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Demosthenes, as an emerging political leader in fourth-century Athens, delivered a series of fiery speeches to the citizens in the democratic Assembly, attacking the Macedonian king Philip II as an aggressive imperialist bent on destroying the city's independence. This volume presents the Greek text of five of these speeches with full introduction and detailed commentary. They show how the foremost politician of the day argued his case before the people who made policy decisions in the Assembly, and how he eventually persuaded them to support his doomed militaristic position in preference to the more pragmatic stance of accommodation advocated by his political opponents. These speeches are unique sources for the ideology and political history of this crucial period, and the best specimens of persuasive rhetoric in action from democratic Athens. This edition takes account of recent studies of fourth-century Athens and showcases Demosthenes as a master of Greek prose style.
Hyperides' Funeral Oration is arguably the most important surviving example of the genre from classical Greece. The speech stands apart from other funeral orations (epitaphioi) in a few key respects. First, we have the actual text as it was delivered in Athens (the other speeches, with the possible expection of Demosthenes 60, are literary compositions). Next, in contrast to other orations that look to the past and make only the vaguest mention of recent events, Hyperides' speech is a valuable source for the military history of the Lamian War as it captures the optimistic mood in Athens after Alexander's death. Finally, the speech has been singled out since Longinus' time for its poetic effe...
A collection of surviving state funeral orations from Athens (Thucydides, Gorgias, Lysias, Demosthenes, Hypereides and Plato's 'Menexenus'). The translations include introductions and notes, as well as literary and historical commentary.
Hyperides' Funeral Oration is arguably the most important surviving example of the genre from classical Greece. The speech stands apart from other funeral orations (epitaphioi) in a few key respects. First, we have the actual text as it was delivered in Athens (the other speeches, with the possible expection of Demosthenes 60, are literary compositions). Next, in contrast to other orations that look to the past and make only the vaguest mention of recent events, Hyperides' speech is a valuable source for the military history of the Lamian War as it captures the optimistic mood in Athens after Alexander's death. Finally, the speech has been singled out since Longinus' time for its poetic effe...
In classical Athens, a funeral speech was delivered for dead combatants almost every year, the most famous being that by Pericles in 430 BC. In 1981, Nicole Loraux transformed our understanding of this genre. Her The Invention of Athens showed how it reminded the Athenians who they were as a people. Loraux demonstrated how each speech helped them to maintain the same self-identity for two centuries. But The Invention of Athens was far from complete. This volume brings together top-ranked experts to finish Loraux's book. It answers the important questions about the numerous surviving funeral speeches that she ignored. It also undertakes a comparison of the funeral oration with other genres that is missing in her famous book. What emerges is a speech that had a much greater political impact than Loraux thought. This volume puts the study of war in Athenian culture on a completely new footing.
Responding to Plato's challenge to defend the political thought of poetic sources, Marlene K. Sokolon explores Euripides's understanding of justice in nine of his surviving tragedies. Drawing on Greek mythological stories, Euripides examines several competing ideas of justice, from the ancient ethic of helping friends and harming enemies to justice as merit and relativist views of might makes right. Reflecting Dionysus, the paradoxical god of Greek theater, Euripides reveals the human experience of understanding justice to be limited, multifaceted, and contradictory. His approach underscores the value of understanding justice not only as a rational idea or theory, but also as an integral part of the continuous and unfinished dialogue of political community. As the first book devoted to Euripidean justice, Seeing with Free Eyes adds to the growing interest in how citizens in democracies use storytelling genres to think about important political questions, such as "What is justice?"
This new edition introduces the core elements of ancient Greek and Roman narratives about immortal gods and heroic humans. It explains how myths once shaped ancient ways of thinking, and how they have fascinated and inspired artists, writers, musicians, scientists, and scholars since. In six clear and concise chapters, this book explains what myths are, sketches the main stories about divinities, heroes and heroines, and explores through specific case studies the ways in which they influenced modern culture, from Renaissance opera to contemporary video games and social movements. The second edition also features a new chapter analyzing how myths have been used in politics from antiquity to t...
Work in Progress offers the first in-depth study of the cultural and social importance of literary revision among ancient Greek and Roman authors.
Socrates and Dionysus engages and seeks to redraw the boundaries between philosophy and poetry, science and art. Friedrich Nietzsche argues in his work The Birth of Tragedy that science conquers art, especially the tragic art of the Dionysian poet of ancient Greece. Appealing to the natural, primeval self that is suppressed but not extinguished by the knowledge of culture, Dionysian tragedy establishes contact with our bodies and their deepest longings. Science and philosophy, associated with the ‘Socratism’ of the theoretical man, celebrate the human mind in particular and the mind or rationality of the universe more generally. According to Nietzsche, it is Euripides who destroys the Di...
Universally regarded as Plato’s student in antiquity, it is the eloquent and patriotic orator Demosthenes—not the pro-Macedonian Aristotle who tutored Alexander the Great—who returned to the dangerous Cave of political life, and thus makes it possible to recover the Old Academy. In Plato and Demosthenes: Recovering the Old Academy, William H. F. Altman explores how Demosthenes—along with Phocion, Lycurgus, and Hyperides—add external and historical evidence for the hypothesis that Plato’s brilliant and challenging dialogues constituted the Academy’s original curriculum. Altman rejects the facile view that the eloquent Plato, a master speech-writer as well as the proponent of the transcendent and post-eudaemonist Idea of the Good, was rhetoric’s enemy. He shows how Demosthenes acquired the discipline necessary to become a great orator, first by shouting at the sea and then by summoning the Athenians to self-sacrifice in defense of their waning freedom. Demosthenes thus proved Socrates’ criticism of democracy and the democratic man wrong, just as Plato the Teacher had intended that his best students would, and as he continues to challenge us to do today.