Andy Chen Precis of Encomium of Helen by Gorgias

Precis of Encomium of Helen by Gorgias

Like Gorgias shows at the beginning of his essay, “Helen, ...has become a byword for calamities.” People then, such as writers, poets blamed Helen for Troy’s failure.  Gorgias writes this essay to propose that Helen is innocent, he lists reasons, “Helen's journey to Troy was (triggered) either by the wishes of Fortune and plans of the gods and decrees of Necessity she did what she did, or abducted by force, or persuaded by speeches, or conquered by Love.” In this precise, I am going to analyze how and what Gorgias completely defend for Helen.

The mindset and process he uses to plead for Helen is that; First, he firstly purifies his motivation and the ultimate goal of writing this essay. Second, he quickly and effectively makes the first two reasons, the fortune and external force, which were agreed by audiences already, and prepare two points that he will use again later in the argument. Third, he uses multiple examples to show speeches and Love are powerful and out of human’s control, such like both are as powerful as the power of fortune and force. Fourth, he suggests and proposes changing of people’s attitude of Helen.

Gorgias believes it is required of the same man both to speak straight and to refute crooked speech. So he writes, “by bestowing some rationality on the discourse, I myself wish to absolve this ill-reputed woman.” He here shows that he defends for Helen, not for other things but “because this is the right and rational thing to do.” As we know, he was trying to against the crowds’ opinion on Helen. It is extremely important to show audiences to know his argument is “nature” to exist, and it is not forced by anyone else.

Gorgias then (only) spent one and a half paragraphs talking about god’s willing and force. He mentions the will of a god in order to prepare and indicate his point that human forethought cannot violate gods’ plans. Then he talks about bringing abducted by force and directly propose that abductor should be blamed strongly instead of blaming the victim. (He will use this idea later again when he talks about Love.)

After briefly indicating two strong points, he is ready to talk more deeply about other two points, persuasive the discourse and love. He points out that poetries can cause fearful shuddering and tearful pity and sorrowful longing come upon those who hear it. In advance, like what he describes “the incantation's power, communicating with the soul's opinion, enchants and persuades and changes it, by trickery.” Along with examples such as the discourses of the astronomers, debates in the court, and the competing arguments of the philosophers, he completely shows that “the power of discourse stands in the same relation to the soul's organization as the pharmacopoeia does to the physiology of bodies.”

As the Same process of explaining how love is one of the reasons that Helen is innocence. He takes soldiers’ weakness in wars, human’s normal reaction to dreadful thing, and the delighted artists’ works bring with to show how “the soul (will) receive(s) an impression in its own ways through the sight.” Then he assumes “if Helen's eye, taking pleasure in Alexander's body, transmitted to her soul the eagerness and struggle of Love.” Then again, he said, “If Love, being a god, has the divine power of gods, how could the weaker being have the power to reject this and to ward it off?” Such as the second point he showed before, nobody can escape from God’s plan.

From establishing the legitimacy of his essay, then premise gold’s Holy immutability and that the society should not blame the victim for the result. He then proves strongness of speeches and Love and relates speeches to external force and Love to god’s plan. As a conclusion, he wraps up with his strong justice to show his ambitious of correcting the fact, as he writes in the last paragraph, “by this discourse I have removed infamy from a woman; I have continued in the mode I established at the beginning. I tried to put an end to the injustice of blame and ignorance of opinion”


Andy Chen 3032305225 @Berkeley