Overview

This volume provides readers with a new translation and up to date historical and rhetorical commentary on the only extant speech of the Athenian leader Lycurgus (390s/380s-324 BCE), one of Athens' most influential statesman and orators. His prosecutorial speech, Against Leocrates, delivered in 330 BCE, indicted his compatriot for treason, claiming that he fled Athens after the battle of Chaeronea when the city was under threat of attack by Philip II of Macedonia, though this attack never materialized. Although Leocrates was acquitted after the evenly split jury ultimately came down in favour of the defence, the speech is much more than a condemnation of an alleged misconduct: it provides valuable information on the historical and political events around Chaeronea and offers Lycurgus' vision of what Athens could and should do in those circumstances, in light of models which he fashioned from Athenian and other Greek mythical and historical pasts. Not only his legal and rhetorical strategies and the merits of the case are examined here, but also what the speech tells us about his and his contemporaries' perceptions of patriotism, their religious beliefs, views of desirable citizenship, and the tensions between the individual and the state. A detailed introduction complements the new English translation of the speech with an authoritative account of its history and manuscript tradition, as well as an overview of the trial's procedure, Lycurgus' motives for initiating it, and Leocrates' defence. It also provides a survey of Athenian democracy and judicial system in the late fourth century BCE which will be invaluable for readers new to the text, covering Lycurgus' career, his ideology and program for Athens, and what these meant to individual Athenians and democracy, while the in-depth commentary analysing the historical, legal, and rhetorical facets of this multi-layered and unique oration will be of use to both students and advanced scholars of ancient Greek history and rhetoric.

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9780198830177

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Reviews

This volume offers an accessible guide to a fascinating and (as Roisman rightly indicates) unsettling speech from a period-and cultural environment-which is now attracting the attention it deserves. It will help to encourage nuanced readings of Lycurgus not only as a linchpin figure in Athenian civic renewal in the 330s and 320s but also as a political operator who had to fashion individual communication strategies to sustain his authority in the familiar democratic contexts of the lawcourts and Assembly, just like his peers and rivals. * Guy Westwood, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *

This volume offers an accessible guide to a fascinating and (as Roisman rightly indicates) unsettling speech from a period-and cultural environment-which is now attracting the attention it deserves. It will help to encourage nuanced readings of Lycurgus not only as a linchpin figure in Athenian civic renewal in the 330s and 320s but also as a political operator who had to fashion individual communication strategies to sustain his authority in the familiar democratic contexts of the lawcourts and Assembly, just like his peers and rivals. * Guy Westwood, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *

Author Information

Joseph Roisman is a Professor of Classics at Colby College. Among his major publications are monographs and anthologies on Greek rhetoric, Alexander the Great, ancient Macedonia, the Athenian general Demosthenes, and the classical art of command. He has also written numerous articles on Greek history, historiography, and drama. He has been the recipient of research fellowships in the US and overseas. Michael J. Edwards is a Professor of Classics at the University of Roehampton. His research interests cover classical oratory and rhetoric - in particular the speeches of the Attic Orators and Greek rhetorical theory - and his publications include editions and translations of or commentaries on Antiphon, Lysias, and Andocides, as well as Statius and Plutarch.

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