Persuasion in Ancient Greece Quiz 2

Aristophanes

comedy playwright, ca. 445-380s, wrote Clouds, Knights, and Lysistrata

Genre: Old Comedy

• Elaborate poetic structure

• Political topicality

• Personal abuse

• Sexual and scatological obscenity

What leader is Aristophanes’ Knights satirizing? 

Cleon - he non-aristocratic (though wealthy) political leader. A successful leather merchant, Cleon was very popular with the dēmos, but despised as a vulgar parvenu by more aristocratic and conservative elements.

Who are the characters in Aristophanes Clouds?

Strepsiades, Pheidippides, and Socrates

What are the opposing forces in Clouds?

Better Argument v. Worse Argument

Who are the main characters in Aristophanes’ Knights? 

Demos, Paphlagon, Sausage Seller, Knights, 1st and 2nd Slaves

Who were the main characters in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata?

Lysistrata, Calonice, Myrrhine, Lampito, Magistrate, Rod

What is the setting of Knights?

Athens, the Peloponnesian war is going well:

• Cleon as general has just captured a number of Spartiates, elite Spartan citizen-soldiers, and is holding them prisoner at Athens

• This gives a tremendous negotiating advantage to Athens

• It also greatly enhances the prestige of Cleon

• produced 424 BCE, about current events 

What is the setting of Lysistrata?

• Setting: Athens, at the western entrance to the Acropolis. The Acropolis is the temple complex (with treasury) and citadel perched atop a hill smack in the middle of the city

• Time: The "now" of the production date (411 BCE)

• Situation: The Peloponnesian War (431-404, Athens versus Sparta) has been going badly for all concerned, including the women of various parts of Greece (Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, etc.).

When was the Peloponnesian War?

431-404 BC

Lysias Speech 34

Context: Democracy reinstated; the famous amnesty ("non-remembrance") by which oligarchic sympathizers re-integrated into the Athenian state. Democracy restored as full democracy, i.e., Phormisius' proposal that only property-owning Athenians be allowed civil rights defeated

• the speech is a political oratory that tries to convince the audience that the government should not limit citizenship to only property holding individual

Demosthenes’ Third Olynthiac

• DATE: Delivered probably in the autumn of 349 BCE

• AUTHOR: Demosthenes (see above)

• GENRE: This is the published version of a speech that was actually delivered in the Athenian assembly — political rhetoric

SITUATION: Philip II, king of Macedonia and father of Alexander the Great, is trying to extend his power down into Greece, even as Athens has been trying to recover some semblance of the power it lost in the war with Sparta half a century earlier. Philip threatens the northern city of Olynthus, which appeals to Athens to help.

• Demosthenes speaks here on behalf of the war party (the anti-Macedonian "hawks"), who want to dip into the "Theoric Fund," that is, the moneys used for public works and the public dole, to bankroll the war effort — by definition, a controversial, even dangerous, idea

• key topos that show up: parrhesia v PROS KHARIN LEGEIN (DEMEGOREIN, ETC.) 

Demosthenes First Phillipic 

• DATE: Delivered probably summer 351 BCE

• AUTHOR: Demosthenes (see above)

• GENRE: This is the published version of a speech that was actually delivered in the Athenian assembly — political rhetoric

SITUATION: Philip of Macedon, seeking conquests in Thrace (a region to the north and west of Greece) is distracting Athens from intervening by stirring up trouble in Euboea, an island very near Athens and an Athenian possession. Philip is also attacking Athenian shipping and has staged a humiliating naval raid on historic Marathon. Demosthenes argues that Athenians can't any longer afford to deal reactively with Philip but proactively.

• this is the first time he has got up to speak without waiting for his elders to finish speaking. It is, then, an urgent issue, urgent enough for the junior leader to seek to be in charge of the discourse from the start. Though Demosthenes even uses the verb form of parrhēsia, "frank speech," (peparrēsiasmai, "I have spoken frankly," 51). Certainly, he draws attention to his willingness to "talk turkey" multiple times, and contrasts his own tough talk with the lies of his opponents.

Antilogic

the "technique of constructing opposed arguments" (anti "in opposition" + logos "discourse," "argument"). For instance, starting with the proposition that Helen of Troy is to be blamed for the Trojan War, the art of constructing an argument that contradicts, or is at least contrary to, the starting argument (logos), the end result therefore being an argument (logos) maintaining that Helen was in fact not to blame

• Example: Gorgias’ Helen

apragmosune

• modestly, quietism, non-meddlesomeness

• opposite of polupragmosune

• Opposite of how Cleon/ Paphlagon is depicted

• captatio benevolentiae

• Currying favor with ones audience 

• can be seen as a form of flattery 

• can be seen in Demosthenes’ First Philippic as he introduced his speech with this tactic, “I know you do not know me, but”

Colon

• gorgianic figure of speech

• A word-grouping understood not as a grammatical but rhetorical unit

• The point of cola is how they relate to — echo, reinforce, contrast with — each other.

• demophile, demophilia, demophilia topos

• the demophilia topos "spins" an opponent's captatio benevolentiae as insincere audience-bonding, as speech-acts intended to forge a manipulative love-connection ("I love you!"). Thus it represents a strategy to control the discourse: it misrepresents the "misrepresentations."

• seems to not be a real thing orators did, but it was how they were portrayed as they pandered to the audience

• demophile would be “the politician who seeks favor by stating his love for the people”

• demophilia would be the act in politics

doxa

Opinion as opposed to true knowledge; appearances, impressions, subjectivity. Seeming as opposed to being. Also, one's reputation, good or bad.

• to seem v. be and how to relates to rhetoric

• example: Sophistic readings

epideixis 

• "demonstration," "proof" (epideiknunai, "to show").
  
  The term could also refer to "mock" assembly-, courtroom-, etc. speeches not intended for actual delivery, but for "demonstrating" a given argument, a mode of argumentation, a rhetorical style, rhetorical skill, and so on. Examples: Gorgias' Helen, Antiphon's Tetralogies, pseudo-Xenophon's (the "Old Oligarch's") Constitution of the Athenians.

eristic

From eris, "strife," "quarrel." The art of debate - not the same as antilogic or dialectic. I.e., the "tricks of the trade" as opposed to the theory that lies behind Protagoras' and others' theories of logos and argumentation

nomos

• laws

• Earlier in the 400s, the assembly would enact nomoi; it was, though, more characteristic of the Athenian assembly to enact decrees.

• Starting in 403, and throughout the 300s, oversight of nomoi (enactment and revision of them) was the job of boards of nomothetai, or "legislators."

parrhesia 

“frank-speech” 

• is it a rhetorical topos or not? 

• In Plato's Gorgias, Socrates is characterized as using parrhesia with people, Callicles, as using kolakeia.

patrios politeia

-"ancestral constitution," also "ancestral citizenship criteria." Either phrase will translate the Greek; for Athenians of the 400s and 300s BCE, the two pretty much mean the same thing.

In fact, patrios politeia was to all intents a purposes a political slogan, even a topos, available to anyone needing rousing, chest thumping theme.

Seen in Lysias Speech 34

phusis

• "Nature" (root of "physics"), either the nature of an individual entity or of all entities as a whole (the "nature" of the universe, or just "nature"). With the sophists, phusis arguably came to mean something resembling the-way-things-are-irrespective-of-human-subject”

pros kharin legein

"Speaking to please / gratify / coddle" the people of Athens; we might call it demagoguery. It is, as well, precisely what Socrates in Plato's Gorgias means by "pandering" (kolakeia), indeed, by rhetoric generally. But this is also a democratic politician talking. . . .

• Attacked in Demosthenes’ speeches

antirhetoric

• The "rhetoric of antirhetoric" can be defined as the attempt to counteract the impact of another's words. That can involve alerting one's audience to attempts by one's opponent to use speech to win their favor. Or it can involve the attempt to spin one's opponent's words as some sort of verbal manipulation, whether it in fact is or is not.

• Can be seen in Demosthenes

• connection to parrhesia

sophist

• Prior to the later 400s BCE, a "wise man," one who stood out for sophia, wisdom or skill. By about 430, sophistes had come to refer to a professional (i.e., paid) teacher of subjects of interest to young men intending to enter public life. The term could carry negative connotations; to ordinary Athenians, it seems to have suggested a teacher of the art of verbal deception.

• Depicted and satirized in Aristophanes Clouds (Socrates)

spin

the attempt to affect another's impressions of a thing, to make those impressions less or more favorable. That can involve a subtle shift in value judgments: "Well, you know, I wouldn't call that a defeat. I'd call it a learning experience." Or it can involve a radical rethinking: "Ill-considered boldness was counted as loyal manliness; prudent hesitation was held to be cowardice in disguise. . ."

stasis

Political faction, political disorder, revolution. Its opposite is harmonia

topos

• trope

• earlier use by sophists, for whom it perhaps meant commonly available, "prefabricated" or "ready-to-wear" verbal formulations (arguments, sentiments, topics, conceits etc.) that could be "plugged-in" to a discourse as needed

• cliche’s

A fortiori argument

• “a form of reasoning that draws a conclusion based on a previously established stronger argument, implying that if the first is true, the second is even more likely to be true.:”

• if you can lift an elephant, you can lift a mouse

Speech genres

• Political, judicial, epideictic (future, past, show (present, but not solely))

Argument from probability

• real facts, probable facts, sounds probable, doesnt have to be true just has to seem probable, prone to circular language