The Art of Rhetoric · Part 7 · The three kinds of speech · B2–C1
Epideictic Speech: The Present, Praise and Blame
Part 7 of The Art of Rhetoric: the third kind of speech praises or blames. Nobody votes after it, but everyone learns what the city admires. Adjectives of praise and blame (brave / reckless, thrifty / stingy, warm-hearted, narrow-minded, truly, utterly), with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
The assembly decides the future, and the court judges the past. Tonight, the third kind of speech.
Speeches of praise and blame: at funerals, at festivals, in honour of heroes and of cities.
But nobody decides anything after a speech like that.
Nobody votes. But everybody learns what the city admires, and that is no small thing.
Aristotle calls the third kind of speech epideictic, from a Greek word for “display”. It praises or blames, its time is above all the present, and its aim is the noble and the shameful. So the speaker must know the virtues: justice, courage, self-control, generosity, gentleness and wisdom.
Its main tool is amplification: making a deed look greater by showing that the person did it first, or alone, or with great effort, or many times. Aristotle also notices that praise and advice are close relatives: “you should be proud of what you did, not of your luck” is advice; “he was proud of what he did, not of his luck” is praise.
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