There is no question that King Agamemnon is incredible at what he does best which is one thing - rallying his troops. One of the most brilliant parts of the excerpt is when King Agamemnon has his rebuttal following Nestor’s persuasive speech found on page 26. The first necessary thing to address is the fact that Agamemnon has power, authority, and arguably the most important thing he has is credibility. It is clear that he is well respected and that just as the prince of Pylos stated towards the beginning “if any other man of the Achaeans had told us of this dream, we should have declared it false…”. However, they believed since the beginning that Agamemnon was a credible source or one who could be trusted. He uses this sense of ethos largely to his advantage in front of his audience.
With this being said, King Agamemnon does a spectacular job at using the rhetoric appeal of pathos as he motivates the troops using a stellar choice of words and even imagery. He uses powerful phrases such as “may [we] join in fight”, “whet your spears”, “…your shields shall be wet with the sweat upon your shoulders.” To my understanding, the audience is a group of warriors who have been away from their families and homes for nine years. Of course, they want to gear up and go to war so they can finish this after all. Agamemnon uses these powerful phrases like a football coach uses to motivate, inspire, and pump up his team going into the fourth quarter. King Agamemnon even has clear evidence that his genius form of rhetoric and persuasiveness was effective as he finished due to the fact that the “Achaens roared applause.” Though some may argue that he lacked logic, it is evident that he was successful at touching the hearts of these men using pathos and developed his credibility through others using ethos.
With this being said, King Agamemnon does a spectacular job at using the rhetoric appeal of pathos as he motivates the troops using a stellar choice of words and even imagery. He uses powerful phrases such as “may [we] join in fight”, “whet your spears”, “…your shields shall be wet with the sweat upon your shoulders.” To my understanding, the audience is a group of warriors who have been away from their families and homes for nine years. Of course, they want to gear up and go to war so they can finish this after all. Agamemnon uses these powerful phrases like a football coach uses to motivate, inspire, and pump up his team going into the fourth quarter. King Agamemnon even has clear evidence that his genius form of rhetoric and persuasiveness was effective as he finished due to the fact that the “Achaens roared applause.” Though some may argue that he lacked logic, it is evident that he was successful at touching the hearts of these men using pathos and developed his credibility through others using ethos.
The fact that he uses ethos with his equals and pathos with the armies does show his ability to address audiences productively. Pathos wouldn't have been nearly as effective with the war council and ethos only goes so far with a large army of common soldiers. I thought of the speech as a coach's pep talk also, and I feel like that is a good metaphor for what Agamemnon was attempting to do with his troops.
ReplyDeleteI also think a great persuasion point that he used to rally the troops was when he retold the story of the snake eating the sparrow and her young symbolizing the nine years of war that would end in victory for them. I think it adds to your analogy of the fourth quarter of a football game because he is saying that there is light at the end of the tunnel and if they just push through push through this final battle, they will come out victorious.
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