I am on a boat going from Athens to the island of Serifos, but I’m still thinking about all those ancient Athenians who dug up the guiding principles that create the foundation of public speaking, persuasion, and the entire modern communications industry.
Demosthenes was one of them, “supreme in vehemence and power,” or so we hear from history. He was the guy who failed miserably when he first spoke in public, and then shaved the hair off half his head so he’d be ashamed to go out in public, thus forcing himself to practice speaking in his root cellar until his voice was strong and his speech was clear.
Then, when his hair grew, he went to the beach and practiced speaking over the sound of the waves with a pebble in his mouth.
He saved the city from destruction at least once by moving them to take defensive action against Phillip of Macedon, and then his son, Alexander the Great. According to Cicero, he was an orator “who lacked nothing.”
(If you’ve seen The King’s Speech, there is a scene in which a speech teacher inserts a dozen large white marbles into the king’s mouth and asks him to read something. The speech teacher is a pompous fool and is summarily dismissed by the Queen, but apparently Demosthenes benefited from his pebble – maybe the simple benefit of being more aware, more mindful, of what he was doing with his tongue.)
Suffice it to say, it took work to hold the attention of a crowd in ancient Athens. No microphone to compensate for a dull voice; no video magnification to bring your audience up close and personal; no teleprompters to help you sound polished. Nothing but a man, his thinking, his words, and his hard work rehearsing. It was speaking without a net, and more than two thousand years later, we’re still talking about it. (Or at least I am.)
It’s hard to really grasp the Greeks, but I often think of them in terms of our own native Americans, including the Incas and Aztecs, and Mayans. We look back at them as ancient civilizations, but their art, architecture, literature, and politics (at least the Greeks) are supremely sophisticated and powerful, even by today’s standards.
They had no cell phones, or super computers, but they had houses, clothes, food, water, meaningful work, love, family, warmth, and something they called the polis, for which there is no adequate word in English.
In our textbooks, we call it city-state, but that doesn’t do it justice. I like to think of it as an optimal coccoon for human health and growth: a way of life that gave every citizen the best chance of thriving as an individual: a coccoon made of laws, customs, gods, responsibilities, expectations, art, festivals, contests – all of which pulled the best out of people, and reflected their goodness back to them.
Their love and respect for the potential beauty and power of public speaking is just one of the extraordinary gifts they have passed down to us.