Keeping to the Point in Athenian Forensic Oratory: Law, Character and Rhetoric

When a litigant initiated a lawsuit in Classical Athens, he submitted a written plaint to the relevant magistrate. This document contained his name, the name of the defendant, the legal procedure employed, and the specific violations of part of the law. If the magistrate accepted the plaint, the legal charges were read to the court before and after the litigants spoke, and the judges swore in their oath to vote only about the charges in the plaint, that is, whether the defendant had violated a specific law or not. In private suits, litigants took an oath to ‘keep to the point’, that is, discuss only the legal charges. In public cases litigants were under the same obligation. This volume examines several Athenian court speeches and show that litigants paid close attention to legal relevance in court. Consequently, the essays in this volume make the case for integrated approach to rhetoric and law emphasizing an institutional understanding of Athenian forensic oratory.

Edward M. Harris is Professor Emeritus of Ancient History at Durham University. He has published Aeschines and Athenian Politics (OUP, 1995), Democracy and the Rule of Law in Classical Athens (CUP, 2006), and The Rule of Law in Action in Democratic Athens (OUP, 2013). He has translated Demosthenes, Speeches 20-22 (UT Press, 2008) and Demosthenes Speeches 23-26 (UT Press, 2018) and co-edited with L. Rubinstein, The Law and the Courts in Ancient Greece (Duckworth, 2004) and with D. Leão and P. J. Rhodes, Law and Drama in Ancient Greece (Duckworth, 2010).

Alberto Esu is Lecturer in Classical Greek History at the University of Manchester. He has published on ancient Greek law and institutions, political thought, and Athenian oratory. He is the author of Divided Power in Ancient Greece: Decision-Making and Institutions in the Classical and Hellenistic Polis (2024) and has co-edited (with E. M. Harris), Keeping to the Point in Athenian Forensic Oratory: Law, Character and Rhetoric (EUP, 2025).