Gorgias: "Encomium of Helen"

Gorgias writes with a simple purpose—to remove the disgrace from Helen. The praise he offers is personal entertainment for his mind, but as he concludes, it also shows speech’s power to halt blame’s injustice and bring to light opinion’s ignorance. Thus, his argument is effective and still applicable.

The opening line strikes me as beautiful. In explaining what things are attracted to, the argument logically follows that the becoming things should be praised. (Although if there is no such thing as being, how can anything be becoming?) With this introduction, along with the analysis of her beauty and her beauty’s effects, his purpose remains to release Helen from rebukes.

The first argument addresses those who place fate and blame on a god. If one believes that the stronger god can rule and lead the weaker human, than one cannot blame Helen because her disgrace came only as was predetermined by the gods. Nothing she could have done could have stopped the events.

Along this same line of reasoning, one cannot blame Helen if she was raped since she is then the victim. The barbarian is in the wrong, not the sufferer, so Helen should be pitied instead of blamed. This transfers the blame to the committer of the crime.

The next argument against blaming Helen analyzes the power of speech. Minds are moved by the power of words. Those in pain turn to sacred incantations, words in song, to relieve their souls. False arguments persuade and because the future is a mystery and it is impossible to constantly remember everything that has ever happened in the past, people are convincible. Affording speech the power to end fear and grief while creating joy and cultivating pity (something this particular speech excels in), it is easy to see that Helen might have simply been a victim of excellent persuasion. Speech, after all, is like a drug.

The final argument is love. According to this argument, love is a powerful and unpredictable force which alters a reality. If love has the power of the gods, and the gods being mightier than humans can inflict their will, then a lesser human like Helen could no more resist love than she could resist the gods.

These arguments still echo in different degrees. At the same time, these arguments are often passed over as the “injustice of blame and the ignorance of opinion” continues. The instances when a woman is blamed in a situation involving rape come quickly to mind. Oftentimes, even when an attacker is proven guilty, the victim woman is disgraced. The power of speech and twisted love plays a large part in domestic abuse situations, and when the victim leaves, she (and sometimes he) is also met with disgrace as people fail to legitimize speech and love.

Could this argument then work on anyone? Can any action be attributed to either the gods, crime, speech, or love? Could it be applied to the person who took Helen and then to any criminal, leaving blame obsolete? In some cases, is blame good? Being aware of the powers of rhetoric certainly seem to make one less susceptible to the negative persuasion of speech. And since speech is so often tied to love, then perhaps knowledge offers an armor to even the type of ‘love’ that corrupts and leads to blame.

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