A Distinctly Rhetorical Space;Eusynoptosand the Greek Council-House

Abstract

The original research of Johnstone and Graff on the bouleuteria of ancient Greece and their physical and acoustic features will, I predict, have a significant impact on future work in the history of rhetoric. Of equal importance to me is their gathering together in one easy view the site plans and reconstructions—in some cases three-dimensional reconstructions and interior views—of Greek council houses. Though students of ancient Greek rhetoric will be familiar with the functions of the council house, this will be for most the first opportunity to view this collection of council-house plans and reconstructions in close proximity. This collection and arrangement of images constitute an argument for a deliberate and principled evolution in the architecture of council-houses, from the mid-sixth-century structures at Olympia (Johnstone and Graff, Figures 6–7c) and Athens (Johnstone and Graff, 1a and 1b) to the second-century curvilinear structures at Athens and Miletos (Johnstone and Graff, Figures 17a–21b). Their essay demonstrates nothing less than the invention of a specifically rhetorical space, parallel to the development of deliberative arenas like the Pnyx.We shouldn’t let the current ubiquity of the semicircular, banked theatral area obscure or diminish for us the significance of this invented spatial configuration and rhetorical technology. Today, this form is ubiquitous in lecture halls, movie theaters, playhouses, churches, and assembly halls around the world, but it was for the Greeks a significant achievement and a rhetorical one, as Johnstone and Graff’s essay makes clear. Its underlying purpose was the collection, arrangement, and display of a collectivity—the creation of a people—for mutual regard through political deliberation in service to the city. I mean here to invoke both constitutive rhetoric (Charland) and the social imaginary (Castoriadis). Rhetorical spaces like the council house were instrumental in constituting the polis as an imagined, known, and valued entity.The Greeks, of course, had a name for what Johnstone and Graff have brought together for us. They called something collected and arranged so that it could be easily or clearly seen in one view, eusynoptos. As a result of Johnstone and Graff’s essay, the historical development of the Greek council house as a distinctly rhetorical space becomes eusynoptos. I might then coin the term eusynoptic to name the effect of collecting and positioning objects so that they can be easily seen, and so that the principle underlying their orchestration can be clearly understood. A eusynoptic image, scene, or perspective features a collection of otherwise disparate items deliberately selected and gathered, and strategically arranged for complete visibility of all items within a 180 degree radius. A scene so configured generates in the spectator a clear and rapid comprehension of its implicit rationale. What is eusynoptos is not simply easy to see at a glance, it has been rendered so in a way that demonstrates and illustrates its controlling idea.Graff and Johnstone’s essay makes immediately clear to me that the underlying principle and implicit rationale governing the historical development of bouleuteria from the sixth century to the second century BC was itself eusynoptic. Greek cities and Greek architects crafted and refined their bouleutêria to highlight the ability of both speakers and audiences to easily attend to and comprehend at a glance the collective—the city as its citizenry—and the issue before them in deliberation, and they did so to highlight this very mutual co-presence, to make plain to the council the importance of seeing and being seen, hearing and being heard, by speaker and spoken to alike. I suspect that the rhetorical importance of eusynoptics has till now escaped our attention because its disparate applications have not been collected or arranged.Eusynoptic techniques are tools of arrangement and subordination, of hypotaxis out of parataxis, of bringing the many into one: one view, one principle of organization, one controlling idea or purpose. Such a goal might seem mundane to the modern world, where Aristotle’s rules of identity, non-contradiction, and the excluded middle go without saying, where hierarchical rules of composition are universally taught, and where Whitman’s “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself” remains an eccentric view. But ancient Greeks even into the Roman age regularly entertained incompatible or inconsistent ideas or images in close proximity, what Perry calls “the capacity to see things separately,” and what Veyne refers to as “the Balkanization of the mind” (92). Versnel notes the paratactic character of much Greek literature as “the linking of disparate and not seldom contradictory or incompatible parts and the (apparent?) lack of a uniting and binding central concept or theme” (214). In the same way, Greek city development has often seemed “unsystematic and irregular” (Wycherly 7). Eusynoptic bouleutêria and similar spaces catalyzed then and demonstrate now a Greek commitment to principles of organization, subordination, and comprehension. The elements of eusynoptics are worth reviewing here.Keeping or having something in view implies keeping it in mind and affording it some attention and regard, respect, or affection. And, by contrast, keeping it out of sight implies keeping it “out of mind.” When the ancient hero Diocles fled from Corinth to Thebes to escape his mother’s incestuous love, his lover Philolaus followed him to Thebes, but retained his love for his home city, Corinth. In death, their tombs reflected their allegiances: “Even now people still show the tombs (of Diocles and Philolaus), in full view of each other, and one of them fully open to view in the direction of the Corinthian country but the other one not” (Aristotle Politics, 168–169, 1274a35).Greek homes turned inward around a central courtyard, but kept external windows high and small, so that its members might be visible to each other, but not to outsiders (Phoca and Valavanis 26–29). And after it was partially destroyed by the Persians, the ruins of the old temple of Athena (archaios neos) were left visible on the Athenian Acropolis, to preserve a memory of Persian hubris and Athenian suffering, and a desire for revenge.1 Greeks expressed their values through the planned visibility provided by architectural spaces.Arranging social space to enable mutual visibility was also a goal of city planning. Aristotle limits the population of a city to the number that can be easily seen in one view: “The best limiting principle for a state is the largest expansion of the population with a view to self-sufficiency that can well be taken in in one view” (Aristotle Politics 558–559, 1326b23). In like manner, the city territory should also (from one privileged vantage point) “be well able to be taken in at one view” (558–559, 1327a). This implied not only the ability to see the physical city from one position, but the capacity for the citizens to gather as a collective, to see and be seen by each other.By contrast, a city or a citizenry too large or diffuse to be easily seen could not be comprehended, and thus could neither act wisely nor be managed well. Isocrates complains that “Athens is so large and the multitude of people living here is so great, that the city does not present to the mind an image easily grasped or sharply defined” (Antidosis 282–283 §172). It would be the task of structures like the Athenian council house to make such an image possible and useful.Through its visibility, a person, structure, or text could be grasped, regarded, remembered, observed, and managed. A space or place could be called to mind and taken to heart, including all the characters, actions, and events that it contained and made possible. For these reasons, the Greeks planned structures, precincts, and even whole towns mindful of how, and from where, they could be seen. In particular, Greek spatial planning often valued the full and contiguous visibility of structures within a sacred precinct or area, such that no structure obstructed another and no spatial gaps were left open, so as to maximize visibility of all structures in the smallest possible space (within a 180-degree field of vision), with the exception of the path of approach open to the surrounding countryside, called the “sacred way” (Doxiadis 5).For example, the Sanctuary of Athena at Pergamon was built so that each of its elements—the stoa, altar, temple, and column—was visible within the peripheral vision of a visitor at the entrance. From this perspective, every object filled in the gap left by the other objects, without any one element obstructing any other, presenting one contiguous scene. This principle applies to a wide range of sacred precincts and urban areas across the Greek world.The same principle applied to city planning. Pergamon was laid out so that all the important structures could be fully seen in one view from the theater stage. The elevation of the hillside made it possible to cluster public buildings so that all were visible without overlap. When the theater was in attendance, a speaker or performer would see the city (its citizenry) as well as the city (its important public structures) together at a glance (Wycherly 28–29). The indoor square and round bouleuteria utilized the same combination of elevation, contiguity, and positioning, albeit with a more uniform geometry, the more clearly to express an aesthetic and egalitarian ideal.An understanding of eusynoptics reveals that it would behoove anyone who sought to know (and control) his city—like a prospective tyrant—to keep its people (and their actions and associations) within clear view, and arranging “for the people in the city to always be visible and to hang about the palace gates, for thus there would be least concealment about what they are doing and they would get into the habit of being humble” (Aristotle, Politics 460–461, 1313b7).If Aristotle’s insight applies to Athens, then it is possible that Peisistratus worked to secure his tyranny at Athens by arranging to have the people “hang about” his palace gates (Johnstone and Graff, Figures 1a and 1b) so that they would “always be visible” to him and would “get in the habit of being humble.”The Peisistratids selected a flat area northwest of the Acropolis to build their new agora. At the southwest corner of this open space, a palace is built (Johnstone and Graff, Figure 2a). To the north, an altar to the twelve gods is set up. To the east is a fountain house where women could collect fresh water. The Panathenaic way ran past these two structures, toward the Acropolis. A large open space was available for political, sporting, and theatrical events and for market stalls, creating a eusynoptic gathering place (Camp 32–36).The resulting triangular shape embodied Aristotle’s principle of eusynoptic surveillance and provided a model for the shape of the democratic Pnyx. Like the agora, the Pnyx was an essentially triangular arena built for eusynoptic gathering of the city anchored by the bema rather than the palace complex.2 The logic of eusynoptic parataxis that shaped the bouleuteria, as Johnstone and Graff demonstrate, also shaped the agora, the Pnyx, and, as we’ll see, the polis.Isocrates’ complaint notwithstanding, Athens, too, was laid out so that the city was visible from at least one eusynoptic vantage point without any one important element obstructing any other. In its earliest form, a speaker at the Pnyx could see in one view all the citizens gathered together (Pnyx, from puknos, means “packed” or crowded) while, at the same time, the assembled citizens could see easily at a glance the whole city laid out before them (Pnyx I, see Thompson 134–138 and plate 18a; orientation, see Camp 4–5, images 1,3). From the Pnyx hillside, the late fifth-century spectator could see, from the far right (southeast): the (unfinished) temple of Olympian Zeus, the theater of Dionysus and Odeon, the Acropolis, and Parthenon. A citizen looking to the Parthenon from the Pnyx would see the temple of Athena Niké (just to the left of and jutting out in front of the Propylaia) nested inside of the larger Parthenon further back.Just to the left of the Acropolis, spectators could see the Areopagus and then, directly in front of them (on a line running through the center of the Pnyx), the western edge of the agora and its important structures, including the stoae, council house, temples and altar. Immediately to the west was the temple of Hephaestus, the Kerameikos, the Dipylon gate (along with the Sacred Gate and Sacred Way to Eleusis) and the Piraeus gate. This contiguous arc of structures asserted, like the curvilinear bouleuterion, albeit with less mathematical precision, that Athens as place and as idea belonged to the political participants who could see it.Visible beyond the city lay the country and many rural demes. In Aristophanes’ Acharnians (25), as Dicaeopolis sits in the Pnyx, he gazes upon his fields out in the rural deme of Acharnai, and longs for peace. In this way, an audience would see in one view the entire polis: all the landmarks of the urban center and the rural demes that made up Athens, even as the speaker saw the entire city in the form of the citizens themselves.Tellingly (but not surprisingly), when, with Spartan aid, the Thirty Tyrants overthrew the democracy, one of their first objectives was to reverse the direction of the Pnyx. The idea may have been to prevent the people from seeing (and keeping in mind) the city which they were voting to preserve and protect (Plutarch §19, 99).This principle of a visible array, selected, gathered, and arranged so that it could be seen “easily at a glance” as an organic whole, did not only guide the construction of bouleuteria and other structures, it also shaped the evolution of rhetorical artistry through the spatial metaphors applied to it. That is, the spatial logic of the bouleuteria also provided a fundamental principle of rhetoricStyle, says Aristotle, should be periodic, “and by period, I mean a sentence that has a beginning and an end in itself and a magnitude that can be easily grasped (eusunopton)” (Aristotle Rhetoric 386–387, 1409a–b). Aristotle and Demetrius alike explain with the image of runners on a circular running track: “For at the very beginning of their race the end of the course is already before their eyes, hence the name “periodos,” an image drawn from paths which go around and are in a circle” (On Style 354–355, §11, cf Rhetoric 386–7, 1409a).Plots (of dramatic and epic poems) too should have magnitude, with actions selected and arranged so that the arc of the whole can be seen in one view: “So just as with our bodies and with animals, beauty requires magnitude, but magnitude that allows coherent perception (eusunopton), likewise plots require length, but length that can be coherently remembered” (Aristotle Poetics 56–57, 1451a5, cf 118-119, 1459b; and contrast 116–117, 1459a30–35).Most importantly, speeches should convey an argument in a way that is easily comprehended at a glance. One function of enthymemes, says Aristotle, is to help a lay audience (untrained in dialectical reasoning) more easily see (sunoran; 22, 1357a) a long chain of reasoning in one view (Rhetoric 22–23, 1357a and 288–289, 1395b).3 A well-selected series of enthymemes can tie up even a sprawling narrative nicely and make clear its underlying rationale.Even at the outset of rhetoric, Corax, after gathering the people and his thoughts together, eusynoptically began “to advise the demos and to speak as though telling a story, and after these things to summarize the argument and to call to mind concisely what had gone before, and to bring before their eyes at a glance what had been said to the demos (Rabe 12–13, italics inserted).I am suggesting that the bouleuteria collected by Johnstone and Graff demonstrate eusynoptics to be central not only to civic structures and spaces, but to rhetorical artistry as a whole. In texts as much as in spaces, paratactic arrangement like that perfected in late bouleuteria proves crucial to persuasion.