Demades the politician

This chapter analyzes how the images of Demades replicated the involvement of the pepaideumenoi in politics: an uneducated nouveau riche of obscure origins and an accidental politician, he proffered an example of the absolute nature of corruption. This image was constructed with the help of the metaphor of Demades consisting of “tongue and guts”—an expression that was retrospectively applied to different political figures—which indicated the selfish nature of his politics; and with stories of his bribe taking and proposing numerous honorific decrees for personal profit. These and other displays of Demades’s immorality, such as cheating and breaking oaths, turn out to have been popularly recycled rhetorical topoi . It was a short step from breaking promises to making illegal proposals. Later references to such proposals by Demades supplied material for progymnasmata exercises in the introduction of laws; these exercises focused on moving legal initiatives that did not comply with existing legislation.

Decree · Honorific · Linguistics · Metaphor · Political science · Politics · Classical Antiquity Studies · Law · Philosophy