Lucia Cecchet
https://www.unimi.it/it/ugov/person/lucia-cecchet
Profile
Lucia Cecchet is Senior Lecturer in Greek History at the University of Milan, Department of Historical Studies. Her research focuses on poverty in the Greek world, Greek citizenship from the classical to the imperial period, speech performance in antiquity, and the impact of war on ancient communities. She is author of Poverty in Athenian Public Discourse (2015) and co-editor of Citizens in the Graeco-Roman World (2017), The Ancient War’s Impact on the Home Front (2019) and Poverty in Ancient Greece and Rome (2023). Sie is PI and national coordinator of the PRIN project Performing Power: Political Communication, Consensus and Audience in the Ancient Cities.
Abstract
“Public speaker and the cities: Dio Chrysostomus and his audiences”
Lucia Cecchet will work on Dio Chrysostomus’ orations, with particular attention to the Bithynian speeches (Or. 38-51). As a professional rhetor travelling different places, Dio performed his speeches not only before the assembly and the council of his native city Prusa, but also before the ruling bodies of other Greek cities. In his speeches, Dio often found himself in the difficult position of defending the interest of his homeland, while at the same time pleading for harmony with the neighboring cities and good relations with Roman authorities. These aspects made him a man divided between several ‘worlds’, i.e. local and foreign, world of the elites and world of the people, Greek and Roman world. On account of this complex background, his speeches have so far been studied mainly as sources of biographical information on Dio and the life of the Greek cities during the mid-imperial period (Desideri 1978, Jones 1978, Sheppard 1984, Bekker-Nielsen 2008, Heinz-Günther 2009, Fuhrmann 2015), while less attention has been devoted to the crucial question of the different audiences of Dio’s speeches. More clearly than in the case of Attic orators of the classical period, who were used to speak before different ruling bodies but within the same polis (Athens), the case of Dio shows how rhetoric strategies, tone, arguments, and overall performance change in the different venues of delivery and from polis to polis, helping understand the internal tensions of the audiences of the Greek cities under Roman rule.
