The magic of ancient literature
τῶν γοήτων ἐστί τις, μιμητὴς.
A sort of magician, an imitator.
Therefore, sophists pretend to know the truth and deceive their listeners into believing them. Plato uses the same word for magician, which carries the same derogative connotations, as Gorgias uses throughout the Encomium of Helen . Furthermore, there is even fear of the magical powers of the abstract concept ‘persuasion’, which rhetoricians deploy. Euripides’ Hecuba line 816 states:
Πειθὼ δὲ τὴν τύραννον ἀνθρώποις μόνην.
Persuasion, the only tyrant of man-kind.
This imagery is remarkably similar to Gorgias’ description, in the Encomium of Helen , of ‘logos’ as a tyrant, taking away the freedom of the audience over their emotions. Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound , lines 173-4, states:
καί μ᾽ οὔτι μελιγλώσσοις πειθοῦς ἐπαοιδαῖσιν θέλξει
Not by Persuasion’s honey-tongued spells will he bewitch me.
The sense is very much negative of the magical power of persuasion, through the use of language.
Literature was only developing as an art form in the fifth century in Greece, and there were several ancient writers who despised the new form of literature. In Phaedrus (276), Plato describes how authors write:
λόγων ἀδυνάτων μὲν αὑτοῖς λόγῳ βοηθεῖν, ἀδυνάτων δὲ ἱκανῶς τἀληθῆ διδάξαι.
With words not able to support themselves by argument, and not adequately able to teach the truth.
Plato is perhaps an example of the old guard, who wanted to return to the oral tradition of the past. However, writers such as Thucydides embraced the new form. In 1.22.4 of The Peloponnesian War he recognizes the power of the literature to preserve language when he states:
κτῆμά τε ἐς αἰεὶ μᾶλλον ἢ ἀγώνισμα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆμα ἀκούειν ξύγκειται.
This has been composed as a possession to last forever, rather than an utterance to be heard for a moment’s pleasure.
This is truly one of the greatest powers of ancient literature, to preserve their magical language for our enjoyment thousands of years later.
In this essay, I have sought to demonstrate that ancient literature, in particular ancient Greek literature, is magical because of its language. It is the language, with its innate magical powers, which is the essential component of all ancient literature. Furthermore, since ancient literature was written to be heard, the magical descriptions of the language apply to the literature too. Many ancient writes did recognize and explore the magic of language, in particular its ability to generate and control emotions. The language is the greatest magical component of ancient literature.
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