῖα χρήματα; τί προβαλλόμενος ὑπὲρ τοῦ δήμου πεπολίτευσαι; As to his tears and his shrill voice, when he asks you: ‘where shall I find refuge, men of Athens? Shut me out of public life and there’s nowhere for me to fly’, you must answer him in turn: ‘and the Athenian people – where are they to find refuge, Demosthenes? With what allied support? With what financial resources? What protection have you created for the people by your policies?’ Demosthenes’ utterance contains a question (marked in the passage above as D.S.1), whereas that of the Athenians contains four questions in direct speech (D.S.2). It is difficult to imagine that these utterances were delivered deadpan, especially inasmuch as they are sandwiched between two narrative parts (N.). The speaker, shifting from narrative to direct speech and vice versa, would have changed, at the very least, the volume and pitch of his voice to indicate the transition and the change of the speaker, that is Demosthenes – Athenians. It is also worth

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! 133 pointing out that the utterance attributed to Demosthenes is in direct speech. Given that, as Garrison argues, utterances in escape odes received elaborate lyric treatment in tragic plays, it is likely that Aeschines deployed his vocal skills as a tragic actor to deliver what is attributed to his adversary, with the aim of parodying and ridiculing him by identifying him with female figures.29

Occasional aspects of hypocrisis A few occasional features of speeches, such as a pun in Demosthenes 19 and a mimetic passage in Aeschines 2, also entail gestural and vocal techniques of delivery. The pun is in 19.213: the term αἰσχύνην, which refers to Aeschines’ shamelessness, is phonetically close to his name, Αἰσχίνης, and both are mentioned in the same clause (τοῦτον μὲν τοίνυν οὐκ ἔκρινεν Αἰσχίνης, ὅτι τὸν αὑτοῦ παῖδ’ ἐπ’ αἰσχύνῃ πρὸς Φίλιππον ἔπεμψεν ‘that man was not put on trial by Aeschines for sending his own son to Philip for a shameful purpose’). Demosthenes would have used techniques to exploit vocally the similar pronunciation of the two words – by mispronouncing, for example, the name of his opponent in order to invite his audience to think of Aeschines in connection with shame and shameful deeds. Mispronunciation of words as a means of engaging the audience to vocalise a specific response correcting the mistake that the speaker deliberately makes is a technique that Demosthenes reportedly used on other occasions, as in 18.52.30 The highly mimetic Aeschines 2.49 also offers clues to its speaker’s delivery. Ἐφ’ ἅπασι δ’ ἡμῖν ἀνίσταται τελευταῖος Δημοσθένης, καὶ τερατευσάμενος, ὥσπερ εἴωθε, τῷ σχήματι καὶ τρίψας τὴν κεφαλήν [. . .] Last of us all Demosthenes stood up and, with the portentous manner he usually adopts, he scratched his head [. . .] The specific terminology used encourages the view that Aeschines would have reinforced his point with gesticulation. The word σχήματι, in particular, may have implications for lively theatrical performances, since it is used in several dramatic passages, referring to bodily expressions and movements of characters. A search of the online Thesaurus Linguae Graecae database reveals several instances of this term in a wide range of dramatic passages.31 The later rhetoricians, Longinus and Quintilian (11.3), also highlight the connection between the schēmata of speakers and those of actors.32 The theatrical connotations of the word schemata are unlikely to have gone unexploited in terms of delivery. If we also consider Demosthenes’ remark in 18.232 that Aeschines, an actor by profession, imitated his words and gesticulation (ῥήματα καὶ σχήματα μιμούμενος), it is possible to argue that Aeschines encouraged the visualisation of Demosthenes’ flamboyant and elaborate gesture so as to engage the hearers/viewers, elicit their interest and invite them to pay attention to Demosthenes’ phoney mien. Visualisation is a means of reinforcing incrimination and inviting the audience to (re)evaluate Demosthenes’ law-court performance and personality negatively.

134 Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Despite the inevitable limitations of this attempt to reconstruct the moment of performance, in particular the fair amount of speculation that an enterprise of this sort inevitably involves, this chapter has shown that the echoes of the moment in time of the first delivery of the speech are deeply engrained in the transmitted text. The style, language and pathos incorporated in and extracted from the extant written copies of Demosthenes 18, 19 and Aeschines 2, 3 enable us to identify and discuss the speakers’ delivery techniques and their possible impact upon the judges and the onlookers in the law-court.

Notes 1 Taplin (1985) 2. 2 Aristotle points out that ‘delivery is needed, and the words should not be pronounced with the same tone and character, as if there was only one clause’. Demetrius says that ‘the words will of themselves force a man to be dramatic even in his own despite’. 3 Cassius Longinus, Ars Rhetorica 567; Cicero, De Oratore 3.213–27; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 4.2.77, 11.3.1–14. 4 Chapter 2, pp. 22–23. 5 Chapter 1, pp. 23–24. 6 Neither Aristotle nor Demetrius, however, is clear about what kind of delivery techniques asyndeton requires the speaker to use. Aristotle points out that ‘delivery is needed, and the words should not be pronounced with the same tone and character, as if there was only one clause’. Demetrius says that ‘the words will of themselves force a man to be dramatic even in his own despite’. On asyndeton: Lausberg (1998) 315, §709. 7 About word order in Greek prose: Denniston (1952) 41–59. 8 Cf. n. 3. 9 Cf. pp. 32–33. 10 Chapter 2, pp. 31–32. 11 Chapter 2, pp. 4–7. 12 Bers (2009) 89. 13 Pernot (2009) 332. 14 On gestures: Aubriot-Sévin (1992) 125–93; Pulleyn (1997) 188–95; Corbeill (2004) 26–7. On delivery: Zaidman and Pantel (1989) 41; Pulleyn (1997) 184–88; Dowden (2007) 323–24. 15 On direct addresses see pp. 15–18. 16 About direct speech as entailing gestural and vocal techniques of delivery, pp. 26–34. 17 Pulleyn (1997) 178–81, n. 55; McClure (1999) 52–6; Willi (2003) 168. 18 Chapter 2, pp. 31–32. 19 Translation: Usher (1974) 445. 20 Usher (1999) 36; cf. Lausberg (1998) 338–9, §§762–5: ‘this practice has an emotive effect on the normal audience, since it is an expression, on the part of the speaker, of a pathos which cannot be kept within the normal channels between speaker and audience’; Edwards (2012) 108–10. 21 Repetition is frequent in Demosthenes 19: §§5, 32, 41, 96, 100, 126–27, 296, 330, 343. On anaphora: Lausberg (1998) 281–83, §§629–30. 22 Aristotle discusses a Homeric example of asyndeton and repetition that are at work in the Iliad 2.261: ‘Nireus, again, from Syme, Nireus son of Aglaia, Nireus the most beautiful’. He notes: ‘if then the name is often mentioned, it seems as if much has been said; so that, by means of this fallacy, Homer has increased the reputation of Nireus, though he only mentions him in one passage; he has perpetuated his memory, though he never speaks of him again’. Cf. Demetrius, On Style 61.

Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! 135 23 Examples of apostropheē can be found in Aeschines 3.163, 165, 167, 212, 218, 220–21, 224, 226, 237, 240; Demosthenes 18.11, 21, 129, 199–200, 208, 222, 256, 265, 270, 290, 306, 309, 318. 24 Further on paronomasia in Aeschines’ speeches: Vryzidis (1972) 55–8. 25 Translation: Roberts (1902) 191. 26 On the delivery demands of asyndeton, pp. 18–19. 27 Translation MacDowell (2000) 137 adapted with regard to the last clause. 28 On escape songs in 3.209, Chapter 4, pp. 12–14. 29 Garrison (1995) 81. Hall (2002) 3–24 discusses several examples of the vocal ploys that actors in tragic performances would use to sing songs attributed to females. 30 Chapter 2, pp. 9–10. 31 Aeschylus, Seven against Thebes 172; Sophocles, Antigone 1169; in several comic plays of Aristophanes: Frogs 463, 538ff.; Wasps 1069, 1170, 1485; Peace 322; Acharnians 64; Knights 1331 etc. 32 Katsouris (1989) 146–66, 179.

Bibliography Aubriot-Sévin, D. (1992). Prière et Conceptions Religieuses en Grèce Aucienne Jusqu’à la Fin du Ve Siècle av. J.-C. Lyon: Collection de la Maison de l’Orient méditerranéen ancien. Série littéraire et philosophique. Bakker, E. (2010). Pragmatics: Speech and Text. In: E. Bakker, Ed., A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, 1st ed. Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 151–67. Bers, V. (1985). Dikastic Thorubos. In: P. A. Cartledge and F. D. Harvey, Ed., Crux: Essays Presented to G. E. M. de ste Croix on his 75th birthday, 1st ed. Devon, UK: Duckworth, pp. 1–15. Bers, V. (2009). Genos Dikanikon: Amateur and Professional Speech in the Courtrooms of Classical Athens. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Corbeill, A. (2004). Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Denniston, J. D. (1952). Greek Prose Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dowden, K. (2007). Rhetoric and Religion. In: I. Worthington, Ed., A Companion to Greek Rhetoric, 1st ed. London: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 320–35. Edwards, M. (2008). The Gods in the Attic Orators. In: L. C. Montefusco, Ed., Papers on Rhetoric IX, 1st ed. Rome: Herder, pp. 107–15. Edwards, M. (2012). Oratoria y Performance en la Atenas Clásica. Acta Poetica, 33(1), pp. 87–115. Garrison, E. P. (1985). Groaning Tears: Ethical and Dramatic Aspects of Suicide in Greek Tragedy. Leiden and New York: Brill. Goodwin, W. W. (1970). Demosthenes, On the Crown. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, E. (2002). The Singing Actors of Antiquity. In: P. Easterling and E. Hall, ed., Greek and Roman Actors. Aspects of an Ancient Profession, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–38. Johnstone, S. (1999). Disputes and Democracy: Litigation in Ancient Athens. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Lausberg, H. (1998). Handbook of Literary Rhetoric. Leiden, Boston, MA and Köln: Brill. McClure, L. (1999). Spoken Like a Woman: Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

136 Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! Hypocrisis! MacDowell, D. M. (2000). Demosthenes, On the False Embassy. Oration 19. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martin, G. (2009). Divine Talk: Religious Argumentation in Demosthenes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pernot, L. (2009). The Rhetoric of Religion. In: L. Pernot, Ed., New Chapters in the History of Rhetoric, 1st ed. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, pp. 327–46. Pulleyn, S. (1997). Prayer in Greek Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roberts, R. (1902). Demetrius, On Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taplin, O. (1985). Greek Tragedy in Action. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Usher, S. (1974). Dionysius of Halicarnassus: The Critical Essays in Two Volumes. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Usher, S. (1993). Greek Orators – V: Demosthenes, On the Crown. Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips. Usher, S. (1999). Greek Oratory: Tradition and Originality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vryzidis, D. (1972). A Critical Study of the Style of Aeschines. PhD. University of London. Willi, A. (2003). The Languages of Aristophanes: Aspects of Linguistic Variation in Classical Attic Greek. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yunis, Harvey. (2001). Demosthenes, On the Crown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zaidman, L. B. and Pantel P. S. (1989). Religion in the Ancient Greek City. Trans. P. Cartledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

6

Conclusion

Timing, gesture, voice inflection, tempo, proximity to the audience, the past relation of a particular performer with his or her audience, the setting, the season, the time of the day – are factors that determine the meaning of the actual words spoken by a performer as much if not more so than the literal meaning of the words themselves.1 The above statement by Martin on the value and importance of an all-inclusive approach to performance, despite referring to the Homeric epics and not to Attic oratory, provides a pertinent summary to this book: the first fully fledged exploration of performance in selected speeches of Attic forensic oratory from a holistic perspective. Using the comparative opportunities provided by the fierce rivalry between Aeschines and Demosthenes in selected speeches, this work has taken a fresh look at the notion of performance, systematising the exploration of direct/sensory and cognitive/emotional techniques and purposes and their potential impact upon the audience, through the lens of current Performance Studies insights and linguistic, pragmatic and cognitive-theoretical perspectives. Performance Studies provides the theoretical perspectives, methodologies and conceptual tools to frame the sprawling examination of aspects of social reality in fourth-century Athens – religious beliefs, cultural and social conventions, public identities, sexual norms, political positions, etc., – that, together with nonverbal communication and strategies of persuasion, indicate how Aeschines, Demosthenes and Athenian speakers in general, wrote for performance. This book, following the important contributions of Performance Studies, challenges the longstanding narrow perspectives in classical scholarship of what performance entails in Attic forensic oratory, and in so doing sheds further light on the circumstances that helped create the law-court performance, the relationships that this performance enables and the purposes it serves. This broad notion of performance encompasses not only hypocrisis and the symbiotic relationship between oratory and theatre, but also the strategies of engaging, manipulating and constructing the audience and portraying character: in short, every practice that advances the persuasiveness of an oration and heightens the audience’s receptivity to it. These aspects of Attic forensic oratory were for a long time all but neglected in classical scholarship, but this book has aimed to shed new light on their use as a means

138

Conclusion

of triggering cognitive, emotional or verbal responses from the audience to the speaker and the speech. The way the audience experiences a speech explicates the notion of oratorical performance in the same way Performance Studies treats texts, visual arts and anything else. The fresh textual interpretations and the multidisciplinary approach to oratorical practices and the broad analytical focus, which sheds light on a whole range of arguments, cognitive and emotive insights and communicative strategies, have enhanced our knowledge, understanding and appreciation of Attic forensic oratory, and of how public speakers developed mechanisms to persuade and influence people. We have learnt, for example, how several features of oratorical language and style, such as the addresses to the audience, the use of imperatives and questions, the word order and ekphrasis, affect the overall rhetorical purposes of the speaker and incite, or at least invite, the cognitive and emotional reactions of the audience (verbal and non-verbal) in ways that would influence voting behaviour. New light is also shed on the ways in which norms, beliefs or fears that reflect upon social reality, cultural and religious institutions and political circumstances, along with the opportunities, conventions or restrictions that are part and parcel of the legal character of the speech, are used to control and influence the reaction of the audience in a real-time space and spectacle. This book has also offered the first in-depth attempt, informed by ancient rhetorical treatises and handbooks, to show where and what kind of gestures and vocal ploys the speakers in the law-court were expected to use to amplify the written words. This work indicates how important is the task of supplementing the traditional avenues of classical philology with an awareness of the uses of nonverbal communication. This additional resource helps to impart a new life to the extant oratorical scripts. Theorising about and commenting upon (oratorical) performance present two problems. The first is whether we can capture the intensity of the live spectacle by revisiting the incomplete transcripts of what was said in the law-court. Can we preserve the vivid and tactile language(s) of the event itself – body, sound and voice, the use of space, expression of emotions, rhetorical strategy and interaction with the audience? In the absence of visual records of the law-court actions, interactions and relationships, speculation will always remain an inevitable weakness of any discussion of performance. Despite the limitations and the methodological impediments, however, this book has indicated that there remains much in the text handed down to us that gives clues as to the ways in which the speaker delivered the speech, and to how the audience was invited to think, feel, imagine, remember and react. These clues, when reinforced by the invaluable information that the ancient theoretical sources on rhetoric convey to us, especially about hypocrisis, facilitate the reconstruction of significant aspects of law-court performance. The second problem inherent in any performance-orientated approach to speeches distant in time is to what extent skills in performance made a difference to the outcome of a trial. Specific features of performance, considered by ancient rhetorical sources to be powerful and effective means of putting the audience into a certain frame of mind and rallying its support for the speaker, almost certainly

Conclusion 139 had a huge impact upon the judges and the onlookers. The elaborate visualisation of the speaker’s plight in Aeschines 2 through references to his children mounting the rostrum, for example, would effectively awaken the compassion of the judges, while the incessant association of Aeschines with acting and dissembling actors in Demosthenes 18 might also be expected to have made a difference. What remains elusive is how much difference did Aeschines’ and Demosthenes’ skill in performance really make? It is important to bear in mind that in a large dicastic panel, which did not debate before arriving at a judgement, interpretive communities would have reacted in different ways to different components of the speech. It can only be argued, therefore, that while the inherent persuasiveness of the arguments and the impact of the historical and political moment that shaped the collective mood are significant factors, nonetheless, it was the interplay of the political momentum with the arguments and performance of the speakers that together determined the outcome of the two trials. In discussing in some detail the theoretical groundwork and elucidating the use of both direct/sensory and cognitive/emotional techniques in Aeschines 2, 3 and Demosthenes 18, 19, this book has ultimately aimed to establish a framework within which the use of similar strategies in the works of other Greek orators might be explored. It has not attempted to be the final word on the examination of Attic oratory and performance, since, by adopting a case-study approach, it only examines specific aspects of performance in a small sample of forensic speeches. One of its goals has been to stimulate further work on the performance value of oratory. Future research could concentrate, for example, on the investigation of aspects – not necessarily those that have been explored here – of performance in epideictic and symbouleutic speeches both in fourth-century Attic oratory and in speeches from other periods and genres, such as in historiography. Inquiries of this sort would enable us to identify, analyse, compare and evaluate performance and thereby to shed more light on the evolution of oratory from era to era and from region to region. Future research could also explore the similarities and differences in how performance is employed in public and private orations. Rubinstein is right to note that the nature of the case, public or private, affected the options available to the speakers in terms of the content of their speeches, the arguments and the rhetorical strategies employed, such as the use of emotional appeals.2 The different nature of speeches is also highly likely to have influenced the way the speakers wrote for performance. The absence of a public profile and the limited scale of issues that concern private cases may, for instance, have affected ēthopoiia. Another aspect of the cognitive/emotional techniques that may have been affected by the nature of the case is the form and value of the use of addresses to the audience. The civic address is generally used much more frequently in Demosthenes’ public speeches than the judicial address. Demosthenes 24, however, is an exception to this rule, since the judicial address is used thirty-two times compared with nineteen instances of the civic address. This notable exception is worth closer examination in future works.3 Other important oratorical devices that have yet to be fully explored include examinations of laughter and mockery,

140 Conclusion the convergences and divergences in the depiction of characters and delivery in public and private speeches, the use of imperatives and interrogatives, and other elements of the oratorical language, as a means of manipulating and winning over the audience. Further work on performance in Greek oratory continues to be needed.

Notes 1 2 3

Martin (1989) 7. Rubinstein (2004) 187–203. Serafim (forthcoming).

Bibliography Martin, R. P. (1989). The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad. Ithaca, NY, New York and London: Cornell University Press. Rubinstein, L. (2004). Stirring up Dicastic Anger. In: D. L. Cairns and R. A. Knox, Eds., Law, Rhetoric, and Comedy in Classical Athens. Essays in honour of Douglas M. MacDowell, 1st ed. Wales, UK: Classical Press of Wales, pp. 187–203. Serafim, A. (Forthcoming). ‘Conventions’ in/as Performance: Addressing the Audience in Selected Public Speeches of Demosthenes. In: S. Papaioannou, A. Serafim and B. da Vela, Eds., The Theatre of Justice: Aspects of Performance in Greco-Roman Oratory and Rhetoric. Leiden and New York: Brill.

Index

abuse, language of 23 acting, oratory’s relationship with 83–4 ‘actio of prayer’ 117–18 actors, status of 81–2 addresses to audience 47–66: form and value of 139–40 Aeschines 6–9: accusation of being Macedonian stooge 53; ‘actio of prayer’ 118; apostrophē 124; bringing children into law-court 67–8; character portraiture, tragedy and epic 99–105; civic address 20–1; comic stereotyping 92–6; cursed or unlucky 103–5; delivery of curses 119–20; description of theatrical performance 87; deixis 120–1, 123; direct speech 128–9, 130, 132; emphatic repetition 127; ēthopoiia 91–111; hypocrisis 116–17; identification with tragic and epic characters 99–103; insults 66; intergeneric portraiture 26–7; inter-generic portrayal of character 91–111; inversion of tragedy into comedy 96–7; inviting audience reaction 86–8; invoking the gods 58; language of hatred 61–3; lawcourt hypocrisis 117; oral excess 84–6; political thespians in law–court 82; reality 19; rhetorical questions 70–1, 131–2; ridiculing sexuality 97–9; strategic function of questions 71; strategies to influence audience 21–3; theatre and law-court 17; theatre of justice 81–90; theatrical manner 30; use of quotations 83–4; verbal exhibitionism and speechifying 85–6 after-trial revision and publication 33 anaphora 123 ancient sources, use of 33–4 antistrophē 127

apostrophē 122–3 Aristotle: on delivery 28–30; on hypocrisis 114; Rhetoric 22–3 asperity 64 Athenian audience, identification of 49 Attic forensic oratory, enhanced understanding of 138 Attic oratory: future research 139; performance studies 3–5 audience: composition of 47; constructed 20–1; strategies to influence 21–3 audience and speaker in law-court 5–6 Beauvoir, Simone The Second Sex 4 buffoonish behaviour 28 Butler, Judith on performativity 6 character portraiture, tragedy and epic 99–105 civic address 20–1, 48: strategic purpose 54; We–They pattern 50–2 civic community 47–66 civic identity, self–conscious awareness of 53–4 comedy, use of patterns from 27 comic ēthopoiia 92–9 comic stereotyping 92–6 communication 1, 2, 16, 31 constructed audience 20–1 construction 47–79 Crown case 8–9 Crown speeches, figures of speech 124–7 current perspectives and approaches 1–2 defence versus prosecution 66–8 deixis 31 delivery 28–31: accuracy 29; Aristotle 28–30; association of emotions with 29; clarity 29; elegance 29; propriety 29

142 Index Demetrius 33–4: on Demosthenes’ delivery 30; on figures of speech 121, 127; on forcible rhetorical style 132; on hypocrisis 113–14, 115; on questions in Demosthenes’ speeches 72; Demosthenes 6–9: accusing Aeschines of being Macedonian stooge 53; apostrophē 124; character portraiture, tragedy and epic 99–105; civic address 20–1; comic stereotyping 92–6; concentration of questions in limited space 73–4; cursed or unlucky 103–5; delivery of curses 120; direct speech 128, 129, 130–1, 132; divine powers 118–19; ekphrasis 23; emphatic repetition 126–7; ēthopoiia 91–111; gap between syntactical and semantic addressee 60; gods 56–7; hypocrisis 114–16; identification with tragic and epic characters 99–103; insults 65–6; inter-generic portraiture 26–7; intergeneric portrayal of character 91–111; inversion of tragedy into comedy 96–7; inviting audience reaction 86–8; language of hatred 61–3; merging divine law with secular 56–7; on hypocrisis 113–36; oral excess 84–6; political thespians in law court 82; questions in speeches 72–3; reality 19; reference to mediocre voice 85; rhetorical questions 70–1; ridiculing sexuality 97–9; self-presentation 85; separation of legal rule of law from divine justice 59; shift from metaphorical to literal 10; speeches written in advance 32; strategies to influence audience 21–3; theatre and law-court 17–18; theatre of justice 81–90; theatrical manner 30; use of medical terminology 70; use of quotations 83–4; vocal delivery techniques 125 dicastic oath 57–8 diexis 120–1 Dionysus of Halicarnassus: on delivery 29; on hypophora 122 diorthēsis 52 direct/explicit appeals to emotions 61–4 direct speech, narrative and questions 128–33 diversity of audience 5 divine audience of inspectors 57–8 divine hypocrisis 117–20

‘drive him away and hiss him out’ 86–8 durative present imperative 69 ekphrasis 23–4: definition 24; diversity of terminology 24; reconsidering through lens of ancient theory 23–4 Embassy case 7–8 Embassy speeches, figures of speech 121–4 emotional appeals 60–1 emotional arousal and persuasion 22 epiphora 127 ēthopoiia 25–8, 91–111: ancient authority 25; comic 92–9; conceptual groundwork 25; laughter-inducing 92–9; performance dimension of oratorical portraiture 26 ēthos 25 extemporisation 32–3 figures of speech 121–8: Crown speeches 124–7; Embassy speeches 121–4 gender 4–5, 6, 15, 25, 28, 97–8, 98–9; see also Beauvoir, Simone The Second Sex; Butler, Judith on performativity gesticulation/gestures, excessive 31 gods, evaluation of judges’ decisions 56 ‘he is proud of his voice’ 84–6 hermeneutic framework 15–46 Hermogenes on harsh language 64 He–You pattern 52 hypocrisis 28–31, 113–36: Aristotle on 114; gestural and vocal ploys 113; occasional aspects 133–4; reconstruction of speaker’s law-court 113–14 hypocrisis of emotions 114–17 hypophora 121–2 identification with tragic and epic characters 99–103 imperatives 68–74 interest/inexplicit appeals to emotions 64–6 inter-generic portraiture 26–8 inter-generic portrayal of character 91–111 inversion of tragedy into comedy 96–7 inviting audience reaction 86–8 judges: accountable to all Athenians 56; evaluation of decisions by gods 56;

Index 143 inspectors monitoring 55; role as protectors of constitution 49 judicial address, use of 54 judicial oratory in/as performance 20–3: Aeschines 2, 3, 20–3; Demosthenes 18, 19 language of abuse 63 language of hatred 61–3 language of performance 68–74: imperatives 68–74; questions 68–74 laughter, dispositional functioning 27–8 laughter-inducing ēthopoiia 92–9 law-court 55–60: audience and speaker in 5–6; incomplete transcripts 138; performance in 17–20; secret ballot 55 law-court ‘Big Brother’ 55–60 limited agency of performer 6 litigants, depiction of 25–8

techniques 3, 4–6, 9, 137–9; interaction between performer and audience 16; in the law-court 17–20; in the theatre 17–20; notion of 15–17; physical separation from performers 16; value and importance of all-inclusive approach 137 performance and oratory, holistic perspective 1 performance skills and outcome of trial 138–9 performance studies: attic oratory 3–5; contribution of 137 ‘performance turn’ in classical studies 1 persuasion: 20, 22, 26, 27, 28–9 29 political thespians in law–court 82 potency of language, two dimensions 4 questions 68–74 quotations, use of 83–4

manipulation 47–79 Middle Comedy 92 mockery 27

revision 32–3 ridicule 27 ridiculing sexuality 97–9

Old Comedy 92 oral excess 84–6 oratorical performance: holistic perspective 3; problems of theorising about 138–9; performative dimension 26 oratory: reality 19; relationship with acting 83–4

script 32–3 stimuli in court, two categories 6 strategically used imperatives 69–70 Sun, personification of 58–9 symplokē 127

paronomasia 125 patterns, use of 91–2 performance: as spectacle 17; cognitive/emotional techniques 3, 4–6, 9, 20, 22–3, 26, 29, 54, 137–9; conceptual groundwork 15–17; definitions 15–17; direct/sensory

text, nature of 15–16 theatre, performance in 17–20 theatre and oratory 3 theatre and reality 18, 19 theatre of justice 81–90 theory of performativity 4 vehemence 64 We–They pattern, civic address 50–2