The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk by Samuel McCormick (review)

Abstract

thorubos of the audience. At page 103, the author seems to overlook the fact that “focus[ing] on the integrative and cohesive side” of a myth in a funeral oration was not incompatible with concealing divisions in the citizen body but could in fact be a method of actively doing so. Perhaps the book’s most valuable contribution is its sustained rhetorical analysis of the four chosen myths across different genres and institutional settings. Barbato’s discussion of Euripides’ Children of Heracles (126–133), and particularly his consideration of its use and subversion of language and themes from oratory and politics, is compelling. The readings of Lysias’ funeral oration throughout are a necessary addition to the scholarship on the speech; particularly interesting is the discussion on the Amazons and hybris in Lysias. The chapter on the Amazonomachy contains, however, the description of victims of sexual abuse and abduction by Theseus as his “love interests” (172), which was disappointing in an otherwise fairly sensitive treatment of the subject. Barbato’s book will be a valuable addition to the library of anyone studying Athenian ideology and democracy or the rhetoric of mythology.