Witnesses and Evidence in Ancient Greek Literature

Andreas Markantonatos, Vasileios Liotsakis, Andreas Serafim, Andreas Markantonatos, Vasileios Liotsakis, Andreas Serafim

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9783110751970
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: Literature

The fact that aspects of witnesses and evidence put them in the centre of the institutional and cultural (e.g. religious, literary) construction of ancient societies indicates that it is important to keep offering nuanced approaches to the topic of this volume. To advance knowledge of the processes of presenting witnesses and gathering, or constructing, evidence is, in fact, to better and more fully understand the ways in which deliberative Athenian democracy functions, what the core elements of political life and civic identity are, and how they relate to the system of using logos to make decisions. For, witnesses and evidence were important prerequisites of getting the Athenian citizenship and exerting the civic/political identity as a member of the community. It is important, therefore, all the matters that relate to information-gathering and decision-making to be examined anew. Emphasis can be placed on a variety of genres to allow scholars recreate the fullest and clearest possible image about the witnessing and evidencing in antiquity. Chapters in this volume include considerations of social, political, literary, and moral theory, alongside studies of the impact of information-gathering and decision-making in oratory and drama, with a steady focus on the application of key ideas and values in social and political justice to issues of pressing ethical concern.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Witness and Evidence in Legal, Oratorical and Other Literary Contexts in Antiquity
• Part I: Written and Oral Evidence
• The Role of Written Documents in Athenian Trials
• Rumour and Hearsay Evidence in the Athenian Law-courts
• Part II: The Rhetoric of Information-Gathering and Decision- Making
• Audience Memory as Evidence in the Trial on the Crown
• Additional Information in Witness Testimonies in Classical Athens
• Self-Quotations as Witnesses and Evidence: The Case of Isocrates’ Antidosis
• Antiphon’s Witnesses: Extending the Earliest Greek Theories of Argumentation
• Part III: Scripting Witnesses and Evidence: Prose and Verse Texts
• The Questions in (Answering the Question about the Historicity of) Plato’s Apology of Socrates
• Plato’s Apology of Socrates: The Rhetoric of Socrates’ Defence and the Foundation of the Ancient Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry
• Witnesses and Evidence in Thucydides: The Institutional and Rhetorical Context of the Digression on the Tyrannicides
• The Torture of Prometheus
• Poet, Patron, Message: Witness-Roles and the Game of Truth in Epinician Eidography
• Part IV: The Cultural Workings of Witnesses and Evidence
• Information and Decision in Sophocles’ Trachiniae and Euripides’ Medea and Ino
• Scandals as Evidence in Attic Forensic Oratory: The Case of Aeschines’ Against Timarchus
• Notes on Editors and Contributors
• General Index
• Index Locorum