THE SPEECH IN THE COMPOSITE TEXT: STUDIES IN THE MEDIATION PROCESS FOR SOURCES OF RHETORIC IN THE DEIPNOSOPHISTS OF ATHENAEUS OF NAUCRATIS

Abstract

The Deipnosophists is a literary work that presents an insight into ancient rhetoric and speech from various perspectives, while its author, Athenaeus of Naucratis, has a mediating function in the process of communicating this knowledge besides other topics of knowledge about ancient cultures to the readers. Being composed of fictive speeches that join the texts of ancient writings in paraphrases and citations in the conversations of the participants during a banquet, the work reveals in different layers information about rhetoric. Rhetoric is present in the composition of the work itself. In the conversation’s speech is present as the essential form of this piece of literature and one component of this composite text. But also, the writings of other authors reflect knowledge about rhetoric as the scholarly discipline for speech. We argue that Athenaeus invents and composes here a memory that arranges topics related to the culture of banquets in speeches. The speeches range from the factuality of historical accounts about rhetoricians to the fictional story of the event and its speeches. The Deipnosophists blends speeches into each other as conversations of the framing narrative of a meeting of Athenaeus who tells the story of the event to a friend and the speeches of the deipnosophists in the actual event of the banquet. The presentation of the texts of the cited and paraphrased books on rhetoric and anecdotal information about rhetoricians and sophists in the description of the banquet rely on the intensive collection of information recorded in the medium book that the author used for the creation of his own work.