This chapter is focused on a battle in the Athenian law-court between two great orators. Aeschines was trained as a tragic actor who worked in a mask, and brought the skills of the stage to the democratic arena. He argued for making peace with the new rising imperial power, Macedon, and tried to persuade the jury to position themselves as authentic democrats. Demosthenes was a skilled writer who wrote speeches for others, and later learnt how to present himself as a public speaker. He won the debate for two reasons. He persuaded the jury to position themselves in nationalistic terms as Athenians, and he also persuaded them that he was sincere while his opponent was merely acting. The reputation of Demosthenes has undergone many changes, and it was only in the nineteenth century that he emerged as an archetypal democrat. In Demosthenes’ day the drive for sincerity was tied to a shift from communitarian thinking to a higher degree of individualism, in a political context where the city was losing its power of self-determination. I end by drawing on Peter Brook’s minimalist definition of theatre to create a definition of democracy.

Chapter 3 analyzes freedom as doing “whatever one wishes” in fourth-century oratory. As several scholars have noted, doing “whatever one wishes” appears ambivalent in forensic speeches. They argue that, since Athens was not an anarchic state, extreme freedom could be glossed as a threat to sociopolitical stability. In contrast to prevailing scholarship, however, I argue that the most dominant principle, even in these texts, is the preservation of positive freedom as justification for the litigant’s position. While acting “however one wishes” may be presented as objectionable, the rhetoric of that assessment emphasizes who is doing “whatever they wish” and whom they affect by doing so. Bad characters, whether a criminals, oligarchs, or metics, can be rebuked as undeserving of positive freedom and abusing the power that attends it. The limitation of another citizen’s ability to do what he wishes can also condemn the action. Doing “what one wishes” is not a byword for antidemocratic action, but can have such a connotation because of the particular actors or victims of the actions. It is the misuse of the natural qualities of a citizen that leads to censure.

This chapter examines Ep. 2.20’s intertextual engagement with Demosthenes’ De Corona and Cicero’s In Verrem. By analysing these ‘allusions’, we can determine that Pliny self-identifies with his famous oratorical predecessors. More specifically, Pliny’s feud with Regulus recalls Demosthenes’ rivalry with Aeschines and Cicero’s oratorical competition with Verres. Pliny casts himself as a successor of this tradition and, like his great forebears, can overcome his nemesis. Yet the letter also has a more poignant political point about Pliny’s civitas (community). Demosthenes claims that some individuals who were involved in Greek political affairs were bribed by Philip. Aeschines was therefore symptomatic of a wider failing among the Greek political elite. Similarly, Cicero claims that high ranking senators support men such as Hortensius so long as it benefits their own careers. By bringing Cicero and Demosthenes to mind, then, Pliny suggests that his own political elite community reward wicked men such as Regulus in much the same way. In fact, Pliny’s letter seems to suggest an even gloomier future, where his own civitas are worse than the precedent of the past. These intertextual allusions, then, can challenge common scholarly pre-conceptions about Pliny’s view of Rome’s future under the Trajanic principate.

Chapter 7 considers stylistic imitation and appropriation in the debate over Atticism and Asianism, with a special focus on how Cicero distorts the aims and positions of his detractors in the diatribe against the Atticists (285–91). He trades on various meanings of Atticus/Attici in order to make a rhetorical – rather than strictly logical – case. He downplays Atticism as outdated and relegates its stylistic virtues to the plain style (genus tenue). Rejecting Atticism does not entail rejecting the plain style. Instead he acknowledges it as one of many oratorical virtues to be subsumed under the capable orator’s broad stylistic repertoire. Cicero promotes a model of stylistic diversity, examples of which are found in the long histories of Greek and, especially, Roman oratory.

This chapter looks at the broader contemporary significance of declamation, focusing on (Macedonian) imperialism, and taking as its major case study Aristides' To the Thebans: concerning the alliance I–II (Orr. 9–10), in which Aristides recreates Demosthenes' speech urging alliance between Thebes and Athens before Chaeronea. The image of an attack by a despotic and barbaric king echoed some presentations of the Parthian menace, potentially ennobling a contemporary conflict. But the image of the greedy despot also echoed discourses about 'bad' emperors, thereby offering a negative exemplum to heed. Finally, Macedon in these texts further recalls the Roman empire more generally: accordingly, these texts make available an unusually negative attitude to the empire, but also, I argue, a celebration and a justification of Rome's power over Greece. I compare the discourses present in a fragment of Pollux's declamation On the Islanders, where the Persian court recalls Lucian's denunciation of the vulgarity of rich Romans in his De mercede conductis. In closing, I note the particularly high number of potentially meta-exemplary remarks in Aristides' declamations, encouraging audiences to ponder these texts' meaning deeply.

Like those studying other aspects of the ancient world, archaeologists working on housing frequently use textual evidence to provide a framework within which the archaeological material can be understood. This chapter suggests that the reverse can also be helpful, namely using archaeology to provide a context which facilitates a clearer understanding of some of the textual evidence. As an example, I choose three passages from Demosthenes which allude to the character of housing and other buildings in the city of Athens. I read these against the background of broader changes in the architecture of houses being constructed at Athens and other cities in the first half of the 4th century BCE, as well as the new evidence for the lavish palatial building at Vergina, which suggests it was originally constructed by Philip II. I argue that this material shows Demosthenes' allusions are actually veiled references to contemporary politics, and that they highlight an issue which was a matter of debate at Athens during the time he was writing, namely, the increasing use of the house as a symbol of personal wealth and power.

The use of the present tense to refer to the past in summary narrative, that is, narrative passages where small stretches of discourse time cover large stretches of story time, depends upon the idea that the designated events are currently accessible through the medium of the discourse. The present tense serves to highlight the importance of the designated events for the development of the discourse. This diegetic use of the present has a predilection for certain attention-management strategies, such as cataphoric reference and complex clause structure, which puts the main clause event in focus within the wider discourse context. More specifically, the diegetic present has two main functions: marking changes in the narrative dynamic, and marking changes in the status of referents.

Chapter 2 focuses on Cicero’s last work of rhetorical theory, the Orator, and its defense of decorum. Cicero positions the pursuit of decorous, adaptable, polyvocal speech as a political commitment: the orator ought to cultivate speech across the recognized range of styles. Cicero claims that the speech of contemporaries who refuse the challenges of decorum is not just stylistically inert but politically deficient. He advances these claims by constructing a useable stylistic past centered on the Athenian orator Demosthenes. In stressing Demosthenes’s stylistic range, Cicero draws a polemical contrast between his own brand of highly stylized speech and his contemporaries who confine themselves to plain speech. Cicero’s discussion of style also constitutes a critique of the rhetorically circumscribed world that Caesar’s preeminence promised. In such a world, the speaker-audience responsiveness that accounts for much of rhetoric’s normative value would be significantly curtailed – a loss in epistemic, political, and moral terms. In the final section, I consider more general questions about stylized speech. How could Demosthenes’s range of voices be consistent with his reputation for parrhesia, or frankness? As I argue, an embrace of stylized speech can open the way for less intuitive, but more challenging and more rewarding, forms of frankness.

Chapter 7 considers stylistic imitation and appropriation in the debate over Atticism and Asianism, with a special focus on how Cicero distorts the aims and positions of his detractors in the diatribe against the Atticists (285–91). He trades on various meanings of Atticus/Attici in order to make a rhetorical – rather than strictly logical – case. He downplays Atticism as outdated and relegates its stylistic virtues to the plain style (genus tenue). Rejecting Atticism does not entail rejecting the plain style. Instead he acknowledges it as one of many oratorical virtues to be subsumed under the capable orator’s broad stylistic repertoire. Cicero promotes a model of stylistic diversity, examples of which are found in the long histories of Greek and, especially, Roman oratory.