Davide Napoli (Harvard University)
My talk starts from two elements: a well-known fact and an ancient remark. The fact is that the genre of Attic oratory is permeated by commonplaces or topoi, as Aristotle calls them. The ancient remark is attributed by Thucydides to Cleon, who says that the Athenians are “the easy victims of newfangled arguments (kainotētos), unwilling to follow received conclusions (dedokimasmenou); slaves to every new paradox (atopōn), despisers of the commonplace (eiōthotōn)” (3.38.5, trans. Jowett). Can we reconcile these two elements? Do the Athenians always expect to hear topoi, as the evidence from oratory seems to suggest, or do they value atopa, as argued by Cleon?
The widespread presence of topoi in court speeches has led many scholars to mine them as an invaluable source of information for the social and legal history of classical Athens (e.g., Christ 2012, Herman 2006). This important historical enterprise has however privileged the norm over the exception: accordingly, Cleon’s analysis has rarely been used as a guide to understand the forensic material (Hesk 2007 is an exception). On the contrary, Cleon’s argument can be corroborated by a fresh look at the evidence from forensic oratory. As I show in my talk, time and again litigants engage in provocative uses of commonplaces, often reversing a well-attested topos in order to use it against the opponent. This, I argue, is due to the “antilogic configuration” of the Athenian trial – a trial that is made up of two opposed speakers who argue not only about something, but also against someone. This antilogic configuration places a premium on showing that the topos used by an opponent proves the opposite of what they want. By following this rhetorical mechanism and reversing topoi, litigants often end up challenging legal and social norms (cf. Lanni 2016, 150–70).
For instance, a well-known topos of oratory is to present oneself as an inexperienced speaker against much more skilled – and therefore suspicious – opponents (Ober 1989, 170–9). But in his attempt to save his life from a capital sentence, the orator Antiphon states: “My accusers say I used to compose speeches for others to deliver in court and that I profited from this. But under an oligarchy I would not be able to do this, whereas under a democracy I have long been the one with power because of my skill with words” (Ant. fr. 1a Gagarin). Antiphon strikingly argues that the topos of the skilled speaker, which was easy for the opponents to deploy against him, proves the opposite of what the opponents argue. As I show, the same pattern can be seen in many other examples of reversed topoi (e.g., [Lys.] 6.48, Lys. 30.26–7 etc.): even when the stakes are high, speakers are willing to challenge “received conclusions” (to dedokimasmenon). Thucydides’ Cleon thus turns out to have a sharper eye than modern scholars grant him, and Athenian oratory to be a much more creative laboratory of norms and (un)commonplaces than previously believed.