Homeric Speech and the Origins of Rhetoric

5. Rhetoric in Archaic Poetry

c h a p t e r f i v e If indeed Homeric speech is a significant (and largely unacknowledged) source for later rhetorical theory, how was a system of rhetorical persuasion transmitted from Homer to Aristotle—crossing lines of time, genre, and medium (oral to written)? Did it find its way into other forms of Archaic literature along the way? In an attempt to answer these questions, I have surveyed the role of rhetorical speech at representative moments in the chronologically intervening literature: the Homeric Hymns, Hesiod’s poetry, varieties of Archaic lyric, tragedy, and sophistic oratory. This survey, necessarily brief though it must be, brings to light noteworthy points of comparison between Homeric poetry and the literature that follows it with regard to the understanding and portrayal of rhetoric. Insofar as it is possible to trace a “literary lineage” for rhetoric in the Archaic age, pointing to the use of persuasive techniques in Archaic poetry, and evaluating the techniques ’ similarity and possible indebtedness to those found in Homer, I have attempted to do so. Two basic observations emerge from this survey. First, no representation of rhetoric within Archaic literature approaches Homer’s in terms of its detailed and wide-ranging employment of rhetorical techniques. Second, when complex rhetoric is depicted during this period, it tends to be in literature that bears an affinity to the Homeric epics in genre and/or subject matter. Thus, as we will see, certain Homeric Hymns and the military exhortation elegies of Callinus and Tyrtaeus are the only Archaic works that contain rhetorical speech bearing a strong resemblance to Homeric rhetoric. It is these works that might be seen as propagating the “literary lineage” for rhetoric from Homer, a lineage that continues through tragedy and certain sophistic works Rhetoric in Archaic Poetry r h e t o r i c i n a r c h a i c p o e t r y 105 in the fifth century, and thence to the rhetorical theories of Plato and Aristotle in the fourth. In general, however, examples of complex rhetoric—that is, speech that involves the range of logical argumentation, diathesis, and êthos appeals— are few and far between in the Archaic period, a fact that only highlights the innovation displayed by the Homeric poems in this regard. i. homeric hymns The dating and origins of the Homeric Hymns are murky, and even when only the longer poems are considered, their composition likely spans more than a hundred years.1 We know from a variety of ancient sources (the opening lines of Pindar’s Nemean 2, for example) that hymns were often performed by rhapsodes as preludes (prooimia) to a performance of epic material.2 There is thus a natural relationship between hymns and epic; in addition, the two genres have certain shared characteristics: both portray the gods as characters, possess a narrative arc, and take the form of hexameter poetry. Indeed, the Hymns share a number of formulae, and occasionally even full verses, with Homer—a fact that, according to Martin West, “is not surprising in view of the Hymns’ creation and transmission among a professional rhapsode class.”3 The Homeric Hymns (and the other Archaic literature examined in this chapter) are of interest to this project insofar as they contain rhetorical speech that can be compared with that in Homeric poetry. In drawing such a comparison, it is, of course, important to consider the differences in genre and subject matter between the Hymns and the Homeric epics. The Hymns’ inherently religious nature and purpose distinguish them from the epic genre. The long Hymns, however, possess a significant formal similarity to Homeric epic in that they are narrative hexametric poems containing direct speech and dialogues between characters. This means that there are opportunities within the Hymns for representing persuasive discourse of the sort that we have seen in Homer. The degree to which these opportunities produce instances of rhetorical speech varies among the individual long Hymns. Only the four longest Hymns—the Hymn to Demeter, the Hymn to Apollo (counting the Delian and Pythian portions of the Hymn to Apollo as a unity4 ), the Hymn to Hermes, and the Hymn to Aphrodite—are relevant for this investigation, as the shorter Hymns do not contain instances of persuasive direct speech.5 I treat these four Hymns in the order of their traditional numbering, beginning with the Hymn to Dememter (Hymn 2). The examples of rhetoric in this Hymn...