UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Agon and Ethics: Competitive Discourse in 5th and 4th Century Greece Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4fr5d52f Author Avinger, Elias Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Agon and Ethics: Competitive Discourse in Fifth and Fourth Century Greece By Elias Avinger A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor G. R. F. Ferrari, Chair Professor Mark Griffith Professor Anthony Long Professor Daniel Boyarin Fall 2012 Abstract Agon and Ethics: Competitive Discourse in Fifth and Fourth Century Greece by Elias Avinger Doctor of Philosophy in Classics University of California, Berkeley Professor G. R. F. Ferrari, Chair How do we model our public sphere and the discourse that takes place within it – as a space of gradually emerging consensus or of endless competition? And how can we determine what constitutes appropriate, or even beneficial, competition and what constitutes inappropriate or harmful competition? In my dissertation, I utilize both literary and philosophical sources to examine classical Greek thoughts about the ethical problems of competition in public discourse. I argue, first, that public speech was virtually always conceived of as a fundamentally competitive enterprise; and secondly, that such competitiveness was viewed as particularly problematic in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Authors in various genres explored the utility and abuses of competitive discourse through the vehicle of debate pieces that were intended to both entertain and illuminate. The agones that I examine are thus quasi-theoretical in that each contestant seeks to define the nature and limits of productive, fair competition and to distinguish it from harmful competition; but as one might expect, the agonistic format of the debate often colors the values expressed in the arguments. I organize my dissertation according to Aristotle’s three divisions of rhetoric—epideictic, forensic, and deliberative—in order to show how each genre attempts to define its own version of 'good eris' largely through differentiating itself from the other genres. I use Euripides as an example of explicitly epideictic debate. In the agons from Suppliants (399- 580), Phoenician Women (446-635), Iphigenia in Aulis (317-414), and Andromache (147- 273), the playwright presents competitive discourse as an ultimately irresolvable problem. At the same time, his ability to rise above the fray and offer a balanced presentation of the issue sets him apart from practitioners in the other genres (and ideally helps him to defeat his opponents in the dramatic contest). I then turn to Demosthenes and Aeschines for my example of forensic debate. In these legal agons, we see each contestant attempting to present himself as a superior competitive speaker, while each opponent is accused of a different kind of unfair epideixis. Finally, I examine three debate scenes from Thucydides’ History (Cleon vs. Diodotus, Nicias vs. Alcibiades, and Hermocrates vs. Athenagoras), where we see the contestants walking a fine line between public and private interests and trying to outdo their opponents by more persuasively defining the type of competition proper to deliberative debate. 1 Chapter 1: Introduction 1. Rhetoric as a competitive art In the first book of Plato's Republic, Socrates and Thrasymachus enter into a debate to determine whether the life of the just man or the life of the unjust man is more profitable. The debate is given a certain formality by Socrates' proclamation that the disputants will serve as both speakers and judges (ἅµα αὐτοί τε δικασταὶ καὶ ῥήτορες ἐσόµεθα, 348b). Thrasymachus makes it clear that his primary criterion for deeming a man intelligent and good is his ability to successfully put other men 'under' himself. Only the perfectly unjust man will be able to do so with impunity, he claims. Socrates responds by asking Thrasymachus if he seriously believes that injustice, rather than justice, should be grouped together with wisdom and virtue (ἀρετή).1 Suspecting an attempt on Socrates' part to shame him into a contradiction, Thrasymachus declines to answer the question: "What concern is it to you whether I believe it or not? Just refute the argument." Socrates agrees and begins his refutation by asking Thrasymachus a series of questions that essentially refer to the difference in attitude between the just and the unjust man in regard to competition. Thrasymachus agrees that the just man does not want to be superior to (πλέον ἔχειν) another just man or a just action, but he does consider it good (and just) to be superior to the unjust man. The unjust man, on the other hand, 'will compete in order that he himself may get the better of everyone' (καὶ ἁµιλλήσεται ὡς ἁπάντων πλεῖστον αὐτὸς λάβῃ; 349c).2 Thus the just man only tries to outdo those unlike himself, while the unjust man competes with like and unlike alike. Socrates' next move is, in trademark fashion, to introduce the practitioners of various crafts (τέχναι) in order to illustrate his ethical claims. If the unjust man is φρόνιµος (intelligent, skilled), then he is 'like' other φρόνιµοι, such as the musician and the doctor. The expert musician certainly does not try to outdo other expert musicians when he tunes his lyre, nor does the wise doctor compete with another doctor when he prescribes food and drink. In order finally to draw his conclusion that it is the just man, not the unjust man, who is wise and good, Socrates sums up his argument about skilled practitioners in the following way: Περὶ πάσης δὴ ὅρα ἐπιστήµης τε καὶ ἀνεπιστηµοσύνης εἴ τίς σοι δοκεῖ ἐπιστήµων ὁστισοῦν πλείω ἂν ἐθέλειν αἱρεῖσθαι ἢ ὅσα ἄλλος ἐπιστήµων ἢ πράττειν ἢ λέγειν, καὶ οὐ ταὐτὰ τῷ ὁµοίῳ ἑαυτῷ εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν πρᾶξιν. In regard, then, to all knowledge and ignorance, see if you think that anyone at all who is knowledgeable would want to get more for himself than another knowledgeable man, either in acting or speaking, and would not rather try to 1 Socrates' strategy here depends in part on the ambiguity of the term ἀρετή. Adkins 1960 made a great deal of the fact that, in Homer, ἀρετή refers to a man's ability to defeat his opponents (the 'competitive virtues' of courage, etc.), and only later does it come to include the more cooperative virtues. 2 Literally, 'that he himself may take the most out of everyone': the most profit? the most honor? On the analogy of πλέον ἔχειν, the idea is probably just that he will try to outdo or excel everyone. Aristotle associates πλεονεξία (and 'particular' injustice) especially with honor, money, and safety (EN 1130b3). See Williams 1980: 199, who suggests that Aristotle's description of πλεονέξια is only really accurate with respect to honor. 1 get the same amount as the man similar to himself in respect to the same action.3 (350a) Barely below the surface of this argument lurks the question of how debate, i.e. verbal competition, ought to be conducted. Although the emphasis is on the justice of men and of actions generally, Socrates points to the issue of just and unjust speech when he adds ἢ λέγειν to the areas in which the knowledgeable man will refrain from competing with his equals. Further, he draws attention to the importance of rhetoric to the subject matter under discussion by framing the debate as a contest between two rhetors, public speakers, who, in this case, are also judges. Further, although Thrasymachus argues here for all manner of injustice and subjugation, nonetheless, as a renowned sophist, the means that he actually employs, and imparts to his students, for placing men under him (to the extent that we imagine him actually behaving in accordance with his professed ethical principles) must be the art of rhetoric. But rhetoric, which was considered, at least by Plato's contemporaries, to be a τέχνη, is rather out of tune with the conclusions that Socrates draws from the examples of the lyrist and the doctor.4 We can see that Socrates has made a number of questionable moves in this brief passage – sleights of hand that one could even take as an indication of the great freedom granted by Plato to the just man in his competition with the unjust man. At any rate, it is certainly suspicious that, to show that expert lyrists do not compete with other expert lyrists, Socrates limits his discussion of their art to the tuning of the strings. Of course a good deal of the lyre playing that took place in 4th century Greece was in fact either explicitly or implicitly competitive, expert against expert.5 Similarly, as we see from Greek medical writing, doctors were quite keen to develop innovations that set them apart from 3 All translations are mine. 4 Several scholars (especially Ford 2001, Cole 1991, and Schiappa 1990) have argued that there was no conception of rhetoric as a τέχνη before the 4th century. The first appearance of the word ῥητορική is in Gorg. 448d9, where Socrates refers to τὴν λεγοµένην ῥητορικήν. The qualifier λεγοµένην ('so-called') seems to suggest that rhetoric was already being spoken of as an art, but Ford (p. 89 n. 11), e.g., argues that Socrates only uses the word here to infer from what Polus has said (by which, I suppose he means that we might translate it 'what you call rhetoric' rather than 'what people call rhetoric'). At any rate, Ford is surely correct that the sophists must have advertised themselves as more general liberal educators rather than mere teachers of rhetoric, and Schiappa may be right that 5th century τέχναι were not theoretical treatises, but only collections of model speeches, like the Dissoi Logoi or Antiphon's Tetralogies.