Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Killing with a Smile: Comic Invective in Greek and Roman Oratory -- Part I: Intertextual and Multi-genre Invective -- Comedy and Insults in the Athenian Law-courts -- Comic Invective and Public Speech in Fourth-Century Athens -- Comic Invective in Attic Forensic Oratory: Private Speeches -- Rhetorical Defence, Inter-poetic Agōn and the Reframing of Comic Invective in Plato’s Apology of Socrates -- “You are Mad!” Allegations of Insanity in Greek Comedy and Rhetoric -- Comic Invective in Cicero’s Speech Pro M. Caelio -- How to Start a Show: Comic Invectives in the Prologues of Terence and Decimus Laberius -- Part II: The Cultural Workings of Invective -- Comic Somatisation and the Body of Evidence in Aeschines’ Against Timarchus -- Comic Invective, Decorum and Ars in Cicero’s De Oratore -- No Decorum in the Forum? Comic Invective in the Theatre of Justice -- Part III: Invective in Ancient Socio-political Contexts -- Political Rhetoric and Comic Invective in Fifth-Century Athens: The Trial of the Dogs in Aristophanes’ Wasps -- Democracy, Poverty, Comic Heroism and Oratorical Strategy in Lysias 24 -- Notes on Editors and Contributors -- General Index -- Index Locorum

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This volume acknowledges the centrality of comic invective in a range of oratorical institutions (especially forensic and symbouleutic), and aspires to enhance the knowledge and understanding of how this technique is used in such con-texts of both Greek and Roman oratory. Despite the important scholarly work that has been done in discussing the patterns of using invective in Greek and Roman texts and contexts, there are still notable gaps in our knowledge of the issue. The introduction to, and the twelve chapters of, this volume address some understudied multi-genre and interdisciplinary topics: first, the ways in which comic invective in oratory draws on, or has implications for, comedy and other genres, or how these literary genres are influenced by oratorical theory and practice, and by contemporary socio-political circumstances, in articulating comic invective and targeting prominent individuals; second, how comic invective sustains relationships and promotes persuasion through unity and division; third, how it connects with sexuality, the human body and male/female physiology; fourth, what impact generic dichotomies, as, for example, public-private and defence-prosecution, may have upon using comic invective; and fifth, what the limitations in its use are, depending on the codes of honour and decency in ancient Greece and Rome.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Feb 2023)