Sophistopolis as Cosmopolis: Reading Postclassical Greek Rhetoric

Susan C. Jarratt University of California, Irvine

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines the interplay between the Stoic concept of cosmopolis and Greek rhetorical discourses of the polis in the Roman imperial period. D. A. Russell's “Sophistopolis” (from Greek Declamation, 1983) and Doyne Dawson's work on utopian political theory (1992) serve as points of departure for developing a method of reading the political in Second Sophistic rhetoric. The text under examination is a major first-century oration: Dio Chrysostom's Euboean Discourse. Composed around 96 CE, after Dio's return from exile by Domitian, the Euboicus combines a castaway's rural fable with didactic commentary, forcing the utopian pastoral hard up against a lecture on economic and social distress in the imperial city. Dio creates disjunctive moods, city-visions, and speaking personae, performing a rhetorical tour de force while simultaneously constructing a political subject at the limit of creaturely need. A “cosmopolitical” analysis of Second Sophistic rhetoric finds the consummate artistry of the paideia addressed to imperial power and provincial realities, revealing civic breakdown and human suffering in the city-spaces of empire.

Journal
Advances in the History of Rhetoric
Published
2011-04-15
DOI
10.1080/15362426.2011.559404
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Advances in the History of Rhetoric

References (50)

  1. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
  2. The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome
    American Journal of Philology  
  3. Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece
  4. The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire
  5. Dio Chrysostom the Moral Philosopher
    Greece & Rome  
Show all 50 →
  1. Outline of a Theory of Practice
  2. Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic
    Past & Present  
  3. “The Stoic Invention of Cosmopolitan Politics.”
  4. Aspects of the Social Thought of Dio Chrysostom and of the Stoics
    Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society  
  5. Stoicism and the Principate
    Papers of the British School at Rome  
  6. The Philosophy of Literary Form
  7. In Athens, about His Banishment
  8. The Seventh or Euboean Discourse
  9. Cities of the Gods: Communist Utopias in Greek Thought
  10. City and Country in Dio
  11. The Discourses as Reported by Arrian
  12. Fearless Speech
  13. Introduction: Setting an Agenda: ‘Everything Is Greece to the Wise.’
  14. The Huntsman and the Castaway
    Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
  15. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act
  16. Libanius' Antioch: Rhetorical Construction of the Greek (Cosmo)Polis under Empire
  17. The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom
  18. Sextus Empiricus against Aelius Aristides: The Conflict Between Philosophy and Rhetoric i…
  19. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times
  20. A New History of Classical Rhetoric
  21. Sermo and Stoic Sociality in Cicero'sDe Officiis
    Rhetorica
  22. From Politics to Philosophy and Theology: Some Remarks about Foucault's Interpretation of…
    Philosophy and Rhetoric  
  23. Hellenistic Philosophy
  24. “Longinus
  25. Public Speech and Community in theEuboicus
  26. The Career and Conversion of Dio Chrysostom
    Journal of Hellenic Studies  
  27. Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius'
  28. The Res Gestae of Augustus: Announcing the Conquest of the World
  29. Aristotle's Phantasia in the Rhetoric: Lexis, Appearance, and the Epideictic Function of …
    Philosophy and Rhetoric  
  30. Rhetoric in Antiquity
  31. Philostratus and Eunapius: The Lives of the Sophists
  32. Speaking for the Polis. Isocrates' Rhetorical Education
  33. Institutio Oratoria
  34. Sons of the Gods, Children of Earth
  35. Greek Declamation
  36. Dio, Rome, and the Civic Life of Asia Minor
  37. The Stoic Idea of the City
  38. Dio's Life and Works
  39. Synesius of Cyrene. 2008. “Dio Chrysostom.” Trans. Augustine Fitzgerald. Livius. Articles in Ancient History.…
  40. Complete Works of Tacitus
  41. Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity
  42. Reading Power in Roman Greece: The Paideia of Dio Chrysostom
  43. ‘Greece Is the World’: Exile and Identity in the Second Sophistic
  44. Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation
  45. The Second Sophistic