The 'Rhetorica ad Alexandrum' and its historical contextualization

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Karen Piepenbrink
• Subject Area: Ancient History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 521025742

The aim of the project is to provide the first systematic historical analysis of the ‘Rhetorica ad Alexandrum’, the first surviving practice-oriented rhetorical textbook from Athens in the 4th century BC. The outstanding importance of this text – which has been well studied philologically, but has only been appreciated very sporadically from a historical point of view – does not only result from its application orientation, which is unanimously stated in research. In addition – and this has not been seen so far – it reaches beyond Athenian oratorical practice and its exploration can thus help to overcome the Athenian focus of previous rhetoric research to a certain extent and to achieve a broadening of the perspective. This does not mean, of course, that public rhetoric in a particular city can be reconstructed in detail on its basis and that the loss of possible speeches composed there can be compensated for. Despite some concrete references to individual poleis, it does not offer enough valid data in this regard either. However, it does provide important clues for the instruction of differently located future orators, about whom we otherwise have hardly any contemporary information beyond Athens. In order to do justice to the local heterogeneity and corresponding expectations of his audience, he draws on diverse bodies of knowledge and experience of different provenance, some of which are fed by rhetorical empiricism and manifold genres of theoretical-rhetorical writing of his time, while others are shaped by political thought or ethical debates. Some of them are new to us – such as parts of his reflections on the activity of rhetors in oligarchically organized cities; others are known at least in the broad outline. What is striking, however, and has not received enough attention so far, is the way in which Anaximenes brings together this information of different origin, links it and 'breaks it down' to the manifold needs of oratorical application. This is the desideratum that the planned project aims to remedy. In contrast to what has often happened in older studies, the intention is not to criticize his statements as ‘unoriginal’ or not very elaborated, but to explore them with regard to their practical-rhetorical focus. To this end, the project will develop three modules: first a commentary on the history of the period, which pursues the question just explored, second three further separate studies (essays), which, based on the specifics of the text, discuss fundamental and at the same time innovative historical questions of ancient rhetoric, and third, a new German translation of the text, which corresponds to the current state of historical research, especially with regard to its terminology.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants