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Ēthos and Logical Argument Inthucydides' Assembly Debates

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Ēthos and Logical Argument Inthucydides' Assembly Debates chapter 7 Ēthos and Logical Argument in Thucydides’ Assembly Debates Christos Kremmydas* Introduction Speeches in Thucydides’ History are among the most talked about topics in Thucydidean studies.1 Scholars have been debating, inter alia, their role in the work as a whole, their historical reliability, and their relationship to contempo- rary Greek oratory in the last third of the fifth century. Aspects of argumenta- tion of key speeches in Thucydides’ history (e.g. in the Mytilenean debate) have also been the subject of scholarly analysis.2 There is no doubt that the Athe- nian historian made speeches (direct and indirect) integral to his presentation of events of the Peloponnesian war and his portrayal of the role of individuals in it. He thus adds vividness to the narrative of events and gives his readers an insight into the decision-making of the main parties at key junctures of the war. But his reconstruction of direct speeches delivered in assembly meetings may also convey a performative aspect of these debates: they are intense verbal interactions between individuals before the “historical” audience in different Greek poleis involved in the war (Athens primarily, but also Sparta, Syracuse, Gela, Camarina, Acanthus, Torone (indirect), Scione (indirect), Amphipolis, Argos, Chios (indirect), Delos (indirect)) and the real audience, Thucydides’ readers.3 These agōnes involve the verbal performances of key actors in the History and their structure, texture, and content all target the cognitive facul- ties of Thucydides’ audiences.4 And whilst the most obvious aspects of stag- * I wish to thank the editors for their kind invitation to contribute to this volume. 1 Selected bibliography on a vast and ever-expanding topic: Tompkins (1972), Raubitschek (1973), Stahl (1973), West (1973), Westlake (1973), Stadter (1973), Hornblower (1987) 45–72, Pelling (2012), Harris (2013c). 2 MacLeod (1977= 1983; and 1978=1983) and Heath (1990) in particular. 3 One should also include audiences listening to recitations of extended passages of the History; cf. performance of Herodotus’ Histories, if Marcellinus is to be believed: Vit. 54; see also Thomas (2003) 173–180. 4 Ober (1998) 52–121 on agōn and democratic debate in Thucydides; see response in Barker © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004341876_008 94 kremmydas ing and acting usually associated with theatrical performances are missing from the text (or are only rarely alluded to in passing), it is clear that the speeches presented by different individuals (or groups of speakers such as ambassadors who represented by a single voice) are agonistic performances in their own right: the different audiences of Thucydides would be interested in how the arguments put forward by the speakers would advance the action in the drama of the war as reality experienced in historical time/space and as artistic, literary representation. Few people would associate argumentation with performance but there is no doubt that verbal performances by different individuals in a debate appealed to and enthused the contemporary public, and the arguments advanced were central to this appeal. Thucydidean audi- ences would also be keen to discover more about the character (ēthos) of the individual speakers/politicians and the different ways in which they con- tributed to specific events, decisions, and the formation of specific ideas and attitudes. A key passage in the Mytilenean debate (3.38.4–7) suggests that Athenian audiences in particular took a keen interest in the form of arguments presented in Assembly debates and may have treated the debates themselves as specta- cles. Cleon deplores the fact that the use of novel types of logical arguments by Athenian politicians in Assembly debates distorted the nature of political debate: rhetorical argument had allegedly taken precedence over substance, debates turned into spectacles, and Assembly-goers into spectators. This is pre- sented as an undesirable state of affairs and a perversion of the standards of political deliberation, yet it is difficult to miss the irony of the speech’s overly elaborate logical argumentation. However, even if Cleon was exaggerating the extent to which Athenian Assembly-goers enjoyed debates as spectacles with novel and elaborate logical argumentation at their very heart, debates as pre- sented by Thucydides do seem to stress this competitive display of arguments and counterarguments. And Thucydides’ modern readers, like contemporary audiences in Athens and elsewhere in the Greek world, are enjoying the com- petition of rival verbal performances that usually consist of one or two speakers (or groups of speakers in the case of envoys) performing their carefully crafted arguments, through which one also gets to know more about their character as politicians, generals, diplomats. In this chapter, I shall seek to examine the extent to which types of argu- ments help project the speakers’ character or seek negatively to characterise (2009) 203–263, who re-examines the role of agōn in theThucydidean narrative and considers the limitations and possibilities it offers the Athenian historian and his readers..
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