Reviewed by: Attic Oratory and Performance by Andreas Serafim Matteo Barbato Andreas Serafim, Attic Oratory and Performance (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies), London and New York: Routledge, 2017. 156 pp. ISBN 9780367871277 In this slim book, Andreas Serafim sets out to provide a holistic perspective on the performative aspects of Attic oratory through an analysis of two pairs of interrelated judicial speeches: Demosthenes’ and Aeschines’ respective speeches On the Embassy; and Aeschines’ Against Ctesiphon and Demosthenes’ On the Crown. As stated in his introduction, Serafim believes that the speeches of the Attic orators, despite surviving as written texts, can only be fully appreciated if one gives appropriate weight to the interaction between speaker and audience. He adopts an approach based on linguistics and performance studies. This leads him to define performance as the “interactive communication, explicit or otherwise, between the transmitter of a message and its receiver” (pp. 16–17)—in other words, as anything that enables the speaker to elicit a reaction in the audience. Serafim distinguishes between two types of performance techniques (direct/sensory and indirect/emotional) and proposes to look at both in combination. In Chapter 1, Serafim lays out the methodology of his study. He identifies the main areas of performance (rhetorical construction of the audience; relationship between oratory and theatre; inter-generic character portraiture; delivery) that provide the subjects of Chapters 2–5, and he illustrates them through references to ancient and modern scholarship. The discussion, though mostly solid, is at times undertheorized. This is most evident in the analysis of emotions in pp. 21–3. Despite rightly stressing the significance of emotions for performance,i Serafim overlooks an important body of scholarship that highlights the complex nature of emotions, which encompass [End Page 114] social and cognitive as well as bodily aspects.ii Engaging with such studies could have nuanced the distinction between sensory and emotional performance techniques and could have offered an interesting lens for investigating delivery. Chapter 2 examines the strategies (e.g. emotional appeals; imperatives and questions) deployed by the orators to construct the identity of their audience and invite them to act accordingly. Chapter 3 analyses the interrelationship between oratory and theatre, with a focus on the characterisation of one’s opponents as deceitful actors on the judicial stage. While Serafim provides a good discussion of Demosthenes’ use of poetic quotations to stress Aeschines’ connection with theatre, it is surprising that no comparison is made with Aeschines’ own use of quotations in Against Timarchus. This would have allowed Serafim to investigate Aeschines’ negotiation of his image as an actor and its significance for our understanding of Athenian attitudes to theatre. Chapter 4 looks at the orators’ construction of their own and their opponents’ character through patterns borrowed from comedy as well as tragedv and epics. Serafim rightly notes that the judges had experience as theatregoers, which he suggests was exploited by the orators to create favourable and unfavourable dispositions towards themselves and their opponents respectively. Chapter 5 focuses on delivery and is the most effective in stressing the interconnection between the different aspects of performance analysed in the book. Through comparison between rhetorical theory and oratorical practice, Serafim convincingly shows how some rhetorical features of the speeches may be taken as indicative of the gestural and vocal ploys adopted by the orators as part of their performance. Chapter 6 briefly summarises the book’s findings and delineates possible areas for future research. Serafim is at his best when providing rhetorical analyses of specific passages, and he makes a convincing case for understanding performance as a multidimensional phenomenon. The book, however, is somewhat lacking in conceptual breadth, as its main merit lies in combining existing strands in scholarship that focus respectively on oratorical delivery and on rhetoric’s relationship with drama. Serafim’s arguments are sometimes weakened by a lack of engagement with the institutional nature of judicial oratory. At pp. 48–9, for example, Serafim argues that Aeschin. 3.8 addresses the judges with the civic address (“men of Athens”) as opposed to the judicial address (“judges”) in order to make them “realise that both their duty and their status as judges is wholly intertwined with the best interests of...