Oratory and Rhetoric

Sources

Public Speaking . The participatory nature of Athens’s democracy required its citizens to be proficient public speakers. Although some leading figures clearly spoke more than others, every citizen had to be able, in theory at least, to promote and defend himself and his positions, whether in the assembly, the courts, or at the village meetings. Oratory was clearly of critical importance in Athens. Beginning in the fifth century b.c.e., Athens attracted many professional intellectuals, or sophists, such as Protagoras and Gorgias who, among other things, taught public speaking for a price. Many leading citizens led the community both as speakers and generals; examples include Themistocles, Aristides, Nicias, Alcibiades, Cleon, and Pericles.

Specialization . In the fourth century, an era of specialization began when the military leaders were no longer the prominent speakers. New laws recognized distinct roles for generals (stratêgoi) and public speakers (rhêtores). The philosopher Plato used (and possibly coined) the term rhetoric to characterize, negatively, the art by which the new class of speakers dominated Athenian politics and manipulated the public assemblies. Sophists composed handbooks on specialized forms of argumentation, delivery, and style. Athenian citizens and foreigners who had a knack for composition earned money as logographoi (speechwriters) for those lacking the ability, or confidence, to compose speeches for themselves. The best of these men such as Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, and Demosthenes collected their compositions, which served as models for school children for centuries. Many of these speeches survive today and were composed for delivery in the Athenian courts, Assembly, and Council and for various ceremonial occasions.

Aristotle . In response to Plato’s rather negative portrayal of rhetoric a generation earlier, the philosopher Aristotle composed a treatise on rhetoric that brought together the ideas of many of the previous handbooks and gave them a philosophical rationale. For instance, he saw three kinds of speeches distinguished by time and who the listeners were: deliberative speeches were about the future and are heard by members of the assembly; judicial speeches were about the past and are heard by members of a court; and display, or “epideictlc,” speeches were about the present and are heard by listeners at ceremonial occasions.

Sources

George A. Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).

Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).