A Companion to Greek Rhetoric
Language: English
Pages: 632
ISBN: 144433414X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This complete guide to ancient Greek rhetoric is exceptional both in its chronological range and the breadth of topics it covers.
- Traces the rise of rhetoric and its uses from Homer to Byzantium
- Covers wider-ranging topics such as rhetoric's relationship to knowledge, ethics, religion, law, and emotion
- Incorporates new material giving us fresh insights into how the Greeks saw and used rhetoric
- Discusses the idea of rhetoric and examines the status of rhetoric studies, present and future
- All quotations from ancient sources are translated into English
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not A man of many words. Being older, he spoke first. Then Odysseus, the master strategist, rose quickly, But just stood there, his eyes fixed on the ground. He did not move his staff forward or backward But held it steady. You would have thought him A dull, surly lout without any wit. But when he Opened his mouth and projected his voice The words fell down like snowflakes in a blizzard. No mortal could have vied with Odysseus then, And we no longer held his looks against him.6 Clearly Odysseus’
threatens the argument is a feeling, or perhaps an intuition, that philosopherkings are simply preposterous. Among Plato’s readers, that feeling would be tenacious and not entirely allayed by yet another argument (473e–474a, 487b–d). Plato’s task was to convey not just a counter-argument, but also a counter-feeling, that philosopher-kings are, or at least could be, natural. The image of the cave (514a– 521a) contributes to this task. The cave image depicts conventional values as unnatural, and it
responsible for it. One thinks of the agent (ho poio ¯n) who is, according to Plato in Philebus (26 e), one and the same with the cause (to aition), which obviously entails a distinction between the two; 2) through him (di’autou). This seems to imply that the agent is the intermediary agent, or passive agent, of the good action. For example, it is possible to imagine an encomium of the hand as the instrument that enabled one to act generously (there is no example here because of a lacuna in the
to be said; it is also necessary to say it in the right way, for that contributes greatly to the impression one has of a speech (3.1 1403b6–18). So much is straightforward, but what follows introduces difficulties. Aristotle distinguishes between how one sets out the facts of a case, the style in which the facts are expressed, and how one delivers an oration. He tells us that delivery is the most powerful of the three, and that it has not been a Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric 119 subject of
offer was invalid. Here, orators could, for example, present speeches for or against the young man’s claim to the girl, and for and against the kinsman’s right to the girl and her inheritance. The following situation falls in the deliberative category: though resident foreigners were not permitted on a city’s walls, one man nevertheless appears there and distinguishes himself in fighting off besiegers. Should he be held to account for transgressing the law or be rewarded for his heroism? Again,