Classical Rhetoric Notes 1/30/2013

31 January 2013

On Techne

• Root for technology, and often refered to as Art
• Plato loads it up w/ multiple meanings techne is based on episteme, but how does one get it; only one who obsesses over it, the art of rhetoric; he has a problem with those who say they teach rhetoric and have the means to do so
• Competence in making something, specialized knowledge toward practical ends
• Greek used it without reflecting on it.
• Cicero and Quintillian often reference Plato’s dialogues about techne; it was the zeitgeist for rhetoric through the Roman period and most dialogues/texts have been lost, so they “knew” more than we did about it.
• Art – Theory – Practice && Precepts are in each

Class Discussion

Rhetorike – The Art [ike] of the Orator [rhetor] to the Art of Rhetoric

• The city-states in Greece and Italy are all autonomous during this period, but the Persian people all answer to one emporer.

Social Context: Athenians in contrast to Spartans

• Spartan women are too present and wear hair too long!
• Spartans don’t say much; have a mystique and were popularized through
• “Come back either carrying a shield or on it” –death in fighting is the highest honor
• Sparta subjagated Messene people to support their army
• Spartan young boy’s rite of passage was to often kill a Messenian
• Athenians could not understand the Spartan enslavement of Greek’s by Greek’s
• Sparta has a long-term, idiosyncratic polos outside of Athens

Socrates’ Apology (4th century)

• Plato’s Socrates and his bent on Truth is that we should operate with a desire to seek out truth
• Eloquence in Socrates’ text is actually the word “Deinos or legein which is dinosaur, large lizard, forceful, clever/crafty; not beautiful

Social Context

• Juries were filled with 1000s of people daily; take oaths to judge impartially and not interrupt trial, but it is socially acceptable to do so; this lottery of people included thousands of people from a multifarious set of poleis(sp?), so it was impossible to “stack the deck”; also, the people were given a days pay to serve as a juror.
• Trials lasted one day and speeches were timed by water-clocks
• Citizens were always in contest with each other; Greeks as a cohesive people needed to be arduously reminded of this history and relations; it had to be “activated,” due to a person’s social interest in the prosperity of one’s own polos; Greek’s had different dialects and resonate with different histories, paths to places/locations/battles; An Attic dialect is of Athens and Doric speakers, so Athens and Sparta both spoke those but were always at war with each other.

Odysseus’s Speech to Achilles

• Achilles has been so strongly shamed and injustly so in public by the slight of Agemenon (sp?). This is a very strong core value of the manhood and honor code, so it may be read as almost just fate, or stasis
• The only thing that brings him out is the death of his closest friend, Patricklus (sp?), where now the fate of this stasis is unloosed and he battles Hector.
• Then, Achilles shames Hector’s body by dragging it around–probably the most dishonorable act possible