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Talking About Violence: Clustered Participles in the Speeches of Lysias
Department of English, University of Missouri-Kansas City
Jeff Rydberg-Cox, Department of English, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 5121 Rockhill Road, Cockefair Hall 106, Kansas City, MO 64110, USA. E-mail: rydbergcoxj{at}umkc.edu
This paper explores the Greek participle and its use in the works of Lysias. I will argue that in Lysias' works, narrative descriptions of violence are characterized by the unusually frequent use of the participle. I will further show that the association of high participle density and narratives about violence are a subset of a larger pattern relating to use of the participle in Lysias' works. In this pattern, Lysias uses unusually large numbers of participles: (1) only within the narrative and argumentative sections of the speeches; (2) to structure the work and mark the conclusion of narrative arcs and lines of argument; (3) in their role as a structuring device, these passages also provide immediacy and momentum to the argument or narrative descriptions of events; and (4) to mark a return in subject matter to the case at hand and to focus the attention of the jury on the question that is before them.