Leadership and individuality in the Athenian funeral orations

Athenian funeral orations did not simply celebrate Athenian military achievements or renew and augment a specifically anonymous collective identity and hoplite ideology. Rather, the speeches also model the role and importance of sub-groups within the democratic polis and celebrate some individual generals for their attributes and achievements as leaders. Furthermore, internal and contextual evidence shows that the prominent leaders who were chosen to deliver these speeches were often promoting or defending their own particular involvement and advocacy of the military campaign in question. This stress on the importance of the individual ‘voice’ of the orator and the speeches' inscription of exemplary individuals (probably, but by no means certainly, much more common from the 380s downwards) offers a significant contribution to literary and historical understanding of this genre and its cultural and ideological functioning.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The constuction of 'the other' and the contestation of the 'self':insult and elenchos in Athenian oratory

Athenian forensic orators of the fourth century draw upon “negative representations of the other”, especially in the form of invective narrative and name-calling. While both the “absolute other” (e.g. non-Athenian birth) and the “bad citizen” (e.g. the bribe-taker, sycophant or ‘counterfeit orator) are crucial categories for the winning of the case at hand, their deployment in invective is not just a reflection or reinforcement of a pre-existing Athenian democratic mentalité. Rather, the lawcourts were a major conduit for the refreshment and refinement of values, categories and distinctions. I suggest that this ongoing process of refreshment and refinement allowed for certain categories of the “negative other” and their associated behaviours to be re-negotiated and re-evaluated. My example is the status and character of the trained actor who is also an ambassador or rhētōr (Aeschines On the Embassy). With reference to the representation of loidoria in Demosthenes’ On the Crown and Against Androtion, I also suggest that the medium of oratorical invective itself was subject to evaluative refinement, re-negotiation and scrutiny in the light of its associations with categories of “the other” and its uncertain position in relation to legitimate standards of forensic proof

Terrence Malick's <em>The thin red line</em> and Homeric epic:spectacle, simile, scene and situation

Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998) engages with Homer, via Heidegger on the pre-Socratics, in order to ask questions about the ‘spectacular’ aspects of warfare and their narrativization in film. As we watch a beautiful early morning sky, an ambitious, glory-seeking commander boasts about how he read Homer during his officer training and cites a well-known Homeric epithet as we watch a beautiful early morning sky (‘Ἠώς ῥοδοδάκτυλος’… ‘Rosy Fingered Dawn’). This moment signals the film’s complex reception of Homer. Where the ‘anti-war’ sentiment of many recent combat films is undercut by an imperative to entertain and seduce their audiences with spectacular violence, Malick draws on the dynamics of Homeric similes and scenes to expose and de-center the spectacular seductions of war and their filmic reproduction. This fresh vision is articulated through the film’s emphasis on the spectacular wonders of nature and the ‘other world’ that they reveal.Keywords: Terrence Malick, Homer, Iliad, spectacle, heroics, The Thin Red Line, similes, Homeric similes, war films, epic.<br/

Uncertainty and the possibilities of violence:the quarrel in <i>Odyssey</i> 8

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