Abstract

Reviewed by: The Orator Demades: Classical Greece Reimagined through Rhetoric by Sviatoslav Dmitriev Gunther Martin Sviatoslav Dmitriev, The Orator Demades: Classical Greece Reimagined through Rhetoric. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021. 354 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-751782-6. The sub-title reveals that this book is not a biography of the orator Demades; it does not describe the work, life, and character of a leading politician in the waning days of Athenian independence. One may instead call it an anti-biography in that it undertakes the deconstruction of nearly all existing evidence about Demades's life and rhetoric. Far from being purely negative, it offers a thorough study of the way in which the rhetorical culture from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine Era constructed and moulded its own "Demades," subjecting this phantasmagoria to its own ideas about [End Page 212] the social, moral, and rhetorical qualities of good and bad orators and to its own purposes in propagating these ideas and the concomitant values. Literary sources paint a picture of Demades as a major force in "pro-Macedonian" politics in Athens after the battle of Chaeroneia in 338, i.e., a proponent of a non-confrontational relationship with Philip II and Alexander the Great. The many witticisms ascribed to him show a teller of truth, fearless in the face of monarchs and the democratic mob, making him immensely quotable. While previous biographies of Demades have struggled to distinguish trustworthy information from fanciful anecdotes and to assign the former their historical setting, Dmitriev proposes to cut the Gordian knot by discarding all evidence that is not from Demades's lifetime as fabrication of the later rhetorical educational system, in which progymnasmata and declamations drew on classical (pseudo-)quotes and (often historically impossible) scenarios. His argument is based on an impressive array of material that exposes many of the quotes as stock material ascribed to different characters by different ancient authors, the anecdotes as tropes, for example about corruption, dealing with the masses or flattery. What is left is a small number of references in the Attic orators and epigraphic evidence. One inscription (IG II2 1623, B 166-167), which appears to show Demades's commitment in an operation directed against Macedon in 341/340, is viewed as proof that Demades was by no means a supporter of appeasement or even pro-Macedonian. Dmitriev's scepticism deprives us of many cherished sources, such as Plutarch's Lives of Demades's contemporaries. But if Plutarch was indeed so steeped in the culture of his days that he fell for the inventions of the rhetorical school, so be it: we should be grateful for the purge of misleading material. However, despite the impressive cumulative power of Dmitriev's parallels and his construction of a largely coherent picture of the transformation through rhetorical culture of "Demades," the pendulum swings too far to the side of scepticism (not of the Pyrrhonian kind) when all the later testimonies are discarded as products of a later age. The evidence may be rejected as unreliable, but Dmitriev insists that it is definitely fabrication. Sometimes, however, tropes and clichés may not be pulled out of thin air, and he rarely asks where information may have come from and for which reasons one may have invented biographical snippets (other than the needs of the school room and the self-affirmation of the educated class). Plutarch often drew on contemporary (now lost) sources, not only historians such as Theopompus but also compilations of personal attacks from comedy. The trope of Demades having been a sailor would be in line with Aristophanes's mocking description of Cleon as a tanner. Moreover, in his dismissal of the literary sources, Dmitriev even doubts the authenticity of Hyperides's Against Diondas and both his and Dinarchus's Against Demosthenes. Methodologically problematic is the dismissal of tropes as late because of their "rhetorical tone": that seems to presuppose that the polemicists of the fourth century—i.e., the orators, the "rhetorical" historians, and the comedians—did not adopt a rhetorical tone. (Dmitriev himself, by the way, slams those who accept alleged quotes by Demades on the basis that they sound authentic.) [End Page...