La retorica dello ψόγος nella polemica di Libanio contro i bouleuti di Antiochia

The study focuses on the dialectic between central and local power as expressed in the work of the rhetor Libanius of Antioch. In the Speeches 48, examined here, and 49 he shows an approach antithetical to the one through which he usually praised the exponents of the local power, i.e. the bouleuti, and, on the contrary, through which he usually addresses the representatives of the central power using the rhetoric of psogos. Far from the circumstances and above all from the tones of the speech pronounced in praise of Antioch (Or. 11), a city that found in the boulè one of her reasons for pride, Libanius, in the Eighties of the IVth century AD, is forced not to contradict himself, but more normally to modify his point of view with respect to a reality that has changed. He in turn changed his approach in a way that corresponds to the concrete action he acknowledges to the λόγοι and to the paideutic intent pursued through the art of speech.