Sansone - Greek Drama and the Invention of Rhetoric

This edition first published 2012
2012 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sansone, David.
Greek drama and the invention of rhetoric/David Sansone.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-35708-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. RhetoricHistory. 2. Greek dramaHistory and criticism. I. Title.
PN183.S26 2012
808.009dc23

2012011202

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Jacket image: Greek theatre mask Repina Valeriya / Shutterstock
Jacket design by Nicki Averill

For Alexander and Nicolas
,

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la philologie mne au crime
Eugne Ionesco

In his review of Lorna Hutsons The Invention of Suspicion, a book concerned with the transformative influence of legal terminology and rhetoric on Renaissance drama, Peter Holbrook writes that the move from a primarily symbolic or gestural drama to the more realistic theater of Shakespeare and his contemporaries is dazzling, an innovation as momentous as when silent movies gave way to the talkies, or Hollywood adopted Technicolor; at the time, people must have felt a new world had been discovered. Oddly missing from Holbrooks comparanda is the momentous creation of the cinema itself, or the invention of drama. The thesis of the book that you hold in your hands or that momentarily occupies your digital display is that, first, the invention of the drama in Athens around 500 BC was at least as dazzling and momentous an innovation as the introduction of Technicolor; and, second, that this revolutionary innovation inspired the formal study of rhetoric. The first part of this thesis is uncontroversial, perhaps even self-evident; the second part is heretical.

Ever since the time of Aristotle, it has been an article of faith that the drama became more rhetorically sophisticated in the fifth century BC as a result of its exposure to the influence of rhetorical theorists and teachers. But the origins of rhetoric are so uncertain, and the accounts of those origins so confused and unsatisfactory, that we ought not to rely on faith when, it is proposed, a more reasonable explanation of the relationship between rhetoric and the invention of the drama is available. Specifically, I will argue that the essential feature of the drama that the playwright is required to compose speeches for characters, who are often in a state of conflict, to use in interaction with one another before an audience in the theater is sufficient to account for the self-conscious theorizing about forms of argumentation that is the essential feature of formal rhetoric. And, since the development of formal rhetoric is acknowledged, even by those who adhere to the traditional account, to be later than the invention of the drama, it would seem appropriate to entertain the possibility that rhetoric owes more to the drama than vice versa. Still, the authority of Aristotle and the seductive force of longstanding tradition are formidable obstacles to overcome, especially given the nature of the available evidence. And so it will be necessary to argue in support of this thesis at some length. It is hoped that even those readers who are not, in the end, convinced by the arguments presented here will at least find that it has been invigorating to have their faith tested.

Polite audiences in Chicago, New Haven, and Urbana have been subjected to having their faith, and perhaps their patience, tested by oral presentations of some of the arguments advanced in this book. I am grateful for their indulgence and their valuable comments. I am also grateful for the financial support of the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, which made possible a sabbatical leave that was devoted to work on the early stages of this project. Jonathon Auxier, Victor Bers, Tom Conley, Scott Garner, John Gibert, Donald Mastronarde, and Doug Olson have all contributed in various ways; I thank them for their assistance and their personal support, which, I hasten to add, does not necessarily extend to their support of the thesis argued here. Finally, I wish to express my thanks to my editor at Wiley-Blackwell, Haze Humbert, and to the reader for the press, whose healthy skepticism has caused me to reformulate a number of my more confident statements.

Two of Aristophanes earliest plays involve a comic hero who finds himself in serious trouble and needing the help of an expert in order to save himself from disaster. In Acharnians, produced at the Lenaea in 425 BC, Dicaeopolis is pursued by a chorus of irate fellow demesmen intent upon stoning him to death for having ratified a private peace treaty with the Lacedaemonians, the benefits of which only he and his family can enjoy. In Clouds, written for performance at the Dionysia two years later, Strepsiades faces imminent financial ruin, since his creditors are about to demand prompt repayment of his massive debts and are sure to take him to court when he defaults on his loans. Both characters urgently require the services of what we would today call a lawyer, a trained professional who knows how to argue persuasively and, if necessary, deviously. It may come as a surprise, then, to modern audiences of these comedies that neither Strepsiades nor Dicaeopolis resorts to the ancient equivalent of a lawyer. The reason for this is that, in ancient Athens, there was nothing corresponding to the modern attorney at law. While litigants might have someone else prepare a speech for them to deliver, or could enlist supporters to deliver additional speeches on their behalf in court (Rubinstein 2000), citizens were expected to represent themselves either in a court of law or when speaking to a proposal in the Assembly. It is usually assumed, however, that there existed at this time professionals who claimed to be able to teach citizens how to speak effectively and persuasively in public, and one might expect either or both of Aristophanes heroes to seek out one of these supposed experts in order to extricate himself from his pressing difficulties by learning the art of public speaking.