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'5peakingthe &me Language

Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2001 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America @)Printed on acid-free paper 2004

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A CIP catalogrecordfor this book is availablefrom the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 0-472-11236-8 (cloth: alk. paper)

Speaking the Same Language Speech and Audience in Thucydides' Spartan Debates

PAULA

DEBNAR

Ann Arbor

THE UNIVERSITY OF 1\1.JCHIGAN PRESS

Preface

~ his book is an examination

of the role played by the internal audiences in

.1 Thucydides' History of the PeloponnesianWar and focuses on debates in

which Spartans are either speakers or auditors. My analysis for the most part takes the form of discursive commentaries on the speeches, with particular consideration given to the historical as well as the narrative context. I make no apology for this approach; Thucydides demands close reading coupled with attention to historical detail. As is true of any study of Thucydides, the organization of Speaking the Same Language is itself a structure imposed on the History. Its three parts correspond to a progressive change I perceive in Spartan discourse-and attitudes to discourse-as the History moves farther away from the prewar debates in Sparta in both time and place. There are of course numerous details that do not fit easily into this schema. Nonetheless, a large-scale movement of profound significance is the result of the individual speeches and events in the History

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. II.— SEPTEMBER, 1858.—NO. XI.

IT is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or we boil at different degrees. One man is brought to the boiling point by the excitement of conversation in the parlor. The waters, of course, are not very deep. He has a two-inch enthusiasm, a pattypan ebullition. Another requires the additional caloric of a multitude, and a public debate; a third needs an antagonist, Or a hot indignation; a fourth needs a revolution; and a fifth, nothing less than the grandeur of absolute ideas, the splendors and shades of Heaven and Hell.

But because every man is an orator, how long soever he may have been a mute, an assembly of men is so much more susceptible. The eloquence of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking point, and all others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on their return to the fireside.

The plight of these phlegmatic brains is better than that of those who prematurely boil, and who impatiently break the silence before their time. Our county conventions often exhibit a small-potsoon-hot style of eloquence. We are too much reminded of a medical experiment, where a series of patients are taking nitrous-oxide gas. Each patient, in turn, exhibits similar symptoms,—redness in the face, volubility, violent gestieulation, delirious attitudes, occasional stamping, an alarming loss of pereeption of the passage of time, a selfish enjoyment of his sensations, and loss of perception of the sufferings of the audience. But this lust to speak marks the universal feeling of the energy of the engine, and the curiosity men feel to touch the springs. Of all the musical instruments on which men play, a popular assembly is that which

Harris, William V.. "I. Approaches". Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. 1-128. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674038356-003

Harris, W. (2004). I. Approaches. In Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity (pp. 1-128). Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674038356-003

Harris, W. 2004. I. Approaches. Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, pp. 1-128. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674038356-003

Harris, William V.. "I. Approaches" In Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity, 1-128. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2004. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674038356-003

Harris W. I. Approaches. In: Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press; 2004. p.1-128. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674038356-003

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