Set Speeches in History
Crafted orations placed in historical figures' mouths to lay bare the reasoning behind their decisions.
Ancient historians inserted composed speeches (demegoriai) at pivotal moments, often as paired opposing debates, to dramatize the arguments and motives driving events. Thucydides (late 5th c. BCE) famously admitted he gave each speaker the words it seemed fitting they should say for the occasion, while staying close to their general sense. The device, also used by Herodotus and by Roman historians like Livy and Tacitus, became a signature of classical historiography.
How it traveled
- Antiquitates RomanaeRomeexplains
- De ThucydideRomeexplains
- De Demosthenis dictioneRomeexplains
- HistoriaeConstantinople (Istanbul)explains
- Ars Rhetorica—explains
- Scholia in Iliadem—explains
- Quaestionum Homericanum ad Iliadem pertinentium reliquiaeRomeexplains
- HistoriaeRomeexplains
- De BellisConstantinople (Istanbul)explains
- Historical LibrarySyracuse (Sicily)explains
- Historia RomanaRomeexplains
Key passages(20)
De Thucydide · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Thucydide · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Thucydide · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Antiquitates Romanae · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Antiquitates Romanae · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Demosthenis dictione · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Thucydide · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Thucydide · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Thucydide · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Thucydide · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Thucydide · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Thucydide · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
De Thucydide · Dionysius of Halicarnassus