A Rhetor and His Audience
A Rhetor and His Audience
The Role of Invective
This chapter focuses on certain of Libanius's orations, returning to consideration of his correspondence only at the end but considering the same issues of credibility and “reality.” It concentrates on those of the sophist's speeches that contain marked elements of invective (especially sexual slander). The chapter's main contention is that Libanius did not have to “hide” these (or other) virulent speeches, as has been claimed, because his audience was able to evaluate, and understand as conventional, elements of invective that may startle the modern reader. A large part of this chapter deals with character assassination in the oratory of the fourth century BCE in an effort to determine whether audiences in classical antiquity accepted sexual slander uncritically.
Keywords: Libanius's orations, invective, sexual slander, character assassination, classical antiquity
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