One of the perks of having children in college is that I
have been exposed to lots of great works of writing that I missed in my
youth. My youngest is an auditory
learner and a classics major, so I have spent countless hours reading writings
from the ancient world to him. Many of
the works of ancient Greeks and Romans have been lost forever or are only known
because other writers have paraphrased their work. Gorgias was luckier than that. He was a Sophist of the 5th
century BCE and four of his works survive to the modern age. His defense of Helen is an interesting
example of rhetoric that is disconnected from a moral and ethical stance. The Sophists were slammed by Socrates and his
acolytes for just this problem—no moral compass. The good news is that his rhetoric is very
accessible.
Helen was at the center of the disastrous war with
Troy. It went on for ten years, led to the destruction of Troy, and spawned
three epics (The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid).
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Gorgias’ contended that Helen could have been bewitched by
the gods so that it was her fate to leave her husband and go with Paris. That is my assessment and I was surprised
to find out that she was blamed in the
ancient world. The other options that
Gorgias considers are that she was forced to go against her will, that she fell
in love with Paris (which he argues leaves her blameless—others might disagree)
and then most interestingly, he argues that she might have been deceived by
Paris’ rhetoric. He gives a discourse on
how a good persuasive speech can be dangerously effective. He says that Helen should be forgiven if she
fell for such a persuasive speech, because such rhetoric is overwhelmingly seductive
to the point of being witchcraft. I was
initially quite skeptical, and then I thought about the current Republican
candidates for president, and realized that Gorgias could easily be talking
about Donald Trump.
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