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Chapter 5 - Epic Demagoguery

from Part II - Oratory in Epic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2019

Irene Peirano Garrison
Irene Peirano Garrison
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

This chapter focuses on select scenes of deliberative oratory in Roman epic and on the figure of the demagogue who inhabits them - Thersites in the Iliad, Drances in Virgil’s Aeneid 11, Odysseus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 13, Cicero in Lucan, Varro in Silius. Tracing the ways in which poets use these orators as foils for their generic rivals, I suggest that far from chanelling disapproval of rhetoric, these demagogues are truly hybrid figures, who leverage anti-rhetorical discourse while simultaneously claiming for poetry the same power and persuasiveness of rhetoric.

Keywords

ThersitesDrancesOdysseusAjaxOviddemagoguecontioCiceroarms of Achilles
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Persuasion, Rhetoric and Roman Poetry , pp. 174 - 216
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • Epic Demagoguery
  • Irene Peirano Garrison, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Persuasion, Rhetoric and Roman Poetry
  • Online publication: 08 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316219355.006
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  • Epic Demagoguery
  • Irene Peirano Garrison, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Persuasion, Rhetoric and Roman Poetry
  • Online publication: 08 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316219355.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Epic Demagoguery
  • Irene Peirano Garrison, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Persuasion, Rhetoric and Roman Poetry
  • Online publication: 08 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316219355.006
Available formats
×