Book contents
- Articulating Resistance under the Roman Empire
- Articulating Resistance under the Roman Empire
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction Articulating Resistance
- Part I Language and Identity
- Part II Genres of Literary Resistance
- Chapter 2 Courtroom Rhetoric in Imperial and Late Antique Philosophical Dialogues
- Chapter 3 Greek Declamation and the Art of Resistance
- Chapter 4 Plutarch’s Parallelism and Resistance
- Chapter 5 A Glitch in the Matrix
- Part III Identity Negotiation
- Part IV Religion and Resistance
- References
- Index
Chapter 2 - Courtroom Rhetoric in Imperial and Late Antique Philosophical Dialogues
from Part II - Genres of Literary Resistance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2022
- Articulating Resistance under the Roman Empire
- Articulating Resistance under the Roman Empire
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction Articulating Resistance
- Part I Language and Identity
- Part II Genres of Literary Resistance
- Chapter 2 Courtroom Rhetoric in Imperial and Late Antique Philosophical Dialogues
- Chapter 3 Greek Declamation and the Art of Resistance
- Chapter 4 Plutarch’s Parallelism and Resistance
- Chapter 5 A Glitch in the Matrix
- Part III Identity Negotiation
- Part IV Religion and Resistance
- References
- Index
Summary
Because dialogue represents philosophy happening in the context of interpersonal relationships, it is a natural place to investigate power dynamics, both displays of power and displays of resistance. But in literature, unlike in life, the power dynamics are completely within the control of one person, the author, who can script the situation as he chooses. In this chapter, I argue that there was a change in the rules of comportment found in literary dialogues between the first and fourth centuries CE that can be traced through paying close attention first to the appearance and then to the development of a new character in these discussions – a judge. A shared embrace of forensic rhetoric to express philosophical antagonism existed across changing modes of judgement in the Roman Empire. I argue that this forensic dialogic mode was introduced as a mode of sublimation of political energy, as a rerouting of resistance into a safer domain of scholastic antagonism.
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- Articulating Resistance under the Roman Empire , pp. 51 - 70Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023