Trials for murder and manslaughter in ancient Athens are preserved in a singularly full and revealing record. The earliest surviving speeches were written for such proceedings, and the laws governing such trials - laws that tradition ascribes to Draco himself - also survive in large part. These documents bear witness to the birth of the jury trial and of democratic rhetoric. This book, the first study of its kind, offers a systematic interpretation of Draco's law and the legal reasoning that grew out of it. The author outlines the historical development (7th to 4th centuries BCE), and then analyses the surviving speeches to unravel the underlying issues and practical consequences.

The Attic Orators' have left us a hundred speeches for lawsuits, a body of work that reveals an important connection between evolving rhetoric and the jury trial. The essays in this volume explore that formative linkage, representing the main directions of recent work on the Orators: the emergence of technical manuals and ghost-written speeches for prospective litigants; the technique for adapting documentary evidence to common-sense notions about probable motives and typical characters; and profiling the jury as the ultimate arbiter of values. An Introduction by the editor explores the speechwriter's art in terms of the imagined community. Four essays appear in English here for the first time, and all Greek has been translated.

The Attic Orators' have left us a hundred speeches for lawsuits, a body of work that reveals an important connection between evolving rhetoric and the jury trial. The essays in this volume explore that formative linkage, representing the main directions of recent work on the Orators: the emergence of technical manuals and ghost-written speeches for prospective litigants; the technique for adapting documentary evidence to common-sense notions about probable motives and typical characters; and profiling the jury as the ultimate arbiter of values. An Introduction by the editor explores the speechwriter's art in terms of the imagined community. Four essays appear in English here for the first time, and all Greek has been translated.

This volume explores the amnesty which ended the civil war at Athens in 403 BC. Drawing upon ancient historians and speechwriters, together with the surviving inscriptions, it presents a new interpretation of the Athenian Amnesty in its original setting and in view of the subsequent reconstruction of laws and democratic institutions in Athens. Beginning with the evidence on the original agreement and the events that shaped it, the volume also discusses the major trials that challenged and reinterpreted key elements of the amnesty agreement, including the trial of Socrates. These studies reveal the Athenian Amnesty as a contractual settlement between the warring parties, a bargain for peace and reconciliation. The oath that came to symbolize the Amnesty was the closing to that contract, a pledge not to go back on the covenants that spelled out remedies and restrictions-not a promise to forgive and forget. The same contractual principle inspired major reforms of the restored democracy, barring litigation on settled claims and ensuring that new legislation did not conflict with the constitution. While this book deals largely with the ancient agreement, Carawan also draws perspectives from parallels in modern history, such as the post-apartheid settlement in South Africa, illustrating how the Athenian Amnesty is generally regarded as the model for political 'forgiveness' or 'pardon and oblivion' embraced in later conflict resolution.