Speaking the same language

"Speaking the Same Language recovers the role played by the audiences of debates in Thucydides' account of the war. By restoring these audiences to a more prominent position, Debnar emphasizes the perspective of the participants in the war and heightens the dramatic immediacy of the debates. She offers close readings of twelve speeches and shows that the earlier speeches help characterize the Spartans and their supporters as a Dorian ethnos opposed to their common enemy - the Athenians and their Ionian allies. Yet later speeches show that, as the war progresses, the Spartans frequently use…