General Comments

These readings are concerned with different aspects of epideixis, and can be viewed as a preparation for the expdeixeis you'll be writing and delivering yourselves.

For what an epideixis is, please see the entry on the "Terms" page
For the epideixis assignment itself, click here

Specifically, they'll introduce you to two sides of epideixis: "demonstration" of argument (Constitution) and "demonstration" of style (Epitaphios).

Reading Accessed. . .

Gorgias Epitaphios

You'll have already read this (very brief — a mere paragraph!) reading, but I'm requiring that you to read it again.

Access by clicking here.

I am asking you to read the descriptions of rhetorical figures and see if any show up in the translation I wrote. (The translation doesn't always map the original exactly as to rhetorical figures. But overall it's pretty close.)

That's to start you thinking about the rhetorical structure of your own epideixeis.

Pseudo-Xenophon's Constitution of the Athenians

Access this reading via the myCourses course site > Course Docs > "Old Oligarch."

Once you've clicked "course docs," you'll see at the top of the frame a PDF link for:

Pseudo-Xenophon ("Old Oligarch") - Constitution of the Athenians

Or, to give it its full citation,

Pseudo-Xenophon. Constitution of the Athenians. Xenophon VII. Scripta minora. Eds. E. C. Marchant, and G. W. Bowersock. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968. 459-507. Print.

Readings Journal Exercise

See if you can write your own mini-epideixis, or "epideictic speeches," in which you try to convince Pseudo-Xenophon's (the "Old Oligarch's") speaker that he's wrong.

That will involve the following steps:

Figure out what your persuasion-target's (your interlocutor's) ideological perspective or his political leanings are. Who, ideologically speaking, is this person you're trying to persuade?
Try to "spin" your arguments in a way that will both appeal to, and convince (with compelling reasoning, not just eros!), your interlocutor.

If you feel brave enough, embellish your epideixis with figures; we shall try to put together one or more of our own in class.

Larger Issues, General Question

In the 420s, the Athenian state was beginning to become polarized again along democratic and oligarchic alignments. The leaders of democracy (the prostatai tou demou), now often newly wealthy businessmen like Cleon (leather merchant) or Hyperbolus (lamp manufacturer), were scorned by others regarding themselves as the better sort of Athenian.

So, how in the Old Oligarch is democracy problematic or problematized? How is it and/or peitho "in crisis"? What resonances do you detect with other works you've read?

Pseudo-Xenophon Constitution of the Athenians

Background

DATE: Probably 420s BCE
AUTHOR: Unknown. Conventionally referred to as. . .
- "Pseudo-Xenophon" because, though the work comes down to us among the manuscripts of the Athenian writer Xenophon, it clearly is not by Xenophon
- "Old Oligarch" because the dramatized speaker's avowed sympathies are with oligarchy, though that cannot be taken as evidence for the sympathies of the actual author
GENRE: Widely acknowledged to be a sophistic epideixis not unlike Gorgias' Helen

Pretend you are studying with a sophist. Pretend that sophist has assigned you the task of writing an essay in which you have . . .

to adopt the biases and prejudices of an Athenian oligarch (whatever you may really feel)
to address an audience/readership of fellow oligarchs, though from a different city
to try to explain Athenian democracy to these foreigners - in particular, to try to show how well Athenian democracy promotes the interests of the lower orders

The result could well end up looking something like the "Old Oligarch's" Constitution of the Athenians, apparently, an exercise in making the weaker argument, namely, democracy, appear stronger to an audience of anti-democrats.

Questions

What similarities/differences do you see in relation to the Periclean Funeral Oration (Hackett Thucydides pp. 39-46)?
Why are "the poor and the people generally are right to have more than the highborn and wealthy" (p. 475, section 1.2)?
How exactly does democracy favor the "worse" citizens?
Why wouldn't they be better off under oligarchy?
What "powers" the democracy?
Where exactly do the vested interests of this paradoxical "ruling class" lie?
What does the author seem to be trying to tell us about the Athenian democracy

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