For my uncle, Harry Kagan Acknowledgments I have presented parts of this book at the École Normale Supérieure (Paris), Brown, Princeton, Harvard, Bryn Mawr, the 1998 meeting of the American Society of Legal Historians in Toronto, the New York Classical Club, Johns Hopkins, the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale, and the Bibliotheca Classica in St. Petersburg. My gratitude to those audiences, and also to Stephen Colvin,… Read more
Chapter 1: The Challenge of Court Speech Few aspects of classical Greek literature are as well preserved as the oratory of the lawcourts of classical Athens. Of the approximately 150 speeches composed by or attributed to the Attic orators who constitute the Canon, about two-thirds were written for real or imaginary forensic occasions. For some purposes we can also consult partly or entirely imaginary court speeches by… Read more
Chapter 2: Amateur Litigants, Amateur Speakers The idiôtês on His Own It often said that a litigant in an Athenian court was required to speak for himself, [1] though the evidence for an actual law making such a stipulation is very weak indeed: a single remark in a second-century AD work, Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria (2.15.30). [2]… Read more
Chapter 3: Natural and Artificial Speech from Homer to Hyperides; A Brief Sketch From Homer to the Mid-Fifth Century The continuity of Greek rhetorical tradition has become controversial, with much of the controversy centering around those Plato identifies as teachers of rhetoric in the Phaedrus. [1] Others take a broader view and see abundant material in the earliest texts, including Homer… Read more
Chapter 4: Terrors of the Courtroom In Demosthenes 22.25, a passage made famous by Osborne’s 1985 article on the multiplicity of procedural routes available to prosecutors, we have one of the very few general references within a speech to the possibility that litigation, and specifically speaking in court, might intimidate some idiôtai: καὶ μὴν κἀκεῖνό γε δεῖ μαθεῖν ὑμᾶς, ὅτι τοὺς νόμους ὁ τιθεὶς τούτους Σόλων… Read more
Chapter 5: Performance as Evidence Far from being a small town where everybody kept everybody else under continual surveillance, Attica was a large territory with a large population, and it would be exceptional for a juror to know the people involved in a trial, unless perhaps they lived in the same deme or had served together in the army. Hence the outcome of a trial often depended… Read more
Chapter 6: Appeals to Pity and Displays of Anger Appealing to Pity Several very well-known descriptions of court speakers and actual passages of court speech have lead many scholars to conclude that litigants wallowed in emotion as they made appeals to the jury’s pity (in older terminology, appeals ad misericordiam). This might have been true of many amateurs, but very seldom, as I see it, of… Read more
Chapter 7: Tactics, Amateur and Professional In remarking on the style of classical Greek authors, moderns usually leave denigration to the ancients. [1] Criticisms such as MacDowell’s remarks on Andocides’ stylistic lapses (1962:20–22) are exceptional. [2] And there is an obvious reason for us to be slow to censure: we have very little poorly written literature from… Read more
Appendix. Instances of Trickery in Herodotus’ Histories Trick Trickster Vocabulary Manipulation of signs? Successful? Sign Type Stage of Signification Process 1.21.1–22.3 Thrasyboulos tricks Alyattes into thinking Miletos has plenty of food μηχανᾶται 1.21.1 no yes 1.59.3–6 Peisistratos mutilates himself as if attacked μηχανᾶται τοιάδε 1.59.3ὁ… Read more
Works Cited Commentaries and Translations with Commentary Aeschines Carey, Christopher. 2000. Aeschines . The Orators of Classical Greece 3. Austin. Fisher, Nick. 2001. Aeschines : Against Timarchos. Oxford. Alcidamas Muir, J. V. 2001. Alcidamas : The Works and Fragments. London. Antiphon … Read more
