Attic Old Comedy and the
Development of Theoretical Rhetoric

Thomas K. Hubbard (University of Texas, Austin)

Attic Old Comedy is particularly useful in reconstructing the early history of Greek rhetoric, since its formal agonistic structure features many debates that employ rhetorical topoi and catchwords, and moreover because more than any other category of evidence from the period, it gives us a vivd picture of contemporary oratory and oratorical education as they appeared to the general public. Thomas Cole (The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece 1991) and Edward Schiappa (The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece 1999) have recently disputed whether anything that can truly be called ‘rhetoric’ existed in the late fifth-century, but the evidence of Comedy, as it bears on this question, has been either neglected or dismissed.

Examination of Aristophanes’ corpus clearly shows that he was familiar with at least some form of rhetorical theory and education which was beginning to make a strong impression in the 420s. The speeches within his plays typically adapt their style and argumentative strategy to their specific audience, with the sole intent of persuading, not establishing objective truth; this conforms with even Cole and Schiappa’s definitions of ‘rhetoric.’ Wasps (422 BCE) attests intense public interest in oratory even on the part of common people. Starting with Banqueters in 427 BCE (fr. 205 PCG), Aristophanes refers to a new and highly effective style of public speaking common among the younger generation, characterized in part by the lexical orthoepeia for which teachers like Protagoras and Prodicus were known. Fr. 92 (from Babylonians in 426) parodies young speakers’ overuse of neologistic diminutives, even as Knights 1373-83 parodies their overuse of –ikos words; Acharnians 679-718 presents a devastating portrait of the effectiveness of the younger orators’ new verbal skills. The plot of Clouds (423 BCE) revolves around acquiring a sophistic education to succeed as such an orator. The trial scene in Wasps betrays knowledge of the canonical divisions of a forensic speech, as well as numerous other conventions. Finally, Frogs (405 BCE) presents a contest between two paradigmatic styles similar to those familiar from later rhetorical analysis. When the Euripides of that play says, ‘there is no shrine of Peitho other than speech’ (Ran. 1391 = fr. 170 N), he is surely not expressing a sentiment with which Aristophanes’ earlier work was unfamiliar.