The Making of Identities in Athenian Oratory

Focusing on extant speeches from the Athenian Assembly, law, and Council in the fifth–fourth centuries BCE, these essays explore how speakers constructed or deconstructed identities for themselves and their opponents as part of a rhetorical strategy designed to persuade or manipulate the audience.

According to the needs of the occasion, speakers could identify the Athenian people either as a unified demos or as a collection of sub-groups, and they could exploit either differences or similari...