III. Rhetoric: The Authority of Self-Presentation

Abstract

‘Democracy is a constitution of speech-making’, wrote Demosthenes, the great orator of the fourth century. The Assembly is the arena where policy decisions of the state were publicly debated and decided – and where political careers were made and lost. The law courts were a forum not just for conflict resolution but for competition in status between elite males. The theatre staged debate for an audience’s reflection. Even in the more private sphere of the symposium amid the wine, women and song we see the party game of speeches on a particular topic. In the agora, the market place, and, more formally, in the theatre, visiting intellectuals and professional speech-makers – often called ‘sophists’ – gave speeches for the edification and amusement of a paying audience. What is perhaps as important as this institutional framework is the ideological underpinning of such practices. That both sides of a question must be publicly debated is a constant watchword of democratic principle. That all citizens are equal before the law, and that the provision of a law court with a public jury is basic to a democratic polity – these are principles uncontested in democratic theory. Isêgoria – the right of all citizens to speak – is announced in the opening ritual of each Assembly with the herald’s question, ‘Who wants to speak?’. There is a wonderful phrase that sums up these principles: es meson. It means literally ‘into the middle’ – but implies that a grounding ideal of democracy is that all issues should be set out in public for debate and decision. Demosthenes was right: Athenian democracy can be summed up as a ‘constitution of speech-making’.