Introduction

With the rise of persuasive public speech as a distinctive field of endeavour in Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries bc, Greek political thought becomes deeply involved with democratic Athenian political practice and with Athenian legislative and judicial institutions. Significant political ideas and a distinctive form of political/ethical reasoning were developed by Athens’ practising political orators (rhētores); evidence for their ideas and style of reasoning survives in their preserved public speeches. Certain of the political ideas developed by practising orators challenged, and were in turn challenged by, teachers of formal rhetoric (rhētorikoi); this critical rhetorical tradition survives in some of the speeches of Isocrates. The political ideas and reasoning propounded by rhētores and the counter-arguments of the rhētorikoi in turn provided an important part of the intellectual context for the development of the political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.

The Athenian rhētores are noteworthy as the primary surviving source of ancient political writing that is genuinely sympathetic to democracy. The speeches of Athens’ public orators were written to influence large public bodies, especially the citizen assembly (ekklēsia) and people’s courts (dikastēria); another important venue was the (nearly) annual epitaphios: a public oration spoken over Athenians who had died in battle during the previous year. When addressing democratic audiences, composed primarily of ordinary citizens, the Athenian speaker necessarily paid close attention to the established social and political notions, opinions, and beliefs (i.e. the political ideology) common to most members of the Athenian citizen body (dēmos). Assembly and courtroom speakers who ignored or too overtly contravened their audiences’ deeply-entrenched ideological convictions were unlikely to win many votes.