A Distinctly Rhetorical Space; Eusynoptos and the Greek Council-House

Abstract

The original research of Johnstone and Graff on the bouleuteria of ancient Greece and their physical and acoustic features will, I predict, have a significant impact on future work in the history of rhetoric. Of equal importance to me is their gathering together in one easy view the site plans and reconstructions—in some cases three-dimensional reconstructions and interior views—of Greek council houses. Though students of ancient Greek rhetoric will be familiar with the functions of the council house, this will be for most the first opportunity to view this collection of council-house plans and reconstructions in close proximity. This collection and arrangement of images constitute an argument for a deliberate and principled evolution in the architecture of council-houses, from the mid-sixth-century structures at Olympia (Johnstone and Graff, Figures 6–7c) and Athens (Johnstone and Graff, 1a and 1b) to the second-century curvilinear structures at Athens and Miletos (Johnstone and Graff, Figures 17a–21b). Their essay demonstrates nothing less than the invention of a specifically rhetorical space, parallel to the development of deliberative arenas like the Pnyx. We shouldn’t let the current ubiquity of the semicircular, banked theatral area obscure or diminish for us the significance of this invented spatial configuration and rhetorical technology. Today, this form is ubiquitous in lecture halls, movie theaters, playhouses, churches, and assembly halls around the world, but it was for the Greeks a significant achievement and a rhetorical one, as Johnstone and Graff’s essay makes clear. Its underlying purpose was the collection, arrangement, and display of a collectivity—the creation of a people—for mutual regard through political deliberation in service to the city. I mean here to invoke both constitutive rhetoric (Charland) and the social imaginary (Castoriadis). Rhetorical spaces like the council house were instrumental in constituting the polis as an imagined, known, and valued entity. The Greeks, of course, had a name for what Johnstone and Graff have brought together for us. They called something collected and arranged so that it could be easily or clearly seen in one view, eusynoptos. As a result of Johnstone and Graff’s essay, the historical development of the Greek council house as a distinctly rhetorical space becomes eusynoptos. I might then coin