One of the rhetorical tactics adopted by Nikias is an authoritative tone. He is persuasive because he gives the impression of being a natural leader, making his listeners want to put their trust in him. Thucydides even phrases it as Nikias giving the Athenians “advice” when Nikias gives his argument, suggesting the Athenians’ trust in his judgment (310, 6.8). However, one unpersuasive rhetorical device Nikias uses is circumlocution. This makes his speech confusing; his speaking style suggests ambiguity, and his listeners often get lost in the verbosity of his speech. Paragraph 6.21 is a perfect example of his verbose sentence construction. The entire paragraph is comprised of one sentence. A successful rhetorical tactic employed by Alcibiades is a confident and charismatic tone which has resulted from his conscious superiority in politics. He explicitly begins his argument by saying, “Athenians, I more than others am entitled to command…” (314, 6.16). This makes Alcibiades seem persuasive because, similarly to Nikias, the Athenians trust Alcibiades because of his experience in political affairs. If all the information I had about the situation depended on the speeches, I would vote in support of Alcibiades even though as a person, Nikias appears to be the more likeable of the two because Alcibiades’ advice to go forth with the expedition sounds like a safer plan for Athens in the long run.
The Mytilenean debate makes a reference to the senses in paragraph 6.37 when Thucydides writes that the Mytileneans “want to appear wiser than the laws,” and again in 6.38 when the Mytileneans are described as being “slow in foreseeing consequences” and “seeking…something different from the life we lead without enough understanding of actual conditions…overcome by the pleasure of listening.” The first reference to sight advances Thucydides’ views about evidence and belief by suggesting that the Athenians were able to distinguish the Mytileneans as frauds or true speakers of...