Twenty-four declamations from the Greek imperial period, the work of six authors, survive today: a survey reveals that their authors were prominent in politics and culture on a local and often imperial level. Why did these elite men pour such energy into the classical role-play that was declamation? Further indices of the genre's importance are considered: the centrality of declamation to education in this period, the great outpouring of rhetorical theory, the sheer number of declaimers and declamations that we know of, and the distances that star performers travelled and the fees that they earned. Such an enquiry is urgent: declamation was very influential on other genres, and work here has fallen behind work elsewhere. But the most urgent reason is that the question of the relationship of classical past and imperial present is fundamental for all literature in this period, and indeed for this period’s wider culture. This book rejects traditional explanations of the genre in terms of nostalgia, and instead takes seriously the almost universal ancient belief that the past was useful for the present.

Certain oddities and omissions in two pseudo-Aristidean declamations on Leptines' proposal to abolish exemptions from liturgies are explained with reference to their composition in thirteenth-century Byzantium: their author, Thomas Magistros, seems to be alluding to contemporary debates about the pronoia, a Byzantine tax exemption. But the same scenario was also being performed as early as the third century BCE, for which period it has also been argued to be relevant. Further examples of declamations covering topics of importance to their own time are considered from the Hellenistic era to Late Antiquity and Byzantium and even the English reniassance. That Greek imperial declamation too should speak to the times in which it was written ought not therefore to be surprising. Declamation's ability to do so depends on a careful balance. There is much in its scenarios that seems of relevance to any age, and moral foundations theory helps us put such intuitions on a firmer footing. But it is equally important that the world of declamation is not our own. As a result, issues are approached obliquely, declaimers are safer, audiences are more receptive, and the resulting interpretations themselves are more diverse.

This chapter looks at declamations on conflicts between cities, taking as its primary case studies Aristides' On behalf of making peace with the Lacedaemonians (Or. 7), in which an Athenian urges his fellow countrymen to accept the Spartan offer of peace in 425, and On making peace with the Athenians (Or. 8), in which a Spartan speaks in favour of preserving Athens in 404. The issues in such declamations are often the same as those in contemporary disputes between cities (territorial disputes, tax and trade, titles), and even discussed using the same discourses (freedom and oppression, envy, concord). From its use in real political oratory, we may conclude that the lesson drawn from the Peloponnesian War as presented in declamation was above all to pursue concord and avoid strife, with contemporary conflicts made to seem trivial. But approaching what was clearly a sensitive issue at one remove makes the lesson more palatable, and dramatizing it in the form of a declamation more memorable; the most reflective audiences, noticing how the same discourses were used by either side, might have concluded that a little more humility was needed in future disputes.