ABSTRACT
Fénélon’s view that ‘among the Greeks everything depended on the people and the people depended on speech’ is particularly appropriate to classical Athens. The art of speech had been an important element of the hero’s education in Homer’s work; but in the democratic city the art of speaking proved indispensable to those who wanted to make themselves heard, whether before the law courts (where the decision was in the hands of popular juries) or in the assembly, where the citizens’ vote was sovereign. Thucydides regarded the relation of ‘what was said’ to be as important as ‘what happened’. Finally, in some circumstances-such as the funerals of citizens who died in combat-the city delegated one of its members to commemorate it in a funeral speech.1 The three canonical forms of the oratorical art were judicial or dicenic oratory, political or persuasive oratory and ceremonial or epideictic oratory. Many of these speeches did not enter into literature: they were intended simply to be spoken, and not to be published. It was not until the last third of the fifth century that any orator thought of publishing his speeches.
