[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
Scholarship has increasingly moved away from Athenocentric and fifth-century-focused readings of Greek drama. Even so, it remains important that the Athenians who heard speeches in law-courts and assemblies were also—for the most part—the audiences who engaged with staged characters’ speeches and debates. The fact that a relationship exists between public rhetoric and dramatic speech has long been a commonplace in scholarship,[1] although its nature is far from settled. Some recent treatments have challenged existing models of the relationship between formal rhetoric and tragedy.[2] Others have explored new methodologies for understanding audience experience in the Greek theatre and its relationship with democratic citizenship.[3]
This push to reassess the relationship between tragedy and rhetoric inspires the present book. Arguing for parallel development and mutual influence between rhetoric and tragedy throughout the fifth century BC (Introduction, p10) this edited volume presents eleven chapters which discuss rhetorical elements in tragedy from diverse perspectives. The book has developed from a three-year research project based at the University of the Basque Country, which itself forms part of a longer collaboration: the same two editors previously published Connecting Rhetoric and Attic Drama (2017).[4] Here, five chapters are devoted to specific tragedies, with a noticeable preference for Aeschylus: there are two chapters on Aeschylus’ Suppliants alone. The six later chapters tackle more general topics, ranging from secondary characters’ rhetorical skills to the concept of enargeia. It is pleasing to see tragic fragments represented in Karamanou’s informative and well-argued chapter on Euripides’ Alexandros. This volume also reminds us that the rhetorical elements of tragedy are not merely an artefact of fifth-century Athenocentric scholarship: Fernández Delgado’s chapter conducts productive analysis of Euripides in light of later rhetorical training exercises.
How does one define rhetoric? Must we look for specific structures or techniques—the markers of sophistic rhetorical training, for instance—or should we cast our net wider, looking at persuasive language or simply communication delivered with an audience in mind? What metrics can we use to assess the presence or sophistication of rhetoric? Encinas Reguero’s Introduction acknowledges (p10f.) these questions and identifies a tension between two possible approaches to rhetoric—in a stricter sense, as a formal series of rules for persuasive speech (p10-11); in a less strong sense, as “everything that implies a conscious use of the word to achieve persuasion” (p13).
This tension remains unresolved. The decision to avoid committing to a specific definition of “rhetoric” is the volume’s strength, allowing contributors to approach the topic using various methodologies. The volume’s implicit answer is that silence, visual euphemism and emotional affect are all rhetoric, and so is much else. Several chapters (including, for example, the contributions by Mueller and Encinas Reguero) offer a timely and thought-provoking expansion of what we consider “rhetoric”: it is to the volume’s credit that it creates space for such interventions. Another striking aspect of this volume is the limited emphasis on political framings. Rhetoric is inherently political, and many topics addressed within this volume—female reframing of the institution of marriage, non-elite characters’ rhetorical abilities, persuasion of groups—have unavoidable political significance. But this volume stops short of framing rhetoric solely or primarily in terms of its significance in the mechanisms of Athenian democracy. Such a framing has been common in treatments of ancient rhetoric,[5] and understandably so. Readers who are used to such framings will find this volume refreshingly different.
But this richly multifaceted approach to rhetoric is also the volume’s weakness, for it undermines its cohesion. As a collection of eleven fascinating papers, this is a valuable volume; the chapters feel unconnected to each other, however, and several nod to rhetoric only in tenuous or nominal ways. This lack of cohesion particularly makes itself felt in the referencing. At p150, for example, a contributor briefly suggests comparing the messengers in Agamemnon and Persians; it is strange not to footnote de Fátima Silva’s earlier chapter, which is devoted to precisely that comparison. A more concerted effort to track overlap and connections between chapters, and insert references where necessary, would make this volume better equipped for a world in which readers often read specific chapters in isolation. All chapters contain interesting material and analysis, but some are undermined by arguments that make major assumptions or methodological frameworks that draw on too many different ideas. Here, I focus on contributions that seem to me particularly high-quality or thought-provoking.
Giulia Maria Chesi (ch.2) argues that the Danaids in Suppliants engage with the rhetoric of violence in a way that reframes marriage itself as an institutional legitimisation of male sexual violence. In particular, she highlights the discourse on the meaning and legitimacy of kratos which takes place across the play. Her chapter combines wide-ranging research with sensitive close reading of Suppliants, making her core thesis very compelling. On occasion, the breadth of evidence included makes the chapter lose focus due to digressions—e.g. on the precise nature of Agamemnon’s ate in Ag. 1524-26 (p49). The possibility of paternal manipulation by Danaus is treated in even-handed fashion. Chesi’s discussion of the disjunct between male and female interpretations of kratos—and how the latter problematises fifth-century political discourse in Athens—is argued elegantly and powerfully.
Melissa Mueller (ch.4) uses affect theory to understand how Deianeira’s fear interacts with her much-debated responsibility for Heracles’ death. Of particular interest to Mueller is “bodily rhetoric”, which she approaches by applying affect theory to the communication between Deianeira and Iole. Affective communication, Mueller argues, enables Deianeira to sense Iole’s fear and understand her experiences even before Iole articulates them. This is reinforced by a subtle and careful approach to the complexities of interpreting on-stage gesture from our extant evidence. Mueller pushes her argument far, and not all readers will accept (for example) the contention that “ambivalence surrounding Iole’s status is […] conveyed via affect, perhaps as a certain warmth or, more likely, a chill, emanating from her body” (p119). But the critical and creative acumen of this chapter is such that readers from all methodological backgrounds will find in it much of interest, even if they reject Mueller’s methodology.
Elodie Paillard (ch.6) discusses the extent to which non-elite characters (her term is “secondary characters”) exhibit rhetorical skill, and whether any chronological trends can be identified and compared to evolving political realities in Athens. Paillard is admirably clear on the metrics she uses to measure characters’ rhetorical skill: she identifies the problematisation of speakers’ credentials, successful or failed attempts to use elaborate speech, and deceptive speech as areas of focus for her study. Paillard’s material on Sophocles is heavily abbreviated, to avoid repeating material in her book on the subject;[6] however, this chapter contains much new exploration of Aeschylus and Euripides. Even though this chapter is built around analyses of separate characters, it identifies comparisons and draws threads together sufficiently to build a sustained argument. Paillard’s material on the Guard in Antigone, who (she argues) attempts to select an appropriate linguistic register (p159-61), is especially strong, as is her section on the Nurse in Hippolytus. One might advance her argument on Euripides’ Orestes further by mentioning the common trope of fetishising unschooled rural people as sources of straight-talking wisdom.[7]
Carmen Encinas Reguero (ch.7) pushes the boundaries of rhetoric further with a chapter on the rhetoric of silence in tragedy. The cornerstone of this chapter is a detailed interpretation of Cassandra’s silence in Agamemnon, connected to a shorter reading of Iole in Trachiniae. This section is vibrantly perceptive, creative and impressively widely researched: I will certainly recommend it for undergraduates studying Agamemnon. This chapter is burdened by a topic that could easily fill a book: its two-page second section (Silence in the Greek Culture) makes a number of worrying generalisations and is limited to fifth-century Athens. Section 3.1, on “Imposed silence”, focuses on women silenced by men, and ignores (for example) silences required by oaths, which are pivotal in Hippolytus. Still, this chapter makes a necessary step towards investigating an important topic, and certainly achieves its aim of “show[ing] that the detailed study of silences in Greek tragedy still has much to contribute” (p214).
The volume closes with José Antonio Fernández Delgado’s chapter (ch.11), which scrutinises the relationships between Euripides’ plays, the rhetorical techniques taught by sophists, and rhetorical training exercises known as progymnasmata. This chapter is cogent and well-argued, and especially informative on developing evidence for the contents of progymnasmata before the turn of the millennium (our earliest surviving progymnasmata are Aelius Theon’s 1st-century AD works). The first section is a list, with brief descriptions, of Euripidean passages which contain progymnasmatic features (divided into ethopoeia, anaskeue/kataskeue and ekphrasis). The second section offers a detailed close reading and exposition of such features in the agon between Medea and Jason. Fernández Delgado could scarcely have chosen a better example, and his perceptive analysis demonstrates the fruits of his approach; this section merits being placed on reading lists for students of Medea, regardless of whether the students in question are also interested in ancient rhetorical theory. It is a drawback that much of the methodology here depends on work which the author has done elsewhere, but he provides ample references (including to 15 of his own publications) which allows readers to follow up his methodology.
The book itself is well-produced and mostly easy to navigate. Every chapter is accompanied by an abstract and an individual bibliography; footnotes, numbered separately in each chapter, appear at the bottom of the page. Though the volume itself is user-friendly, some inconsistencies may limit its audience. There is considerable variation (even within chapters) in whether Latin and Greek quotations are translated. Where translations are provided, they are often unhelpfully archaic: phrases such as “if haply even” (p191) and “as thou see’st” (p261) recur. At times, more thought should have been given to presentation: the block-quoted masses of quotations and text-references from p283-8 and p304-7 are extremely difficult for readers to disentangle. The decision to print two chapters in Italian and nine in English is strange. The book contains several typographical errors: I count 43, some of which are glaring. These are heavily concentrated in certain chapters, which implies that some chapters went through fewer rounds of editing than others. There is an index locorum, but no general index.
Authors and Titles
M. Carmen Encinas Reguero, Introduction
Alan H. Sommerstein, Persuadere parlando nelle Supplici di Eschilo
Giulia Maria Chesi, Fe/male Rhetoric of Violence against the Woman’s Body in Aeschylus’ Supplices
Maria de Fátima Silva, The Art of creating a Messenger. Aeschylus, Persians and Agamemnon
Melissa Mueller, Bodily Rhetoric in Sophocles’ Trachiniae
Ioanna Karamanou, Shards from Tragic Rhetoric. The Agon Scenes in the Alexandros
Elodie Paillard, Secondary Characters’ Rhetorical Skills in Fifth-Century Athenian Tragedy
M. Carmen Encinas Reguero, The Rhetoric of Silence in Greek Tragedy
Maria Gerolemou, The Rhetoric of Elpis in Greek Tragedy. The Gender Dimension
Milagros Quijada Sagredo, The Concept of enargeia and the Terminology related to enarges in Greek Tragedy
Francesco De Martino, To see or not to see. Eufemismi visive e tragedia greca
José Antonio Fernández Delgado, Euripides in the Rhetoric Classroom
Notes
[1] For a survey, cf. Saïd, S. (1998) ‘Tragedy and Politics’ in D. Boedeker and K.A. Raaflaub, eds. Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens. Cambridge, MA; New York. 275-295.
[2] Sansone, D. (2012) Greek Drama and the Invention of Rhetoric. Malden, MA; Oxford; Chichester. BMCR 2013.06.16.
[3] Meineck, P. (2018) Theatrocracy: Greek Drama, Cognition, and the Imperative for Theatre. London; New York.
[5] E.g. Hesk, J. (2000) Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens. Cambridge. 202-291.
[6] Paillard, E. (2017) The Stage and the City: Non-élite Characters in the Tragedies of Sophocles. Paris.
[7] See, for example, Aristophanes Acharnians 28f.