Matteo Barbato | Università degli Studi di Milano - State University of Milan (Italy) (original) (raw)

Books by Matteo Barbato

Journal articles by Matteo Barbato

Polygraphia, 2024

Scholars who focus on the rhetorical aspect of Attic oratory stress the role of emotions in influ... more Scholars who focus on the rhetorical aspect of Attic oratory stress the role of emotions in influencing the judges by appealing to shared, but often legally irrelevant cultural norms. Legal scholars instead highlight the rarity of theatrical appeals to anger or pity or view them as only appropriate in public procedures. This article seeks to overcome this dichotomy by drawing on recent studies which view emotions as characterised by embodied appraisal and stress the importance of emotion scripts and cognitive metaphors for conceptualising emotions. By applying these notions to Lysias 1, I demonstrate that emotions in forensic narrative were meant to reinforce the speaker’s legal interpretation of the relevant events rather than distract the judges from them, and that there was no gulf between rhetoric, emotions and the rule of law in the Athenian legal system

Hormos, 2024

The last instance of ostracism, which befell Hyperbolus between 417 and 415 BC, is described by P... more The last instance of ostracism, which befell Hyperbolus between 417 and 415 BC, is described by Plutarch as the outcome of a pact between Alcibiades and Nicias, who, despite their rivalry, united their hetaireiai against the demagogue. Many scholars interpret Hyperbolus’ expulsion as a misuse of ostracism and use it to explain the causes of the abandonment of the practice. Others question the historicity of the pact against Hyperbolus and view it as a fourth-century invention. This article analyses Plutarch’s sources without his filter and argues that the conspiracy originated in Plato Comicus’ Symmachia. The poet invented an unlikely alliance between Alcibiades and Nicias to provide a comical aition for the surprising ostracism of Hyperbolus. Although it can be traced back to a contemporary source, Plutarch’s account thus remains unreliable and cannot be used as a source to understand why ostracism fell into disuse.

Histos, 2023

This article investigates the historiographic identity of Diodorus through the analysis of select... more This article investigates the historiographic identity of Diodorus through the analysis of select narratives of political conflict. These feature in sections of the Library based on different sources and are structured around the contrast between a group of political actors labelled as the χαριέστατοι and another to which they are opposed. I show that, whatever the respective position of the factions on the socio-political spectrum, the main role of the χαριέστατοι is to act as the mouthpieces of Diodorus' moralising. I also argue that Diodorus' use of this pattern was the result of his engagement with an Aristotelian variant of traditional aristocratic thought, which he adapted to the political scenarios recounted by his sources in order to suit his moral agenda.

Rivista di Diritto Ellenico, 2023

The article provides a critical reading of Pollux’s (8.18-19) account of the Athenian scrutiny of... more The article provides a critical reading of Pollux’s (8.18-19) account of the Athenian scrutiny of the citizen registers (diapsephisis). According to the most common interpretation, the lexicographer argues that the procedure required the demesmen to hold a vote by means of leaves. This contradicts the information provided in Demosthenes’ Against Eubulides regarding the voting procedure in deme assemblies and has led Whitehead to reject the testimony of Pollux. After illustrating the characteristics of the diapsephisis and discussing the main interpretations of the passage, the article shows that Pollux ascribes the ballot through leaves not to deme assemblies but to the dikastai kata demou. Pollux, therefore, does not contradict Demosthenes; yet, he still does not provide reliable evidence on the diapsephisis. Based on a comparison with the lexicographic tradition, I show that Pollux (or his epitomiser) combined two distinct stages of the procedure which took place respectively in the deme assemblies and in the lawcourts of the polis and mistakenly assumed that the voting was performed with leaves due to a confusion with the Council’s ekphyllophoria.

Klio 105/2, 2023

This article aims to advance our understanding of Athenian politics through a quantitative study ... more This article aims to advance our understanding of Athenian politics through a quantitative study of the proposers of decrees in the Assembly during the fifth century BC. Based on the accounts of Greek historians, biographers and orators, scholars have traditionally envisioned Athenian politics as dominated by an elite whose members competed for power and prestige and controlled the Assembly through dynamics of political friendship. Recent studies of the decree proposers attested in the epigraphical and literary sources have questioned this model. They have shown that, at least during the fourth century, political initiative was not the prerogative of an elite but was rather widespread among ordinary citizens. Yet, the traditional, elite-centred view of Athenian politics is still widely supported among scholars working on the fifth-century democracy. This article challenges this view through a comparative study of the respective pictures of fifth-century decree proposing provided by the literary and epigraphical evidence. By means of statistical tests and analyses, it argues that, while wealth certainly gave elites an advantage in the Assembly through rhetorical training as well as an edge in the run for elective offices, Athenian democracy since the fifth century provided occasional proposers and ordinary citizens with significant pathways for exerting political agency. By reviewing the problematic evidence for the practice of proposing decrees through proxies, this study also shows that the significant level of popular participation attested in the observed data was not a by-product of political friendship, and that Athenian democracy since its early history encouraged models of political aggregation which could cut through friendship groups and enable forms of participation not limited to passively supporting one’s political leaders.

Classical Quarterly 71/2 (2021)

This article offers a new interpretation of the Athenian institution of ostracism and explores it... more This article offers a new interpretation of the Athenian institution of ostracism and explores its significance for our understanding of democratic politics. A popular scholarly trend interprets ostracism as an instrument for pursuing (or regulating) conflict among aristocratic politicians, in accordance with a view of Athenian democracy as dominated by a restricted elite competing for power and prestige. This article aims to reassess this picture by investigating ostracism in the light of recent studies of honour, which have stressed honour's potential for balancing competition and cooperation within communities. By using the ostracism of Themistocles as a case study, it argues that ostracism was a manifestation of an institutionalized concern for honour in Athenian democracy. On the one hand, ostracism could punish politically active citizens who, in excessively enhancing their own honour, failed to respect democratic equality. On the other, it could be employed for tackling shameful behaviour which placed the agent below the community’s standards of honour. The article then sets ostracism against Athens’ broader institutional framework and argues that Athenian democracy was not so much concerned with policing intra-elite conflict as much as it was designed to foster a balance between competitive and cooperative values and ensure broad participation in the political domain.

Chapters in edited volumes by Matteo Barbato

E. M. Harris and A. Esu (eds), Keeping to the Point in Athenian Forensic Oratory. Law, Character and Rhetoric, 2025

In 346/5 BC, Aeschines prosecuted Timarchus under a procedure known as dokimasia rhētorōn. Timarc... more In 346/5 BC, Aeschines prosecuted Timarchus under a procedure known as dokimasia rhētorōn. Timarchus was accused of illegally addressing the Assembly on account of his actions as a male prostitute and squanderer of his patrimony. However, doubts have been cast on Aeschines’ adherence to the legal issue at hand, and it has even been suggested that he made up the procedure of dokimasia rhētorōn while actually prosecuting Timarchus under a graphē hetairēseōs. This chapter argues that Aeschines’ rhetorical strategy was in fact bound to the nature of the legal procedure. Given the weakness of the legal charges against Timarchus, Aeschines relies on character evidence and pits the defendant against allegedly Solonian moral legislation. Through a comparison with other types of dokimasiai, I show that a focus on character and morality was engrained in the dokimasia rhētorōn and allowed Aeschines to prove that Timarchus was unfit for advising the people. I then investigate Aeschines’ use of character evidence as well as his discussion of Timarchus’ public career and show that it was relevant to the charge of prostitution. Given the paucity of concrete evidence, Aeschines provided a picture of Timarchus that was reminiscent of the stereotypes on hetairai in order to persuade the judges that Timarchus had indeed been a prostitute. Finally, I analyse Aeschines’ poetic quotations within his discussion of rumour and homosexual love. These are legally relevant because they counter the main objection to Aeschines’ legal charges, namely the lack of solid evidence against Timarchus. The orator therefore relies on the authority of Homeric and tragic poetry to deploy poetic quotations in place of witness statements in support of his otherwise weak charges.

Feel free to contact me to request a full draft of this chapter.

Tra Cuma e Metaponto Ricerche in Magna Grecia, 2024

This article re-examines Syracusan petalism in view of the current historiographical debate on Di... more This article re-examines Syracusan petalism in view of the current historiographical debate on Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus portrays petalism as a local variant of Athenian ostracism introduced in 454 BC in response to multiple attempts at establishing a tyranny in Syracuse, only to be abolished soon after it caused a crisis in the civic life of the polis. Despite its inconsistencies, Diodorus’ narrative is accepted by most scholars, who take petalism as evidence for determining the constitutional order of post Deinomenid Syracuse. This piece offers a new interpretation of petalism which appreciates Diodorus’ authorial voice and his use of the sources. I aim to provide a non-Athenocentric view of petalism and stress its relevance to the colonial environment of fifth-century Sicily. First, I analyse the procedural section of Diodorus’ narrative. I show that the historian lacked any direct information on petalism and deducedits procedural features by analogy with Athenian ostracism and ekphyllophoria. I then focus on the historical section of Diodorus’ account of petalism. I demonstrate that, on a narrative detailing a stasis between ancient and naturalised citizens, Diodorus superimposed one centred around the struggle between demagogues and «the most respectable citizens» (οἱ χαριέστατοι τῶν πολιτῶν), according to a pattern he typically used to adapt scenarios of political conflict to his moral agenda. I thus argue that petalism was not an anti-tyrannical institution but a tool to tackle the social problems caused by the re-definition of the citizen body and land distribution carried out as a result of the κοινὸν δόγμα in 461 BC.

J. Filonik, B. Griffith-Williams and J. Kucharski (eds), The Making of Identities in Athenian Oratory, London, 2020

The Athenian ancestors were constantly made object of praise in Athenian public discourse, and th... more The Athenian ancestors were constantly made object of praise in Athenian public discourse, and the orators often exhorted their audience to imitate their deeds and follow their example. The ancestors’ ideological weight risked reducing the representation of Athens’ future policies to a perpetual reenactment of the city’s glorious past. Then how could Aeschines, in an address to the Assembly recalled in his speech On the Embassy, invite the Athenians to avoid the mistakes of their ancestors during the Peloponnesian War? According to a recent study, Aeschines challenged the prevalent image of the city’s past by relying on his family tradition as an alternative carrier of social memory. This chapter argues that an institutionalist approach offers a more convincing explanation. Far from challenging the Athenians’ shared image of their past, Aeschines adapted it to the discursive parameters of the Assembly, which compelled orators to construct their speeches around issues of advantage.

Book Reviews by Matteo Barbato

Rivista di Filologia e Istruzione Classica, 2023

Since Maurice Halbwachs' Topographie légendaire des Evangiles en Terre Sainte, scholars have incr... more Since Maurice Halbwachs' Topographie légendaire des Evangiles en Terre Sainte, scholars have increasingly recognised the connection of memory and space in human societies. Katharina Kostopoulos draws from this tradition to fill a gap in the study of the past in Athenian public discourse by providing a broad investigation of the role of monuments and space in the construction of shared memories, identities and values. The book focuses on three areas of the city (Acropolis; Agora; Ceramicus) to show how they interacted with one another in the speeches of the Attic orators to form a network of spatial references to the past. Chapter 1 is devoted to methodology. Kostopoulos highlights the importance of vision in the Greeks' experience of monuments and stresses the dynamic and socially constructed nature of space (Raum). This encompasses movement and multiple perspectives of perception and depends on individual and collective actors attaching meaning on physical objects in accordance with shared values. Chapter 2 analyses Lycurgus' Against Leocrates to illustrate multiple spatial carriers of memory and strategies for their deployment, which Kostopoulos rightly taken as representative of the orators' use of collective visual memory rather than unique to Lycurgus. The remaining chapters deal with different monument types and monumental complexes. Chapter 3 focuses on the Acropolis. Because of its visibility across the city, this plays a significant role in Athenian collective memory. Many structures on the Acropolis (most notably the Propylaea) were associated with glorious episodes of Athenian history, while others could recall traumatic memories. This was the case of the northern wall of the Acropolis, which was connected to the destruction caused by the Persians. Chapter 4 investigates honorific statues. Their location in the Agora, close to the dikasteria, contributed to their success in forensic rhetoric and facilitated their use as paradeigmata for attacking one's opponent or discussing Athenian honorific practices. The same functions were performed by honorific inscriptions, which also ensured visibility to the honorand and acted as proof and embodiment of the honours conferred. These and other kinds of inscriptions are addressed in Chapter 5, which shows how the physicality of inscriptions contributed to collective memory, as evidenced especially in cursory allusions (e.g, 'the law from the stele of the Areopagus' at Lys.1.30) that assume knowledge on the part of the audience. Chapter 6 focuses on the city walls. Their construction is often connected with Themistocles' trickery against the Spartans and provides orators with a term of comparison for opponents or other historical figures. Their destruction after the Peloponnesian War is a painful reminder of defeat, but after the foundation of the Second Athenian Confederation starts to be coupled with a drive to Athenian resurgence. Chapter 7 deals with the tombs of the ancestors. Family tombs served as proof in citizenship trials and inheritance disputes and figured among the routine questions in dokimasiai. The demosion sema instead allowed the orators of funeral speeches to conjure in one place the memory of the Athenian dead from different battles. Chapter 8 explores trophies. These served as memorials of specific victories but also as paradeigmata for exhorting the Athenians to imitate the virtues of the ancestors, while trophies of individual generals were used to stress their individual merits or as terms of comparison against one's opponents. Chapter 9 draws the conclusions of the study. Kostopoulos rightly stresses how collective visual memory, while reaching its pinnacle after Chaeronea, had been a feature of Attic oratory since early on, and notes how monuments could give rise to different, sometimes conflicting histories. Kostopoulos successfully shows the constant presence of monuments, landmarks and even smaller memorials such as golden crowns in Athenians public discourse and provides a detailed account of the many ways space could be deployed in the memory strategies of the orators. The book benefits from the author's great familiarity with the source materials and the methodologies of memory studies. Yet, Kostopoulos sometimes too readily assumes spatial allusions where in fact one might simply see generic allusions to individuals or events of the past. The mention of Solon at Aeschin. 3.257 as the one 'who equipped the democracy with the most noble laws', for example, cannot be taken as an allusion to the inscribed copies of Solon's laws (205). Some might also disagree with Kostopoulos' choice to accept the authenticity of Andoc. 3, which, however, only affects her analysis on specific instances. Finally, the book seems to lack a strong, overall argument. This is probably due to its "heavy" structure based on monument types, which at times tends to be compilatory and discuss the same passages multiple times. The identities and values the author seeks to illuminate (37) thus end up on the background, and her final considerations on the spatial memory strategies typical of individual genres or orators (350) are left underdeveloped. However, the book's thoroughness and high level of scholarship, its comprehensive, international bibliography, and its helpful indexes will make it an important reference point for readers interested in collective memory and in the reception of specific monuments or historical events in the speeches of the Attic orators.

‘Review of Bourke, G. (2018), Elis. Internal Politics and External Policy in Ancient Greece, London and New York’, in Classical Review 68/2 (2018), 488-9

Public engagement by Matteo Barbato

'Clavis Aurea: Unlocking Academia' podcast , 2024

We are Clavis Aurea: a dynamic team constantly looking for ways to make the academic publishing i... more We are Clavis Aurea: a dynamic team constantly looking for ways to make the academic publishing industry grow and to promote groundbreaking academic publications to scholars, students and enthusiasts globally. Based in the renowned publishing city of Leiden, we eat, sleep and breathe publishing!

Matteo Barbato’s The Ideology of Democratic Athens: Institutions, Orators and the Mythical Past (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) investigates the construction of democratic ideology in Classical Athens through a study of the social memory of Athens’ mythical past.

The debate on Athenian democratic ideology has long been polarised around two extremes. Matteo Barbato addresses this dichotomy by providing a unitary approach to Athenian democratic ideology. Analysing four different myths from the perspective of the New Institutionalism, he demonstrates that Athenian democratic ideology was a fluid set of ideas, values and beliefs shared by the Athenians as a result of a constant ideological practice influenced by the institutions of the democracy. He shows that this process entailed the active participation of both the masses and the elite and enabled the Athenians to produce multiple and compatible ideas about their community and its mythical past.

Conference presentations by Matteo Barbato

This paper, delivered at the SCS Annual Meeting 2021, aims to advance our understanding of the ro... more This paper, delivered at the SCS Annual Meeting 2021, aims to advance our understanding of the role of justice in Athenian international relations. The relevance of justice in Athenian deliberation on foreign policy and the development of its relationship with self-interest throughout the classical age have long been the object of debate. Kennedy (1959) argued that in the fifth century deliberative orators focused either on justice or interest and regarded them as mutually exclusive (see also Cohen 1984), whereas in the fourth they tended to combine both kinds of arguments. Heath (1990), on the other hand, argued that justice was a central component of both fifth- and fourth-century deliberative discourse. These studies, however, did not appreciate the influence of the Assembly on Athenian decision making. This aspect has been addressed by Harris (2013), who has convincingly shown that speakers in the Assembly were expected to focus their arguments on the interests of the city. As a result, deliberative orators (as opposed to speakers in the lawcourts) avoided appeals to punishment and corrective justice but could address issues of distributive justice, which dealt with the fair distribution of material and non-material goods.
This paper builds on Harris’ conclusions and investigates the role of justice in Athenian international relations through the methodology of the Discursive Institutionalism, which stresses the mutual influence between ideas and institutions (Schmidt 2008, 2010). This approach will allow me to tackle two potential counterarguments against the centrality of self-interest in the Athenian Assembly. The first relates to the ‘helping the wronged’ motif in Athenian ideology. This reflected a norm that compelled poleis to intervene in foreign affairs through dynamics comparable to those of corrective justice (Low 2007). To what extent was this norm compatible with the focus on Athenian interests appropriate to the Assembly? I shall answer this question by analyzing Demosthenes’ use of the ‘helping the wronged’ motif in his speech For the Megalopolitans. Through comparison with Lysias’ Funeral Oration, I will show that the discursive parameters of the Assembly led Demosthenes to downplay the altruistic aspect of the motif and conceptualize Athenian help for the victims of injustice compatibly with the focus on self-interest. I shall then address the second counterclaim. One may argue that the emphasis on self-interest in Athenian deliberation is amplified due to Thucydides’ cynical picture of interstate relations and to the influence of the Empire on Athenian foreign policies during the fifth century. I shall therefore compare two inscribed decrees which illustrate how the norm of ‘helping the wronged’ was implemented in Athenian diplomacy and expressed in official documents in the fifth (IG I3 61) and fourth centuries (IG II3 1 367). I will show that both inscriptions appealed to corrective justice but used it to pursue Athenian interests by fostering advantageous relations of reciprocity with foreign political actors. This picture is compatible with (and provides a more nuanced version of) Thucydides’ view of international relations and is consistent from the fifth to the fourth century despite the changes in Athenian external power.

This paper offers a new interpretation of ostracism and explores the significance of this Athenia... more This paper offers a new interpretation of ostracism and explores the significance of this Athenian institution for our understanding of democratic politics. The predominant scholarly view of ostracism is that it was an instrument for pursuing or regulating conflict among aristocratic politicians, which assumes that Athenian democracy was dominated by a restricted elite competing for power and prestige. This paper will re-assess this picture by investigating ostracism in the light of recent studies of honour, which stress this value’s potential for balancing competition and cooperation within a community. By using the ostracism of Themistocles as a case-study, it argues that ostracism was a manifestation of an institutionalised concern for honour in Athenian democracy. On the one hand, ostracism could punish politically active citizens who, in excessively enhancing their own honour, failed to respect democratic equality. On the other, it could be employed for tackling shameful behaviour that placed the agent below the community’s standards of honour. The paper thus sets ostracism against Athens’s broader institutional framework and argues that Athenian democracy was not so much concerned with policing intra-elite conflict as much as it was with fostering a balance between competitive and cooperative values and ensuring broad participation in the political domain.

In 346/5 BC, Aeschines prosecuted Timarchus, a well-known Athenian politician, under a procedure ... more In 346/5 BC, Aeschines prosecuted Timarchus, a well-known Athenian politician, under a procedure known as dokimasia rhētorōn. Timarchus was accused of illegally addressing the Assembly on account of his actions as a male prostitute and squanderer of his patrimony (Aeschin. 1.28-32, 154). In his accusation, Aeschines devoted much attention to the education and morals of Athenian citizens (Aeschin. 1.6-27) and Timarchus’ character and public career (Aeschin. 1.39-70, 106-115), conjuring the evidence of Homer and other poets to discuss homosexual love and the reliability of rumour (Aeschin. 1.125-40). As a result, doubts have been cast on Aeschines’ adherence to the legal issue at hand (Ford 1999; more cautiously Fisher 2001: 127-8), and it has even been suggested that the orator made up the procedure of dokimasia rhētorōn while actually prosecuting Timarchus under a graphē hetairēseōs (Lane Fox 1994: 149-51).

This paper puts these claims under scrutiny and argues that Aeschines’ rhetorical strategy in Against Timarchus was inextricably bound to the nature of the legal procedure. After reconstructing Aeschines’ plaint and the relevant legal allegations (Harris 2013), I shall provide a detailed analysis of his argument. Given the weakness of the legal charges against Timarchus, Aeschines abundantly relies on character evidence and pits the defendant against allegedly Solonian moral legislation. I will show that these evidence was relevant to the legal charges of prostitution and squandering of inheritance. Through a comparison with speeches dealing with other types of dokimasia (Lys. 16; 26; 31), moreover, I will show that Aeschines’ use of character evidence was engrained in the nature of the dokimasia rhētorōn and allowed the orator to prove that Timarchus was unfit for advising the dēmos on matters of public policy.

Polygraphia, 2024

Hormos, 2024

Histos, 2023

Rivista di Diritto Ellenico, 2023

Klio 105/2, 2023

Classical Quarterly 71/2 (2021)

E. M. Harris and A. Esu (eds), Keeping to the Point in Athenian Forensic Oratory. Law, Character and Rhetoric, 2025

Feel free to contact me to request a full draft of this chapter.

Tra Cuma e Metaponto Ricerche in Magna Grecia, 2024

J. Filonik, B. Griffith-Williams and J. Kucharski (eds), The Making of Identities in Athenian Oratory, London, 2020

Rivista di Filologia e Istruzione Classica, 2023

‘Review of Bourke, G. (2018), Elis. Internal Politics and External Policy in Ancient Greece, London and New York’, in Classical Review 68/2 (2018), 488-9

'Clavis Aurea: Unlocking Academia' podcast , 2024

The paper explores the role of institutions and the ideology of autochthony in the construction o... more The paper explores the role of institutions and the ideology of autochthony in the construction of Athenian identity. The ideology of autochthony entailed a potential disruption of the unity of the Athenian citizen body: did the myth of the earthborn kings and the reality of immigration and naturalisation imply the existence of different degrees of autochthony among the Athenian citizenry? I address this issue from the perspective of discursive institutionalism. This trend in the political sciences treats ideas and discourse as a product and as constitutive of institutions, and insists on the importance of studying them within their institutional setting. I compare accounts of Athenian autochthony produced at the state funeral, in the lawcourts, and at the dramatic festivals, and show how Athenian institutions mediated the potential contradictions in the notion of autochthony and helped constructing Athenian identity. The result was a dynamic ideology of autochthony: while in the lawcourts and at the dramatic festivals autochthony could be pictured as a factor of exclusion even within Athens’ citizen body, at the state funeral autochthony was invariably conceptualised as an inclusive factor which united all Athenians.

This paper aims to explore the ideological dynamics of the orators’ historical allusions. I argue... more This paper aims to explore the ideological dynamics of the orators’ historical allusions. I argue that, compared to the context of the epitaphios logos, where the orators actively contributed to the creation of the ideological image of Athens' past, forensic and deliberative rhetoric granted the orators larger autonomy in recalling the past. I will concentrate on Aeschines’ reply to Demosthenes’ accusation (Dem. 19.15-6) that he had exhorted the Athenians to forget about the ancestors and their trophies. Aeschines states that he had in fact invited the Athenians to imitate the euboulia of the ancestors, embodied by the Persian Wars and the generalship of Tolmides, but that he had warned them against emulating their philonikia, exemplified by the Sicilian expedition and the refusal of Sparta’s peace proposal at the end of the Peloponnesian War (Aeschin. 2.74-7).
In a recent article, Bernd Steinbock has suggested that Aeschines managed to challenge Athens’ master narrative by relying on his family tradition as alternative carrier of collective memory; yet Steinbock does not take into account the risk inherent in challenging the ideological image of Athens’ past and overlooks the importance of the institutional context in determining the modality of the orator's historical recollection. I will argue that Aeschines’ distinction between the euboulia of the ancestors and their philonikia, unconceivable in epitaphic context, was not out of place in the deliberative context where Aeschines’ original remarks had taken place. The orator is in fact keen to show that he, unlike his sophistic opponents, was only concerned with the safety of the state; this is in turn consistent with the object of deliberative rhetoric, which Aristotle identifies as ‘the useful or the harmful’ (Arist. Rhet. 1358b21-2). Through comparison with relevant passages dealing with the deeds of the ancestors, I thus show how Aeschines, far from challenging the ideological image of Athens' past, had managed to recalibrate it to the ideological coordinates of an ideal deliberative context.

In his speech On the False Embassy, Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of having exhorted the Athenian... more In his speech On the False Embassy, Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of having exhorted the Athenians to forget about their ancestors and to be wary of those who talk about their trophies and sea battles (Dem. 19.16). The orator remarks the gravity of his opponent’s words, which he describes as ‘worthy of many deaths’ (Dem. 19.15-6). On his part, Aeschines is aware of the threat represented by Demosthenes’ insinuations and addresses them in his speech On the False Embassy. Here he states that he had in fact invited the Athenians to remember and imitate the good achievements of their forefathers, and that he had only warned them to avoid repeating their same mistakes, such as the Sicilian expedition (Aeschin. 2.74-7).

This episode shows how dangerous it was for any orator who wanted to be successful in the Athenian courts and public debate to forget the city’s past and challenge the value of the ancestors’ achievements. The ancestors’ indisputable weight in Athenian civic ideology seems to reduce the representation of Athens’ policies to a perpetual re-enactment of the city’s glorious past. Aeschines, however, was eventually acquitted; Demosthenes’ accusations were not enough to instigate the hostility of the judges against him. To what extent, then, could orators question the example of the ancestors without incurring in the hostility of the audience? Was there any room for progress in the Athenian public debate? Starting from the case of Aeschines and Demosthenes, my paper will consider further instances of the discussion of Athens’ past in both forensic and deliberative oratory and assess to what extent the example of the ancestors had the power to shape the future of the city.

The Failure of Persuasion: a Case of Weak Rhetoric in Euripides' Children of Heracles

One of the most characteristic features of Euripides’ poetry is its strong involvement with rheto... more One of the most characteristic features of Euripides’ poetry is its strong involvement with rhetoric, and his plays often include skilfully crafted speeches. The author’s familiarity with the subject, however, appears even more strikingly when he brings unconvincing orators on the stage and consciously reverses successful rhetorical habits.

The paper will take as an example the rhetorical agon between the Herald and Iolaus in the Children of Heracles
(134-231). The confrontation results in the crushing defeat of the Herald, since Iolaus is able to persuade Demophon, king of Athens, to grant help to the suppliant Heracleidae (237-252). Such an outcome is reflected in the different construction of the two speeches, directly aiming at depicting the Herald as a bad orator. By drawing parallels from deliberative and forensic speeches, I will thus argue that Euripides is programmatically making the Herald rely on arguments of proven ineffectiveness in the actual rhetorical practice. Such is the case of his cynical and inappropriate appeal to kerdos (“personal gain”), a theme that the orators only use when trying to portray their opponents in a bad light. Moreover, the weakness of the arguments employed by the Herald is evident from a comparison with Iolaus’ speech. The latter is specifically designed to be a persuasive piece of rhetoric and relies on values which were well-established in the Athenian community, such as the obligation to reciprocate favours to benefactors. Because of Euripides’ intentional “sabotage” of his speech, the Herald is thus doomed to lose in the verbal battlefield of deliberative discourse, and his failure must have been perceived by the Athenian audience not only as plausible but even as necessary.

Variations on Myth: Different Perceptions of Charis in Euripides’ Children of Heracles and in Lysias’ Funeral Oration

The paper will address the issue of the variants of one mythical story in different traditions. T... more The paper will address the issue of the variants of one mythical story in different traditions. To what extent did ancient authors change traditional material? What were the reasons behind such variations? In an attempt to answer to such questions, I shall concentrate on one case study from the story of the Children of Heracles as treated by Euripides and Lysias. In Euripides’ Children of Heracles, Iolaus reminds the Athenian king Demophon of how Heracles rescued his father Theseus from the underworld, appealing to the value of charis (whose importance in many aspects of Greek society has been highlighted e.g. by Seaford 1998) in order to persuade him to succour the children of the hero against Eurystheus (215-222). On the other hand, Lysias in his Funeral Oration stresses how the Athenians did not receive any favour from Heracles, implying that they decided to defend his children entirely out of goodwill and love for justice (2.11-16). One possible explanation for such an opposite use of the concept of charis might be found in the disappearance of Theseus from the horizon of the Athenian official narrative represented by the epitaphios logos. Yet Euripides could have easily represented Iolaus employing the same rhetoric of reciprocity that Millett (1998) has identified in many forensic speeches from the fourth century. Another explanation is needed, and this can be found in the different rhetorical purpose of Lysias’ Funeral Oration: Lysias’ aim was to stress the Athenians’ philanthropia. The paper will use this case study to distinguish between the unchangeable narrative core of a mythical story, and the malleable realm of the motivations of mythical actions, which can be shaped by specific rhetorical needs in each case.

Variazioni sul Mito: Declinazioni del Concetto di Charis negli Eraclidi di Euripide e nell’Epitafio di Lisia

Il mio intervento sarà incentrato sul tema delle varianti di uno stesso mito in diverse tradizion... more Il mio intervento sarà incentrato sul tema delle varianti di uno stesso mito in diverse tradizioni. In che misura gli autori antichi modificavano il materiale tradizionale? Quali erano le ragioni di tali variazioni? Per rispondere a queste domande, concentrerò la mia attenzione su un case study tratto dal mito degli Eraclidi così come viene esposto da Euripide e Lisia. Negli Eraclidi di Euripide, Iolao ricorda a Demofonte come Eracle avesse salvato suo padre Teseo rimasto intrappolato nell’Ade, e fa dunque ricorso al concetto di charis per convincerlo ad aiutare i figli dell’eroe contro Euristeo (215-222). L’Epitafio di Lisia, sottolineando come gli Ateniesi non avessero ricevuto alcun favore da Eracle, presenta invece la loro difesa dei figli di Eracle come un gesto disinteressato e mosso dal loro amore per la giustizia (2.11-16). Tale differenza nell’uso del concetto di charis potrebbe essere spiegata con la scomparsa di Teseo dall’orizzonte della narrativa ufficiale ateniese dell’epitaphios logos. Tuttavia è possibile che Iolao nella tragedia euripidea impieghi la stessa retorica della reciprocità che Millett (1998) ha identificato in varie orazioni giudiziarie di quarto secolo. È dunque necessario cercare un’altra spiegazione, che risiede probabilmente nel diverso fine retorico perseguito da Lisia, vale a dire quello di dare rilievo alla philanthropia degli Ateniesi. Il mio intervento si servirà dunque di questo case study per distinguere tra il nucleo narrativo invariabile di una vicenda mitica, e la malleabile sfera delle cause delle azioni mitiche, che può essere modellata dalle specifiche necessità retoriche del singolo caso.

Popular participation and the nature of political power in democratic Athens have long been objec... more Popular participation and the nature of political power in democratic Athens have long been object of debate among scholars. This workshop will focus on a specific facet of this debate: the political class of Athenian democracy. Was there a political class in democratic Athens? How can we explain the diverging pictures of Athenian politics which emerge from literary and epigraphical sources? Did any major changes take place in Athens’ political equilibrium throughout the fifth and fourth centuries? What was the role of expertise and professionalization in Athenian politics? By tackling these and related questions and analysing them from multiple angles, this workshop aims to renew and advance the debate on Athens’ political class. As a result, it will provide a nuanced and comprehensive view of the nature, breadth, composition and very existence of a political class in Athenian democracy and shape the debate on the topic for the next generation of scholars.