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Isocrates and Busiris CHAPTER 4 Rhetoric, Art, and Myth: Isocrates and Busiris by Terry L. Papillon According to traditional accounts, the story of Busiris, mythical king of Egypt, is a frightening tale of violence. Apollodorus tells us the following: Leaving Libya, he [Herakles] passed through Egypt, which was then under the rule of Bousiris, son of Poseidon and Lysianassa, daugh­ ter of Epaphos. Bousiris used to sacrifice strangers on an altar of Zeus, in accordance with an oracle; for barrenness had gripped the land of Egypt for nine years, and Phrasios, a skilled diviner who had come from Cyprus, said that the barrenness would come to an end if they slaughtered a male foreigner in honour of Zeus every year. Bousiris began by slaughtering the diviner himself, and continued to slaughter strangers who landed there. So Heracles was arrested and dragged to the altars, but he broke free of his bonds, and killed both Bousiris and his son Amphidamas.! In Isocrates we hear none of this traditional story. His discourse entitled the Busiris presents the story of Busiris very differently from the story as we normally think of it. Part of the reason for this is that it reacts to a speech by the rhetor Polycrates that sought to defend Busiris. Isocra­ tes claims that Polycrates mishandled the defense and corrects him. After an introduction that faults Polycrates for mishandling the presentation of Busiris (by telling some of the traditional story), Isocrates offers a number of topics that are recognizable from later theory of epideictic discourse: Busiris' lineage, the manner of his rule, and what he gave to society. His gifts include such things as the caste system, government, advanced civili- I Library 2.5.11, tr. Robin Hard, Oxford World's Classics (Oxford, 1997). 74 THE ORATOR IN ACTION: GREECE zation, religion, and philosophy. Isocrates then concludes the speech quite self-consciously with a defense of his own method of praise. In this con­ clusion, Isocrates addresses many topics regarding Busiris that he had not treated, arguing that they are either not true or not appropriate. He also comes close to arguing compositional theory, addressing a number of im­ portant issues, though in negative terms: the need to use the correct topoi (33), the importance of saga and ElKO'; (35), the potential danger of ex­ ample speeches (48), and the need for (and danger of) philosophy (49). He also talks of his goal of "making a demonstration for the benefit of the audience" UnrooEtgat).2 The question posed in this paper is why Isocrates tells the story of Busiris the way he does. Certainly the presentation is understandable in terms of the theory of epideictic composition. D.A. Russell and N. Wil­ son's edition of Menander Rhetor has made it easy to study the ways in which the ancients thought it appropriate to praise. Isocrates' speech shows the kind of treatment laid out by Menander: the introduction fol­ lowed by chronologically organized topics. Isocrates differs only in the rather programmatic beginning and ending, which may be due to the edu­ cational/advertising emphasis of these sorts of speeches. Nevertheless, we need to remember that such theoretical organization as Menander gives us comes well after the composition of this speech. Aristotle also talks of what is needed for an epideictic speech, but his treatment is also very probably later than this speech of Isocrates. Moreover, regardless of the dating of this speech (on which more below), Isocrates seems very con­ sciously to be struggling against the organization of Aristotle.3 Thus we 2 For more on "hypodeictic" discourse, see below and Terry Papillon, "Isocrates' Techne and Rhetorical Pedagogy," Rhetoric Society Quartedy 25 (1995), 149-63. J Edward Schiappa has argued for the need to avoid allowing later theory to color our perception of earlier rhetores; see "Rherorike: What's in a Name? Toward a Revised History of Early Greek Rhetorical Theory," Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1992), 1-15; "The Be­ ginnings of Greek Rhetorical Theory," in Rhetorical Movement: Essays in Honor ofLeland M. Griffin, ed. D. Zarefsky (Evanston, 1993), 5-33; and especially "Toward a Predisciplinary Analysis of Gorgias' Helen," in Theory, Text, and Context: Issues in Greek Rhetoric and Ora­ tory, ed. L.c. Johnstone (Albany, 1996), 65-86. This is a useful warning, though perhaps one needing some caution; see Terry Papillon, Rhetorical Studies in the Aristocratea of Demos­ thenes (New York, 1998), 3-5' Recently George Kennedy has argued that the theory of the Greeks and Romans can help us understand the rhetoric of non-classical cultures, even of animals; see George Kennedy, Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultztral Intro­ duction (Oxford, 1998). I think that Kennedy is correct when he says that we can learn some­ thing of comparative rhetoric by using Greco-Roman rhetoric as a lens, and Mary Garrett's review points out the important beginning that the book Comparative Rhetoric makes (Rheto-.
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