Sophists, Women, and Ancient Greece

1. Sophists, Women, and Ancient Greece ENG 3306 History of Rhetoric Dr. Carol Johnson-Gerendas Sources: Glenn, Cheryl. Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance, 1997. Goden, Berquist, Coleman, Sproule. The Rhetoric of Western Thought, 2007. Hertzberg and Bizzell. The Rhetorical Tradition.

2. Comparative History: THE GREEKS Hebrew History Greek Rhetorical History • Abraham 2,000 B.C.E. • Moses 1,500 B.C.E. • David 1,000 B.C.E. • Babylonian Captivity 500 B.C. • Intertestamental Period 400 B.C. • Christ 3 B.C.E. • Lack of Shared Experience • Pre-Socratics: 700 & 600 B.C.E – Mythos replaced with Logos • Milesians: introduce idea of cosmic order and natural law • Early Sophists • Relativism • Oratory • Style & Ornament

3. Three Kinds of Speeches • Epideictic(ceremonial, commemorate, or blame) • Forensic (to accuse or defend) • Deliberative(legislative, to exhort or dissuade) http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/rhetoric-1.jpg

4. Five Canons of Rhetoric (adapted from Cicero, De Oratore, I.xxxi.142-143) • Invention: (discover what to say; e.g. Aristotle’s topoi, proofs, commonplaces, fallacies) • Arrangement: (“marshal discoveries in orderly fashion”) • Style: (adorn them with appropriate stylistic language) • Memory: (keep all guarded in one’s memory) • Delivery: (deliver all with “effect and charm”)

5. Three Rhetorical Appeals • Ethos • Pathos • Logos http://media.photobucket.com/image/Rhetorical%20appeals/kmaddox88/Guernica-1.jpg

6. Sophists: Kairos(seizing the right moment to speak) • Invention • Heuresis (discovery, to find) • Arrangement • Judicial: proem, narration, proof, epilogue • Style • Ornament, flowery language • Sophists • Compiled collections of common places • Compiled glossaries of beautiful words (metaphors, similes, phrases)

7. Socrates Introduction to Socrates- and the Sophists Knowledge vs. Negligence

8. The School of Athens – Raphael - Renaissance

9. Women in Ancient Greece • Women could testify—but not argue • Aspasia-mistress & companion to Pericles, most powerful Athenian 40 yrs.; loved sophists, philosophers, artists • Foreign-born women or men could never be citizens—could have political influence

10. From: Audrey Kali, “Phryne and the Rhetoric of Gesture,” The Rhetoric of the Western Tradition, 2007. p.49 “As Hyperides, while defending Phryne, was making no progress in his plea, and it became apparent that the judges meant to condemn her, he caused her to be brought out where all could see her; tearing off her undervests he laid bare her bosom and broke into such piteous lamentation in peroration at the sight of her, that he caused the judges to feel superstitious fear of this handmaid and ministrant of Aphrodite, and indulging their feeling of compassion, they refrained from putting her to death.” (Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists 13.590-591). PhryneThe Rhetoric of Gesture Gerome, PhryneIn Front of the Judges, 1861, oil painting

11. DISCUSS: The Case of Phryne • Lamentation, plea of supplication • Disrobing – act of exposure • Imagistic rhetorical power • Magic of nudity • Phryne / Aphrodite connection • Efficacy of rhetorical gestures?

12. Aspasia of Miletus • Mentioned by her male contemporaries • Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (AD 100) • Fresco over portal at the University of Athens