• classical rhetoric

from Simonides, as translated by Anne Carson in The Economy of the Unlost:

Hard to become truly a good man
in hands and feet and mind
built four-square without blame
Now if you ask me, the old saying of Pittakos does not
define its terms properly although
said by a wise man: hard (he says) to be good.
The fact is, God alone could have this privilege.
Man cannot but be bad
if the misfortune machine pulls him down.
Yes sure, every man is good when things are good
and bad when things are bad
(and in general the best are the ones
whom the gods love).

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• classical rhetoric

This might be one of those points that everyone else knows but me, but I think it's important, so I'll mention it. Quentin Skinner, in the first half of his book on rhetoric in Hobbes, does a great summary of the classical and renaissance rhetorical traditions. In discussing style, he points out that ornatus and ornamenta are frequently translated as ornamentation or embellishment.

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• classical rhetoric

Here's a link to the complete dissertation--I've been looking for this for years (it's only been available on microfilm). (Hat tip to Michael Kochin, of the University of Tel Aviv--and make sure you get Michael's new book when it comes out next month.)

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• classical rhetoric
• gender

I'm still pondering Josh Gunn's and Chuck Morris' talks on "voice" from the Wisconsin Public Address conference. "The Gender of Sound" is a very cool essay by Anne Carson, a Canadian classics professor and poet, in her 1995 book Glass, Irony, and God. Here's how it starts: "It is in large part according to the sounds people make that we judge them sane or insane, male or female, good, evil, trustworthy, depressive, marriageable, moribund, likely or unlikely to make war on us, little better than animals, inspired by God. These judgments happen fast and can be brutal.

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• classical rhetoric

I've been pondering the material conditions of rhetorical practice of late, and I've run across two oddly complementary passages about the sea and Athenian democracy. I'm curious what others think about them.

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