Genos dikanikon : amateur and professional speech in the courtrooms of classical Athens

by: Bers, V.

Price: 16,00 EURO

(in stock)

 Under the Athenian democracy litigants were expected to speak for themselves, though they could memorize a speech written for them. The texts of about one hundred judicial speeches of the genos dikanikon (the forensic genre) have survived, all attributed to Demosthenes or another of the ten writers of the ancient canon. These professionals wrote either for themselves or for members of a small elite. Victor Bers argues that men too poor to afford a professionally written speech frequently spoke before judicial bodies in procedures crucial to their status, their wealth, or even their lives, and that these amateur performances often manifested an unmanly yielding to emotions of anger or fear; professional speech, Bers seeks to demonstrate, was to a large degree crafted in reaction to amateur stumbling.

The challenge of court speech
Amateur litigants, amateur speakers
Natural and artificial speech from Homer to Hyperides : a brief sketch
Terrors of the courtroom
Performance as evidence
Appeals to pity and displays of anger
Tactics, amateur and professional

Series:
Hellenic studies, 33

ix, 159 pages ; 23 cm

Genos dikanikon : amateur and professional speech in the courtrooms of classical Athens

by: Bers, V.

• ISBN-13: 9780674032033 / 978-0-674-03203-3
• ISBN-03: 0674032039 / 0-674-03203-9
• Center for Hellenic Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009

Price: 16,00 EURO

(in stock)