᾽Εναργὲς καὶ σαφές: Demosthenes and the Rhetoric of Disclosure in the Philippic Orations

Against the devious lies-and-promises strategy of Philip and his agents, Demosthenes deploys an elaborate rhetoric of "making visible" to enlighten and warn uncritical assemblymen of covert Macedonian ambitions. A distinctive "diagnostic gaze" situates him in the tradition analogizing medicine and politics: like the Hippocratic doctor, he probes beneath the surface to uncover the decisive unseen factors. Medical language and imagery are reinforced, as medium of disclosure, by literary and forensic techniques that include enargeia, visual rhetoric, luminous ekphraseis, internal spectators, pathetic optics and the dramatic flashback as didactic arena. Together these elements constitute a coherent poetics of "making manifest."