"amnesty" Lv Xi, Speech And Athens

Atheian Democracy had been restored in403B.C. after thebloody civil strife. The democratics didn’t revenge for oligarchicatrocities instead of promulgating the amnesty. However, from manyspeeches of Lysias in the4th century B.C, it is not difficult to find that thespeakers focus on civil conflict and reconcilation. But the demos didn’tforget the oligarchics atrocities. Through a thorough analysis of somemost important speeches of Lysias, this paper analyzes the spcecialrhetorical strategies performed by the orator, and reveals that theachievement of internal peace partly depends on the reiteration ofcity-states stasis and homonoia.In Chapter one, according to the records of ancient authors,this paper introduces the historical background and contents of Athensamnesty, and then comb through the speeches of lysias, making the listof the passage assocition with the amnesty.In Chapter two, taking the18th speech of Lysias as an example,the thesis describes that the speakers combine personal experiencewith city-state history and adopt rhetorical strategies. On the one hand,in order to soften traumatic memories of city-state during the civil war,and highlights the misery of speakers during Thirty Tyrants period, andmake themselves and their families to be the advocators of democraticpolitics; On the other hand, it strengths the authority of amnesty andconverts the rivals’ revenge behaviors to unjustice activities of stasis. Inthe public discourse, through the rhetorical stratigies, amnesty is nolonger the chain of public angry emotion and the result of externalpower interference, but the justice behavior of maintaining city-stateand the expression of people’s loyalty to city-state.In the third chapter, from the angles of stasis and harmonoia,this paper demonstrates the speakers how to maintain democracy stably in Athens by using of rhetorical skills under the amnesty context. Inthe first section, the speakers not only reinterpret the both sides ofamnesty, but rebuild the political identity in order to realizethe city-state unity. The second part elaborates the speakers how toexplain the reasons which cause misfortunes of citizens and city-state.Therefore, the speakers tend to attribute them to the result of internalconflict in Athens.Describing amnesty in the speeches of Lysias, this paper tries torebuild historical memories of city-state, so as to reconcile potential splitin Athens and achieve internal peace.