Civic Silence and Complicit Peace: The Rhetorical Functions of Silence in Aeschines and Demosthenes

Abstract: The inaction of US President Donald Trump during the January 6th, 2021, attack on the Capitol raised a pressing question for the American people: how should the public interpret and respond to the president’s decision not to speak? Trump’s silence during the assault on the Capitol and the silence of several representatives in the opening months of the second Trump administration have brought to the forefront of US American politics the rhetorical problem of critiquing political silence. This article discusses silence as a deliberate rhetorical act that can both embrace democratic resistance and defy democratic responsibilities. It extends existing rhetorical scholarship on silence as a politically meaningful course of action before turning to rhetorical constructions of political silence in the speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes. In On the Embassy , On the Dishonest Embassy , Against Ctesiphon , and On the Crown , Aeschines and Demosthenes attack and defend silence as either upholding or violating the democratic obligations of statesmen. In the most extensive discussion of silence within these four speeches, Demosthenes frames silence as a defiance of democratic duty and presents political crises as imposing civic obligation to speak upon Aeschines. Demosthenes argues that Aeschines’s decision not to speak in a time of crisis is undemocratic, describing silence as an act of complicity with an antidemocratic enemy. Aeschines defends silence as a mark of the deliberative statesman and attacks Demosthenes for engaging in undemocratic speech.