This paper looks at ways in which speakers in the Athenian courts turn the judges (at least rhetorically) into witnesses for their case. It begins with a brief survey of the complex role of the witness within Athenian forensic culture and then looks at the different ways in which speakers stretch this role both terminologically and conceptually to fit the judges facing them and in the process align them more closely with their own case and their own version of the facts at issue. It closes by looking briefly at other rhetorical games which speakers play with the notion and practice of witnessing.

On a summer night of 415 BCE, a few days before the campaign to Sicily, most of the Herms on the streets of Athens were found mutilated, and a few days later information came about performances of the Eleusinian Mysteries at private houses. These two affairs were immediately considered to be connected and created a great disruption in Athens. As Thucydides reports, this ‘double affair’ was thought to be ominous for the expedition; more importantly, suspicions were raised that these were the workings of a conspiracy whose ultimate purpose was to overthrow the democracy. The Assembly voted a decree inviting anyone who had information about this double affair to come forward and speak without fear of consequences, and large public rewards were offered to anyone who would reveal the names of the perpetrators. Numerous denunciations of persons allegedly involved in the two connected affairs were made before the Council and the Assembly by citizens, metics, slaves, by Alcibiades’ wife Agariste, and by anonymous denunciators. All these resulted in an unprecedented number of trials before the heliastic courts. Dozens of citizens and a number of metics were put to trial; Hansen (1975, 58) enumerated as many as forty-eight trials that took place. This paper focuses on the evidence concerning the two affairs given both before (at the Council and the Assembly) and during the trials at the heliastic courts, and examines its use and abuse.

In this paper I shall re-examine the formulas for the calling of witness statements in the speeches of Isaios, which are of central importance for the dating of the change from oral to written evidence in the Athenian lawcourts of the fourth century. Calhoun (in TAPA 1919) fixed the date of the change to 378/7, and while this precise dating has not found general acceptance (see, e.g., MacDowell, Law in Classical Athens 243), most scholars agree that the change took place around 380 (e.g. Todd, Shape of Athenian Law 336; Phillips, Law of Ancient Athens 38). However, a major problem is that it is very difficult to assign dates with any degree of certainty to the majority of Isaios’ speeches. Consistent with a date c. 380 is that the only speeches of Isaios that do not mention written depositions are speeches 1 and 10 (also 4, which has no witnesses of any kind), usually considered to be among the earlier speeches; while the only speeches that do not mention ‘witnesses’ are 2 and 3 (and 4), usually considered among the later. But one problem with the c. 380 date, which was acknowledged by Calhoun, is that speech 5 is datable to c. 389 but contains a reference to a written deposition; and Wevers (Isaeus: Chronology, Prosopography, and Social History) challenged the traditional dating of Isaios’ speeches, putting 1 and 10 much later. It is also the case that speeches 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11 all appear to have at least one example of both ‘witnesses’ and ‘depositions’. I shall therefore consider the wording of the formulas and their context, and how the differences between the traditional and the Wevers dating may affect the standard view on the date of the changeover from oral to written evidence.

Aristotle (Rhet. 1. 2.2; 1375a24ff.) lists five kinds of pisteis atechnoi: laws, witnesses, agreements, tortures and oaths, and the list may also include other kinds of evidence of the same sort, as for example challenges (prokleseis).

Only free adult males were allowed to be witnesses. It was the duty of the litigant to secure that the witnesses named by him did actually attend at the trial or arbitration to acknowledge their testimony. The role of witnesses in the Athenian courts has been widely discussed by scholars of Greek law and oratory and the perspectives vary according to the way they were considered to contribute to justice. It is generally conceived that witnesses are not the primary source of information for the judges but it is the litigants who tell the story, frequently calling witnesses to confirm the details. A witness in Athenian trial was a supporter of one of the litigants more than a medium for finding the truth and reconstructing justice.

The present paper will focus on the legal aspect of a dike pseudomarturion and its contribution to the operation of the judicial decision making process in Athenian courts. Private and public cases may have originated different conditions and effects upon the initiation of a trial for false testimony. The legal scope of the specific procedure prevented witnesses from affirming illegitimate evidence in court and may have consequently made them reluctant to undertake their role and to comply with a litigant’s choice of argumentation. Dike pseudomarturion was an instrument that enabled both litigants before the final decision of the judges to sue witnesses produced by their opponents and rhetorically manipulate and control the development of the trial. My aim is to examine the specific legal procedure in the case of false testimony against Euergos and Mnesibolos, as presented in Demosthenes’ speech 47, involving originally a trial of assault. Apart from the variety of legal issues that arises in the specific case, it is also worth examining the use of a dike pseudomarturion as a powerful rhetorical tool to reverse the outcome of a previous trial and get the benefit from compensation. As such, dike pseudomarturion appears to be the only possible way of appeal to the court for the judges’ vote at a trial.

The theme of madness has been treated in the classical Greek world mainly from two points of view: the medical and the philosophical. It does not seem to have found particular attention in the sources the socially most important aspect, i.e. how to evaluate the consequences for others persons of the behavior of a mad person. Only in the Laws of Plato we find a rule that concerns in general the treatment of mad persons. From historical poleis we know only a text of law that expressly contemplates madness: it is the law on the validity of the testament attributed to Solon. In any case, these are rules that concern the private sphere, inside the oikos. Regarding the consequences of an offense committed by a mad person, the Laws of Plato provide for the simple compensation of damage, because Plato recognizes that madness is a disease. It is difficult to establish if and how madness was relevant in the Athenian process. A preliminary step consists in verifying, on the basis of literary texts (in particular theatrical texts) and philosophical reflection (in particular Aristotle’s Ethics), if the argument of madness had at least influence on the social evaluation of behaviors.

The epilogoi of Attic forensic oratory have not attracted much attention in recent scholarship. Their treatment in Greek rhetorical theory is quite rigid, superficial and generally unsatisfactory. It mainly covers their key objective and basic functions and provides brief suggestions on how to perform these functions. Aristotle stresses the fact that the epilogos follows the demonstration of the speaker’s truthfulness and the opponent’s falsity and has to focus on “what has already been shown” in summary form.  In this paper, I shall first discuss some key methodological problems encountered when dealing with epilogoi. I shall then proceed to consider the role played by references to proofs, and the concepts of truth and justice. An in-depth examination of extant epilogoi will demonstrate that references to these concepts and the reiteration of key proofs are part of wider, complex rhetorical strategies that fit the legal and rhetorical context of the speeches and the task that speakers had to perform in any given case. 

In 354/3 BC, two years after the unfavourable outcome of a trial connected with an antidosis procedure, the octogenarian Isocrates wrote an extensive defence of his life and reputation as an intellectual and teacher, the Περὶ τῆς ἀντιδόσεως or Antidosis, in order to respond to the accusations that had been made on that occasion and led to his condemnation. The speech has nothing to do with the antidosis case, except for the telling title: in fact, Isocrates imagined defending himself, like a new Socrates, from the charge, brought by a fictitious prosecutor, of corrupting youth through his teaching. In this imaginary trial, extensive quotations from his previous works are read by a clerk as if they were key evidence and, at the same time, the most reliable witnesses to his honourable conduct towards the polis. However, this set of extracts also functions as an auto-anthology, thus merging fictional court speech and literary criticism. The paper aims to address the role of these quotations in the complex structure of the Antidosis, in relation to Isocrates’ past experience as a logographer and as part of his effort to transform oratory into a new kind of prose.

Demosthenes’ Against Euboulides is one of the three forensic speeches in the corpus of Attic oratory which deals with contested citizenship, the others being Apollodorus’ Against Neaera and Isaeus’ For Euphilētus. Our speech was delivered as an appeal against a decision taken in the framework of an extraordinary procedure called diapsēphisis, activated in 346/5 BC. In this procedure, each member of a deme had to pass in turn an extraordinary scrutiny concerning his citizen status. More specifically, the speaker Euxitheus is appealing against the decision of his ejection from Halimus, his deme. The prosecutor Euboulides is acting as a representative of the deme. Euxitheus refutes the assertions of the prosecution by calling on his relatives and fellow-demesmen to bear witness to his citizen status.

In this paper I focus on the rhetoric of the testimonies, in the hope of showing some interesting aspects concerning the nature of Athenian citizenship. It is worth noting that the speech contains no fewer than 15 headings for witnesses and depositions. These testimonies bear the main burden of the rebuttal, and they accordingly have a structural function in the speech, being placed in its central part and either preceded or followed by relevant arguments and comments. The speaker also supports these statements with generalizations on human life and emotionally loaded arguments. Moreover, as occasion serves, he turns over the evidence used by the prosecution by adducing witnesses who support his own interpretation. An indicative passage is §§44-45, where he manipulates the allegation that his mother, having served in the past as a wet-nurse, was not an astē. Euxitheus admits that his mother was a nurse, but then he calls on the members of the family whom she had served to testify what they know, i.e. that she was an Athenian woman who was forced by poverty to undertake humble occupations (§§44-45). This particular issue is also considered in the light of similar slanders and allegations regarding the social status of well-known personalities, which occur both in political oratory and in comedy.

Several of the speeches written by Isaios for litigants in disputed inheritance cases include evidence about day-to-day family activities – especially (though not exclusively) about religious observance. For example, as part of his attempt to prove his identity as Kiron’s legitimate grandson, the speaker of Isa. 8 says that when he and his brother were children, Kiron always took them with him to public spectacles and festivals; and always included them in his private sacrifices to Zeus Ktesios, to which he never invited anyone from outside his own family (Isa. 8.15-16).

In other speeches, similar evidence about participation in religious ceremonies (or sometimes about absence from them) is used for different purposes: to show that the speaker’s opponent was an enemy of the deceased relative whose estate he claims (Isa. 1.31, 9.21), that the speaker himself was on terms of close friendship with the deceased (Isa. 9.30), that the speaker’s mother was a legitimate Athenian citizen (Isa. 8.19), or as general evidence of an opponent’s bad character (Isa. 6.48-49). Sometimes this kind of evidence is characterized as a σημεῖον (Isa. 1.31, 6.48) or a τεκμήριον (Isa. 8.15) of the point the speaker wants to prove, and it is almost always supported by witnesses who claim to have observed the presence (or absence) of the person in question at the ceremonies described. In one exceptional case, the speaker adduces ψηφισμάτα passed by the βουλὴ as evidence of his opponent’s sacrilegious behaviour (Isa. 6.50).

A close analysis of these passages (with reference to Aristotle’s theory of proof) will show that they all have some relevance to the legal issue in the case: who is best qualified to inherit the contested estate. But evidence of religious observance is never essential to the speaker’s case, and often forms only a small part of the total evidence he produces. I conclude, nevertheless, that its persuasive effect may often have been significant because of the strength of its appeal to traditional Athenian values.

It is a topos in modern scholarship on the topic of Athenian witnesses to emphasise an important difficulty when approaching the subject, namely to make a link between the identity of witness and the content of the particular piece of deposition he offers. Despite this difficulty, modern accounts are increasingly defining witness’ legal, political, and rhetorical function. Nonetheless, different approaches have been offered with reference to a crucial question, the witnesses’ legal function: some scholars argue that their role was primarily to support the litigant, so what matters most is ‘who they are’, while others rightly emphasise their main role to confirm certain events they knew, since they are always invited to this effect (‘what they say’ is most important).

Building on this latter view, which in my opinion, offers a better understanding of the role of witness testimony in the Athenian law, and the well-argued case for the artful use of this ‘artless proof’ (e.g. Carey 1994), I focus on the things they are invited to confirm, from a rhetorical point of view. Therefore, this paper seeks to understand the rhetorical role of witness testimony in the wider strategy of two speeches dealing with assault: a private (Dem. 54) and a public (Dem. 21). It intends to shed light to various artful uses of witness testimony, from gathering and drafting witness testimonies to their orchestration in the strategy of the speeches—especially, to illustrate the ethos of the opponent, in order to achieve persuasion. Such artful uses of witness testimony compensate for the absence/ weakness of factual evidence to prove crucial aspects of those cases. 

It is well known that Herodotus privileged the direct seeing (opsis) over a theory-based approach. This emphasis on direct knowledge is a feature shared by other literary genres in the classical period, including medical texts, philosophy, and tragedy. At the same time, Herodotus makes use of what is clearly hearsay (akoe) information, i.e.information given by someone else who had heard from direct from eyewitnesses sometimes at several removes. The Athenian court was no exception. In this paper, I will examine the usage of hearsay information in the Athenian legal sphere.

First, hearsay evidence was accepted more widely than usually believed in the Athenian courts. To be sure, Athenian law did impose restrictions on the use of hearsay witness. For example, Dem.57 argues that the hearsay evidence is regarded as an unreliable source of information. However, reexamination of forensic speeches that make use of hearsay witnesses will show that hearsay evidence was often represented as an eligible source of information, even though it ranked second to testimony provided by eye witnesses.

The reliance on hearsay (akoe) is further attested in the litigants’ use of rumour, too. One prominent example is Aeschines, who had succeeded in prosecuting Timarchus without presenting any direct evidence for his prostitution. For him, the rumours served as testimony confirming the common local knowledge in the Athenian community. Demosthenes, who had criticized Aeschines’ use of rumour at that time, later in the turn reemphasized the force of rumour as a form of evidence. Rumour, as common knowledge based on hearsay, did not even have to be confirmed by individual witnesses.

Here lies the democratic feature of the Athenian courts, as well as the danger. The Athenian courts distinguished between direct evidence and hearsay evidence, privileging the former over the latter. The strategies of persuasion employed in the Athenian courts, however, did include hearsay information.

Scholars have discussed the role of witness in the court of law in Classical Athens: Some have analyzed the witness’ status and personal connection with the litigant whom he was supporting; others have advocated that the main function of Athenian witnesses was to tell the truth. However, the information given by the witness testimonies has been largely neglected. It is true that the content of the witness testimony is frequently omitted from the extant forensic speeches or regarded as spurious. Moreover, witness testimonies were, presumably in many cases, read only in order to confirm the information given by the litigant. But there are not a few witness testimonies that are highly likely to contain more detailed information than the litigant’s speech itself provided (e.g. Lys. 12.42, D. 36.55, 56, 57; 37.54; 49.61; 55.21; 54.36; 58.35, etc). The main purpose of this paper, therefore, is to investigate rhetorical functions of such kind of witness testimonies in the Athenian law courts.

First of all, I will show that a litigant from time to time gives more detailed information on his own liturgical services or on the opponent’s wrongdoings other than the main issue, through witness testimonies without telling anything concrete by himself. In other words, witness testimony with additional information contributes to give credibility to litigant’s character portraiture either of himself or of his opponents. Secondly, I will argue that Athenian litigants could present the court of law with wide range of his personal supporters by making use of this type of witness testimonies. Although a litigant usually present those who were thought to have best knowledge about the fact to be testified, he could presumably easily produce many supporters as witnesses of such matters as his own liturgical services or his opponents’ other bad conduct than the main issue.

One of the most famous arguments extra orationem is the “performance” of the hetaera Phryne. As the conclusion of his speech in her defence (Frg. 171–180 Jensen), Hypereides tore off her vestments, and her unfolding beauty won the case. The speech and its frame story were appreciated both in antiquity (cf. the acknowledgements of Ps. Longinus and M. Valerius Messala Corvinus, entries in handbooks of rhetoric, the epistles of Alkiphron) and in later times (including works of literature and fine art, such as Jean Léon Gérôme’s painting). This paper, considering aspects of eloquent oratory, dramatic elements, and the application and system of proofs, surveys the outcomes of philological research in order to systematise them and draw some new conclusions.

While taking his customary stroll in the Agora Ariston is assaulted by Conon and his company; the blows are so violent that for a while he lies between life and death. After his recovery he initiates a private case of aikeia against Conon. It has been suggested that one of the logographer’s main tasks is to mask the fact that the victim does not have eye-witnesses. However, I don’t think this is an issue, since the victim quotes verbatim his witnesses’ testimony (διαρρήδην μεμαρτυρήκασιν). In my mind, the difficulty of constructing a convincing case against Conon lies elsewhere: in the fact that the latter won the arbitration preceding the actual trial. If we are to believe Ariston, everybody present resented Conon’s delaying tactics; even the defendant himself ended up by hating himself, and his tricks became apparent to the arbitrator. If so, why did Conon win the diaita? As I shall argue, this is because he produced convincing evidence, and in a  psychologically apt way. Demosthenes’ task is rather difficult. Since the litigants were not allowed to invoke any other evidence apart from that used at the diaita,  the logographer has to reconstruct the same evidence (which led to the defeat of his client) in a new, different way, τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιῶν. Thus this paper explores two issues: (a) the possible reasons for Ariston’s defeat at the diaita and (b) Demosthenes’ strategies in tipping the scales.

In this paper, I explore the inclusion of scandalous incidents in the narrative of
forensic speeches. My case study will be Aeschines Against Timarchos. I argue that the narration of scandalous stories in the Against Timarchos compensates for Aeschines’ lack of factual evidence mainly regarding his claim that Timarchos had prostituted himself, and contributed to the success of the action that Aeschines brought against Timarchos. In the course of the paper I will call attention to tactics employed by the orator with reference to the narration of such incidents, which reveal the understanding on behalf of the orator of the rhetorical importance and the potential persuasive power of the skilled construction and presentation within his narrative of scandalous stories, which could, and actually in this speech did, function as pieces of evidence.

In Demosthenes 54, amongst his witnesses the speaker calls a doctor who treated him after his alleged assault at the hands of Conon. The doctor presumably testified to the severity of his wounds, and is said to have been unsure whether or not the speaker would survive; he appears to act in a role resembling that of the modern ‘expert witness’, rather than speaking to the character of the speaker or the specific events of the assault. This is the only clear instance of a medical professional being called as a witness in the extant forensic speeches, but it is far from the only mention of them. In fact, forms of the word iatros appear in eleven extant forensic speeches, all by Demosthenes or Aeschines, as well as in one Demosthenic symbouletic speech, two non-forensic speeches of Isocrates, two of Antiphon’s Tetralogies, and several fragments of Lysias and Lycurgus.

In this paper, I explore how the doctor in Demosthenes 54 may have been perceived by the audience, particularly with regard to his trustworthiness and expertise as a witness. I analyse the other mentions of doctors in the orators, both those referring to specific individuals, sometimes by name, and those referring to the profession in a more general or even proverbial sense, in order to build a picture of the ways in which doctors were deployed in the orators and the popular opinions of the profession that logographers felt able to exploit. I argue that doctors were not generally perceived to be more trustworthy than any other kind of witness, and that the concept of ‘expert witnesses’ has little use in the Athenian context; thus, the doctor in Demosthenes 54 should not stand out as much as we might expect.

In Chapters 26–27 of the novel Barlaam and Josaphat, King Abenner organises a theological dispute in order to discourage his son from Christian faith. One participant, Nachor, pretends to be Barlaam, the tutor of Josaphat. The king intends this “fake Barlaam” to speak so badly of Christianity as to allow all the other orators easily to triumph over him, thus making Josaphat abandon his belief. But Nachor’s speech achieves the opposite effect: not only does he fail to persuade Josaphat, but he himself converts to Christianity as well. Nachor’s pseudo-testimony is but a transcription of Aristides’ Apology, long believed to have been lost, which the Athenian philosopher addressed to Emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. Although both Eusebius and Hieronymus mention this work, the speech was believed lost until as late as 1878. This paper discusses the later fate of the Apology: in addition to Armenian, Syrian, and Georgian translations recovered in the 19th century, Greek papyrus fragments also carry details of the original script, while Codex Iviron 463 has preserved not only the Greek metaphrasis of the speech but also its Old French translation.

Ἡ Κατὰ Βαγώα μελέτη, ὡς πλήρης λόγος καὶ ὄχι ἀποσπασματικός, εἶναι ἕνα μικτὸ προγύμνασμα κατηγορητικοῦ περιεχομένου, τὸ ὁποῖο στρέφεται ἐναντίον αὐτῶν ποὺ διέπραξαν τὴν ἔκνομη πράξη μόλυνσης τῶν εἰκόνων καὶ συνάμα ὑπερασπιστικὸ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ποὺ κατηγορήθηκε ἄδικα ἀπὸ τοὺς παρανομήσαντες.

Τὸ μικτὸ προγυμνασματικὸ εἶδος εἶναι ἐξαιρετικὰ ἰσχυρὸ κατὰ τὴν διάρκεια λήψης μιᾶς καταδικαστικῆς ἀπόφασης, ἀφοῦ συνδυάζει μὲ τρόπο δυναμικὸ τὴν πολυμορφία ὅλων τῶν εἰδῶν προγυμνάσματος. Η συνολική ισχύς αυτού του αποτελέσματος εκφαίνεται στην χρήση της μαρτυρίας στο δικαστήριο η οποία ανακόπτει την διασάλευση της ηθικής τάξης και συνδέει ψυχικά τον ρήτορα με το ακροατήριο.

Στὴν παροῦσα ἐργασία καταβάλλεται ἡ προσπάθεια νὰ ἰχνηλατηθεῖ ἡ λειτουργία τοῦ μικτοῦ προγυμνάσματος ὡς ρητορικοῦ εἴδους ποὺ εἶναι ἐξαιρετικὰ ἰσχυρὸ πρὸς τὴν λήψη μιᾶς καταδικαστικῆς ἀπόφασης, όπως και η διαδικασία με την οποίαν η μαρτυρία υπηρετεί τους στόχους του ρήτορος και τον καταξιώνει στην συνείδηση του ακροατηρίου.

Ἡ Κατὰ Βαγώα μελέτη πληροῖ τὰ λογοτεχνικὰ κριτήρια ἑνὸς «προγυμνασματικοῦ» δικανικοῦ λόγου ἀλλὰ οὐσιαστικὰ πρόκειται γιὰ ἕνα κείμενο ποὺ δὲν ἐκφωνήθηκε ποτὲ σὲ ἀνάλογο περιβάλλον, καὶ συνεγράφη ἀπὸ τὸν ρήτορα πρὸς γλωσσικὴ ἐκγύμναση. Ἀκόμα καὶ ὑπ’ αὐτὴν τὴν αἴρεση, ἡ ἀποκάλυψη καὶ ὁ σχολιασμὸς τῶν ρητορικῶν μέσων ποὺ χρησιμοποιήθηκαν γιὰ τὴν κατασκευὴ τοῦ λόγου αὐτοῦ δεικνύουν τὴν ἰδιαίτερη σημασία του γιὰ πράξεις μὲ ἠθικὲς ἐπιπτώσεις στὸ Βυζάντιο τοῦ 12ου αἰῶνος.

Testimony is in a relationship of interdependence with truth, through mediation of faith-trust and persuasion. At the same time truth from functional role of the ancient Greek worldview is transformed into a person in the Christian society. Truthful «witnesses» are the Antigone by Sophocles, the The Apology of Socrates by Plato, and the John’s Gospel of the New Testament. The purpose is to investigate the «path» of the martyr from the classical era to the early Christian centuries, so as to reveal different approaches and individual engaging representations of testimony. The method chosen is analysis through the source texts themselves, the study of intrinsic references and review of related literature. Perceptions and beliefs of  people of that time – through the texts – about witness of truth compose the image of their world.