Dr. María José Martín Velasco took part in the IVth International Conference of the Iberian Society of Greek Philosophy (SIFG) with a paper on The value of persuasive discourse in the different stages of tragedy.
Her paper revolved around one issue: how Athenians were gradually losing confidence in the ability of persuasive language to regenerate life in the polis. Aeschylus was firmly convinced of the capacity of human beings to reach the truth through language and in his tragedies, this tragedian gives indications of what that language must be like in order to fulfil its mission. Euripides, on the other hand, knowing all the rhetorical mechanisms and handling them with great mastery, focuses his interest on revealing the possible gaps through which society, precisely through persuasive language, is undermining its own foundations.