Marco Bettalli
https://docenti.unisi.it/it/bettalli
Profile
He graduated from the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Siena in 1979; becoming a university researcher in 1983, he initially privileged studies of Athenian economics in the classical age. He then privileged mainly the study of warfare in the ancient world (edition and commentary of Aeneas Tacticus, Pisa, ETS, 1990; The Army and the Art of War, in The Greeks, edited by S. Settis, Turin, Einaudi, 1998; Mercenaries. The Profession of Arms in the Ancient Greek World, Rome, Carocci 2013); he has also dealt with classical historiography (Introduction to Greek Historiography, Rome, Carocci, 20092), published an edition of Plutarch’s Life of Theseus (BUR Rizzoli 2003) and edited a university textbook of Greek history, now in its second edition (Greek History, Rome, Carocci, 20132).
Abstract
“Historical and Rhetorical Reality. The Speeches of Generals Before Battle in the Greek World”
As anyone who frequents Greek historiography is well aware, the commander’s address to the troops in the imminence of battle is a topos of great importance, repeated with continuity, starting at least from the work of Thucydides, where this mode of communication reaches extremely complex and elaborate rhetorical levels. A renewed study of the exempla offered by historiography undoubtedly offers promising avenues of inquiry, bearing in mind a relatively large bibliography that, especially in recent years, has questioned numerous aspects of the subject, starting with the main one: that is, whether the speeches are essentially a fictitious rhetorical exercise, provided with rules (and if so, surely more plausible, what those rules were), or whether instead it is possible to detect some connection with reality, that is, with the perorations with which commanders, in some way, would have addressed their soldiers before battles.
Mogens H. Hansen, The Battle Exhortation in Ancient Historiography. Fact or Fiction?, Historia XLII.2 1993, 161-180, is probably the most convinced proponent of commanders’ speeches as fiction (by the same author see an “extension” to the modern era, with an analysis of Henry V’s speech at Agincourt in Histos 2, 1998, 46-63); see, however, C.T.H.R. Ehrhardt, Speeches before Battles, Historia XLIV.1 1995, 120-121 and the fluent remarks of W.K. Pritchett, The General’s Exhortations in Greek Warfare, in id. Essays in Greek History, Amsterdam 1994, 27-109. He does not add much G. Bruno Sunseri, Le arringhe dei generali alle truppe fra retorica e realtà, Hormos 2, 2010, 5-16. On the purely rhetorical analysis of speeches, see Juan Carlos Iglesias Zoido, The Battle Exhortation in ancient Rhetoric, Rhetorica. A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 25.2, 2007, 141-158; F. Mattaliano, La parenesi bellica nella storiografia greca: prassi allocutiva e procedure compositive, Hormos 2, 2010, 17-37. A fine example of how a single speech can be investigated is R. Nicolai, Il generale, lo storico e i Barbari: a proposito del discorso di Brasida in Thuc. IV 126, in G.Arrighetti, M.Tulli (eds.), Letteratura e riflessione sulla letteratura nella cultura classica, Atti del Convegno, Pisa, June 7-9, 1999, Pisa 2000, 145-155. Finally, it should not be forgotten how part of modern research is indebted to earlier, now largely forgotten work: for our topic, compare for example O. Luschnat, Die feldherrnreden im Geschichtswerk des Thukydides, Leipzig 1942; R. Leimbach, Militärische Musterrhetorik, Wiesbaden 1984 (Stuttgart 1985) is also now little cited and even less read.
