SEMINAR IN GREEK RHETORIC, LAW, AND SOCIETY (SPRING 2025)
UF and the INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF RHETORIC
The fourth seminar in Greek Rhetoric, Law, and Society, organized by Ifigeneia Giannadaki (UF), was held virtually in March and April 2025 and featured four international speakers, based in Greece, Canada and the US. The event was generously sponsored by a competitive grant by the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR) and attracted an international audience of attendees from over 14 countries in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa (including Italy, Greece, France, Switzerland, Norway, Canada, Poland, The Netherlands, Ghana, the UK, the US, Canada). The seminar participants represented over 18 HE institutions internationally (including, University College London, Royal Holloway, University of London; Princeton University, Columbia University, University of Köln, Sewanee, Simon Frazer, University of Crete; University of Athens; University of the Peloponnese; University of Manchester; University of Bari). The seminar papers were followed by lively discussions and debate over the original themes explored.
The seminar featured four excellent speakers and focused on the following themes:
Rosalia Hatzilambrou (University of Athens), Shared memory and the walls of Athens. The evidence of the Attic orators
The walls of Athens, a perennial urban feature of the Athenian topography, surrounding the inhabited areas of Athens and extending to the ports of Piraeus and Phaleron, were not only vital for the survival of the city and the security of its inhabitants. They also emerge as a fundamental element of the collective identity and the shared memory of the Athenians in the classical period, crystallizing both traumatic and glorious experience, and objectifying dominant values of the Athenian civic ideology. In my paper, I aimed to explore how the walls as ‘stores’ of shared/collective memory (I follow Steinbock 2013 for the terms) were used in the public speeches delivered at the Assembly and the popular lawcourts of Athens, and what this use reveals about the attitude towards shared memory adopted by the orator and his public. Furthermore, I wished to investigate how the Attic oratorical texts contributed to the construction and maintenance of the ‘recollecting’ function of the walls, and as a result to the representation and reproduction of the self-image of the polis. Passages from Andocides On the Peace, Lysias Against Agoratus, and Lycurgus Against Leocrates chiefly provide my case-studies.
Eleni Papadopoulou (University of Florida), Punctuation and lectional signs in the papyri of the Attic orators
In my talk, I examined the presence and function of punctuation and lectional signs in the papyri of the Attic orators. My focus was primarily on papyri dated between the 3rd century BCE and the 2nd century CE, particularly those attesting the works of Demosthenes, Lysias, and Isocrates. I also proceeded with a closer analysis of the papyri of Demosthenes’ Philippics and On the Crown in a separate section, in order to draw preliminary conclusions about the role of punctuation in the transmission and reception of these orators. This allowed me to explore whether punctuation was introduced to facilitate oral or silent reading at different stages of the textual transmission. My methodology involved identifying the copies in which punctuation and/or reading marks appear most frequently and evaluating what this suggests about their intended use.
Nikos Litinas (University of Crete, Greece), The distributed materiality of a legal document. A case study from the second century CE Egypt
The paper provides insight into the bureaucratic mechanisms and practical challenges surrounding legal procedures in early Roman Egypt. After examining the administration and the state archives in this period—specifically focusing on the roles of the archidicastes and strategos, as well as the organization and function of public record offices (mainly of katalogeion) dealing with legal instruments and private transactions—we analyzed the dunning procedure triggered by loan repayment defaults. This included an assessment of the financial cost required for creditors to initiate the process and the timeframe leading to its resolution. Finally, we clarified the concept of “distributed materiality” by identifying the total number of documents produced and the locations where they were stored.
David Mirhady (Simon Fraser) Ēthos and the Composition of Aristotle’s Rhetoric
This paper seeks to explain the perceived discrepancy between Aristotle’s innovative and seminal description of the ēthos (character) of the speaker as one of his three technical modes of persuasion (Rhet.1.2, 2.1, & 3.1), alongside logos and pathos, and his rhetorically less interesting account of different sorts of ēthos in the middle of book 2 (Rhet. 2.12-17). The two accounts represent attempts by Aristotle to adapt such treatments of ēthos from accounts of the arrangement of parts of a speech in earlier handbooks. Those accounts can also be traced in Anaximenes’ Rhetoric to Alexander, in which the speaker’s character appears principally as an element to be treated within a speech’s introduction. Aristotle’s second account, in book 2, I argue, stems from earlier accounts where that speaker’s character comes under attack through the opponent’s use of diabolē. The paper serves as a case study of how Aristotle composed parts of his Rhetoric by mining early handbook that were largely organized around arrangement.
