taut' ego martyromai: bystanders as witnesses in Aristophanes (original) (raw)
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Law on stage-forensic tactics in the trial of Marcus Caelius Rufus
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The present paper intends to highlight some aspects of Cicero's speech in defence of Marcus Caelius Rufus on 4 April 56 BC on the fi rst day of the Ludi Megalenses. In 56 BC, as a result of peculiar coincidence of political and private relations, Cicero was given the opportunity to deal a heavy blow on Clodius and Clodia in his Pro Caelio, whom he mocked in the trial with murderous humour using the means of Roman theatre, and, thus, arranged a peculiar theatre performance during the Megalensia, which anyway served as the time of the Ludi scaenici. After outlining the circumstances of the lawsuit (I.) and the background of the Bona Dea case that sowed the seeds of the confl ict between Cicero and the gens Clodia (II.) in our paper we intend to analyse the rhetoric situation provided by the Ludi Megalenses and genially exploited by Cicero (III.) and the orator's tactics applied in the speech in defence of Caelius (IV.).
In March 2018 the Centre for Ancient Rhetoric and Drama (C.A.R.D.) at the University of the Peloponnese organised the Second Attic Drama and Oratory International Kalamata Conference with the theme Witnesses and Evidence: Information and Decision in Drama and Oratory. From Antiquity to Byzantium, which gave rise to many highly interesting and thought-provoking papers. In particular, these fourteen selected chapters that began life at the Second Kalamata conference aim to examine an important interdisciplinary, intertextual and intercultural topic: witnesses and a wide range of other ways and means of collecting evidence. This is of great significance in varied legal systems across cultures and ages, but also in the texts and contexts which provide us with information about these systems. Classics, anthropology, sociology and studies of comparative law, among a plethora of contemporary disciplines, and several texts that present the mindset, folklore and cultural identity of ancient populations, provide details about the degree to which legal systems of the past valued the importance of witnesses. Chanakya, who was, among other qualities, an ancient Indian jurist, points out, in his political treatise Arthashastra (book J, chapter 11, verse 50), that "the parties shall themselves produce witnesses who are not far removed either by time or place. Witnesses who are far away, or who will not stir out, shall be made to present themselves by the order of the judge". 1 In the ancient Hindu legal system, "the king, cognizant of laws, and in consideration of the duties of the (four) several tribunal, shall ascertain the truth and determine the correctness of the allegation, description, time and place of the transaction, giving rise to the case, as well as its usages, and pronounce the true judgment". 2 The quintessence of legal systems across cultures and ages has always been the ability to deliver justice that is based on provable truth and impartiality. This makes the ways and means of collecting, constructing and using witnesses
In the so-called “excursus on Eastern lawyers” (30.4), Ammianus includes a picturesque description of the lawyers in the Eastern Empire. This has traditionally been considered a chaotic accumulation of satiric motives, and it has been used as proof that the historian had problems with law professionals at Antioch. However, a detailed analysis of allusions to previous authors, especially Cicero, Gellius and Horace, emphasizes that the author was following an articulate plan and excludes any autobiographical value. Its purpose was to vividly highlight the decline of forensic oratory, precisely in the context of ignorance in Valens’ reign that prevented Roman rulers from understanding the lessons from the past in a time of crisis.
Legal Strategy and Learned Display in Apuleius’ Apology
W. Riess, ed., Paideia at Play: Learning and Wit in Apuleius. Groningen: Barkhuis (2008), 17-49, 2008
In this paper I argue that Apuleius’ displays of learning in the Apology, far from being gratuitous, are central to his strategy in countering the charge brought against him. The key issue at stake in the trial, for both the prosecution and Apuleius himself, was the claim that Apuleius was a magus, which was in essence a claim that he possessed socially suspect knowledge and used it for socially subversive ends. Accordingly, Apuleius’ overall objective in his defense was to demonstrate that his knowledge was instead socially respectable. Although an important part of his strategy was to present himself as a philosopher, a status that at that time was eminently respectable, debates over who counted as a real philosopher meant that this line of argument could get him only so far; he needed to supplement his claim to be a philosopher with something more immediate. He thus put his knowledge on display in forms that were instantly recognizable as safe, familiar, and socially respectable: the standard grammatical forms of the quotation, the list, and the ‘problem’. These displays of learning accomplished something that more explicit arguments could not: they shaped the audience’s perceptions of him in ways that were both subtle and immediate. By parading his knowledge in such familiar and socially respectable forms, Apuleius was able through his very behavior to disprove the charge that it constituted something sinister and subversive, and hence to refute the accusation that he was a magus.
This paper, focusing on and discussing salient passages from the whole corpus of Attic forensic speeches, examines the use and purposes of imperatives for persuasion. The main argument it puts forward is that imperatives should not be seen as an improper, impolite or abrasive means of communication in the law-court, but rather as a decisive and confident way of sustaining a triangular relation between the speaker, his opponent and the audience. The speaker, through the use of imperatives, talks about, and intermittently to, his opponent and conveys messages to the audience about him. These messages, combined with references to religion, patriotism, ancestral glory and the very existence of the polis, give the potential to orations to influence the verdict of the judges and determine the outcome of trials.
This chapter examines Thucydides’ digression about the tyrannicides, with which the historian questions the Athenians’ memory of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and explains the truth about the tyrannicides and the Peisistratids. The point that is put forward is that Thucydides, in interrupting with this digression his account about Alcibiades’ involvement in the case of the Herms, not only to criticizes the flaws of his compatriots’ collective memory about the tyrannicides, but he also conveys the message that the story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton was intentionally distorted by politicians and demagogues in their speeches against Alcibiades in the Assembly and in court. Thucydides’ emphasis on the institutional and rhetorical context within which the tyrannicides were evoked as democratic symbols at the expense of Alcibiades’ alleged plan to overthrow democracy emerges from specific verbal choices. The surviving works of 4th-century oratory which refer to the tyrannicides prove that in the Assembly and court the Athenians referred to Harmodius and Aristogeiton in an idealizing fashion, which leads to the conclusion that Thucydides, by offering an account which belied the established idealized image of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, thus wishes, inter alia, to highlight historiography’s superiority over oratory in terms of the degree of validity with which each genre contributed to the preservation of historical truth.