Preliminary Programme

Sole rule in the Greek polis has a complex history. Attitudes towards sole rule became increasingly negative from the 7th century BC onwards due to a rising focus on good governance and institutional order (eunomia). This meant that sole rulers faced increasing pressure to legitimise their position in the light of the rising civic ideology of the polis. Successful rulers were fully aware of the power and malleability of language to shape thought and used this to their advantage by employing strategies of persuasion and by manipulating historical memory for legitimising purposes (Gehrke 1994; Foxhall, Gehrke, Luraghi 2010). To challenge negative frames of power we see political actors use their own stereotypes and metaphors to present their rule as legitimate. For example, framing sole rule as mastery over slaves makes sole rule less attractive as slavery is largely considered negatively. Whereas framing sole rule as a father over his children evokes a more positive response due to the paternalistic nature of the frame. It is this attempt to frame one’s power in a paternal fashion that this paper is concerned with. While hierarchical in nature, the metaphor places emphasis on protection and duties of care rather than any pernicious motivations. Positive depictions of sole rulers in the ancient sources often used the paternal framework, particularly in epinician and panegyric to legitimise sole rule and present a more favourable appearance.
This paper will examine the development of the father metaphor in describing sole rule in the polis, noting its effectiveness in legitimising monocratic power. I then track the reconceptualization of the father metaphor and note its use in democratic and oligarchic constitutions, where the city institutions, or the city itself, takes on the role of father/fatherland, and the subsequent repercussions this had for sole rulers. The paper will make use of framing theory and conceptual metaphor theory to demonstrate the rhetorical effectiveness of the father metaphor in ancient Greece in an attempt to gain new insights into the political discourse of that period. (Show less)

Over the last century, Thucydides has sometimes been identified as a pioneering social scientist rather than merely a historian, an idea most closely associated in recent years with Josiah Ober (see e.g. Ober & Perry, ‘Thucydides as a prospect theorist’, 2014). This line of interpretation identifies in his work not only a conscious tendency towards generalisation and the elaboration of normative principles (as R.G. Collingwood, for example, accused him of having a guilty conscience for being ‘unhistorical’) but also of anticipating different modern ideas and approaches, including those of social psychology (see e.g. Turner, ‘Thucydides, groupthink and the Sicilian Expedition fiasco’, 2018). This paper will explore how far the famous Sicilian Debate can plausibly and productively be read through the lens of cognitive bias and ‘thinking traps’, as a dramatisation of the ways in which the Athenians failed to deliberate rationally, thus providing an explanation of their failure in the war. It will also draw on other cognitive approaches, such as the idea of apophenia (perceiving meaning in randomness) to understand the appeal of Thucydides’ text and its distinctive contribution. (Show less)

In political communication – ancient and modern – it is evident that it is not only facts that convinced groups of people. Rather it is how something is said, how a story is elaborated, how information is illustrated, linked to emotional stories, or proven with examples that determines the reception and reaction of an audience. Hence, framing influences opinion building and decision-making (Kahneman & Tversky 1981; Nelson, Oxley & Clawson 1997). The importance of such storytelling in political communication was already well known to public speakers in ancient Athenian democracy. Through storytelling, orators offered their audience a framework in which they invited them to make their decision (Spatharas 2020). This ability to reach an audience, keep their interest and make a speech not only appealing but – at least for the day – convincing was crucial, especially in the competitive context of Athenian law courts.
To influence information evaluation processes, applicability and accessibility are crucial cognitive effects of framing (Price & Tewksbury 1997, Lecheler & de Vreese 2019). Applicability is the process of knowledge activation. A public speaker frames the issue at stake in such a way as to activate a specific set of ideas, emotions, and prior knowledge which the individual then applies to process the information received. If successful, the speaker determines how the audience evaluates the issue at stake. Further, once activated, such ideas, emotions or memories retain an activation potential, making them more likely to be used also in subsequent evaluations. This is the accessibility effect. It determines which cognitive elements are – even after a speech is finished – most likely used to evaluate an event or person. Accessibility depends on a speaker's ability to activate knowledge, opinions, values or emotions within his audience, while applicability is strongly dependent on repetition.
In this paper, I show how statesmen in ancient Athenian democracy used framing for their public political speeches and in doing so built on applicability and accessibility effects to stir their audience’s evaluations towards the decision they wished for. I will focus on the Athenian rh?t?r Aeschines and discuss how he used framing to create cohesive stories throughout his speeches. This allows us to analyze how Aeschines used applicability to impact the audience’s evaluation of his main arguments as well as how he deliberately repeated key points throughout a speech to build an accessibility effect. (Show less)