A DRAMATIC PERFORMANCE OF ENVOYS IN THE ASSEMBLY OF XANTHOS

Those citizens of Xanthos who attended the assembly on 2 Aoudnaios of the year 206 BC, a winter morning, late in November, were unexpectedly rewarded for their willingness to fulfil their citizen duties. For a rather uncommon event awaited them – not the usual agenda of honouring a benefactor or deciding about how to cover a deficit, but the appearance of three men from a distant place most of them had never heard of: Kytenion in Doris. These three men, Lamprias, Ainetos and Phegeus, equipped with two letters of recommendation by the Dorians and the Aetolians, but also equipped with their eloquence, fascinated the Xanthians with their lecture so much that the decree voted on by the assembly gives an unusually lengthy report of their oral presentation, thus providing an interesting insight into oral performances in the popular assembly. The three envoys of Kytenion requested financial aid for the reconstruction of the fortification wall of their city. They supported this request with a common argument of Hellenistic diplomacy: kinship.

The oral presentation of the envoys is referred to with the terms apologizesthai (‘to give an account’) and dialegesthai (here not in the sense ‘to hold converse with someone’, but rather ‘to present a discourse, to give a lecture’). The latter meaning of dialogos and dialegesthai is attested, e.g., in connection with the rhetorical competition which took place during the festival of the Eleutheria and to which I shall return later.