Prose Performance Texts:Epideixisand Written Publication in the Late Fifth and Early Fourth Centuries

Abstract

In the early fourth century, Alcidamas wrote a piece attacking the trend toward writing speeches rather than speaking spontaneously, On the Writers of Written Speeches or On Sophists , yet he admitted that it was ironic that he, too, had written his piece because it would bring him fame. Written publication and oral performance jostled side by side in the late fifth and early fourth centuries. The very attack by Alcidamas, not to mention Plato's critique of written texts, imply a cultural shift. But what exactly is shifting, and where? The period offers a particularly arresting combination of prose texts and performances. Oral performance and display are still important. Indeed, the techniques are elaborated and refined, but at the same time written texts are being made that have some relation to these performances, and there are more and more documents in Athenian public and private life. The very nature of publication, written or oral, seems precarious. How did texts manage to survive at all in the late fifth and early fourth centuries? The diversification from poetry to prose as the main medium for serious reflection and the appearance of new genres make the relation of written texts to oral performances even more interesting. The period gives us numerous descriptions of oral performances, especially in Plato and Xenophon, and texts that seem in various degrees to belong to that performance milieu, from early oratory to sophistic epideixeis to medical display lectures.