We are delighted to welcome Dr. Maria G. Xanthou FHEA, of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies to join members of the Kosmos Society for an Open House discussion on:
“Killing with words: Isocrates, Dio Chrysostom, and Libanius on how to commit character assassination with style.”
As Monty Python’s sketch Argument Clinic illustrates, abusive discourse (psogos, loidōria, mempsis) lies at the heart of oratory and rhetorical education. Abuse informs the art of rhetoric as performance and amplifies its vehemence. Being chronologically distanced from one another, Isocrates, Dio Chrysostom, and Libanius took different approaches and presented us with different styles of the use of invective in oratory. This diachrony provides us with a diverse and wide spectrum of pragmatic, linguistic, and intertextual forms and features of comic invective. Isocrates expounded his theory on the oratory of blame in his treatise Against the Sophists and Areopagiticus, while Dio Chrysostom as well as Libanius employed abusive language in many orations. In my paper, I shall examine exemplary instances in Isocrates’, Dio Chrysostom’s, and Libanius’ corpora, where invective is used for defamation or slandering. I will focus on specific examples of their style and language to illustrate the interaction of rhetoric with performance and uncover their theoretical underpinnings.
Keywords: rhetoric, oratory, invective, abusive discourse, blame, performance
The Open House will be held on October 25 at 11:00 am EDT
To prepare for the event, you might like to read a few excerpts.
The event will be available at a later date on the Kosmos Society YouTube channel.
Dr. Maria G. Xanthou, FHEA, is a Senior Research Associate in Resilient Communities (University of Bristol) and a permanent full-time educator for the Hellenic Ministry of Education. She worked as a Research Associate in Pindaric Studies (CHS Washington DC, Harvard University) and a researcher in ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: the Greek Paradigm’ project at the University of Oxford (ERC Grant 2009–2013; PI: Prof. Angelos Chaniotis). She taught Classics and Ancient History at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Hellenic Open University, Open University of Cyprus, University of Bristol, and University of Leeds. She has been Visiting Fellow 2020 at Seeger CHS (Princeton University), and CHS Residential Fellow 2015 (Harvard University). She is a recipient of academic scholarships from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Academic Excellence Scheme, Hellenic State Scholarships Foundation, and Nicos and Lydia Trichas Foundation for Education and European Culture. Her interests lie within the intersection of ancient history, material culture, and classical philology, and include resilience in ancient communities and urban clusters, epichoric identities in the coastline of Northern Greece, Greek lyric poetry, both monodic and choral (Stesichorus, Pindar, and Bacchylides), Aristophanic and Attic comedy (5th c. BCE), Attic rhetoric (Isocrates), history of classical scholarship (German classical scholarship of the 19th c.), textual criticism, literary theory, ancient theory of rhetoric (definition and use of asyndeton), and e-learning.