Abstract

The lesson of Homer’s Iliad is that eloquence arises out of a confrontation with death. Perhaps the most dramatic of these confrontations is the death of Patroclus, an event that elicits epideictic speech by three parties: immortal horses, Xanthos and Balios; an immortal god, Zeus; and a mortal human, Patroclus. However, although the reaction of the horses and of Zeus reflect the pathos and logos of eloquence, respectively, this essay argues that true eloquence grows out of an experience of a divided self that heroically judges its own life meaningful—thereby constituting ethos through speech—in the face of death.