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Once More, The Client/ Logographos Relationship1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

I. Worthington
I. Worthington
Affiliation:
The University of Tasmania
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Extract

Whilst Theophrastus (Char. 17.8) implies that the logographos had a great deal of control over the oral version of a forensic speech and what went into it,2 the part played by the logographos and the client in the content and circulation of the oration after oral delivery is controversial, and has attracted a fair share of attention.3 Sir Kenneth Dover argued that joint or composite authorship of the speech (i.e. client and logographos together) could take place, and that it was the client who could publish the speech after the trial and was free to include his own remarks.4 Thus, as Dover would have it, in the case of Lysias (and of other orators too if joint composition occurred), no unique style of that orator could be discerned in his speeches as we have them today. This composite authorship was first questioned by T. N. Winter,5 and denied even more vigorously by S. Usher,6 who argued that responsibility for a speech's later circulation lay only with the logographos, who also revised the speech as he saw fit.7 Their arguments, which nicely complement each other, are convincing enough on the evidence we have (although a case will be made below that in certain circumstances some, but probably not many, speeches appear to be the work of joint authorship). However, two other factors may be brought in as further support: the stylistic nature of the revised speech and the extent of literacy. The argument of this paper is that the composition of the final circulated speech was beyond the ability of the ordinary client and could only have been produced by the logographos.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , May 1993 , pp. 67 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1993

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References

2 ‘Should this man win a suit-at-law by a unanimous verdict, he is sure to find fault with his speechwriter for omitting so many of his pleas’ (Loeb translation of J. M. Edmonds).

3 On the role of the logographos and some consideration of the nature of his dealings with his client, see the succinct comments of Carey, C. and Reid, R. A., Demosthenes: Selected Private Speeches (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 13–18Google Scholar; cf. Kennedy, George, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton, 1963), pp. 127–9Google Scholar.

4 Dover, K. J., Lysias and the Corpus Lysiacum (Berkeley, 1968), pp. 148ffGoogle Scholar. – especially pp. 150–6 and 159–67.

5 Winter, T. N., ‘On the Corpus of Lysias’, CJ 69 (1973), 34–40Google Scholar.

6 Usher, S., ‘Lysias and his Clients’, GRBS 17 (1976), 31–40Google Scholar. Usher rather misrepresents Dover as believing that joint composition was a regular practice; in fact, Dover does not argue that all extant speeches were the product of joint composition, but that this could happen in some cases. See further below on Demosthenes 22 and 24.

7 Cf. Carey, and Reid, , op. cit., p. 16Google Scholar with n. 33, and Kennedy, , op. cit., p. 127Google Scholar, who takes something of a neutral line.

8 Symbouleutic speeches seem rarely to have been revised for circulation: Hansen, M. H., ‘Two Notes on Demosthenes' Symbouleutic Speeches’, Class, et Med. 35 (1984), 60–70Google Scholar (= The Athenian Ecclesia, ii (Copenhagen, 1989), pp. 286–96)Google Scholar; cf. Hudson-Williams, H. L., ‘Political Speeches in Athens’, CQ 2 1 (1951), 68–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Kennedy, , op. cit., pp. 203–6Google Scholar.

9 Clearly there must have been more orators who lived and worked in Athens over the course of nearly two centuries than the meagre number listed in the so-called ‘Canon of the Ten Attic Orators’.

10 On revision, see Worthington, Ian, ‘Greek Oratory, Revision of Speeches and the Problem of Historical Reliability’, Class, et Med. 42 (1991), 55–74Google Scholar.

11 Clients may also have sought the services of logographoi in other legal matters: [Dem.] 58.19–20 refers to the logographos Ctesicles, who arranged a settlement, and cf. Thuc. 8.61.1 on Antiphon.

12 Dover, , op. cit., p. 26Google Scholar.

13 See my A Historical Commentary on Dinarchus: Rhetoric and Conspiracy in Later Fourth-Century Athens (Ann Arbor, 1992), pp. 27ffGoogle Scholar. and Appendix 2.

14 For example, Dyck, A. R., “The Function and Persuasive Power of Demosthenes' Portrait of Aeschines in the Speech On the Crown”, G & R 2 32 (1985), 42–8Google Scholar, highlights parts of the structure of Demosthenes 18 which indicate the presence of the device. Cf. also the comments on the structure of Demosthenes' Against Leptines, On the Symmories and On the Crown of Kennedy, , op. cit., pp. 221–3 and 232–4Google Scholar, and also on Demosthenes, see my “The Authenticity of Demosthenes' Fourth Philippic”, Mnemosyne 44 (1991), 425–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The device is even evident in Isocrates' letters, as I hope to show elsewhere.

15 See Worthington, , ‘Greek Oratory, Revision of Speeches and the Problem of Historical Reliability’, 55–74Google Scholar.

16 On dicastic thorubos, see especially Bers, V., ‘Dikastic Thorubos’, in Essays…de Ste Croix = History of Political Thought 6 (1985), 1–15Google Scholar; cf. Demosthenes', Exordia 5. 1Google Scholar, 24.4 and 26.1, aimed at offsetting noise and interruption.

17 On my argument here see further, Worthington, , ‘Greek Oratory, Revision of Speeches and the Problem of Historical Reliability’, 62–3Google Scholar.

18 Cf. the remarks of Usher, , op. cit., pp. 37–8Google Scholar.

19 For a full bibliography of the literacy issue, see Harris, , Ancient Literacy, pp. 339–69Google Scholar.

20 Harvey, F. D., ‘Literacy in the Athenian Democracy’, REG 79 (1966), 585–635CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Burns, A., ‘Athenian Literacy in the Fifth Century B.C.’ J. Hist. Ideas 42 (1981), 371–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Harris, E. M., ‘When is a Sale Not a Sale? The Riddle of Athenian Terminology for Real Security Revisited’, CQ 2 38 (1988), 351–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar: see especially pp. 379–80.

22 Phillips, D. J., ‘Observations on Some Ostraka from the Athenian Agora’, in Worthington, Ian (ed.), Acta of the University of New England International Seminar on Greek and Latin Epigraphy (Bonn, 1990), pp. 123–48Google Scholar; also in ZPE 83 (1990), 123–48Google Scholar.

23 Harris, , Ancient Literacy, especially pp. 65ffGoogle Scholar.

24 For example, see the review of Keenan, J. G., ‘Ancient Literacy’, AHB 5 (1991), 101–6Google Scholar. Some of Keenan's criticisms are valid: for example, pp. 102–4 on Harris's interpretation of Plato, , Apol. 26d (Ancient Literacy, pp. 104–5) andGoogle ScholarAristoph, . Knights 188–9Google Scholar(Ancient Literacy, pp. 109–10). On the first passage see further below, n. 26.

26 Calhoun, G. M., ‘Oral and Written Pleading in Athenian Courts’, TAPhA 50 (1919), 177–93Google Scholar, discusses the change primarily from the viewpoint of legal phraseology, and does not consider the implications for the level of literacy.

26 The translation is that of the Loeb. Keenan has referred to this passage and that of Aristoph, . Knights 188–9Google Scholar (where the Sausage-seller talks of his functional illiteracy) in his review of Harris, Ancient Literacy (above, n. 24), and both passages may be used to support the point here that even if some of the lower stratum could read, they could not necessarily write.

27 On a didactic function of oratory, cf. Worthington, , ‘Greek Oratory, Revision of Speeches and the Problem of Historical Reliability’, p. 69Google Scholar n. 40.

28 Op. cit., p. 70 with pp. 170–2; cf. his Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1974), p. 11Google Scholar.

29 On which cf. Ober, J., Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton, 1989), pp. 122Google Scholarff., for example.

30 On extemporaneous comments, see Dorjahn, A. P., ‘Extemporaneous Elements in Certain Orations and the Proemia of Demosthenes’, AJPh 88 (1957), 287–93Google Scholar.

31 Diodorus, : PA 3919Google Scholar, Hansen, , Athenian Ecclesia, ii. 43Google Scholar.

32 Some background on the case is necessary for my argument and the points raised in the following notes. In 356/355, owing to the financial plight of Athens, Leptines introduced a law repealing the immunity from liturgies which had been bestowed on individuals (except for the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton) performing notable services for the state. Ctesippus, son of Chabrias, hired Demosthenes in a suit against the law, for although Ctesippus had inherited his father's immunity, under Leptines' law he would be expected to perform an expensive liturgy.

33 Professor Ernst Badian was kind enough to correspond on matters relating to my argument here, and I am very grateful to him.

34 On these speeches cf. Kennedy, , op. cit., pp. 209–11Google Scholar; on those against Androtion and the law of Leptines: Kennedy, , op. cit., pp. 216–22Google Scholar. On Demosthenes' early logographic career see, for example, Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., Demosthenes (London, 1914), pp. 111Google Scholarff. and Jaeger, W., Demosthenes (Berkeley, 1938), pp. 24Google Scholarff.

35 Dio. Chrys. 31.128ff. says that Leptines lost the case, but the veracity of the passage is doubtful. Inscriptional evidence (IG ii2 3040) attests that a Ctesippus performed a liturgy (the choregia), probably in the 320s, but this cannot be taken as an indication that Demosthenes won the case, since Ctesippus' father Chabrias performed a similar liturgy in the 350s and did not seek exemption, as was his legal right: see further Davies, J. K., Athenian Propertied Families (Oxford, 1971), p. 561Google Scholar.

36 Cf. Usher, , op. cit., p. 39Google Scholar, who also believes that the role of the client diminished in a revision-stage, but does not consider the literacy question.