The last attempt did not produce a readable copy.
The last attempt did not produce a readable copy.
Picture yourself in a beautiful room, flooded with early morning light. It has a lofty ceiling, delicately gilded and glinting in the sunshine. The walls are adorned with paintings, in colour and detail as bright as Spring. What is one to do in the face of such beauty? Stand mute, gazing in wonder, or articulate the impact of the visual, rival it even, in words? This is the question posed by Lucian's On the Hall, a rhetorical introduction or prolalia, probably written between 160 and 180 CE. The piece is framed as a debate about the merits of speaking in beautiful surroundings. While the first speaker confidently asserts that it is both desirable and beneficial to give oratorical displays within impressive surroundings, a second speaker, who only appears in chapter 14, suggests that such surroundings will instead overpower the speaker and distract his audience. Yet the debate does not only question whether beautiful surroundings help or hinder the epideictic orator. It also asks what the proper response of an educated man should be to visual beauty, and problematises the relationship between the visual and the verbal. While many of Lucian's other works give descriptions of works of art, or appeal to the reader's artistic knowledge, this essay puts the ekphrastic project itself in the spotlight, questioning whether words can ever truly compete with the impact of the visual.
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