This stimulating collection of essays about the performance of oratory in the ancient world consists of an introduction and sixteen chapters. It contributes particularly to the scholarship on Attic oratory, the focus of eleven of its chapters. While there are only five chapters on Roman oratory, they are of a uniformly high quality and should not be overlooked.
The contributors, who adopt a variety of methodological approaches, all take as their starting points two claims that the editors make in the introduction. First, texts preserve ‘glimpses into the performative dimension of speeches’. Following R. Schechner, the editors insist that the texts of speeches are not ‘objects’ but ‘practices, events, and behaviours’ that ‘interact’ with their audiences (p. 3). Second, this interaction transcends delivery and includes all the ways in which speeches affect their audiences. Persuasion and emotional manipulation are as much a part of performance as gestures and appearance. Neither of these claims is new or controversial, but this is the first volume of which I am aware in which every essay explores their consequences for ancient oratory. The result is a set of rich and nuanced interpretations of how ancient oratory would have worked as a performance genre.
The volume is divided into five parts: ‘Speakers–Audience’, ‘Ēthopoiia’, ‘Hypocrisis–Delivery–Actio’, ‘Emotions in the Law-Court’ and ‘Language and Style in Performance’. ‘Speakers–Audience’ consists of five essays and is the longest section. In the first essay, I. Worthington argues that the performance conventions of the assembly and the courts differed in Classical Athens. He maintains that assembly speakers needed to adjust their performances to the reactions of assemblymen, while speakers in court probably stayed closer to the texts they had memorised, since extemporising within time constraints would have put them in danger of omitting key points. Next, A. Serafim analyses the contrasting functions of addressing jurors as ō andres Athēnaioi or ō andres dikastai, using passages from Demosthenes 18, 19 and 24 as case studies. He argues that the first option places both jurors and speaker in an in-group of Athenians, while the second option distinguishes jurors from non-jurors in the audience and, intriguingly, reminds them that other Athenians are evaluating the way they judge the case. Third, B. Griffith-Williams proposes that the account of the ‘scheming prostitute’ (p. 45) Alke in Isaeus 6 may have reminded the jurors of the hetairai they could have seen on the New Comedy stage. Griffith-Williams makes some particularly perceptive remarks about the role of focalisation in this speech. Fourth, G. Westwood examines why no extant Attic speech ever employs eidōlopoeia, the impersonation of a dead person. He concludes that audiences may have considered eidōlopoeia overacting and perhaps even anti-democratic, since it would have transferred attention away from the speaker's own record. Westwood suggests that Aeschines’ appeal to dead Athenian heroes in Against Ctesiphon, while not strictly speaking eidōlopoeia, suited Aeschines’ acting talents and was consistent with Lycurgan-era interest in the Athenian past. Fifth, in the first essay to address Rome, C. Steel shows that the continuous, uninterrupted speeches published by Cicero are a fiction. Roman public oratory was a performance that featured other actors besides the speaker, including witnesses, clients and the corona. Steel's observations complement Worthington's about the Athenian assembly. Both note that orators had to be ready to depart from prepared texts to respond to factors beyond their control.
‘Ēthopoiia’ features two essays. C. Kremmydas’, the only essay in the volume to discuss Thucydides, is also one of the most interesting from the standpoint of rhetorical theory. Kremmydas shows that the ēthos of Thucydides’ speakers depends in part on logical arguments constructed through dianoia. Although Kremmydas does not use the term logos, his essay shows that Aristotelian distinctions between logos and ēthos are misleading from a performative perspective, since speakers ‘perform’ their ēthos (p. 112), in part, through the arguments they choose to make. H. van der Blom, in the second essay about Rome, discusses two fragments of Metellus Numidicus. She shows how consideration of historical context and a broad understanding of performance can reveal performative aspects of even short fragments. Metellus, recognising the power of contiones at a time of widespread suspicion of senatorial corruption, employs a ‘rhetoric of inclusion’ (p. 122) to align himself with the people and, through a philosophical maxim, strives to portray himself as calm, composed and unworthy of mistreatment.
‘Hypocrisis–Delivery–Actio’ features three essays. First, K. Apostolakis discusses displays of family members, the most overtly theatrical element of Athenian forensic pleading. His case studies of ps.-Lysias 20 and Aeschines 2 show how displays can both complement logical arguments and stand on their own as pleas for pity. Apostolakis proposes that they are a particularly democratic element of trials, since supplication recognises the sovereign power of the people. The next two essays address delivery in Roman oratory, considering evidence apart from speeches in original ways. B. da Vela studies the information relevant to delivery in Donatus’ Commentary on Terence. She situates Donatus’ analysis, which resembles Quintilian's, within the context of Roman education. Dramatic performances of short speeches of Terence, following Donatus’ guidelines, may have helped prepare students for the more advanced practice of declamation. K. Tempest, in one of the most thought-provoking essays in the volume, suggests that Pliny's letters are a kind of handbook-that-is-not-quite-a-handbook of oratorical practice, especially delivery. She argues that they were meant to be read with the (now lost) speeches they discuss. The letters provide the context for these speeches and allow the reader to appreciate how Pliny described his own reactions to the tempus ipsum of rhetorical situations.
‘Emotions in the Law-Court’ consists of three essays. In the volume's most theoretically sophisticated essay, D. Spatharas shows how Demosthenes leads his jurors to feel a democratically permissible envy for Meidias through an ‘emotion script’ that relies on shared cultural ideas of democratic behaviour. He also argues that Demosthenes makes the spectacle of Meidias’ anti-democratic actions particularly potent by situating it in the agora. Second, E.M. Harris demonstrates that litigants in the Athenian courts do not speak about emotions in the same way as characters in tragedies. Most importantly, litigants rarely discuss their own pity or anger, even if they attribute these emotions to the jurors. The decorum of the courts seems to have required a more restrained delivery than the theatre. Litigants avoid weeping, for instance. Third, J. Hall argues that Roman judges were both an audience for and participants in Roman trials. They could take active steps to influence decisions. Overt displays of emotion, including weeping, were acceptable on their part. The atmosphere of Roman trials also seems to have been chaotic, with few rigid behavioural protocols for the judges.
‘Language and Style in Performance’ also features three essays. First, C. Carey shows that Aeschines’ argument in Against Timarchus depends on a set of antitheses, such as order/disorder, male/female, glorious past/degenerate present. Timarchus is always associated with the negative element. The most important antithesis is between Aeschines’ moderation and Timarchus’ lack of restraint, a verbal distinction that becomes visible through performance when Aeschines imitates Solon. Second, K. Kapparis analyses the performance techniques of Apollodorus, especially direct speech and narrative. Through close readings of each of Apollodorus’ speeches, Kapparis shows that Apollodorus uses these both to further his argument and to keep his audiences alert and entertained. Reminiscent of Kremmydas’ analysis of ēthos and logos in Thucydides, Kapparis makes clear that argument and emotional appeal (pathos) cannot properly be separated in Apollodorus. The third essay, by A. Vatri, ends the volume on a high note. Relying on modern insights into language comprehension, he shows that the speeches of Antiphon that seem to come from actual trials (1, 5 and 6) are characterised by ambiguous expressions that could have been made clear through gestures and intonation. This suggests that they were written for delivery. Similar ambiguities also appear in the tetralogies, however, which suggests that they would have been a challenge for ancient readers to understand. While the essay does not conclude with a clear linguistic distinction between prose written for delivery and prose written for reading, it moves beyond A. Boegehold's earlier work on gesture by introducing a rigorous way of thinking about how language points towards non-verbal performative elements.
The editors state that the volume ‘aims to establish a framework’ for future work on Greek and Roman oratorical performance (p. 5). While a consistent framework does not emerge from the contributors’ varied approaches and interests, five general insights arise from the essays that together might provide the beginnings of such a framework. First, oratorical performance is a phenomenon worthy of study on its own. While it is related to performance in the theatre, it differs in fundamental ways. The volume does a service to the field by moving the discussion beyond polemic and showing how orators developed their own performance techniques based on the need to persuade. The theatre of justice may be a theatre, but it is not the same as the theatre. Second, performances are based in a particular culture and are governed by the expectations of that culture. All the essays reflect this conclusion, but Spatharas engages with it in the most sophisticated way. Third, the different cultures of Classical Athens, late-Republican Rome and Imperial Rome gave rise to drastically different performance conventions. To take two examples, the performative behaviour of the Roman judges that Hall discusses and the close interaction between rhetorical schools and Roman oratorical practice that da Vela finds reflected in Donatus have no real analogies in Classical Athens. Fourth, the audience is at the centre of oratorical performances. Speeches both respond to audiences and cause audiences to respond to them through methods that range from addresses to emotion scripts and to self-characterisation. Audiences are themselves also a part of performances, as Hall shows in the case of Roman judges. Fifth, performance not only transcends delivery, it also transcends the distinctions between what Aristotle calls logos, ēthos and pathos. As Kremmydas shows, performance lies at the intersection of dianoia and ēthos. This could be the theme of the entire volume. What the editors call a ‘holistic’ approach in the introduction (p. 5) means that we must study performance not only within its cultural context but also within the context of entire speeches. To draw lines in the manner of ancient rhetoricians is to conceal the way that every element of a speech contributes to the performance.
Many readers will read individual essays rather than the entire volume, and the editors and contributors should be commended for keeping the essays brief and accessible. Reading the essays in context enriches them, however. For example, Harris's and Spatharas's essays adopt different methodological approaches to what is essentially the same question and, read together, they show both that the role of emotions in forensic performances is different from their role in the theater and how it is different. But whether the essays are read on their own or as part of the volume, the book is a rewarding work that will appeal to a wide readership.
