A Political Thriller (c. 63 BC)
Hour 1/2 (2/16/17): in class
Today, as a class, we discussed the importance of portraiture. How do we portray ourselves today? Where can we shift and shape our image? I immediately thought of my twitter — or twitters to be exact. I have one completely unaffiliated with my full name or my status as a student at Howard University; my other is the perfect faux account: it uses my full name in the username, my tweets are protected, my profile picture is one with my family and my bio boasts my pride at being a family gal with Bison pride and the praise of God. If an employer or a school official looks for me, my private twitter pops up, my other twitter almost impossible to find unless you do a lot of digging. While I don’t use my primary, public twitter for anything bad, my filter is not as refined as I expect future officials and employers to associate with me. Much like Alexander used Lysippos to produce one uniform image of himself, no matter how loosely it matched his actual personality, my portraiture and ethos are carefully preserved behind my private page.
We also touched on the display of ethos in looks alone. In the mural of Darius III’s defeat by Alexander the Great, we noted the structure of the piece. Alexander sat above the other soldiers, as the flanked him front and back — he looked powerful and his fighters loyalty and fierceness in battle were apparent. Then we looked closer to Alexander, specifically his anastole. The lock of hair on his forehead seems “whimsical” to use the words of Dr. Sandridge, as if his leonine locks are representative to his untamed ferocity in battle and leadership. When I think of Alexander’s hair and the symbolism that it held, I think of Barack Obama — a president known for his unfading hairline and well put together look. In fact, I recently read an article about the President’s barber who traveled back in forth from Illinois to the White House throughout Obama’s entire presidency. Though the color changed to more silver fox than spring chicken in his 8 years, Obama’s hair stayed relatively constant, much like his overall image of World Leader. Though he lacks the whimsy of an anastole, Obama kept up his ethos through his hair much like Alexander the Great did.
Hour 3 (2/17/17): Meeting the players of the political games in the late Roman Republic
Around 63 BC, the Roman Republic was descending into chaos. Too many people, too little money, with no solution in sight. Within this turmoil came Cicero and Catiline. Catiline hailed from a noble Patrician family, though they were poor. Cicero on the other hand was born into a wealthy family outside of Rome. The men’s relationship came to head after Cicero beat out Catiline for the position as one of the consuls. Catiline was already in debt, but he furthered himself into bankruptcy in the political race; Cicero was apparently seen as “the champion of the poor” as he used his amazing oratory skills to keep the corrupted Catiline out of office. Despite serving in the army and having once been a praetor and governer, Catiline’s reputation and behavior were questionable and added to Cicero’s arguments against him. Cicero’s reputation was extremely becoming due to his career as a lawyer where he gained political favor.
Even before his loss at consulship, Catiline had conspire to overthrow the standing system of government. Not only was a play at dictatorship, it was one to clear himself of his outstanding debt — though it was “hidden” under the guise of freeing the lower class of debt. His secret plan unraveled as Cicero convinced Fulvia, the mistress of Quintus Curius, to unveil the plan with the promise of wealth; too bad no one believed Cicero at first — though it soon came out to be true with proof. Cicero went as far as to execute 5 of Catiline’s fellow conspirators, stripping them of their right to a fair trail.
These men differed in upbringing, reputation and motivations of power.
Hour 4(2/18/17): Why do we remember Cicero as a persuasive leader (invention, style, memory, arrangement and delivery)
As a lawyer, Cicero needed to use rhetoric among the citizens of the Roman Republic. Lawyers need to be able to argue not only with logic and fact, but with an air of persuasion — people are swayed by pathos as much as logos as the Greeks may argue. It probably also helped that his speeches weren’t thrown together and instead had a well thought out approach, planned and structured for a convincing argument rather than random ramblings of intelligent thought.
In the Roman Republic, a political leader might more often speak to an assembly of other politicians, possibly groups of commoners. For a leader, having a stopping point is important because it can address both sides of the audience’s opinions; if a leader is proposing a new law, he or she would want to be able to talk about why the law would be a good decision while also being able to address both the possible downfalls. If the law is meant to keep crime rates low, the leader could address exactly why the rates are high to begin with and how the new law would address it.
A leader with effective style is Martin Luther King Jr. (cliche, I know). His style, to me, was much like a preacher. His speeches were impactful not solely based on content but his deliberate diction, intonation, and flair for dramatic pause brought his speeches to life.
Top 5 Characteristics:
- Decorum: MLK Jr. always dressed well and lived without scandal (at least no one knew about his scandals then).
- Diction: MLK Jr. didn’t use an excessive amount of large, “hyper-intellectual”, have to look up every 5th sentence type of words. His speeches broke down big concepts into understandable pieces.
- Intonation and Speech making: MLK Jr. is recognized for his speech giving, not only in his words but how he says them. He knew when to pause, when to raise his voice, lower it and exactly which tone to use for each audience.
Hour 5 (2/19/17): Leadership as rhetorical performance in Ciceros first catilinarian oration
In his speech, Cicero is trying to persuade his audience to turn against Catiline as he brings Catiline’s conspiracy to light. I think Cicero is trying to elicit a sense of disapproval and shame, as he consistently asks rhetorical questions to Catiline about why he chose to betray Rome and the Cicero quickly answers those same questions with Catiline’s downfalls in personality and morality. Cicero makes himself out to be a crusader of the people, fighting to keep the integrity of the Republic intact. He seems to be speaking as the Republic himself and he says “we” a lot:
We have now for a long time… lived among these dangers and machinations of conspiracy; but somehow or other, the ripeness of all wickedness… has come to a head at the time of my consulship. But if this man alone is removed from this piratical crew, we may appear, perhaps, for a short time relieved from fear and anxiety… (13).
In this passage, Cicero is arguing that the Republic would be in danger of another attack by Catiline if he was allowed to continue winning; while his exile would provide some relief, the threat of Catiline’s evil would not be extinguished permanently. He is setting up his own opinions of Catiline to look like that of others — his dangers are that of the people; his decision if for that of the people.
Cicero is pleading with the assembly as much as he is, successfully, demonizing Catiline. He proclaims that he is willing to ruin his reputation over this matter because it is of such importance; his “unpopularity” may “hang over” him but the “memory of your [Catiline’s] wickedness is fresh, at all events hereafter.” (9).
I think Cicero is very persuasive in that he effectively pulls at the emotions of the audience — myself included. He successfully talks to the audience through his rhetorical speech spoken specifically to Catiline. His reasoning for reprimanding Catiline and asking for his execution is flooded with logic as well as emotion; he calls to the history of the Republic, asking if these great people were willing to risk war and destruction of the beautiful Rome for one bad person. Cicero juxtaposes Rome’s integrity with Catiline’s evil, calling his audience to immediately think of the blatant differences and especially the values of the Republic. I was convinced, but I’m also biased to people acting selfishly under the guise of helping the people; Catiline’s plan to murder the officials and dismantle the class system was meant to clear his own debt first before it was meant to help the rest of the population.
Hour 6 (2/20/17): Leadership as rhetorical performance in Ciceros first catilinarian oration
Raubaugh’s argument is thin and far from convincing. He asks us to discount Catiline’s downfalls by arguing “Cicero did worse”. Yes, that’s obvious that executing men without a fair trail is bad, deserving of punishment of course, but that’s Cicero’s cross to bear; Catiline was still wrong, no matter if someone, somewhere did worse. I do agree with Raubaugh that Catiline’s character is portrayed as inheritantly bad, despite Cicero having admitted (according to Raubaugh’s research) to thinking that Catiline, at one time, was “a worthy citizen, a man who delighted in the society of the good…”. But by the time this was introduced into Raubaugh’s argument, it wasn’t enough to persuade me that Cicero was the worst out of the two.
Unlike Cicero, when Raubaugh compared Cicero and Catiline, he lacked the emotional tie tothe audience. Why should I believe that Catiline wasn’t a bad guy? When I read Cicero’s speech, I felt as if I could understand his personal interactions with Catiline; his speech was built with logic, but it was successfully sprinkled with his own testimony, some regret at the situation, as well as respect and nobility. When I read Raubaugh, I felt as if I was reading a “I have an idea so different than what’s been said already” and that conflict against normal praise of Cicero was supposed to persuade me alone.
Hour 7/8 (2/21/17): in class
In class, we talked about rhetoric. We dissected it not only in terms of the “Political Thriller” module, but also those of the past. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. We juxtaposed the concept of persuasion with that of leadership. Is a good leader one who is persuasive? Is persuasion good in its truest essence? Cicero was one of the consuls of the Roman Republic and it was because of his oratory skills that he gained social ascendency; his status of novus homo was also helped by his career as a lawyer, where he gained political favor and reputation through his skills of persuasion.
There are three types of rhetoric: forensic, epideictic, and deliberative.
Forensic: “what happened”; used within the courts to determine did someone do it or not
Epideictic: a showing; placing blame or praise (or eulogy) onto someone
Deliberative: group setting — winning people over to agree upon a decision (ex. “should we go to war and why)
We began with module one: Agamemnon, Achilles, and Nestor; we discussed how in Nestor’s attempt to reconcile the two Kings, he used deliberative and epideictic rhetoric — “You two should not quarrel anymore, here’s why you should decide this” while giving praise to both of the King’s personalities and accomplishments and giving blame to their characters in turn (Agamemnon preys on his people, and Achilles is a sucky leader). Nestor’s attempts at persuasion were important to the movement of the storyline as the reconciliation actually fueled more fighting. Also in the Iliad, Achilles makes an attempt to change Agamemnon’s mind about keeping Chryseis by using deliberative rhetoric — you shouldn’t keep Chryseis because it’s angering Apollo and destroying our quality of life”; like Nestor, Achilles fails in mending the situation as Agamemnon agrees to give up his prize, only if he can have someone else’s.
Then there was Socrates who argued his innocence through forensic rhetoric. He asked the assembly “What happened? What is true and what is false about the accusations made against me?”. His main argument was deciding his guilt through impiety — what is the probability that Socrates was actually the kind of guy to corrupt young men and idolize false, new gods? (Obviously the court decided he really was the kind of guy to do that stuff.) This argument of probability is tied to epideictic rhetoric in that it argues blame and praise. What kind of man do you think I am? Well let’s look at what I’ve done well and what I’ve done poorly in order to really decide if I could commit such a crime. Socrates argues that he is a “gadfly” meant to wake the sleeping horses (the young men) who think that they know when they do not. However, the court sees acquitting Socrates, no matter his achievements and societal importance, would be to praise all others who seem to denounce the law. Does Socrates failure to argue his case and win make him a bad public speaker? I think not. Socrates situation was complicated in that he was not speaking to an impartial group and Socrates was not begging his release. Instead of playing to persuasion, Socrates stuck to logical argument; it was his reluctance to read the audience that caused his death because his persecutors were willing to let him go if he admitted guilt. Unfortunately for Socrates and his unmoving pride, the truth does not always win the day but rather how well one can convince others whether it is true or not.
Hour 9/10 (2/21/17): Is Rhetoric Still a Path to Leadership?
- What similarities do you notice between Cicero’s speech and Obama’s speech in general? What tactics do they use to convince listeners they are effective leaders?
Both Cicero and President Obama used inclusive words like “we”; he also seems to speaking directly to a specific person or peoples — the President is talking to the graduating class and the surrounding crowd, Cicero to Catiline. They both ask a lot of rhetorical questions, most made to make the audience think critically about what is being said. There is a major pull to interact with the audience in a space that doesn’t necessarily allow for back and forth conversation.
- What emotional (pathos) appeals do both Cicero and Obama use? Choose one phrase each uses from their speeches to explain. Highlight specific words that you believe are particularly emotionally-charged.
One of the most striking emotional appeals that President Obama gave in his speech was when he spoke on abortion; he had recited an interaction between himself and a pro-lifer who had felt Obama was demonizing his morals. I could not access the commencement speech dialogue so excuse my lack of specific quotation, but Obama spoke about how the doctor had asked him not to change his position, but only that the president “speak about this issue in fair minded words”. Obama thanked the man, and turned his request to action — he did not change his stance on abortion, but he had his staff change the wording on the website’s abortion page. President Obama gave us an antidote that showed us his humility and willingness to take criticism as he then pushed us to do the same — he even prayed on it. He really stressed that though his opinion was not swayed, he was able to discern the situation and take the high road, something many people aim to do every day. Cicero makes an emotional appeal
- From your analysis of the two speeches, what does Cicero’s use of rhetoric (i.e. the art of persuasion) teach us about using speech to enact leadership (or at least, the impression that one is a leader through his or her speeches)?
I think that Cicero has taught us that using speech to enact leadership is a very powerful skill. Some of the most successful and powerful people have had amazing oratory skills or at least seemed to. I think the most important part of rhetoric is the ability to connect to your audience and call to their pathos. As important as ethos and logos are, people tend to move emotionally through life, choosing to go with their gut than their brain.
Example A: Trump supporters. There was no basis to Trump’s election other than his bigoted, hateful promises to Make America Great Again (though was it ever really great?). When you got past his big speeches on walls, thugs, big business and other nonsense, you could see his crippling lack of experience, knowledge, and humility. But he won over the hearts (or empty black pits) of over 6 million people through his presence as he preyed on their hatefulness. He said what many of them wouldn’t — he was the public reflection of the private bigot. His speeches and responses were extremely illogical and poorly presented, they proved that connecting with your intended audience is essential to leadership. Like I mentioned before, throughout Cicero’s argument against Catiline, he used as many arguments toward the emotion of the people as made arguments of ethics. While I despise making a comparison between Cicero and Trump, as one was an ancient, celebrated orator and the other an orange, reality tv star (excuse my bias), Trump made an impact much like Cicero.