Email this article Making Violence Speak: The Voice of the Aggressor in Ancient Greek Literature
Abstract
ABSTRACT
This paper addresses an oversight in classical scholarship: moving beyond metaphorical interpretations of voice, it draws on ancient physiognomics, modern paralinguistics, and acoustics theories to establish a vocalics framework and analyse the material qualities – volume, pitch, depth, harshness, and pace – of the aggressor in selected passages from oratory, tragedy, and comedy. The central argument is that the voice provides audible indicators of aggression (whether innate, as in Meidias’ persistent hybris in Dem. XXI 72, 195, 201, or circumstantial), moral decay, and civic unworthiness. The analysis demonstrates that the voice serves as an encoded index of socio-political values and as a signifier of the cultural construction of ancient societies.
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.7358/erga-2026-001-sera
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