The Anticolonialist Discourse in Classical Rhetoric: The Controversy between Alcidamas and Isocrates on Messenia
Abstract
This paper intends to reveal how the anti- colonial discourse found a particular place in the ancient Greek rhetoric. In the Classical Age, two disciples of Gorgias, the orators Alcidamas and Isocrates, took part in a debate about the independence of Messenia, recently conquered by Sparta. Both authors were critical of each other for many years, being the Messenian crisis an episode in their quarrel. A complete discourse of Isocrates, the Archidamus, survived, but unfortunately only three brief fragments of the Messeniac of Alcidamas did. Isocrates made use of all kind of arguments to justify the Spartan colonization of Messenia: first of all, the power of myth and, in second place, the military action, plus other topics taken from the status quo. Conversely, Alcidamas offered arguments taken from the sophists, like a passage from the orator and thinker Antiphon. The political opposition between both orators was expressed in the use of different conceptual tools so the attention will be focused on the devices used by each one in order to examine the adaptation of those elements to the rhetorical debate. A fragment taken from the comic author Philemon will be added in order to evaluate the reception of a number of ideas that pre- announced ideals of philanthropy and universalism typical of the Hellenistic Age.Downloads
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