Narrative and characterisation in the <i>paragraphe</i> speeches of the Demosthenic corpus

ABSTRACT In a well-known passage of his Rhetoric, Aristotle remarks that ‘[t]he narration ought to be indicative of character [ēthikēn]’ (1417a). In this paper, I shall focus on the portrayal of character through narrative in the paragraphe speeches of the Demosthenic corpus. Through a paragraphe, a defendant sought to block a claim by the plaintiff on technical grounds. The narratives in these speeches relate the background to the legal case but also portray a range of different characters. The opponent and his associates are regularly presented as habitual deceivers who have always been involved in malicious schemes or as individuals who used to be friends with the speaker but have fallen in with the wrong ‘crowd’. Meanwhile, the speaker's character also emerges as law-abiding, non-litigious and charitable. I shall examine three paragraphe speeches in greater detail and discuss the ways in which the presentation of the opponents’ character fits into the speakers’ wider rhetorical strategies.