| This dissertation examines diabolh&d12; in ancient rhetorical theory, a topic that has been largely ignored by scholarship.;Chapter One, a study of the semantic field of diabolh&d12; /diaba&d12; llw in the actual forensic speeches, serves as an introduction to the other texts considered in this dissertation, all of which use the words diabolh&d12; /diaba&d12; llw almost exclusively for courtroom attack. This chapter shows the common opinions and important cliches connected to diabolh&d12; that would have been recognizable to the average Athenian, it shows how the use of the word itself became a tactic in court as a way of discrediting an opponent's speech and it provides some insight into the experience of the accused.;Chapter Two looks at diabolh&d12; in Aristotle's Rhetoric. Aristotle rejects diabolh&d12; and all other ' 3&d12;x wtou&d5; pra&d12; gmatov speech from the t3&d12;cn h of rhetoric on the first page of his text, but he has no intention of dismissing them from his discussion of rhetoric. Moreover, he devotes a portion of the Rhetoric's third book to an analysis of diabolh&d12; tactics in the form of a catalogue of topoi.;Chapter Three looks at diabolh&d12; in Anaximenes' Rhetoric to Alexander, a text that compares nicely to Aristotle's because Anaximenes, without judgment, considers diabolh&d12; to be a fact of life in court, and therefore teaches his reader how to use it and how to defend himself against it.;Chapter Four examines diabolh&d12; in pseudo forensic speeches---Antiphon's Tetralogies, Plato's Apology of Socrates and Isocrates' Antidosis . These speeches constitute rhetorical theory indirectly (as models, not as discursive advise) because, by using the forensic form, they self-consciously comment the convention of the genre from the inside in a number of ways.;The final chapter, on Lucian's P3ri&d13; tou&d5; mh&d13; r` ad i&d12;wv pist3u&d12; 3india bolh&d5; (On Not Easily Trusting diabolh&d12; ), serves as a general conclusion to the dissertation. If Lanni argues that leeway in speaking off-topic in the popular courts is a natural side effect of the Athenian participatory democracy (see Introduction), Lucian shows what happens with diabolh&d12; in an entirely different political framework where there is no jury, and where diabolh&d12; becomes a private conversation between speaker and hearer in the small, elite world of the emperor's court. |
