eBook - ePub
Logos without Rhetoric
The Arts of Language before Plato
Robin Reames, Thomas W. Benson, Robin Reames
This is a test
Share book
- 208 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
Logos without Rhetoric
The Arts of Language before Plato
Robin Reames, Thomas W. Benson, Robin Reames
Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations
About This Book
A germinal examination of rhetoric's beginnings through pre-fourth-century Greek texts
How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called "rhetoric"? Must art have a name to be considered art? What is the difference between eloquence and rhetoric? And what were the differences, if any, among poets, philosophers, sophists, and rhetoricians before Plato emphasizedāor perhaps inventedātheir differences? In Logos without Rhetoric: The Arts of Language before Plato, Robin Reames attempts to intervene in these and other questions by examining the status of rhetorical theory in texts that predate Plato's coining of the term rhetoric (c. 380 B.C.E.). From Homer and Hesiod to Parmenides and Heraclitus to Gorgias, Theodorus, and Isocrates, the case studies contained here examine the status of the discipline of rhetoric prior to and therefore in the absence of the influence of Plato and Aristotle's full-fledged development of rhetorical theory in the fourth century B.C.E.
The essays in this volume make a case for a porous boundary between theory and practice and promote skepticism about anachronistic distinctions between myth and reason and between philosophy and rhetoric in the historiography of rhetoric's beginning. The result is an enlarged understanding of the rhetorical content of pre-fourth-century Greek texts.
Edward Schiappa, head of Comparative Media Studies/Writing and the John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, provides an afterword
Frequently asked questions
How do I cancel my subscription?
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlegoās features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan youāll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, weāve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is Logos without Rhetoric an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access Logos without Rhetoric by Robin Reames, Thomas W. Benson, Robin Reames in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & Rhetoric. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Notes
Introduction
1. This can be seen from the outset of both works. Herodotus began, āHere is the showing-forth of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that neither what human beings have done might disappear in time, nor the deeds great and admirable, partly shown forth by Greeks, and partly by the barbarians, might be without fameā (I.1; Mensch, 3). Thucydides begins similarly: āThucydides of Athens wrote this history of the war fought against each other by the Peloponnesians and the Athenians. He began his work right at the outbreak, reckoning that this would be a major war and more momentous than any previous conflictā (I.1; Hammond, 3). Throughout both works, the authors express a distrust of secondhand accounts and the oral record that mirrors neatly their own desire to set their firsthand accounts in writing.
2. It is clear from Aristotleās account of Corax in Rhet. 1402a and of Tisias in Soph. Elench. 183 that both had written books on the subject. Plato refers at length to a written work on rhetoric by Tisias at Phaedrus 273aā274a. And Quintilian in Inst. Or. III.8ā9 states explicitly that āthe earliest writers of text-books are the Sicilians, Corax and Tisias, who were followed by another from the same island, namely Gorgias of Leontini, whom tradition asserts to have been the pupil of Empedocles. He, thanks to his length of days, for he lived to a hundred and nine, flourished as the contemporary of many rhetoricians, was consequently the rival of those whom I have just mentioned, and lived on to survive Socratesā (Butler, 375).
3. Charlton (1985) explains how what we identify as academic disciplines did not emerge until the third century in Alexandria (47).
Unity, Dissociation, and Schismogenesis in Isocrates
1. The current chapter is submitted in remembrance of Professor Mackin, who passed away in August 2011.
2. The opportunities to turn back are few; the choice for leniency only barely succeeds in Corcyra (Thucydides 3.70ā85), and fails with Melos (Thucydides 5.84ā114). Though there may also have been an opportunity for reconciliation during the peace of Nicias, Thucydides makes it clear that it was not viable.
3. Mackinās words come from late in his conclusion, where he broadens his scope and considers the lessons of his observation for modern discourse. Perceptively, he does not fault Pericles for his ignorance of the larger ramifications of his words (258).
4. See, for example, Gomme (vol. 1: 236), Romilly (1963), Hornblower (1987), Forde (1989), Price (2001), Kagan (2003), Stahl (2003), Sahlins (2004), Hanson (2005), Foster (2010), Harloe and Morley (2012), Morley (2013), and Hawthorn (2014).
5. The Melian Dialogue (Peloponnesian War 5.84ā114) provides a most vivid example when Athens confronts Melos in 416 B.C.E. Euripides may have commented on the violence of this event in his play Trojan Women of 415.
6. For example, Schiappa (1985), John Poulakos (1995), Takis Poulakos (1997), and Papillon (1996 and 1997).
7. It also derives from the political work of Lewis Fry Richardson (1939).
8. To explain how the styles between women and men can drive each other to more exaggerated forms of behavior, Deborah Tannen (1993, 177ā84; 1994, 234ā36; 2001, 103ā5) explains how the split is created in a complementary way. Two people who have different styles (of communication, personality, behavior) end up exhibiting more exaggerated forms of that different behavior than they would if they were not encountering someone with an opposite style.
9. Bateson is more guarded about this in the conclusion to the second edition of Naven (1958).
10. See also Perelman 1982, 126ā37.
11. See for example Romilly 1958.
12. The difficulties of the year 339, before Chaeronea, left him with no choice: his frustration with Philip meant that he could only return to Athenian leadership. Later on, after Philipās victory, Isocrates realized the inevitability of Philipās leadership and wrote his last work, the second epistle to Philip, in which he tried to make the best of a (to him now) bad situation by calling him to lead the Greeks again.
13. Or perhaps a āre-newedā sense. He uses the Trojan wars and especially the Persian wars as a way to show precedent for a pattern of Greeks against Easterners (4.85, 158, 181, 186; 12.42ā52). It is significant, I think, that Pericles does not use this early history in his argumentation (Mackin, 254).
14. On Isocratesā death, see pseudo-Plutarch Moralia 837eāf and Edwards 1994, 26ā27.
Theodorus Byzantius on the Parts of a Speech
1. On Theodorusā dates see Solmsen cols. 1839ā42. Evidence regarding Theodorusā life and works is collected in Radermacher [BXII] 106ā11.
2. Pl. Phdr. 261, 266ā67; Arist. S.E. 34 [183b]; D.H. Amm. 1: 2; cf. Them. Or. 26, 328.
3. Pl. Phdr. 266d; Arist. Rh. 2.23.28 (1400b), following Grimaldi 333 [1400b.15ā16]; D.H. Is. 19; Phld. Rh. 4, P. Herc. 1007, col. 5a.10ā21 (see Appendix C).
4. Arist. Ī¤ĪµĻĪ½įæ¶Ī½ ĻĻ
Ī½Ī±Ī³ĻĪ³Ī® ap. Cic. Brut. 48.
5. Pl. Phdr. 266dā267e; Arist. Rh. 3.13.5; Mart. Cap. 5.552.
6. Especially Pl. Phdr. 266d-267e; Arist. Rh. 3.13.4ā5 (1414b).
7. Hamberger, 73ā80; Solmsen, cols. 1844ā45; cf. similar reductions in Kennedy 1994, 32; Heitsch, 38; Theobald, 284n16; Schirren, 1516; De Brauw, 188ā90.
8. The standard scholarly view is that Oration 6 in the Lysianic corpus was not authored by Lysias (hence āpseudo-Lysiasā); see, e.g., Usher 1999, 113; Todd 2000, 63ā64. Accordingly, to avoid confusion, I refer to Oration 6 as pseudo-Lysianic and its author as pseudo-Lysias.
9. For the date of the work, I follow Todd 2007, 407ā8, who argues that āwhat we have is in origins and in essence a genuine speech delivered at the trial [of Andokides],ā though the text āmay represent post-trial revision.ā This view places the composition of the speech in 400 (or 399) B.C.E.
10. For the text of Platoās Phaedrus, I follow Burnet 1901. With reference to present passage (i.e., Phdr. 266d5ā6), the translation is my own.
11. This is the Fowler 1914 translation (537, 539), partly revised.
12. Cf. Mirhady 2007 6 who omits only the speech-conclusion in his list of speech parts attributed to Theodorus at Phdr. 266dā267a. Out of the speech parts mentioned, confirmation, additional confirmation, refutation, and additional refutation are assigned to Theodorus by name; remaining parts are attributed to him as one of the writers of rhetoric books, since Plato deliberately summarizes āthe things that have been written in books on the art of speechesā (Phdr. 266d; cf. Vries [266d5ā6, 266d7] 221). The speech-conclusion is expressly attributed to all the rhetoric book writersāTheodorus includedāin the clause, āBut all seem to be in agreement concerning the conclusion of discoursesā (267d; trans. Fowler 539; cf. Vries [267d3ā4] 226).
13. See, e.g., Hackforth, 138; Vries, 221; Leeman and Pinkster, 180; Cole 1991, 23; Romilly, 60; Heitsch, 37ā38; Mirhady, 6; Schirren, 1516.
14. Yunis (on Phdr. 266d5ā267d9) stresses Platoās grasp of details in the early rhetoric books: āS.ās surprisingly extensive knowledge of the sophistsā books reveals an ability to engage his interlocutor in the most opportune manner. Plato thereby also shows that his critique of sophistic rhetoric is based not on ignorance but on close familiarityā (2011, 200).
15. For the text of Aristotleās Rhetoric, I follow Kassel. The translation is my own, following Kennedy 2007, 231.
16. KĆ¼hner and Gerth, 662ā63 [Ā§470.2]; Cooper and KrĆ¼ger 1: 549 [51.16.2]; cf. Pl. Phdr. 265a: Ī¼Ī±Ī½ĪÆĪ±Ī½ Ī³Ī¬Ļ ĻĪ¹Ī½Ī±, Prot. 313c: į½ ĻĪæĻĪ¹ĻĻį½“Ļ ĻĻ
Ī³ĻĪ¬Ī½ĪµĪ¹ į½¢Ī½ į¼Ī¼ĻĪæĻĻĻ ĻĪ¹Ļ į¼¢ ĪŗĪ¬ĻĪ·Ī»ĪæĻ.
17. The proximity of Theodorusā dates to the trial of Andokides for impiety along with evidence in Suidas (Īø.145) for a Theodorean speech Against Andokides has engendered several proposals that Theodorus was the author of Ps. Lys. 6; see, e.g., Bergk, 357 (āvielleichtā); Roegholt, 12; Drerup, 337ā40; Schneider, 372. However, the evidence for these proposals is not decisive, and the Theodorus-authorship thesis has not figured significantly in scholarship on Oration 6 for about a century.
18. Here and elsewhere for the text of Ps. Lys. 6, I refer to Carey 2007.
19. My translation; on Ī“į½² ĪŗĪ±į½¶, see Denniston and Dover, 305 (s.v. ĪŗĪ±į½¶, II.B.7.ii).
20. My conjecture and translation, following Todd 2007, 469ā70.
21. See, e.g., Bergk, 357n80; Jebb 1: 280; MacDowell, 14; Todd 2007, 405, 463.
22. Todd (2007, 463) offers a specific example of what he recognizes as a āstructural weaknessā in Oration 6, namely use of an anticipatory topic (āI hear he will sayā) in two places within the speech (Ā§13 and Ā§35). However, this double use of the topic becomes explicable once it is considered that the anticipations serve distinct purposes in speech parts that have different functions. At Ā§13 the anticipation allows the speaker to insist that those who fail to punish impiety are guilty of impiety (Ā§13) and that Andokides admitted to profaning the Mysteries (Ā§14). Both of these assertions are relevant to the speech part where they arise, confirmation (ĻĪÆĻĻĻĻĪ¹Ļ). At Ā§35 the anticipation allows direct rebuttal of four possible arguments in Andokidesā possible defense (Ā§35ā45). These rebuttals relate directly to the speech part in which they arise, refutation (į¼Ī»ĪµĪ³ĻĪæĻ).
23. I here follow the Ross text.
24. This is a slight revision of the Forster translation in Forster and Furley, 153, 155.
25. Cole 1991, 28; 2007, 46. Schiappa 1999, 25.
26. Schiappa 2003b, 49ā54; 1999, 45ā47. Cole 1991, 22ā26, 82.
27. Cole 1991, 2, 98ā99. Schiappa 1990, 457ā70; 1999, 40ā49.
28. See, e.g., Usher 1992, 58ā60; 1999, 2n3; also Gaines, 500ā503; Gagarin 1994 65ā66n6; Hesk, 60ā61; Reinhardt, 87, 102ā3.
29. For some time evolutionary historians have posited that theoretical arts of speechmaking or rhetoric were commonly available in the fifth century B.C.E., but that they were rendered obsolete by Aristotleās Collection of Arts and thereafter forgottenāa circumstance which explains why they have not survived; see, e.g., Kennedy 2007, 302ā6. In response to the evolutionary explanation for the non-survival of fifth-century arts...