Master Pages 116  7 Gorgias in the Real World Hermocrates on Interstate Stasis and the Defense of Sicily Daniel P. Tompkins As Athens threatened Sicily, irst in 427 and then in 415 BCE, the Syracusan leader Hermocrates vigorously organized resistance, urging military alli- ances in Gela, Syracuse, and Camarina. 1 In this essay, I argue three points: 1. Hermocrates’ style difers from those of other hucydidean speakers in its use of stylistic innovations that are generally attributed to his fellow Sicil- ian and contemporary Gorgias of Leontini. his sort of stylistic diferenti- ation has not been widely noticed in hucydidean scholarship. 2 2. Whereas Gorgias delivered both deliberate and display speeches, Hermocrates’ focus is consistently deliberative, and the Gorgianic fea- tures of his speeches are not, as oten claimed, merely ornamental but constitutive: they are concentrated nodes of political discourse that ad- vance the speaker’s argument about matters of life and death. 1. I am grateful to Professors Paula Debnar and Paul Cartledge for their extremely valuable advice during the composition of this essay, which was irst conceived as an efort to in- ventory and discuss Hermocrates’ use of Gorgianic innovations, frequently noticed but seldom analyzed by scholars. When the essay was in its inal draft stage, Professor Debnar provided a copy of Jessica Miner’s unpublished Smith College senior thesis on Hermocrates’ style, which covered nearly the same ground as my draft writen ifteen years earlier. After consulting Miner’s ine study, I changed course and composed a new essay emphasizing Hermocrates’ diplomatic skills. Hermocrates’ Thucydidean speeches occur at 4.59–64 (Gela, 425), 6.33–34 (Syracuse), and 6.76–80 (Camarina, 415). 2. See n. 9 for further detail. CClark.indd 116 3/31/2015 4:34:54 PM