Addressing Matters in Context The Art of
Addressing Matters in Context The Art of
Addressing Matters in Context The Art of
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
PROGRAMME
Thursday 27/08/2015
12:30-13:30 Lunch
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University of Cyprus 27-29 August 2015
Friday 28/08/2015
2
University of Cyprus 27-29 August 2015
10:30-11:00 Tzu-I Liao (UCL): Rhetoric on the border: De Corona as both judicial
and deliberative speech
13:00-14:00 Lunch
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University of Cyprus 27-29 August 2015
Saturday 29/08/2014
13:00-14:00 Lunch
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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Addressing Matters in Context:
The Art of Persuasion across Genres and Times
ABSTRACTS
Early editors of the Attic orators (e.g., Reiske’s Aeschines 1771; Babington 1853,
Hyperides’ Lycophron, Euxenippus) usually transliterate the term eisangelia;
likewise slightly later (legal) historians such as Wilamowitz in 1893 (Aristoteles und
Athen) and Lipsius at the beginning of the twentieth century (Das attische Rechte und
Rechtsverfahren, 1905-15). Translators have different obligations and already in 1852
(Demosthenes, xvi) the distinguished English lawyer and classicist Charles Rann
Kennedy had set forth the case for translating technical terms and praised Lord
Brougham’s 1840 On the Crown for doing precisely that; and indeed, we find
eisangelia translated there as ‘impeachment’ (pp. 12 and 171). In Kennedy’s 1857
volume of Demosthenes, he could say ‘The law of Athens, in cases of high crimes and
misdemeanors against the state, afforded a method of proceeding not unlike an
impeachment in our own law’ (Demosthenes, 1857, vol. 2, p. 118). By 1840 and even
moreso in the 1850s, the lawyer/translators were certain: eisangelia was a kind of
impeachment and referred to a ‘method of proceeding’ at law for ‘high crimes and
misdemeanors.’ ‘Impeachment’ as a piece of technical legal vocabulary appears to
have entered English history in French: in an account of the trial of Lord Latimer by
the Good Parliament in 1376 (Rotulli Parliamentorum ii.L.20). The procedure itself
would evolve quickly in the following years and steadily in the next centuries.
While the reticence of early Greek legal historians is salutary—for it cautions us that
the procedure of one place and period cannot be pasted onto another—nevertheless,
perceived parallels are remarkable: the interpretation of substantive offence (e.g.,
‘high crimes and misdemeanor’), repetition of rhetorical topoi, essential aspects of
procedure and protocol. The first two of these phenomena are explored here.
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impeachable;’ ‘the defendant is not so distinguished as earlier offenders’; i.e.: ‘wrong
procedure!’ and ‘wrong kind of defendant’!). Among Athenian cases, the topoi appear
in Hyp. Lycophron and Euxenippos, and in Lyc. Leocrates. Comparison can be made
to early impeachments in the US (e.g., vs. Samuel Chase, Supreme Court Judge
1804/05; Judge Mark Delahay in 1872 for high crimes and misdemeanor, for
drunkenness on the bench) and more recent (notably, President Clinton, 1998/99).
While the topoi of the ‘trivialization of impeachments’ in Athens have sometimes
been persuasively explained as politically or ideologically inspired (Philipps 2006,
Volonaki forthcoming), comparison with modern topoi suggests that they may also
reflect the impulse to extend the offences to categories of immoral conduct and thus
are symptomatic of the working of the ‘open texture of the law.’
A fundamental factor in producing the desired effect on the audience was the manner
in which a quotation was made recognizable as such. This depended on a number of
elements. First, an orator would in all likelihood quote a passage that he presumed to
be known to the audience. Formal features could make a poetic quotation stand out
from the rest of the speech even without recitation. As to metre, iambics would not be
far removed from the rhythm of ordinary language, especially if they were not recited;
in such cases, the perception of poetry would be conveyed by vocabulary and diction.
Epic poetry would stand out more easily, given the large gap distinguishing its rhythm
and diction from those of the rest of a speech. Evidence for its recitation in quotation
is scantier, but instructive passages from Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetoric will be
brought in for discussion.
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Andreas Hetzel ([email protected])
Persuasive language beyond giving
reasons: from Gorgias to Jane Austen
I start from the premise that it is not the allegedly unconstraint obligation of the better
argument which forms the centre of Greek peithein and Latin persuadere but a free
offer for agreement which constitutively can always be refused. Precisely because
there is no logical necessity to agree, we become disposed to agree: rather enticed
than forced.
In a first section of my paper I want to give a brief summary of Gorgias’ theory of the
persuasive force of language which he develops in his Encomium of Helen. Here
Gorgias compares the power of language with the power of the gods and physical
violence. Human beings cannot resist any of these powers. But only speech can
become a peithous demiourgos or megas dynastes because it does not force us.
Rhetorical persuasion works without the necessity of violence or reasons, it works
because it can always fail. Protachos says in Plato’s dialogue Philebos: “I often heard
Gorgias, distinguishing the art of persuasion [peithein] from all other arts, because in
rhetoric everything is done freely and willingly, but not forcedly, and so it is the best
of all arts” (Philebos 5a-b) The ability of peithein lies in convincing rather than force.
It seduces us and offers us an opportunity for a free agreement, for consent beyond
reason.
In a second section I suggest a reading of Jane Austen’s Persuasion which focuses on
traces of classical Rhetorics in the novel. We will see that Austen’s novel is first of all
about “persudability, unpersuadability and over-persuadebility” (Ryle 1966: 287).
Everything which happens in the novel happens in persuasive speech acts. Persuasion
offers a theory of verbal persuasion which comes close to Gorgias. Two types of
persuasion are confronted in the novel: The first one is represented by Lady Russell
who is a personification of a rationalistic notion of convincing by giving reasons. But
for that very reason she is not very convincing to Ann, who represents the second,
more rhetorical type. Ann is “totally persuaded” that Lady Russell’s reasons can never
convince her, that real persuasion works without any reason, and that reasons always
indicate a lack of persudability.
Andreas Michalopoulos ([email protected])
The art of persuasion in Seneca’s
Agamemnon: the debate between
Clytemnestra and her nurse
Seneca’s plays is an obvious choice for rhetorical analysis, given the playwright’s
rhetorical skills and his warm interest in the art of persuasion. Rhetoric plays a vital
part in the beginning of Act 2 of Seneca’s Agamemnon (125-225), the domina-nutrix
scene between Clytemnestra and her nurse. The aim of this paper is to discuss the
rhetorical aspects of this controversia. Clytemnestra presents the reasons why she
seeks revenge against Agamemnon (the sacrifice of Iphigenia / her injured pride /
Agamemnon’s infidelities / his new mistress, Cassandra), while her nurse struggles to
persuade her to change her mind and abandon her disastrous plans. I will explore the
principles and techniques of persuasion employed by the two women in this debate,
the way they present their arguments, the content and nature of their argumentation,
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the depiction of their character, the power play and the relationship between them, the
performance of their speeches, and their appeal to logic and/or emotions.
Imperatives are one of the commonest features of speeches. While they may often be
used conventionally (e.g., when the speaker calls the herald to read a decree), there
are instances where their concentration in a limited space (Aeschines 2.8: three;
Demosthenes 19.262: two imperatives reinforced by medical terminology, §97: three,
§§8, 75: four) indicates that their use is more than merely a matter of convention. The
imperative’s demand for the audience to think, listen and act, or react, in a specific
way is an undisguised linguistic gesture of direct authority over the judges. In
Demosthenes 19.75, 97, for example, repetitive imperatives invite the audience to
prevent Aeschines from making his speech by heckling, questioning and shouting at
him.
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Antonis Tsakmakis ([email protected])
Thucydides and Mytilene’s revolt:
rhetoric and beyond
TBA
It is well known that in Antiquity, rhetoric and historiography are closely connected
(see for instance, Marincola, 2001, p. 3-7). Ancient historians do not only use rhetoric
to tackle and rebuild the past, to give a specific and oriented vision of the events, like
in the narratio of an actual speech (Woodman, 1988; Sans, 2012) and to make the
narrative more attractive and aesthetic, they also often demonstrate their rhetorical
skill and technical mastering by attributing various speeches to the protagonists of
their narrative (Marincola, 2007). Among these speeches, it is possible to recognize
some regularities, that seem to correspond to specific patterns and rhetorical genres,
but also singularities corresponding to the context (Goyet, 2013a). Although, we do
not find a proper description of these patterns in theoretical treatises (Aristotle,
Cicero, Quintilian,…), whose main concern is rather forensic and political
(deliberative) speeches. The best example of this gap between theory and practice is
probably the battle speech (exhortatio), for which we find numerous examples in
ancient historiography (Iglesias Zoido, 2008), but only a few clues in rhetorical
treatises (especially in late treatises and exercises). In this paper, I will first try to
describe the battle speech pattern. Then, I will describe the functions of such speeches
and show how the particular adaptations of this pattern in various examples
sometimes fit with the global persuasive strategy of the narrative and, in short, how
rhetorical theory and technical knowledge can contribute to a better understanding of
the ancient texts (Goyet, 2013b). Finally, I will briefly tackle the modernity of the
exhortatio and the usefulness of practicing the technique linked to this rhetorical
genre.
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problem for democratic politicians, dependent as they are on popular support, is that
most people, rich or poor, put their own immediate interests before the longer term
needs of the state. Effective rhetoric sometimes persuades people to accept an
unwelcome message, but all too often, as the former UK prime minister Tony Blair
puts it in his autobiography, politicians are “obliged to conceal the full truth, to bend
it and even distort it, where the interests of the bigger strategic goal demand it be
done”. One need not be unduly cynical to paraphrase this as “politicians often lie, in
the interest of gaining or retaining power”. Instead of presenting their policies
positively – and being honest about the cost – they resort to “uncommunication”:
negative tactics such as evasion, false promises, and smears against their opponents.
Small wonder, then, that mistrust of politicians is a phenomenon common to the
ancient and modern worlds.
My paper selects some (un)communication strategies and techniques from the British
general election campaign of 2015, and compares them with the political rhetoric of
the Athenian democracy which, despite its very different social and political
institutions, faced some strikingly similar problems.
It is well known that the debates in the Assembly played an important role for the
shaping of the Athenians’ imperialistic policy. Unfortunately, we do not have at our
disposal original speeches delivered by Pericles, Cleon, Hyperbolus and Alcibiades at
the second half of fifth century, i.e. the heyday of the Athenian imperialism.
Thucydides includes in his work some speeches of these Athenian leaders, while the
characters in the plays of the Old Comedy, on the other hand, present on stage –
though exaggerated or distorted- certain pieces of contemporary deliberative oratory.
This paper will deal with the rhetoric of the Athenian imperialism, as it is expressed in
speeches delivered both in the Assembly and in the comic theatre. It will investigate
recognizable arguments, slogans and rhetorical techniques. My main focus will be
Aristophanes’ comedy, namely the Knights and Birds. The controversy between
Paphlagon and Sausage-Seller contains hints to contemporary imperialist rhetoric, as
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this is expressed, for example, in the Mytilenean debate narrated by Thucydides.
Peisetairus’ attempts to persuade the winged chorus to follow his utopian proposition,
i.e. to build a city on air, might also be read as an allusion to the Sicilian expedition.
More specifically, the arguments of the Aristophanean hero recall Alcibiades’ rhetoric
in the Sicilian debate in Athens, whereas the birds can be assimilated with the
Athenians. This material can be enriched by selected surviving fragments of the Old
Comedy, which satirize Athenian leaders for their imperialistic policy. Besides, it has
been suggested (Malcom Heath 1997) that fourth century orators employ specific
types of argumentation, which were already in use in the deliberative oratory of the
previous century; in fact, a recognizable imperialistic argumentation (though modified
and adapted) survives in the speeches delivered by pro-Macedonians and anti-
Macedonians in the second half of the fourth century.
Dimos Spatharas ([email protected])
Enargeia and emotions in the Attic orators
Recent work on ancient oratory tends to emphasize that the surviving speeches
display significant features of literary composition. In the frame of this new approach,
forensic speeches are seen as pieces of literature rather than as pieces of evidence
concerning the history of Athenian law. In this paper, I propose to discuss enargeia,
an important quality that forensic narratives share with other genres of literary
composition, such as historiography and the ancient novel. Although ancient sources
associate enargeia primarily with rhetorical practice, in modern studies of ancient
oratory the notion remains largely under-explored. Usually translated as ‘vividness’,
enargeia describes narratives which are so designed as to add visibility to the narrated
events. Ancient discussions of enargeia derive from rhetorical treatises composed
long after the surviving forensic speeches of the Attic orators. However, it has been
suggested that Greek orators were well aware of the notion of enargeia. This
suggestion gains important ground from the fact that as early as the Sophists, Greek
rhetoricians addressed the problem of the representational potentialities of logos. At
the same time, and, perhaps more importantly, ancient theories of enargeia emphasize
vivid narratives’ ability to elicit emotions. In view of modern theoretical approaches,
showing that narratives are complex cognitive phenomena, the relationship of
enargeia with emotions is hardly surprising. If emotions require complex evaluative
judgments frequently concerning moral, ideological or normative considerations,
vivid narratives are informed by potent cultural understandings that secure
verisimilitude. Hence, vivid narratives must be seen as an effective tool that enabled
speakers to offer jurors a conceptual framework in the context of which they invited
them to endorse appropriate sentiments and, ultimately, decide the cases at hand.
Furthermore, vivid narratives gave speakers the opportunity to simplify the
complexities of their cases. My aim in this paper is to discuss enargeia in the light of
modern advancements in the fields of cognitive psychology and philosophy and show
how narratives contributed to what ancient rhetoricians labeled as pahtopoiia. My
paper will also use case studies from the corpus of the orators in an attempt to show
how speakers employed enargeia as a means of producing narratives that elicited
audiences’ appropriate emotional responses.
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Eleni Volonaki ([email protected])
Narrative persuasion in forensic oratory
In forensic oratory, narratives are regularly the background to a suit described in the
form of a summarized story. According to Aristotle the narrative is different in nature
and content from the other parts of the speech, though in practice the distinction
between different parts of a speech is not always so clear. The principal purpose of the
speech’s narrator is to compile the “real” events of the case into a story that is
persuasive to his audience and in order to win one’s case the narrator is deliberately
using deception. and to that end he deliberately uses deception. The speaker, in a
forensic speech, turns into a primary narrator at the point of the speech where he starts
narrating the events of his case, addressing the jurors as his external audience and
sometimes his opponents as his internal audience.
Various rhetorical strategies are employed by logographers to add vividness and
persuasiveness in the narration of the speaker’s story and the aim of this paper is to
examine the convergences and divergences of the narrative techniques in forensic
oratory, based on a few samples of narrative composition. In Antiphon, for example,
we can notice a distinct strategy between his sole prosecution speech (Against the
stepmother) and the two defence speeches (On the murder of Herodes, On the chorus-
boy), concerning the length and the content of the narrative section. Furthermore, he is
employing a mixing of narrative and proofs, which is also found in later orators.
Breaking up the narrative into smaller sections and the frequent insertion of meta-
narrative narratorial interventions is a common technique also found in Andocides (In
the Mysteries). In Lysias’ speeches the narrative plays a key role in the portrayal of
characters (e.g. On the killing of Eratosthenes). Demosthenes’ narratives undeniably
present a similar vividness and persuasiveness to that of Lysias but his most
noticeable feature is the vehemence of the personal attacks his narrators make on their
opponents (Against Conon, On the embassy, On the crown). Thus, the present paper
presents a variety of perspectives in the narrative persuasion as derives from the
examination of specific forensic cases, in connection with the ethos (characterization),
the form of composition consisting either of distinct narrative parts or mixing
elements of narration and argumentation, the different extent of details in the
presentation of a case, depending on the side of a litigant, the performance and
physical appearance of the narrator, the pathos in personal attacks and finally the
meta-narrative techniques in a form of intervention and rhetorical strategy.
In this paper I wish to consider the relationship that exists between classical oratory
and historiography, especially Herodotus’ Histories, focusing my analysis on the use
of apophainein, a verb which appears to be common to both genres and particularly
relevant to forensic speech. In juridical settings apophainein is apparently used to
indicate an authoritative and effective demonstration, either physical – based on the
display of material elements of proof (eg. D. XXVII; Is. III; Is. IX) – or metaphorical,
thus relying on a powerful discourse and on the influence of the speaker on the
recipient (eg. Antipho VI; D. XXXIII; D. LIX). The shift between a physical and a
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metaphorical exhibition (apophainein es opsin, apophainein toi logoi) suggests a
performative efficacy of apophaino. It can be considered as what Austin would call a
speech act which enables the speaker to state a truth as clearly as it were shown and
displayed to the eyes of the audience and to effect reality according to the speaker’s
expectations.
In Herodotus’ work, the use of apophaino seems to anticipate the technical specificity
the verb has in fourth century oratory, as it often appears in juridical contexts, forensic
disputes and accompanied by other terms which recall the semantic field of law,
courts and trials and which can be related to rhetorical technique (eg. Hdt. I 82; V
45). My aim is to focus on those elements which enable us to connect the two genres,
especially concentrating on the forensic vocabulary employed, on reference to proof
and on the analysis of the argumentative strategy.
To deal with these issues and to look into the cultural categories which the use of
apophaino implies, a pragmatic perspective is required. In particular, attention must
be paid to what Malinowski refers to as context of situation. Authority and agency of
the speaker, for instance, appear to be essential for the performative effectiveness
apophaino, together with the participation of the audience which has the role of
understanding, certifying and eventually accepting the intentions of the speaker, in
order to make the act successful (eg. Hdt. I 82; Hdt. IV 81; Hdt. V 45; Hdt. VI 65).
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185 – 189). I will then move to the four acts of supplications, pointing out their role as
the last-resort attempt for persuasion. Finally, I will deal with Medea’s gifts to Jason’s
new wife, focusing on the description of their supernatural power as well as on the
gestures through which Glauce accepts them: reluctant at first, when she sees Medea’s
children, Glauce is eventually won over the charm of Medea’s gifts (1144 – 1166).
Georgios Vassiliades ([email protected])
The debate on the lex Oppia in Livy:
juxtaposing two failed strategies for
persuasion
In the debate on the abrogation of the lex Oppia (Liv. 34.1-8), Livy puts into the
mouth of his speakers two different perceptions of the purpose and relevance of this
law, which was voted in 215 B.C. amidst the Second Punic War. From the perspective
of Cato the consul, it was a sumptuary law aiming to slow down women’s appeal to
luxury. Accordingly, its abrogation would bring about the propagation of luxuria. On
the other side, the tribune Valerius considers that the law was just an austerity
measure which was voted for confronting the exceptional circumstances of the war.
Its abrogation, thus, constituted no threat to morality. Metaphors, historical exempla
and the appeal to the character of the speakers are among the most predominant
stylistic devices and rhetorical means for persuasion in both speeches.
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the way in which Livy builds up each
speaker’s argumentation encapsulates his own view on the abrogation of the lex
Oppia. More precisely, both speakers appear to draw their arguments from the very
livian narrative. However, while Cato’s previsions concerning the dangers of the
abrogation are confirmed by Livy’s account, his understanding of the scope of the law
in the past is shown to be erroneous. Inversely, although Valerius’ interpretation of
the law as an austerity measure sits in accord with the quasi-absence of luxury in the
third decade, the tribune did not appreciate properly the future perils stressed by Cato
and reinforced in the rest of the extant books. Unlike all scholars who maintain that
Livy gives reason to one of the two speakers, this paper shows that Livy juxtaposes
two strategies for persuasion which equally failed to prevent Rome’s decline. In other
words, Valerius has persuaded his contemporary audience, but neither him, nor Cato
achieve to persuade Livy (and his readers). This juxtaposition, as shall be argued,
serves to prompt our reflection on the abrogation of the lex Oppia, allowing us thus to
explain and better understand the propagation of luxuria in the next few books, and
offering a prominent example of how persuasion in historiographical discourse can
raise questions of historical and philosophical importance.
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The usual answers to these questions are fairly straightforward. Rhetorical theory is
often taken to be a (relatively) unproblematic guide to oratorical practice: orators, in
the speeches they made and published, as well as historians, in the speeches they
(re)present in their work, are supposed to have used the rules found in the ancient
rhetorical handbooks. Accordingly, scholars often analyse speeches – deliberative as
well as judicial ones – in terms of these rules. However, this is far from
unproblematic, and the ‘fit’ of such analyses with the actual speeches is often not
particularly good.
In the case of deliberative speeches, the problem is compounded by the nature of the
rhetorical rules: the judicial genre received most attention in the rhetorical handbooks,
and accordingly the rules for judicial speeches were elaborate and complex (often to
the point of caricature); but those for deliberative speeches were underdeveloped.
This paper, mainly on the basis of Roman material, will suggest ways of going
beyond the usual, fairly mechanical picture of the relationship between deliberative
speeches and rhetorical theory. I hope that this will also contribute to a better
understanding of the much-discussed relationship between actual speeches and
speeches found in the ancient historians.
Jennifer Devereaux ([email protected])
Embodied metaphor and the rhetoric
of emotion in Greek and Latin Prose
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into why skillfully arrayed words were believed to have the power to shape human
behaviour.
The particular political, moral and intellectual agendas of Thucydides and Xenophon
obviously shape their respective representations of deliberative rhetoric in assemblies
and ‘wide advisors’. But in this paper I will point to their shared interest in
highlighting certain pathologies and vices of mass deliberation which are rooted in the
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specifics and contingencies of sequencing and situation. This interest is displayed via
certain narrative techniques which engender vividness and irony as much as via the
form and content of the speeches themselves. Alongside a critical stance on
democratic deliberation and its limitations, these historians also frame certain
speeches and characterizations of wise advice in ways which clearly offered
instructive perspectives and salient narratives to real orators. These included some
consideration of the most effective forms of debate and deliberation which the orator
can engage in privately as preparation for his public performances and the implication
that the reading of historiography must form a part of good rhetorical training for
politicians, ambassadors and generals.
The collection of Greek letters attributed to Marcus Junius Brutus consists of seventy
short epistles in total, half of which were allegedly written as he made his
preparations for war in the East. An introductory letter written by the compiler of the
collection, the unidentified Mithridates, explains that he personally composed the
other half, because his nephew had wanted to know how the communities to whom
Brutus had written might have responded to his repeated demands for money and
military support. There is no doubt, then, that the responses from the communities are
imaginary letters, but the letters attributed to Brutus, too, are in all likelihood entirely
fictitious.
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a large number of questions remain unanswered. What training was provided in the
rhetorical schools for the composition and declamation of military despatches? What
evidence do they provide more generally for the role played by letters in military
envoys? How were written communications conveyed to mass audiences? And what
argumentative techniques worked best in this context? In this paper, I shall aim to
demonstrate how a clearer understanding of the letters’ audience, authorship, and
function may help us examine the art of persuasion from a new and fruitful
perspective. Indeed, as the only extant collection of letters by, or purporting to be by,
a military commander, these letters offer unique evidence for understanding the role
of letters within rhetorical education; they also attest to the strong connection between
epistolography and ambassadorial rhetoric.
TBA
Recent scholarship has demonstrated the many ways in which Pliny the Younger’s
Letters were influenced by the rhetorical and historiographical (together with the
biographical) tradition and that the epistolary corpus can be read as a form of “small
scale prose”. Pliny shows profound awareness of the similarities and differences
between the genres in question (as e.g. in Ep. 5.8). Thus it might not be too surprising
that the art of persuasion also plays an important role within the context of the letter-
collection. Due to the conventions of epistolary writing and the design of the
collection as a whole we can distinguish three different groups of addressees who are
the target of Pliny’s ars persuadendi: 1. the various addressees of single letters, 2. the
general reader of the published letter-collection and 3. the internal audience of Pliny’s
speeches which are described in several letters (e.g. Epist. 2.11-12; 4.9; 5.20; 6.5;
6.13; 6.33; 7.33; 9.13).
The paper wants to examine how the art of persuasion is employed on these different
levels of communication: With regard to single letters it asks which rhetorical
techniques Pliny applies in order to influence a particular addressee. On the other
hand, the collection as a whole is designed as a kind of “autobiography” through
which Pliny tries to create a positive self-image as a statesman and member of the
Roman upper class in the post-Flavian era. The paper discusses how this larger
“image-campaign” is designed and compares the literary strategies Pliny applies with
instructions in rhetorical treatises such as in Plutarch’s De se ipsum citra invidiam
laudando (= Mor. 539 A-547 F). Within this larger project of self-fashioning, Pliny’s
self-depiction as a successful orator in the senate and the Centumviral Court plays an
important part: Several letters serve as a kind of “commentaries” to Pliny’s speeches
(of which only the Panegyricus has survived) and contain vivid descriptions of the
respective trials; in these texts we are also informed about the audience’s reactions
both to Pliny’s own speeches and those held by his opponents. Through the art of
enargeia the reader of these letters is virtually turned into a part of Pliny’s audience in
court (cf. Epist. 6.33.7).
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Maria Kythreotou ([email protected])
Persuasion in Thucydidean speeches
Among the speeches of Thucydides some prove completely effective (e.g. Pericles’
speeches), others only partially influence the course of the events (e.g. the Corcyrean
– Corinthian antilogy), while others do not seem to affect in any way the process of
the war. In this last case, other factors prove more decisive than the persuasiveness of
the speaker. Thus, the impact of these speeches on the narrative seems to be
insignificant. And what is worth noticing is that the historian himself mentions this
insignificance at the very end of the speech. There are nine speeches of this kind: the
tetralogy at Sparta before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war (1.68-86), the speech
of the Corinthians at Sparta (1.120-124), Teutiaplus’ speech at Embaton (3.30), the
Plataians’ – Thebans’ antilogy (3.53-67) and the speech of Brasidas at Acanthus
(4.85-87). As a characteristic example, we will mention the speech of Brasidas∙ a
seductive speech according to Thucydides. As the historian points out, the speech
does not play any role in the final decision of the Acanthians to let Brasidas and his
army enter their city walls. On the contrary, the decisive factor seems to be the fear of
the vintage. In this and similar cases fear and other feelings seem to be more
important than persuasion in the decision making process. But what should be noticed
is that the speeches under examination create these feelings due to the use of different
figures of speech (e.g. antitheses, repetition). Is Thucydides in the cases under
examination trying to undermine the power of logos (i.e. persuasion) so much
widespread through the teachings of his contemporary sophists? Taking also into
account that in the majority of these cases the speaker addresses a Doric (mainly
Spartan) audience, can we assume that Thucydides is trying to show that this power of
logos is only effective in cases of democratic cities, while in the oligarchic ones only
emotion prevails? Additionally, why does he seem to “ignore” the fact that the speech
creates this feeling that at last dominates? Does he want his careful readers to notice it
and therefore perceive the power logos has in creating any feeling the speaker thinks
proper for his purposes?
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Michael Paschalis ([email protected])
The Art of Ruling an Empire: Persuasion at Point Zero
By comparison with Homer in Virgil’s Aeneid dialogues are greatly reduced, the
speakers are normally only two, while 127 speeches receive no reply at all. Often
dialogues are in essence parallel monologues. The Aeneid differs in these respects
also from the Argonautica, though Apollonius’ epic contains far fewer speeches than
Homer. On the whole the role of persuasion is drastically reduced in the Aeneid, an
immensely influential epic narrating the beginnings of the Roman Empire. In the
words of T. S. Eliot «Aeneas is the symbol of Rome; and, as Aeneas is to Rome, so is
ancient Rome to Europe. Thus Virgil acquires the centrality of the unique classic».
Relevant to any discussion of the character and function of persuasion in the Aeneid
are Anchises’ words to Aeneas, when the hero descends to the Underworld to meet
his father: “others will hammer out bronzes that breathe in more lifelike and gentler/
ways, I suspect, create truer expressions of life out of marble,/ make better speeches
(orabunt causas melius), or plot, with the sweep of their compass, the heaven’s/
movements, predict the ascent of the sky’s constellations. Well, let them!/ You, who
are Roman, recall how to govern mankind with your power (tu regere imperio
populos, Romane, memento)./ These will be your special ‘Arts’: the enforcement of
peace as a habit,/ mercy for those cast down and relentless war upon proud men”.
(6.847-853, tr. by Fred Ahl). In Anchises’ vision of Rome the art of persuasion is set
completely apart from the task of governing an Empire. Aeneas, the archetypal
Roman emperor, stands practically alone among the characters of the epic and carries
alone the burden of founding an empire. Persuasion is therefore inherently irrelevant
to Aeneas’ mission and to the course of history as reflected in the epic, and has little
meaning in the world the poet creates around the hero. For about 100 years, from the
times of Tiberius to the age of Trajan, the Romans debated the issue of the decline of
oratory. In the Dialogus de oratoribus, the last document in this almost 100-year-long
debate, Tacitus offered a historically determined view, that oratory was suppressed by
the sole government of the Princeps.
16
orators in form, function and purpose. Lykourgos’ oracles are namely the only ones to
be presented as part of the narrative of the speech, rather than as formal depositions of
evidence to be read out by a clerk. Furthermore, it is particularly in Lykourgos’
references that we find the ambiguity of oracles and the need for interpretation
emphasised.
Similar to Herodotus, Lykourgos uses the ambiguity of oracular responses to amplify
their authoritative nature and to present them as sources of evidence for divine will, in
order to attribute to the gods particular actions and attitudes which endorse and
authorise his arguments against Leokrates. Demosthenes, Dinarchus and Aeschines,
on the other hand, present oracles, in format and function, in a manner similar to laws
and other atechnoi pisteis. It will be shown that Lykourgos’ unique portrayal of
oracles is due to his employment of a different technique of argumentation, which is
comparable to that used by Herodotus. This paper will thus address the cross-generic
use of oracle stories as tools of persuasion in historiography and oratory.
This paper discusses Aristotle’s theory of the causes for the arousal of emotions.
While Aristotle does not discuss the arousal of the emotions in his more theoretical
writings, some scholars hold that it is possible to extract such a theory from what
Aristotle writes in the Rhetoric (mainly Rhet. 2.1-11). These scholars argue that for
Aristotle the arousal of emotion is necessarily dependent on belief (as Nussbaum,
1996; Fortenbaugh, 2002; Dow, 2011). However, there are those (as Sihvola, 1996;
Striker, 1996; Cooper, 1996) who deny that emotion is dependent on belief, pointing
out that animals (which, according to Aristotle, are incapable of having beliefs)
do have emotions.
I will propose a way of reconciling these two approaches and acknowledging what is
valid in both positions. According to De Anima 3.3, 3.10 and 3.11, phantasia is the
necessary cause of emotions, and both sensations and beliefs participate in the arousal
of emotions by influencing phantasmata (the objects of phantasia). Since
aisthetike and bouletike phantasia (sensitive and deliberative phantasia) influence the
emotions, animals can have emotions too. Their phantasmata are generated through
sensation by means of the aisthetike phantasia. In humans, both sensations and beliefs
can generate phantasmata. These phantasmata are combined and processed in
the phantasia with all other phantasmata generated by previous experiences.
This approach allows me to accept the valid evidence of both positions and create a
theory that is consistent with Aristotle’s different works. Further, it allows for a more
nuanced reading of the explanations of emotions found in Rhet 2.1-2.11 as the closest
we have to an Aristotle’s theory of emotion, as far as it applies to rhetoricians. It does
not include either physiological explanations or other explanations for the arousal
of emotions that are unavailable to rhetoricians, limited as they are to the spoken
word. Finally, my explanation gives an underlying reason why some emotions will be
easier or harder for the rhetorician to arouse as it takes account of both the context of
the speech and the existing ideas/beliefs of the audience. The phantasmata that
are generated by the belief the rhetorician is trying to instill will combine with those
17
from previous beliefs and enhance, change or balance them. This shows the
importance of taking on account the audience's previous experiences for deciding how
to appeal to them and induce the desired reactions.
Pericles’ speeches in Thucydides suggest that the dêmos was poorly equipped to make
decisions about the financial dimension of warfare without extensive guidance from
orators (Kallet 1994). They indicate that this guidance was based on orators’ special
access to factual information about Athenian finances and those of the enemy. The
nature of financial discourse in present-day democracies reinforces this Thucydidean
picture of a dêmos reliant on its rhêtores for guidance in matters beyond the
experience of most citizens. We might expect that this knowledge-based power
disparity between rhêtôr and dêmos became even greater after the financial crisis and
the rise of the Theoric Board in the mid-350s.
I argue that Thucydides has exerted a distorting influence on our picture of Athenian
financial discourse. The fact-driven rhetoric of Pericles is shaped by Athens’ unique
financial position in 432/1 and Thucydides’ construction of the ideal democratic
leader as the instructor the people.
Demosthenes’ self-presentation as an advisor may owe much to Thucydides’ Pericles
(Yunis 1996), but although Demosthenes and Pericles both share the task of making
persuasive assessments of financial power in war, Demosthenes takes a different
approach. For Demosthenes, facts alone do not enable sound foresight and good
policy. His assessment of Athenian and Macedonian financial power in the 340s
stresses the primacy of politics over hard economic facts. The former determines how
well a state can convert wealth into military might. Rather than presenting a dossier of
facts, Demosthenes relates financial power in terms of ideological assumptions and
historical analogy.
Is Demosthenes’ strategy here simply to mislead? By not quantifying financial power,
it is easier for him to argue that a cash-strapped Athens can fight Philip. I argue that
Demosthenes’ ideological and historical construction of financial realities render him
more trustworthy and intelligible and hence, more persuasive. More importantly, he
provides the dêmos with a broader interpretative framework for deliberating
intelligently on the financial dimension of war. Self-evident, ‘common-sense’
understandings are invested with greater interpretative significance than the technical
knowledge wielded by orators. The result is a financial rhetoric which underscores the
limitations of the Periclean model as a representation of the relationship between
instruction and persuasion.
18
formal speeches in contexts of political decision-making and diplomacy (e.g. the
Peace of 371 BC: VI.3), judicial proceedings (e.g. the ‘trial’ of Theramenes: II.3)
and military activity. At the same time, he regularly uses OR in a more informal
manner which recalls Herodotus: often these conversational episodes function in the
same way as in the Histories, to illuminate the issues at stake or the causation behind
events, but at times they seem to point a moral lesson, as in the dialogue between
Dercylidas and Meinias (III.1), or to throw light on more informal methods of
persuasion by contact between individuals (e.g. the encounter of Agesilaus and
Pharnabazus: IV.1) and at times come close to the contemporary practice of lobbying
(as before the trial of Sphodrias V.4). Likewise in the Anabasis we sometimes see the
use of public rhetoric to address the Ten Thousand like a polis assembly, but again,
there are more informal speeches which at times (notably in Xenophon’s encounter
with Seuthes in VII.7) come close to the kind of overt morally didactic agendas which
give rise to passages of outright Socratic dialogue in the Cyropaedia (notably I.6 and
V.5). My paper will consider how Xenophon adapts his characters’ use of direct
speech according to context, addressee and objectives, in a way that a contemporary
Director of Communications might well recognise.
Sophia Papaioannou ([email protected])
The Poetics and Politics of Persuasion
in Ovid’s and Quintus’
Reconstructions of the Hoplon Krisis
The ‘Judgement of the Arms’ (Hoplon Krisis) has been interpreted as an agon, already
since Aeschylus’ original treatment of the episode in the lost Hoplon Krisis tragedy;
there, contrary to the epic tradition (depicted likely in Athenian iconography) the
judges of the contesting heroes were not the Achaeans or the Trojan captives but the
Thetis and the Nereids (cf. esp. TrGF iii fr. 350). This innovation significantly alters
the orientation of the contest from the perspective of the mortal audience-the Argives
are not judges but an audience: for them, the agon between Odysseus and Ajax is now
a spectacle, perhaps for the first time ever and the perspectives of Aeschylus’
extradamatic spectators and the Greek army on stage identify. This metadramatic
dimension of the Hoplon Krisis narrative informs the treatment of the same episode
first in Ovid and subsequently in Quintus of Smyrna (who composed his epic
independently from Ovid, but was certainly informed by the same intertexts). Both
epic accounts of the agon center around two contestants who try to win by combining
performance and persuasion for primarily metaliterary purposes. I propose to examine
the persuasiveness of the argumentation employed by each of the two contestants in
two different epic narratives of Ovid and Quintus, that engage with the same epic
sources antagonistically, motivated by the same aspirations to emulate the model.
Both Ovid and Quintus emulate archaic epic as known to us through the only
surviving Homeric poems. More specifically, both reproduce the speech contest
between Odysseus and Ajax as conflicted readings—one in favor of the Cyclic
version of the epic order, the other proposing a revised version of traditional epic and
so, an alternative epic system of values. I intend to assess the persuading strategies of
the two contestants by examining their alternative readings of the same epic moments.
Due to time limitations I shall focus on those episodes based on epic material from the
Iliad (the only surviving part of the Trojan careers of Odysseus and Ajax), study the
diverse assessments each speaker gives on the same episodes and appreciate the
19
effectiveness of their accounts—in terms of persuasion as part of an oratorical
performance (for the intradramatic audience) and in terms of proposing an alternative
epic reading based on principles of a different heroic code (for the reading audience of
Ovid’s and Quintus’ audiences across time).
I hope to show that they offer two independent but poetically similar metaliterary
critical readings of the Trojan war as archetypally recorded in the Epic Cycle.
20
the distinction between the use of eyewitness testimony in contemporary history and
the use of oral tradition when writing about the distant past, but it is notable that his
methodological discussion of this point does not use the language of marturia,
preferring instead to speak of “those present” (hoi parontes, 1.22.3); an explanation of
this dogged silence will be proposed in terms of Athenian forensic practice in the use
of witnesses.
T. Davina McClain ([email protected])
Women Speak: Direct Speech in Livy’s Ab
Urbe Condita
While scholars have examined the use of direct speech in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita,
this paper will offer the first detailed examination of direct speech by women. Livy
has women use indirect discourse to give advice (Sabines 1.13.2), whereas his female
speakers employ direct discourse to convey actions that must happen (Sabines 1.13.3).
By making this shift, Livy heightens the authority with which he has these women
address men. Lucretia, for example, responds to the question “satin salve?” with
direct speech to present her rape to her father and husband and to declare her
determination to commit suicide (1.58.7). In comparison, when Fabia Minor responds
to the same question from her father (6.34.8), Livy has Fabia use indirect discourse to
address him about the disparity between her marriage to a pleb versus her sister’s
marriage to a patrician. That the indirect speech emphasizes the appropriateness of her
speech has been missed by scholars (Phillips 1983; Krause 1991). Similarly, while
Livy limits Sophoniba’s persuasion of her first husband, Syphax, to abandon his
alliance with the Romans to blanditiis … adhibitis (29.23.7), the historian employs
direct speech in the situation of Sophoniba – Masinissa – Scipio to convey how easy it
is to manipulate Masinissa. The captive Sophoniba’s direct plea results in a hasty
marriage to Masinissa (30.12.12). Then Scipio’s direct address results in Masinissa’s
agreement to hand the Carthaginian Sophoniba over to the Romans (30.14.4).
Masinissa, however, sends a message and poison to Sophoniba to allow her to commit
suicide. Livy has Sophoniba use direct speech to define her suicide (30.15.7).
21
used by characters in the context of decision making we find an implicit theory of the
rhetoric of numbers.
The following aspects will be discussed: (i) The argumentative power of numbers:
Pericles’ use of numbers imply preliminary decisions about what to count that are not
accounted for; the audience is provided with an avalanche of data but is withheld
information crucial to assess the meaning of these numbers; by contrast, Thucydides’
narrative voice abounds in authorial remarks about the quality and meaning of
numerical data, leaving the audience to draw the inferences from these data (i.e. the
calculations) themselves (e.g. 1.10.3-5, 5.68.1-4).
(ii) The epistemology of numbers: Thucydides’ authorial use of numbers displays
self-consciousness about the quality of numerical information. The epistemological
quality of these ex eventu-numbers contrasts with the numbers used by characters in
contexts of decision-making where they are part of predictions that are often negated
by the course of events following them. (iii) The authorial framing of “number
speeches”: the narrative framing of both Pericles’ speech in 2.13 and its counterpart,
Nicias’ speech in 6.24-26, suggests that the communicative power of numbers
consists not in promoting collective rationality but in appealing to mass emotions.
Analysis along these lines will shed light on a phenomenon overlooked by ancient
rhetorical theory but abundantly used in practice and reflected upon in historiography.
In this paper, I will investigate which types of examples are found in these treatises,
where they come or might come from, whether there are any significant differences
between the types and sources of examples for Cic. Inu. and Rhet. Her. Furthermore, I
will analyse what kinds of examples occur in [Arist.] Rh. Al. and Arist. Rh., and also
in Quint. Inst., in order to examine whether there are any traditions of examples from
4th-century Greece that are passed down to 1st-century AD Rome. Although there have
already been individual studies investigating certain types of examples in one of these
handbooks, e.g. the popular examples in Rhet. Her., this paper will analyse all
examples found in both treatises, which might give us an idea of what Roman authors
from the Late Republic, and possibly until Quintilian’s times, might have come across
in their rhetorical education.
22
Tzu-I Liao ([email protected])
Rhetoric on the border: De Corona as both
judicial and deliberative speech
The Aristotelian division of speech genres is based on two criteria: persuading
addressees into action and the time of the topic issue (Aristotle Rhetoric 3.14). While
generations of scholars ascribe to this paradigm on which ancient persuasion studies
have their basis, the persuasion mechanism presented by surviving speeches appears
to be more vigorous and complex than Aristotle claimed. Borders between speech
genres were never rigid as theoreticians presented—in fact, the crossing and the
manipulation of the borders between speech genres are common practices of ancient
practitioners of persuasion. This paper examines how Demosthenes' De Corona
transcends generic borders as an example of the persuasion mechanism in the ancient
political context.
The speech plays on the boundary line not only in its discussion of themes of
statesmanship (which is considered of the deliberative genre) in the judicial context,
as Usher (1999:270) points out, but also in its structure and its formal profile which
are finely tweaked for persuasive purposes. Subscribing to functional linguistic
theories on genre study, I investigate the contextual values (Hasan 1996; Martin &
Rose 2012) in order to understand this particular case of political speech, and I
compare the structure of De Corona to the generic structure of deliberative speeches.
This paper then focuses on how in three aspects of language— experiential,
interpersonal and textual (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004)—the speech exemplifies the
interactions between the judicial and the deliberative genres. These aspects of
language are manipulated as the speaker exploits the persuasive resources from both
genres: 1) experientially, how the representation of activities reflects deliberative
formulae in a judicial context; 2) interpersonally, how the use of personal references,
illocutions and registers demonstrates the similarities between this particular judicial
speech and the deliberative corpus; 3) textually, how the transitioning of
argumentation and narratives in this judicial speech resembles a typical deliberative
speech. This paper concludes with a comparison between similar practices in the
classical deliberative corpus (Demosthenes’ Philippics) and shows how through such
manipulation of generic borders Demosthenes maximises the persuasive potential of
deliberative conventions in the judicial context, turning a personal political enemy
into a national menace.
Victoria Pagan ([email protected])
Dialogus de Principibus? Tacitus on the art of
persuasion in the Julio-Claudian era
In his recent study on the Dialogus (The World of Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus:
Aesthetics and Empire in Ancient Rome, Cambridge 2014), Christopher van den Berg
posits that the work chronicles how changes in the rhetorical arsenal, like the
historical circumstances that led to them, “define a new era of modern eloquentia” (p.
296), and he proposes a reading of the dialogue that denies the central tenent of the
decline of oratory, to ask instead what might be at stake for Tacitus in choosing to
frame the problem in terms of decline. His conclusions gesture toward Tacitus’
historical works: “The values which Tacitus documents in the Dialogus can be read as
a programmatic framework for his rhetorical enterprise, be it as advocate or as author”
23
(p. 300). I should like to test the application of van den Berg’s conclusions
on Annals 13.3, the report of the funeral oration for Claudius composed by Seneca for
Nero and the comparison of Nero’s oratorical skills to previous principes. This
paragraph encapsulates the nominal themes of the Dialogus: the decline of oratory,
the periodization of the genre, and the influence of politics on the art. Given these
obvious parallels, how does van den Berg’s thesis hold up? Does the Dialogus inform
the Annals, or has Tacitus’ conception of the art of persuasion, its transmission
through education, and its practice changed in any way? Is oratory as practiced
by principes even the same art as that practiced by the sort of elite who engage in
the Dialogus?
24
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Addressing Matters in Context:
The Art of Persuasion across Genres and Times
CONFERENCE DELEGATES
CONVENERS
Kyriakos Demetriou is Professor of Political Science, Department of Social and
Political Sciences, University of Cyprus. As an intellectual historian, Kyriakos
Demetriou specializes in the history of classical reception(s), with emphasis on
eighteenth and nineteenth-century Platonic interpretations, the classical heritage in
Victorian Britain, and the history of Greek historiography. His teaching is mainly
focused on the history of political thought (ancient and modern), political
ideologies and the interpretative approaches in political theory.
Sophia Papaioannou teaches Latin language and literature at the National and
Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her principal areas of research include ancient
epic, the literature and culture of the Age of Augustus, and Roman drama,
especially comedy. Her main publications include two books on
Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the reception of the earlier epic tradition, the first
interpretative commentary on Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus since 1963, the first
translation of Miles Gloriosus in Modern Greek, and (in collaboration with Antonis
Petrides) a collective volume on the work and the heritage of Menander,
entitled New Perspectives on Postclassical Comedy. Her forthcoming publications
(2014-15) include a collection of essays on Terence as agent and object of
interpretation; the first edition of the unpublished verse translation of
Ovid’s Amores by the early 20th century Greek author Christos Christovassilis; and
two collections of conference papers. She is currently occupied with the first
translation of the unpublished Latin philosophical treatise De Statu Hominis by the
15th century Greek Catholic theologian Leonardus, archbishop of Chios, and she is
writing a book on the manipulation of prevalent mythological tradition in
Ovid’s Fasti.
1
College London (Lloyd Scholarship in Greek), and University of Texas at Austin
(Leon Fellowship). He is specialist in Greek oratory/rhetoric and in performance
criticism. He is also interested in ancient Greek medicine (esp. Hippocrates) and
prose (esp. Xenophon). Selected publications include: Attic Oratory and
Performance (Routledge: forthcoming); Papaioannou, Sophia, Andreas Serafim,
and Beatrice da Vela (eds.). Theatre of Justice: Aspects of Performance in Greco-
Roman Oratory and Rhetoric (Brill: forthcoming); Serafim, Andreas. “Making the
audience: ekphrasis and rhetorical strategy in Demosthenes 18 and 19”, Classical
Quarterly 65 (2015) 96-108.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Michael Gagarin is James R Dougherty, Jr. Centennial Professor of Classics
Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of many books and
articles, including Early Greek Law (1986), Antiphon the Athenian: Oratory, Law,
and Justice in the Age of the Sophists (2002), Writing Athenian Law (2008),
and Speeches from Athenian Law (2010), and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford
Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (2010). His latest book, The Laws of
Ancient Crete 650-400 BCE, will be published in 2015. He has been President of
the Classical Association of the Middle West and South (1989-90) and of the
American Philological Association (now the Society for Classical Studies) in 2002.
CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
Adele Scafuro is Professor of Classics at Brown University where she has taught
since 1983. She has been a recipient of numerous awards, including those from: the
Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (University of Tokyo, March 2013);
Loeb Classical Library Foundation (2012); ACLS (2003-04); von Humboldt
Stiftung (summer 2004, Munich and 1989, Berlin); the Center for Hellenic Studies
(Washington, D.C., 1987-88) and Fulbright (summer 1987, American Academy in
Rome). She was Whitehead Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical
Studies (2004-05) and has been an International Scholar at the Leopold Wenger-
Institut für antike Rechtsgeschichte und Papyrusforschung in Munich (2003-04)
and in the Dept. of Philology/Classical Studies at the University of Crete,
Rethymnon (May-Oct. 1997). She is the author and editor of books and essays in
the fields of Greek (especially Athenian) and Roman law, Greek (especially
Athenian) epigraphy, and Greek and Roman drama. These include: The Oxford
Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy (co-edited with M. Fontaine);
Demosthenes Speeches 39-49; The Forensic Stage: Settling Disputes in Graeco-
Roman New Comedy; Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology (co-edited with A.L.
Boegehold). She is series editor (on the Greek side) for Brill Studies in Greek and
Roman Epigraphy. She is currently finishing a book on political trials in Athens.
Scafuro is a frequent visitor to Athens and has served on the Managing Committee
of the American School of Classical Studies since 1997.
2
rhetorical literature as evidence for the native linguistic perception of classical
Greek. His doctoral thesis is under revision for publication under the title “Orality
and Performance in Classical Attic Prose: A Linguistic Approach”.
3
Benoit Sans is a classical philologist, Latin teacher and post-PhD researcher at
Brussels’ University (Université Libre de Bruxelles), in the Research Group in
Rhetoric and Linguistic Argumentation (Groupe de recherche en Rhétorique et en
Argumentation Linguistique - GRAL), directed by Prof. Emmanuelle Danblon. His
PhD dissertation was devoted to the relations between rhetoric and ancient
historiography through a comparison of parallels extracts of Polybius and Livy.
His current research topics are the speeches genres in ancient historiography and
rhetorical exercises. He is now working with his research team on a project
called “Training Rhetoric: practical reason, creativity, citizenship”, financed by the
Belgian National Research Funds (FNRS) that aims to recreate and to test a
practical course of rhetoric based on the ancient rhetorical teaching and to
reintroduce rhetorical formation and exercises in secondary schools and at
university.
4
Greek (editions: Papazisi 2010). Research interests focus on Ancient Greek Law,
Greek Rhetoric (esp. forensic and epideictic rhetoric and oratory), Greek values
and epic poetry, and Hellenistic rhetoric. She is currently working on the
completion of a Commentary on Lycurgus’ speech Against Leokrates, which is to
be published as a supplementary volume of BICS.
Francesca Scrofani is a Phd student from the University of Trento (Italy) and the
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales (EHESS) of Paris. Using a
philological and semantic method, her dissertation with the working title “the
Minos in the Corpus Platonicum” focuses on the re-evaluation of this dialogue.
The dissertation examines the relations between the Minos and the main political
dialogues of Plato and the notion of nomos related with the platonic imagery. She
also wrote a thesis on "Persuasion in Medea and Hippolytus of Euripides" during
her previous bachelor degree at the EHESS and the Sorbonne University.
5
Jakob Wisse is Professor of Latin Language & Literature at Newcastle University,
where he is also head of Classics. His book publications centre on ancient rhetoric,
in particular Cicero and his “magnum opus”, De oratore. Further research interests
include intellectual life (esp. in the Roman republican period); Greek and Roman
historiography; literary theory; and Greek and Latin language. His next book
project is a commentary on Sallust’s War with Jugurtha, to be written with his
Newcastle colleague Federico Santangelo.
Jessica Evans received her PhD in 2012 from Trinity College, Dublin, where she
wrote her dissertation on the discourses of political freedom in Greek
historiography. Since completing her PhD she has taught at both the University of
Vermont and Middlebury College, where she will be a Visiting Assistant Professor
of Classics next year. In addition to teaching a variety of courses in classics, she
has also taught Sociology of Gender.
Jon Hesk is Senior Lecturer in Greek and Classical Studies in the School of
Classics at the University of St Andrews. Jon Hesk is the author of Deception and
Democracy in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 2000) and Sophocles’ Ajax (London,
2003). He has also published numerous chapters and journal articles on Homer,
Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and the Athenian orators. Jon Hesk also has a
blog called ‘Ancient and Modern Rhetoric’, has been known to do podcasts and
occasionally writes book reviews for the Times Literary Supplement. He is just
starting work on a new book which is provisionally entitled Decision-making and
evidence in Archaic and Classical Greece: an archaeology of intellectual and
discursive virtue. This will look at will at representations and thinking about what
constitutes a good decision and how good decisions get made (or thwarted) in
archaic and classical Greek poetry, drama, philosophy, historiography and oratory.
Judith Mossman studied Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and then held
a Junior Research Fellowship at Christ Church, Oxford before leaving for a post at
Trinity College, Dublin, where she was a Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Classics.
In 2004 she took up a Chair in Classics at the University of Nottingham. She has
published a book on Euripides' Hecuba, an edition of Euripides' Medea, and a
number of articles on Plutarch and Lucian.
Kathryn Tempest is Senior Lecturer in Roman History and Latin Literature at the
University of Roehampton. Her research field is ancient oratory, especially Cicero
and the Attic orators, upon which she has published several articles and book
chapters. She is the author of Cicero: Politics and Persuasion in Ancient Rome
(Continuum, 2011; reprinted by Bloomsbury, 2013) and Hellenistic oratory:
6
Continuity and Change (Oxford University Press, 2013), which she co-edited with
Christos Kremmydas. Kathryn is currently completing a book on Caesar’s
Assassin: Marcus Brutus for Yale University Press, and she has just started work
on her new project, funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship: The
Pseudepigrapha of M. Iunius Brutus.
7
the 2014 Athens Academy essay award. Another book entitled Nikos Kazantzakis:
From Homer to Shakespeare. Essays on his Cretan Novels is currently at the
printer. Projected books for 2015-2016: C. P. Cavafy: The Poetics of Middle
Ground; The Cretan Renaissance and 16th Century Italian Literature; Andreas
Kalvos: New Interpretations of the Odes.
Rebecca Van Hove is a second-year PhD student at King’s College London. Her
thesis examines religion in the Attic orators, supervised by Dr Hugh Bowden and
funded by an AHRC doctoral studentship. Before moving to London Rebecca
studied at the University of Edinburgh, first as an undergraduate student in History
and Classics, before completing a Master’s (by Research) degree with a thesis on
Persian and Macedonian identity in Isocrates’ political ideology. Her research
interests include Greek religion (in particular divination), Athenian oratory and
law, and discourses of identity in antiquity.
Ricardo Gancz was born in Brazil. He pursued his undergraduate studies in
education and physical education and his postgraduate studies in psychopedagogy.
Besides, since 2006, he has been a philosophy student of Olavo de Carvalho.
Ricardo moved to Israel and joined the M.A. programme in Classical Studies under
the supervision of Gabriel Danzig. He is currently a PhD candidate. Ricardo is
interested in rhetoric and in ancient and contemporary philosophy.
Sophia Xenophontos was educated at the University of Cyprus and the University
of Oxford (MSt., DPhil. Oxon) and is currently a Lecturer in Classics at the
University of Glasgow. She has published extensively on ethics and education in
Plutarch, and worked on his revival in the Byzantine era and the period of the
Modern Greek Enlightenment. She is now about to publish her monograph entitled
Teaching and Learning in Plutarch: the dynamics of ethical education in the
Roman Empire (de Gruyter 2016) and is preparing an English translation with
Introduction and Notes of Metochites’ Ethikos for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval
Library series (2016). She is also co-editing the first Companion to the Reception
of Plutarch for the Brill Companions to Classical Reception series. In her new
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project, she is interested in Galen’s psychological writings with a view to exploring
his moralising rhetoric along the therapy of the soul.
Tzu-I Liao is studying for a PhD in Classics at University College London under
the supervision of Chris Carey and Stephen Colvin. Her research interests include
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ancient rhetoric, functional grammars, and the application of text linguistics on
classical texts, in particular Greek oratory and historiography. Her thesis examines
the corpus of Demosthenic symbouleutic speeches, investigating the relationship
between linguistic variations and communication strategies, with the hope to
understand the communicative and social dynamic within the Athenian assembly.
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