Date of Defense

4-22-2026

Date of Graduation

5-2026

Department

World Languages and Literatures

First Advisor

David Kutzko

Second Advisor

Justin Barney

Abstract

From the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., professional teachers travelled throughout Greece, teaching a wide variety of subjects from music to grammar. One subject that these sophists taught earned massive notoriety for them and, consequently, their trade: rhetoric. Within Athenian democracy, this craft of speaking well to persuade others became both valuable for those who are politically active and dangerous for demagogues. Coinciding with this emerging art of rhetoric was the emergence of Athenian tragedy. These tragedies served to speak about and encourage reflection upon their own contemporary politics and culture. This paper explores how Euripides examines and encourages wariness of rhetoric. He first argues for its positive role in democracy and the court through its manifestation in such settings within his plays. This paper further demonstrates that Euripides encouraged wariness for rhetoric by contrasting the uses of rhetoric. He contrasts rhetoric which is wielded to encourage policy and actions that align with nomos (customs such as the right to bury the dead, the sanctity of oaths, and the role of justice with regards to violence) with that of rhetoric used to argue for what is expedient to the powerful. This paper will further magnify this dynamic between the just, powerless speaker and the unjust, powerful speaker. Euripides demonstrates this power dynamic between speakers in the rhetoric of supplication. Euripides then gives this contrast potency by imposing tragic consequences upon characters who ignore rhetoric argued with nomos and heed to rhetoric that argues for expediency. He further shows rhetoric’s powerful capacity for deception, for “bewitching” its audience through demonstrations of characters deceiving others with the same rhetorical devices used to argue for nomos. The paper uses the handbooks of sophists to analyze what rhetorical devices are being employed by the characters within these plays and how they impact their audience. This analysis, drawing from both the plays and the handbooks of sophists, gives Euripides’ plays tremendous political relevance to his day as well as a new perspective on a subject that animated so much discourse in Athens.

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Open Access

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