N2: Gorgias of Leontini
Encomium of Helen
This is the latest entry in my series discussing the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. For the first issue, start here.
Gorgias of Leontini
Gorgias (ca. 483 - 376 B.C.E.) was a Greek sophist, most famous for his innovations in rhetoric. Since I know you weren’t paying attention to those dates, I’ll spell it out - the guy lived to be about 108 years old. He came to Athens from his native Sicily when he was sixty years old, the same year Plato was born, and by all accounts made great use of his last forty or so years.
I mentioned the sophists briefly last time but never elaborated. A sophist was an itinerant teacher who offered their services for a fee. They could specialize in all kinds of subjects, but most famously taught rhetoric, or the art of persuasion. Plato hated them; sophistry and philosophy were often conflated by the general public and a great deal of Plato’s energy was directed toward eliminating this confusion. Sophists were accused of “making the weaker argument appear the stronger.” According to Plato, they were uninterested in finding truth and only sought to convince other people to hold certain opinions, usually for their own personal and political gain. For Plato, philosophy was noble and pursued true knowledge, whereas sophistry and rhetoric were simply concerned with the appearance of knowledge. Today sophistry refers to “the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intent of deceiving,” precisely because Plato spent so much effort trashing the sophists in his writing. Importantly, the sophists did not represent any coherent school of thought; they were individuals trying to make money and belonged to no organization. Despite this, they came to be associated with certain philosophical ideas, such as the notion that truth is relative, and they all had a way with words that people found both dangerous and intriguing. Around the time Gorgias was active, rhetorical ability “was coming to be perceived both as a prerequisite to the practice of effective statesmanship and a means of acquiring power, fame, wealth, and intellectual wisdom,” which led to the sophists being in high demand and well paid.1 They were simultaneously respected and maligned, perhaps not unlike consultants today.
Gorgias was a particularly successful sophist who taught public speaking and was known for his ability to argue from any position. Plato was a vocal critic of Gorgias, though he also respected him, mostly because he, unlike the other sophists, did not claim to teach virtue: “in fact, he laughs at others he hears making such promises. He thinks one should make men skillful at speaking.”2 The Sicilian’s apathy for truth still annoyed Plato, however, and he makes Gorgias the target of Socrates’ pedantry in the aptly titled Gorgias. But Plato is over with, and today we look at one of Gorgias’ display pieces meant to exhibit the power of rhetoric.
From Encomium of Helen
Gorgias walked so Chris Crocker could run. The Encomium of Helen is a short piece of writing that serves as a defense of Helen of Troy, once the most beautiful woman in the world and often the target of poets’ scorn.
Helen’s alleged responsibility for the Trojan War begins with the Judgement of Paris. Zeus is holding a banquet for the marriage of some mortals he likes, and he purposefully avoids inviting Eris, goddess of discord, to the party because no one wants her there. Annoyed, Eris comes anyway and brings a golden apple that will go to the prettiest attendant. Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite all lay claim to the apple, and they ask Zeus to decide which of them will get it. Zeus, married to Hera, father of Athena, and nephew or father of Aphrodite depending on the source, passes the buck to Paris, son of the king of Troy, who up until now had been minding his own business. Paris, wanting to be as objective as possible, asks them all to undress and inspects them thoroughly. Unable to decide, the three goddesses grow impatient and begin to bribe him. Hera offers him dominion of Europe and Asia, Athena offers to make him a master of war, and Aphrodite offers the world’s most beautiful woman. Athena’s is right out, did she even want to win, and ultimately Paris says I’ll take the girl; it turns out to be Helen, then married to Greek king Menelaus.
Aphrodite is awarded the apple and whisks Paris away to Helen, and here some (probably purposeful) ambiguities arrive. Does Paris kidnap Helen by force, or is she “seduced” by Aphrodite’s divine powers of love, or does she simply fall in love with Paris and leave? Each option is supported by different accounts. Regardless, she does leave with Paris, and when Menelaus finds out he summons the troops and heads out for Troy, beginning the most famous conflict in all of literature.
The Trojan War lasts ten years and is pretty devastating to everyone involved. According to most people of the ancient world Helen is to blame. For what it’s worth, within the Iliad itself Helen is filled with self-loathing, often referring to herself as “whore that I am,” whereas the Trojans themselves seem to blame Paris, who comes off as incompetent and cowardly. Sappho’s Fragment 163 emphasizes the ambiguity of Helen’s flight, suggesting that Helen left of her own accord and that Aphrodite was to blame for her elopement:
Some say an army of cavalry, others of infantry, and others of ships, is the most beautiful thing on the black earth, but I say it is whatever one passionately desires. It is perfectly easy to make this understood by everyone; for she who far surpassed humankind in beauty, Helen, leaving her most [excellent] husband went sailing to Troy; she gave no mind at all to her child or dear parents, but [Aphrodite] led her astray, though she was [...], for she lightly [conquers] an inflexible mind... [and this] puts me in mind of Anactoria who is not here; I would rather see her lovely walk and the bright sparkle of her face than the Lydians’ chariots and infantry in their armor.
In the Odyssey, after Troy has been sacked and razed, she is reconciled with her husband Menelaus, seemingly without issue. Despite these more famous depictions of Helen painting her fairly neutrally, a lot of ancient art was not so kind; Gorgias himself says in the Encomium that “[a]mong those who listen to the poets a single-voiced, single-minded conviction has arisen about this woman, the notoriety of whose name is now a reminder of disasters.”4
Wanting to show off his rhetorical skills by defending unpopular viewpoints, and perhaps simping for the thousand-year-dead hottie who probably never existed, he pens the Encomium of Helen with the intent to clear her name. It argues that there are four possible reasons Helen left for Troy, none of which leave her at fault. Ostensibly, this is the purpose of the piece, then: “to bring reason to the debate, eliminate the cause of her bad reputation, demonstrate that her detractors are lying, reveal the truth, and put an end to ignorance.”5 However, not unlike with Plato’s dialogues, what Gorgias is actually up to is a bit of a mystery. First, an “encomium” is a piece of writing meant to praise a given person (like a speech that introduces a famous speaker, say) but Gorgias’ Encomium is really what the Athenians would’ve called an apologia, or a piece of writing meant to defend someone or something. While this might seem like a minor detail, the generic differences would’ve been clear to the Greeks, and it raises questions about Gorgias’ intent. One argument is that the piece is an encomium, but not of Helen; its real subject may be (and almost definitely is) rhetoric and the power of language. Gorgias also states at the work’s conclusion that he “wished to write this speech for Helen’s encomium and my amusement.”6 This last bit has been the subject of much scholarly debate and indicates that we need to navigate this encomium with some accounting for the ironic distance Gorgias creates between himself, Helen, and the text. Is the whole thing a joke Gorgias wanted to tell himself? The argument he mounts is on its face fairly absurd, and seems to suggest that no one can be blamed for anything. Could Gorgias really have meant what he said? Probably not, so the point most likely lies in the fact that his argument seems convincing due to its structure and style and in spite of its illogical turns, exhibiting the hypnotic power of rhetoric.
Before we get into the substance of Gorgias’ argument I want to highlight the playfulness of his prose that brought him fame in that ancient city-state. Take for example the following sentence: “Many were the erotic passions she aroused in many men, and her one body brought many bodies full of great ambition for great deeds…”7 And another: “Now that my speech has passed over the past, it is to the beginning of my future speech that I proceed and propose the likely reasons for Helen’s journey to Troy.”8 And last: “Thus, the undertaking undertaken by the barbarian was barbarous in word and law and deed and deserves blame in word, loss of rights in law, and punishment in deed.” 9 These rhetorical flourishes, most notably the repeated repetition of words in slightly different grammatical forms (I cannot for the life of me find the technical term), were at the time fairly cutting edge (they still seem inspired today) and the pleasure they bring is independent of their semantic content, a feature of rhetoric Plato distrusted. Rhetoric in fact depends on these flourishes, and we somehow instinctively find the argument more convincing because of them - the riddle of form and content and the pleasure we take in linguistic play continue to be discussed in rhetorical studies today.
Gorgias lays out the four reasons Helen could have left: “Either she did what she did because of the will of fortune and the plan of the gods and the decree of necessity, or she was seized by force, or persuaded by words, or captured by love.”10 The first one is a little iffy (isn’t everything a matter of fate?) but the second is convincing; obviously Helen cannot be blamed if Paris did indeed kidnap her by force. It’s the third where things get tricky.
“[S]peech is a powerful master and achieves the most divine feats with the smallest and least evident body,” begins Gorgias. A footnote brings attention to his use of “body,” as if implying language was a physical thing that travelled from one person to another, not unlike a germ, albeit at times a benevolent one: “It can stop fear, relieve pain, create joy, and increase pity.”11 Pursuing this reification of language, Gorgias compares speech to drugs:
The power of speech has the same effect on the disposition of the soul as the disposition of drugs on the nature of bodies. Just as different drugs draw forth different humors from the body - some putting a stop to disease, others to life - so too with words: some cause pain, others joy, some strike fear, some stir the audience to boldness, some benumb and bewitch the soul with evil persuasion.12
For Gorgias persuasion becomes an almost physiological process, the psyche not something abstract but more like a functioning organ that can be interfaced with and manipulated through speech. Clearly we don’t think of language in these terms today, but importantly we don’t think of language really in any terms; we have mostly just accepted that it is its own thing, beyond our understanding despite being the very foundation of understanding itself.
Gorgias’ reverence for the power of language is not dissimilar to Plato’s, though it is underscored by a kind of elation, instead of the fear and awe that pervades Plato’s writing. The source of that power, however, is not in its ability to assist reason or lead us to truth (as Plato would like to believe), but in its capacity to change (as literally as possible) our minds and rearrange the contents of our souls. The implications here are actually fairly staggering, and set up a divide that we still navigate today. For Plato, language is a tool that needs to be wielded ethically, with concerns for its effects, and is important insofar as it can represent (albeit poorly) the totality of Forms to which we might aspire. Gorgias, however, views language almost like the totality itself, the only thing that humans can actually manipulate, strewn throughout the wild, uncontrollable phenomena of reality as we are. Language “represents” nothing but itself, corresponds to no truth and exists for its own sake. All these points anticipate more modern thinkers such as Derrida, who as luck would have it also has beef with Plato.
Gorgias briefly mentions poetry and its powerful emotional effects as evidence of language’s strange capacity to change us, comparing it to “witchcraft,” and then pivots, interestingly, to time:
For if all men on all subjects had memory of the past, understanding of the present, and foresight into the future, speech would not be the same in the same way; but as it is, to remember the past, to examine the present, or to prophesy the future is not easy; and so most men on most subjects make opinion an adviser to their minds.13
Here our receptiveness to persuasion is linked to our incapacity to meaningfully interact with time - the past and future being inaccessible to us, and the present too complicated to parse, our only recourse to have any grip on the world of temporal phenomena is language. Worse yet, we often are forced to rely on opinion, which Gorgias calls “perilous and uncertain.” In this Gorgias echoes Plato a bit - there is indeed a danger in the attractiveness of artfully constructed opinions, but where Plato finds a solution in avoiding rhetoric and pursuing philosophy, Gorgias (in other works of his) implies the latter will ultimately fail and that our only option is to embrace rhetoric and become skilled at it ourselves. In this way we might be able to alter others’ perception of truth, which would effectively mean constructing truth ourselves.
Getting back to Helen, Gorgias argues that “persuasion expelled her thought - persuasion, which has the same power, but not the same form as compulsion.”14 Although he has great reverence for rhetoric, Gorgias here suggests it is a kind of violence. If we take this argument at face value, then of course Helen cannot be blamed for leaving with Paris - some rhetorical deception was achieved against her will and off she was whisked. This raises questions of agency with regards to the relationship between persuader and persuadee. By contemporary popular belief this is ridiculous - are we not responsible for our own actions, and is it not in some way our duty to be on guard against deceptive language and the people who wield it against us for their own nefarious purposes? Lately, in the age of COVID misinformation, the tide has shifted back, and there have been calls for more oversight regarding all kinds of information networks. Clearly there is some gray area between persuader or persuadee being at fault - if I tell you to kill your friend and you do, you will almost definitely still go to jail, but if I have a platform and an audience of millions and tell everyone to kill their friends and they all do, I am almost definitely going to jail. Is it simply a matter of scale? Is it a question of power? Regardless, Gorgias foresaw a lot of the difficulties that would arise regarding rhetoric, agency, and responsibility, and his idea of language as “compulsion” or violence is now, I would argue, effectively the default view.
The fourth, final, and fleetest reason Helen may have left Menelaus is out of love for Paris. Gorgias argues that love is either a god (as in literally Aphrodite) or a “human sickness and a mental weakness.”15 If the former, how can a mortal resist a god? And if the latter, it “must not be blamed as mistake, but claimed as misfortune.”16 This, of course, is a rhetorical trick, but is in its own way a pleasant way to think of love.
Thus marks the end of the encomium: “With my speech I have removed this woman’s ill repute.”17 This line is striking in that it proclaims to have done something, to have cured the affliction suffered by Helen’s reputation. His brief speech, according to him, has acted upon the world and changed it, which is really all we can ask of language. But has he honored his original claim to “reveal the truth?” Gorgias has only listed out possibilities for Helen’s behavior and argued against her responsibility, not revealed to us what actually happened. To what extent then is this “truth?” In the encomium truth seems to simply be the occupation of uncertainty, dictated by language and the possibilities, logical or not, it grants us. For something to be true is not to accord with any greater schema upon which the signs of a larger reality are inscribed, but to correspond simply with the constraints defined by the speaker in a given moment.
"Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (British, 1829-1904), 'Helen of Troy' (с. 1867)" by sofi01 is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Poulakos, John, “Gorgias’ Encomium to Helen and the Defense of Rhetoric,” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 1, no. 2 (1983): 1–16.
“Gorgias of Leontini,” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vincent B. Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), 39.
David Konstan, “Sappho 16 and the Sense of Beauty,” Eugesta 5 (2015): 15-16. [I couldn’t get the footnote to appear at the end of the poem for some reason.]
“Encomium of Helen,” in the The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vincent B. Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), 40.
“Encomium of Helen,” 40.
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