Epic, historiography and rhetoric: the epipólesis to different nations in Greco-Latin historiography
Keywords:
Historiography, Epic poetry, Pre-battle speech, Epipolesis, Alexander the GreatAbstract
The purpose of this study is to analyse the evolution of pre-battle speeches addressed to different groups or nations, according to the group character or nature. We will see that the pre-battle speech shows a series of characteristics of form, structure and content that were well defined since Thucydides, and that were repeated, in more or less the same manner, in all the examples found along the Greek and Roman historiographical tradition. In the preliminaries of the battle of Issus described by Trogus and Curtius, the speech addressed to different nations turns out to be an epipólesis and, Alexander the Great being its protagonist, it shows a great degree of complexity. We are thus led to search its origin and first model in the epipoléseis included in the Iliad, with a special mention of the important epipólesis of Agamemnon in Book IV. We also want to emphasize the undeniable influence of rhetoric in the composition of the battle descriptions in which such speeches were included.
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