indicated earlier, Plato strongly opposed Sophists who practiced eristic discourse but would not engage in the rational didactic techniques of protreptic discourse (Euthydemus 288B–D, 272B–C, 289E, 290A, 278C, D). We know from Pucci, that Hesiod had discussed the concept of false and true discourse, which he called respectively “crooked” and “straight” (45–49). Homer also has a directional concept of protreptic discourse and refers to yielding or betaking oneself willingly to do something (Iliad 5.700; Iliad 6.336). Moreover, there is present in Homer the notion of a human capacity to generate “gentle” words to soothe the mind. Perhaps the most sensitive illustration of this phenomenon of protreptic discourse occurs in the Iliad when Alexander says “I had a desire to direct my [thought] to sadness. And even now my wife sought to persuade me with gentle words” (Iliad 6.336–38). By our present standards it is somewhat ironic that women, who are seen here as having nothing whatsoever to do with the real power of discourse beyond “wrangling,” are used to illustrate a capacity for rationality in time of stress!
Although the human heuristic capacity to discover discourse is evident in Homer as well as the potential to manufacture powerful eristic and reasonable protreptic discourse, it should not be forgotten that these are emerging, and even primitive, notions of discourse. To appreciate this perspective, we should reflect on the ability to produce genuine eloquence. There is little doubt that in Homer, eloquence is god-produced and god-given. As is evidenced in Hesiod’s account of Pandora, Zeus gave, and later took away, divine speech (Erga 90–105; see also Solmsen, “Gift”). Yet, to say that Zeus completely took away divine speech would be imprecise and not account for Hesiod’s statement that both he and Homer knew “a few” divine words (Theogenia 837; Pucci 91). Despite man’s limitations to struggle with the development of his own techne, there is evidence of what E. R. Dodds calls “psychic intervention” (5). Individuals who are eloquent are seen as having a gift from the gods and are considered to be “god-like” (Homer, Odyssey 8.165–185).
This divine gift from the gods is reserved for two categories of humans. The first group is royal or god-descended and god-blessed. Nestor, the King of Pylos, is the model of eloquence in Homer (Iliad 1.247–249). Yet, Odysseus, the King of Ithaka, is viewed not only as wily but eloquent, as is indicated in the Iliad when Homer says, “But when he [Odysseus] put forth his great voice from his breast, as like a snow storm in the winter, then indeed could no mortal man quarrel with Odysseus and then indeed did we wonder to behold his image” (Iliad 3.221–224). Lastly, the “hero” of the Iliad, Achilles, is not only god-born but has been raised in a kingly fashion so that he can be “a rhetor of speech and a doer of deeds” (Iliad 9.443). Of great importance here is the use of the term rhetor, for it is the earliest and only known instance in which Homer used the term throughout the entire Iliad and Odyssey. It is a provocative point to historians of rhetoric that this earliest notion of the term which would be the basis for the founding of the discipline of rhetoric centuries later is now clearly associated with the god-blessed hero Achilles.
The other group of individuals in the Iliad and Odyssey who have the capacity for eloquence are the aoidoi, the bards who “weave” together or compose chants of heroic tales to honor the gods. Demodocus and Phemius are two examples from the Odyssey (1.154; 8.65–67; 13.27–28). Aoidoi are invariably given the epithet “divine” or “god-like” aoidoi who receive their power of eloquence from Zeus (Odyssey 1.325–349; Odyssey 8.43, 47, 87, 539; Odyssey, 13.27; Odyssey 9.3, 4). The sixth century BCE lyric poet Pindar considered “aoidoi” to be “weavers of chants” (Nemean Odes 2.1, 2). These composers of discourse were the pioneers of the techniques of oral literature and evolved into the formal guild of Rhapsodes who are discussed in Plato’s Ion. Both the aoidoi, and their later descendents the Rhapsodes, orally composed and preserved texts of heroic tales, of which the Iliad and Odyssey are the most famous. During the sixth century BCE, the Rhapsodes developed written compositional techniques to preserve by script the collection of Homeric words and grammar which was becoming increasingly rare and, consequently, difficult to pronounce. These compositional techniques became so established that by the fifth century BCE private texts of Homer were known to have existed in Athens (Xenophon Symposium 3.6; Memorabilia 4.2.10).
In review, this chapter addressed several issues. First, the earliest Greek literature known indicates that there was an awareness among the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey of heuristic processes that could be used to develop human technai to produce discourse. Secondly, this discourse had power. The power was man-made, but it could produce emotive effects and resolve discord and strife through conceptual, eristic discourse. Third, there is some evidence that a gentler structuring of discourse to turn or direct the mind and soothe emotions was the precursor to protreptic discourse. Lastly, man has some potential to be eloquent but the gift was god-given inspiration and available to only a chosen few. Although women could wrangle and produce strife, they could not be eloquent or even wily in their discourse; they had to content themselves with being reasonable!
The implications of these points are important for the history of rhetoric. It is clear by Homer’s tales of a proto-literate, Bronze Age culture that conceptual processes were being formulated for the structuring and understanding of discourse. There is an awareness of the potential of this power and even an indication of the relationship of thought and discourse. Even at this early stage of development, human technai (i.e., strategies or heuristics) for the structuring of discourse were being developed. More importantly, with this consciousness there is an emerging shift from a theocentric notion to more of an anthropocentric notion of discourse. The supremacy of the gods as the generating force of effective expression would be challenged to the extent that words and arguments could be composed by Sophists so powerful that they could defy the very existence of the gods who had once been credited with giving them the divine power of speech. To Zeus, it may have been better if Pandora had not opened the lid of that jar in the first place.
The Evolution of the Hellenic Rhapsode
A good song, I think. The end’s good—that came to me in one piece—and the rest will do. The boy will need to write it, I suppose, as well as hear it. Trusting to the pen; a disgrace, and he with his own name made. But write he will, never keep it in the place between his ears. And even then he won’t get it right alone. I still do better after one hearing of something new than he can after three. I doubt he’d keep even his own songs for long, if he didn’t write them. So what can I do, unless I’m to be remembered only by what’s carved in marble?
—Mary Renault, The Praise Singer
Traditionally, Corax and Tisias of Sicily (fifth century BCE) are acknowledged as the inventors of rhetoric. However, Rhapsodes (the individuals largely responsible for the transmission of Homeric literature) were developing techniques for the theory and practice of oral literature at least three centuries earlier and were a link between Homer and the systematized rhetoric that emerged centuries later in classical Athens. Milman Parry’s discovery that the Iliad and Odyssey were oral documents was an extremely important contribution to the study of the prehistory of rhetoric. Parry’s exhaustive efforts and evidence clearly reveal that Homeric compositions were recorded so that they could be recited aloud (Milman Parry 1928 and 1932; Adam Parry 1–50; Dodds 1968; cf. Davidson 216–18, 224). The implications of this discovery not only indicate a shared interest in oral technique between Rhapsodes and ancient rhetoricians, but also compel an examination of the role of Rhapsodes in codifying, transmitting, and even composing this oral literature. More importantly, research done by Parry, Albert B. Lord, and Berkley Peabody demonstrates that early oral compositions reveal an ancient oral tradition functioning as a “highly sophisticated sociolinguistic institution that plays a central role in maintaining the continuities of the culture in which it occurs” (Peabody 1). Rhapsodes were composers of epic poetry who continued from the formation of Homeric literature through the evolution of rhetoric into a discipline. Yet the relationship between the Rhapsodes and the development of rhetoric was far from autonomous, for in the period prior to rhetoric’s emergence as a discipline, Rhapsodes developed compositional techniques that laid a foundation that contributed to rhetoric’s development.
