The Legacy of the Attic Orators in Early Hellenistic Athens. Rhetoric, Democracy, and the Politics of Memory

The Legacy of the Attic Orators in Early Hellenistic Athens: Rhetoric, Democracy, and the Politics of Memory offers the first comprehensive study of how the speeches of the Attic orators were collected, published, and politically instrumentalized in early Hellenistic Athens (c.322–262 BCE), a period marked by profound political transformation. The book argues that the corpora of Demosthenes, Lycurgus, Hyperides, and Dinarchus were compiled in Athens as part of a deliberate politics of memory designed to preserve and reinforce Athenian democratic identity under Macedonian influence. It demonstrates that Demosthenes’ speeches were likely published posthumously in the early third century BCE, possibly at the initiative of his nephew Demochares of Leuconoe, as part of his broader politics of memory. Through detailed philological analysis of manuscript evidence, the study reconstructs the contours of this editorial project. Crucially, it situates the publication of the orators’ works alongside other commemorative practices, especially honorary decrees and civic monuments and portraits, showing how textual transmission and public commemoration functioned together as complementary instruments of memory-building. By integrating traditional philology with memory studies, the book reassesses early Hellenistic Athenian democracy, the political and intellectual role of Demochares, and the early reception of Attic oratory, demonstrating how textual transmission itself constitutes a vital domain of Greek political and cultural history.