Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens [Hardcover]

This book, first published in 2000, is a study of the ways classical Athenian texts represent and evaluate the morality of deception.This book is a study of the ways in which classical Athenian texts represent and evaluate the morality of deception. It is particularly concerned with the way in which the telling of lies was a problem for the world's first democracy and compares this problem with the modern Western situation. There are major sections on Greek tragedy, comedy, oratory, historiography and philosophy.This book is a study of the ways in which classical Athenian texts represent and evaluate the morality of deception. It is particularly concerned with the way in which the telling of lies was a problem for the world's first democracy and compares this problem with the modern Western situation. There are major sections on Greek tragedy, comedy, oratory, historiography and philosophy.This book is a study of the ways in which classical Athenian texts represent and evaluate the morality of deception. It is particularly concerned with the way in which the telling of lies was a problem for the world's first democracy and compares this problem with the modern Western situation. There are major sections on Greek tragedy, comedy, oratory, historiography and philosophy.Preface; Prologue; 1. Deception and the rhetoric of Athenian identity; 2. Deceiving the enemy: negotiation and anxiety; 3. Athens and the 'noble lie'; 4. The rhetoric of anti-rhetoric: Athenian oratory; 5. Thinking with the rhetoric of anti-rhetoric; Epilogue; Bibliography; Indexes. This thoughtful and wide-ranging book...provides a useful introduction to important recent work by classicists on Athenian political culture.... Hesk's book reminds us of the legitimate centrality of political rhetoric to democracy, yet provides new insight on how sophisticated rhetorical technique complicates the struggle to discover truth. He is surely right to conclude that 'without that struggle, we may as well give uld