CHAPTER III
PUBLIC SPEAKERS AND MASS AUDIENCES
If the key to social and political stability in democratic Athens is to be sought in communication between the Athenian elites and the masses, we must decide as best we can who was sending and who was receiving messages, what form messages took, and in what contexts the communication took place.
Only after we have formed an idea of the participants in and the contexts of public communication can the actual content of the messages be properly assessed. Thus, before we can hope to understand the sociopolitical significance of the rhetorical texts available to us—the corpus of Attic orations—we must fill in some of the background in terms of the orators themselves, the nature and rules of the forums in which they spoke, and the audiences they addressed. We must also keep in mind that the communication was always reciprocal. The speaker obviously communicated messages to his audience, but the audience communicated to the speaker as well: immediately through direct verbal intervention (e.g., catcalls) and nonverbal signals (e.g., restlessness), at a short remove through voting, and at a greater remove through their subsequent behavior toward the speaker. We can begin to construct an adequate framework for the analysis of public political discourse and the nature of Athenian democracy only if we recognize that public communication between Athenian elites and masses was a dynamic and interactive process, undertaken in different forums but within a relatively stable ideological and social environment.1
The orators represented in the corpus make a clear distinction between public speakers who were politicians and those who were not. A plurality of the orations (59 of 132) were delivered by individuals who, as far as we know, did not have great political ambitions. The legal actions in which they were involved are roughly equivalent to modern American civil suits. Texts of this sort are generally referred to as “private orations” and are classified as “I” speeches in the Appendix. On the other hand, a number of speeches were delivered by, or written for, politically active citizens, and these speeches were overtly intended to further their careers. The most important for our purposes are those listed in the Appendix as “E,” “P,” and “R” speeches: orations delivered in the Assembly and “public” legal actions brought by politicians (rhētores) against political opponents.
The expert orator/politician was a well-recognized figure in fourth-century Athens, and there was a wide variety of terms to describe him. The most common term was rhētōr. In the mid-fifth century this was apparently a legal term for one who proposed a motion in the Assembly; by the later fifth and through the fourth century it was ordinarily used of individuals recognized as active political experts: those who addressed the Assembly frequently and who competed in political trials with other rhētores.2 As it is normally used in oratory, the term “rhetor,” by itself, seems to be more or less value-neutral.3 But it could certainly be used in negative contexts. Aeschines (3.253) called Demosthenes the “rhetor-man” who was responsible for all the evils of the city. Elsewhere (2.74), he refers to the “rank-ordered” (suntetag-menoi) rhetores who ignore the safety of the city. Similarly, Demosthenes (22.37) could speak of the entrenched (sunestēkotōn) rhetores who supported the evil Androtion. More vigorously yet, Demosthenes (23.201) discusses the “damnable and god-hated rhetores” who sold public honors as if they were nothing. In On the Crown (18.242) Demosthenes caps a tirade of insults against Aeschines with a claim that his opponent was a counterfeit (parasēmos) rhetor, whose cleverness was useless to the polis. This last suggests that the genuine rhetor might be expected to use his abilities for the good of the polis.
Other terms for politicians also reflect their primary role as addressers of the public. The political orators are often simply referred to as “the speakers” (hoi legontes).4 An orator could also be alluded to as one who was able or clever at public address (deinos, dunamenos legein). Frequently this was intended to have a negative connotation.5 Yet if an orator wanted to praise himself, he might refer to himself, as did Demosthenes (18.320), as “the most able speaker” (kratista legōn). Some other descriptions of public speakers refer to their advisory and leadership roles. Vying in popularity with rhetor as a standard term for political orator was politeuomenos. “He who is actively involved in the affairs of the polis” might be a safe general translation, but “politician” serves as well.6 Variants include to politeuesthai, the infinitive form of the same root word (Dem. 22.47), and to politeuesthai kai prattein, “the engagement in politics and action” (Dem. 18.45). Ps-Lysias(6.33) claims that Androtion was preparing to engage in politics (ta politika prattein) and that he already spoke as a demagogue (dēmēgorei) and gave advice (sumbouleuei); the passage introduces two other terms associated with Athenian public speakers. The words dēmagōgos and the closely related dēmēgoria (public and, by extension, demagogic speaking) were often used by an orator of his political enemies.7 But both terms could also be used in a more positive sense. The speaker in Lysias 16 claimed that he had to “speak out in public” (dēmēgorēsai: 16.20) in order to protect his own interests. Hyperides (5.17) claimed that a just demagogue (dikaion dēmagōgon) should be the savior of his polis. Demosthenes (19.251-52) mocked Aeschines for attempting to mimic the prose style of Solon and others who had served as public speakers (dēmēgorountōn) in the past. By the fourth century, Solon was widely regarded as the Father of the Democracy, and so the description of him as a public speaker, even in the context of Demosthenes’ parody of Aeschines, suggests that the term could be given positive connotations.8 Similarly, Lysias (27.10) suggested that the duty of “good demagogues” (dēmagōgoi agathoi) was to give generously to the state in times of emergency.
The term “advisor” (sumboulos) was typically a positive one and seems to have become particularly popular with the orators of the latter part of the fourth century. Hyperides (5.28) notes that even after Chaeronea, the demos did not reject the rhetores but used them as advisors and public advocates (su[mboulois] . . . kai s[unēgorois]). Demosthenes (58.62), on the other hand, claimed that no one would consider Theocrines and his friends to be good men and advisors (sumboulous kai agathous: note that agathos here has an aristocratic connotation as well). Aeschines (3.226) warns against those who attempt to stop thoughtful men from giving advice. Dinarchus sums up the public position of the orators by arguing (1.72) that those who advise and lead (hoi sumbouloi kai hēgemones) were responsible for all the good and ill that befell the polis. He contrasted (1.40) the current crop of politicians with the worthy advisors and leaders of previous generations.
The politicians of Athens could be referred to as “leaders”: dēmagōgoi (literally “they who lead the demos”), or hēgemones, (“they who lead”) (Din. 1.40, 72, 74). The prevalence of descriptive terms that emphasize their speaking ability and their advisory function, however, suggests that public speech was a major aspect of their leadership role. We may contrast the etymologies of modern English terms for leaders, such as president, governor, chairperson, director. Speaking ability may be part of the arsenal of a modern political leader, but his or her power will typically be exercised largely outside of public view and as a direct function of the office he or she holds.9 The vocabulary of political activism in Athens reveals that direct public communication was the primary locus of whatever power, authority, or influence the Athenian rhetor might hope to exercise.
The frequency and casualness with which many of the terms were used in the plural furthermore suggest that the rhetores were a recognizable “set” of men who played a special role in the political life of the polis.10 Demosthenes (4.1, cf. Ex. 55.2), for example, could refer to them as “the accustomed speakers” (hoi eiōthotes). We do not know how many individuals would be in the set at any one time, but the number is likely to have been quite small. “Membership” required virtually full-time participation in politics, a great deal of native ability, and (usually) specialized and expensive training. It was potentially lucrative (v.G.2) but also very dangerous (111.B.2). M. H. Hansen has suggested that perhaps only ten to twenty “professional” politicians would have been active at any given time; this may be a bit too low, but I think it is the right order of magnitude; probably, less than one hundred full-time political experts operated in Athens from 403 to 322 B.C.11
The expert politicians were not a legally defined group. They tended to speak frequently in the Assembly, but this was a privilege granted them by the goodwill of the demos, not a legal prerogative. Aeschines (1.27) states clearly that no Athenian was forbidden to speak in the Assembly because of his social status or poverty, but rather all citizens were especially and repeatedly invited to come to the speakers’ platform (bēma) if they wished to address the demos. By the mid-fifth century, all Athenian citizens possessed the right of isēgoria (above, II.F.I), and by law no Athenian had any greater right than any other to address the Assembly. If most citizens did not speak up in public, choice or habit, not legal restriction, was the reason.12 Demosthenes (22.30) claimed that Solon himself had noted that most Athenians did not speak in public, although they had a right to do so.
Part of the rhetor’s role in the Assembly was to secure passage of decrees (psēphismata) binding on the citizens. Thus he could be compared to the nomothetai who passed the general laws (nomoi) also binding on the citizenry. Lysias (31.27) could ask “what rhetor ... or nomothetēs could have anticipated” (with a psēphisma or nomos) the crime of a citizen absenting himself from a crisis? But the right to propose a decree was open to any citizen. Despite the general dominance of the expert orators in public debate on major issues, ordinary citizens also raised their voices in the Assembly and proposed motions to the de« mos.13 Isocrates’ student in the Panathenaicus (12.248) states that in Athens sometimes the wisest speakers miss the point, and one of the ordinary citizens “deemed of little account and generally ignored” comes up with a good idea and is judged to speak the best. The ambiguity of the standing of the expert orators is suggested by arguments over how often a good rhetor should address the people. Aeschines (3.216—20) turned Demosthenes’ charge that Aeschines seldom spoke in Assembly against his opponent, by implying that speaking constantly was an oligarchic trait. In oligarchies, only he who rules (ho dunasteuōn) addresses the people, whereas in democracies whoever so wished (ho boulomenos) could speak whenever it seemed right to him.
There is no evidence that the expert orators ever secured any legal privileges vis-à-vis the rest of the citizens, but they were subject to various laws as a consequence of their public actions. Demosthenes (10.70) states that the politician Aristomedes should know that the life of ordinary citizens (idiōtai) is a safe one but that of politicians (politeuomenoi) is dangerous, implying that the latter could expect to face legal prosecution. Demosthenes (24.192-93) argues that all law was divided into two types: that which concerned private life (peri tōn idiōn) and that which concerned the duties to the polis of anyone who wished to act as a politician (politeuesthai). Demosthenes claimed that it was to the advantage of the mass of citizens that the former class of laws be lenient but the latter harsh, so that the politicians would not be able to act unjustly to the masses (adikoien tous pollous). The proposer of a decree in the Assembly could be indicted by the procedure against unlawful decrees (graphe paranomōn); he who proposed an unlawful law could face a charge of having done so (graphē nomon mē epitēdeion theinai); he who spoke against the public interest due to having taken a bribe could be indicted according to the eisangelia (treason trial) procedure.14 There was also a scrutiny procedure that applied specifically to speakers in the Assembly (dokimasia rhētorōn), forbidding any citizen who had mistreated his parents, failed to perform his military duties properly, prostituted himself, or squandered his inheritance from addressing the demos. Our best evidence for the last procedure is Aeschines (1.28-32) who indicted the rhetor Timarchus on the prostitution clause.15
The existence of the dokimasia rhētoron, Hyperides’ (especially 4.7—8) discussion of provisions of the eisangelia procedure referring to rhetores and generals, and other testimonia (see III.D.I) have led M. H. Hansen to conclude that the term ‘rhetor’ was used in the fourth century as a legal/constitutional term for proposers of laws and decrees and for those who brought public actions in the courts.16 In fourth-century Athenian legal terminology, ‘rhetor’ may have retained a specific technical meaning, but there is no reliable textual proof that it did.17 The term is not used in any inscribed law or decree after the mid-fifth century (and only once then). The law cited by Aeschines in his action against Timarchus was attributed to Solon, but we have no way of knowing when the dokimasia rhētorōn process was actually first put into place. It was evidently very rare by the fourth century.
Hyperides’ discussion (4.7—8) of the eisangelia procedure as it applied specifically to rhetores (ē rhētor ōn mē legēi . . .) was in the context of a speech in which he consistently emphasized the distinction between ordinary citizens—idiötai—and the recognized set of expert public speakers—rhetores. When he quoted the law, he attempted to make it appear as if it was specifically written to apply to the expert political orators, as opposed to the ordinary citizens. Hyperides was exploiting the ambiguity between the old legal meaning of the term rhetor—which in the mid-fifth century had apparently been “decreeproposer”—and the everyday meaning of the term as it was used in oratory and would be understood by the jurors. He implied that there really was a legal difference between the expert politician and the ordinary citizen and so tried to show that his opponent had done a great injustice by indicting the innocent idiōtēs Euxenippus with a procedure (eisangelia) intended only for use against rhetores: “Although he is an idiōtēs your prosecution of him classifies him as a rhetor” (4.30; cf. Aesch. 3.214). Once again, the term idiōtēs had a common meaning in the fourth century: one who was an ordinary citizen and not a political expert.18 But all Athenian citizens who were not serving in magistracies or on juries were idiōtai, if we are to accept Lycurgus’ (1.79) definition. He stated that the politeia consists of three parts: the officeholder (archōn), the juryman (dikastēs), and the idiōtēs. Aeschines (2.181), one of the best known politicians of the mid-fourth century, could claim with a straight face to be both an idiōtēs and a middling citizen (metrios).
There was no legal difference between the expert politician and the ordinary citizen, except that the former was more likely to engage and to have engaged in activities, for example, proposing decrees and laws, that made him liable to legal action. As we have seen, all Athenian citizens had a right to speak in the Assembly and many decrees—especially those of an honorary nature—seem to have been proposed by “non-experts.”19 But there was certainly a perceived difference between the ordinary citizen and the political expert in fourth-century Athens, as Hyperides’ comments, cited above, clearly attest. Like Aeschines, Demosthenes (22.25-27) considered the metrioi and idiōtai to be more or less synonymous, but he contrasted these folk with the powerful and bold (deinoi, thraseis)—the expert politicians. He suggested that there were different sorts of legal actions appropriate to each sort of citizen: public actions that might offer greater rewards but also carried greater risk, and private actions that ordinary citizens could undertake without risking their status or property.20
The functional difference between the expert politician and the “amateur” who might propose an honorary decree, but was likely to avoid hot issues, was in part a consequence of the increased risk that political activity brought in its wake. The maze of legal difficulties in which the proposer of a controversial decree might find himself would be enough to scare most citizens away from the bema during intense debate over major issues.21 The general opprobrium that might follow upon a failed policy decision was also a consideration. The orator who spoke in favor of a policy that went wrong might later be regarded as a convenient scapegoat by the Assemblymen who had themselves voted for the policy, as Thucydides (8.1.1) and Demosthenes (1.16) both noted. Fear of legal difficulties and of the resentment of their fellows by most Athenians, even those who were active Assembly-goers and cared deeply about political affairs, rendered the experts a structural necessity in the Athenian system of government; without them there would be few bold and original policy initiatives.22
Because of the risks that actively debating or proposing major new policy in the Assembly entailed, and because it was not necessary for the average citizen to engage in high-risk public legal actions, the most common public forum in which the Athenian idiōtēs spoke was the law court, in the course of defending or prosecuting a private lawsuit (dike). The Athenians had a reputation for being an especially litigious folk (cf. Aristophanes, Wasps, Clouds), but we do not know how common it was for an average Athenian to find himself involved in a lawsuit. On the other hand, we can probably assume that members of the Athenian elites, especially the wealth elite, were quite likely to get involved in legal actions, and it is the elite Athenian litigant who is represented in the preserved private orations. The internal evidence of the speeches frequently demonstrates that the speaker is a member of the leisure class, although some defendants prevaricated about the extent of their personal wealth (see V.D.2). Furthermore, most, if not all, of the surviving private orations were written by professional speech writers—logographers. The logographers’ fee scales are not known, but once again, a safe assumption is that the common Athenian could not afford to buy an oration of a quality comparable to the average of those preserved in the corpus.23
Whether the speakers who commissioned and delivered the extant private orations should be considered members of an educated elite is debatable. On the one hand, we can probably assume that they would, as a function of their upbringing, have been better educated than the average Athenian.24 On the other hand, probably relatively few of them had formal training in philosophy or rhetoric; the former was very rare in any case, and those who had been trained in the latter would presumably not have had to resort to logographers. The problem is complicated by the tendency of the private litigant to understate his ability and experience at public speaking (see IV.C.3). At least some private litigants can be assigned to the birth elite, on the basis of their own statements.
The elite status of the expert politicians who wrote and delivered speeches for political trials and for Assembly debates is quite clear. While we do not have adequate biographical data to determine as much as we might like about their backgrounds, a few generalizations are possible. First, they were, by definition, members of an elite of ability. Skill in public address was sine qua non for the politician. This meant not only skill at putting words together but also in putting them across. Isocrates, one of the most brilliant prose writers of classical Athens, was forced to forgo a political career because his voice was not strong enough to carry to a large audience.25 The orator’s native ability was necessarily sharpened by practice. According to Plutarch (Dem. 5—8, 11), Demosthenes listened to other orators (especially Callistratus of Aphidna), practiced his skills in private trials (against his guardians), received advice from other orators (notably Eunomus), and took a lesson in declamation from the comic actor Satyrus. He undertook vigorous physical training of various sorts, including declaiming while exercising and with his mouth full of pebbles. The story that he spent long hours in an underground study, with his head half-shaved to force himself to keep his nose to the grindstone because of embarrassment over his appearance, may be apocryphal, but it catches the spirit of the level of dedication necessary to become an effective political speaker in the competitive political atmosphere of fourth-century Athens.
In many cases, the prospective political orator must have sharpened his skills through formal training in rhetoric. Plutarch (Dem. 5.4-5) records the tradition that Demosthenes studied with Isaeus, because he could not afford Isocrates’ fee. But Plutarch had read other accounts as well. He notes that Hermippus cited certain anonymous memoirs that stated that Demosthenes was a student of Plato. According to Plutarch, Hermippus also cited Ctesibius for the story that Callias the Syracusan and certain others secretly provided Demosthenes with the rhetorical system of Isocrates and Alcidamas. None of this, with the possible exception of the lessons with Isaeus, seems, on the face of it, very likely. Most can probably be attributed to ancient speculation, based in part on stylistic analysis.26 Regrettably, our biographical tradition is equally confused and contradictory (if not as rich) concerning the educational backgrounds of most of the other famous rhetores, and it is nonexistent for the less well known. The Pseudo-Plutarchian Lives of the Ten Orators makes various speculations, which are sometimes contradictory, about who studied with whom, but on the whole, this evidence is useless.27
Nevertheless, we are faced with two undoubted facts: that the texts left us by the political orators display a great deal of rhetorical sophistication and that schools of rhetoric existed in fourth-century Athens. Isocrates’ school was the most famous. The program of study there supposedly lasted up to four years, and Isocrates was said to have charged a flat fee of 1,000 drachmas for the course. Both figures are suspect, but he did have students, they did study for a considerable period, and they did pay him well enough that he was able to recoup his family fortune which had been destroyed in the Peloponnesian War. Both he and his son were liturgists, if unwilling ones.28 Furthermore, as S. Wilcox has demonstrated, Isocrates and his fellow rhetoricians taught political rhetoric. 29Although no doubt some aspiring logographers attended the rhetoricians’s classes and legal rhetoric was surely included in the curriculum, most students of the fourth-century rhetoricians, as of the fifth-century sophists, probably studied rhetoric because they had political ambitions.30 Thus, although not all the students of Isocrates and other rhetoricians were Athenian citizens or went on to successful political careers, a reasonable assumption is that many of the expert politicians of fourth-century Athens sharpened their rhetorical skills as students of the late fifth-century sophists and later at formal schools of rhetoric. Moreover, given that formal higher education in Athens was relatively rare and limited for the most part to either philosophy (as Plato defined it) or rhetoric, we may guess that the political experts formed a relatively significant percentage of the “educated elite” of the fourth-century Athenian citizen body.31
Formal education in rhetoric was especially important for the aspiring Athenian politician because of the lack of ways in which he could gain a practical education in politics. Scholars once commonly assumed that holding offices and generally being politically active at the local level, in one’s deme and tribe, provided the up-and-coming politician with his first political experiences.32 But recent detailed studies of the Athenian demes have disproved at least part of this assumption. Prosopographical analysis of individuals active in deme affairs, especially the demarchs, has shown that there is no link between local political activity and “national” political activity; indeed the two spheres of activity appear to have been mutually exclusive. None of the known rhetores can be demonstrated to have been actively involved in the public life of his home village either before or after beginning his political career.33 Once again, this provides a strong contrast to the modern politician, who typically begins his or her career at a local level and frequently maintains close ties with local supporters throughout his or her rise to national prominence. The lack of a federated structure of government and the relative insignificance of most offices in the Athenian state made the Assembly and people’s courts unparalleled institutions. He who would be a politician at Athens must address the Assembly and become active in the courts, but prior experience in local politics was of relatively little use in these activities.
The political orators were also members of the Athenian elite of wealth. In general, a wealthy Athenian was statistically much more likely than the common citizen to be overtly politically active.34 In 1983 M. H. Hansen published a list of all Athenians who are known to have held a generalship, addressed the Assembly, proposed a decree or law, or were involved in a public legal action, between 403 and 322 B.C.35 Some 30 percent (114) of these individuals are listed by Davies in APF as liturgists and so had family fortunes of ca. three to four talents or more. Both Hansen’s and Davies’ lists are subject to unquantifiable variables, and the 30-percent figure is probably too low. According to Davies’ estimates, which I accept, liturgists were only about one or two percent of the total Athenian citizen population in the fourth century. Furthermore, a number of the citizens on Hansen’s list were probably in the leisure class, even if they were not liturgists, since the liturgical class constituted only about 15-30 percent of the leisure class (see below, III.E.I). Even allowing for a large margin of error in any or all of these numbers, the general conclusion that, relative to their numbers in the total citizen body, the leisure class was heavily overrepresented in the set of all overtly politically active citizens is secure.36
If the "overtly politically active” citizen was likely to be wealthy, so a fortiori was the expert politician. Hence, not surprisingly, many of the well-known politicians of fourth-century Athens are listed as liturgists in Davies’ APF: for example, Andocides (828), Androtion (913), Apollodorus (11672), Callistratus (8157), Demades (3263), Demosthenes (3597), Hegesippus (6351), Hyperides (13912), Lycurgus (9251), Meidias (9719), Timocrates (13772). Some politicians, such as Demosthenes, clearly came from wealthy families. Others, for example, Demades and Aeschines, may have made their fortunes in the course of their careers. The question of the early careers of many orators is complicated by the tendency of politicians to denigrate opponents by implying that their fortunes had been made in an unsavory manner (see V.F.2—3). But in every known case, by the time an orator was a recognized political expert—by the time he was addressing the Assembly frequently on major issues and involving himself in high-visibility, public legal actions—he was unquestionably a member of the leisure class. The general impression of politicians as a wealthy group is reinforced by hyperbolic rhetorical statements, such as Demosthenes’ (23.208) comment that those who transact the public business have such great fortunes that their private houses are grander than public buildings and that some of them own more land than “all of you [jurors] in this court put together.” Such statements were intended to have a specific impact on juries and cannot be taken at face value, but they exaggerate rather than falsify the reality of the situation. Demosthenes implies here that great personal wealth was unseemly in a political leader, but, given that being a politician in fourth-century Athens was a full-time affair, being a member of the leisure class was virtually a prerequisite.37 And, as Demosthenes points out elsewhere (22.27), the poor man simply could not afford to risk the high fines that were levied on losers in certain public legal actions.38
A considerably weaker link joins the rhetores to the birth elite, at least if we limit the latter to those who were members of a genos (see below, VI.B). Lycurgus was of the genos of the Eteoboutadai; Hegesippus and his brother Hegesandros, who can also be considered a politician (cf. Hansen’s list), were of the Salaminioi. Some scholars have suggested that Demosthenes and Androtion may have been gennētai, although this is far from certain.39 But, as we shall see (VI.E.I), even politicians such as Aeschines, who were certainly not gennētai, were eager to stress their connections with aristocrats and their own aristocratic pursuits.
In sum, the expert politicians of fourth-century Athens were not legally defined, and there are no fixed criteria by which we can include or exclude marginal figures from the set. But the rhetores were easily recognized by their contemporaries and could be spoken of collectively. They were relatively few in number, invariably elite in wealth and ability, usually so in education, and occasionally were gennētai. Many of the expert rhetores held lotteried offices from time to time, as any other citizen might.40 But, with the exception of Eubulus and Lycurgus in the financial archai, they did not normally hold consecutive magistracies. Their political influence was not dependent upon local constituencies, elective offices, or constitutionally granted powers.
The orators are occasionally referred to in speeches as if they were the equivalent of elected magistrates. This is implicit in the reference of Lycurgus (F V.1a [Conomis] = F A.2.1 [Burtt]) to the three types of dokimasia: one to which archons submit, another for rhetores, and a third for generals (stratēgoi). Lycurgus is apparently referring here to the procedure used by Aeschines against Timarchus, discussed above (111.B.2). Like Aeschines, Lycurgus is exploiting the confusion between the common use of the term rhetor and its legal meaning. More problematic is a testimony by Dinarchus (1.71) to the effect that the laws (nomoi) declare that any rhetor or general must have legitimate children and own land in Attica if he is to be considered “worthy of the demos’ trust” and that only then will he be “worthy to lead the demos” (axioun proestanai tou dēmon). If this were an accurate paraphrase of a law, we would have to assume that those who addressed the people were subject to a property qualification and that they were legally equated with the generals. Dinarchus does not, however, quote the nomoi in question, and his phraseology, which emphasizes who should be seen as worthy to lead the people, does not seem to reflect, even indirectly, Athenian legal discourse. In the absence of any other evidence for this sort of restriction on public address (taking rhetor here to mean anyone who addressed the Assembly) and in the face of the other testimonies that seem specifically to exclude the possibility of a property qualification, Dinarchus’ testimony should not be taken as evidence for the existence of a written law requiring that public speakers have legitimate children and own property.41
Dinarchus’ comment should be viewed in the context of the general tendency of the orators to treat rhetores and stratēgoi as fulfilling parallel functions and as constituting collectively a set of “the politically powerful,” who were contrasted with the set of “the idiötai.” Hyperides, for example, claims (5.24) that the wrongdoing of idiötai is less serious than that of rhetores and stratēgoi. As we have seen (111.B.2), he urged the prosecutor of Euxenippus to leave innocent idiōtai alone and “wait for a rhetor or a stratēgos to commit a crime” (4.27). In a similar vein, Dinarchus (3.19) exhorted the jury to demonstrate to all men that the demos had not been corrupted along with certain of the bribe-taking rhetores and stratēgoi. Demosthenes (18.171) emphasizes that after Philip’s occupation of Elatea in 339, no one but he was willing to come to the bema, despite the fact that “all the stratēgoi and all the rhetores were present.” The parallelism is particularly clear in a comment of Aristotle (Rhet. 1388b17-18), who states that the archontes who were able to do good for many were the stratēgoi, the rhetores, and generally all those who were powerful. Stratēgoi were constitutional magistrates, rhetores were not, as Aristotle certainly knew. The conflation of the rhetores and stratēgoi by Aristotle and by the orators describes a political reality, not a constitutional fact.42
Certainly, fourth-century rhetores had much to do with Athenian military policy, and some generals, such as Phocion, addressed the Assembly with some frequency. But, as was suggested above (11.F.5), the dual road to political power taken by Pericles had begun to bifurcate shortly after his death, and the distinction between political and military experts was quite clear in the fourth century. Aristotle noted (Pol. 1305a10-15) that the “demagogues” of his day tended to be skilled in rhetoric and not in military affairs; generals tended to be the opposite. 4342 Precisely because of their differing areas of expertise and their common concern with both state policy and personal political survival, generals and orators tended to work closely together. Generals needed skilled speakers to help in impeachment trials—to which they were very commonly subjected in the fourth century—and to propose legislation providing the funds necessary to carry out military campaigns mandated by the Assembly. The political orator needed cooperative generals to enthusiastically pursue military actions in support of his own long-range foreign policy objectives. Generals, along with other orators, also made good character witnesses (sunēgoroi) at public trials, although the other side might attempt to discredit them. Dinarchus (1.112) assured his audience that any rhetor or stratēgos who might speak in Demosthenes’ favor was guilty of bribe-taking himself. In Against Ctesiphon (3.7) Aeschines urged the jurors not to allow themselves to be influenced by intercessions of generals favorable to Demosthenes’ cause, claiming that the generals had for a long time been co-workers (sunergountes) with certain orators and as such were outraging the state.44
The symbiosis between generals and orators was clearly important to the functioning of the post-Periclean Athenian government, and no doubt certain generals and orators did tend to act as “co-workers.” Furthermore, orators clearly cooperated with other orators on specific issues and sometimes over fairly long periods of time. A politician commonly called upon friendly rhetores as sunēgoroi when he was involved in a public trial, and political legal actions were often aimed at those rhetores known to be actively supporting one’s political opponents (e.g., Aeschines’ actions against Timarchus and Ctesiphon). But we must resist the tendency to make too much of these relationships. As I have suggested above (I.B, II.G), the politicians and generals of the fourth century did not constitute a ruling elite. The limited amount of cooperation between orators and between orators and generals was more than overbalanced by the intensity of their competitions with one another. Whatever authority they wielded was dependent upon the people’s continuing approval: stratēgoi faced reelection each year and trial at anytime; rhetores were judged each time they stood up in the Assembly and each time they were engaged in a public legal action.
The relations between orators and generals were not even remotely similar to modern party politics. Recent research on the political groupings of Athenian politicians and generals has shown the error of the party model for Athenian politics. There is no longer much scholarly enthusiasm for tracing the fortunes of hypothetical oligarchic and democratic “parties,” and one now finds fewer references in the professional literature to organized conservative, moderate, and radical interest groups than was once the case. Most specialists in fourth-century politics would, I think, agree that such political groupings of orators and generals as can be demonstrated to have existed were fluid, although there is still not much agreement about the relative importance of principle, pragmatism, friendship, and family relations in the mutations of Athenian political factions.45 The shifting alliances, whatever their bases, between political and military experts were certainly a factor in the public life of fourth-century Athens, and continuing research in the area should help to further clarify the situation. But the intense scholarly interest in defining parties, groups, and factions has tended to divert attention from other, perhaps more important, political realities.
The relationships between elite speakers and generals would certainly be the central feature of Athenian political life if the political and military experts constituted a ruling elite, but they did not. Their relations would also be of key importance if political groups commanded loyal mass followings, but they did not. The recent investigations into Athenian group politics have demonstrated clearly that no Athenian political faction had an organized or consistent popular constituency. The masses in the end, made and broke the politicians who constituted the factions. Thus, an exclusive emphasis on political groups is misdirected; it concentrates attention on ephemeral and epiphenomenal intra-elite relations and distracts our attention from the relationship between elites and masses that was the central reality of Athenian political life. Finley’s comments on the demagogues are apropos.
A man was a leader solely as a function of his personal, and in the literal sense, unofficial status within the Assembly itself. The test of whether or not he held that status was simply whether the Assembly did or did not vote as he wished, and therefore the test was repeated with each proposal.46
When he addressed the Assembly or court, the orator stood alone, before the people. Thus Demosthenes (18.171), in describing his great moment in 339, does not say “the anti-Philip faction alone was able to held a credible spokesman” or anything of the kind. To have made such a claim would have been counterproductive, even if Demosthenes thought of those who shared his foreign policy views as his faction. The Athenians expected an individual politician to state his personal opinion on any given subject in open debate with other individuals of differing opinions. The suggestion that a politician was actively supported by powerful cronies was frequently used as an argument against his credibility.47 As we shall see, the political orator was typically eager to portray himself as belonging to various elite status groups but never as belonging to an organized group of politicians that advocated special interests. The demos in the Assembly and the juries in the people’s courts voted for or against the proposer of a decree or a litigant on the basis of his and his opponent’s verbal arguments and perceived worth as citizens.
The most important political linkages in democratic Athens were not between politicians and generals but between public speakers and mass audiences. The key position of the individual demagogue in the political process and the key importance of rhetoric in Athenian decision making were well understood and heartily disapproved of by the elitist writers of late fifth- and fourth-century Athens. Among their objections to the demagogues was that the latter did not appeal in their speeches to the rational intellect but to irrationality, in the form of the baser emotions and ingrained prejudices of their audiences.48 This general argument was reformulated by Max Weber, who characterized Athenian political leadership as of the “charismatic” type, based on emotional appeals.49 M. I. Finley, arguing against both the ancient critics of the democracy and against Weber, has disputed this categorization and asserted that the demagogues did not compete for leadership solely on the basis of emotional appeals but rather through “substantive promises” which they were expected to fulfill. Finley argues for an “instrumental view of politics” which locates the explanation for the workings of Athenian leadership “in the area of programmes and politics” rather than in the “mystical ‘faith’ ” that Weber stressed. Finley concludes his essay on Weber and the Greek city-state by arguing that “to dismiss the Greek polis in general and Athens in particular as irrational does not advance our understanding."50
Finley is certainly correct to attack as simplistic and misleading a purely charismatic view of Athenian leadership and to point out the overemphasis of the ancient critics on demagogic appeals to base emotions. But Finley himself seems to go too far in the other direction. His eagerness to debunk the critics of the democracy leads him to overrationalize the nature of the Athenian orator’s appeal to his audience. If good programs and sound policy were sufficient to achieve a position of leadership in Athens, Demosthenes and the other rhetores wasted a great deal of their own and demos’ time, expending as they did much time and effort in perfecting their rhetorical style and in writing and delivering highly crafted speeches in which discussion of substantive proposals did not predominate. A careful reading of the oratorical corpus will not sustain the idea that the success of the Athenian politician was based on a purely instrumental approach. Rather, we should seek a middle ground between Weber’s charismatic emotionalism and Finley’s instrumental rationalism. And the middle ground can be sought in what I have described (I.D) as ideology. The successful orator was one who could consistently and seamlessly combine ideas drawn from mass ideology with moral principles and pragmatism in presenting a workable policy, a defense of his policy, or an attack on the policy of an opponent. The Athenian voter in the Assembly or courtroom did not react in a predictable and simplistic manner to obvious appeals to his baser emotions. But neither was he a logician or a purely pragmatic political analyst, who assessed and measured options on the basis of a purely rational calculation of interests.
When he entered the Assembly place or courtroom, the Athenian citizen was no doubt aware of his duty to the laws and customs of his state, of the importance of his decisions to his own and Athens’ present and future interests. But he did not and could not check his ideological baggage at the gate. As a juror he swore: “I will listen impartially to both plaintiff and defendant, and I will cast my vote strictly on the basis of evidence that is relevant to the case.”51 But, if the extant orations are any guide, he construed relevance quite broadly and never thought of excluding his general impression of the speakers or litigants as citizens. When the time came to cast his ballot or to raise his hand, the citizen-voter evaluated the merit of the arguments on either side as best he could, but his judgment involved weighing them against not only the laws and the state interest but also his ideological presuppositions. Orators were well aware of the interplay of pragmatism, principle, and ideology in the minds of their audiences, and they designed their speeches accordingly (cf. Aristot. Rhet. 1354b4-11, 1375a27-31). The ideological content of Athenian orations should not, however, necessarily be construed as the product of cynical calculation on the part of the speakers. The line between personal character, legal and moral principles, and political ideology, though of considerable interest to Aristotle in the Rhetoric, was not, I think, particularly clear to most speakers or to their audiences in fourth-century Athens.52 This lack of clarity is, at least in part, due to the relatively low level of political role differentiation that pertained in fourth-century Athens.
In a series of important essays, Niklas Luhmann has argued that one of the key sociological and political realities of modern industrial society is a very high level of role differentiation. Thus the modern politician’s actions, undertaken while performing his political role in the government, are judged by criteria different from those employed when he is perceived as acting as a private individual. His political and social roles are, therefore, differentiated in his own mind and in the minds of the other members of his society. As a corollary, Luhmann suggests that in simple societies there is a very low level of differentiation and that, therefore, the political leader will be judged by ordinary social values; his role as leader is not differentiated from his role as citizen.53 Athens was certainly not a simple society, and the difference between idiōtai and rhetores stressed by the orators suggests that some role differentiation did indeed pertain and that it was of operational significance.54 But the recognition that Athenian political roles were rather less differentiated from the social role of the average citizen than has often been the case in modern societies helps to explain the relative lack of interest shown by the Athenians in separating policy proposals from the individual character and behavior of the proposer, legal culpability from immoral behavior, or abstract political principles from popular ideology.
The demos judged a politician’s policy at least in part by reference to his character, to his worth as a citizen. Hence, if a politician hoped to have his policy suggestions greeted with sympathy by the demos, it was incumbent upon him to demonstrate to the demos his personal worth. If he could undermine the demos’ faith in the character of his adversary, he could undercut that adversary’s policy initiatives as well. The degree of emphasis that both rhetorical manuals and the preserved orations place upon character defense and character assassination has sometimes disturbed modern readers, who have come to expect a greater degree of role differentiation between public and private lives than pertained in fourth-century Athens.55 But character assassination appeared perfectly natural and quite correct to the relatively undifferentiated Athenians. Certainly there were limits, and concentrating completely on character to the exclusion of substantive discussion of the issues (legal or policy) at hand might alienate an audience. But the process of dokimasia rhētorōn specifically recognized the intimacy of the relationship between character and policy. In his prosecution of Timarchus, Aeschines (1.30) attributes the origin of the process to the lawmaker’s conviction that no man “could be a rascal (ponēros) in his private life (idiai), but an excellent man (chrēstos) in public affairs” (dēmosiai). Later in the speech, he commented (1.17g) that the laws were losing force, and the democracy was being destroyed because “you [jurors] sometimes recklessly accept mere speech (logos) that is unsupported by a good life” (aneu chrēstou biou). The stress on the necessity of good character for good political action led quite naturally to the politician’s life as a whole being open to public scrutiny. For the expert Athenian politician, politics was a full-time occupation, not only because of the time consumed in perfecting rhetorical skills and the risks he undertook in the courts, but because his every action was public property and would be judged against the standard of popular morality. His family, early career, and personal relationships would all count for or against him in the courtroom and Assembly.
The forums of Athenian public life, at which the individual Athenian citizen might meet, communicate with, judge, and be judged by his fellows included the Assembly, the courts, the Council, the agora, and the theater. While courtroom and Assembly speeches form the bulk of the rhetorical corpus, speeches in the other public forums must be taken into consideration as well. In order to form an opinion on the political significance of the communication between mass and elite generally, we must try to understand the nature of communication in each public space, and this requires some background on the political function of each forum, the social composition of the audience, and the rules and procedures governing the actions of both senders and receivers of messages. We should first look briefly at Athenian economic and geographic demography and at the cost of living in fourth-century Athens. These will be significant variables in our assessment of the composition of mass audiences.
The most elementary demographic data needed are, of course, the size of the total population of Attica and the number of Athenian citizens. Unfortunately, neither is easily determined. There has been a good deal of interest in the demography of fourth-century Athens, which has concentrated on the size of the citizen body. But there is, as yet, no consensus, and scholars using the same limited data have come up with rather different answers. We will, however, not go very far wrong if we suppose that for most of the fourth century the citizen population was in the area of 20,000-30,000 (perhaps somewhat less in the immediate postwar decades) and that the total population of Attica was in the area of 150,000-250,000.56 For our present purposes, no greater precision is really necessary, even if it were theoretically possible. In any event, the citizen population was in all likelihood never much more than about 15 to 20 percent of the total population, or half the adult male population; but, as suggested above (I.A; cf. II.F.1), the percentages are less important for understanding the nature of ancient democracy than is the absence of any property qualification for full political participation.
Lack of agreement among scholars also exists on the relative size of the Athenian wealth elite. J. K. Davies has, I believe correctly, defined the wealthiest citizens of Athens as the liturgy-paying class and has determined that a minimum size for a liturgical fortune was three to four talents (18,000-24,000 drachmas). I also accept his argument that in the fourth century there were about 300-400 liturgy payers.57 Davies has also, once again in my opinion correctly, suggested that a fortune of about one talent (6,000 drachmas) was necessary to place a family in the leisure class, that a total of about 1,200-2,000 citizens (and their families, perhaps 4,800-8,000 persons total) were leisure class, and that the leisure-class citizens were those who paid the occasional war tax (eisphora).58 The considerably higher figures suggested by other scholars for the size of the leisure class seem to me to be based on erroneous notions of the size and distribution of the slave population (see 1.C.4), the probable rate of return on investments, and the cost of living and of maintaining a family fortune.59
Hence, the leisure-class citizens composed somewhere in the region of 5 to 10 percent of the citizen population. The other 90 to 95 percent of the citizens would have had to work, at least part time, to support themselves and to contribute to the support of their families.60 Of these laboring citizens, a total of perhaps 7,000-8,000 possessed property amounting to about 2,000 drachmas or more and so were of hoplite status. A good many of these “middling” citizens would be subsistence farmers who were able to feed themselves and their families from the production of their farms.61 The remainder of the citizen population would have included poorer subsistence farmers—some of whom would have to supplement their agricultural production with other income from wage-labor or labor-exchange—and urban residents who might own small shops or family-labor manufacturies or who might work as hired laborers. Wages for laborers seem to have been in the range of between one and two and a half drachmas per day in the fourth century, although the significance of these figures is open to question.62 At the bottom of the economic ladder were the truly indigent, citizens without real property and perhaps unable to work. At least some of these received direct state support.63
We should also consider briefly the geographical distribution of the citizenry. By use of the bouleutic quotas, a fairly good idea of the geographic distribution of citizens in 508/7, at the time of the Cleisthenic establishment of the deme system, may be obtained. But, since deme membership was hereditary, these quotas do not tell us as much as we should like about the actual distribution of population in the fourth century. Robin Osborne has calculated that, according to the bouleutic quotas, some 39 percent of Athenians lived further than 24 km. (15 mi.) from the city. This distance would represent a trip from home village to city of at least four hours each way on foot—and longer by slow-moving ox cart. Even in mid-summer, therefore, citizens at this remove would be unlikely to make the round trip in a single day.64 Presumably, some members of rural demes had moved to the city since the time of Cleisthenes, but Thucydides (2.16.1) notes that before the Peloponnesian War the majority of Athenians lived in the countryside; this was most probably still the case in the fourth century.65 Presumably, a significant number of citizens, then, still lived far enough from the city to make it inconvenient for them to visit the city without planning on an overnight stay.
Many imponderables are present in the attempt to calculate the average cost of living in fourth-century Athens, especially if we assume that much of the Athenian economy was at the level of autarkic subsistence, barter, and exchange.66 Housing was no doubt a significant factor for a poor urban citizen who must rent his lodgings but not for the rural resident who owned his home outright. For a citizen living in the charcoal-burning region north of Acharnai, fuel would not cost much, if anything; it might be expensive in the city.67 There was no doubt a considerable difference between the annual clothing costs of the sheep-owning rural citizen whose wife was a weaver and the citizen who purchased similar items in the agora. The one variable that can be pinned down is the cost of grain, which was the basic source of both calories and protein for most Athenians. The cost of both wheat (six drachmas per medimnos) and barley (three drachmas per medimnos) was fairly stable in fifth- and fourth-century Athens. Modern statistics on subsistence diets suggest that a family of four would need to consume a minimum of about twenty-three medimnoi of wheat or about twenty-eight of barley in a year to achieve a basic subsistence level of existence. Thus the fixed minimum annual cost for the family’s basic food commodity, assuming that cheaper barley was the most common food of the poor, was about eighty to ninety drachmas—assuming the family was able to buy in bulk. The per diem expense would have been about a quarter drachma, or under two obols.68
In the latter part of the fourth century, there were normally four meetings of the Assembly per prytany, for a total of forty meetings each year (AP 43.3); the set number may have been thirty meetings per year in ca. 355-346; previously no more than one meeting per prytany may have been mandated, although as many as necessary could be called to deal with emergencies.69 Meetings were typically held in the Pnyx, a theater-like area built and used exclusively for meetings of the Assembly. Assemblies could, however, be held elsewhere, especially in the theater of Dionysus (AP 42.4). The fourth-century Pnyx (period II) could comfortably seat about 6,000 to 8,000 persons, and Hansen has argued that an average meeting in the fourth century would have had an attendance of 6,000 or more citizens; it is possible, although I think it unlikely, that entrance was restricted to the first 6,000 citizens to arrive.70 Thus, those present at any given Assembly probably represented between one- and two-fifths of the total citizen population—a remarkably high turnout, if one considers the frequency of meetings.71 Seating may have been according to tribe and (at least in the fifth century) by trittys. A nomos of 346/5 (Aesch. 1.33; above, 111.B.2) called for the members of one tribe to maintain order at each meeting of the Assembly, and these men may have taken their seats in the front of the auditorium, by the bema. Otherwise there were no privileged seating arrangements. The seating was egalitarian: rich and poor, elite and commoner sat together in a socially undifferentiated mass (cf. Theophrastus Characters 26). Access to the meeting was controlled by entry gates.72 This facilitated the payment of citizens in attendance. By the late 390s at least the first several thousand citizens to arrive received a stipend of three obols; by the 320s pay for attendance had been raised to one drachma for the ordinary meetings and 1 ½ drachmas for the ten annual principal meetings.73
A meeting of the Assembly began early in the morning and opened with a prayer to the gods. Then the president of the meeting (selected by lot from among the bouleutai) presented the issue for discussion, according to the agenda set by the Council. If the Councilmen had formulated a recommendation on the issue, it would be read in the form of a proposal to the Assembly. The president would then ask (through the herald) who of the Athenians had advice to give. After the debate (if any) he conducted the vote. Voting was normally by show of hands, but in exceptional circumstances it was by ballot.74 If the measure passed, it became a decree (psēphisma) which had the force of law unless and until it was successfully challenged as having contravened the established nomoi, through the conviction of the proposer by the people’s court (in a graphē paranomōn, see above, II.G). At least until the mid-350s the Assembly might also sit as a jury to hear impeachments for major public offenses (eisangeliai), but this seems to have been quite rare, and only one preserved oration (Lys. 28) was written for a trial heard by the Assembly.75 Hansen has argued convincingly that a typical meeting would last about half the daylight hours.76
The Assembly represented the Athenian citizen body gathered together with the specific duty and intention of determining state policy. Any citizen in good standing could attend meetings of the Assembly, and his vote was equal to the vote of each other citizen in attendance. The Assemblymen could be and often were addressed as ho dēmos—they were, symbolically, the Athenians; their decisions were the decisions of the Athenian state.77 The Assemblyman was not the representative of a constituency or special interest group. He voted as he saw best, according to his own ideological presuppositions and in the best interests of his state and of himself. The directness of the decisionmaking procedure makes it important to determine whatever we can about the social makeup of the Assembly. If its social composition was, typically, dramatically different from that of the citizen body as a whole, this would have a considerable bearing upon our reading of the nature of the arguments made by politicians in Assembly and of the decision-making system of the democracy as a whole.78
Some scholars have assumed that most citizens who attended Assembly meetings were quite wealthy or at least were members of a hypothetical “middle class.”79 But, if the demographic analysis suggested above (III.E.I) is anywhere near correct, no Assembly could have been numerically dominated by the leisure class, since there were not more than 2,000 leisure-class citizens, and surely not all of them attended any given meeting. Assuming an average Assembly attendance of 6,000 or more, we must suppose that 4,000 or more of them were Athenians who had to work for a living. The mythical “middle class” of Athens was dealt with above (1.C.5). But we should at least consider the argument that many poorer Athenians were excluded from the Assembly (and from the jury-courts) because the state reimbursement was insufficient to replace wages and too low to support a family. M. M. Markle, in an article that vigorously disputes the idea that the rich dominated either the Assembly or the juries, has attempted to show that an average family of four could be maintained on rather less than three obols a day.80 Markle’s figures for the overall cost of living may be somewhat low, but we need not demonstrate that an entire family could be supported from ecclesiastic pay in order to disprove the notion that the poor could not afford to attend the Assembly. First, it is not necessary to assume that the male “head of household” was the only member of the laboring class family who was able to generate income. Much evidence suggests that Athenian women who were not of the leisure class performed productive labor, and there is no reason to assume that their partly grown children were idle.81 Thus, we do not need to prove that the triōbolon was enough to support a family for a day in and of itself. Next, since meetings apparently lasted only half a day, the remainder of the day was left free for wage-earning activities. Urban residents, at least, could attend the Assembly in the morning and plan on working at their regular employments for the rest of the day.
The equation of payment for attendance at the Assembly with wage earning is somewhat misleading. The Athenians were ambivalent about the propriety of a citizen working for wages paid by another individual—the procedure smacked of the relationship between a slave and his owner. Given a choice, the citizen might well choose a lower stipend from the state for performing the duties proper to a citizen over higher wages offered by an individual, even assuming he could always find work when he wanted it. And this last is not a necessary assumption.82 The poorest of the citizens—the old, handicapped, unlucky, and unskilled—might well attend the Assembly regularly to collect money not otherwise available to them. This is the point of Demosthenes’ comment (24.123) that the Athenians were high-minded, since they retained laws prescribing harsh penalties for disenfranchised citizens who attended the Assembly or sat as jurors, although “you [jurors] know that someone may do this only because of want (penia)."
Arguments that treat state pay as the equivalent of wages do not translate well to a rural setting. Because agriculture is a seasonal activity, there were some periods of the year (especially the summer, between harvest and sowing) when the rural citizen’s farm work would allow him to travel to town as he wished. Even during the more active times of the agricultural year, he might well be able to afford to leave for a couple of days at a time; indeed, he would probably have to do so in order to transact his affairs in town (these might include selling seasonal produce in order to finance purchases of items he could not obtain locally). And, since he could plan on a half-day free after the Assembly meeting, he could combine the business of a citizen with his private business; attending the Assembly would help to subsidize a trip he might make anyway. The subsistence farmer was not dependent on wages to support his family; he would require only enough of a stipend to feed himself while in the city and to pay for lodgings if he stayed overnight and had no relatives or friends in town to put him up.83 The members of his family who had stayed behind were provided for out of the farm’s produce.
Although we obviously cannot determine what percentage of the citizens at any given Assembly meeting were rural residents, it seems likely that the farmers were a noticeable presence. In the Ecclesiazusae (280-81) Aristophanes refers to the “Assemblywomen” (in the guise of their husbands) coming to the Pnyx from the countryside (ek tōn agrōn) in numbers large enough to threaten the townspeople’s chance of collecting their own ecclesiastic pay.84 Even if we suppose that the average Attic farmer attended no more than one Assembly in four (which would require only ten annual trips to town, or about twenty days away from home for residents of more distant demes), we may still guess that rural residents would be present at meetings in very significant numbers. Their geographic “disadvantage” was, at least to some degree, balanced by the lack of competition for their time in the form of regular urban employment.85
The demographic mix at each individual meeting of the Assembly would no doubt differ, depending on a variety of factors presumably including, but not limited to, the published agenda, the season of the year, and the state of the economy. On the whole, many more working than leisure-class citizens would be in attendance. Perhaps the rural population was underrepresented at some meetings, but significant rural underrepresentation cannot be demonstrated to have been the norm and need not be assumed a priori. The very rich, due to their greater leisure, and the very poor, due to their need, may have been somewhat overrepresented. But no evidence suggests that the Assembly was grossly unrepresentative of the social composition of the Athenian citizen body as a whole. The decisions made in Assembly affected all Athenians directly; there is no reason to suppose that the members of any identifiable social sub-group would systematically avoid the meetings. Indeed, both the importance of the decisions made in Assembly and the general scorn of the elitist writers for the Assembly and its decision-making methods suggest that the demos which sat at the Pnyx was demographically quite similar to the “imagined” demos, the demos that no one had ever seen assembled but which existed at the level of popular ideology and elite political theory: the entire citizen body.86
Undertaking to address the Athenian Assembly must have been a daunting prospect, even to the trained orator. The audience was huge, so a strong voice was essential (Aristot. Rhet. 1414a16-17). In the Rhetoric (1358b6—10), Aristotle treats deliberative oratory (to sumbouleutikori), which included oratory in the Assembly and Council, as one of the three main branches of the art. He notes (1418a21-29) that deliberative oratory is much more difficult than forensic because deliberative oratory deals with the future, rather than with the past, and because it allows fewer chances for digression or making comments about oneself or one’s opponent. The demos, as Demosthenes had discovered, felt no hesitation about shouting down any speaker who irritated them or who was wasting their time (cf. Aristot. Rhet. 1355a2—3). A politician’s opponents would be quick to jump in if they perceived that the audience was becoming bored. Demosthenes (19.23—24, 46) recalls with some bitterness how, during a key meeting in 346, Aeschines and Philocrates stationed themselves at his side in order to mock him. Worse yet, the Assemblymen had found their quips amusing. This sort of behavior may have led to the “orderliness” nomos of 346/5 (above, 111.B.2), but Hyperides (5.12), speaking in 323, claimed that it was still possible to purchase the services of “lesser rhetores” who were specialists at causing a ruckus to disturb the speaker. There are only seventeen preserved fourth-century speeches that were delivered to the Assembly, all but three from the period 355-338; deliberative speeches were apparently less frequently published than forensic speeches (above, I.E).87
Speeches to the Council of 500 constituted the second major branch of Athenian deliberative oratory. Despite the importance of the Council as an empowering institution for the Assembly (see 11.E.2), only five Council speeches are preserved, and in each case the speech is in the form of a legal plea, rather than advocating a policy. Apparently, like Assembly speeches, Council speeches on policy were seldom (if ever) published. We know, however, that the bouleutai could invite individuals to speak before them when they were preparing probouleumata, and we know that expert politicians who were prominent in the Assembly and in public trials served terms on the Council.88 Skill in oratory was presumably an advantage for a Councilman who wished to influence the decisions of the Council on agenda and probouleumata; late in 343/2 the Council invited the demos to join in honoring its best speaker of the year.89
The Council met in a special building (bouleutērion) in the agora each day of the year except for the sixty public holidays and an unspecified number of days of ill omen. By the 320s a Councilman received five obols for each day he attended, except for the tenth of the year his tribe was in prytany, when he received a drachma. We do not know how long an average meeting lasted, nor what percentage of the bouleutai attended regularly. Only citizens over age thirty were eligible to serve.90
Aristotle (Pol. 129b30-38) notes the practical need for a probouleutic body to prepare an agenda for the Assembly, and he states that its composition can have a large effect on the character of the constitution. There has been a good deal of debate on the social composition of the Athenian Council. In 1906 J. Sundwall argued, on the basis of a prosopographical analysis of known bouleutai, that wealthy citizens predominated, but Davies has demonstrated that Sundwall’s criteria for determining wealth status were faulty and his conclusions therefore dubious.91 Yet, despite the absence of positive evidence, the domination of the Council by the rich is still sometimes assumed.92 This seems unlikely on demographic grounds alone. Citizens could legally serve only twice, and there is little reason to believe that many citizens served more than one term. Since 500 Councilmen were needed each year, a large percentage of the citizen population must have served a term: estimates range from that of Gomme, who suggested that at least a quarter to a third of the citizenry served; to Woodhead, who claims less than half; to Osborne, who guesses about 70 percent; to Ruschenbusch and Hansen, who have suggested that almost all citizens would have had to serve.93 If the higher estimates are correct, the question of the numerical domination of the wealth elite is moot, unless we assume massive dereliction of duty by all but the wealthy Councilmen. But even if only a third of the citizens served, working citizens must have predominated. It is certainly possible that some farmers and some urban residents—those who were able to make a better income and were unencumbered by civic spirit—avoided Council service or failed to show up regularly for meetings when chosen in the lottery. But on the other hand, we might guess that the indigent citizen would be eager to serve, since the office would provide a year of regular employment otherwise unavailable to him. While farmers and “middling” citizens may have been somewhat underrepresented at a typical meeting, P. J. Rhodes must be correct to suggest that the Council was “fairly representative of the citizens who were politically minded”; and I believe that the great majority of the total citizen population must fall into this category.94
When a citizen spoke in the Council, he was addressing a much smaller audience than he would in the Assembly. But, except for the absence of those between ages eighteen and thirty, the social composition of the smaller group would probably not have been markedly different from that of the larger. Furthermore, as both bouleutai and orators knew, the Council existed to serve the Assembly and was watched over by the demos. Lysias’ client (26.12-14) made this very clear when he asked the Councilmen, “What do you think will be the attitude of the mass of citizens (to plēthos) if you acquit this oligarch? Remember, you [bouleutai] are on trial before the whole polis here.”
The Areopagus council tried certain classes of homicide cases and investigated other activities, including (after 344/3) some political matters. But we have only three speeches preserved that were delivered before the council of the Areopagus, all from the early fourth century. Technically, only citizens of zeugite status and above were permitted to serve on the Areopagus, but this stipulation was apparently widely ignored. In general, the sociopolitical conditions of speeches delivered before the Areopagus would probably not have been radically different than in other Athenian courts, which we may now consider in more detail.95
The people’s courts, which probably met as often as 150-200 days each year, provided an extremely important public forum for elite private citizen and politician alike.96 As a defendant, the citizen might be called upon to defend his behavior generally; a politician might be expected to justify his policies and the proposals he had supported in the Assembly. As a prosecutor, the citizen could attack the personality and behavior of his enemies; if they were political enemies their policies could be undercut. As detailed above (111.B.2), court cases may be divided into public actions (graphai, eisangeliai, and certain other special actions) and private actions (dikai). The former frequently featured expert politicians or generals as protagonists, involved serious financial risks for prosecutors, and generally took an entire day to try. The latter sort of trial, which usually lasted only a few hours, generally concerned the affairs of idiōtai. We may suppose that expert politicians involved in public actions often wrote their own speeches; a wealthy litigant involved in a private case would, however, typically call upon the services of a logographer. In all actions, however, prosecutor and defendant argued their cases personally before a mass jury by means of prepared speeches which were strictly limited in length, though not in subject matter.97
Any citizen over age thirty who so desired could enter himself on the annual list of potential jurors; the fifth-century list normally had about six thousand names, and the fourth-century list was apparently similar in length. The jurors for the cases to be heard on a given day were chosen from those on the list who had appeared in person that morning. A complicated selection process assured that all potential jurors had an equal chance of being assigned to a court and that individuals from all ten tribes were represented on each jury. Jurors received a three-obol stipend for their day’s service, a figure that remained constant from the late fifth century to the latter part of the fourth century. A typical jury might consist of two hundred men for a private trial or five hundred for a public trial, although much larger juries were occasionally empaneled for especially important cases. After the arguments on both sides had been heard, the jurors voted by secret ballot to acquit or convict the defendant. There was no formal consultation among jurors, and a simple majority determined the judgment of the court.98
There has been some debate over the social composition of Athenian juries. 99 Scholars who argue that juries were primarily made up of the well-to-do have pointed out that in some speeches litigants make comments that seem to imply that they were addressing an audience of men of means (see below, v.D.2), but rhetorical statements about economic status cannot always be taken at face value. On the question of the adequacy of jury pay, the basic daily barley ration for an average family would have cost under two obols, and the other family members of poorer households could be expected to contribute to the family’s total income (see III.E.I, 2). In light of these factors, three obols was never a starvation wage. It was admittedly, by the 320s, only half the normal Assembly pay, and a public court case might last longer than an average Assembly meeting. But this discrepancy in the size of stipends only appears problematic if we equate jury and Assembly pay with wages. If we assume rather that state pay was meant to provide participants with a subsistence ration, the three obols no doubt still fulfilled its intended function in the 320s, given the stability of the price of grain. The rise in Assembly pay by the 320s may have been neither an adjustment for inflation nor a way to lure recalcitrant citizens to the performance of their duty, but rather a way of redistributing surplus state revenue. Athenian revenues were relatively high by the 330s, and the rise in the rate of the ekklēsiastikon (which cannot be precisely dated) was perhaps seen as the most equitable way of allowing those Athenians who spent time making state policy to benefit directly from the state’s prosperity.100
The little direct evidence that can be brought to bear on the problem of the social composition of juries suggests that poor citizens did sit on them and that the pay they received for jury duty was important to them. Early in the fourth century, Lysias (27.1-2; cf. Isoc. 20.15) urged a jury to remember the arguments that the defendant Epicrates had previously used as prosecutor: that the jurors would not get their three-obol pay unless they convicted the rich defendant. Lysias notes that there was presently a scarcity of funds in the treasury and suggests that this fact proved that Epicrates had embezzled the money that the state should have received from the convictions obtained by his use of this argument. Whether or not Athenian juries really could be persuaded to vote for conviction in hopes of filling the state coffers (cf. below, V.A.3), Lysias’ statement would have no point if most jurors were unconcerned over the question of whether or not their pay would be forthcoming. Demosthenes’ comment (23.123, cited above III.E.2; cf. 21.182), to the effect that some disenfranchised citizens served on juries for pay because of their poverty, suggests that at mid-century poor citizens did serve on juries. In 348 Demosthenes (3.3435) proposed a state-paid national service to prevent citizens from falling into shameful (aischron) conditions because of need (endeia). He explained his proposal in terms of the existing system of dicastic pay; each citizen was to receive a standard stipend so that he could serve in the army, in the courts, or wherever else there was a need suitable to his age. Demosthenes’ proposal may suggest that older citizens were particularly likely to serve as dikastai, but it also shows that pay was deemed to be economically necessary to the jurors.
In sum, there is little reason to suppose that a given Athenian jury was likely to be startlingly different in social composition than the average Assembly or Council. Probably the elderly tended to be overrepresented, as Aristophanes’ Wasps suggests they were in the late fifth century. Farmers might prefer to spend their limited “city” time in the Assembly, because Assembly decisions were more important to them or because the pay was better. But the large number of days in the year when the courts were in session would give the farmer a greater flexibility in planning his trips to town if he sometimes served as a juror rather than, or in addition to, attending the Assembly. Skilled craftsmen, able to find more remunerative employment, might prefer to spend their available “citizen-duty” time in the Assembly rather than on a jury, where they might be stuck sitting on a public trial for the whole day. On the other hand, as Markle points out, the courtroom was often more exciting than the Assembly.101 For a connoisseur of rhetoric—which many Athenian citizens certainly were (cf. below, IV.D)—a chance to judge an oratorical bout between the likes of Demosthenes and Aeschines might well be worth the loss in income.
We should also look briefly at the question of the “sovereignty” of the Athenian courts and their relationship to the Assembly (cf. below, VII.C). The judgment of an Athenian jury was, in principal, final, and there was no higher authority to which a convicted defendant could appeal (e.g., Dem. 42.31). In this sense the dikastērion may be regarded as sovereign. But, as Osborne has pointed out, most Athenian juries’ decisions were not actually final until both parties agreed to call a halt to the proceedings, because of the great variety of legal actions to which an initially unsuccessful litigant could resort. The prosecutor in one action, dissatisfied with a jury’s acquittal, might indict the same person, for the same crime, in front of a different jury by use of a different class of action. Similarly, a convicted defendant could prolong proceedings by turning prosecutor. Osborne suggested that multiple retrying of cases with the same cast of litigants made Athenian legal proceedings into a sort of “social drama,” aimed ultimately at public display and at redressing social imbalance.102
Osborne’s argument on the “open texture” of Athenian law becomes particularly important when viewed in terms of mass-elite relations. Only elite litigants could likely afford the time that multiple retryings required. But since the elites threatened the social balance to the greatest degree, the public airing of their difficulties before a series of mass juries was particularly salutary. The more often a case was reheard and the more Athenian citizens there were who had the chance to act as judges, the greater was the extent and complexity of communication between mass and elite. Athenian law, according to this analysis, was not only intended to solve conflicts between individual citizens by resort to a formal legal standard, but also, and perhaps more importantly, legal action ensured ongoing communication between Athenians in a context that made explicit the power of the masses to judge the actions and behavior of elite individuals.
When viewed from the context of “law as discourse” (to use S. C. Humphreys’ formulation), the problem of determining the comparative “sovereignty” of the people’s court and the Assembly seems less pressing. In arguing that the courts and laws were the “ultimate” sovereigns against the lesser, “immediate” sovereignty of the Assembly, Hansen quite rightly points out that the term demos, while frequently used of the Assembly, is seldom used for juries.103 But the juries did act in place of and on behalf of all the citizens. Dinarchus, who recognized the legal distinction between demos and dikastērion (e.g., 1.105, 3.16), describes (1.84) the jurors as those “who have been assembled on behalf of the people (huper tou demon suneilegmenōn) and who had sworn to obey both the nomoi and the psēphismata of the demos.”104 Furthermore, the jurors could in fact be held to represent the Assemblymen themselves, at least indirectly. Thus Demosthenes (e.g., 19.224) could blame the jurors for errors in state policy, and Hyperides (1.17) and Lysias (19.14) could discuss how “you jurors” had elected persons to be phylarch, hipparch, and general; the actual elections were, of course, held in the Assembly. In the speech Against Meidias (21.214-16) Demosthenes reminds the jurors that the demos had indicted Meidias at a preliminary hearing (probolē) in the Assembly and argues that it would be an awful thing if “when [in the Assembly] the offenses were clear in your memory . . . you shouted at me not to let him off . . . yet after all you acquit him” in court. Aeschines (2.84) was certain that all his jurors would remember the Assembly at which Demosthenes (as proedros: one of the nine bouleutai chosen by lot to preside over each meeting of the Assembly) had tried to block voting on a resolution, but “you shouted out (boōntōn de humōn) and called the proedroi to the bema,” and so forced a vote on the resolution. Dinarchus (1.86) tells the members of a jury that “in the Assembly” Demosthenes made “you” his witnesses. Elsewhere (3.19), Dinarchus comments that by voting for a conviction, the jury would demonstrate that “the mass of the people” (to tou dēmou plēthos) had not been corrupted. Isaeus’ client (5.38) says to the jury that the prosecutor was not so clever that he had been able to fool “you all when you were united in the Assembly.” These statements cannot be explained simply by the fact that there was a good deal of personnel overlap between courts and Assembly (although indeed there was: Dem. 21.193—94, 22.10; Din. 3.1), but they suggest rather that the citizens empaneled on a jury were regarded as standing in for the demos and as representing the demos’ interests.
Litigants frequently reminded the jurors of their responsibilities to the mass of citizens in whose interests they acted. Demosthenes (21.2) pointed out to his jury that the entire Assembly voted unanimously against Meidias at the probolē, and later in the speech (21.227) he urged the jurors to do “what is pleasing to the demos.” Dinarchus (1.106) asked his jury if they, who were masters of all affairs (kurioi pantōri), would take it upon themselves to ignore the things that had seemed just to the demos. Jurors might be warned to remember that their actions were of great concern to their fellow citizens who would inquire as to what their judgment had been (e.g., Lys. 12.91, 22.19). Dinarchus (1.3; cf. 2.19) claimed that the jurors themselves were standing trial before the other citizens who would judge them according to whether they decided rightly or not. Perhaps less intimidating, but not necessarily less effective, were reminders that the jurors had been given a sacred trust by the citizens and were responsible for the safety of the polis as a whole.105 The courts may indeed be regarded as “sovereign” in abstract legal terms. But the Athenians did not typically think in abstract legal terms and apparently regarded the authority of the courts as deriving from the will of demos as well as from their role in interpreting the laws. In literary terms, demos and dikastērion stood in a synecdochical relationship: the part (dikastērion) stood for the whole (demos), and, in the rare instances in which the Assembly served as a jury, the whole took the role of the part. When a speaker addressed the Assembly or the court, his audience represented the interests of the Athenian people. In each instance, a mass audience, broadly representative of the social composition of the demos at large, served as his judge.106
Significant similarities and differences existed between deliberative and forensic oratory. The most important similarity is in form: in both cases an individual addressed and was judged by a mass audience. Furthermore, the litigant, like the speaker in the Assembly, had to put on a good performance if he hoped to keep his audience’s attention. If he irritated the jury, he faced heckling from the jurymen.107 But while his water clock was running he did not have to worry about direct competition from his opponents for the jury’s attention. Perhaps the most salient difference is that the courtroom gave the speaker a greater opportunity to discuss himself and his opponent, and so arguments based on personal character (ēthos) could be developed in much greater detail. Aristotle (Rhet. 1377b20-1391b6, 1416a4-37) emphasizes the importance of establishing one’s own character and of attacking that of one’s opponent as a factor in successful forensic rhetoric. In the case of an idiōtēs, the jury’s impression of the litigant might be formed solely through his own and his opponent’s ethical discussion; no matter what the facts of the case, he had to prove that he was the sort of person deserving the jury’s respect and that his opponent was not. If his legal case were weak, his only hope might be to sway the jury through argument based on ēthos.
For the politician as litigant, the situation was somewhat different. Many jurors would already have formed an opinion of him and of his opponent, an opinion that might have a considerable bearing on the outcome of the case and which each side would variously attempt to strengthen or undermine. Furthermore, courtroom appearances had long-term effects on a politician’s career. The significance of the courtroom drama was not only a matter of whether he won or lost a particular round in an ongoing series of legal contests. Each courtroom appearance was also a chance to enhance his image. Even if he lost the round on the weakness of his factual or legal case, he might have scored some political points. The juror who had been favorably impressed by his character might be expected to listen attentively to his policy speeches in the Assembly. If very impressed, that juror might tell his friends and they their friends. Hence, for the politician every appearance before a jury had the nature not only of a legal dispute but of an ongoing quest for the respect and approval of the citizenry as a whole.
The politician’s statements in court were part of his ongoing campaign to create a positive image of himself in the minds of his fellow citizens; that positive image would help him in future legal disputes and in the Assembly. But “official” public appearances only formed part of the overall picture of a prominent citizen held by the populace. Much depended on rumor and gossip, which were particularly important in a society that lacked organized news media. It is impossible to determine just how rumors were spread in Athens, but we know they did spread rapidly and crossed class lines easily. News of the Sicilian disaster, for example, was disseminated very quickly throughout the city from the barber shop in which the story was first related (Plut. Nicias 30.1). The agora and the shops in the area around it were natural news centers where the elite and non-elite could mix freely. Lysias’ client (24.1920) notes that “each of you” Athenians is in the habit of spending some time at one shop or another, “a perfumer’s, a barber’s, a shoemaker’s, or whatever.” Isocrates (7.15) mentions that the Athenians tended to sit around in the shops (ergasteria) complaining about the existing political order. The complaints may have been particularly prevalent in his elite circle, but political discussion was no doubt common in all levels of society. The comic poet Eupolis (F 180 [Kock, CAF 1, 308]) has the late fifth-century politician Hyperbolus claim that he had learned a lot from hanging around in barber shops “sitting there unsuspected and pretending not to understand.”108
Presumably, more intimate and private forms of social intercourse also helped to spread news across class lines. A client of Lysias’ (24.11), who was on the state rolls as a handicapped indigent, occasionally borrowed a riding horse from wealthy friends. He may not have been as poor as he claimed (see v.D.2), but he expected the jury to believe that a poor citizen could have rich friends. Prostitutes and entertainers may have been conduits of gossip between classes. The anonymous author of a lengthy curse tablet from the late fourth century incl ades both liturgical-class politicians and common prostitutes (male and female) in the list of individuals to be cursed; presumably, his circle of personal acquaintances included members of both groups.109 A client of Isaeus (6.19) stated that all the jurors would know the prostitute Alke; Apollodorus ([Dem.] 59.108-11) assumed the Athenians and their wives were familiar with the notorious Neaera, and several prominent politicians spoke on her behalf. Flute players and other professional entertainers, as well as prostitutes, were commonly featured at elite drinking parties and presumably picked up some of the dinner chat in the process.110
Athenian speakers often said to their audience “you all know” the character or actions of a litigant, either that he was a good man who lived an upright life or an evil one who did evil things.111 The statement that everyone knew something could be used in an attempt to manipulate the audience. Aristotle (Rhet. 1408a32-36) says that speechwriters used the tactic of saying everyone knows something to secure the agreement of even those who did not know it, because the latter would be ashamed at their ignorance of what was common knowledge. Hyperides’ (4.22) statement that even the schoolchildren of Athens know which of the orators had been bribed might be interpreted in this light.
In democratic Athens, however, the “everyone knows” topos had more to it than merely shaming the uninformed into acquiescence. The topos created the fiction that the entire polis was the sort of faceto-face community that in reality existed only at the level of the demes, and the topos may have its roots in village-level judicial decision making.112 But the statement that everyone knew something was also directly linked to egalitarian ideology. When Hyperides (1.14) argued that a legal defense should be based on a man’s whole life, as no individual in the polis could hope to deceive “the mass of you” (to plēthos to humeteron), he implied that arguments based upon common report were just and democratic. Hyperides bases his argument on the assumption that, although a clever speaker might fool the members of a jury, he could not hope to fool “all of the people all of the time.” Because the jury’s decision stood for the decision of the society as a whole, it was regarded as right that society’s opinion be taken into consideration by a jury. This helps to explain why Aeschines (2.145), who praised the divinity of phēmē, said that it was at work “when the mass of citizens of their own will . . . say that something is the case.” Taken to extremes, this line of reasoning implied that common report should be given greater weight than the verbal arguments made in court. Aeschines urged this interpretation when he said that the jurors not only should be (1.179) but were (2.150) more concerned with the orator’s lives as a whole than with their speeches (logoi). Hyperides (4.40) urged the jurors to ignore all arguments made in court when it came time to vote and to cast their ballots as seemed most just to themselves.113
The perceived democratic nature of common report made it particularly difficult to defend oneself in court against rumors. One possibledefense was based on contrasting common report, which was acknowledged to be valid, with slander, which, as Aeschines (2.145) said, was “the brother of sycophancy” and (2.149) went “no further than the ears.” Aristotle (Rhet. 1416a36-38) suggests a similar approach, that litigants try attacking slander as an evil that corrupts judgments. He also (Rhet. 1400a23-29) suggests that one may fight against slander by showing the origin of the false opinion. The plaintiff in a speech in the Demosthenic corpus (37 55-56) attempts to explain that his habit of “fast walking and loud talking,” which his opponents used to show his bad character, was an uncontrollable natural trait, to be contrasted with his general reputation, since “none of you, though you are many, know of any evil in me.” And the best defense was always a good offense. Aristotle (Rhet. 1416a26-28) encourages the litigant concerned with removing the stain of open or hidden prejudice from himself to counterattack by attempting to blacken the reputation of the accuser, since no one will believe the speech of a man who is himself untrustworthy (apistos). This technique was a favorite of the political orators.
Compared to modern polities, the Athenians drew relatively few distinctions and imposed few effective buffers between public opinion and decision making—either at the level of state policy formation or legal judgment. Objectivity was not considered possible or even particularly desirable. That there was a relatively direct and causal relationship between the opinion of the majority, and state policy and legal decisions is a fundamental difference between Athenian democracy and modern governmental systems.114 This direct and causal relationship must be a key factor in our assessment of the social function of Athenian political oratory. When speaking in public, the Athenian had a doubly difficult task. He won the vote only if the opinion of the majority was favorable to him, or at least more favorable than toward his opponent. He could attempt to influence that opinion by the power of his rhetoric, but his speaking time was always limited, and some opinions, based on ideological presuppositions, were not easily changed. Thus, the astute speaker attempted to use ideology to his advantage by persuading his audience that a vote in his favor was consistent with their existing values. This technique required that the speechwriter be closely attuned to the political attitudes common to the mass of the citizens.
The final “political forum” to be considered is the theater. The citizens of Athens were connoisseurs not only of oratory but also of drama and other forms of theatrical performance. Since the late sixth century, the festival of Dionysus, celebrated annually in the city over the course of a week, had featured performances of dithyrambic choruses, tragedies, satyr plays, and comedies. By the mid-fourth century, traveling troupes of actors were performing plays in smaller theaters in the demes.115 Drama was very popular in Athens, and by the mid-fourth century the state underwrote the price of dramatic festival admissions through the theoric fund.116 Theater was not, therefore, an art form limited to the elite but was a public and political event, experienced by the citizenry at large. The theater of Dionysus (as remodeled in the 330s) could accommodate an audience of about 17,000, and most of the seats were apparently reserved for the Athenians themselves.117 A large percentage of the citizens attended annually. Hence, the audiences in the Assembly and in juries would include very significant numbers—probably clear majorities—of regular “theater-goers.”
Athenian theatrical performance was closely bound up in the attempt to resolve the contradictory social values of intense competition and political unity.118 These values were also of great concern to the orators, and thus the experience of the Athenian demos in the theater had much to do with its experience as an audience of oratory. The responses of average Athenians to litigants in civil suits and to politicians in public trials and in the Assembly were, consequently, influenced by their experiences as members of theatrical audiences and vice versa. Notably, although perhaps inevitably, the physical settings for mass meetings of the people, namely, the Pnyx and the theater of Dionysus, were very similar in spatial organization. The seating in the theater was egalitarian, as it was in the Assembly and in court. In each case, the mass audience faced, listened to, and actively responded to individual speakers. In all cases, cooperation, both between individual and mass audience and between the members of the audience, was necessary. But each situation involved competition at various levels as well. The contests between chorēgoi, playwrights, and actors have some similarities to those between litigants and political orators. In each case, the outcome was decided by a mass audience sitting in judgment (directly or indirectly) over competing elites.119
Athenian dramas were composed by an elite author specifically for presentation to a demotic mass audience and allowed the Athenians to consider the nature of their own society at a remove. The images of human society in tragedy and comedy could be idealized, amusing, or horrific.120 In the case of tragedy, the action typically involved the problems of individuals who were clearly identified as elites but who were in terrible straits. The process of identification with tragic characters provided the Athenians with symbolic paradigms and may have tended to humanize the elite litigant for the members of mass juries.121
The Athenian theater-goer was a self-conscious witness of a self-conscious acting performance. Actors were an important part of the dramatic scene, and prizes for acting were being awarded by the mid-fifth century. By the end of the fifth century, actors were well on the way to becoming professionals. The fourth-century Athenian citizen knew that the man behind the mask was an actor, but that knowledge did not interfere with his enjoyment of the performance or with the power of the performance to affect him. Rather, the recognition of the actor behind the mask doubled and enriched the dramatic experience and made it consequently more meaningful.122 This suggests a symbolic context in which we can understand some rhetorical strategies that have confused historians who assume that forensic rhetoric provides a straightforward description of Athenian society. Theater-going citizens “learned” to suspend disbelief. The theatrical audience entered into a conspiracy with the playwright and actors which allowed the theatrical experience to take place. This “training” helped jurors to accept elite litigants’ fictional representations of their own circumstances and their relationship to the Athenian masses. The complicity of speaker and audience to create and accept dramatic fictions regarding social status was an important factor in the maintenance of Athens’ social equilibrium.
As we have seen, by the fourth century the political orators, like actors, had become experts. The Athenian politicians were, undoubtedly, acutely aware of the continuum between politics and theater, and they exploited it in the highly charged and competitive arenas of the Assembly and the popular courts. 123 The physical relations of actor in the orchestra of the theater and orator at the bema of the Pnyx to their respective audiences were similar. In at least one case, actor and orator were identical. Before he embarked upon his political career (it would be interesting to know how long before) Aeschines had been a professional actor. Demosthenes characterizes him as a tritagōnistēs, a bit player, but that may have been mere slander; Aeschines may have been among the better known actors of his generation.124 As we have seen (III.C), Demosthenes himself took a lesson in public speaking from the professional actor Satyrus. When the audience in Assembly or the jury of a political trial listened to either Aeschines or Demosthenes, they were therefore hearing an indirect reflection of the cadences and gestures of the dramatic actor. The cases of Aeschines and Demosthenes were probably not unique; the two best-known politicians of the fourth century could hardly have been also the only ones with overt theatrical connections.125 Both by space and by behavior of the protagonists, the congruity between the theater and the Assembly was reinforced.126
The political orator had much to gain from being seen in “dramatic” guise. The actor-orator could call upon the audience’s experience in listening attentively to long and complex speeches by elite characters engaged in fierce competition on the stage. Furthermore, in tragedy and comedy the protagonists interacted with and sometimes actively opposed the group, here represented by the chorus. In Old Comedy, actors occasionally even castigated and made fun of the audience. The Athenian theater-going citizen thus had some experience with individuals who legitimately confronted and opposed the group.
The political orator, like the private litigant, depended on his audience’s willingness to suspend disbelief. But here again, the politician’s task was more demanding. To be successful the political orator had to persuade the citizens that he was both an average citizen—idiōtēs and melnos—and, simultaneously, that he possessed abilities and attributes that legitimized his assumption of political privileges, especially the privilege to stand before and even against the masses. The politician had to play a complicated double role and maintain credibility in both roles over a long period of time, all the while in the face of acute public scrutiny and the jibes of his political opponents. The theatrical “training” of the masses helped to condition the Athenians to accept the strange double-role playing that their own value system imposed upon those who would be political leaders. The theater provides a useful metaphor for the orator’s role in society, one that will help us to explore some of the complexities of the communication between elite public speakers and their mass audiences.
1 On the reciprocal nature of public speech, see Riley and Riley, “Mass Communication,” 537—78, esp. 563-68. Buxton, Persuasion, 10-18, points out the importance of public debate in Athenian political life.
2 Common fourth-century use: e.g., Lys. 31.27; And. 3.1; Dem. 24.123, 51.20, 58.62; Aesch. 2.176, 3.231. As a technical term: IG 13 46 (= 12 45), line 21; cf. Harrison, Law, 11.204 n. 1. The fullest discussion of the term and its origins remains Pilz, Rhetor, with whom I am in substantial agreement on the common meaning of the term, although not on its negative connotation; see m.n.3. See also Wilcox, “Scope,” 127-28; Connor, NP, 116-17; Hansen, “ ‘Politicians’,” 39-49.
3 Neutral: Wilcox, “Scope,” 127-28 (citing Dem. 21.189, 18.280); Hansen, “ ‘Politicians’,” 36-37, 46-49. Negative uses of ‘rhetor’: e.g., Dem. 23.184-85, Isoc. 8.129-31; Hyp. 4.33-36.
4 E.g., Lys. 18.18, 28.9, 29.6; Dem. 1.28, 22.37, 24.198, 25.41.
5 ho deinos legein: Lys. 12.86; Isoc. 21.5; thrasus kai legein deinos: Dem. 22.66; dunamenos legein: Lys. 14 38, 30.24; dunasthai legein: Din. 1.113; deinos demiourgos logon: Aesch. 3.215; hoi deinotatoi: Dem. Ex. 45.2.
6 E.g., And. 2.1; Dem. 3.31, 10.70, 19.285, 23.4, Ex. 42.1; Aesch. 3 235. Cf. Mossé, “Politeuomenoi.” Hansen, “ ‘Politicians’,” esp. 37, argues that the term ‘politician’ is best avoided in discussions of Athenian politics. It is certainly important to keep in mind the differences between modern and ancient “politicians,” but I have continued to employ the term for want of a better one.
7 E.g., Lys. 25.9; Dem. 22.48, 519; Din. 1.99, 113; cf. Ostwald, From Popular Sovereignty, 201-203. Demagogos derives from dēmos and the verb ago (to lead); dēmēgoria from demos and the verb agoreuō (to speak in public assembly), but the two root verbs are themselves closely related.
8 On the myth of Solon as father of the democracy, see, for example, Mossé, “Comment.”
9 Modern political leadership as behind-the-scenes power: e.g., Mills, Power Elite, esp. 229-35. But cf. Michels, Political Parties, 98-100, on the importance of excellence in oratory to political leadership in the modern democratic state.
10 On the orators as a recognizable group, see Cloché, “Hommes politiques”; Ehrenberg, People of Aristophanes, 351; Perlman, “Political Leadership,” “Politicians”; Seager, “Lysias,” 177; Finley, PAW, 140.
11 Hansen, “Number of Rhetores.” Cf. Buxton, Persuasion, 14-16, who argues that “a fairly small group of individuals tended to dominate matters in the assembly . . .,” citing Mark Hobart’s anthropological study of public assemblies in Bali, where a few villagers are designated “speech-specialists” and comprise “an informal élite” with high prestige and extensive influence in assembly and in the community generally.
12 As the comments of Euripides Suppliants 430-42, and Plato Protagoras 319d (quoted above, LA), make clear. See also Finley, DAM, 24-25 and PAW, 139—40; cf. above, II.F.I.
13 Hansen, “Number of Rhetores," adduces some statistics to suggest that some 700-1,400 individuals proposed decrees in the period 355-322. Although I do not find the statistical argument particularly convincing, he is certainly correct to argue that many Athenians who cannot be identified as “political experts” did propose decrees.
14 On the types of procedure available, see Hansen, “ ‘Politicians’,” 39-41. Graphē paranomōn: above, II.G with n.96. Graphē nomon mē epitēdeion theinai: Hansen, Sover-eignty, 44—48; Wolff, Normenkontrolle, 40ff. Eisangelia: below, m.n.75. For other sorts of public actions, see Hansen, ‘Apagoge.' Pace de Laix, Probouleusis, 189—90; and Perlman, “Politicians,” 354, the rhētorikē graphē mentioned by Harpokration and other late texts certainly refers to the graphe paranomōn: Hansen, “ ‘Politicians’,” 39-41.
15 See also Harrison, Law, 11.204-205; MacDowell, Law, 174; Hansen, “‘Politicians’,” 40-41.
16 Hansen, “ ‘Politicians’,” 39-42, but he also (48-49) notes the “gap” between the supposed constitutional use of the term and its common use and suggests (49) that this must be attributed to the “gap between the constitution and how it works.”
17 Aeschines (1.33—34) mentions a nomos passed in 346/5 which appointed by lot the members of one tribe at each meeting of the Assembly to keep order. He suggests that this was specifically to control the rhetores (cf. Aesch. 3.4; Dem. 25.90). But the “law” included in the text (Aesch. 1.35) is a forgery, and (pace Hansen, “ ‘Politicians’,” 40) there is no way of knowing what either the wording or the original intent of the law might have been. For differing views of the seating arrangements this nomos would have entailed, see Hansen, “Athenian Ecclesia and the Assembly-Place,” 246-48; Stanton and Bicknell, “Voting in Tribal Groups,” 58—65; and below, III.D.I.
18 E.g., Aesch. 3 233. Occasionally (e.g., Dem. 18.45) hoi idiōtai was used to describe the leisure class in contrast to hoi polloi; cf. Mossé, “Politeuomenoi et idiötai.” The rhetor/idiōtēs dichotomy may help to explain the apragmōn topos: cf. below IV.n.37.
19 Political activity by idiōtai: Hansen, “Numbers of Rhetores,” “Rhetores and Strategoi” 159-80 (catalogue), and “‘Politicians’,” esp. 45-46 with n. 37. Cf. the much greater emphasis on the distinction between idiōtēs and rhetor assumed by Dover, GPM, 25-26; Perlman, “Politicians,” 328-30.
20 Cf. the seminal discussion of this passage by Osborne, “Law in Action,” 42—44.
21 An extreme case: Dem. 18.171. Connor, NP, 23, suggests that Diodotus, Cleon’s opponent in the Mytilenean debate, was an ordinary citizen, a “temporary politician” outraged by the issues at hand. But if the speech Thucydides puts in Diodotus’ mouth is in any way indicative of the speech he actually delivered, he must have been a master of sophistic rhetoric. R. A. Knox, “ ‘So Mischievous a Beaste’? The Athenian Demos and Its Treatment of Its Politicians,” Greece and Rome 32 (1985): 132-61, lists some of the evidence for the legal “destruction” of Athenian politicians and argues that the high mortality rate among active politicians was damaging to the function of the democracy since, inter alia, it kept some citizens from engaging in politics. But see below, VII.E.5.
22 Montgomery, Way to Chaeronea, esp. 66-95, provides a good introduction to the important political role played by the political orators in the polis, along with an assessment of the rhetorical tactics they used to demonstrate to the demos the legitimacy of their position in the decision-making process. Contrast the more legalistic approach to initiative of Hansen, “Initiative and Decision,” 359-65.
23 On logographers and their clients, see Kennedy, Art of Persuasion, 126-45; Lavency, Aspects; Dover, Lysias, 148-74; Usher, “Lysias.”
24 As Wilcox, “Scope,” 130-31, and “Isocrates’ Fellow Rhetoricians,” 174-75, points out, only the rich could afford higher education; cf. Finley, PAW, 28; Raaflaub, “Democracy, Oligarchy,” 529-30. See also Jaeger, Paideia, III. 120-21, for the idea (in Plato and Isocrates) that the length of an individual’s education should be proportional to the extent of his parents’ wealth.
25 Isoc. 5.81-82; cf. Aristot. Rhet. 1414a16-17, cited below, 111.E.2. On the importance of natural ability in relation to training for the orator: Isoc. 13.14-15 with Jaeger, Paideia, 111.63.
26 For discussions of the ancient testimonia on Demosthenes’ rhetorical education, see Blass, AB, III. 1.10-20; Jaeger, Demosthenes, 31-32.
27 He states that Isocrates studied under Prodicus. Gorgias, leisias. and Theramenes (cf. Jaeger, Paideia, 111.48-49, 314 n. 35) and that Isaeus may have studied under Isocrates (837D). Demosthenes supposedly did not have the cash to pay Isocrates his 1,000-dr. fee (837D-E), but he paid the huge fee of 10,000 dr. to Isaeus for private lessons (837F; cf. 844C). Aeschines is reported in one version to have studied with Isocrates and Plato (840B), according to another version with Leoda mas (840B), and yet elsewhere with no one at all (840F; other late sources are discussed by Kindstrand, Stylistic Evaluation, 68-75, who concludes that Aeschines in fact had no formal training). Lycurgus and Hyperides are supposed to have studied under both Plato and Isocrates (841B, 848D; cf. Davies, APF, p. 518). Dinarchus is reported to have studied under Theophrastus and later under Demetrius of Phalerum (850C). For the similarly dubious ancient biographical tradition on famous Greek poets, see Mary R. Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets (Baltimore, 1981).
28 The amount of his fee is mentioned by Ps-Plutarch Lives 837D-E; Plut. Demosthenes 5.4. Both may have picked up the reference from Dem. 35 40-43. His personal fortune: Davies, APF 7716. For rather speculative discussions on Isocrates’ school, see R. Johnson, “A Note on the Number of Isocrates’ Students,” AJP 78 (1957): 297-300; idem, “Isocrates’ Method of Teaching,” AJP 80 (1959): 25-36. Cf. Jaeger, Paideia, 111.46-70.
29 Wilcox, “Scope,” and “Isocrates’ Fellow Rhetoricians,” also discusses the close relationship between the schools of rhetoric of the fourth-century and the fifth-century sophists; cf. Jaeger, Paideia, III. 102-103. Demosthenes himself may have taught rhetoric, which would help to explain the relatively large number of Assembly speeches he published: Blass, AB, III. 1.34-35; Adams, “Demosthenes Pamphlets,” 11 with n. 2.
30 Pilz, Rhetor, 13; Wilcox, “Scope,” esp. 128-31; Bolgar, “Training,” 38-40. Wilcox, “Isocrates’ Fellow Rhetoricians,” 175, 182-84, rather grudgingly admits that some forensic oratory must have been taught in the schools, but he suggests that even that would be mostly for political action.
31 See Bolgar, “Training,” 42-47, who decries the failure of both the philosophical and rhetorical schools to produce students who could form an effective ruling elite. See also M. S. Warman, “Plato and Persuasion,” Greece and Rome 30 (1983): 48-54.
32 E.g., Haussoullier, Vie municipale, 133; Hopper, Basis, 16.
33 Whitehead, Demes, 236-41 and esp. 315-24; cf. Osborne, Demos, 83-87, who fails to prove that the deme was the “unavoidable channel for political activity” (189). Cf. above, 1.c.6.
34 By “overtly politically active citizen” I refer to those who fulfill the criteria for inclusion on Hansen’s list, below m.n.35. I do not intend to imply that citizens who were not “overtly active” were apathetic or uninterested in politics. To the contrary, I would suggest that a great many citizens who never addressed the Assembly, served as generals, or brought a public legal action, nonetheless regularly attended the Assemblies and sat as jurors, partook in all the other normal activities of a citizen, and cared deeply about their polis.
35 Hansen, “Rhetores and Strategen," a total of 368 names. Cf. the less inclusive lists of Cloché, “Hommes politiques”; Roberts, “Athens’ Politicians,” which are restricted to individuals I would describe as politicians or political experts.
16 The general tendency of the wealthy to be active in city politics is mirrored by their tendency to be active at the deme level, as proposers and receivers of honors from their demesmen—although not as demarchs or other regular deme magistrates. See Whitehead, Demes, 236-41, “Competitive Outlay”; Osborne, Demos, 66-68, 83-87. The latter’s conclusion (68) that “still in the fourth-century political power lay effectively with a rather restricted and wealthy social group” is, however, not warranted.
17 Full time: Demosthenes (19.226) describes politicians as “those who live their lives for you and covet your honors.” Cf. Larsen, “Judgment,” 8; Jones, AD, 55; Perlman, “Politicians,” 333-36 with n. 38; Finley AE, 37 and PAW, 37. For an assessment of the ways by which a lower-class Athenian might climb to a position of wealth and political influence, see Rhodes, “Political Activity,” 142-44.
38 Cf. Osborne, “Law in Action,” esp. 42-43.
39 See MacKendrick, Athenian Aristocracy, 14-15 (Hegesandros and Hegesippus), 22-23 (Lycurgus), index s.nn. (Demosthenes and Androtion).
40 See Roberts, “Athens’ Politicians,” who certainly shows that, pace Gomme, “Working,” 16, Athenian politicians often held offices in the course of their careers.
41 Cf. Aesch. 1.171 (discussed above, 111.B.2) and the testimonia cited in m.n.12. Rhodes, CommAP, 511, discusses the Dinarchus passage, concluding that the requirements are “probably survivals from the archaic state,” although he also notes that “a law concerning ρήτορες is not likely to be earlier than the end of the fifth century.” Hansen, “History of the Athenian Constitution,” 62, agrees with Rhodes’ discussion of this passage.
42 Cf. Dem. 23.184 and Hansen, “Rhetores and Stratēgoi," for other testimonia. Hansen, “ ‘Politicians’,” suggests that the “politicians” (a term he would prefer not to use) of Athens were the rhetores (construed constitutionally) and stratēgoi. Cf. Perlman, “Politicians,” 353-54, who suggests that public opinion saw the orators as holding “a position similar or identical with that of the strategi.”
43 Hansen, “ ‘Politicians’,” 49—52, emphasizes the “sharp” distinction between the roles of rhetores and stratēgoi.
44 Cf. Lys. 14.21; Dem. 12.19. Aeschines is making a pun on sunēgoroi: character witnesses. On the generally close cooperation between rhetores and stratēgoi, see Perlman, “Politicians,” 347-48; Hansen, “ ‘Politicians’,” 52—55. On character witnesses at Athenian trials, see Harrison, Law, 11.158-60; Humphreys, “Social Relations,” esp. 335-38 (rhetores and stratēgoi as sunēgoroi).
45 The best recent study of fourth-century political groups is Strauss, AAPW, esp. 11—14. Among other useful discussions, see, for example, J. de Romilly, “Les modérés Athéniens vers le milieu de IVe siècle: Echos et concordances,” REG 67 (1954): 327-54; Cloché, “Hommes politiques”; Sealey, “Athens after the Social War,” “Callistratos”; Perlman, “Politicians,” 349-53, and “Athenian Democracy and the Revival of Athenian Imperial Expansion at the Beginning of the Fourth Century B.C.,” CPh 63 (1968): 257-67; P. Harding, “Androtion’s Political Career,” Historia 25 (1976): 186-200; Roberts, Accountability, 55-83; Rhodes, “On Labelling.” Humphreys, Family, 2-3, notes the relative unimportance of kinship and personal friendship in democratic politics.
46 Finley, “Athenian Demagogues,” 15, cf. PAW, 63-64.
47 E.g., Lys. 14.23; Dem. 21.139-40, 208-10, 213, 23.206; Aesch. 3.188, 255; Din. 1.99; cf. below, vu.F. 1. Demosthenes’ famous comment (2.29) to the effect that the Athenians conduct their politics by “symmories,” each led by an orator with a stratēģos under him and three hundred others to do the shouting, must be read in this light and in light of the ideal of homonoia: below VII.B; cf. also Montgomery, Way to Chaeronea, 23-25. Recently, the group-politics model has been questioned; see esp. Meier’s stimulating essay, “Les groupements politiques dans l’antiquité classique,” in Anthropologie, 45-62. Meier argues that the political identification of the Athenians made parties unnecessary and undesirable, so that factions were always seen in a negative light.
48 E.g., Aristot. Rhet. 1404a1-8, Pol. 1291b29-1292a38; Plato Republic 493a-d. Cleon was often considered to have been the originator of this evil: see II.n.91. Among modern discussions see Sattler, “Conceptions of Ethos"; Solmsen, “Aristotle”; Wilcox, “Scope,” 145-48; J. de Romilly, Magic and Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), 25-32, 37-43 (Plato on rhetoric); Arnhart, Aristotle. Cf. ancient criticisms of rhetoric as flattery of the people: I.E, VII.E.4.
49 See Finley, Ancient History, 93 with n. 21, for bibliography. Weber’s charismatic model for Athenian leadership is accepted by Montgomery, Way to Chaeronea, 92-93. See also Michels, Political Parties, 64-65, 93-102.
50 Finley, “Max Weber and the Greek City-State,” in Ancient History, 88—103: quotes are from 98-99, 103. For a discussion of “instrumental” (instructional/informational) and “expressive” (emotional) communication, see Riley and Riley, “Mass Communication,” 571-72.
51 Adapted from Dem. 24.149-51 by Lipsius, Recht und Rechtsverfahren, 152-53 n. 56; cf. Bonner and Smith, Administration, 11.152-56; Maio, “Politeia," 43.
52 Aristot. Rhet., esp. 1355b25-1358a35, and Book 2, passim. Cf. Sattler, “Conceptions of Ethos," esp. 63—64; Arnhart, Aristotle, esp. 9-10, 112—14. Solmsen, “Aristotle,” points out that before Aristotle’s late fourth-century treatise, ethical arguments had not been subjected to independent analysis, since the emphasis of rhetoricians was on parts of the speech, rather than on the abstract nature of persuasion.
53 Luhmann, Differentiation, esp. 139-42, 146. For other aspects of role differentiation at Athens, see Humphreys, Anthropology, 250-65, Family, 21: “. . . the society of classical Athens was only at the beginning of the process of differentiation leading to complex modern societies. . . .”
54 Holmes, “Aristippus,” tends, I believe, to overemphasize the undifferentiated character of polis society; see Ober, “Aristotle’s Political Sociology.”
55 Cf. Sattler, “Conceptions of Ethos," 55-56, 60-61; Kennedy, Art of Persuasion, 229. See, in general, Burke, “Character Denigration.”
56 See esp. Strauss, AAPW, 70-86; Hansen, “Demographic Reflections,” Demography and Democracy, with literature cited; cf. I.n.66. Among older accounts Gomme, Population, idem, “The Population of Athens Again,” JHS 79 (1959): 61—68; and Mossé, Fin de la démocratie, 139—85, are still useful. Cf. above, I.C.5.
57 Davies, APF, xx-xxx, WPW, 9-37.
58 Davies, WPW, 6-14, 28-35, esp. 28 (one talent for leisure class status, citing Dem. 42.22), 34-35: ca. 1,200 in the leisure class. Cf. Mossé, “Symmories,” 37; and E. Ruschenbusch in ZPE 31 (1978): 275—84, who suggest that there were about 1,200 liturgy-payers, and that these were identical to the eisphora-payers; P. J. Rhodes, “Problems in Athenian Eisphora and Liturgies,” AJAH 7 (1982): 1-19, esp. 8, who argues that there were about 1,200 liturgy-payers and somewhat more than this, perhaps 2,000, eisphora-payers. On the organization of the eisphora, see below, v.A.3.
59 Ste. Croix, “Demosthenes’ TIMHMA,” 33, accepted as very plausible the figure of ca. 6,000 citizen eisphora-payers, which had been suggested by Jones, AD, 9-10. Brun, Eisphora, 19-22, cf. 64-65, 68-73, supposes that there were some 6,000-9,000 eisphora-payers (including metics), that responsibility extended to those with fortunes of 2,000-2,500 drachmas, and that therefore most eisphora-payers could not be considered rich. The figure of ca. 6,000 payers is accepted by Markle, “Jury pay,” 282, who attempts (295-97) to demonstrate that these 6,000 citizens (and their families) would be leisure class. Markle argues that a fortune of 2,500 drachmas would free a family from the necessity of laboring. This seems to me quite impossible. Thompson, “Athenian Investor,” calculates, quite optimistically, that investment in land could return up to 8 percent per annum. Investments in slaves, mines, and overseas trade were more profitable but also more risky, and land surely formed the bulk of the property of most Athenians between the lowest and highest classes. Eight percent per annum would yield 480 dr. on a talent’s worth of land; 200 dr. on 2,500 dr. worth of land. But a good part of the family’s fortune would probably not be financially “productive” (e.g., the house and the land it sat on, property given for dowries) and considerable reserves would need to be retained for emergencies (e.g., legal entanglements, crop failures, tax assessments). It seems unlikely that a family with a fortune of a talent (6,000 dr.) would realize a disposable income of much over a drachma a day. It hardly seems likely that an income of substantially less than this would qualify a family as leisure class, since the expenditure by aspirants to the leisure class for food and other consumed goods would presumably be well above the subsistence level (e.g., wheat rather than barley, meat, better qualities of wine and oil, more and better clothing; cf. Lys. 32.20: a guardian who reckoned the trophē of two boys and a girl at five obols a day—albeit his opponent claims this was an inflated figure). All this suggests that the speaker of Dem. 42.22 was not exaggerating when he claimed that to live on a fortune of 4,500 dr. is not easy.
60 Pace Gabrielsen, Remuneration, 126, the tendency of elite writers to equate the penētes with the demos as a whole is not significant in this context; cf. below, V.A.I on the terminology of wealth.
61 On hoplite status, see Jones, AD, 142 n. 50. On subsistence farming, see Ober, FA, 19—28, with literature cited; G. Audring, “Über Grundeigentum und Landwirtschaft in Attika wahrend des 4. Jh. v.u.Z.,” Klio 56 (1974): 445-56; cf. Ste. Croix, CSAGW, 208—18. The average grain production of Attica, a key factor in the subsistence-farming question, is often grossly underestimated; see P. Garnsey, “Grain for Athens,” in Cartledge and Harvey, edd., Crux: Essays Presented to Ste. Croix, 62-75.
62 See, in general, Y. Garlan, “Le travail libre en Grèce ancienne,” in Garnsey, ed., Non—Slave Labour, 6—22; and E. C. Welskopf, “Free Labour in the City of Athens,” in ibid., 23-25; cf. A. Fuks, “Kolonòs místhios: Labour Exchange in Ancient Athens,” Eranos 49 (1951): 71-73; Wood, “Agricultural Slavery,” 23-24. Wages for skilled laborers at the end of the fifth century seem to average about one drachma per day. See R. H. Randall, “The Erechtheum Workmen,” AJA 57 (1953). 199-210, which is similar to military pay at the time (Thuc. 3.17.3). In the late fourth century, wages seem to be in the range of 1½ to 2½ dr. per day; see Markle, “Jury Pay,” 293; Rhodes, CommAP, 691. The figures are problematic in that they are widely separated chronologically, are in the context of work on religious monuments (hence some workers may accept lower wages as a sort of liturgy), and are specific to the building trades.
63 AP 49.4; Lys. 24; cf. Rhodes, CommAP, 570; Hansen, Demography and Democracy, 18-19; Buchanan, Theorika, 1-3, 38-48.
64 Osborne, Demos, 68-72, 88. The suggestion of Hansen, “Political Activity,” that there may have been a reassessment of bouleutic quotas in ca. 403/2, is not convincing. Ox carts as basic form of transport: A. Burford, “Heavy Transport in Classical Antiquity,” Economic History Review, 2nd series 13 (1960): 1-18; speed: D. W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1978), 14 with n. 15 (ca. 2 m.p.h. and generally good for only about 5 hrs. per day).
65 According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ hupothesis to Lysias 34, only 5,000 Athens were landless in 403. Of course, not all landed Athenians lived in the country, but many did. The theory that by the early fourth century the land of Attica was concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy citizens, most fully elaborated by Mossé, Fin de la démocratie, 39-67, 133, has now been discarded by most scholars; see Ober, FA, 20-22, with literature cited. Hansen, “Political Activity,” 234-35, argues rather tentatively for a migration of significant proportions to the city, but he admits that quantification is impossible.
66 The extent to which ancient Greek economies were monetarized is not known, but I tend to agree with scholars who suppose that they retained many primitive features. See, in general, Finley, AE, esp. 123-49, and the essays collected in Trade in the Ancient Economy.
67 Charcoal burners: Aristoph. Acharnions (chorus); cf. And. F III. 1 (Maidment). The wealthy Phaenippus, owner of the largest known estate in fourth-century Attica, used six donkeys to ship wood (possibly timber, but more probably for fuel) to the city, from which his opponent claimed he gained a profit of more than twelve dr. per day: Dem. 42.7, with R. Meiggs, Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Oxford, 1982), 205-206.
68 For the calculations, see Ober, FA, 24—25; cf. the similar figures arrived at by Markle, “Jury Pay,” 277-280: cost of grain per family = ca. 1.65 obols. For a fuller discussion of ancient grain consumption, see L. Foxhall and H. A. Forbes, “Σιτομετρεία: The Role of Grain as a Staple Food in Classical Antiquity,” Chiron 12 (1982): 41-90.
69 Hansen, “How Often,” and Hansen and Mitchel, “Number of Ecclesiai,” argue that in the mid-fourth century the number of ekklēsiai per prytany was fixed at four (for a few years before this at three), and no more than this could legally be called. Contra: Rhodes, CommAP, 521-22; Markle, “Jury Pay,” 274 with n. 18; Edward M. Harris, “How Often Did the Athenian Assembly Meet?” CQ 36 (1986): 363-77. Hansen replies to Harris in “How Often Did the Athenian Ekklesia Meet. A Reply,” GRBS 28 (1987): 35-50.
70 Excavations on the Pnyx: H. A. Thompson et al. in Hesperia 1 (1932): 90-217, 5 (1936): 51-200, 12 (1943): 269-383. On the dates of the three periods, see summaries in Thompson and Wycherley, Agora, XIX.48-52; H. A. Thompson, “The Pnyx in Models,” Hesperia Suppl. 19 (1982), 134-47; R. A. Moysey, “The Thirty and the Pnyx,” AJA 35 (1981): 31-37; Stanton and Bicknell, “Voting in Tribal Groups.” Numbers in attendance: Hansen, “How Many,” “Athenian Ecclesia and the Assembly-Place”; Stanton and Bicknell, “Voting in Tribal Groups,” 68—69. Re“ stricted entry: Hansen, “Athenian Ecclesia and the Assembly-Place,” 243-44, “The Construction of Pnyx II and the Introduction of Assembly Pay,” CM 37 (1986): 8998; Krentz, The Thirty, 63; contra: Rhodes, “Athenian Democracy,” 307. Meetings in the theater of Dionysus: AP 42.4 (regularly to review the ephebes); Thuc. 8.93-94 (extraordinarily in 411/10); cf. W. A. MacDonald, The Political Meeting Places of the Greeks (Baltimore, 1943), 47-61.
71 Osborne, Demos, 65, 91, emphasizes the significance of the fact that not all citizens attended regularly, but contrast Raaflaub, “Freien Burgers Recht,” 39-41.
72 Tribal seating: Staveley, Greek and Roman Voting, 81-82; cf. Boegehold, “Toward a Study,” esp. 374. Contra: Hansen, “How Did the Athenian Ecclesia Vote?” 135-36. Stanton and Bicknell, “Voting in Tribal Groups” (a reply to Hansen), argue for subdivision by tribe and trittys in Pnyx I and II and by tribe in Pnyx III. Stanton and Bicknell’s arguments (80—86) for trittys divisions in Pnyx II seem to me inadequate. Entry gates: Hansen, “Two Notes on the Pnyx.”
73 Introduction and amount of ecclesiastic pay: AP 41.3; see also Markle, “Jury Pay,” 273-76; above, II.G. In the late 390s, when Aristophanes wrote the Ecclesiazusae (see lines 183-88, 289—310, 383-95; date: Strauss, AAPW, 143 with 149 n. 85) payment was limited to a certain number who arrived early. On the rise in the amount of pay, see also below, 111.E.4.
74 See, in general, Staveley, Greek and Roman Voting, 83-87; Boegehold, “Toward a Study”; Hansen, “How Did the Athenian Ecclesia Vote?”
75 For differing views on the evolution of eisangelia procedure in the fifth and fourth centuries see Hansen, Eisangelia, esp. 37 with n. 2; Rhodes, “ΕΙΣΑΓΓΕΛΙΑ”; Roberts, Accountability, 15-17, 21-24; Hansen, “Eisangelia. A Reply”; Carawan, “Eisangelia and Euthyna.”
76 Hansen, “Duration.”
77 On ‘demos’ as a synonym for ekklēsia, see Hansen, “Demos, Ecclesia,” 130-31. On the question of the sovereignty of the Assembly, see below, 111.E.4, VII.C.
78 The fullest discussion of this point is Ernst Kluwe, “Die soziale Zusammensetzung der athenischen Ekklesia und ihr Einfluss auf politische Entscheidungen,” Klio 58 (1976): 295-333, “Nochmals zum Problem: Die soziale . . . Entscheidungen,” Klio 59 (1977): 45-81, who argues for elite domination. Cf. Gomme, “Working,” 12; Finley, “Athenian Demagogues,” 10-11; Rhodes, Boule, 79.
79 For example, Jones, AD, 35-36; Perlman, “Political Leadership,” 163.
80 Markle, “Jury Pay,” esp. 277-81. He appears to me to underestimate living costs over and above the cost of grain. On grain his figures seem to me very reasonable; sec above, III .n.68. For a close analysis of the various factors which made up the cost of living in late eighteenth-century Philadelphia, see Smith, “Material Lives.”
81 The mother of the litigant in Dem. 57 sold ribbons in the agora; the same litigant notes that in times of economic difficulty even upper-class women might serve as wetnurses; cf. discussion of this passage below, VI.D.2. “Socrates” recommended that a friend who had lost his fortune put the women in his house to work as weavers (Xen. Mem. 2.7); and Aristotle (Pol. 1300a4-8, 1322b37-1323a6) implicitly links women’s labor (or at least the need to leave the home) with aporia. Cf. Lacey, Family, 170-71; Keuls, Reign of the Phallus, 229-64, esp. 231-32. Comparisons from other pre-industrial societies suggest that women’s labor is important to lower-class households. For urban women see Smith, “Material Lives,” esp. 201, who demonstrates that among the unskilled laborers of late eighteenth-century Philadelphia, “women and children rarely could earn their keep, but as a supplement to the wages of the household head, their income was essential to the maintenance of the family.” For rural women, see R. O. and P. Whyte, The Women of Rural Asia (Boulder, Colorado, 1982), 159—77, esp. 159; “The lower the socio-economic level of the family, the greater the proportion of total income contributed by women. . . . The contribution of Asian women is often in the form of unpaid labour—work on subsistence plots which would otherwise be beyond the capacity of the husband alone”; ibid., 160: women also contribute cash to the family budget “either from the sale of grain received as payment for labour on large landholdings ... or small sums derived from a multiplicity of secondary pursuits such as weaving, sewing, matmaking. ...” I am indebted to Michelle Maskiell for this reference and for her comments on the economic role of women in pre-industrial societies.
82 Preference for community work (e.g., serving as a magistrate) over labor for an individual: Raaflaub, “Democracy, Oligarchy,” 531-32; cf. below, VI.D. Markle, “Jury Pay,” 296-97, points out that even skilled laborers would not work every day.
83 A wealthy citizen might lease a room in a private home as a pied à terre for his visits to town: Ant. 1.14.
84 As always with Aristophanes, one must allow for comic exaggeration and distortion; cf. Dover, GPM, 20-22. But in this case surely the humor of the reversal of sexual roles would be blunted by the introduction of a second level of improbability. The “turnabout” of Assemblywomen would become absurd if rural Assemblymen were already regarded as oddities.
85 On the question of rural residents and political participation, see also Strauss, AAPW, 59—60, 69 n. 97, with literature cited; Carter, Quiet Athenian, 76-98; Osborne, Demos, esp. 184-85; Hansen, “Political Activity,” 233-38. Wood, “Agricultural Slavery,” 13-15, argues (against Jameson, “Agriculture and Slavery”) that peasants who are not in debt to landlords have considerable nonproductive time that is available for civic pursuits. I do not think that Aristotle’s (Pol. 1319a4-19) discussion of the “farmer’s democracy,” which he considered better than the extreme Athenian-type democracy—in part because farmers would tend to come to the city less frequently—is apropos, since Aristotle was discussing a hypothetical idealized state which is specifically contrasted to the existing Athenian order.
86 Scorn for the Assembly and its methods; above, 111.D.2. “Imagined society”: above, I.C.6; cf. Loraux, Invention, esp. 336-38.
87 Laughing and shouting down speakers: Plato Euthyphro 3b-c; Plut. Demosthenes 6.3; Aesch. 2.4. On symbouleutic oratory generally: Kennedy, “Focusing of Arguments,” Art of Persuasion, 203—206; discussion of Demosthenes symbouleutic speeches: Montgomery, Way to Chaeronea, 39-63.
88 See Rhodes, Boule, 3-4; de Laix, Probouleusis, 147; and above, II.n.77. Aeschines (3.3-4) inveighed against the evil men who insinuated themselves into the Council and secured for themselves the right of proedria; cf. Dem. 22.39.
89 IG II2 233. Cf. Rhodes, Boule, 14 n. 9. Perlman, “Politicians,” 344, suggests this decree, which honored Phanodemos, author of an Atthis, represented a vote in favor of a political group, but there is no evidence for this.
90 Bouleutērion and associated buildings: Thompson and Wycherley, Agora, XIV.29-47. Meeting days and pay: AP 62.2; Rhodes, Boule, 13-14, 30. Hansen, “Political Activity,” 229, cites Dem. 22.36, to argue that “quite a number” of bouleutai did not attend meetings.
91 J. Sundwall, Epigraphische Beiträge zur sozial-politische Geschichte Athens. Klio Beiheft 4 (Leipzig, 1906); Davies, APF, xix-xx, WPW, 3-6.
92 E.g., de Laix, Probouleusis, 149-53; Daviero-Rocchi, “Transformations,” 39, 44. The attempt to demonstrate by quantitative analysis that “activity in the boule came to rest with well-known and generally wealthy men” by Osborne, Demos, 66-72, 81 (quote: 68—69), is not convincing. His sample is much too small to yield a statistically significant number. The tendency to use statistical analysis improperly causes flaws in several of the arguments in this otherwise stimulating study; cf. Ober, “Review of Whitehead, Demes and Osborne, Demos," 73-75.
93 Limited evidence for two-term bouleutai: Rhodes, “Ephebi,” 192 n. 7; Osborne, Demos, 45. Percentages of citizens who served: Gomme, “Working,” 20; Woodhead, “ΙΣΗΓΟΡΙΑ,” 133; Osborne, Demos, 91 (“most citizens” must have served at least once), 237 n. 56 (ca. 70 percent of citizens served); E. Ruschenbusch, “Die soziale Zusammensetzung des Rates der 500 in Athen im 4. Jh.,” ZPE 35 (1979): 177—80, “Epheben, Bouleuten und die Bürgerzahl von Athen um 330 v. Chr.,” ZPE 41 (1981): 103-105, “Noch einmal die Bürgerzahl Athens um 330 v. Chr.,” ZPE 44 (1981): 110—112; followed by Hansen, “Political Activity,” 229—30. Rhodes, “Ephebi,” argues against Ruschenbusch’s assertion that due to demographic factors all qualified citizens over thirty were automatically candidates and their names put into the lottery. Rhodes (ibid., 193) agrees with Ruschenbusch that the boule was de facto open to all citizens over thirty, but he still believes that there was some choice involved and that “it seems likely that there was a somewhat higher proportion of rich men in the boule than in the citizen body as a whole.” Note that Rhodes’ position is far from the outright dominance by the rich that others have assumed must have pertained.
94 Rhodes, Boule, 3-6, quote: 215.
95 Types of legal trials and investigations that fell under the purview of the Areopagus: Wallace, Areopagos, chapter 4.ii; size and composition of the Areopagus in the fourth century: ibid., chapter 4.i, iv (an average of perhaps two hundred or fewer men, with an average age of perhaps ca. 47.5 years, who were not paid for their service); social status of Areopagites: ibid, chapter 4.iv. Comments by litigants being tried by the Areopagites, to the effect that they were more just, more worthy (and so on) than other judges (e.g., Lys. 3.2, [6].14), are not of much evidential value.
96 Number of days: M. H. Hansen, “How Often Did the Athenian Dicasteria Meet?” GRBS 20 (1979): 243-46.
97 Differences between public and private cases: Hansen, “Rhetores and Strategoi,” 152—55; Sealey, Athenian Republic, 54—55; Osborne, “Law in Action,” 48—52. Length of trials: Harrison, Law, 11.47, 161-63.
98 Number of dikastai: Aristoph. Wasps 662; AP 24.3; IG I2 84 line 20; cf. Rhodes, CommAP, 302-303, 702-703. Jury selection: AP 63-69, cf. Harrison, Law, 11.44; Maio, “Politeia,” 29, 44; Rhodes, CommAP, 697-735. Hansen, “Initiative and Decision,” 367, calculates that on an average “court day” some 1,500 to 2,000 jurors would be selected. Pay for jurymen: AP 27.2-5, 62.2; Aristot. Pol. 1274a8; cf. Harrison, Law, 11.48—49, 156; Rhodes, CommAP, 339-40. Jury size: Harrison, Law, 11.47; MacDowell, Law, 36; Hansen, “Rhetores and Strategoi,” 154, Eisangelia, 10 n. 14. For a summary of the limited archaeological evidence for law courts in the Agora area and interpretation of the artifacts identified as courtroom equipment, see J. Travlos “The Lawcourt ΈΠΙ ΠΑΛΑΑΔΙΩΙ,” Hesperia 43 (1974): 500-11; A. L. Boegehold “Philokleon’s Court,” Hesperia 36 (1967): 111-20; Thompson and Wycherley, Agora, XIV.52—72; Garner, Law and Society, 39—41.
99 Jurors mostly well-to-do: Jones, AD, 36-37; Dover, GPM, 34-35; contra: Adkins, “Problems,” 156-57 with n. 7; Markle, “Jury Pay.”
100 AP 41.3 associates only the introduction of the ekklēsiastikon, not the rise in the rate above three obols, to a need to attract citizens to meetings of the Assembly; cf. Aristoph. Ecclesiazusae 185-89. High revenues: Humphreys, “Lycurgus,” 204-205; Burke, “Lycurgan Finances.” The theoric distributions for festivals provided another way of distributing surplus: Din. 1.56; Hyp. 3.26; cf. Markle, “Jury Pay,” 290; and below, III.n.116.
101 Markle, “Jury Pay,” 285.
102 Osborne, “Law in Action,” esp. 52-53.
103 Hansen, “Demos, Ecclesia,” 131-35. For the traditional view that the jury in essence was the demos see, e.g., Larsen, “Judgment,” 3; Finley, DAM, 80; Mac-Dowell, Law, 40. The “locus of sovereignty” problem assumes a narrow definition of political power as unitary state power. For a cogent critique of this conception and a discussion of the historical origins (in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries) of the notions of unitary sovereignty and the separation of powers, see Bowles and Gintis, Democracy and Capitalism, esp. 22-24, 167 with n. 27.
104 For an analysis of the problem of relating Dinarchus’ comment to the heliastic oath, see Harrison, Law, 11.48.
105 E.g., Lys. 12.94; Aesch. 3.8; Din. 1.107, 3-16; Lyc. 1.4.
106 On the question of representationality, cf. the comments of Rhodes, CommAP, 318, 545, with reply by Hansen, AECA, 159-60; above all, Maio, “Politeia,” esp. 24: adjudication was in general the “creature and servant” of the politeia because courts were composed of citizens who acted according to the norms of the general political culture, and 30: the people’s courts were “bodies of citizens that represent the polis in both appearance and substance and thus legitimately exercise its sovereign power.”
107 On the tendency of jurors to demand good speeches and to interrupt the speaker, see, for example, Lyc. 1.52; Plato Euthyphro 9b-c; cf. V. Bers, “Dikastic Thorubos,” in Cartledge and Harvey, edd., Crux: Essays Presented to Ste. Croix, 1-15.
108 Cited and translated by Ehrenberg, People of Aristophanes, 354.
109 D. R. Jordan, “A Survey of Greek Defixiones Not Included in the Special Corpora,” GRBS 26 (1985): 164 no. 48 (ca. 323 B.C.). The wealthy politicians are Xenocles (Davies, APF 11234) and Deinomenes (Davies, APF 3188). I am indebted to David Jordan, who alerted me to the existence of this document and offered a copy of his (unpublished) improved reading of it.
110 On prostitutes at symposia, see Keuls, Reign of the Phallus, 160-68. Flute girls: C. G. Starr, “An Evening with the Flute Girls, Parolo del Passato 183 (1978): 401-410.
111 Good: e.g., Lys. 21.19; Dem. 18.10; evil: Is. 3.40; Dem. 19.199-200, 226; Din. 2.8; cf. also Lys. 29.6; Is. 3.19; Dem. 21.149.
112 Cf. above, I.n.76. Haussouilier, Vie municipale, 179-80, takes the topos literally and hence makes an overly direct equation between the experience of deme and polis.
113 Cf. below, IV.B.4. On the importance of gossip and scandal in preserving and enforcing adherence to group values and in promoting group cohesion, see Max Gluckman, “Gossip and Scandal,” Current Anthropology 4 (1963): 307-16. Starr, Individual and Community, 53, notes that a high level of concern with conformity typified the early polis and cites the lyric poets for the pitiless censure by the citizens of behavior deviating from the norm. He also (113 n. 1) cites J. Du Boulay, Portrait of a Greek Mountain Village (Oxford, 1974), 181-82, 200-211, on the role of gossip as a means of enforcing conformity in modern Greek communities. Cf. also Garner, Law and Society, 16-18; Ostwald, From Popular Sovereignty, esp. 133 (speaking of the late fifth century): “. . . the laws established by the sovereign people contributed to setting a moral standard for society. . . . The sovereign people sets the norm not only for political but also for moral conduct.”
114 On the tendency of modern governments to establish buffers between public opinion and the decision-making process, see G. E and K. Lang, The Battle for Public Opinion: The President, the Press, and the Polls During Watergate (New York, 1983), 10-25.
115 On the Dionysia, see, in general, Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, 57-125. On traveling troupes in the demes, see ibid., 52; Ghiron-Bistagne, Recherches, 193-94.
116 See Buchanan, Theorika, 28-93, with the review by Ste. Croix in CR 14 (1964): 190-92. On the date of introduction, cf. Rhodes, Boule, 105 with n. 6, CommAP, 492, 514.
117 A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens (Oxford, 1946), esp. 140-41 (capacity); Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary, 537-52. On the seating arrangements: Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, 269-72.
118 Winkler, “Ephebes’ Song.”
119 On the sociopolitical significance of theater seating, see Webster, Theatre Production, 2; Winkler, “Ephebes’ Song,” 30-32; Small, “Social Correlations”; I am indebted to David Small for discussion of this problem. Competitions and judging: Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, esp. 95-99; Maurice Pope, “Athenian Festival Judges—Seven, Five, or However Many,” CQ 36 (1986): 322-26.
120 For the complexities involved with representation of society in drama see, for example, Vernant, “Tensions”; Segal, “Greek Tragedy”; Zeitlin, “Thebes”; H. P. Foley, “The ‘Female Intruder’ Reconsidered: Women in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae," CPh (1982): 1-21.
121 See Aristot. Poetics 1452a, 1453a, 1455a: tragedy is based on a shocking and terrible misfortune suffered by some apparently fortunate person. Cf. Segal, “Greek Tragedy,” 66-67; Salkever, “Tragedy,” 297, 300.
122 Prizes: Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, 90. Professionalization: Niall W. Slater, “Vanished Players: Two Classical Reliefs and Theatre History,” GRBS 26 (1985): 333-44; relationship of the citizens’ experience to the recognition of the actor: Ghiron-Bistagne, Recherches, 160.
123 The continuity of the experience of the political arenas and the theater is emphasized by Dem. 21.226-27. Cf. Rowe, “Portrait,” esp. 404-406; Buxton, Persuasion, esp. 17—18; Garner, Law and Society, 82-83, 95-130. Sattler, “Conceptions of Ethos," 59, notes that the discussion of ēthos in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, with its concentration on ways in which the orator reveals his character through his speech, is closely related not only to his general ethical doctrine (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 1113b) but to the discussion in the Poetics (1450a29—33) of the ways in which a dramatic character reveals his ēthos through his argument (dianoia). North, “Use of Poetry,” 6-7, also notes the frequency of cross-references between the Poetics and the Rhetoric, especially on the subject of metaphor, and points out the commonness of quotes from Euripides in the Aristotelian Rhetoric to Alexander. She also notes that in the Rhetoric, Aristotle uses many quotations from tragedy and that he assumes that knowledge of poetry is “indispensable” to the orator. Salkever, “Tragedy,” 293-94, goes so far as to suggest that Aristotle considered tragedy to be a branch of rhetoric, Cf also below, IV.D, VI.D.3.
124 Cf. Dorjahn, “Remarks”; Ghiron-Bistagne, Recherches, 158-61. On the term tritagōnistēs, see Kindstrand, Stylistic Evaluation, 20 with n. 15.
125 The actors Aristodemos and Neoptolemos, for example, had important diplomatic careers: Dorjahn, “Remarks,” 228; Ghiron-Bistagne, Recherches, 156-57. A modern parallel might be sought in the careers of Indian politician-film actors; see C. D. Gupta and J. Hoberman, Film Comment 23.3 (May-June 1987): 20-24.
126 Aristotle (Rhet. 1403b24-26, 1413b8-14) recognized that there was a certain similarity between poetic and rhetorical delivery; cf. Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, 168. The connection between rhetoric and tragedy was later incorporated into Hellenistic rhetorical theory: Cicero de Oratore 1.128 suggested that the orator should possess the vox tragoedorum and was reputed to have studied with two actors (Plut. Cicero 5); cf. North, “Use of Poetry,” 11 with n. 34.