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Chapter Two. The Menexenus: Plato's Critique of Political Rhetoric
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chapter two The Menexenus: Plato’s Critique of Political Rhetoric ne of the characteristic features of Attic oratory is the frequent appeal Oto the historical example as a means of winning over the audience to the speaker’s point of view. Because the chief motivation for its use is persuasion,1 the orators tend to render events according to popular tradition (even when it is clearly inaccurate) in order not to strike a discordant note with their audience and risk losing its good will.2 Similarly, the orators often give excessively simplified or even inaccurate versions of historical events in a desire not to appear more learned than their audience.3 In 1. See, e.g., Ian Worthington, “History and Oratorical Exploitation,” in Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action, ed. Ian Worthington (London: Routledge, 1994), 109–29, at 109–10. 2. P. Harding, “Rhetoric and Politics in Fourth-Century Athens,” Phoenix 41 (1987): 25–39, at 28–29: “Ancient oratory, like ancient comedy, was a popular medium. The one attempted to entertain, the other to convince the majority of the Athenians. In both, the level of appeal was to popular opinion and popular prejudice.” See also K. J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), 11–14. 3. On the efforts made by the orators to conform to the expectations of their audiences, see the (still) important observations of Lionel Pearson, “Historical Allusions in the Attic Orators,” CP 36 (1941): 209–29; see also Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 38 The Menexenus 39 general, the orators are usually more concerned with a given historical example’s relevance to their argument than with Thucydidean akribeia.4 While much attention has been paid to the historical inaccuracies contained in the speeches of the Attic orators,5 I examine what sorts of misleading or false information the orators provide and the reaction of Plato against the Athenian orators’ misuse of the historical example in service to a democratic agenda in his critique of contemporary rhetoric and politics, the Menexenus. Although speakers in Herodotus and Thucydides do make some historical allusions,6 we have little other evidence in the extant record for the use of arguments drawn from history until Attic oratory begins to flourish in the fourth century. It is worth noting that all of our texts date from 420 to 320, all (except Isocrates 19) were written for an Athenian audience, and the speakers are generally from the social elite,7 although to a great extent their success depends on their ability to downplay their social status and present themselves as members of the masses.8 It is tempting to argue that rhetoric, with its emphasis on plausibility and persuasion over truth and its frequent use of commonplaces and examples, exerted an influence on Attic oratory by the end of the fifth century, although the dearth of extant oratory prior to this time will not allow any definite conclusions. Some orators, particularly the authors of funeral orations and panegyrics ,9 refer to the legendary history of Athens. Although the orators 43–44; and Josiah Ober and Barry Strauss, “Drama, Political Rhetoric, and the Discourse of Athenian Democracy,” in Nothing to Do with Dionysus?: Athenian Drama in Its Social Context, ed. John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 237–70, at 238–39. 4. S. Perlman, “The Historical Example, Its Use and Importance as Political Propaganda in the Attic Orators,” SH 7 (1961): 150–66, esp. 155–56. 5. See now Ian Worthington, “Greek Oratory, Revision of Speeches and the Problem of Historical Reliability,” ClMed 42 (1991): 55–74, and “History and Oratorical Exploitation,” 109–29 (with earlier bibliography). 6. On the use of the historical example in the fifth century, see H. Lamar Crosby, “Athenian History and the Athenian Public,” in Classical Studies Presented to Edward Capps (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1936), 72–85, and Michel Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire par les orateurs attiques (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1982), 30–43. 7. Stephen Todd, “The Use and Abuse of the Attic Orators,” G&R 37 (1990): 159–78, at 168. 8. Ober, Mass and Elite, esp. 190–91. 9. Although the authenticity of some of these speeches is in question, I have left them under the name of the author in whose corpus they appear on the grounds that whether or not they are the work...