Year: 2007
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: The central importance of the narrative in Lysias' speeches is well established.1 He had a talent for writing vivid, fluent, self-consistent and plausible narratives, primarily in a simple, flowing style.Narrative is therefore the key element in Lysias' persuasive technique.It is then interesting to observe that his narrative method, in terms of temporal structure, is entirely unspectacular.Two characteristics also found in Antiphon (→) recur in Lysias, viz. the telling of the story in its temporal sequence and the inclusion of additional details in other, non-narrative sections of the speech.Thirty-one speeches are preserved in the medieval manuscripts of Lysias, with three more extended fragments in Dionysius and one speech, the Eroticus, in Plato's Phaedrus (230e-234c).The authenticity of many of these is disputed, in the sense both of whether they were actually written by Lysias and of whether they were delivered on the occasion on which they purport to have been delivered.Of the forensic speeches that have the best claims to be genuine in both senses, 2 several are fragmentary or are secondary speeches delivered in support of a main speech.3 Among the remainder, the employment of a discrete, extended narrative section is clearly Lysias' preferred method: in speech 1 ( § § 6-28), 3 ( § § 5-20), 7 ( § § 4-11), 10 ( § § 4-5), 12 ( § § 4-23), 17 ( § § 2-7), 19 ( § § 12-16), 22 ( § § 2-4), 30 ( § § 2-6), 31 ( § § 8-23), 32 ( § § 4-18).Speeches 16 and 25 have no clear narrative section, which is partly dictated by the nature of these speeches; 4 and it is perhaps only in speech 13, Against Agoratus, that we have significant mixing of narrative and proof 1 Cf.e.g.SAGN 1:333. 2 Numbers 1, 3
Source: BRILL eBooks
Author: M.J. Edwards
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4205398623