As factors in the defendant’s decision, he mentions the gods, chance, love, violence, and persuasive speech. The rhetorician argues that speech dominates everyone and everything and evokes emotions such as fear, sadness, joy, hatred, envy, disgust, pain, and many more.

Prompted by the above, I attempted to approach and compare the hate speech expressed in the modern communicative field with the practice of rhetorical art exercised by the ancient Athenians of the Classical period in the social, political, and judicial sphere. Certainly this is a complex issue. However, it appears that contemporary hate speech resembles the tactics, content, motives, and targets of the practices of ancient rhetoricians.

The art of rhetoric was born in Sicily and flourished especially in ancient Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BC through various political and historical circumstances for the Greek city-states. Since then, rhetoric has been a cornerstone of the education of young people throughout the civilized Mediterranean basin.

The term rhetoric means the art of speech, that is, the technique of composing speeches that have the power to persuade an audience. Rhetoric refers to the art, meaning the set of rules governing the composition of speech, whereas the term oratory denotes the application of the art, the speeches themselves, and the rhetoricians themselves. Gorgias of Leontini came to ancient Athens in 427 BC and was a rhetorician and teacher of rhetoric to prominent Athenian students. He became a proponent of the art of rhetoric and persuasion and concluded that the power of speech knows no limits. Anyone can achieve anything with speech. Nevertheless, he recognized that violence is an unacceptable means of manipulating an audience. The purpose of the rhetorician is demagoguery, influencing the audience for his own benefit. Rhetoric as the “creator of persuasion,” that is, as a technique, aims to persuade; it is not concerned with teaching what is true and just, but with presenting what is plausible, that which benefits the rhetorician.

According to Aristotle, there are three kinds of rhetorical speeches. Deliberative speeches, meaning political speeches delivered in the Assembly of the People regarding matters of the state with the aim of encouraging or dissuading the people in decisions of interest. Forensic speeches, meaning judicial speeches concerning accusations or defenses with the aim of proving guilt or innocence based on the law and a sense of justice. The most important court in the Athenian state was the “Heliaia,” which consisted of 6,000 Athenian men, the “Heliasts.” Because the law stipulated that the parties were obliged to speak in person, and if they had an advocate for rebuttal, the litigants turned to the logographers. Logographers were paid rhetoricians who wrote speeches that the litigants were then obliged to memorize and recite in court. To influence the judges, professional logographers had to know the laws and the psychology of popular courts in order to sway public opinion in favor of their clients. The third category was epideictic or ceremonial speeches, which were delivered at festivals and gatherings and praised or criticized actions and figures of the present with references to the past and predictions of the future, often with political motivations.

Aristotle includes among the artistic means of persuasion the ethos of both the speaker and the opposing side. Demosthenes, in his speech “On the Freedom of the Rhodians,” describes how the ethos of the listener is utilized by the speaker in order to strengthen the persuasion of the speech, since, like passion, it emotionally affects the listener. The synergy between emotional arousal and persuasion is established in ancient rhetoric. Persuasion is a complex, ongoing, and interactive process in which sender and receiver connect through symbols, verbal and non-verbal, through which the audience is led to adopt a given behavior, stance, or opinion against existing perceptions.

Lene Rubinstein argues that there is a direct and an indirect way of arousing emotion. The direct manner relates to language and emotions such as hatred, anger, hostile words, feelings of wrath; the indirect manner involves sentences that conceal or imply negative messages. Aristotle emphasizes that harsh criticism and vulgarities create a negative emotional framework. This may be characterized as “abusive language.” Hate speech is expressed through deliberate insults and expressions directed at the interlocutor. Slander is also used as a means of attack. As such, slander can be considered an indirect unofficial means of arousing and exploiting people’s negative emotions, especially fear, insecurity, and prejudice.

The terminology of “hate” is also found in medical rhetoric, which aimed to frighten and influence Athenians about the dangers presented by carriers of infectious disease. Medical metaphors of hate exploit anxiety, panic, and fear associated with illnesses and create a negative disposition in the audience. Aristotle states that fear is defined as a painful, troubled emotion caused by the impression of an impending evil that causes destruction or pain.

“Hate speech” in ancient Greece was used in everyday communication between people. The practice of “insulting” could range from simple humor to the assault on a person’s honor. “Skómata,” from the verb skóptō, meaning mockery, teasing without intent to offend, was encountered among people in the ancient marketplace — the field in which Athenians negotiated their social status and insults played a significant role. Skómata are found in ancient rituals, at symposia with crude language, and in ancient comedy through obscenity and satire about the body, sexuality, gender, economic status, and origin of the satirized.

The art of insult was deeply rooted in ancient Greek culture and was included in the art of rhetoric, which was taught to the young. In this field we encounter “diabolē” and “loidoría” with the aim of defamation, ridicule, and vitriolic insult. Rhetoricians through diabolē and loidoría abuse verbal communication. The most serious form of insult in classical Athens was hybris, which concerns the assault on a person’s honor. Hybris was malicious and forbidden, as it was considered the most harmful of all insults because it threatened the functioning of the democratic polity.

Aristotle states that hybris aims to cause harm and humiliation to the person insulted and is done for the pleasure of the one who insults, with the intention of feeling superior to the other. This tactic is seen among the young and the wealthy because that is how they showed superiority. He who dishonors someone does so deliberately and believes that the “worthless” has no honor.

In abusive rhetoric the vocabulary includes diabolē, loidoría, slander, public abuse, harassment, blasphemy, mudslinging, and insult. Abusive rhetoric was usually used against citizens with inferior military performance, those who participated in illegal financial transactions, if their parents were foreigners or slaves, for homosexuals, the poor, prostitutes, lower social classes, citizens who squandered their family’s wealth, who insulted their parents, for violation of religious principles, strange clothing, behavior, appearance, and licentiousness.

Ronald Barthes, a theorist of language and literature, states that our world is incredibly full of ancient rhetoric. The art of rhetoric travels through the centuries and has a timeless safety limit that says the art of rhetoric is beneficial only when combined with moral integrity. But how can hate speech in the communicative field be combined with moral boundaries and ethical dimensions? Because artistic speech has the power to compose a virtual reality, the opposite of true reality. In this way, hate rhetoric can be considered an art of persuasion, demagoguery, deception, and fraud.

In the contemporary communicative field, rhetorical art is clearly practiced, orally and in writing, directly and indirectly, openly and anonymously. The barrage of propagandistic messages disrupts and threatens the intellectual freedom of every individual with the aim of manipulating him. Propaganda, which one could describe as an evolution of the ancient art of rhetoric, is also a scientific technique in connection with the sciences of psychology and sociology, and is dangerous.

Hate speech expressed in the modern communicative field uses every available means and tool — written and spoken word, sound, image, internet, social media — to persuade and provoke a hostile climate toward its targets, such as women, groups of similar sexual orientation, political figures and parties, religious groups or religions, and others.

According to all of the above, hate speech in the modern communicative field bears similarities to the ancient art of rhetoric, as it is exercised on political, judicial, social, and communicative levels and carries a structured technique. Today’s manufactured propaganda assembles, cuts, stitches, distorts, and presents the possible as true or even repugnant. In most cases it expresses the speaker’s opinion, not that of society as a whole, and aims to stir the emotions and opinions of the audience. Ancient oratory included emotions, half-truths, symbols, acting, pathos, methods and techniques that are encountered to this day with the purpose of inflaming crowds, creating a hostile climate of opinion, and even brainwashing.

On the other hand, the reader and listener himself, when encountering hate speech on the internet and mass media, has the freedom to filter information, distance himself, cross-check, and then arrive at his final opinion, which should stand unaffected and independent from propagandistic tactics. Just because someone writes a personal opinion of hate or is paid to write and systematically exercise negative criticism toward others, does it mean that he is right?

“Isēgoria,” that is, equality in the right of speech, was and is a fundamental characteristic of the democratic polity, which on the one hand gives the propagators of hate the right to pursue their aims, and on the other gives the public the right to respond and reject every act of hate, verbal violence, and fanaticism. What is heartening and can operate as an example is that in classical Athens the comic and tragic characters of Attic drama challenged the deceptive tricks of rhetorical art and distrusted speech.

Since humans tend to be defenseless against speech, they must adopt a stricter defensive tactic and evaluation of what they hear and read. Plato himself was an opponent of the art of rhetoric because he considered it an instrument of deception without moral restraints. However, the reader and listener who must be informed daily about what is happening in society should choose his sources of information with quality criteria, critically evaluate their content, and question any propagandistic practices of hate, discerning the truth.

Source of information: Λόγος Μίσους δυνάστης μέγας εστίν.. - SOpHiSM 

https://cityculture.gr/gorgias-o-leontinos-o-logos-dynastis-megas-estin-raftopoulos/

Deborah Kamen, Insults in Classical Athens, London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2020.

Andreas Serafim, Feel between the lines: Emotion, language and persuasion in Attic forensic oratory, in Sophia Papaioannou, Andreas Serafim and Kyriakos Demetriou(eds.). The Ancient Art of Persuasion across Genres and Topics, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019

Andreas Serafim, Attic Oratory and Performance, London: Routledge, 2017.

Χρυσάνθη Τσίτσιου-Χελιδόνη, Ρητορεία και ρητορική στην αρχαιότητα : https://www.greek-language.gr/digitalResources/ancient_greek/encyclopedia/rhetoric/index.html