Speech In Defence Research Articles

Socrates' Trial and Conviction of the Jurors in Plato's Apology

Socrates' Trial and Conviction of the Jurors in Plato's Apology Dougal Blyth I am going to argue in this paper that, in the three speeches constituting his Apology of Socrates, Plato presents the judicial proceedings that led to Socrates' execution as having precisely the opposite significance to their superficial legal meaning. This re-evaluation will lead to some reflections on the politics of Socrates' defence, and, similarly, on Plato's own aims in writing the Apology. I want to show not only that the trial as portrayed demonstrates an inevitable dereliction of duty by the democratic jury, but also, more interestingly, that throughout the proceedings Socrates understands the meaning of the trial precisely in terms of his anticipation of the jurors' judicial incapacity. In the prooimion to his defence speech, Socrates requests that the jurors ignore his manner of speaking and concentrate on whether his case is just, "since this is a judge's virtue (), while that of a rhêtôr is to speak the truth" (18a5-6, cf. 35c2-5). We can gloss the expression "a judge's aretê" in this context as his function, or responsibility.1 Socrates claims that he, himself, fulfills his own responsibility as a defendant to tell the truth (17b4-c4, 33c1-2, cf. 34b5, 35b9-c2) in a speech that asserts his exemplary piety in Apollo's service and his beneficial influence on the Athenian youth. But if, in claiming that he is innocent of the charge, Socrates does tell the truth, then those jurors who thereupon convict him of impiety and corruption, and subsequently sentence him to death, have failed in their duty to judge rightly. My claim is that Socrates sees the trial as a test of the jurors' abilities. It is characteristic of Socrates to test people regarding their concern for virtue and justice, a habit to which he devotes extended discussion during his defence, even dramatising it provocatively in a central passage (29d7-e5) that I aim shortly to analyse in detail. Moreover, Socrates specifically withholds from the jury the title of dikastai or judges; he does finally award the title in his address following the sentence, but only to those who have voted [End Page 1] to acquit him (40a2-3).2 The possibility thus emerges that Socrates has treated the legal proceedings all along as a moral (and intellectual) test, or trial, of the empanelled jurors themselves, to see whether they are capable of the legal function to which they have been allotted. In that case, Socrates is putting on trial, not just those individual citizens, but the very legal system of democratic Athens. Socratic irony and truthfulness Before considering Socrates' own explicit judgement during those final remarks on the jurors' moral offence and punishment, I should first address briefly the issue of Socrates' irony. In the past, some writers have asserted that this irony involves him in not telling the truth about himself during his defence, in which case the jury might well have been justified in convicting him. Actually, there does seem to be a consensus among the more extended treatments of the Apology that have emerged during the last decade, at least on the point that Plato presents Socrates as committed to making as sincere an attempt at a defence of his case as is consistent with his philosophical commitment to virtue, and so to telling the truth.3 I shall not re-argue this point in detail, but shall take it to be secured by two basic considerations: consistency with the Crito would require Socrates to recognise a legal obligation to make a sincere attempt at defence while his obligation to Apollo to continue his mission in Athens if possible would motivate that attempt with the goal of acquittal.4 Instead, I want to show what role irony does have in Socrates' defence, given that his principled law-abidingness requires him to attempt to persuade the jury, in accordance with truth and justice, that he is innocent (cf. 19a6-7, 18a7-b1, 18e5). Where Socrates acknowledges the obligation to defend himself, he remarks on the difficulty he faces, a difficulty that has resulted from the slander to which he has long...

National Economy and Atlantic Slavery: Protectionism and Resistance to Abolitionism in Spain and the Antilles, 1854-1874

In December I872 fistfight broke out in the Barcelona stock exchange. According to witness, the violence began when man delivered an impromptu speech in defense of Antillean slavery. His intransigence outraged one listener who cried out in response: iViva la libertad de los negros! (Long live liberty for blacks!). In spontaneous display of loyalty to colonial slavery, the rest of the public set upon the lone abolitionist in its midst. The narrator of the incident condemned such violent outburst in a place that should only be for business and neutral in 1 At that moment in Barcelona, however, it was impossible to separate business from politics, especially colonial politics. In the fall of I872, the Sociedad Abolicionista Espaniola, frustrated by the gradualist Moret Law of I870, which intended to prolong Antillean slavery until well into the i88os, launched campaign in cooperation with the Radical and Federal Republican parties in the Cortes for the immediate abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico. The abolitionists made it clear that after Puerto Rico, Cuba would follow. In response, colonial and metropolitan conservatives mobilized to defend colonial slavery and challenge the revolutionary regime that had created the political climate favorable to radical abolitionism. As the vio-

Truthful Fiction: New Questions to Old Answers on Philostratus' Life of Apollonius

Truthful Fiction: New Questions to Old Answers on Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius James A. Francis Within the past twenty years four extensive works have appeared treating Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana (VA) from various literary, historical, and cultural perspectives. These include E. L. Bowie’s “Apollonius of Tyana: Tradition and Reality,” Maria Dzielska’s Apollo-nius of Tyana in Legend and History, Graham Anderson’s Philostratus: Biography and Belles Lettres in the Third Century A.D., and my own lengthy chapter in Subversive Virtue: Asceticism and Authority in the Second–Century Pagan World.1 The popularity of what has often been considered an “offbeat” text is striking—and largely explicable given concurrent interest in such subjects as the Second Sophistic, the novel, holy men, and asceticism. At this juncture it is thus appropriate to ask: how far have these studies advanced our appreciation and understanding of this text? In answer to this question, I propose first to critique the assumptions and methods of this body of work on VA and, second, to suggest that new insights into the nature of ancient fiction would provide both a resolution to old scholarly impasses and a more fruitful agenda for research. Little is known about the historical Apollonius. He must have been born early in the first century c.e. in Tyana in Cappadocia and died sometime during or after the reign of Nerva (96–98). So little remains of sources prior to VA that the most that can be said further both with certainty and without fear of “contamination” from posthumous representations is that Apollonius appears to have been a wandering ascetic/philosopher/wonderworker of a type common to the eastern part of the early empire.2 Philostratus’ work, which appeared a century after [End Page 419] the death of its hero, is usually thought to have been published sometime after the death of the empress Julia Domna in 217.3 For a biography VA is extraordinarily long, eight books requiring two Loeb volumes. The work begins with a description of the birth of a “greater than Pythagoras” (1.2) and one who would “approach the gods” (1.5), then follows Apollonius’ prodigious youth through his devotion to piety and learning, especially in regard to the god Asclepius. With his early training perfected, Apollonius sets out to discover the source of piety and wisdom among the Brahmans of India, which allows Philostratus to provide his reader with two and one–half books full of travel, adventure, and esoteric philosophy.4 It is at the very beginning of this journey, while in Nineveh (1.19), that Apollonius first meets his lifelong companion and disciple Damis. Philostratus asserts that Damis kept a record of Apollonius’ ideas, discourses, and prophecies and that a descendant of Damis’ family presented these to Julia Domna (1.3). The empress, in turn, gave these “tablets” (deltoi) to Philostratus with the command that he recast them in more appropriate literary style.5 It is these memoirs which, according to Philostratus, form the authoritative basis of his own work. Upon his return from India, Apollonius is acclaimed by the Greek cultural world and becomes actively involved in the affairs of the cities of Asia Minor and Greece (4.2–33), even journeying to Rome to confront Nero (4.35–47), in an episode which presages Apollonius’ climactic [End Page 420] confrontation with Domitian. He journeys throughout the Mediterranean world, discoursing on true philosophy and religion, preaching Greek cultural ideals, prophesying, and performing the occasional miracle. He visits the gymnosophists of Egypt, and reaches the height of his reputation when Vespasian summons him to Alexandria to solicit his advice and blessing upon accession to imperial dignity (5.27–41). In the final two books, Apollonius is arrested and imprisoned by the unworthy son of Vespasian. Brought before Domitian, he refutes the accusations made against him and, as proof of both his innocence and his superior philosophical nature, simply vanishes from sight and materializes at the coast, where the faithful Damis has booked passage back to Greece. The episode allows Philostratus to deliver a reprise of the entire work and a virtual apologia in the form of a formal defense speech...

Cicero's Pro Murena and the Strong Case for Rhetoric

Cicero's Pro Murena and the Strong Case for Rhetoric Michael Leff Prologue My purpose in this essay is to bring together two strands of recent scholarship that have proceeded independently up to this point. The first of these is part of a broad, multidisciplinary effort to reconsider the relationship between theory and practice in the human sciences; in the study of rhetoric and politics this development has fostered interest in concepts such as prudence, decorum, and judgment that are grounded in practice and strain against the bias of abstract, theoretical categories .1 For the purposes of this essay, I will take Richard Lanham's concept of the "strong defense of rhetoric" as a representative anecdote for this development and use it to direct my own inquiry.2 The other strand of scholarship comes from a much narrower and more technical area of scholarship—the study of Ciceronian oratory. This area is itself only a subfield within the relatively small domain of Ciceronian scholarship, and the work done in it has attracted little interdisciplinary interest. Nevertheless, I believe that the recent literature suggests some important points of affinity between problems involved in reading Cicero's speeches and problems encountered in the effort to understand how prudence and judgment enter into political deliberation. I want to develop these affinities first by examining the origins and characteristics of the currently dominant model of criticism for Ciceronian studies, the "persuasive process" model. And then I will analyze one of the major works in Cicero's oratorical corpus —the speech in defense of Lucius Murena—to see whether and in what sense it is possible to connect Cicero's rhetorical practice with current issues in the study of rhetoric and public policy. Michael Leff is Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. © Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 1,No. 1,1998, pp. 61-81 ISSN 1094-8392 62 Rhetoric & Public Affairs Strong and Weak Defenses of Rhetoric Efforts to connect rhetoric and public policy encounter two objections. On the one hand, rhetoric is treated with suspicion because of the fear that it imparts too much power to the agents who wield it. On the other hand, rhetoric is dismissed as a corruption because it drains genuine ethical power both from those who use it and those influenced by it. The first of these objections rests upon an instrumental conception of rhetoric. The art is viewed as a tool or weapon that has the capacity to do much harm, and since nothing in the art regulates its ethically proper use, rhetoric threatens to become a politically destructive force. The other objection is more fundamental, for it strikes at the nature of rhetoric rather than its applications. Perhaps its best known formulation appears in the Gorgias, where Plato defines rhetoric as a species of flattery and warns that the "love of demos" it engenders destroys a genuine commitment to truth and goodness.3 Such categorical attacks against rhetoric recur throughout the Western tradition, and they reach a very strong pitch in the Enlightenment, where rhetoric, as contrasted to either science or poetry, represents "utter heteronomy."4 Thus, in another famous indictment of rhetoric as an art of political deliberation, Kant asserts that when he reads even the best speech of a "Roman political orator, a modern parliamentary debater, or a preacher," he experiences an unpleasant sense of disapproval of an insidious art that knows how, in matters of moment, to move men like machines to a judgment that must lose all its weight with them upon calm reflection__Oratory (ars oratoria), being the art of playing for one's own purposes upon the weaknesses (let this purpose be ever so good in intention or even in fact) merits no respect whatsoever.5 Corresponding to these objections, there are two familiar defenses of rhetoric, which Richard Lanham has labeled "weak" and "strong."6 The weak defense refers to the instrumental conception of rhetoric and makes a distinction between the neutral rhetorical tool and the purposes for which it is used. Aristotle offers one of the oldest and best known versions of this position: "And if it is argued that great harm can be done by unjustly...

François Mitterrand: ‘Speech in Defence of the Indefensible’ in the ‘Year of Farewells’

It can scarcely be said that François Mitterrand lacked reasons for despondency between September 1994 and May 1995: the oppression of imminent retirement, the ravages of illness, the loss of his dearest friends; the tide of scandals mounting towards the presidency; the disastrous Socialist performance in both the legislative elections of 1993 and the European elections of 1994; the political, intellectual and emotional collapse of the brand of left-wing magnanimity which he had made his own and which had borne him to power; the ingratitude of public opinion, anxious for change. Most of the books devoted to the last months of his ‘reign’ fail to go beyond a fairly mechanical rendering of a feeling of anti-climax. Something of an exception is L'Année des adieux (‘Year of Farewells’),1 a bitter-sweet chronicle of life in the President's entourage by Laura Adler, an adviser to the Elysée; but her comradely offering does little to stem the tide of hostile, regretful or frankly accusatory offerings. It is no coincidence that Jean Montaldo's Mitterrand et les 40 voleurs (‘Mitterrand and the Forty Thieves’),2 has become a long-term best-seller: Montaldo, a former police officer, mercilessly exposes the nexus of scandal and intrigue in the presidential entourage. Or that Thierry Pfister's novel Le Nègre (‘The Negro)3 uses a thinly disguised cast of characters to make a violent attack on the betrayal of socialist ideas, with a bitterness felt also in Daniel Rondeau's Mitterrand et nous (‘Mitterrand and Ourselves’),4 referring to the post-1968 generation which the author claims to represent. Or, again, that it should be the President's most consistently vitriolic radio critic, Philippe Alexandre, who in a tardy attack of pseudo-remorse has undertaken a Plaidoyer impossible pour un vieux président abandonné par les siens (‘Speech in defence of the indefensible, on behalf of an ageing president deserted by his followers’).5 All in all, a display of authorial individuality and ardour, as writers scramble to accomplish the finally rather banal task of presenting the departing President with History's bill for board and lodging.

Technical discourse in defense of public virtue: Ronald Reagan's explanation of the Iran/contra affair

Contemporary political communication is marked by an evolving dialectical tension between public and technical forms of discourse. Using Ronald Reagan's explanation of the Iran/Contra arms‐for‐hostages initiative as a case study, this article explores the rhetorical uses of technical rationality and the dangers these appeals pose for public deliberation. A close reading of Reagan's March 4, 1987, Iran/Contra defense speech demonstrates that Reagan employed the Tower Commission Report's technical judgments to separate the ethical realm of the public from the nonethical realm of the technical. As a result, he was able to define the Iran/Contra affair as an instrumental problem of bureaucratic organization rather than a betrayal of the public trust. This strategy of demarcating the moral realms of agent from agency is conceptualized as both a moral dodge and an instance of what Kenneth Burke calls ironic discourse. The article concludes by contrasting Reagan's strategy with other recent political crises in w...

Parody and the Argument from Probability in the Apology

Over a century ago James Riddell pointed out that Socrates' de- fense speech in die Apology closely followed standard form of Athenian forensic rhetoric. He called Apology artistic to core, and he identified parts of the subde of this defense.1 Since then many scholars have explicated rhetorical elements in Socrates' defense.2 Their work has led in turn to recent attempts to integrate rhetorical form into an overall understanding of meaning and sig- nificance of Apology? The puzzle to be solved is what to make of fact that Socrates disclaims ability and intention to use in a speech which is itself a rhetorical masterpiece. R. E. Allen raises possibilitythatbyusingthe techniques ofrhetoric and at same time denying that he is using them Socrates is dissem- bling or lying. However, Allen rejects this possibility and interprets Socrates' falsehood as only a surface or apparent falsehood. According to Allen it is ironic parody of a disreputable which seeks to convince without concern for truth.4 For Allen object of parody is base in general, type of denounced by Socrates in Gorgias as rhetoric aiming at gratification and pleasure, and indifferent to truth and good of soul.5 Two subsequent articles, one by Kenneth Seeskin, other by Douglas Feaver andJohn Hare, support view that Socrates is parodying debased form of rhetoric. However, they place somewhatdifferentemphasis on exact object of parody. They argue that object of Socrates' rhetorical parody is Pahmedes, ratherthan panderingrhetoricin general.6 After summarizing many rhetorical similarities between Palamedesand Socrates' defense speech, Seeskinconcludes that Gorgias'

A Note on [Lysias] 6, Against Andokides

There is a problem in §23 of Against Andokides, the sixth speech of the Corpus Lysiacum. The passage in question runs: ⋯κ δ᾽ οὖν το⋯του το⋯ τιμ⋯ματος ⋯δ⋯δετο ⋯γγὺς ⋯νιαυτ⋯ν … ‘And as a result of the proposed penalty he was imprisoned for nearly a year …’. The speaker's context is as follows: he is castigating Andokides in connection with his trial in 400/399 for impiety and describing his lawless life since his (alleged) part in the great scandals of 415, the mutilation of the Herms and the profanation of the Mysteries. The problem in the text concerns the words ⋯νιαυτ⋯ν ‘for nearly a year’, as the statement contradicts what we learn about Andokides' imprisonment in 415 from his own defence speech (On the Mysteries) and above all from Thucydides.

The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio (Testimonial Narrative)

The Margin at the Center:On Testimonio (Testimonial Narrative)1 John Beverley (bio) The deformed Caliban-enslaved, robbed of his island, taught the language by Prospero-rebukes him thus: "You taught me language and my profit on it / Is, I know how to curse." -Roberto Fernández Retamar, Caliban Do Social Struggles Give Rise to new forms of literature, or is there more a question of the adequacy of their representation in existing narrative forms like the short story or the novel as in, for example, Gayatri Spivak's articulations of the stories of the Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi or the debate around Fredric Jameson's notion of national allegory in Third World writing?2 What happens when, as in the case of Western Europe since the Renaissance, there has been a complicity between the rise of "literature" as a secular institution and the development of forms [End Page 11] of colonial and imperialist oppression against which many of these struggles are directed? Are there experiences in the world today that would be betrayed or misrepresented by the forms of literature as we know it? Raymond Williams formulated a similar question in relation to British working class writing: Very few if any of us could write at all if certain forms were not available. And then we may be lucky, we may find forms which correspond to our experience. But take the case of the nineteenth century working-class writers, who wanted to write about their working lives. The most popular form was the novel, but though they had marvelous material that could go into the novel very few of them managed to write good or any novels. Instead they wrote marvelous autobiographies. Why? Because the form coming down through the religious tradition was of a witness confessing the story of his life, or there was the defence speech at a trial when a man tells the judge who he is and what he had done, or of course other kinds of speech. These oral forms were more accessible forms centered on "I," on the single person. . . . The novel with its quite different narrative forms was virtually impenetrable to working-class writers for three or four generations, and there are still many problems in using the received forms for what is, in the end, very different material. Indeed the forms of working-class consciousness are bound to be different from the literary forms of another class, and it is a long struggle to find new and adequate forms. (25) Let me set the frame of the discussion a bit differently than Williams does. In the period of what Marx describes as the primitive accumulation in Western Europe-say 1400 to 1650-which is also the age of the formation of the great colonial empires, there appears or reappears, under the impetus of humanism, a series of literary forms like the essay, the short story of novela ejemplar, the picaresque novel, the various kinds of Petrarchan lyric including the sonnet, the autobiography, and the secular theater. These forms, as ideological practices, are also a means of these economic developments (in the sense that they contribute to the creation of the subject form of "European Man"). By the same token, then, we should expect an age such as our own-also one of transition or the potential for transition from one mode or production to another-to experience the emergence of new forms of cultural and literary expression that embody, in more or less thematically explicit and formally articulated ways, the social forces contending for power in the world today. I have in mind here, by analogy to the role of the bourgeoisie in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, not only the struggle of working people everywhere against exploitation, but also in contingent ways movements of ethnic or national liberation, the women's liberation movement, poor and oppressed peoples' organizations of all types, the gay rights movement, the peace movement, ecological activism, and the like. One of these new forms in embryo, I will argue, is the kind of narrative text that in Latin American Spanish has come to be called testimonio. By testimonio I mean a novel or novella-length...

Flexible mechanical assembly systems

Frank Riley, vice president of the Bodine Corporation, USA, made a fighting speech in defence of his company's philosophy of flexible modular assembly at the conference ‘Manufacturing Matters’ organised by the Institution of Production Engineers during the PEP 82 exhibition. This article is based on part of Mr. Riley's paper.

The relationship of defensive language behavior in patient monologues to the course of psychoanalysis.

Examined the relationship of the time-course of psychoanalysis to progressive alteration of defensive language behavior in 7 patients. Spontaneous 5-minute monologues were recorded over 1 1/2 years of three-times-a-week individual psychotherapy. Weintraub and Aronson's (1962) formal measures of defensive language were used: nonpersonal references, negators, qualifiers, retractors, explaining expressions of feeling, and evaluators. The magnitude of defensive speech displayed by a patient was able to predict significantly the duration of psychoanalysis undergone by that patient in 4 of 7 cases.

Hortensius' Speech in Defense of Verres

IT IS GENERALLY ACCEPTED that Hortensius failed to deliver a speech for the defense in the actio prima of Verres' trial, and that his client Verres fled into exile before that part of his trial was concluded.' In order to maintain this view, a passage in Quintilian (Inst. 10.1.22-23) must be explained away, for when emphasizing the need for students of rhetoric to study opposing speeches in pairs wherever possible, he mentions a speech of Hortensius in Verres' defense:

Law and the Moral Paradox in Plato's Apology

Law and the Moral Paradox in Plato's Apology* RONALD F. HATHAWAY 1. ASSUMPTIONS LET US SUPPOSE, in agreement with the oldest tradition, that the dialogues of Plato are Socratic? Let us suppose that every philosophic question presented in the dialogues as fundamental can be made intelligibleonly in terms of the Socratic standpoint. Let us further suggest that the heart of the Socratic standpoint is the view that although nature and law (nomos) axe not in harmony with one another them exists a philosophic preservation of right through reason which if scrupulously followed will bring about a kind of harmony .between nature and law or a natural justice.2 Then it is argued that Plato's Apology is the firstplace in which one can see the principal problem posed by the Socratic standpoint, the puzzling nexus of law and the Socratic moral paradox. The first part of Socrates' questioning (erotesis)of Meletus is based on a paradox which in this carefully chosen context places the maximum possible claim upon law for its sonse of mercy and justice,a claim which ifallowed to stand would seemingly undermine the entire meaning and role of punishment in law? Contrary to the bias of modern commentary, there is nothing "'accidental" or merely occasional about the moves of Socrates here; his questioning of Meletus is intended to be an archetype and a paradigm. In order to show this point clearly, it will be necessary firstto correct three mi.~leading assumptions about the Apology currently in vogue and next to propose a working definition of a paradox. To begin with, the titleof the Apology is wrong; it is not an "apology." Socrates does not excuse himself. The right rendering of its titleis,as many scholars have * I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Thomas Schrock for reading earlier versions of this paper. Plat. Epist., II, 314c3-4; Aristot[e, De arte poet., I, 7-9, 1447b lI; Aristotle, De part. anon., I, 1, 642a28-31; Cicero, De oratore. [[I, 15, 60, 67, 72; Academica, I, 16-17; II (Lucullus), 74; De fin., V, 84; D. L. Socrates. II, 47; D.G. 567, 1-4. Cf. Rep., VI, 501b 1-7 with Laws, IX, 874e7-875d 5; Laws, X, 889e-890a with the sequel; Crat., 390c2-11. Cf. Xenophon, Mere., I, vi 15; Dio Chrysostom, IH De regnoo 29-41. s George Anastaplo, "Human Being and Citizen, A Beginning to the Study of Plato's Apology of Socrates," Ancients and Moderns: Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy in Honor of Leo Strauss, ed. J. Cropsey (New York, 1964), p. 18: "Socrates' argument . . . denies the possibilities . . . perhaps even of any legRimate criminal law." Cf. Arthur W. H. Adklns, Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960), pp. 304-308, for a brief sketch of Plato's treatment of punishment. [127] 128 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY noted, 4 Defense of Socrates, and I shall hereafter refer to it as the Defense. Defenses and excuses are different things. Second, the Defense, invariably called one of the dialogues of Plato, is obviously not a dialogue but a work of forensic or protrcptic rhetoric, s The ancient view that the Defense is a "declaration" of what it means to be a philosopher e captures the surface ambiguity of the work, which is deeper than rhetoric, regarded as persuading to believe with words, and shallower than philosophy, regarded as pursuing truth with valid arguments. The dialogues of Plato differ from the Defense in one cardinal point. The dialogues are investigations of things, not of men. The unknown, the quae~tio of the Defense can be answered with a yes or no, guilty or not guilty, but the unknowns or quaestiones of the dialogues cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. It may be objected that further consideration would show that the Defense raises philosophic questions. Yet as a point of departure it would be a mistake to treat a speech in defense as something other than it is, a philosophic investigation. The third false assumption is that the style of the Defense or other adduced historical evidence is sufficient proof that Plato, at the time of writing, was naive as a philosopher...

History Will Absolve Me. The Moncada Trial Defence Speech. Santiago de Cuba. October 16, 1953.

History Will Absolve Me. The Moncada Trial Defence Speech. Santiago de Cuba. October 16, 1953.

History Will Absolve Me. The Moncada Trial Defence Speech. Santiago de Cuba. October 16, 1953Castro, the Kremlin, and Communism in Latin AmericaFidel Castro

History Will Absolve Me. The Moncada Trial Defence Speech. Santiago de Cuba. October 16, 1953Castro, the Kremlin, and Communism in Latin AmericaFidel Castro

Handling of Facts and Strategy in Cicero’s Speech in Defence of King Deiotarus

The three orationes Caesarianae, i.e., Pro Marcello and Pro Ligario given in 46 and Pro rege Deiotaro delivered in 45 are connected by the fact that the addressee of all of them is Caesar. The speech made in defence of King Deiotarus is the fruit (if possible) of both a legally and rhetorically critical situation: the judge of the case is identical with the injured party of the act brought as a charge: Caesar. Thus, the proceedings, conducted in the absence of the accused, in which eventually no judgment was passed, should be considered a manifestation of Caesar’s arrogance, who made mockery of the lawsuit, rather than a real action-at-law. This speech has outstanding significance both in terms of the lawyer’s/orator’s handling of the facts of the case under circumstances far from usual, and in the development of the relation between Cicero and Caesar. We can also observe some thoughts on the theory of the state framed by Cicero, the fight against Caesar’s dictatorship gaining ground, for the sake of saving the order of the state of the Republic.

Support for the Defensive Speech Clinician

Support for the Defensive Speech Clinician

The Defensive Speech Clinicians in the Schools

The Defensive Speech Clinicians in the Schools

Socrates at Amphipolis (Ap. 28e)

ITHE veracity of Socrates' report (P1. Apology 28e) of his service at Amphipolis in 422 has been impugned by distinguished authorities and ought perhaps to be defended. A. W. Gomme has recently observed: 1 Sokrates himself... cannot have been on this campaign at Amphipolis... The reason is because Socrates lists his battles in the order a-c-b, sc. Poteidaia (432), Amphipolis (422), Delion (424). The same reasoning had earlier led Burnet, not cited by Gomme, to a similar conclusion.2 One queries whether chronological order in this context is a relevant criterion of historical veracity. Plato is not composing a history but an appeal to jurors. Rhetorical effect would be most important. Poteidaia is first. There Socrates most distinguished himself.3 Next come Amphipolis and Delion in order of their fame among Athenians. One may paraphrase to grasp the effect in English officers whom you chose to direct me at Poteidaia and at Amphipolis, not to speak of Delion. And there is an ethopoetic reason. Strictest accuracy was not becoming a gentleman. Battles out of order stress Socrates' modesty. He was not so proud of his accomplishments that he recorded them exactly. Comparable is the Platonic habit of misquoting Homer.4 Further the confusion is between 422 and 424 and not between 414 and 432 as would be the case had Amphipolis misplaced Poteidaia. Only an interval of two years is at issue. Such an indiscretion would cause no comment. Compare the gross historical errors in a defense speech delivered on the same charge in the same year against the same prosecutor.5 Finally there is a relevant passage in Demosthenes, Third Philippic, where that orator recalls three events, obviously well known to himself, in the chronological order, a-c-b. The passage (9. 23) lists the hegemonies of Athens, Thebes, and Sparta in that order.