Victoria Wohl's Rhetoric Of The Athenian Democracy

The pen, at least in ancient Greece, often times proved to be mightier than the sword. As Victoria Wohl said in “Rhetoric of the Athenian citizen,” “citizenship…was defined by speech, the citizen’s right to speak his mind freely in the Assembly” (162). To be able to defend oneself, discuss law, work for the courts, be on jury was part of being a citizen in Greece. Because speech was so important, how words were said and pieced together held even greater significance. People would often hire, logographers, or speechmakers, to create an ethopoeia, or a character that brought the speech alive, for the person who needed a compelling speech or argument. Speeches were essential in winning cases in front of the dikasteria, or a court panel, similar
The plaintiff tells the dikasteria that the Disabled Man is “skilled in a trade which would enable [him] to live without this grant. In proof of [his] bodily strength, he instances that [the Disabled Man] mount[s] on horseback; of the affluence arising from [his] trade, that [the Disabled Man is] able to associate with people who have means to spend,” (Lysias 4-5). Wohl argues Disabled Man’s speech “is both about an adunatos, a Disabled Man, and about an adunaton, an impossible metonymy that threatens to expose impossibilities within the metonymic structures of democracy,” (173). In a way, Wohls describes the Disabled Man as someone who lives outside Greece’s citizen protection because of his disability. The man does not have oikos, or the basic unit of Greek society that was defied by the family, the family’s property, and the house. He also doesn’t really have a phratry, a grouping of clans or other social units within a tribe or like a fraternity. As Wohl and the Disabled Man said, his only real tie to being a citizen is his obol. Because the man does not have easy access to the city because he lives in the deme, or suburbs, he not really an ideal person to sit in a government position and he has no true ties to the city, without his obol “he threatens to expose as adunaton the city’s claim to protect all its
He is earning a living with his trade; he has access to the courts as we see with speech, he votes, and theoretically could hold an office position. Even Wohl said “one of the key identifying attributes of a citizen was parrhēsia, the right to speak freely in the public sphere,” (162). This is why Lysias building of the Disabled Man’s ethopoeia is so important. Lysias uses self-derision to make the Disabled Man seem vulnerable but he also weaves a tale to make the Disabled Man’s accuser seam like a corrupt jokester and the jury feel guilt if they were to take a way the man’s obol. The Disabled Man’s accuser is not wrong on saying that it is a little fishy that he can mount horses even though he walks on two crutches and has a decent trade. At the same time, however, “the most powerful citizens were those who spoke well,” (Wohl 163). What makes the Disabled Man not seem like he not active in the democracy is that he compels people not believe it. He argues as counter