Attic Oratory

The law courts of Athens regularly oversaw lawsuits involving money, especially those involving inheritance. The speeches of Isaeus deal with such cases and offer insight into how individuals could talk about money in legal matters. His repertoire of rhetorical arguments included elements of slander, insult, and mockery, and he often employed these in cases involving money. In this paper I investigate how Isaeus’ clients used insults to their advantage when discussing wealth and their opponents’ misuse of it.

Little scholarly attention has been paid to intertextuality in the Attic orators, but in the case of Against Leptines an intertextual approach can reveal how Demosthenes constructed himself as a speaker and political theorist at the very outset of his public career. The recent appearance of two commentaries (Kremmydas, Canevaro) has made this speech in particular ripe for analysis of Demosthenes’ literary methods.

While important work continues to be done on male sexuality in Aeschines 1, scholars have also begun to think more about the techniques employed that made it successful in court (Fisher 2001: 55-67). Giulia Sissa (1999) and Susan Lape (2006) consider the representation of the body in particular, what Lape terms Aeschines’ “physiognomic strategy” (2006: 141). Aeschines’ speech is also rich in its use of place as an effective tactic. Yet while the ‘spatial turn’ has begun to penetrate Greek cultural studies (Gilhuly and Worman 2014), it is less in evidence in Greek oratory.

Prognosis as a Measure of Excellence:

Medical Language in Demosthenes’ On the Crown