PAUL BARCLAY:
Dr Kathryn Welch is a classicist from the University of Sydney who works across both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome and has a particular interest in the Roman Republic. Kathryn, welcome to the program.
KATHRYN WELCH:
Thank you very much.
PAUL BARCLAY:
And, Kathryn, just how important was speechmaking to ancient democracy?
KATHRYN WELCH:
Well, I suppose it's at the heart of it. Any ancient city-state was divided into two great spheres. And, of course, the players were the same in both. There's the military sphere and there's the sphere of the speaking place in Ancient Greece. That's the 'agora', the place where you speak. The words are related. Or in Rome it's the forum, the outside place, the place where you could gather and listen. And in both those cases you've got speeches being made outside. Of course, there are other areas where they're made, but they're the two quintessential places that we think of when we think of ancient cultures and ancient city-states. Some societies didn't bother with speeches 'cause they had absolute rulers, but in any institutionalised society where debate mattered, then, of course, you had to be able to speak. And it's fascinating that in the fifth century, when Athenian democracy is developing, at the same time and under the pressure of that democracy you've got a kind of professionalisation happening with the way speeches operate and how trainers spring up suddenly and how people get better at things because they're getting their tricks of the trade underway. And then suddenly this becomes the whole way of education for someone that's going to take part in public life.
PAUL BARCLAY:
So you're saying they were central to the whole idea of democracy and also it mattered where these speeches occurred? They had to be understood in their context?
KATHRYN WELCH:
Yep, they very much did. For a start, almost all of the contexts we think of, of the great speeches, are outside. So you have to think of battling the elements without any electronic microphones or loudspeakers. It has to be your voice against the open air, the crowd, your opponents, your adversaries. All of these, you had to take on and you had to win the day if you to win the argument.
PAUL BARCLAY:
So where do you look to find these speeches? Do you go to Greece and Aristotle? Where do you start?
KATHRYN WELCH:
No, well, in Greece you'd probably start with Demosthenes. He's the famous name in speechmaking. Of course, he's not the only one. And in Rome you would go for Cicero, who is the great working orator. Many other people wrote speeches and wrote about speechmaking, but when it comes down to it he's the person we have who actually had to deliver these speeches. And that's an interesting thing. We go to books to find these speeches. But they would have been heard. And certain filmmakers and novelists and the rest have tried to recreate the experience of the speech. Which is not just words on a page, but delivered words with hecklers and interjectors. And that's something that we have to imagine back into the speech because that was at the very heart of what ancient oratory was about, was the spoken thing, whereas for us it's books.
PAUL BARCLAY:
Kathryn, where does the idea of free speech fit in, the right to stand up and be heard?
KATHRYN WELCH:
This, too, is at the heart of the ancient city-state. Of course, people organised themselves into alliances and factions. And certain things were driven by ideology and principles. But there was an idea that every person who took part in public life was supposed to be an independent thinker and that if a person was worthy of living in a city-state, then that person was able to take part with his own voice. And so you kind of get the idea that someone is supposed to be able to stand and deliver their own opinion and be free to do so. Not to be able to do so living under a tyranny. You might as well have a king or some kind of tyrant running the show and telling you what to do. Whereas at the heart of the speech making society is the idea that you should have an opinion, that you should able to express it. So it was the difference between tyranny and being a free citizen. And it came down to that. And, of course, some people were more free than others. But if you were a member of that elite class that thought it had the right to run the place as a group or in Athens, it could go well down into society, then it was the idea that your opinion mattered and you had the right to say it or at least think it.
PAUL BARCLAY:
I'd like to bring John Kane into the discussion now. John is a Professor of Politics at Griffith Uni in Brisbane. John, welcome to the program.
JOHN KANE:
Hi there, Paul.
PAUL BARCLAY:
And, John, all these centuries later, I wonder how well are we continuing the tradition of persuasive speechmaking that Kathryn was talking about there here in Australia? Has television and the sound bite perhaps killed off speechmaking, as we've noted in the past?
JOHN KANE:
Not altogether. I think it's changed it and transformed it somewhat, but it hasn't killed it off certainly. You'll still hear plenty of speeches around the place if you know where to look for them. Kathryn is absolutely right. It's the essence of a democratic or a republican system. It's not just the right to speak, but the fact that speech is your way to make an effect, to persuade others. It's your path to power, actually. Where speech matters, speech matters because you can influence other people and get your way. You can't command other people, you have to persuade them. Therefore, speech must remain important.
PAUL BARCLAY:
What, then, of you, is the modern high point of speechmaking? What and who moves you, John?
JOHN KANE:
The famous speeches. Winston Churchill. 'Fight them on the beaches', etc, etc. Martin Luther King and his speech in Washington. 'I have a dream.' John Kennedy talking about the idealistic moment in America, where he launches the Peace Crusade and so forth. All those famous speeches are part of one's history. My thoughts on democratic life in general, however, is that those kind of speeches tend to occur only on occasions where emotions are very heightened, where there's something very large at stake, often in wartime or civil rights in America or something like that. Mostly democratic speech tends not to be like that, because democrats tend not to respond to exalted speech. I've heard people say John Howard, for instance, is 'not an orator'. I actually think he's a very good democratic orator. He tailors his speech to the Australian people, specifically, but to democratic people. He doesn't sound like someone who's above them speaking down to them. He's very plain, he's articulate, but not fancy. And this works very well in democratic culture.
PAUL BARCLAY:
I'm talking to John Kane and also to Kathryn Welch about speeches, what makes a great speech.