The Documents in the Attic Orators

Laws and Decrees in the Public Speeches of the Demosthenic Corpus

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3939616
AutoresDavid C Mirhady (autor de correspondencia)
Año2014
Volumen68
Número1-2
Páginas177-179
Fecha de publicación2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPhoenix (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0031-8299 • E-ISSN: 1929-4883
EditorialProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/phx.2014.0006
OpenAlexW4301936706
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas14

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 177 slaves seem to be worn by non-slave characters. In particular, the popular “B” mask was used for non-slave roles in the Apulian, Paestan, and Sicilian traditions (201–203). Vases which likely illustrate scenes from comedies in the Attic tradition, however, invite no such slippage, even going so far as to provide characters both a slave mask and a label with a servile name (203). In the latter fourth century, moreover, the Apulian and Paestan traditions more and more frequently picture the B-mask slave alone. This suggests an increased importance for slave roles or greater interest in them on the part of the audience. In the final essay, “Tokens of Identity in the Epitrepontes: Slaves, Citizens and InBetweens ,” C. Vester demonstrates the lability of citizen status and the deployment of essentially arbitrary signs to assert that status. In epic and tragedy, important tokens (such as Odysseus’ and Oedipus’ scars; Orestes’ hair, garment, and footprints) are a part of the character’s individual identity. The tokens in Epitrepontes, however, establish an elite identity for their owner, but do not otherwise distinguish that person. Each time the tokens move from one character to another, the instability of identity is emphasized. Habrotonon and Onesimus each behave as if they are free when discussing Pamphile’s baby and her rape with free citizens. Habrotonon understands that it is perfectly possible for a freeborn baby to be reared as a slave, which comment underscores “the fluid boundary of status” (222). Likewise, Pamphile’s question to Habrotonon, “aren’t you the mother?” (225), clearly shows that even a biological mother does not automatically recognize her offspring. In the end the father’s ring is the touchstone of identity. The Epitrepontes is an especially daring play in its demonstration of the instability of citizen status. Much of the disproportionately long introductory essay might have been more effective as a conclusion to the volume, with a briefer introduction pointing to the main questions and problems, and more cross-referencing among the individual essays would have been helpful. The lack of standardized transliterations and spellings (both Karion and Cario appear, and some authors transliterate Greek while others do not) is somewhat jarring. Nonetheless, this volume will be useful for anyone interested in the representation of slaves and slavery as found in our sources for Greek comedy. Purdue University Madeleine M. Henry The Documents in the Attic Orators: Laws and Decrees in the Public Speeches of the Demosthenic Corpus. By Mirko Canevaro. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. xviii, 389. In the one hundred or so surviving speeches that were prepared for presentation in the classical Athenian law courts, the speakers commonly pause and ask that a document be read aloud by the court secretary. As the usual notations in the manuscripts indicate, these documents varied from excerpts of laws, to witness testimony, wills, even to the wording of challenges to have slaves tortured. Aristotle refers to these texts as atechnoi pisteis, since their wording lay outside the speech itself and thus outside the rhetorical techne of the speechwriter. They nevertheless had rhetorical force, so Aristotle discusses how to talk about them in Rhetoric 1.15. In this exhaustive study Mirko Canevaro bypasses Aristotle’s distinction entirely and probes instead why some of these documents, specifically the laws cited in Demosthenes’ public speeches 18, 21, 23, 24, and 59, do actually appear in some of the manuscripts when most such documents in most of the 178 PHOENIX speeches of the orators do not. His study thus largely concerns the manuscript traditions, not rhetoric. His study is greatly facilitated by the appearance in some of the medieval manuscripts of consistent stichometric markings that measure either the total number of lines (stichoi) in the speech or 100-line sections in it. Since there is no medieval archetype and the manuscripts trace back to different ancient ancestors, in those places where the presence of the documents throws off the consistency of these markings, he can safely assume that the documents were added later and were thus not included in the ancient Urexemplar of the manuscript tradition, which he postulates to have been prepared by Demosthenes’ nephew

Aesthetics · Art · Character (mathematics · Elite · HERO · Identity (music · Literature · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Tragedy (event · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Law