Demades’s last years and words

This chapter explicates how later rhetoricians contrived the image of Demades as a participant in the Macedonian domination over Greece to develop the topoi of treason, the role of rhetoric in politics, and a just punishment for one’s betrayal of his city. Rhetorical manifestations of later political agendas explain references to Demades’s oratory “taming” Alexander the Great; his public honors, including a bronze statue; and his “tyranny,” “treason,” fall from grace, public trial, and death. The rhetorical nature of such information clarifies the recycling of the well-known evidence about Demosthenes to construct the figure of Demades as Demosthenes’s opposite par excellence. The rhetorical origins of such evidence resolves the contradiction between the traditional image of Demades as a lover of peace and references to his anti-Macedonian harangue in several late texts, and explains the confusion surrounding Demades’s “just punishment” with death for his “tyranny” or for betraying Athens to Macedonians.

Ancient history · Art · Art history · Betrayal · Decree · Literature · Macedonian · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Statue · Theology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy