“Ekphrasis? What’s that, you ask?” Well, let me take you on a journey back over two thousand years…
Imagine standing among the ruins of Ephesus, an ancient Greek metropolis nestled along the western coast of modern-day Turkey. As you wander among the crumbling marble columns and weathered stone streets, the boundaries of time blur. Suddenly, you’re transported back to an era when words wielded the power to conjure realities.
In the heart of Ephesus, the State Agora bustles with activity. Merchants peddle their goods, citizens debate the latest political developments, and the air hums with the everyday chaos of city life. Suddenly, a figure catches the eye of passersby. A philosopher, draped in a traditional himation, takes his place near the steps of the Stoa. As he begins to speak, his voice carrying tales of an epic battle, an audience emerges around him, drawn by the power of his words.
The crowd falls silent—the kind of silence that’s deafening, a stark contrast to the usual clamor of the Agora. As he speaks, his words paint vivid mental images—heroic battles clash and majestic landscapes unfold in the minds of his listeners. These mental images become as tangible as the marble beneath their feet, transporting the audience from the sun-baked stones to the mythical realms of gods and heroes.
This magical transformation of words is ekphrasis—the ancient art of evoking vivid mental images. It’s a testament to the power of our imagination to ignite the senses, evoke emotions, and transcend the boundaries of time and space.
But ekphrasis is more than just a relic of ancient rhetoric. It challenges our modern assumptions about imagination and visual thinking, offering surprising insights into our increasingly image-saturated world.
The Origins and Purpose of Ekphrasis
In the classical world, words were more than just sounds or scribblings on papyrus. They were magic. With the right combination of words, a skilled speaker or writer could make you see things that weren’t there, feel emotions you’d never experienced, and believe in worlds beyond your own. This wasn’t just art; it was a superpower. And like all superpowers, it needed to be honed.
Enter the Progymnasmata—think of it as the ancient world’s version of rhetoric boot camp. Young aspiring orators and writers would spend years learning and practicing ekphrastic exercises. The term itself comes from the Greek word “ἔκφρασις” (ekphrasis), meaning “descriptive speech.” The objective of these exercises? To create enargeia, or vividness—to describe something so vividly that the audience could practically see it, smell it, touch it.
Imagine being a student of rhetoric during this time. Your teacher points to the Temple of Artemis, a 127 ionic-styled column building to celebrate the Greek goddess, and says: “Describe this so well that a blind person could sculpt it from your words alone.”
Talk about pressure, right? But this ability to evoke someone’s imagination with words wasn’t just about showing off. In a world without photographs, television, or PowerPoint presentations, the ability to paint pictures with words was a crucial skill.
Applications of Ekphrasis
Ekphrasis was more than decorative speech; it was a pathway to influence, persuade, and educate. Its applications were far-reaching, from education to politics to literature, each demonstrating the power of vivid description to move hearts and minds.
Education
In education, ekphrasis played a crucial role. Philosophers and teachers employed it to illuminate complex philosophical concepts or historical events. Through detailed and vivid descriptions, they made abstract or distant ideas tangible.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a prime example. In this philosophical masterpiece, Plato crafts an imaginative narrative designed to explore themes of perception, knowledge, and enlightenment. He describes prisoners chained in a cave from birth, only able to see shadows cast on a wall by objects passing in front of a fire behind them. This scenario is not merely a story; it’s an ekphrastic device Plato uses to paint a mental image guiding the listener through his philosophical inquiry.
Here’s an excerpt from Plato’s Allegory:
“And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads.”
This use of ekphrasis—employing detailed, imaginative descriptions—makes Plato’s theories more impactful. By inviting his audience to visualize the prisoners’ plight, Plato engages their senses and emotions, fostering a deeper, more empathetic comprehension of his ideas.
This technique of using vivid mental imagery to explain complex ideas isn’t just ancient history. Modern educators still employ similar methods, from using analogies in science classes to historical reenactments in social studies. The power of ekphrasis is more than sharing information; it deepens learning, making complex ideas tangible—and it remains a valuable tool in today’s classrooms.
Politics
Moving from the classroom to the political arena, ekphrasis became a tool for swaying public opinion and inspiring civic pride. A classic example is Pericles’ Funeral Oration in 431 BCE. In this speech, Pericles used vivid descriptions to showcase Athenian democracy and honor fallen soldiers, highlighting the nobility of their cause and the value of their sacrifice.
Here’s an excerpt from the Oration:
“We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.”
Through these words, Pericles paints a vivid picture of Athenian society, its values, and its people. He uses ekphrasis not just to describe, but to evoke a sense of pride and unity among his listeners, creating a shared mental image of their collective identity.
In broader political contexts, ekphrasis can be used to argue for or against policies. Want to argue against a war? A skilled orator might describe the horrors of battle so vividly that the audience can hear the clash of swords and smell the blood on the field. Pushing for a new law? Paint a picture of a better future so real that people can almost touch it.
Literature
Writers and poets took ekphrasis to even greater heights. Remember that famous shield of Achilles from Homer’s Iliad? Homer spends nearly 150 lines describing it, and not a single person reading it has ever seen the actual shield. Why? Because it never existed! It’s a fictional object in a fictional story, described so well that generations of readers have debated what it would look like if it were real.
Here’s an excerpt about the shield:
“First of all he forged a great and massive shield, adorning it all over…He made the earth upon it, and the sky, and the sea’s water, and the tireless sun, and the moon waxing into her fullness, and on it all the constellations that festoon the heavens…”
This isn’t just a vivid description; it’s a microcosm of the entire world as the Greeks understood it. Through this imaginative description, Homer invites readers to visualize not just a shield, but the entirety of human existence.
The power of ekphrasis in writing lies in its ability to create a shared imaginative space between the author and the reader. It invites the audience to see what the author sees and to experience what the characters experience. In doing so, it bridges the gap between the written word and the reader’s imagination, making stories come alive.
The Presumption of Visualization
Through ekphrasis, speakers could sway public opinion, impart moral lessons, and immortalize events—this ancient art required skill in language and a deep knowledge of human imagination.
Here’s where things get really interesting. All of this relies on one big assumption: That everyone can see these mental images. Just as Aristotle believed in phantasia—that to think, we must think in images—the ancient rhetoricians were convinced that any educated person could conjure up these vivid mental pictures. Little did they know that centuries later, we’d discover something called aphantasia—the inability to create mental images.
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Were there people back then who just didn’t get what all the fuss was about? Did they sit through these vivid descriptions or read through the 150 lines describing a shield and think to themselves; “What am I supposed to be seeing here?“
That, my friends, is where our story really begins. Because in exploring this ancient art of ekphrasis, we’re not just digging into history. We’re unravelling assumptions about how our imagination works that have persisted for millennia.
So, are you ready to dive deeper? Trust me, this is where things get really fascinating…
Ancient Awareness of Cognitive Differences
Now, imagine you’re one of those ancient students, sitting in a sun-drenched courtyard, listening to your teacher speak effusively about the power of ekphrasis. But there’s a problem—you’re not seeing anything. While your classmates nod along, eyes glazed over as they picture the scenes being described, you’re left wondering if you’re missing out on something.
You might think, “Surely, I can’t be the only one?” And you’d be right.
There’s evidence that even back then, some people were raising eyebrows at the assumed universality of this mental imagery business. Take, for instance, this intriguing question posed by Quintilian, a renowned Roman rhetorician:
“Is there anyone so incapable of forming images of things that he does not seem to see…?”
It’s a loaded question, isn’t it?
Quintilian highlights the immersive experience of ekphrasis, suggesting that any educated person should naturally visualize scenes from texts. On the surface, his words seem to assume that everyone can form these mental images. But the fact that he’s asking at all suggests that maybe, just maybe, he’d encountered folks who claimed the magic of ekphrasis didn’t work on them. This Roman scholar, so influential in the development of rhetoric, inadvertently hinted at a cognitive diversity that wouldn’t be fully recognized for centuries.
Some rhetoricians took an even stronger stance on this matter. Take Dionysios of Halicarnassus, for instance. He didn’t just suggest—he insisted that it was impossible for an educated person not to “see” and interact with the scenes and characters described in vivid rhetoric. Dionysios wasn’t shy about his views either. Those who claimed they couldn’t visualize these scenes? Well, he dismissed them as “dull” or “hard to please.” Ouch.
This example shows us how deeply ingrained the belief in universal visual imagination was. It wasn’t just an assumption. For some, like Dionysios, it was a mark of education and refinement. Little did they know they were setting the stage for a debate that would persist until the present day. But here’s where it gets really interesting. If these ancient scholars were asking such questions or making such claims, they must have bumped into people who said;
“Sorry, I’m just not seeing it.” So why didn’t they dig deeper?
Was it their own cognitive bias getting in the way? It’s not hard to imagine. After all, if you can easily conjure up mental images, wouldn’t it be natural to assume everyone else can too? It’s a bit like a fish not realizing it’s in water—when something is so fundamental to your experience, it’s hard to imagine life without it.
This bias isn’t just ancient history, by the way. It’s the same kind of thinking that kept aphantasia from being recognized in mainstream science until 2015. That’s right—it took us until the age of smartphones and social media to officially acknowledge that some folks don’t see mental images. Talk about a long-standing assumption!
But let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment. What if these ancient scholars did recognize these invisible differences but chose to ignore them? Could it be that they were worried acknowledging this cognitive diversity might somehow dilute the perceived power of their rhetorical techniques? After all, if you admit that your vivid descriptions don’t work on everyone, doesn’t that take some of the magic out of it?
It’s food for thought. And it leads us to an even bigger question—one that’s just as relevant today as it was two thousand years ago.
The Doubly Fictive Nature of Ekphrasis
The power of ekphrasis lay in its ability to create a sense of presence, making absent things appear present. Ekphrasis allowed listeners to ‘see’, ‘hear’ and ‘feel’ with their minds. This capacity to generate vivid, shared mental images fostered a communal imagination, linking the speaker or writer and audience in a shared experience of reality constructed through words.
However, ekphrasis is a dance along the delicate line separating reality from imagination. Through the creation of enargeia—the quality of vivid mental images—ekphrasis demonstrates a profound psychological impact and its potential to transfer internal impressions from one mind to another. This capacity to evoke detailed, sensory-like experiences is what imbues ekphrasis with its unique power and allure. However, this power comes with inherent risks, most notably its ‘doubly fictive’ nature.
While ekphrasis can illuminate truths, bringing to life historical events, philosophical ideas, natural wonders, or human emotions with startling clarity, it equally holds the potential to deceive. In the hands of a skilled rhetorician, ekphrasis can transform into a potent and potentially manipulative tool. This ability to shape perceptions of reality—whether to inspire, educate, or deliberately mislead—highlights the ethical dimensions inherent in its use.
Given that ekphrasis was used as a tool for persuasion, and considering how many more ways we have to capture imaginations today (think images, sound bites, videos, and more), we have to ask ourselves this question: Do we have agency over our imagination, or does our imagination have agency over us?
Ekphrasis and Modern Media
In a world where the lines between imagination and reality are increasingly blurred, and cherry-picked clips, deepfakes, and AI-generated content are commonplace, this question takes on a whole new urgency. And here’s where our aphantasic friends might just have an ace up their sleeve.
You see, the differences in our cognitive styles—including the inability to conjure mental images —might offer a useful filter for discerning imagination from reality. In a world awash with sensory input and persuasive imagery, could aphantasia provide a unique perspective, a built-in skepticism that helps navigate this complex landscape?
It’s a reminder that we need discerning minds and alternative perspectives now more than ever. The power of imagination is undeniable, but so is the need for clear-eyed reality checks. Perhaps, in embracing the full spectrum of human cognitive experiences, we can find a balance —leveraging the evocative power of mental imagery while maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism.
So the next time you find yourself swept away by a vivid description or a persuasive image, take a moment to step back. Ask yourself: Am I seeing what’s really there, or what someone wants me to see?
In doing so, you’ll be carrying on a tradition of critical thinking that stretches back to those ancient Greek and Roman rhetoricians—even if they didn’t quite realize it at the time.
