Thursday, April 08, 2021

On Orators And The Loss of Speech

 Last week I found, completely out of the blue, a horde of my Loeb Classical Library Books (someone, it seems, had an interest in the period of Alexander the Great).  One of the books I found was Minor Attic Orators II:  Lycurgus, Demades, Dinarches, Hyperides.

I had never heard of any of the writers/speakers, yet with the exception of Demades, are considered among the 10 great Orators of Attic Greece.  Sadly, very little of what they wrote has even survived:  the volume has some complete speeches, but just as often there were lacunae in the texts or mere sentences (in some cases only preserved in the speeches or writings of other writers).

Having read this - and having now completed reading the works of Isocrates  and working my way through the works of Demosthenes as I can afford them, I am finding yet another way in which our society is slowly slipping away:  we can no longer speak.

Reading the speeches of these long dead writers, I find myself engaged.  They write well.  They are mostly the speeches of court cases and politics, so they are perhaps a bit inflated in language and tone.  But the language is overflowing and grand; it uplifts and involves the intellect and the emotion.

"He (Leocrates) will perhaps in his impetuosity raise the argument, suggested to him by certain of his advocates, that he is not liable on a charge of treason, since he was not responsible for the dockyards, gates or camps, nor in fact for any of the city's concerns.  My own view is that those in charge of these positions could have betrayed a part of your defenses only, whereas it was the whole city that Leocrates surrendered.  Again, it is the living only whom men of this kind harm, but Leocrates has wronged the dead as well, depriving them of their ancestral rites.  Had the city been betrayed by them it would have been inhabited though enslaved, but left as this man left it, it would have been deserted." - Lycurgus, "Against Leocrates"

"Yet the actions fought near Pylae and Lamia has proven to be as glorious to them as the conflict in Boetia, not solely through the circumstances of victory in the field, over Antipater and his allies, but on the grounds of the situation also.  The fact that this has been the battle's site will mean that all of the Greeks, repairing twice a year to the council of the Amphictyones, will witness their achievements; by the very act of gathering in that spot they will recall the valour of these men.  Never before did men strive for a nobler cause, either against stronger adversaries or fewer friends, convinced that valour gave strength and courage superiority as no mere numbers could.  Liberty they gave as an offering for all to share, but the honour of their deeds they have bestowed upon their country as a wreath for her alone." - Hyperides, "Funeral Speech"

We do not get speeches like that any more.  We get 140 character blurbs or vague generalities or speeches written purely to "make points" for whichever side is speaking.  Keep in mind to that these speeches were written by these individuals (if not always delivered by them).  Now, many of our leaders employ others to write their speeches for them.  They have become merely performers in a sort of grand theater.

One could make a cogent argument, I suppose, that we no longer need this sort of skill because we no longer have situations that require it.  Perhaps that is true.  But what seems objectionable to me is that we have also abandoned the learning and writing and thinking that made such speeches possible.  More and more, we have abandoned the high art of composition and rhetoric and presentation for the lower call of "realism" and "telling truth to power" (whatever you consider that power to be).  It somehow construed that these methods are more effective, when in fact they more often than not are less so, crude tools used to hack and chop where a scalpel would be much more effective.

We are truly the poorer for it.

4 comments:

  1. As far as presidents in my lifetime go, I think the last great speech giver was Ronald Regan. After that, it has been all downhill. (Not including the current occupant which I'm reserving judgement until after he is out of office.)

    I think one of the reasons we don't have great speeches these days is simply because of how it is recorded. Everyone knows that any speech of importance will get at maximum, a minute of airtime with perhaps a 15 second clip. The people listening to said speech are hand picked supporters who need no convincing. Back before televisions, radios and other forms of recording speeches, it was just the listeners before you and you had to convince them.

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    1. Ed - Agreed that Regan was the last great speech giver. And agreed that how the medium is transferred has impacted it greatly. At the same time, we have failed to demand that we have better speech makers (probably about the time we started demanding ideological purity of Reds and Blues instead o factual policy and information, and when the Reds and Blues abandon the need for actual policy as well).

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  2. Septem Artes Liberales

    We've been deprived of the essentials to be Occidental.
    We are left the choice of being a happy slave or a deplorable.

    I think this is not an accident of our times but a deliberate and nefarious construction, a cage without walls.

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    1. Just So, I actually have a book on The Septum Aretes Liberales, partially because they were not taught to me the way the should have been.

      It saddens me that we are losing our classical culture (thus, my buying of books). We are in the process of forgetting who we are. Those that are encouraging this somehow believe that you can destroy the foundation without impacting the superstructure, which is a fallacy both of architecture and political systems.

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