A common practice during the Archaic greek era was to invoke gods as witnesses in political oaths. However, from the 5th century onwards, the testimonies of horkioi gods start to fade away, as the responsibility of monitoring the oaths fall to the appropriate officials (such as magistrates, demos etc). In this paper, we will present three case studies from Eurιpides (Suppliants, Hyppolitos, Medea). In these exemples, the invocation of the gods is deemed necessary in oaths referring to agreements on offering immunity, signing of peace or alliance treaties and imposing the sentence of exile.

The victory Odes of Bacchylides and Pindar do not belong either to the masterpieces of the narrative genre or to the great rhetoric speeches of classical Athens· epinikion is a “communal drama” (L. Kurke [1991]), which celebrates an athletic victory in order to preserve the fame of the addressee in perpetuity. However, as already C. Carey (1999) indicated, the poet’s task, his diction and the strategy he displays in order to persuade his audience, provide a nexus of affinities not only to the epideictic oratory but also to the Athenian dramatic scene. In my paper I will attempt to examine this association thoroughly by using Bacchylides’ Epinician 10 as my test case. This Ode deserves closer scrutiny. Being the only poem of Bacchylides for an Athenian victory in the Isthmian games, the poem develops, through its rhetorical means of persuasion (the priamel, etc.), an eloquent example for the political contextualization of classical encomiastic poetry modelled, in a way, on the Old Elegy of Solon.

Inartistic proofs, as is known from Aristotle, were among the materials used for the purposes of argumentation made in Attic drama and law courts. The argumentation, in particular, of judicial speeches used material from inartistic proofs which included witness
testimony. Witness testimony was among the sources of information that led to decision-making not only in the law courts but also in ancient Greek drama. The organisation of judicial speeches, the use of witness testimony in theatres and law courts and by extension the rhetorical similarities exhibited between Athenian drama and the oratory of the law courts,
reveal that tragedy and judicial rhetoric have reciprocal influences. This paper will explore the reciprocal narrative influences between judicial rhetoric and drama evidenced during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. The paper will provide a narrative analysis of the narrative
construction used to create judicial speeches and by extension the organisation of direct evidence that is given through witness testimony in texts of drama and rhetoric. The paper will examine the subsequent decision-making resulting from the information provided by
witness testimony in such texts. An emphasis will be placed on the reception of the narrative techniques of judicial speeches from texts of rhetoric and drama such as those by orators such
as Antiphon, and playwrights such as Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

Witnesses in Athenian courts testified by swearing to a written document prepared ahead of time and read out by a clerk during a pause in the litigant’s speech. Other documents, such as laws and contracts (the so-called “non-artistic proofs” – Aristotle) were similarly read out, but witness depositions were the most common of such proofs. Most of these depositions do not survive except for a notation in our manuscripts MARTYRES, OR MARTYRIA, but occasionally they do. On the basis of the surviving depositions, Thür has concluded (Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law 152-55) that witnesses presented a “formulaic statement” using “formulaic words,” either “I was present” or “I know.” I will argue that witnesses were not limited to formulaic statements. First, I note that Thür is implicitly distinguishing between “formal” and “accidental” witnesses – between those who are summoned to witness an event, such as making a will or an agreement, and those who by chance happen to have seen or heard something – a distinction I long ago noted at Gortyn (Symposion 1985). Thür is correct that formal witnesses usually state that they were present when such and such happened, since their being present is the reason why they are witnesses. It is also true that accidental witnesses often testify that they “know.” But by no means always. For example, in Demosthenes 35.14 the witness testifies that “Androcles, Nausicrates, Artemon, and Apollodorus deposited the agreement with him and that he still had the agreement.” In 35.23 another witness testifies that “he lent Apollodorus eleven minas of silver,” etc. These and other passages make clear that witnesses could testify using whatever words they wanted and that even if they often used certain words, they were not constrained to formulaic statements. Unlike Roman law, Greek law had no place for formalism, not even in witness depositions.

In his speech Against Ctesiphon Aeschines (3.75) praises the Athenian practice of
preserving the texts of public documents. He observes that this record does not change, but gives
the people the opportunity to see which politicians have been scoundrels in the past but now
claim to be honest men. This passage makes an implicit contrast between written texts, which are
kept in the public archive and considered reliable, and oral statements of politicians, which may
be dishonest and must be checked against written documents. This talk will study the use of
written documents in Athenian courts and show that in public cases decrees and other public
records were considered more trustworthy than oral statements. Litigants might interpret the
written laws in their oral arguments, but their interpretations were constrained by the existence of
written documents. This part of the talk will concentrate on the speeches delivered at the trial of
Ctesiphon, at the trial of Aeschines in 343 and Demosthenes’ Against Aristocrates. In private
cases, there were methods of authenticating written records, which were considered essential in
trials about contracts and wills Dem. 32-37, Dem. 56; Isaeus 1,9). Phratries also kept extensive
written records to establish legitimacy in inheritance cases. Finally, the paper will discuss the
role of the written plaint, which shaped the oral presentation of the litigants in court provided a
yardstick for the judges to evaluate their oral statements. The extensive use of writing helped to
keep the Athenian courts democratic and to prevent the emergence of an elite ruling through
expertise in rhetoric.

The earliest conceptualizations of rhetorical theory prominently featured accounts of how the testimony of witnesses could be deployed during trials and, once in play, either defended or attacked. This essay examines how strategic maneuvering around witness testimony developed in the earliest quantitative techne and then passed into more complex technical traditions of the mid- to late-fourth century BCE. Antiphon’s Tetralogies represent a quantitative approach to rhetorical theorizing in which argumentation is expressed as a feature of the pisteis of the forensic speech. Thought relatively scanty, these accounts (Antiphon 2.1.9;  2.4.4-7;  3.3.8; 4.1.1; 4.2.4-6) have a number of features worth noting:

• All rely on a wooden and reductive notion of argumentation derived from situational strategies observed in Athenian trials. These can be categorized as non-productive modes of argument based on tactical manuevering.
• These accounts make little distinction between the statements of willing witnesses or those whose testimony would have been given after torture, or the testimony of persons under oath. All seem to exist in a single category, testimony, under which the various forms are subsumed.
• Argumentation based on testimony is firmly distinguished from that derived from probability (eikos), the productive mode of argumentation with which Antiphon seems to have been most familiar.
• Many of the manuevers displayed in the Tetralogies appear in a number of the earliest recorded Greek trials (Antiphon 1. 6-12; 5. 20-30, 31-39, 49-56; 6. 16-19, 22-32;  Andocides 1.11-19,  37-42, 69-70, 112-114, 127).

Taken together these features mark the Tetralogies as instances of argumentation by commonplaces. This mode of argumentation passed into the technical tradition, the earliest surviving instances being the Aristotelian Rhetoric and the pseudo-Aristotelian Rhetoric to Alexander, but in doing so underwent important change:

1. Types of testimony became distinguished from each other as testimony relying on oaths, witnesses, and torture came to be considered separately.
2. The heretofore isolated instances of commonplace lines of argument became arranged in a more systematic manner that expressed more clearly how one might deploy or refute one’s positions.
3. The commonplaces came to be considered in an abstract manner. No longer embedded in examples of common approaches to pisteis, they were seen as being theoretically separate from other, more flexible and productive modes of  argumentation. So, for instance, in the Rhetoric to Alexander testimony by opinions, witnesses,  evidence given under torture, and oaths are considered «supplementary» or «additional» (έπιθέτων) to the more substantial modes of proof; probablities, examples, enthymemes, maxims, and signs. In Aristotle , the ἀτέχνων πίστεων, laws, witnesses, contracts, torture, and oaths are literally ‘outside the art,’ the proper pisteis of which being ethos, pathos, and logos.

Furthermore the two surviving technai elaborate on the base of commonplace lines of argument with theoretically eccentric additions. Aristotle insists on a divison of witnesses into ancient (παλαιοἰ) and recent (πρόσφατοι) where the ancient ‘witnesses’ appear to be indistinguishable from maxims and the Rhetoric to Alexander suggests lines of maneuver that go either to the testimony’s general probability or to the witnesses’ credibility. Both of these technai reflect processes of elaboration and categorization that marked treatise composition in the 4th century BCE.

With regard of the testimonies and other documents in Attic Orators two main questions are emerging in scholarly research: Are they original or fake, and in second case, how they have been incorporated in textual tradition. Latest research leads to promising results in case of Demosthenes but the same research regarding the speeches of Aeschines remains until now a desideratum.

In present paper we will examine the testimonies and other documents of  the Aeschinean Corpus in terms of originality, their role in the textual tradition, as well as their rhetorical value. Moreover, we will concentrate on the rhetorical use of testimonies by Aeschines in order to make them function within the overal rhetorical strategy opposing to Timarchus (speech 1) and Demosthenes (speeches 2 and 3).

With regard of the testimonies and other documents in Attic Orators two main questions are emerging in scholarly research: Are they original or fake, and in second case, how they have been incorporated in textual tradition. Latest research leads to promising results in case of Demosthenes but the same research regarding the speeches of Aeschines remains until now a desideratum.

In present paper we will examine the testimonies and other documents of  the Aeschinean Corpus in terms of originality, their role in the textual tradition, as well as their rhetorical value. Moreover, we will concentrate on the rhetorical use of testimonies by Aeschines in order to make them function within the overal rhetorical strategy opposing to Timarchus (speech 1) and Demosthenes (speeches 2 and 3).

The speech Against Timarchos has received a lot of attention in the past 40 years, ever since K.J. Dover published his influential study Greek Homosexuality, followed shortly afterwards by M. Foucault’s History of Sexuality. The speech has been considered a standard for our understanding of 4^th c. century Athenian morality, even though numerous studies have pointed out the weaknesses of this text as historical source. Timarchos almost unquestionably has been perceived throughout history as a male prostitute, although Aeschines does not provide a shred of evidence to support his allegations. In fact, a closer reading of the speech reveals that Aeschines had a great deal of difficulty trying to disguise some of the evidence which glaringly contradicted his assertions, like for example the age of Timarchos. Moreover, Aeschines does not present a shred of evidence proving that Timarchos was a corrupt politician, and in fact the evidence \which he tries to present to this effect, if anything proves the opposite, that Timarchos must have been one of the most honest politicians who ever lived in Athens, if all Aeschines could produce in support of his assertions was a plot of corruption in future, which never materialized, never happened. He also produces absolutely no evidence proving that Timarchos treated his family badly. Again presenting the testimony of Arignotos, an angry, disgruntled relative accusing Timarchos of indifference in a matter which was outside his control certainly proves that there was no evidence against Timarchos in this area either. So, since Aeschines so absolutely and decidedly failed to prove anything at all, how did he succeed in producing a stunning reversal (ἄνω ποταμῶν in the words of Demosthenes) and having Timarchos convicted? Moreover, once we realize how weak was the evidence produced by Aeschines, and how desperate were his attempts to find something where nothing existed, how can we trust anything he says and take it as evidence for an important historical dialogue which has been going on for many years related to the sexual morality of the Athenians, as well as their perception of gender relations and stereotypes? In some ways this paper is a triptych, first discussing the quality of the evidence presented in the speech, then attempting to produce an explanation of how this evidence (or the lack of it) led to this verdict, and finally disputing the reliability of the evidence from the speech Against Timarchos as a historical source for our understanding of Athenian social history and gender studies.

In his book Rumour and Renown: Representations of Fama in Western Literature, Philip Hardie explores two aspects of fama, the Latin equivalent for the Greek phēmē: first, fama-as-rumour, the unattributable, uncontrollable and unverifiable proliferation of a mainly oral messaging system; and second, fama-as-renown, the emergence through frequent and repeated talk of the glorious reputation of men whose fame aspires to fixity and endurance through the medium of writing. The purpose of this paper is to explore references to phēmē, both as rumour and as renown, in the speeches of the Ten Attic Orators, examining the purpose of these references, and the ways in which they converge with or diverge from popular beliefs, as presented in poetry (esp. drama). The most frequent use of the noun phēmē is in the three speeches of Aeschines that have come down to us in a textual form: seventeen times (1.48, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131; 2.144, 145, 166). Strikingly, it is a noun used only a few times elsewhere in Attic oratory: once in Andocides (1.131), once in Lysias (2.3), seven times in Isocrates (1.43, 5.134, 4.30, 4.186, 9.21) and three times in Demosthenes (Dem. 19.243, 244). Orators usually use phēmē as witness and evidence to persuade the audience. Isocrates, for example, calls phēmē a good by which mortals partake of immortality (5.134), and claims that the soldiers embarking on his envisioned Pan-Hellenic expedition would surely either enjoy great phēmē, mnēmē and doxa in their own lifetimes or, should they die in battle, would leave these behind for posterity (4.186). Orators also use phēmē as witness and evidence to substantiate their attacks on opponents. Andocides, for example, recounts a rumour that alleged that Hipponicus’ house was bankrupted by an evil spirit (1.131). Aeschines is exceptional in attributing a divine status to phēmē (as in 1.127-131). Furthermore, before Aeschines, phēmē was not regarded as inherently good (cf. Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers 1043-1047), and while phēmē had divine connotations, it did so only in certain senses and contexts. Aeschines misrepresents Hesiod’s Work and Days 760-764 and a reference to the altar of phēmē in Athens, inventing ancestral beliefs about rumour to buttress his prosecution of Timarchus. Aeschines’ deification of phēmē aims, I argue, not only to insulate the speaker from the accusation that he levels unsubstantiated attacks on his opponent, but also from the accusation of aischrologia. A speaker who talked about shameful acts, even if not his own, ran the risk of incurring shame. The use of foul, profane or abusive language, and slander is also denotative of aischrologia. By making phēmē a goddess, and by making frequent references to phēmē as the source of his claims, Aeschines endowed his own argument with divine authority – euphēmia.

This paper offers an investigation into the use of religious evidence in the legal decision-making processes of classical Athens. Whilst rather rare, divine signs such as oracles make occasional appearances in the speeches of the Attic orators. Their quotation as religious sources of evidence illustrates the complexity of the construction of religious authority in these speeches: rather than straightforward quotations, these divine signs bring with them questions of contested interpretation and authenticity. This paper explores the role of religious evidence in the courts through an examination of the singular trial recounted in Hyperides’ speech In Defence of Euxenippus, which centres around an oracular dream. The speech narrates the case of Euxenippus, a citizen who had been tasked by the city of Athens to undergo incubation at Amphiaraos’ sanctuary in Oropos. He was ordered to consult the god about a dispute between two Athenian tribes and the Oropian sanctuary of the god Amphiaraos himself, which concerned the allocation of land. Recent studies of the speech have downplayed the religious dimension of this case and the significance of the dream oracle in this decision-making process: Papazarkadas (2011. Sacred and Public Land in Ancient Athens), for example, emphasises the economic dimension of the dispute, while others point to the personal interest of the god’s sanctuary in this case as explanation for the Athenian demos’ decision to consult the oracle (Harris, W. 2009. Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity; Whitehead, D. 2000. Hyperides: The Forensic Speeches). In their focus on explicating the reason for the oracle’s involvement, these studies have neglected the actual place of the dream as source of evidence in the subsequent legal trial. This paper therefore investigates the use of the dream as a religious source of evidence. It demonstrates how the question of interpretation, which is often debated, complicates the use of divine signs as sources of evidence in legal trials. To do so, this paper examines the authority with which different elements – the god, the incubant Euxenippus, ‘religious experts’ and the Athenian demos – are invested in this decision-making process, paying particular attention to the relationship between witnesses and evidence. I argue that the case study of Euxenippus’ dream illustrates the complexity of the public consultation of a god through incubation, as a process made up of a number of different stages in which human fallibility complicates the transmission of divine will from its expression in a dream through to human understanding of this will, and to its representation in a judicial context. Whilst unusual, the case at the heart of Hyperides’ speech thus gives us an important glimpse into the potential role of religious evidence in the public discourse of fourth-century Athens.

In his second critique of poetry in the tenth book of the Republic Socrates and Glaucon conclude to banish poetry from their city according to the demands of reason and say to her “if she looks like accusing us of being harsh or uncultured, that there is an ancient (παλαιά) quarrel between philosophy and poetry” (607b, Griffith with alter.). The ‘ancient quarrel’ is a self-defence of philosophy against poetry and it is old. The ‘ancient quarrel’ is a literary or rhetorical invention; and it is a second round de-fence of Socrates after the Apology of Socrates. Forensic commonplaces are both reshaped and dismissed later in the speech. Counteracting the prejudicial attack Socrates uses arguments that might refute the unpleasant suspicion; he contests the disputed points by denying the fact and its harmfulness, and substitutes one motive for another not only denying the charges but arguing for the services done to the Athenians. Socrates, also, adapts elements of eikos and ethopoiia for his defence strategy and philosophical program.

I am going to suggest that the foundations of this “ancient quarrel” are laid in the Apology of Socrates. It consists not only of the popular charges of the old accusers- the first accusation is referred to by the adjective παλαιά (διαβολὴ and ἀπέχθειαι: Aristophanes’ Clouds, Socrates is a sophist, the oracle, Socrates’ ‘pupils’), and the present formal charges brought by Meletus, but also of Socrates’ condemnation and his death itself. The oracle is an ad hoc invention and its meaning in forensic terms is that it is not Socrates’ fault that people or the oracle say that he is wise. Ιt is not Socrates’ fault, either, that those whom these young men (following Socrates of their own initiative) test, become angry at him, not at themselves, and they say “this fellow Socrates is utterly polluted, and corrupts the youth” (23c4-d2). Socrates not only has not harmed the Athenians, but he “believes that no greater good for the Athenians has ever come about in the city than his service to the god” (30a5-7, Reeve). He counts it of greatest importance that “the young should be as good as possible” (24d-e). He exhorts the Athenians to care about having concern for truth and the greatest possible excellence of their soul (29d8-e2). His main concern is to inspire the jurors to be concerned with philosophy and virtue.

One category of ancient witnessing which played a vital part in Greek society is oathtaking. Contrary to the ban on oath of Jewish Law, which is replicated in the New Testament, oaths are pertinent to all levels of human life in Greek antiquity to verify truth and secure order in the case of perjury. What interests us here is the object of the verbal invocation and its nature. Greeks always determined the identity of the person/power they invoke in the oath. Besides oaths in the name of traditional gods and divine powers, we know oaths that invoke an object or a personified power or an abstract concept or an animal and a plant. Τhis category is known with the German term Eideshorte. One good example is the Ephebic Oath in Athens and many such cases feature in Attic Comedy.

This paper will focus on one specific oath the sources attributed to Socrates and this is his oath by the dog. Plato describes Socrates swearing in the name of the dog thirteen times (Apol. 22a, Charm. 172d‒e, Crat. 411b3‒4, Gorg. 461a7‒b2, 466c3‒5, 482b4‒6, Hip. Maj. 287e5‒6, 298b5‒9, Lys. 211e 6‒8, Phaed. 98e‒99a, Rep. 399e5, 567d‒e, 592a). It is noteworthy that neither Xenophon nor Aristophanes refer to that oath when depicting the philosopher. Up to now the Socratic oath by the dog has been interpreted in two different directions: the first saw in it another proof for the philosophers’ religious sincerety and austerity. It has been connected either with the so-called Rhadamathyne oath which forbade the invocation of divine forces in oath-taking or with Anubis, because once Socrates swears by the dog, the Egyptian god. The second explanation suggests that we cannot take it seriously. I shall venture to revisit the Socratic oath by examining it as part of the way Plato’s Socrates dealt with the animal. I will examine the references to the dog and to the natural qualities that the philosopher discusses. Each time Socrates mentions the dog he is interested in very specific qualities by natural disposition, that are connected with his activities of hunting-searching and of watching/guarding; both are applied to the human world and have analogies with the philosophical activity. The oath by the dog can be seen in the light of this approach of the animal as a foil for the man. If so, the tone of the oath is serious and conforms to the model-role Socrates argued for the animal. Furthermore, the dog-like mode of life of the later Cynics, the so-called κύνες, could also have its origin in the known Socratic interest in dogs.

I am writing a little and reading around; but when I read, I feel my own writing is poor by comparison, despite your cheering me up by comparing my speech in vindication of Helvidius with Demosthenes’ Against Meidias. Of course, I had this speech to hand when I was composing my own, not so as to rival it (which would be shameless and almost madness), but to imitate and follow it, as far as the disparity between the greatest and the least amount of talent, as well as the difference between the cases, would allow (Pliny, Letter 7.30).   When the Roman politician Pliny makes his remark on the continued importance of Demosthenes as a model for his own craft, he points to the enduring influence of the Attic orator’s famous speech Against Meidias (Dem. 21), as well as its relevance to the practice of his own day. Indeed, the influence of this speech can also be traced in Cicero’s prosecution of Verres, as Lionel Pearson already noted in his 1968 article on ‘Cicero’s debt to Demosthenes’ (PCPh 3, 49-54).  But what has received less attention is the striking fact that, of all the echoes of Meidias in Cicero’s In Verrem, it is the appearance of the silent witness Strato, the victim of Meidias’ overbearing wrath at Dem. 21.83-100, which has provoked most remembrance of all. Why did this passage resonate so strongly with Cicero? How did he evoke the memory of Strato in his own prosecution of Verres? And what can the later interest in this passage tell us more generally about the potential for dramatic spectacle in the presentation of witnesses in the Roman and Athenian courts? In reviewing the Roman reactions to the appearance of Strato, this paper will reflect, through a cross-cultural comparison, on the key ideas and values in social and political justice with which both Demosthenes and Cicero, and later Pliny, were concerned. At the same time, it will argue that the case of Strato, as it was imagined and reimagined, played a normative and didactic role in the moral instruction of the jurors and audiences, as well as a significant factor in their decision-making processes.

Galen (2nd A.D.) is known as the greatest physician of antiquity after Hippocrates and one of the most prolific ancient authors. He claimed a position among the philosophers of his time and besides medical ανδ treatises he wrote philosophical, philological and rhetorical works form which little has survived. In the paper Galen will be presented as an orator in the highly competitive context of the Second Sophistic. Will be examined the relationship between Galen and rhetoric in his life (public speeches of medical content, public anatomical exhibitions) and medical practice (witnesses and evidence for advertising his medical competence) as well as examples of galenic treatises as public speeches (stylistic analysis, means of persuasion).

The mutilation of the Herms in Athens at the dawn of the Sicilian Expedition (415 BCE) led to one of the most significant court cases in the history of Athens. According to Thucydides, its immediate consequence, Alcibiades’ conviction and removal from leadership of the enterprise not only harmed the outcome of the undertaking but also generated a long-term domino effect of domestic commotions in the political life of Athens, commotions which gradually brought about its eventual defeat at Aegospotami ten years later (405 BCE) (2.65.11-12). While modern scholarship has approached Thucydides’ analysis of these events (6.27-29 and 53-61) as an open window to his judgment on the reasons of Athens’ fall, the importance of these chapters for understanding Thucydides’ view of the role of witnesses and evidence in court has relatively been neglected. The account of the judicial investigations in 415 BCE is the sole case in which Thucydides puts the legal life of his homeland under his microscope. In this respect, this segment of the History is of great significance with regard to Thucydides’ opinion on the significance of legal cases in the political life of Athens and in its fate in the war against Sparta. In this paper, I analyze Thucydides’ style at three levels (vocabulary, content, and arrangement of the material), in order to show that in these chapters Thucydides delineates the atmosphere of uncertainty and insecurity in which Alcibiades was convicted, and participates in that debate as Alcibiades’ defender by neutralizing the validity of the witnesses and evidence used by Alcibiades’ prosecutors against him. I will organize my analysis in three parts: (a) First, I will elaborate on the forensic vocabulary and themes of ch. 6.27-29 and 53-61; (b) Second, in light of – mostly – forensic speeches of the 5^th and 4^th centuries as well as of Aristotle’s Ars Rhetorica, I will approach the digression of the tyrannicides as Thucydides’ attempt to confute the validity of the evidence taken by Alcibiades’ opponents from the glorious past of Athens; (c) Last but not least, reading Thucydides’ account through the prism of his Pathology (3.82-83), I will conclude that the transition of the author’s interest from the general picture of the war towards domestic politics deliberately mirrors the decisiveness of inner politics for the position of a city-state in the international arena.

In this paper I will investigate the importance of witnessing in Hellenistic honorific decrees. An honorific decree presented condensed versions of narratives: ‘In the motivating clause, a series of descriptions and actions, which are noted, in a conventional, moralizing vocabulary, as making visible the honorand’s character; and the city’s reaction, in the form of a series of decisions. The economy of the decree equates the two narratives.’ (Ma 2013, 56-7). These narrations of honorific decrees are considered by many scholars as a useful source for the  oratory during the Hellenistic period (Chaniotis, Rubinstein in Kremmydas & Tempest 2013). Several condensed narratives refer to individuals and/or groups of people, who have reported on the deeds and personal qualities of the honorand. The written and/or oral reports often provided by the envoys sent to testify the honorand’s deeds and virtues are presented as an integral part of the decision making process of the award of public honours. This is particularly evident in the cases of honorands, who are granted honours for their services and conduct abroad, such as foreign judges, theoroi, proxenoi, and other. The polis who granted the honours often requested the affirmation and proclamation of the honours bestowed in the honorand’s homeland too. Both the motivation and the hortatory clauses of the decrees emphasize the benefactions and the virtues of the honorand, which the polis wishes to raise to a civic example of arete for other citizens and foreigners alike. The person(s) who transferred the knowledge, i.e. the evidence of the honorand’s good character and actions, took on a difficult task, which was to report and explain to the recipient community why the honorand deserved public honours. Apart from handing over copies of the psephismata, they also had to present orally before the boule and the demos the evidence for the honorand’s good ethos. Thus, their reports formed parts of deliberative oratory. And, although we cannot be sure whether the oral reports matched the written documents, however the language of the honorific decrees emphasizes that they spoke according to and in line with the passed decrees. The rhetorical elements of the Hellenistic honorific decrees have been studied, yet not from the aspect of witnessing and providing evidence. By shedding light on this aspect of the honorific decrees we come to realize that the decision of a polis to grant public honours for civic benefactions and good services is justified not simply on account of the manifestation of specific virtues and actions, but also on the basis of good reports, either written or oral (or both), which accompanied the honorific decree itself and enforced decisively its reliability and value as a piece of evidence.