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1. Persuasion in Greek Tragedy: a study of Peitho, Cambridge, 1982, p104 and p105. Victor Bers (p184, 'Tragedy and Rhetoric', p176-95, in I. Worthington (ed.) Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action, London, 1994) defines Peitho 'in its (or her) protean attributes: aggression, seduction, irresistible power, weak sister of physical force and deceit'.
2. Gorgias 449a and 452e.
3. For a full discussion of the female nature of mimesis see F. Zeitlin, 'Travesties of Gender and Genre in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae', Critical Inquiry 8.2, 1981, 301-328.
4. Works and Days 78.
5. For a full discussion of the resources of logos, including rationale proper see Barbara Cassin (ed.), Le plaisir de parler: études de sophistique comparée, Paris, 1986, 22ff. Plato, of course, viewed rhetoric as having no part in logos whatsoever because it is concerned with appearances rather than with knowledge (Gorgias 465a-b), but this view does not seem to have been held widely; in Aristophanes' Clouds logos is closely identified with rhetoric and much made of the dissoi logoi to great comic effect.
6. According to Gorgias, Encomium of Helen 11. All numeric references to Gorgias' Encomium of Helen follow that of Diels and Kranz. e.g. Encomium 11 refers to DK82B11.
7. p109, 'History and Oratorical Exploitation', p109-29 in I. Worthington (ed.) n.1.
8. Aeschylus' Suppliant Women 1039.
9. Victor Bers, p182, n.1, discusses 816-9, but assumes that Hecabe is speaking of the same form of Peitho at 1193-5 and states 'she seems to hint that professionals exist, that men might employ, but they are self-deluding charlatans'. There is no indication the text that Hecabe is speaking about teachers of rhetoric, and it makes more sense that she speaks of the practitioners.
10. The pharmaka are 'drugs full of metis [cunning]' (227-8): as part of their description (220-34). Interestingly Theocritus' Idyll 11.1-2 'There is no other pharmakon for love, Nicias, neither unguent nor salve, but only the Muses', which in any case are better than wasting gold on doctors (80-1). Yet here song is the cure, the major symptom and a contributing cause, it both fosters and dispels erotic attraction. See F. Griffiths, 'Poetry as Pharmakon in Theocritus' Idyll 2', Arkturos: Hellenic Studies presented to Bernard M. W. Knox eds. G. M. Bowerstock, W. Burkert and M. C. J. Putnam, Berlin and London, 1979, 81-8.
11. Prometheus Bound 251. Aeschylus also credits Prometheus with the invention of pharmaka as cures for man's ills and fears, both psychological (hope) and physical:
'This first and foremost: if ever man fell ill, there was no defence - no healing food, no ointment, nor any draught - but for lack of medicine (pharmaka) they wasted away, until I showed them how to mix soothing remedies wherewith they now ward off all their diseases.' (Prometheus Bound 478ff).The pharmakon of hope (251) is specifically a 'cure' whereas a medical 'cure' is usually an akos (e.g. Suppliant Women 451 and Persians 631) but Choephori 71, 539, Prometheus Bound 43, 249, Agamemnon 387, 1169 and Eumenides 506 all use pharmakon in this metaphorical sense. For a discussion of the distinction between a pharmakos and akos and their usages see: Jean Dumortier, Le Vocabulaire Medical d'Eschyle et les écrits hippocratiques, 2nd ed., Paris, 1975.
12. This is the same process the Nurse alludes to:
'then she would not have persuaded the daughters of Peleus to kill their father.' (Medea 9-10).
13. Clytemestra's skill in mixing substances is made apparent through her description of the struggle between mixed oil and wine (Agamemnon 321-3).
14. Empedocles (DK31B98, 62) was an orator whom Aristotle (according to Diogenes Laertes 7.57) credited as the inventor of rhetoric and later tradition (Galen, Satyrus, Celsus) as a physician (see DK31B111 for his view on pharmaka). Anaximander (DK12B2).
Heraclitus held that fire was a part of everything (DK22B90) and also that soul was made up of fire (DK22B36, 118). Diogenes (DK64B4, 5, 7, 8) considered soul and warm air to be commensurate (the temperature at which warm air became soul was hotly debated).
15. Immoral actions on the part of the gods could be, and were, used to justify human immoral action: Hippolytus 451ff; Plato has Euthyphro, in Euthyphro, justify his unfilial conduct by using the tale of Zeus' chaining of Cronos and the Erinyes (Eumenides 643ff.) use the same tale to condemn Orestes' matricide as vengeance for his father's murder because Zeus has no respect for fathers; Ion claims that men commit rape as a result of following the shameful examples of Apollo and Zeus (Ion 463ff.). Xenophanes (DK21B11, 12) states that Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all the things which among men are causes for reproach and blame: stealing, adultery and mutual deception.
16. 'You're clever, clever! Still you must be killed.' (Andromache 245) and 'What you call "sense" - never, woman, may it come to dwell under my roof!' (ibid. 237).
17. Michael Gagarin, 'Possibility and Persuasion: Plato and Early Greek rhetoric', p46-68, in I. Worthington (ed.), see n.1, discusses both Aristophanes' caricature of rhetoric as a vehicle for persuasive falsehood that will sway a largely ignorant audience and the Gorgias' portrayal of rhetoric as bringing conviction without knowledge (455a), since it addresses as audience that has no knowledge and is only effective on such an audience (459a-b).
18. Plato's Cratylus reflects the intense interest in etymology and definitions and maintains that falsehood is impossible because all words are appropriate to their meanings. Cf. Euripides' Phoenissae 488-501 which maintains that men define ethical concepts which do not exist beyond the name they are given and Parmenides (DK28B8.36-41) where 'all that mortals posited in the belief that it was true will be name only'.
Prodicus wrote On the Correctness of Names which discriminated between synonyms. Clytemnestra's ambiguous usages (e.g. euphrôn/eupronês) are discussed by Simon Goldhill in Language, Sexuality, Narrative: the Oresteia, Cambridge, 1984, where he identifies puns as a form of language control (35). Euripides also uses puns, synonyms and homonyms in argumentation, as discussed with respect to the rhetorical nature of the Nurse in Hippolytus.
For the variation in the definition of words over time and the subsequent effect on understanding see the 'etymological' explanation of Teiresias at Bacchae 294-7.
Department of Ancient Classics | Conference programme